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  OUTLINES OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
  by Handley Moule
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A systematic outline of foundational Christian doctrine covering the existence
and nature of God, the Holy Trinity, and other essential theological topics. A
useful reference for students of theology and church leaders.

  Chapters: 12

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    0. Outlines Of Christian Doctrine
    1. CHAPTER I. introductory: (1) natural and revealed religion, (2) the holy scriptures.
    2. CHAPTER II. the doctrine of god: (1) theism, (2) the holy trinity.
    3. CHAPTER III. the doctrine of the father
    4. CHAPTER IV. the doctrine of the son.
    5. CHAPTER V. the doctrine of the son (continued).
    6. CHAPTER VI. the work of christ (continued).
    7. CHAPTER VII. the doctrine of the holy spirit.
    8. CHAPTER VIII. the doctrine of man.
    9. CHAPTER IX. the doctrine of the church.
   10. CHAPTER X. the doctrine of the ministry.
   11. CHAPTER XI. the doctrine of the sacraments.

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  CHAPTER 0: OUTLINES OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
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  CHAPTER 1: CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY: (1) NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION, (2) THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.
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introductory.

I. Natural and Revealed Religion.

II. The Holy Scriptures.

We are about to attempt a statement of the main doctrines of the Christian
Faith, taken as the expressions of truths divinely revealed in the Scriptures,
and divinely adjusted to the nature and needs of man. We desire to state and
comment as always remembering not only the duty of accuracy and fairness, but
also the presence of Him who is the eternal Life, Truth, and Love, the
ever-blessed God, to whom be glory for ever.

As introductory to our study, we make a few remarks here on the Connexion
between Natural and Revealed Religion, and on the Holy Scriptures and their
authority.

I. Christian theology, as presented in Revelation, practically assumes, as
otherwise given, certain great facts about man, the world, and God. It assumes
the truth of inferences from general human consciousness, such as the reality of
our personality, self-conscious, intelligent, and free to will; the reality of
the material world, and of the immaterial; of their difference, and of our
capacity really (not fully) to know both; the reality of the law of causation,
that every change or becoming has an adequate cause really related to it; the
reality of will as a true cause, an ultimate force. It assumes the fact of
conscience, the unforced response of man’s nature to evidence for the existence
of an absolute law of moral obligation and accountability. It proclaims, but it
even more largely assumes, the existence of God, the free Personal Creator,
Himself eternally and necessarily being, and the sole ultimate cause and basis
of all positive becoming; goal and repose of all that which in man seeks for
original and perfect being, truth, and goodness; raised above condition and
relation, as being self-existent and self-sufficient, but freely, sovereignly,
and lovingly entering into relation with the creation of His will; Infinite, by
the absence of all limit to His excellences, each in its kind, and meantime
Personal, that is, knowing Himself, and intelligently willing—a view of Him
which, far from limiting His nature, is of the essence of its greatness, for the
absence of personality would be a vast imperfection. Revelation assumes that
man, being what he is, and placed in the world, being what it is, has ground
enough to be sure that that world exists because of the existence of One supreme
Power of at least his own order; a Power which cannot less than himself know,
will, and love (see further below, p. 12).

Christianity assumes and claims the facts of general developed human
consciousness, as part of its evidence, and as necessary to a full estimate of
its doctrines. And it deals with man, accordingly, not as with an abstraction,
but as an actual being under actual conditions. It presents its doctrine of God,
not in vacuo, but as to a being made in his image (below, p. 157). It presents
its doctrine of salvation as to a being actually suffering from moral discord in
his actual state of nature. Individual men may repel these claims. But
Christianity invites them to reconsider their denial in the light of more
general facts, and to listen again.

Meanwhile these assumptions prepare the way for articulate Revelation from God
to man. Revelation assumes conscience, for example, but it refuses to be thought
of as its natural development. It is for man, and to him, but not of him. It
speaks to man, conscious of the existence of supernatural power, as a direct
message from the region of that power. It speaks to man, conscious of moral
difference, and of internal moral discord, as a message, direct from the region
of absolute right and love, about the nature and remedy of his own sin.

Christianity assumes of course the possibility of such direct messages. It
assumes that the eternal personal Cause and Possessor of all creatures is
supremely free amidst all ranges of His works, and in particular free to
communicate, in His spiritual Personality, with the personal spirits whom he has
made free to communicate with each other. And the independent study of physical
phenomena only harmonizes with this assumption, by leading the observer, true to
the deepest principles of thought in his own nature, along the chain of change
and cause to the conviction of an ultimate Cause quite inscrutable to physical
research. In other words, physical enquiry, often suspected of a tendency to
materialistic atheism, really leads towards a region of being on which it can
pronounce no positive verdict, and from which therefore may issue effects which
it can neither predict nor preclude. That region, says Revelation, is God,
supremely free to will and act. Physical enquiry, in its proper province, has no
quarrel with that assertion. It has no proof to offer that He "who inhabiteth
eternity" cannot speak from thence, amidst and through all that He has willed to
exist; not treating His handiwork capriciously, or as unreal, but using it as
entirely elastic under His wise and loving will.

The word Revelation may be used in a wider or a narrower sense. Man, rightly and
fully studied, is to himself a revelation of the being of God. The external
world is in some important respects a revelation, deeply connected with that
conveyed through manhood. But common consent restricts the word Revelation to
communications from and about God given otherwise than through the normal
phenomena of man and the world. Such communications, Christianity holds, have
been made from the very first to man. God has thus spoken sometimes by physical
miracle, sovereign abnormal handling of material things and their successions;
sometimes by spiritual miracle, as by disclosures of the future, or of present
facts of the unseen world. Above all, Revelation has come through the
Incarnation of the Son, the Christ, of God; through His manifested Person, Word,
and Work. And if we ask for a sure record of Revelation in this its more
definite and precious aspects, the Christian answer is, the Holy Scriptures.

II. The Holy Scriptures, whatever their origin and nature, are as a fact one of
the great phenomena of the world. No other collection of writings exists which
mysteriously combines, as they do, the widest diversities of date and authorship
with the deepest pervading harmonies and unities. In one aspect they are a part
of the national literature of a much isolated race; in another, they have been
and are the spiritual oracle of many generations of precisely the most
cultivated and vigorous races. Historical research affirms the accuracy of their
pictures of men and manners of the remote past; but meanwhile they themselves
refuse to separate from their firm texture of narrative and teaching the
presence everywhere of the supernatural. From one side they are a long and solid
chain of recorded and predicted events; from another, they are a continuous
exposition of supreme spiritual principles, spiritual forces, and fears, and
hopes.

They have been very often criticized in respect of their description, for
example, of the origin and processes of the material universe. But among their
defenders in these respects are found some of the chief exponents of the latest
scientific knowledge. [1] They have been attacked in the region of history. But
the past is full of verifications of their historical accuracy in matters once
apparently hopeless of explanation; while it is also full of warnings against
premature explanation of such difficulties.

But the Christian student sees the most impressive characteristic of the Holy
Scriptures in the fact of the attitude towards them taken by Jesus Christ.
Antecedent to all questions of its spiritual authority, the New Testament, as a
whole, is a mass of valid historical evidence to the opinions of Jesus Christ.
And in this character it attests beyond a doubt His profound veneration for the
Holy Scriptures then existing; that is to say, for the Old Testament, as in
substance, and practically in detail, it exists today. For Him it possessed the
peculiar and awful characteristic of Divine Authority. He stated no theory of
its construction; but looking upon it as it existed, He recognized in it the
decisive utterance of God, even in its minor features of expression. For the
mind which recognizes in Jesus Christ all that He claimed to be, this verdict on
the supernatural character and divine authority of the Old Testament is final.

And the transition of inference to the New Testament is not difficult. As a
fact, Jesus Christ entrusted the exposition of His message to a selection of His
contemporary followers. As another fact, within a very few generations, at
furthest, from His death, the vast majority of His disciples recognized in
certain writings, claiming to emanate from that circle, a divine character,
identical with that of the older Scriptures.

The claims of some of these writings to authenticity were freely discussed, and
in some cases long doubted. But this was never so with more than a small
fraction of the whole mass finally recognized. And, what is most significant,
doubt never extended, seriously or widely, to the point of refusing divine
authority to an apostolic writing once ascertained. And it is certain that the
"New Testament Canon," thus recognized from the first in idea, and in the
concrete of its present contents within three centuries from the death of Jesus
Christ, has shown itself ever since, by the evidence of spiritual and moral
power, to be indeed of the same order with those older Scriptures before which
the Incarnate Christ Himself bowed. And let it be remembered that the thoughtful
and reverent study of the internal evidences of the Holy Scriptures will always
contribute above all things to the solid belief in their divine character, and
their claim to ultimate spiritual authority for the Christian. [2]

For in fact the attitude of Christ to the Old Testament Scriptures is decisive
proof that they rightly claim ultimate spiritual authority. And it is well to
remember, as a great subsidiary item of natural and historical evidence on this
subject, that the early generations of the Christian Church held, with practical
universality, this view of the Scriptures. On few subjects, if any, are the
Christian writers of the first few centuries more entirely agreed than on the
ultimate authority of the Holy Scriptures. [3] (See further, p. 139.)

It is important to observe that authority may be real, yet not ultimate. A Creed
has authority; a Council has authority; a Father has authority, and still more,
many consenting Fathers, witnessing to facts of belief. But none of these has
ultimate authority. The Scriptures have it. (See below, p. 214.)

