Secondly, if the resurrection did not take place, what became of the Savior"s body? We have already given reasons why the disciples could not have falsely pretended the resurrection. It is also impossible that they obtained, or surrept.i.tiously disposed of, the dead and interred body; because it was in a tomb of rock securely sealed against them, and watched by a guard which they could neither bribe nor overpower; because they were too much disheartened and alarmed to try to get it; because they could not possibly want it, since they expected a temporal Messiah, and had no hope of a resurrection like that which they soon began proclaiming to the world. And as for the story told by the watch, or rather by the chief priests and Pharisees, it has not consistency enough to hold together. Its foolish unlikelihood has always been transparent. It is unreasonable to suppose that fresh guards would slumber at a post where the penalty of slumbering was death. And, if one or two did sleep, it is absurd to think all would do so. Besides, if they slept, how knew they what transpired in the mean time? Could they have dreamed it? Dreams are not taken in legal depositions; and, furthermore, it would be an astounding, gratuitous miracle if they all dreamed the same thing at the same time.
Finally, a powerful collateral argument in proof of the resurrection of Christ is furnished by the conduct of the Jews. It might seem that if the guards told the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees, of the miracles which occurred at the sepulchre, they must immediately have believed and proclaimed their belief in the Messiahship and resurrection of the crucified Savior. But they had previously remained invulnerable to as cogent proof as this would afford. They had acknowledged the miracles wrought by him when he was alive, but attributed them even his works of beneficence to demoniacal power. They said, "He casteth out devils by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of devils." So they acted in the present case, and, notwithstanding the peerless miracle related by the sentinels, still persisted in their alienation from the Christian faith. Their intensely cherished preconceptions respecting the Messiah, their persecution and crucifixion of Jesus, the glaring inconsistency of his teachings and experience with most that they expected, these things compelled their incredulity to every proof of the Messiahship of the contemned and murdered Nazarene. For, if they admitted the facts on which such proof was based, they would misinterpret them and deny the inferences justly drawn from them.
This was plainly the case. It may be affirmed that the Jews believed the resurrection, because they took no fair measures to disprove it, but threatened those who declared it. Since they had every inducement to demonstrate its falsity, and might, it seems, have done so had it been false, and yet never made the feeblest effort to unmask the alleged fraud, we must suspect that they were themselves secretly convinced of its truth, but dared not let it be known, for fear it would prevail, become mighty in the earth, and push them from their seats. In the rage and blindness of their prejudices, they cried, "His blood be on us and on our children!"
And from that generation to our own, their history has afforded a living proof of the historic truth of the gospel, and of the stability of its chief corner stone, the resurrection of Christ.
The triumphal progress of Christianity from conquering to conquering, together with the baffled plans and complete subjection of the Jews, show that their providential preparatory mission has been fulfilled. If G.o.d is in history, guiding the moral drift of human affairs, then the dazzling success of the proclamation of the risen Redeemer is the Divine seal upon the truth of his mission and the reality of his apotheosis. Planting himself on this ground, surrounding himself with these evidences, the reverential Christian will at least for a long time to come cling firmly to the accepted fact of the resurrection of Christ, regardless of whatever misgivings and perplexities may trouble the mind of the iconoclastic and critical truth seeker.
The Christian Scriptures, a.s.suming the resurrection of Christ as a fact, describe it as a fulfilment of prophecy. Luke reports from the risen Savior the words, "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?" "Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day." Peter declares that the patriarch David before "spake of the resurrection of Christ." And Paul also affirms, "That the promise which was made unto the fathers, G.o.d hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again." One can scarcely hesitate in deciding the meaning of these words as they were used by the apostles. The unanimous opinion and interpretation of the Christians of the first centuries, and of all the Church Fathers, leave no shadow of a doubt that it was believed that the resurrection of Jesus was repeatedly foretold in the Old Testament, expected by the prophets, and fulfilled in the event as a seal of the inspired prophecy. Furthermore, Jesus himself repeatedly prophesied his own resurrection from the dead, though his disciples did not understand his meaning until the event put a clear comment on the words. He charged those who saw his transfiguration on the mount, "Tell it to no man until the Son of Man be risen again from the dead." The chief priests told Pilate that they remembered that Jesus said, while he was yet alive, "After three days I will rise again." Standing in the temple at Jerusalem, Jesus said once, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."
