01. Introduction

Introduction

We live today in the midst of increasing denial that there is any final authority in the Bible. The influence of much that passes for science and philosophy, out of which comes the rationalistic criticism of the Bible and the supposed findings of those who sit in judgment on what God has said to man, has brought about a widespread feeling of emancipation to the modern mind, until the refusal to accept the witness of Scripture is to be found in college and university, and even in many a theological seminary, pulpit and pew. The mind that assumes the right to independent thinking, as soon as it comes under the spell of this modern spirit, quickly becomes a law unto itself. And then the Bible comes to be regarded as of no authority over the life, its doctrines out of harmony with reason, and its claims to be the sole revelation of moral truth to be incapable of proof. The doctrine of Christ’s atonement for sin by His death in substitution on the cross, together with the related doctrines of His virgin birth, His absolute Deity, His true humanity, His sinless life, His bodily resurrection—indeed, all the doctrines that have to do with the Person and work of Christ—are all objects of special attack.

One thing, however, seems to have been missed or evaded by these modern thinkers. No one is asked to accept the doctrines of the Christian faith simply on the ground that they are in the Bible, but rather because they are true. If these doctrines are not self-evidencing in and of themselves, insofar at least as they come within the purview of reason and logic, and if they are impossible of validation to experience, putting them into a book called the Bible, and claiming for them divine authority, will not give them that authority. The authority is in the word of God as given through Christ and the Scriptures, because it is in the truth of what they say. Truth is truth, whether it is in the Bible or outside of it, and is everywhere and forever the same. It never changes, because truth cannot change in any way without becoming error. No statement of it can make it more true, and no denial of it can make it untrue.

Nothing, therefore, can rightly be done with truth but simply to believe it and bear witness to it. And the Bible is not the source of truth, but the witness to it. God is the eternal Source of truth, and the Bible, being His witness, must itself be unmixed truth, since it must be either the perfect witness to Him who is Truth Incarnate, or else wholly a lie. For if it is not unmixed truth, it is so stupendous a lie that its principles cannot possibly be made to harmonize with honest reasoning and sincere thinking, and this would long ago have been shown up and the Bible would have disappeared off the earth. But it still stands against all the assaults of men and demons, a challenging miracle of evidence, in that fact, to all that it claims for itself.

Moreover, at least a first, if not the full and final meaning of the death of Christ, must not only be spiritually discernible and mentally acceptable to those who follow the prescribed formula for its apprehension, but it must therefore be logically demonstrable to those who are willing to follow its principles, in sincere and honest thinking, to their necessary end. For the appeal of this and all other Scripture doctrine is first to faith; and this would be in vain if the outlines of its central principles could be shown to be either hopelessly above apprehension, or so fragmentary and unrelated as to be inconsistent, illogical and unreasonable. The doctrine as it comes to us from Scripture must therefore be consistent, and it must be whole, at least in outline, and it must be in perfect harmony with reason insofar as it comes within our apprehension, even though it may at times ascend to heights where reason must wait upon the acceptance of the doctrine by faith. For truth, in order to have corrective power and give moral motive, must be luminous, not impenetrable, and logical, not illogical. It cannot do violence to the power to reason with which God endowed us, and still be regarded as truth. So it is only to be expected that when we turn to the Bible we should hear its Author say: “Come now, and let us reason together,” and that the reasoning to which He invites us should have salvation from our sins for its subject—“though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:18).

Cleansing from sin, and how God made it possible—that is the place to start. Indeed, it is the one place where reason must start, if the moral problems of life are to have any solution. For when reason comes to see how a holy God can be just and still justify the sinful, the clue to the solution of every moral problem whatsoever will be in our hands. With the purpose of making some contribution, if even a slight one, to an understanding of God’s solution of that problem, the following pages seek to show that the only method of salvation of which reason can possibly conceive, when self-evident, axiomatic truth is reckoned with, is the very plan of salvation set forth in the Bible. The thesis is that both the Word of God and reason agree in witnessing to the absolute necessity of atonement by substitution, as accomplished by Christ on the cross, as the only possible ground on which sin could be dealt with and the sinner saved from its consequences; and that the only philosophy of the cross conceivable to reason, when all the requirements of the whole moral universe are reckoned with, is also the divine philosophy found in the Word of God, and which is therefore eternal and unshakable truth because it inheres in the very nature of things—which is the nature of God Himself. The doctrine of the atonement is and doubtless always will be of unfailing interest. Its depths are so profound that new angles of vision are now and again coming to view, and its principles so comprehensive of all those throughout the moral realm, that they seem to penetrate to the very limit of moral truth. But necessarily the final confirmation of moral truth is to be found in the experiences of the life, not in a logical demonstration to that department of life called the intellect. The issues of life are not out of the mind but out of the heart, for faith is after all a matter of life, not of logic. Logic may satisfy the reason, but experience alone will satisfy the heart and put the life right with God, though logic craves to follow where faith leads, that it may find the reason why. In the experience of the author of these pages, he was saved through simple faith before he reached the teen age. Upon entering the ministry, his attitude toward Christ and His atonement was still one of unquestioning faith. But being of an inquiring mind, the desire grew to find and think out for himself as much of the divine philosophy lying behind the Cross as he could discover from what God has revealed, so that along with the appeal to faith presented to the lost, there might be carried in his own mind as clear an outline as possible of the reason why behind the Cross, that his appeal to faith in working with others might be presented as effectively as possible.

There was for a few years almost no reading of theological works on the atonement, but instead much study of the Word on the subject, with much thought and prayer. Gradually a reason why for the necessity of the cross seemed to shape itself in the thought, until finally there came a satisfying, though at first tentative, outline, from which to proceed into further study of the doctrine.

Reading on the subject then began, the result being an increasing confirmation of the outline, because the complete centrality of the cross to all else by this outline became more and more clear, while the reason why behind the cross, as he saw it, progressively appeared to throw a divine illumination on all the major problems which sin has thrust into the world. The following pages have that original outline of the doctrine as the framework of this discussion, some of the lines of thought herein having been expanded and clarified as the result of much reading on the subject. The principal authors and titles read follow.

Numerous other books not bearing directly on the doctrine of the Atonement, but making their contribution to the shaping of the thoughts here presented. A word about the title of the book will be in place. The wording of the title does not indicate an exclusion of the doctrines of the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Exaltation, and the Intercession of Christ from their essential and integral place with His work of Substitution on the cross, as a reading of the book will show. But it does deliberately design to exclude the “Social Gospel,” and all other “gospels,” which are made to rest on anything other than the shed blood of Christ on Calvary, as He “bore our sins in his own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). The author gratefully acknowledges valuable help given by Dr. Wilbur M. Smith of the Moody Bible Institute, and Rev. Norman H. Camp of the Bible Institute Colportage Association of Chicago, in reading the manuscript and offering suggestions that made possible both a clarifying and a strengthening of the argument in several places. As this discussion goes forth, many prayers go with it that God may be pleased to accompany its message with His power, that whatever of help toward the understanding of the Cross its pages contain, may be released upon the hearts and minds of both saved and unsaved, to the eternal glory of Him who died that we might live.

J.E. Conant