No thoughtful man will hastily urge his private judgment against the deliberate
verdict of his religious community lawfully expressed; or against a great
consensus of Christian witnesses or interpreters. That is, he will recognize
authority in them. To him "private judgment" will be not so much a right, to be
loudly asserted, as a sacred and searching responsibility, to be reverently
remembered. But all this is not a concession of ultimate authority to anything
but the Holy Scriptures. Reverently, but still lawfully and firmly, if the
deplorable necessity should arise, the individual may appeal, from even Creed or
Council, to the Holy Scriptures, asking to be tested by their sacred verdict
alone, as the basis of the authority of all other lawful courts. On the other
hand, he will cherish a high reverence à priori for the results of doctrine
actually attained by those other courts, as against any isolated conclusions of
his own.

The Holy Scriptures, then, are divine Revelation for the Christian who takes his
place without reserve at the feet of the Jesus Christ of the Gospels. It remains
to explain briefly what is the relation between them and systems or expositions
of doctrine based upon them.

Scripture, it is obvious, is not in itself a formulated system of doctrines. But
it does not therefore discountenance the construction of a system. The truth is
that Scripture both contains in abundance the materials for a system, and in
many of its parts, particularly in the Epistles, indicates a system. Up to a
certain point Scripture is thus analogous to "Nature." The universe is not a
system of science. But it contains the materials for the construction of theory
and development of system, and by the orderliness of its phenomena it suggests
an exposition in forms of mental order.

True, Scripture contains immensely more than the materials for a doctrinal
system. It contains a mass of expressions and manifestations of Divine
affections. It is a record of personal dealings of God with man, awful and
tender, so presented as to caution us, at every step, never to study doctrinal
method and order out of relation to the living and eternal Love. And Scripture
contains, moreover, abundant warnings that its contents are in their nature so
related to the inscrutable that in any systematization we soon reach the point
of holy silence. With such provisos, however, we rightly approach the Scriptures
with the aim first to ascertain their data of facts and truths, and then,
knowing that their Author is the Lord of order, and has so constituted us that
our minds must seek order through all phenomena, to endeavour to combine the
data; in other words, to trace a Theology.


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  CHAPTER 2: CHAPTER II. THE DOCTRINE OF GOD: (1) THEISM, (2) THE HOLY TRINITY.
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The Doctrine of God.

I. Theism. II. The Holy Trinity.

I. Theism.

In these pages, of course, no attempt is made to elaborate the argument for God
from man and nature. We have seen already that the Christian doctrines, which
are our real concern here, very largely assume that argument as, more or less
consciously, carried out in the mind already. All that we do is to indicate some
of the great converging lines of testimony outside the Scriptures, and to remark
briefly on some systems of misbelief.

What then are the main lines of testimony, other than direct and miraculous, to
the being and glory of the "One living and true God, everlasting, without body,
parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom and goodness; the Maker and
Preserver of all things, both visible and invisible" (Art. I.)?

Stated as simply and briefly as we can, they are—those testimonies which arise
from man’s observation of the world, and from man’s observation of himself, and,
as a special and profound fact under this last head, from man’s possession of
certain tendencies, or laws, of his nature, which, lying at the basis of all his
powers of observation and reasoning, conduct him also, with mysterious certainty
of result, beyond them. We mean what are known as our "Intuitions;" man’s
constitutional recognition of certain primary facts as incapable alike of formal
proof and of natural doubt.

Such facts are, the reality of our own personality, the reality of existence
external to our own, the universal truth of the first principles of geometry, as
that two straight lines cannot enclose a space, and the absolute difference
between right and wrong. No logical process (in the popular sense of logical)
can prove these truths. But when once the contemplation of them is occasioned to
man by observation, and their bearing made clear, man is such that he cannot
naturally doubt them, while in a state of mental and moral health.

The elements of evidence for God thus presented to man, apart from Revelation,
work then somewhat as follows, so far as we can analyse a process which
ordinarily takes place without the least conscious analysis. Man finds himself
in the midst of a world, a universe, showing innumerable and ever-multiplying
instances of order. We do not say design; for the word design takes for granted
personal will behind order. Man sees order, the more closely he observes; from
the dust beneath to the starry skies above. His instinct is to infer personal
purpose and action behind it. Why so? Because in that region of observation
which to him is quite immediate, namely his own personal consciousness, he knows
that the production of order inevitably implies purpose in action, somewhere,
however far, behind the result. And he is certain that he is not his own cause,
not his own maker; that he himself is, in all the order of his being, an event,
a production demanding (for this is an intuition of the mind) a sufficient cause
behind it. And he finds himself so related to things around him, so adjusted to
and interlaced with the external world, that he naturally tends to recognize
himself as, in some great respects, part of it; and so in its personal Cause to
look for his own. And in himself he finds, immediately and inalienably, the
facts of personal intelligence, will, and love, and the certainty that wrong and
right in actions are absolutely different. And it is intuitive to him to be
naturally sure that such consciousness is in a true sense supernatural, that it
belongs to a higher order than other matters of observation, so that that which
cannot know, and will, and love, and discern moral truth, is incalculably lower
in the scale of being than that which can. The combined facts of the inner and
outer worlds, watched by the one observer, man, thus naturally suggest to man
Personality behind and above phenomena, recognized as exercising intelligent
will, and as knowing good and evil. Meantime, the external things actually
observed are always finite, and so cannot merely of themselves carry proof up to
the infinite; but then the gulf is lawfully bridged by those intuitions which
demand, by the constitution of the mind, the existence of the ultimate and
uncaused; being behind all becoming; power than which nothing can be more
strong, truth than which nothing can be more true, goodness than which nothing
can be more good. Order, observed by the personal existence, man, who is himself
profoundly related to that order, witnesses to personality behind it,
personality of at least man’s order, because man’s cause. Conscience, known in
himself by man, witnesses to that personal Cause as not only knowing good and
evil, but as ranged on the side of good. Intuitions of the infinite—as, for
instance, in space and time—witness to that personal Cause as not only to a high
degree knowing, willing, and good, but as being (because ultimate) all-knowing,
all-powerful, all-good; a God of infinite attributes, that is to say, eternally
exempt from imperfection in everything that can be predicated of Him; not a
vague Something embracing all being, but the eternal One who is good so that He
could not be better, wise so that He could not be wiser, strong so that He could
not be stronger; perfect in Himself and to our true apprehension, infinite to
our always finite comprehension.

It would indeed be idle to say that this idea of God so dwells in the human mind
that it needs nothing to call it out, admits of no development, and demands no
revelation. What we mean is that in its highest and noblest form it is still an
inference as true as sublime from constant facts of the world and of man; that
in the lowest manifestations of religion, even among savages, there are
discernible the rudiments or the relics of it, and that Revelation finds in
man’s capacity for it and tendency to it the prepared receptacle for its
glorious message, a message which meanwhile man’s study of the world and himself
could never by itself develope, and the essence of which, as Christians believe
on good grounds, was accordingly given supernaturally to man even in the first
days of his being. [1]

To this faint sketch of the lines of theistic testimony we append a brief notice
of opponent or alien systems, with passing remarks.

Polytheism is the belief of many invisible personal agents, more or less
co-ordinate, behind or in phenomena. It is the belief of many races. In very
many instances, if not practically in all, there lies however a theistic (i.e.,
as the word by usage means, monotheistic) background behind the polytheism,
discoverable as the thought of the people is better observed and understood; one
indication among others that polytheism is not the germ of theism, but a
degradation. It is almost needless to say that polytheism as a belief is on the
wane. Observation, now enormously developed, and ever developing, in its range
and minuteness, tends to evince a unity in nature which effectually discredits
polytheism. On the other hand, Revelation indicates an element of truth
underlying it, telling us of innumerable existences other than human, personal,
and therefore true causes, but all wholly subject (willingly or not) to the
Supreme.

Pantheism is the view of things which may be roughly said to identify God and
the universe, including man. More strictly, it views the universe, including the
human consciousness, as a phase of the Absolute Being, held to be itself
non-personal, non-conscious. God is the Ocean, the universe a wave, or waves.
Ocean and waves alike are water, but the waves are not the ocean, only its
surface in a certain state. In this view there is no separation between God and
the world; all phenomena, good and evil, are equally and alike related to Him,
or to It. The great existing instance of pantheism is Indian Brahmanism. To the
Brahman all existences, material and personal, are transitory phases of the
inscrutable Brahm, itself unpersonal, which for ever evolves and absorbs
universes and persons, yet without design, sovereignty, or distinction. It is
remarkable that human instinct has so triumphed, however, as to make India the
stronghold of developed polytheism, which is, in this case at least, the popular
correlative of an inner pantheism.

Revelation wholly repudiates pantheism, above all by its witness to the eternal
difference of right and wrong, and by always representing the Creator as the
wholly free personal Cause of all other existence, and wholly sovereign over it.
On the other hand, it fully responds to the element of truth in pantheism, by
revealing the true God as not only distinct from His creation, and sovereign
over it, but always and everywhere present and working in it; not so that "the
universe thinks and knows," but so that His living, willing, and holy presence
is the sustaining cause of all things moment by moment, in their nevertheless
real existence, and while they work each in its sphere and order.

Atheism, although in theory the creed of the many millions of oriental
Buddhists, is now rarely avowed, in a positive form, in thoughtful circles of
unbelief. Practically, it involves the view that the world of phenomena explains
itself. But observation shows more and more clearly that the universe, so far as
its material resources and laws go, tends to quiescence and death. It is not
self-sufficient for its existence. It must therefore have begun, originated ab
extra, by a cause or causes not material. Non-theistic thought infers from this
an impersonal eternal "force" as the cause; a cause not only mysterious, but
unknowable; only, man can know that it is not the archetype of his own
personality. To this view the abiding answer is our immediate certainty of
personality, of self-conscious- ness, will, and conscience, and of the relative
greatness of this amongst other kinds of being. In his personality man knows
himself to be higher than even the most impressive of his surroundings, viewed
as unconscious and without will. And he is assured, in the deepest sense of a
reasonable certainty, that the true Cause of himself, a person, is not devoid of
personality. His intuitions rest in an eternal Person as the ultimate truth, as
they cannot rest in eternal non-personal being.