"When, therefore, he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them;" and then they understood that "he had spoken of the temple of his body." It is perfectly plain that the New Testament represents the resurrection of Christ as the fulfilment of prophecies, those prophecies having been so expounded by him.
There are few problems presented to the candid Christian scholar of to day more perplexing than the one involved in the subject of these prophecies. Paul declares to King Agrippa, "I say none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come: that Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead and should show light unto the Gentiles." It is vain to attempt to disguise the fact that the ingenuous student cannot find these prophecies in the Old Testament as we now have it. He will search it through in vain, unless his eyes create what they see. Let any man endeavor to discover a pa.s.sage in the Hebrew Scriptures which, taken with its context, can fairly bear such a sense. There is not a shadow of valid evidence of any kind to support the merely traditional notions on this subject. The only way of discerning predictions of a death, descent, and ascent, of the Messiah, in the law and the prophets, is by the application of Cabalistic methods of interpretation, theories of occult types, double senses, methods which now are not tolerable to intelligent men. That Rabbinical interpretation which made the story of Ishmael and Isaac, the two children borne to Abraham by Hagar and Sarah, an allegory referring to the two covenants of Judaism and Christianity, could easily extract any desired meaning from any given text. Bearing in mind the prevalence of this kind of exegesis among the Jews, and remembering also that they possessed in the times of Jesus a vast body of oral law, to which they attributed as great authority as to the written, there are two possible ways of honestly meeting the difficulty before us.
First: in G.o.d"s counsels it was determined that a Messiah should afterwards arise among the Jews. The revealed hope of this stirred the prophets and the popular heart. It became variously and vaguely hinted in their writings, still more variously and copiously unfolded in their traditions. The conception of him gradually took form; and they began to look for a warrior prophet, a national deliverer, a theocratic king. Jesus, being the true Messiah, though a very different personage from the one meant by the writers and understood by the people, yet being the Messiah foreordained by G.o.d, applied these Messianic pa.s.sages to himself, and explained them according to his experience and fate. This will satisfactorily clear up the application of some texts. And others may be truly explained as poetical ill.u.s.trations, rhetorical accommodations, as when he applies to Judas, at the Last Supper, the words of the Psalm, "He that eateth with me lifteth up his heel against me;" and when he refers to Jonah"s tarry in the whale"s belly as a symbol of his own destined stay beneath the grave for a similar length of time. Or, secondly, we may conclude that the prophecies under consideration, referred to in the New Testament, were not derived from any sacred doc.u.ments now in our possession, but either from perished writings, or from oral sources, which we know were abundant then. Justin Martyr says there was formerly a pa.s.sage in Jeremiah to this effect: "The Lord remembered the dead who were sleeping in the earth, and went down to them to preach salvation to them." 4 There were floating in the Jewish mind, at the time of Christ, at least some fragmentary traditions, vague expectations, that the Messiah was to die, descend to Sheol, rescue some of the captives, and triumphantly ascend. It is true, this statement is denied by some; but the weight of critical authorities seems to us to preponderate in its favor, and the intrinsic historical probabilities leave hardly a doubt of it in our own minds.5 Now, three alternatives are offered us. Either Jesus interpreted Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, on the Rabbinical ground of a double sense, with mystic applications; or he accepted the prophecies referred to, from oral traditions held by his countrymen; or the apostles misunderstood, and in consequence partially misreported, him. All we can positively say is that these precise predictions are plainly not in the Jewish Scriptures, undoubtedly were in the oral law, and were certainly received by the apostles as authoritative.
Continuing our inquiry into the apostolic view of the resurrection of Christ, we shall perceive that it is most prominently set forth as the certificate of our redemption from the
4 Dial. c.u.m Tryph. sect. lxxii.
5 Discussed, with full list of references, in Strauss"s Life of Jesus, part iii. cap. i. sect.
112.
kingdom of death to the same glorious destiny which awaited him upon his ascension into heaven. The apostles regarded his resurrection as a supernatural seal set on his mission, warranting his claims as an inspired deliverer and teacher. Thereby, they thought, G.o.d openly sanctioned and confirmed his promises.
Thereby, they considered, was shown to men G.o.d"s blessed grace, freely forgiving their sins, and securing to them, by this pledge, a deliverance from the doom of sin as he had risen from it, and an acceptance to a heavenly immortality as he had ascended to it. The resurrection of Christ, then, and not his death, was to them the point of vital interest, the hinge on which all hung. Does not the record plainly show this to an impartial reader? Wherever the apostles preach, whenever they write, they appeal not to the death of a veiled Deity, but to the resurrection of an appointed messenger; not to a vicarious atonement or purchase effected by the mortal sufferings of Jesus, but to the confirmation of the good tidings he brought, afforded by the Father"s raising him from the dead. "Whereof he hath given a.s.surance unto all, in that he hath raised him from the dead," Paul proclaimed on Mars Hill. In the discourses of the apostles recorded in the Book of Acts, we find that, when they preached the new religion to new audiences, the great doctrine in all cases set forth as fundamental and absorbing is the resurrection; not an atoning death, but a justifying resurrection. "He died for our sins, and rose for our justification." Some of the Athenians thought Paul "a setter forth of two strange G.o.ds, Jesus and Resurrection." And when they desire to characterize Christ, the distinguishing culminating phrase which they invariably select shows on what their minds rested as of chief import: they describe him as the one "whom G.o.d hath raised from the dead." "If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will G.o.d bring with him." "That ye may know what is the exceeding greatness of G.o.d"s power toward us who believe, according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in heaven." It is plain here that the dying of Christ is regarded merely as preliminary to his rising, and that his resurrection and entrance into heaven are received as an a.s.surance that faithful disciples, too, shall obtain admission into the heavenly kingdom.
The Calvinistic doctrine is that the unutterable vicarious agonies of the death of Christ placated the wrath of G.o.d, satisfied his justice, and ransomed the souls of the elect from the tortures of h.e.l.l, and that his resurrection was simply his victorious return from a penal conflict with the powers of Satan. The Unitarian doctrine is that the violent death of Christ was an expression of self sacrificing love, to exert a moral power on the hearts of men, and that his resurrection was a miraculous proof of the authority and truth of his teachings, a demonstration of human immortality. We maintain that neither of these views fully contains the true representation of the New Testament. The artificial horrors of the former cannot be forced into nor wrung out of the written words; while the natural simplicity and meagerness of the latter cannot be made to fill up the written words with adequate significance. There is a medium doctrine, based on the conceptions prevalent at the time the Christian system was constructed and written; a doctrine which equally avoids the credulous excess of the Calvinistic interpretation and the skeptical poverty of the Unitarian; a doctrine which fully explains all the relevant language of the New Testament without violence; a doctrine which, for our own part, we feel sure accurately represents the ideas meant to be conveyed by the Scripture authors. We will state it, and then quote, for its ill.u.s.tration and for their own explanation, the princ.i.p.al texts relating to the resurrection of Jesus.
On account of sin, which had alienated man from G.o.d and unfitted him for heaven, he was condemned after death to descend as a disembodied soul into the dark kingdom of the grave, the under world. In that cheerless realm of helpless shades and stillness all departed human spirits were prisoners, and must be, until the advent of the Messiah, when they, or a part of them, should rise.