The non-theistic view just stated, as an alternative to material atheism, is
what is known (with very many modifications of detail) as Agnosticism. It has
affinities in some respects with pantheism, though widely differing from it in
others. Like it, it leaves no real ground for the ideas of government of the
world, of sin, of accountability and retribution. Meanwhile, it has in it
elements of truth, recognized by Revelation. God, according to Scripture, is
"unknowable" in the sense of being never "found out unto perfection;" in the
sense that He only wholly knows His own infinite glorious being wholly as it is.
He eternally invites, and eternally transcends, our thought. Only, we are sure
that nothing unknown or unknowable in Him contradicts what He has revealed of
Himself.

Deism is very much a word of the past. It denotes the belief of an almighty, or
mighty, Contriver and Maker of the universe, who however is not actively
sovereign over it, and is not immanent in it. In particular, it is a belief
which declines to admit the fact (whether or no the possibility) of miraculous
Revelation. Such a view of God and the world is discountenanced, not only by
Scripture, but by independent observation and inference.

In closest connexion with the testimonies to God commonly adduced from man and
nature, we lawfully claim, as a great concurrent evidence, Christianity, (or let
us say, Jesus Christ Himself,) antecedent to any detailed study of the Christian
doctrinal system. What, on the whole, is the testimony of mankind to Christ?
There are many exceptions, real or apparent, to the testimony. But as a fact He
has commanded not only the moral adoration of sixty generations of disciples,
but also, to a degree quite without parallel, the moral reverence of those who
have not submitted to His claims. In the languages of the foremost races the
word "Christian" is practically synonymous with "righteous" and "good." And this
Object of the homage of the human conscience not only confesses God, but claims
unique connexion with and mission from God.

And Jesus Christ is no mere Ideal of the human conscience, evolved from its own
materials. He is historical. His personality, character, utterances, and acts
cannot, in the nature of things mental and moral, be the creation of the thought
of Galilean peasants and a zealous Pharisee, of eighteen centuries ago, nor of
their period. He appears before us as a fact of the past, with the practical
alternatives that we see in Him either the supreme example of self-illusion or
the supreme Truth. The natural verdict of human conscience is not on the side of
the former.

This is not a book of Christian evidences. We can only point to the obvious fact
that the evidences of Christianity are all evidences of course of theism, and
direct us towards the highest answer to the further questions raised by natural
theism. Only here, as everywhere else in the enquiry, the observer, man, as well
as the phenomena observed, must be remembered.

In closing this section, we make a few detached remarks.

(1) Our physical evidence for the existence of God is akin to that for the
existence of man. We infer, however unconsciously, the presence of human
personalities around us, from observing matter around us acted on in a way which
in ourselves we directly know to imply personality. So we infer the Supreme
Personality, however dimly, from observing everywhere, around and within, the
phenomenon of adjustment which we know implies, in the action of our own being,
intention.

(2) A view of the Creator as working in His creation as well as ruling over it
prepares us to find that the traces of His working differ in many respects from
the traces of ours. "He leaves no chips." The hands and tools with which He
works are, in the last analysis, His will, on which also the material rests for
its existence and which gives it the power and law of its development from
within.

(3) The dependence, absolutely and always, of creation on the Creator (Rev. iv.
11) is a truth more distinctive of Revelation than is commonly understood. The
tendency of non-biblical systems of thought has been either to make the universe
co-existent with God, who modifies and adjusts, but does not sovereignly
originate and order, or to identify more or less the universe with God. The
doctrine of Creation, with which Scripture begins and which is everywhere
supposed in it, is all-important to the Scripture doctrine of Providence, which
teaches us to regard the whole system of events as so related to the sovereign
will that while every move- ment of secondary causes is left truly free, the
whole issue is such that "of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things"
(Rom. xi. 36).

The One God stands in Scripture really and absolutely alone as the free personal
Cause, the Creator, of all material and spiritual existence; as its true reason,
not only of origin but of continuance in being; as its supreme and entirely just
Lord, Lawgiver, and Judge; as its true Final Cause or Raison d’être; for He has
made it "for Himself." He is not only greatest of Beings, first among many; He
is the Being of Beings, such that nothing not being of His Essence can for a
moment exist independent of it, or out of relation to Him. Being uncaused, He is
in the fullest sense Eternal; His mode of being has nothing to do with either
origin or close. Declining all analysis of the idea of eternity, Holy Scripture
abundantly teaches that, whatever be the nature of matter or of spirit, the
material universe, and the spiritual, are not conditions of, but consequent
upon, the being and the eternally free will of God; never to be identified with
Him, but never to be dissociated from Him as original and perpetual Cause, alike
in their ultimate elements and in their whole combination.

II. The Holy Trinity.

"In unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and
eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost" (Art. I.).

For evidence on this supreme doctrine we go to the Holy Scriptures. A basis for
it has often been sought, and thought to be found, in independent speculation on
the nature of things, on the laws of being and of thought. But it is at least
safer for those who accept the Scriptures to make them the whole basis. The
existence of the supreme personal Cause and Lord may lawfully fall within the
scope of natural evidence; but not so, surely, the mode of His existence. This
He must Himself reveal. Nature and man may in certain ways harmonize with, or
reflect, that mode of existence, but cannot be trusted to disclose it. A brief
outline of Scripture evidence is accordingly presented.

(1) The basis of Trinitarian doctrine is Unitarian—God is One. The divine Nature
is not, like the human, distributed through or realized in a class of
individuals; it is the Nature of One Being, who is at once the Individual and
the Kind. He in the sphere of divine existence is One in such a sense that other
claimants to Godhead can be called God only by direct usurpation or by
figurative and well guarded designation, as when human judges are called Elôhim
(Psal. lxxxii. 1, 6). As a few specimen passages of the "unitarian" doctrine of
Holy Scripture, see Deut. iv. 35, vi. 4, xxxii. 39; 2 Sam. xxii. 32; 2 Kings
xix. 15; Psal. lxxxvi. 10 ; Isai. xlii. 8, xliv. 8 ; Mark xii. 32. Further, this
great truth appears in Scripture as a thing of warm and pressing practical
importance. The Eternal One, being infinitely great, good, and holy, eternally
and necessarily knows Himself to be such, and cannot, without ceasing to be
Himself, "give His glory to another," nor approve the slightest transference of
the allegiance, adoration, praise, and love, of the created being. Not in
selfish jealousy but in eternal rightness, having justly caused all existence
for Himself, He requires its right relation to Himself. And so far as that
existence consists in personal wills, He eternally and necessarily requires all
wills, if they are to be in right relation to Him, to will His will, to find
their highest utterance in His praise, to work always in the line of adoring and
loving homage to Him, to recognize their creaturely relation in everything.
Personal beings must personally live as those, who live by, in, and for God. He
meanwhile is always, and necessarily, and at once, alike the righteous claimant
of such worship and love, and its infinitely good and satisfying Object;
glorifying and beatifying the creature so related to Him. For evidence from the
side of human consciousness to the supreme fitness and rightness of such a
divine demand on human adoration, we may justly point to the spiritual
experience of all true believers in the God of the Bible. To them, obedience to
this sublime command is the most ennobling action of their will, understanding,
and affections. With a joy that cannot be expressed they "give thanks to Him for
His great glory," and recognize in that glory the true final cause of all His
adorable ways.

Under this head see, for example, Exod. xv. 11; Psal. xlvii. 7, 1. 23, xcix. 3,
cxlvi.-cl.; Isai. xl. 12-28; Jer. v. 22, x. 7; Rom. xi. 33-36, xvi. 25-27; Eph.
i. 6, iii. 20, 21; 1 Tim. vi. 15, 16; Jude 24, 25; Rev. xix. 5.

Such, faintly adumbrated—for even in Scripture we know Him but in part—is the
One God; such is the consistent Unitarianism of Revelation.

(2) But here comes in the Trinitarian phenomenon of the Scriptures.

Throughout the Book, as we have seen, One God appears as the object and claimant
of supreme love and worship; and His claim is guarded with holy jealousy. Yet
meanwhile more Personal Existences than One are addressed, or treated of, in
Scripture, in terms of supreme love and worship—in fact, as God. Let both these
facts be given full and unreserved weight, and then compared and coordinated;
and their convergence at least concurs with the catholic doctrine of the Holy
Trinity. Both facts are necessary; for the evidence of the second will be weak
out of relation to the first. It is the first which decisively forbids us to
explain the second either in a polytheistic sense, or in the sense of a mere
delegation of divine functions, or of a quasi-Godhead, to beings not properly
divine. For the language used about the love and worship rendered in the cases
instanced is such as to invade the prerogatives of Eternal Deity if it is not
harmonized with them by being given to Those who are within It.

We do not here enter in detail on the statement of the evidence for the Godhead
of the Son, and of the Spirit. See further below, in the proper places (pp. 57,
119, etc.). The inner relations of the Trinity will there find fuller
consideration, so far as we may reverently attempt it.

Here, with a brief catena of passages, we rather assume the fact hereafter to be
illustrated, and (a) make a short statement on the whole question, and (b)
briefly outline the history of the doctrine.