This was the Jewish belief. Now, the apostles were Jews, who had the ideas of their countrymen, to which, upon becoming Christians, they added the new conceptions formed in their minds by the teachings, character, deeds, death, resurrection, of Christ, mixed with their own meditations and experience. Accepting, with these previous notions, the resurrection of Christ as a fact and a fulfilment of prophecy, they immediately supposed that his triumphant exit from the prison of the dead and return to heaven were the prefiguration of the similar deliverance of others and their entrance into heaven. They considered him as "the first born from the dead," "the first fruits of the dead." They emphatically characterize his return to life as a "resurrection out from among the dead," "[non-ASCII characters], plainly implying that the rest of the dead still remained below.6 They received his experience in this respect as the revealing type of that which was awaiting his followers. So far as relates to the separate existence of the soul, the restoration of the widow"s son by Elijah, or the resurrection of Lazarus, logically implies all that is implied in the mere resurrection of Christ. But certain notions of localities, of a redemptive ascent, and an opening of heaven for the redeemed spirits of men to ascend thither, were a.s.sociated exclusively with the last. When, through the will of G.o.d, Christ rose, "then first humanity triumphant pa.s.sed the crystal ports of light, and seized eternal youth!" Their view was not that Christ effected all this by means of his own; but that the free grace of G.o.d decreed it, and that Christ came to carry the plan into execution. "G.o.d, for his great love to us, even when we were dead in sins, has quickened us together with Christ." This was effected as in dramatic show: Christ died, which was suffering the fate of a sinner; he went in spirit to the subterranean abode of spirits, which was bearing the penalty of sin; he rose again, which was showing the penalty of sin removed by Divine forgiveness; he ascended into heaven, which was revealing the way for our ascent thrown open. Such is the general scope of thought in close and vital connection with which the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ stands. We shall spare enlarging on those parts of it which have been sufficiently proved and ill.u.s.trated in preceding chapters, and confine our attention as much as may be to those portions which have direct relations with the resurrection of Christ. It is our object, then, to show what we think will plainly appear in the light of the above general statement that, to the New Testament writers, the resurrection, and not the death, of Christ is the fact of central moment, is the a.s.suring seal of our forgiveness, reconciliation, and heavenly adoption.
6 Wood, The Last Things, pp. 31-44.
They saw two ant.i.thetical starting points in the history of mankind: a career of ruin, beginning with condemned Adam in the garden of Eden at the foot of the forbidden tree, dragging a fleshly race down into Sheol; a career of remedy, beginning with victorious Christ in the garden of Joseph at the mouth of the rent sepulchre, guiding a spiritual race up into heaven.
The Savior himself is reported as saying, "I lay down my life that I may take it again:" the dying was not for the sake of subst.i.tutional suffering, but for the sake of a resurrection.
"Except a corn of wheat die, it abideth alone; but, if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." "A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow; but as soon as she is delivered of the child she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world." The context here shows the Savior"s meaning to be that the woe of his death would soon be lost in the weal of his resurrection. The death was merely the necessary antecedent to the significant resurrection. "Blessed be the G.o.d and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead unto an inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of G.o.d through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed." "Him hath G.o.d raised on high by his right hand, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins." How clear it is here that not the vicarious death of Christ buys off sinners, but his resurrection shows sins to be freely forgiven, the penalty remitted! "Remember that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, according to my gospel: therefore I endure all things for the elect"s sake, that they may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory." "Be it known unto you, therefore, men, brethren, that through Him whom G.o.d raised again is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins." The pa.s.sage in the Epistle to the Hebrews, ninth chapter, from the twenty third verse to the twenty seventh, most emphatically connects the annulling of sin through the sacrifice of Christ with his ascended appearance in heaven. "Jesus who was delivered for our offences and was raised again for our justification:" that is, Jesus died because he had entered the condition of sinful humanity, the penalty of which was death; he was raised to show that G.o.d had forgiven us our sins and would receive us to heaven instead of banishing us to the under world. "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that G.o.d hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." Belief in the resurrection of Christ is here undeniably made the great condition of salvation.