The Deity of Scripture, then, is One Being, in a sense of oneness infinitely
deeper than that in which, as in men, man is one—by a common nature in many
individuals. The Oneness of Godhead is altogether unique, and implies a unity of
the eternal Content ineffable, absolute, so that nothing can be more truly one;
and necessary, that is to say, such that Its eternal reason for so being is in
Itself. Such is the Eternal Nature, which is also the Eternal One, that being
eternally and necessarily not only Being but Love, It has more than oneness, It
has relation, within Itself. In one respect One, it is in another respect Three;
three eternally harmonious Wills, Agents, Persons; Persons, inasmuch as there is
between Them knowledge, will, and love. Each has as His nature the entire Divine
nature, which is quality, not quantity: Each is truly God. Each is necessarily
and eternally one in Being with the Others: there are not Three Gods. Each is
not the Others: there are Three Persons.

Meanwhile this Harmony presents with equal clearness the phenomenon of internal
Subordination. The Father is not more divine than the Son, or than the Spirit;
but He is the Father. Godhead is in Him as in the Eternal Fountain; in the Son
and in the Spirit as in the Eternal Streams. They are not accidents of His will,
any more than His holiness is an accident of His will (for without it He would
not be God). Nevertheless, He is the Father of the Son, the Source of the
Spirit. Such is His primacy that He is continually spoken of, by the side of
mentions of the Son and of the Spirit, as simply God; while yet the other
evidence forbids us, if we would submit, to explain this of a difference of
Nature. It indicates a primacy of Relation, of Order.

See the following passages; Matt. xi. 25-27; Joh. v. 19-23, 26, 27, vi. 38,
viii. 38, x. 29, xiv. 28, xvii.; and in general all passages where the
phraseology of Sonship is used of our Lord in His divine Nature.

Detached Remarks on Trinitarian Doctrine.

(1) In the Old Testament there is an adumbration. The plural noun Elôhim
(singular, Elôah [2]) appears continually in the Old Testament with a singular
verb. It would be too much to say that this reveals the Plurality in Unity, but
it certainly is in deep and suggestive harmony with it.

Again, in a large range of passages a Being appears whose character is at once
that of Messenger and Master, Angel of Jehovah and Jehovah. See e.g. Gen. xvi.
10, xxii. 12, xxxi. 11-13; Numb. xxii. 32; Josh. v. 13–vi. 2; Isai. lxiii. 9 ;
Mal. iii. 1. Such passages at least adumbrate the truth that the divine Unity is
not such as to exclude inner Relation.

Again, the divine Spirit is spoken of in terms which at least suggest that in
God’s mode of being His Spirit is not an impersonal Thing, but a Personal Being;
not only Influence, but Agent. See Isai. xlviii. 16.

We may reverently add, as possible indications in the same direction, the
threefold benediction. Numb. vi. 24-26; and the threefold ascription, Isai. vi.
3.

(2) The truth of the Trinity is accordingly in the New Testament less announced
than assumed and developed, in the light of the Incarnation of the Son, and of
the Mission of the Spirit to the world and to the Church.

(3) There is a recognized distinction in theology between the Trinity
"Immanent," or Essential, and the Trinity Economical, or Dispensational. The
Immanent Trinity is a phrase pointing to the eternal inner relation of the
Persons. The Economical Trinity is a phrase pointing to what may be called with
reverence the redeeming activities of the Persons. It views the Father as the
Giver of the Son, the Supreme Author of the Incarnation and Resurrection, and
the Adopter in Him of the saints. It views the Son as the Son, not only Eternal,
but also Incarnate and Mediating. It views the Spirit as not only the eternal
Bond of love between the Father and the Son, but the Glorifier of Christ in
human hearts, and the Regenerator of fallen men into children of God in Christ,
and the Bond of life and love between Christ and His Church. The distinction is
helpful and important as a formulation of great revealed facts. Meanwhile it is
obvious that there is a deep and necessary relation and connexion between the
two aspects of the Holy Trinity.

(4) Illustrations of the Doctrine of the Trinity.—Up to a certain point
illustration is lawful and helpful. Anything which illustrates the way in which
apparent contradictions are often harmonized by remembering differences of point
of view, may be thus in point. But the Trinity in Unity, being the mode of
existence of the Eternal, is a thing essentially unique, and is therefore lifted
far above the possibility of complete comparison or illustration. The student
and teacher will do wisely therefore to deal very sparingly with such treatment
of the doctrine, and will always guard what he does in this direction with a
remembrance of the unique nature of the subject.

SUPPLEMENTARY.

History of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

We trace the history of the doctrine in the form of a very brief account of some
chief misbeliefs, occasioning as they did closer examinations and definitions of
the revealed Truth.

(1) In the Gnostic systems (say a.d. 60 to 200) the Trinitarian question is
involved only by the fact that the terms Christ, Jesus, Holy Spirit, appear in
them. A principle common to all these systems is the view of the Supreme as
raised, not only above immediate contact with the world, but above all we
conceive or define of personal existence and its attributes; so that in the
scheme of Basilides, He, or It, appears as the Non-Existent (ouk ôn). Such
quasi-knowledge, however, as man can gain of Him is man’s salvation; a
quasi-knowledge, purely speculative and contemplative, without love or service.
This knowledge descends to man through a long chain of Emanations, in which the
links are super-terrestrial existences. Among these existences appear a "Christ"
(or, in one system, two Christs), and a Holy Spirit. The "Christ" appeared on
earth either in mere semblance of, or as united to, a man, Jesus; but so that
the higher being was in no way involved in the sufferings of the lower. What
concerns the doctrine of the Trinity here is the tacit witness to the Christian
belief that Christ is superhuman, and the Holy Spirit personal.

(2) Akin in some respects to Gnosticism, but remote from it in others, is
Manicheism. Its floruit begins about a.d. 280. Its feature was an explicit [3]
doctrine of Dualism; the theory that the co-existence of good and evil in
phenomena involves the eternal co-existence of two originals, God and Satan,
Spirit and Matter, Light and Darkness. What concerns us here is that the
Manichean doctrine of Christ and the Spirit made a nearer verbal approach than
the Gnostic to the catholic truth of the Trinity, and witnesses so far to its
wide acceptance. From the Father, Lord of Light, emanated two Persons,
subordinate to Him, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ was the Son, sent
to enlighten souls, and to teach them how to escape from the prison of matter.
His Body was not really material; His death, resurrection, and ascension were
only mystical and visionary. There is no recognition of the mystery of eternal
distinctions and relations within the Godhead. The Son and Spirit of the
Manichean are little more than modes of the action of the good God.

(3) Somewhat earlier, and more within the Church,we find developed the
Monarchian type of thought. Of its expounders the best known is Sabellius, a
North African, an active teacher as early as a.d. 200. But the principle of the
error was held about the same period by many and often mutually independent
teachers; an often repeated phenomenon in the progress of both error and truth.
Noetus, Beryllus, Paul of Samosata, and (later) Photinus, were all essentially
Monarchian. The view indicated by this word is that God is essentially
Unipersonal, and Three only in manifestation to us. The same Person, as the
Father, decreed to save; as the Son, was incarnate and suffered; as the Holy
Spirit, influences man. The Sabellian perplexed the orthodox with the question,
often asked since in the same spirit, "Have we one God, or three?" And
believers, in reply, sometimes used language about essential differences between
the Father and the Son, such as to open the door to errors of the next type. The
Monarchian theory is not a reverent induction from Scripture, but an attempt to
harmonize its teaching with the à priori conception of a God necessarily
unipersonal, devoid of inner relations of eternal love.

(4) The next great alien theory was the Arian. Arius (floruit a.d. 321-36) was
the champion of the view which still assumed Unipersonality as essential in the
Supreme. But, recognizing the personal difference given in Scripture between
Father, Son, and Spirit, he taught, not three phases of the One, but that the
One willed into existence Two Possessors of a subordinate quasi-Deity, to be His
intermediaries with the world and man. Claiming to be scriptural, and insisting
on the Personality of the Son and of the Spirit, he ascribed to the Son an
existence pre-temporal, yet not eternal; a surpassing greatness and glory, yet
not a necessity of existence. The Son’s exalted being was yet originally
contingent on the will of the Supreme. Conceivably, He need not have been; that
is, He was a creature, though a creature who could in turn create, and could
become incarnate in a quais-man (below, p. 66). The doctrine of the Spirit was
but slightly expounded by Arius. His followers arrived at the theory that the
Spirit was willed into existence by the Son, and was thus God in a sense only
tertiary (below, p. 148).

(5) Plainly, a common ground in the above systems is the assumption that the
true God must be unipersonal. Each finds at least a hint of refutation when the
Scripture is seen to assume and indicate interior and necessary relations of
love in the unique Being of the Supreme. In that view, the supremacy of God over
creation, and the sovereignty of His will, are as secure as ever; but a wholly
new intensity is given to the truth that God is Love, and thus a new aspect to
the reality and glory of the union of man with God in the Son Incarnate. To
expound this truth was the great work of Athanasius and his immediate
successors. It had been held before, but imperfectly set forth and vindicated.
The truths whose harmony forms the true doctrine—the Unity of God, and the true
Deity, yet Subordination, of the Begotten Son and the Proceeding Spirit—had been
held, and held together; but very much as truths proposed to faith (as some
truths doubtless are), unrelieved by a harmony summing them up into one.

(6) Leading Alien Theories of Modern Times.—Of these perhaps the most distinct
and important are those connected with the words Unitarian and Swedenborgian.