No text can be found in which belief in the death, or blood, or atoning merits, of Christ is made that condition. And yet nine tenths of Christendom by their creeds are to day proclaiming, "Believe in the vicarious sufferings of Christ, and thou shalt be saved; believe not in them, and thou shalt be d.a.m.ned!" "G.o.d hath both raised up the Lord and will also raise up us." "If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain: ye are yet in your sins." This text cannot be explained upon the common Calvinistic or Unitarian theories. Whether Christ was risen or not made no difference in their justification before G.o.d if his death had atoned for them, made no difference in their moral condition, which was as it was; but if Christ had not risen, then they were mistaken in supposing that heaven had been opened for them: they were yet held in the necessity of descending to the under world, the penalty of their sins. The careful reader will observe that, in many places in the Scriptures where a burden and stress of importance seem laid upon the death of Christ, there immediately follows a reference to his resurrection, showing that the dying is only referred to as the preparatory step to the rising, the resurrection being the essential thing. "The Apostle Paul scarcely speaks of the death of the Savior except in connection with his resurrection," Bleek says, in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. "It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again and is now at the right hand of G.o.d."
"If we believe that Jesus died and rose again." "To this end Christ both died, and rose and lived again." "He died for them and rose again." We confidently avow, therefore, that the Christian Scriptures concentrate the most essential significance and value of the mission of Jesus in his resurrection, describing it as the Divine seal of his claims, the visible proof and pledge of our redemption, by G.o.d"s freely forgiving grace, from the fatal bondage of death"s sepulchral domain to the blessed splendors of heaven"s immortal life.
There remain a cla.s.s of pa.s.sages to be particularly noticed, in which an extraordinary emphasis seems to be laid on Christ"s sufferings, Christ"s blood, Christ"s death, three phrases that mean virtually the same thing and are used interchangeably. The peculiar prominence given to the idea of the sacrifice of Christ in the instances now referred to is such as might lead one to suppose that some mysterious efficacy was meant to be attributed to it. But we think an accurate examination of the subject will show that these texts are really in full harmony with the view we have been maintaining. Admitting that the resurrection of Christ was the sole circ.u.mstance of ultimate meaning and importance, still, his violent and painful death would naturally be spoken of as often and strongly as it is, for two reasons. First, the chief ground of wonder and claim for grat.i.tude to him was that he should have left his pre existent state of undisturbed bliss and glory, and submitted to such humiliation and anguish for others, for sinners. Secondly, it was the prerequisite to his resurrection, the same, in effect, with it, since the former must lead to the latter; for, as the foremost apostle said, "It was not possible that he should be holden in death."
The apostolical writers do not speak of salvation by the blood of Christ any more plainly than they do of salvation by the name of Christ, salvation by grace, and salvation by faith. If at one time they identify him with the sacrificial "lamb," at another time they as distinctively identify him with the "high priest offering himself," and again with "the great Shepherd of the sheep," and again with "the mediator of the new covenant," and again with "the second Adam." These are all figures of speech, and, taken superficially, they determine nothing as to doctrine. The propriety and the genuine character and force of the metaphor are in each case to be carefully sought with the lights of learning and under the guidance of a docile candor. The thoughts that, in consequence of transmitted sin, all departed souls of men were confined in the under world that Christ, to carry out and revealingly exemplify the free grace of the Father, came into the world, died a cruel death, descended to the prison world of the dead, declared there the glad tidings, rose thence and ascended into heaven, the forerunner of the ransomed hosts to follow, these thoughts enable us to explain, in a natural, forcible, and satisfactory manner, the peculiar phraseology of the New Testament in regard to the death of Christ, without having recourse to the arbitrary conceptions and mystical horror usually a.s.sociated with it now.