Of the "Unitarian" theology it is difficult to speak precisely, for it
deprecates, on principle, dogmatic fixity. Its one really common tenet appears
to be the necessary Unipersonality of the Godhead, involving the inferior nature
of Christ. Within this lies a large gradation of views. The early Unitarians, at
the era of the Reformation, held a doctrine akin to the Arian, and many modern
Unitarians probably do the same. But the doctrine was early started that Christ
was mere man (whether supernaturally born or not), and in no sense an object of
worship; and this is perhaps the more prevalent modern view. Unitarians hold
very various opinions on the authority of Scripture, from deep reverence to
advanced rationalism; these, of course, are reflected in their theology.

Unitarians are often called Socinians, from the Italian teachers Lælius and
Faustus Socinus (cent. xvi.). But the opinions of the Socini were Arian. The
term Unitarian meanwhile is to be conceded only under reserve. The Trinitarian
is an earnest Unitarian with regard to the Unity of the divine Being.

The theology of Swedenborg (1688-1772) is in some respects sui generis. A
Trinity appears to be recognized within the Godhead. In Christ, supernaturally
born, resides this triune Godhead, so modified, or manifested, as to be
accessible to worship. The Holy Spirit is the influence communicated to churches
and individuals by Christ. Worship is to be addressed to Christ alone, who is,
for man, the One God.

The followers of Swedenborg are numerous; organized as the New Jerusalem Church,
or the Church of the New Dispensation.

The Word "Trinity" (Trias, Triad)

The first formal adoption of the word to designate the Three in One, One in
Three, dates a.d. 317, at a synod held at Alexandria. That the holy Mystery was
long before this a common article of Christian confession appears from e.g. a
passage in Lucian, the Voltaire of antiquity, (floruit probably about a.d. 160).
In his Philopatris the Christian is made to confess "The exalted God, …. Son of
the Father, Spirit proceeding from the Father, One of Three, and Three of One."

"Trinity" properly means "Threefoldness." It is not, as it is sometimes said to
be, a shortened form of Triunity.


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  CHAPTER 3: CHAPTER III. THE DOCTRINE OF THE FATHER
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The Doctrine of God (continued).

The Doctrine of the Father

On this most sacred region of truth much is best said under the Doctrine of the
Son, and that of the Spirit. The study of Their revealed glory, aways related to
that of the Father, who is Their fountain, best illustrates His. And thus, on
the other hand, the Christian will always aim, not occasionally, but in deep
purpose, in the study of Them, to study Him. All we know of Them is revealed,
ultimately, "to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. ii. 11).

With this resolve we consider here, briefly, and only in some respects, what the
Scriptures say of His will and work.

Creation.—In a sense special and supreme He is the Creator; "the Father
Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth." Through the Son, by the Spirit, Creation
was, and is. But in Their operation, the Father of the Son, the Giver of the
Spirit, works His will, realizes His idea. Thus ultimately to Him, in a sense
not of separation from Their work, but of operation through it, is due Creation,
in its scriptural sense; that is, the willing of the finite into being, with the
absolutely free volition of Infinite Power and Goodness. We repeat it (above,
pp. 18, 19), that nothing less or other than this is the Scripture view of the
relation of Creation to God. It is not coeval with Him, nor necessary to Him,
nor an emanation of Him. It is altogether contingent upon His will, so that He
would not have been less Himself had it never been. It is observable in this
connexion that Scripture never calls the Eternal Father the Father of the
Cosmos, of the Universe; a term which might have favoured the thought of
emanation, and perhaps suggested a co-eternity. He who is eternally the Father
of the Son is freely and absolutely the Maker of the world. Finite being had a
true beginning, at His fiat, however indiscoverable to us the distance of its
date is. And Creation, as being thus the product of His mere will, is ever
viewed in Scripture as wholly in His hands. It presents no difficulties to Him,
as if matter, or finite being, were an alien something in His way. Nothing but
sin is seen in Scripture as related so to God (below, p. 80).

Redemption.—It is out of the Father’s Love, for the Father "is Love " (see 1
Joh. iv. 8, 9, 16, and the context), that the whole Redemption flows (Joh. iii.
16, vi. 38; Rom. iii. 21-26, viii. 32; Eph. iii. 3-12; 1 Pet. i. 3, 21; 1 Joh.
iv. 9, etc.). Nothing is more unscriptural than any shadow of the thought that
the Son is more merciful than the Father; that the Son interposed to make the
Father willing to spare and save. Our Second Article (and so the Trent
Catechism, Pars i., c. v., Qu. xiv.) says that the Son was sacrificed "that He
might reconcile His Father to us"; and the purport of this phrase, though not
the phrase, is fully scriptural. But the meaning is not that the Atonement
induced the Father to have mercy, but that it liberated, so to speak, His mercy
by satisfying His law. As Creator He loves His creatures. As Lawgiver and Judge
He is the adversary of the law-breaker, pending vindication and satisfaction.
But He Himself provided the sacred Satisfaction; "He spared not His own Son"
(Rom. viii. 32). The satisfaction was eternally necessary, demanded by no mere
exigencies of government, but by His own Nature, which alone is exigency to God.
But His own uncaused Love found and gave it, in "sending" the Only Begotten,
whose own free, divine, and blessed love, while indeed His own, is also of the
Father; for the Son, in all He is, is "of the Father alone."

Thus the Father "loved the world;" a phrase to be read with unreserved adoration
and thanks. It is a revealed truth that "His tender mercies are over all His
works" (Psal. cxlv. 9); and that particularly He "loveth man as man" (Tit. iii.
4). Nothing must be allowed to negative this truth, or put it into the
background. And accordingly "He willeth that all men should be saved" (1 Tim.
ii. 4); "He willeth not that any should perish" (2 Pet. iii. 9); "as He liveth,
He hath no pleasure in the death of him that dieth" (Ezek. xviii. 32, xxxiii.
11).

"We give Him thanks for His great glory," in which the central and intense light
is Love. Infinitely unlike the Abyss of the Gnostic, or the unknowable Absolute
of a modern philosophy, He is Love. To know Him, the Fount of Deity, by His
Spirit, through His Son, is to touch nothing less than the perfectly tender and
responsive Original of all personality, all love; paternal in a sense truly akin
to, while infinitely transcending, the paternity of man’s heart.

Is He accordingly the Father of every human being, so that each can say, as
such, "I am a child of God"? If by Fatherhood is meant the divine side of that
profound and tender relation which must exist between the all-loving Creator and
His rational moral creature, made in His image (below, p. 157), and capable of
true love to Him and an eternal likeness to Him, then the Father is Father of
universal Man. Yet the use of the terms of proper Fatherhood to describe this
relation is not fully in accord with Scripture. A few passages appear to look
the other way; especially Luke iii. 38; Acts xvii. 28, 29. But it is plain that
in Scripture the words Father, Son, Child, etc., in this connexion, tend
habitually to refer, not to nature, but to grace; not to creation, but to
redemption, and especially to adoption and regeneration; not to Adam, but to
Christ; not to the world, but to the Church. See, out of a great mass of
Scripture evidence, Matt. v. 9, xiii. 43; Joh. i. 12, viii. 42 ; Rom. viii, 14,
15, 17, 21, ix. 7; Gal. iv. 5, 6 ; Eph. i. 5, v. 1; 1 Joh. iii. 1, 2, 9, 10, v.
1; and cp. Deut. xiv. 1; Psal. ciii. 13; Isai. lxiii. 16. The "Lord’s Prayer"
(Matt. vi. 9) was expressly taught to "His disciples" (Matt. v.1, and cp. 45).
Along with this reference of the words Father and Son, goes the truth of the
absolute and universal need of Regeneration (Joh. i. 13, iii. 3, 5, 7; 1 Pet. i.
23; 1 Joh. iii. 9, iv. 7, v. 4, 18; cp. 2 Cor. v. 17; Gal. vi. 15), in order to
right relations with God. This new birth, along with the kindred revelation of
the adoption of grace, is in Scripture the foreground aspect of the whole
subject of Divine Fatherhood. Compared with this Fatherhood, under which we
become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. i. 4), the Fatherhood of
Creation appears rather as a profound relation analogous to the paternal idea
than as Fatherhood in its proper meaning, which demands a true and proper
impartation of nature.

Thank God, the circle of the true Fatherhood, immovable in its holy limits, is
graciously open to faith. "Whosoever will" is welcome to step into it, met by a
divine embrace, in the name of the Only Begotten and infinitely beloved Son of
God, "Firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. viii. 29).

These reflections lead us to the revealed action of the Eternal Father in the
provision made for the redemption, salvation, and glorification of the Church
(on the Doctrine of the Church see further below, p. 202, etc.). The gift of the
redeeming Son is the act of the Father’s supreme love. And thus, through the
Son, One with Himself, the Father also redeems (so often in the Old Testament;
e.g. Isai. lxiii. 16); whether Redemption is taken in its larger and potential
sense, of full provision for deliverance, or in its (much more frequent) actual
sense, of accomplished deliverance, the experienced rescue of its objects from
condemnation and from the power of sin. [1] But more particularly it is the
Father who "lays on" the Son "the iniquities of us all" (Isai. liii. 6), and
who, on the other hand, "justifies," or pronounces accepted, all who are found
united to the Son in faith by the Spirit (see Rom. iii. 24, 26, 30, iv. 5, viii.
30, 33, and see further below, p. 183). It is He who "adopts" (Rom. viii. 15;
Gal. iv. 5; Eph. i. 5) these same persons to be His children, as members of His
Son (see just above, p. 34), thus meeting with an act of sublimely legal
acceptance His concurrent gift of new birth and new creation. He sends and gives
not only the redeeming Son, but the regenerating Spirit, by whom our will,
understanding, and affections are so dealt with that the man, coming in willing
faith to the Son, receives the mystery of regenerate life in Him (see Luke xi.
13; Joh. i. 13 with iii. 8, xiv. 16, 26; Rom.v. 5; 1 Pet. i. 2; cp. Joh. vi. 44,
45). Thus, ultimately, it is the Father who gives the regenerate life, "calling"
the soul into it, with a "call" which not only proclaims, but actually, without
the least violation of the will, prevails. [2] Those thus "called" and
"justified" by the Father are by Him "kept" (Joh. xvii. 11, 15; 1 Pet. i. 5),
and "sanctified" (Joh. xvii. 17); and finally "glorified" (Joh. xvii. 24; Rom.
viii. 30); "to the praise of the glory of His grace" (Eph. i. 6).