For instance, consider the pa.s.sage in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, from the eleventh verse to the nineteenth. The writer here says that "the Gentiles, who formerly were far off, strangers from the covenants of promise, are now made nigh by the blood of Christ." This language he clearly explains as meaning that through the death and resurrection of Christ "the middle wall of part.i.tion between Jews and Gentiles was broken down" and a universal religion inaugurated, free from all invidious distinctions and carnal ordinances. In his bodily death and spiritual ascension the Jewish ritual law was abolished and the world wide moral law alone installed. From his spirit, rising into heaven, all national peculiarities fell away, and through him Jews and Gentiles both had access, by communion with his ascended and cosmopolitan soul, unto the Father. A careful study of all the pa.s.sages in the New Testament which speak of Christ as delivering men from the wrath of G.o.d will lead, it seems to us, almost every unprejudiced person to agree with one of the ablest German critics, who says that "the technical phrase "wrath of G.o.d" here means, historically, banishment of souls into the under world, and that the fact of Christ"s triumph and ascent was a precious pledge showing to the Christians that they too should ascend to eternal life in heaven."7 The doctrine of the descent of Christ among the dead and of his redemptive mission there has of late wellnigh faded from notice; but if any one wishes to see the evidence of its universal reception and unparalleled importance in the Christian Church for fifteen hundred years, presented in overwhelming quant.i.ty and irresistible array, let him read the learned work devoted to this subject recently published in Germany.8 He can hardly peruse this work and follow up its references without seeing that, almost without an exception, from the days of Peter and Paul to those of Martin Luther, it has been held that "the death and resurrection of Christ are the two poles between which," as Guder says, "his descent into the under world lies." The phrase "blood of Christ" is often used in Scripture in a pregnant sense, including the force of meaning that would be expressed by his death, descent, resurrection, and ascension, with all their concomitants. As a specimen of innumerable pa.s.sages of like import which might be cited, we will quote a single expression from Epiphanius, showing that the orthodox teachers in the fourth century attributed redeeming efficacy to Christ"s resurrection rather than to his death." As the pelican restores its dead offspring by dropping its own blood upon their wounds, so our Lord Jesus Christ dropped his blood upon Adam, Eve, and all the dead, and gave them life by his burial and resurrection." 9
It was a part of the Mosaic ritual, laid down in the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus, that on the great annual day of expiation there should be two goats chosen by lot, one for the Lord and one for Azazel. The former the high priest was to slay, and with his blood sprinkle
7 Bretschneider, Religiose Glaubenslehre, sect. 59: Christus der Erloser vom Tode.
8 Guder, Die Lehre von der Erscheinung Jesu Christi unter den Todten: In ihrem Zusammenhange mit der Lehre von den Letzten Dingen.
9 Physiol., cap. 8: De Pelecano.
the mercy seat. The latter, when the high priest"s hands had been laid on his head and all the iniquities of the children of Israel confessed over him, was to be sent into the wilderness and loosed.
The former goat is called "a sin offering for the people." The latter is called "a scape goat to make an atonement with the Lord." The blood of the sin offering could not have been supposed to be a subst.i.tute purchasing the pardon of men"s offences, because there is no hint of any such idea in the record, and because it was offered to reconcile "houses," "tabernacles,"
"altars," as well as to reconcile men. It had simply a ceremonial significance. Such rites were common in many of the early religions. They were not the efficient cause of pardon, but were the formal condition of reconciliation. And then, in regard to the scapegoat, it was not sacrificed as an expiation for sinners; it merely symbolically carried off the sins already freely forgiven.