These revelations lead up to the revelation of an Election, or Choice, on the
Father’s part, with a view to this call, justification, and glorification. On
this great mystery we speak with humble reserve and reverence. It has been and
is an occasion of even agonizing perplexity to many hearts dear to God. A very
few steps of thought into it bring us to a stand, on the brink of the unknown.
And every inference upon it needs always to be governed and qualified by the
unalterable facts that the Lord’s tender mercies are over all His works, that He
willeth not the death of a sinner, that God is Love. Never for a moment is God
either unmerciful or unjust. Never does He magnify one of His attributes at the
expense of another. Yet in the revelation of His ways we must be prepared for
phenomena which, at least at present, are to us absolutely mysterious; for
instance, for actions of His will as He is Sovereign, and as He is His own
eternal End, and as He is Infinite, which we cannot formally harmonize with His
explicit assurances and proofs of pure and universal Love.

Such insoluble elements are inherent in all thought on the action of the
Infinite on the finite. Our thought must very often come to its end when we have
to study, e.g., the use of means by infinite Will, the action in time of the
Eternal, the relations between us who become and Him who is "I am."

Here we have such necessary mystery specially around us. In Scripture, we find
an element of unexplained divine will and choice regarding the actual
participants in salvation. We carefully say, "an element." The sacred thing in
question is not the ruling truth of the Gospel. It does not hold there the place
of Incarnation, Atonement, or Regeneration. But it is there. See in particular
Rom. viii. 28, 29, 30, 33; Eph. i. 4; 2 Thess. ii. 13; 1 Pet. i. 2. See Rom. ix.
6-25 for a strong assertion of the principle of an inscrutable action of the
will of God in choice; action based not on caprice, or mere force (God forbid!),
but on relations between Creator and creature which lie beyond us. See 2 Tim. i.
9 for a similar aspect of this truth; that this action of His will is "not
according to our works;" not to be accounted for by anything of merit in the
objects of it. With this compare such Old Testament passages as Deut. vii. 7, 8,
ix. 4, 6, where the choice of Israel to peculiar blessings is described as
similarly sovereign. With this again compare Rom. xi. 2,,where this sovereign
resolve and choice is called "foreknowledge;" an indication of the meaning of
that word in still deeper connexions (Rom. viii. 29 ; 1 Pet. i. 2; and cp. Acts
ii. 23). See further Rom. xi. 5-7. Another aspect of the same truth appears in 1
Cor. i. 27, 28. In that passage the Apostle speaks of a special and
distinguishing divine action on human hearts, not to be accounted for by
anything in them, but just such as to illustrate the triumph of grace over sin.
See, on this side of the subject, the passages where the Christian is taught to
refer every link of his salvation to the will and gift of God (1 Cor. iv. 7;
Eph. ii. 8) ; and where the Father is seen as "giving" to the Son those who
actually "hear the voice" of Christ and receive "life eternal" from Him (Joh.
vi. 37, x. 29, xvii. 2, 3, 6, 9, 11, 12, 24).

This work of electing grace is consistently assigned to the Eternal Father. In a
very few passages (see Joh. vi. 70, xiii. 18, xv. 16, 19; Acts i. 2, 24, ix. 15,
and cp. Joh. v. 21), the Son is seen to "choose." But in most of these passages
the reference is rather to work and privilege than to acceptance and holiness.
And in Joh. v. 21 the context explicitly connects the choice of the Son with
that of the Father as with its eternal basis.

The language of Joh. xvii. (and vi. and x.), just referred to, leads to the
doctrine of the relation of the Father to the Son in the work of the salvation
of the Church. With this we close the treatment of this aspect of the doctrine
of grace, and then append some remarks on questions of detail, and on history.

Nothing shines more radiantly in the New Testament than the eternal love of the
Father for the Son (Joh. i. 18, v. 20, xvii. 24, etc.). The Son is "His
well-beloved" (Mark xii. 6), "in whom He is well pleased" (Matt. iii. 17), whom
it is His eternal will to "glorify" (Joh. xvii. 5; Eph. i. 10, 11; Phil. ii.
9-11; Col. i. 16-18). So here, not only is the Son the one infinitely
meritorious Sacrifice, and Risen King and Head of the Church, but in the
antecedent work of covenant and choice, it is with Him that we see, as through a
cloud of light, the Father dealing. "In Him" the saints were "chosen, before the
foundation of the world" (Eph. i. 4); "through Him predestinated to the adoption
of sons" (ibid., 5); "in Him," in the same premundane purpose, "made an
inheritance" (ibid., 11). "In Him," in the same purpose, they "received grace"
(2 Tim. i. 9), "according to" which, and not to their "works," they are "called"
and "saved" in time. To the Son the Father "gave" them; a phrase plainly of like
reference. Their "predestination" is, "to be conformed to the likeness of the
Son" (Rom. viii. 29); "to be holy and without blame before the Father in love"
(Eph. i. 6), as accepted in the Son. Accordingly, when the process descends from
eternity to time, they are actually united by the Spirit (1 Cor. vi. 17 ; Eph.
iv. 4) to Christ, as limbs to Head (1 Cor. xi. 3; Eph. i. 22, iv. 15, v. 23;
Col. i. 18, ii. 19); so joined to Him that He and they are one "Christ" (1 Cor.
xii. 12 ; cp. Gal. ii. 20). They are "in His hand," and "in His Father’s hand,"
so that "no one can pluck them out" (Joh. x. 28, 29). The issue is that they are
"glorified together with" the Son (Rom. viii. 17); "in Him" (2 Thess. i. 12);
"obtaining His glory" (ibid., ii. 14); "being with Him, beholding His glory
(Joh. xvii. 24).

Through the whole plan and process, from "before the world was," we see the
Eternal Father loving the Son with immeasurable love, conducting Him to a
peculiar and supreme glory as Lamb, Priest, King, Head, Bridegroom, of the
Church, ordaining Him to be not only Head and Bond of Creation (Col. i. 17),
but, far more prominently, the one Fountain—for the New Creation, for man
regenerate, for the Church—of "all spiritual blessing" (Eph. i. 3), of "eternal
life" (1 Joh. v. 11). Union with the Son, true and vital, after the order of
grace, not nature, is the one indispensable way of acceptance, peace, holiness,
power, and final glory. Towards this union with Him of those whom the Father has
"given" Him, all the processes of providence and grace converge, under the
Father’s will (Rom. viii. 28). The construction of the Church in Christ, the
glorification of Christ in the Church, and of Himself in that fact (John xvii.
1), is the central thing in the Father’s will and ways (Eph. ii. 7, iii. 11,
etc.).

It is in this connexion that we find the provision of salvation presented as a
Covenant made between the Father and the Son. (See Gal. iii. 17 ; Eph. ii. 12;
Heb. vii. 22, viii. 6, ix. 15, xii. 24, xiii. 20; cp. Mal. iii. 1.) This side of
Scripture truth (below, p. 102) calls for careful study if we would see the
indicated symmetry of the plan of grace. What the matter of the Covenant is
appears from, e.g., Heb. x. 16, 17 (cp. Jer. xxxi. 33, 34). It is a
magnificently full acceptance, and then (second in idea, though not necessarily
in time) an "inscription" of the will of God "on the heart and on the mind." [3]
It is Justification and Sactification, to use familiar terms. It is divine
release from the guilt of sin, and from its power (see also 2 Cor. iii. 6-8).
Now this, in explicit statements, and in wider indications also, is presented in
Scripture as secured under eternal promise by the Father to the Son, for His
members, out of the free will of divine love, and under the holy condition of
the finished work of the Son, whose Blood of Atonement is "the Blood of the
Covenant" (Matt. xxvi. 28; Mark xiv. 24; Luke xxi. 20; 1 Cor. xi. 25; Heb. ix.
15-22, xiii. 20). The Son, our blessed Representative in this supreme matter,
triumphing as Man over sin and death, is, in the Father’s plan and will, the
Trustee and Depositary, for His members, of "pardon, holiness, and heaven;" He
"is made unto us, of God (the Father), wisdom, even righteousness, and
sanctification, and redemption" into glory (1 Cor. i. 30). Potentially, in the
sense of undistributed grace, He is all this for man. Actually, in the sense of
distributed grace, He is this for His "members," His limbs, His body. And they
are those designated Rom. viii. 28, 29. They are men "chosen out," "called out,"
"not according to their works" (2 Tim. i. 9 ; cp. Eph. ii. 8-10), but according
to the purpose of Him (the Father) who worketh all things after the counsel of
His own will"

(Eph. i. 11).

Thus, with the symmetry of an eternal plan, "all things" concur for the
fulfilment of the Father’s will, in the glorification of the Son, and of His
members in Him, and of Himself in all. From this sublime point of view rays of
relation traverse the whole region of salvation. Nothing is vague, contingent,
variable. The will is divine, and so is the foreknowledge (that is,
foredecision: see above, p. 38) and the provision for the actual full "spiritual
blessing" of its objects. The same "determinate counsel" (Acts ii. 23) of the
Father "chooses" the true Church, "calls" member after member in, and has also
provided, in the sacrifice and triumph of the Head, for the actual acceptance
and new life of every member.