All these forms and phrases were inwrought with the whole national life and religious language of the Jews. Now, when Jesus appeared, a messenger from G.o.d, to redeem men from their sins and to promise them pardon and heaven, and when he died a martyr"s death in the fulfilment of his mission, how perfectly natural that this sacrificial imagery these figures of blood, propitiation, sprinkling the mercy seat should be applied to him, and to his work and fate! The burden of sins forgiven by G.o.d"s grace in the old covenant the scape goat emblematically bore away, and the people went free. So if the words must be supposed to have an objective and not merely a moral sense when the Baptist cried, "Behold the Lamb of G.o.d, that beareth off the sin of the world,"
his meaning was that Jesus was to bear off the penalty of sin that is, the Hadean doom which G.o.d"s free grace had annulled and open heaven to the ranks of reconciled souls. There is not the least shadow of proof that the sacrifices in the Mosaic ritual were Divinely ordained as types pre figuring the great sacrifice of Christ. There is no such pretence in the record, no such tradition among the people, not the slightest foundation whatever of any sort to warrant that arbitrary presumption. All such applications of them are rhetorical; and their historical force and moral meaning are clearly explicable on the views which we have presented in the foregoing pages, but are most violently strained and twisted by the Calvinistic theory to meet the severe exigencies of a theoretical dogma.
If any one, granting that the central efficacy of the mission of Christ, dogmatically and objectively considered, lay in his descent into Hades and in his resurrection, maintains that still certain pa.s.sages in the New Testament do ascribe an expiatory effect directly to his death as such, we reply that this interpretation is quite likely to be correct. And we can easily trace the conception to its origin beyond the pale of revelation.
It was an idea prevalent among the Jews in the time of the apostles, and before, that death was an atonement for all sins, and that the death of the righteous atoned for the sins of others.10 Now, the apostles might adopt this view and apply it pre eminently to the case of Christ. This is the very explanation given by Origen.11 De Wette quotes the following sentence, and many others of the same purport,
10 Gfrorer, Gesehichte des Urchristenthums, abth. ii. pp. 187 190.
11 Mosheim, Commentaries on Christianity in the First Three Centuries, Eng. trans., vol. ii. pp. 162-163.
from the Talmud: "The death of the just is the redemption of sinners."12 The blood of any righteous man was a little atonement; that of Christ was a vast one. The former all Protestants call a heathen error. So they should the latter, because it sprung from the same source and is the same in principle. If, then, there are any scriptural texts which imply that the mere death of Christ had a vicarious, expiatory efficacy, they are, so far forth, the reflection of heathen and Jewish errors yet lingering in the minds of the writers, and not the inspired revelation of an isolated, arbitrary after expedient contrived in the secret counsels of G.o.d and wonderfully interpolated into the providential history of the world. But, if there are any such pa.s.sages, they are few and unimportant. The great ma.s.s of the scriptural language on this subject is fairly and fully explained by the historical theory whose outlines we have sketched. The root of the matter is the resurrection of Christ out from among the dead and his ascent into heaven.
It has not been our purpose in this chapter, or in the preceding chapters, to present the history of the Christian doctrine of the atonement, either in its intrinsic significance or in its relations to subjective religious experience. We have only sought to explain it, according to the original understanding of it, in its objective relations to the fate of men in the future life. The importance of the subject, its difficulty, and the profound prejudices connected with it, are so great as not only to excuse, but even to require, much explanatory repet.i.tion to make the truth clear and to recommend it, in many lights, with various methods, and by acc.u.mulated authorities. Those who wish to see the whole subject of the atonement treated with consummate fulness and ability, leaving nothing to be desired from the historical point of view, have only to read the masterly work of Baur.13
In leaving this part of our subject here, we would submit the following considerations to the candid judgment of the reader.
Admitting the truth of the common doctrine of the atonement, why did Christ die? It does not appear how there could be any particular efficacy in mere death. The expiation of sin which he had undertaken required only a certain amount of suffering. It did not as far as we can see on the theory of satisfaction by an equivalent subst.i.tuted suffering require death. It seems as if local and physical ideas must have been a.s.sociated with the thought of his death. And we find the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews thus replying to the question, Why did Christ die? "That through death he might destroy him that hath the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." Now, plainly, this end was accomplished by his resurrection bursting asunder the bonds of Hades and showing that it was no longer the hopeless prison of the dead. The justice of this explanation appears from the logical necessity of the series of ideas, the internal coherence and harmony of thought. It has been ably shown that substantially this view is the accurate interpretation of the New Testament doctrine by
12 Comm. de Morte Christi Expiatoria, cap. iii.: Qua Judaorum Recentiorum Christologia de Pa.s.sione ac Morte Messia docet.