SUPPLEMENTARY

Remarks on Certain Details.

Cautions for the Study of the Doctrine of Election.

(1) The divine Choice is presented in Scripture, like other spiritual truths,
never in vacuo. It is not an abstract problem, a mere instance of Infinite Will
as such, still less the result of a necessity inherent in things. It is
connected, on the one hand, with the will of a God who gives otherwise
magnificent proof that He is All-Good, All-Kind; on the other hand, with the
fact, not of mere creaturehood, but of sin. The mankind contemplated is not
mankind simply as God’s work, but as God’s work perverted from God’s will. Even
in Rom. ix. it is plain that the fact of sin in the creature is in view; while
the creature is enjoined to be silent before the Creator, not because He is
merely strong, but because He, as Creator, is, by a deep necessity, beyond the
creature’s full comprehension as to the whole relations of His ways.

(2) In Scripture the divine choice does not work through force upon the will.
"He enforceth not the will" (Westminster Confession, ch. iii., § 1). It is as
certain from Scripture as from our intuitions that man’s will is a reality, and
is truly free. In its every act it really expresses personal choice, and is not
the mere result of material circumstances. A strong drift of modern thought
favours "necessitarianism," under which, in effect, man’s will is but a phantom,
and our consciousness that "we might have chosen otherwise" an illusion.
Scripture says nothing of the kind. It appeals everywhere to the will as a true
centre of free though finite causation. What it does put before us is the
mystery and fact of the Supreme Will, in its absolute and all-embracing freedom,
dealing with all things from the eternal centre, so that finite personalities
shall all have free play in genuine volition, and so that evil and its results
are wholly of the creature, and not of God, and yet that in the summing up of
things God shall be seen to have carried out His most holy will in the sum of
all events.

(3) The divine choice is so presented in Scripture as to produce certain
definite moral impressions. It is not a problem thrown before the disputant, but
a fact presented to the convinced conscience, and then to the believing heart.
To the awakened conscience it says, "Sinful man has no right to divine mercy; do
you own this for yourself?" "And where that is owned, the truth has done one
side of its work—the work of Rom. ix. To the believing heart it says, first,
"Who maketh thee to differ?" (1 Cor. iv. 7), and then, "All things work together
for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to His
purpose" (Rom. viii. 28). And so the truth does the other side of its work—the
work of Rom. viii.

(4) The doctrine of the divine choice is not the scriptural foreground, and
certainly not the scriptural total, of the doctrine of salvation. There are
other sides of truth, so presented as to be in their turn taken as they stand.
Scripture isolates for treatment truths which converge in experience. The divine
choice, isolated for study, stands out real, sovereign, unalterable,
persevering; realizing with divine efficacy the symmetry and detail of a divine
plan. On the other hand, the Christian’s need to watch and pray, and the perfect
reality of the risk of ruin otherwise, and the necessity of missionary and other
labour in order that the divine plan may be carried out (2 Tim. ii. 10), are
just as little to be explained away. As a fact of spiritual experience, no man
can use the doctrine of a divine choice in order to give himself comfort during
one moment’s willing sin, without obscuring his every evidence of grace.

(5) Scripture asserts with loving iteration that the Eternal Father who chose,
no less than the Eternal Son who suffered, "willeth not the death of a sinner,"
"willeth that all men should be saved" (1 Tim. ii. 4). His solemn warnings and
most tender invitations are divinely sincere. The feeblest stirring of the human
soul towards Him, we may be very sure, is met with a willingness and warmth of
attention past our thought. Never, in His holy Word, is the Gospel presented as
a message whose scope the messenger is to limit to the "foreknown." The
Christian preacher is not only to uphold Christ before men, but to "pray men, in
Christ’s stead, be ye reconcile to God" (2 Cor. v. 20).

To refuse to do so is to forget that Scripture deals, for us, with the sublime
truths of the will of God under the limits always imposed on thought and its
expression, whenever thought touches upon dealings between the Finite and the
Infinite. At that mysterious line of contact, as we have seen already, there
tend to occur to the human mind apparent contradictions, in which the contrasted
statements are each a known truth, a fact, not an illusion, while yet the
relation between them is unknown, and perhaps knowable only to the Eternal Mind,
to Him to whom Time, for example, is related as it is not to us. Under such
contradictions falls the truth that the same Eternal Person who "willeth not the
death of a sinner," "worketh all things according to the counsel of His own
will," and, among all things, the retributory death of the sinner.

(6) It is only to illustrate this to say that the scriptural Christian should
be, and will be, "a Calvinist on his knees, an Arminian on his feet." For
himself and for others he will pray to, and trust in, a God who has all wills in
the hand of His will. To himself and to others he will appeal as to those whose
wills and responsibilities are realities indeed. Not that truth lies equally in
the systems associated with the names of Calvin and Arminius. But there is that
in Scripture which responds from its depths to emphatic points in both. And the
full secret of the harmony lies with God.

(7) Here best a few words may be said on the question of the purposed scope of
the Lord’s Atonement. Was its benefit intended for every human being equally, or
for man actually and ultimately regenerate only, the chosen Church? For the
former view appear, e.g., Isai. liii. 6 (?); Joh. i. 9; 1 Tim. ii. 6; 1 Joh. ii.
2 ; and cp. 2 Cor. v. 19; also, Rom. xiv. 15; 1 Cor. viii. 11. For the latter
appear, e.g., Joh, x. 15, with 26, 29; Eph. v. 25-27; and all passages which
limit the actual benefits of the Atonement to the sphere of union with Christ by
faith, taken with the truth of God’s never-disappointed purposes (Eph. i. 11,
etc.). It is plain that on the whole the atoning work appears as not only
competent to procure and secure salvation, but as efficaciously doing so. And
indeed nothing, from the divine view-point, is loose and contingent; all is
within a covenant.

But are we not entitled here also to read the lesson of parallelism, of apparent
contradiction? We are on the border-line where the Eternal touches the temporal,
the Infinite the finite. The actual issues of salvation and redemption most
surely and exactly realize the eternal purpose, and as it were define it. From
this point of view the purpose of the Atonement is limited within the vast (Rev.
vii. 9) circle of the true Church. Yet, on the other hand, Scripture not only
expressly testifies (as above) to a universal "gracious aspect" of the
Atonement, but, by its appeals and invitations, takes such an aspect for
granted, in the sense not only of an ample provision, but of a divine
willingness and love in offer. The mystery, and at the same time the indication
of where the unknown solution lies, resides in the relations of Infinite and
finite. The Eternal, as the Eternal, purposes and carries out; as the Eternal
condescending to gracious relations with the temporal, He invites all to a full
and actual provision.

(8) The Perseverance of the Saints.—As we are here concerned with divine plan
rather than human action, let us rather say, the Perseverance of God. Now here,
too, the principle of apparent contradiction enters. Scripture abounds with
assurances of perseverance (see Joh. x. 28 for most explicit words) and an
exulting anticipation of it, as an element of experience (Rom. viii. 31-9; 1
Pet. i. 8, 9), and with warnings and cautions of the deepest earnestness (e.g.,
1 Cor. viii. 11, ix. 27 [4]). In a sense, both sides of its language have to be
adopted heartily, by the teacher dealing with concrete experiences. But the
Scripture evidence as a whole goes for the permanence, in the plan of God, of
the once-given "eternal life." As we patiently compare the Scriptures on the two
sides, we shall be struck with the mass, and emphasis, of the positive
statements. It is as if the positive side conveyed a ruling spiritual
principle,—the negative, a warning not to distort or divorce it; the positive,
an assurance for the Christian as such,—the negative, a caution to the man as
such not to delude himself about his Christianity, above all, not to allow
anything to palliate a moment’s sin. It is remarkable that in the
divinely-chosen biographies of Scripture no person appears who, at one time
certainly a saint of God, at a later time was certainly a lost man.

(9) Is grace, in any sense of the word, ever finally withdrawn? Yes, if by grace
is meant any free gift of God tending to salvation, or more specially any action
of the Holy Spirit tending in its nature thither. Spiritual knowledge and light,
alarming intuition into judgment, pleasing intuition into the beauty of
holiness, are given where, through the sinner’s fault, no salvation results
(Acts xxiv. 25, with Joh. xvi. 8). A certain special connexion with Christ may
be given, and lost (Joh. xv. 6). But if by grace is meant the dwelling and
working of God in the truly regenerate, there is no indication in Scripture of
the withdrawal of it. The opposite is powerfully indicated (Joh. x. 28; cp.
xvii. 2, 3, 24). Nowhere occurs the thought of the mortification or amputation
of a true limb of the mystical Head.