13 Die Christliche Lehre von der Versohnung in ihrer Geschichtlichen Entwicklung von der Alteaten Zeit bis auf die Neueste.
Steinbart,14 Schott,15 Bretschneider,16 Klaiber,17 and others. The gradual deviations from this early view can be historically traced, step by step, through the refining speculations of theologians. First, in ecclesiastical history, after the New Testament times, it is thought the devil has a right over all souls in consequence of sin. Christ is a ransom offered to the devil to offset his claim. Sometimes this is represented as a fair bargain, sometimes as a deception practised on the devil, sometimes as a battle waged with him. Next, it is conceived that the devil has no right over human souls, that it is G.o.d who has doomed them to the infernal prison and holds them there for their sin. Accordingly, the sacrifice of Christ for their ransom is offered not to the tyrannical devil but to the offended G.o.d.
Finally, in the progress of culture, the satisfaction theory appears; and now the suffering of Christ is neither to buy souls from the devil nor to appease G.o.d and soften his anger into forgiveness; but it is to meet the inexorable exigencies of the abstract law of infinite justice and deliver sinners by bearing for them the penalty of sin. The whole course of thought, once commenced, is natural, inevitable; but the starting point is from an error, and the pausing places are at false goals.
The view which we have a.s.serted to be the scriptural view prevailed as the orthodox doctrine of the Church throughout the first three centuries, as Bahr has proved in his valuable treatise on the subject.18 He shows that during that period Christ"s death was regarded as a revelation of G.o.d"s love, a victory over the devil, (through his resurrection,) a means of obtaining salvation for men, but not as a punitive sacrifice, not as a vindication of G.o.d"s justice, not as a vicarious satisfaction of the law.19 If the leading theologians of Christendom, such as Anselm, Calvin, and Grotius, have so thoroughly repudiated the original Christian and patristic doctrine of the atonement, and built another doctrine upon their own uninspired speculations, why should our modern sects defer so slavishly to them, and, instead of freely investigating the subject for themselves from the first sources of Scripture and spiritual philosophy, timidly cling to the results reached by these bia.s.sed, morbid, and over sharp thinkers? In proportion as scholarly, unfettered minds engage in such a criticism, we believe the exposition given in the foregoing pages will be recognised as scriptural. Without involving this whole theory, how can any one explain the unquestionable fact that during the first four centuries the entire orthodox Church believed that Christ at his resurrection from the under world delivered Adam from his imprisonment there?20 All acknowledge that the phrase "redemption by the blood of Christ" is a metaphor. The only question is, what meaning was it intended to convey? We maintain its meaning to be that
14 System der Reinen Philosophie, oder Gluckseligkeitslehre des Christenthums, u.s.f.
15 Epitome Theologia Christiana Dogmatica.
16 Die Lehren von Adam"s Fall, der Erbsunde, und dem Opfer Christi.
17 Studien der Evang. Geietlichkeit Wurtemburgs, viii. 1, 2.
Doederlein, Morus, Knapp, Schwarze, and Reinhard affirm that the death of Christ was not the price of our pardon, but the confirming declaration of free pardon from G.o.d. Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, sect. 297, note 5.
18 Die Lehre der Kirche vom Tode Jesu in den Ersten Drei Jahrhunderteu.
19 Die Lehre der Kirche vom Tode Jesu in den Ersten Drei Jahrhunderten, ss. 176-180.
20 Augustine, Epist. ad Evodium 99. Op. Imp. vi. 22, 30. Epist.