(10) To close; the practical solution of many spiritual problems lies in the
fact that revealed truths, dark and bright alike, are never rightly studied
apart from a view of the Real Personality of God. Solvitur ambulando cum Deo.
This is eminently true in the matter of Assurance, whether of present acceptance
and divine life, or of final glory. This the Christian will enjoy both the more
warmly and the more lawfully the more he actually deals, not only with the
promises, but with the Promiser. In adoring intercourse with Him, through His
Son, in His Spirit, it shall be delightfully possible to enjoy without misgiving
the certainty of present spiritual life and its development in glory, and, as a
deep element in the joy, to be on the one hand calmly sure that His tender
mercies are over all His works, and that in every step of His ways He is both
just and merciful, and on the other hand to recognize, with "sweet, pleasant,
and unspeakable comfort" (Art. XVII.), that the individual believing soul is the
object of a totally unmerited, divinely free, and tenderly special love and
call, and of an almighty "keeping, unto salvation ready to be revealed in the
last time"(l Pet. i. 5). In this adoring communion with God, the man thus
believing will find in his humble assurance the very opposite of a contraction
of sympathies and efforts. If it is indeed God in Christ whom he thus knows,
trusts, and worships, the joy of possession will by its very nature ask to be
communicated. The man will "yield himself" in deep peace to be an implement in
the hands of his immeasurably gracious Father, who "so loved the world that He
gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish,
but have everlasting life." He will be, if true to his belief, at once humble
and strong, deeply yet wakefully at rest, "at leisure from himself" to be God’s
means of good for others, as He, sovereign in wisdom, love, and power, shall
choose.

The Doctrine of Election: Various Theories:

Sketch of the History of Opinion.

Very various theories of this great mystery have been held in the Church. We
give a very brief enumeration.

(1) National Election.—The Scripture doctrine has been explained as meaning a
sovereign choice of nations, or races, to light and privilege. Such election—in
the case of the Jews at least—there is. But the theory cannot satisfy such
passages as Joh. xvii., Rom. viii.

(2) Ecclesiastical Election.—It is held, much more widely, that the chosen are,
in effect, the members of the Church, explained as the community of the
baptized. On the surface, Scripture gives much support to this; e.g., St Peter
(i. 1, 2) addresses the Christian body in Asia Minor as "elect according to the
foreknowledge of God the Father." But here arise great questions connected with
the word "Church" (see further below, p. 202, etc.); particularly, whether an
address to a community in such cases does not inevitably assume its ideal, and
not necessarily its concrete and individual, condition. As to the fact of
baptism, no reserves would need to be made. But not so as to the reality of
faith, hope, and love in a given individual. Yet the whole community is
addressed as believing, hoping, and loving. So with the choice of God. If it was
a choice "unto salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and faith in the
truth" (2 Thess. ii. 13), there would be need, in order to know that any given
member of the given community was the object of it, to ascertain the reality of
his faith and sanctification. Rom. viii. 33 plainly identifies the chosen with
the justified. But the justified are the truly believing (Rom. v. 1). Certainly
such passages as Joh. xvii., Rom. viii., indicate by their very tone and manner
a mystery and glory in the choice of God ranging above observable organization,
however sacred. They point direct, not only to opportunity or privilege, but to
glory.

(3) Conditional Election.—Under this are grouped all views which regard election
as to life eternal, but as going upon a personal difference, in some sense
antecedent, between the chosen and others. The chosen man is thus the man who is
foreseen as about to believe, to submit to Christ, and whose difference from
others is simply that he has not resisted the common grace. As one form of
statement puts it, God graciously chose believers, as a class, to life eternal:
whoever, making use of grace, entered that class, became ipso facto one of the
chosen. Such statements have a manifest side of truth. God "enforceth not the
will;" the believer "wills" to come to Christ as genuinely as the unbeliever
"wills not" to come. But we think that the view fails to harmonize with
Scripture in one crucial point. It fails to do what the Scripture doctrine of
election manifestly aims to do, to emphasize the guilty impotence of man and the
mystery of the ways of grace. Practically, it makes man, not God, the chooser.
It may be fairly put somewhat thus: God has in His sovereign wisdom appointed
faith in Christ to be the way of life; He has provided means whereby faith in
Christ is in the power of all fallen human beings; those men who choose to
exercise it place themselves on the register of life. But is such a statement
true to that side of Scripture truth which exalts the wonder of any given
salvation? We think not. But it is with that side only that the doctrine of
election is concerned. The other limb of the "contradiction" (p. 44) stands
untouched; "God willeth all men to be saved." But this limb must be untouched
too, if we would be true to Scripture. It must be owned a mystery whose
explanation and harmony lie within the secret things of God.

The conditional theory has been held by Christians who hold the necessary
perseverance of the saints, and by Christians who deny it. In the first case,
the truly believing and the elect would always be identical terms, and persons;
in the second case they would not.

(4) Election within Election.—It has been held that in Scripture the word
"election" is, like many others, elastic; that all the baptized are chosen, but
that the living and loving among them are chosen in an inner sense, whether the
"choice" in their case be conditional or not. Or again, that all true believers
are a chosen people, but that only some of them have a grace securing their
final glory. These are the elect in the highest sense.

Here again are clear elements of truth. The merest external Christian membership
is a grant of divine kindness; the most imperfect exercise of Christian conduct
is an occasion for thanks to God. But the mystery and greatness which the
leading New Testament passages attach to the divine Choice, lead us deeper and
higher for an adequate account of this side of truth. Abit in mysterium. It is
only one side of the apparent "contradiction;" but one side it is. " The Son
quickeneth whom He will" (Joh. v. 21); "All that the Father giveth Me shall come
to Me …. and I will raise him up again at the last day" (vi. 37, 39).

History of Opinion.

(1) Second to Fourth Centuries.—No controversy about election appears in this
period. And the then Church teachers, from Clement of Rome (cent. i.) downwards,
emphasize earnestly and largely the freedom of the will, the autexousion of man.
On the other hand, there are many references—e.g., in Ignatius (cent. i.)—to the
glory of a divine election. Ignatius identifies the elect body with the baptized
Church; but see above (p. 49) for remarks on inferences from this. And as to the
assertion of the freedom of the will, it is to be noticed that such assertions
were made mainly in the face of Rabbinic or pagan fatalism. In our time, the
thoughtful Calvinist would be as earnest as his Arminian friend in vindicating
the autexousion of the will against materialistic necessitarianism. [5] Yet he
would reverently hold that wherever a will, as the free and true expression of a
human personality, genuinely chooses Christ, it acts, in a very special sense,
"according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His
own will."

(2) Fourth to Fifth Centuries (the age of Augustine).—This great saint (a.d.
354-430) was once a Manichean necessitarian. Convinced of sin, with deep
intensity, he came to the feet of Christ. One great controversy of his life was
with Pelagius, who practically asserted the sufficiency, for holiness, of the
natural human will. This controversy occasioned Augustine’s full treatment of
grace and nature, and, in connexion, of divine sovereignty. True to the
principle explained above (p. 43), he held firmly that the will is always the
genuine unforced expression of the personality, but that God’s choice is
sovereign, and His call effectual where He wills. Augustine’s position, as the
first great patristic teacher in this direction, is largely explained by his
spiritual history. It would seem that no previous great teacher, since the
Apostles, had had his own soul so pierced by conviction of sin, and so filled
with a sense of the wonder of mercy. And it is in the region of such convictions
that the doctrine before us finds its moral response.

Augustine’s teaching was, in outline, this. Adam freely fell; God, for reasons
good and wise, but hidden in Himself, willed to save some, not all, of Adam’s
race. That salvation is within the visible Church alone. And of the baptized,
regenerate, and godly, not all have the grace of perseverance, without which
glory is not attained.

In the sternness of his views on Infant Salvation he clearly outruns Revelation.
But the essential mental attitude of this great, tender-hearted, and
heavenly-minded man was that of one who, in the awful light of personal
conviction, had seen the fallen heart, and thus, with spiritually quickened
insight, found (as it were) an element in Scripture less fully found before—the
wonder and sovereignty of mercy.

(3) Fifth to Seventeenth Centuries.—The divine choice and its working was a
subject of discussion all through the medieval times, in Western Christendom far
more than in Eastern. The Easterns always tended to a view less stringent than
Augustine’s, attributing on the whole to the human will, since the Fall, not
only the freedom which lies in its being always the expression of unforced
personal choice, but freedom in the sense of full moral ability to choose good,
to choose God; that is, to love holiness, not only to approve it. In other
words, liberty for the Latins meant, in effect, self-determination, unforced
from without; for the Greeks, balance between opposite choices. [6]

Of the Schoolmen, or Scholastics, of the West (cent. xii.-xiv.), who laboured to
apply logical method to theology, many great representatives were Augustinian;
e.g., Anselm, Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, Bradwardine. Others took a line almost,
in some cases, Pelagian; e,g., John Duns Scotus, a Northumbrian monk. The
Benedictine and Franciscan Orders followed the Thomist and Scotist systems
respectively. Divergence of opinion on these points has been continuous in the
Roman Church. At the Council of Trent (1546-1563) Augustinianism was practically
reaffirmed, though a large party were for freer definitions. All rejected the
doctrine of necessary final perseverance. The Jesuits, who are at present
dominant in the Roman Catholic Church, favoured a semi-Pelagian doctrine. In
1640 Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, published his Augustinus, a powerful
restatement of strict Augustinianism. He attracted eminent followers, e.g., the
Abbè de St Cyran, the theologian Antoine Arnauld, the great lay thinker Blaise
Pascal, who powerfully attacked Jesuit theology and ethics in his brilliant
Lettres Provinciales (1656-7), and, later, the expositor P. Quesnel. The
Augustinus was censured by the Pope, 1642, and the Jansenists were ultimately
repressed. They survive as a seceding community.

The leaders of the Reformation were not agreed on the details of the doctrine of
divine sovereignty. But they were, as a body, decided Augustinians in all main
respects. [7] Perhaps their chief difference lay in their greater or less
tendency to put the facts of sovereignty into the foreground, and to follow them
logically into remoter conclusions. The Institutes (1536) of the great Frenchman
John Calvin (1509-1564) do this certainly beyond Scriptural warrant; while in
his admirable Commentaries, written later, he shows a full sense of the solemn
mysteries of the subject, and the desire to take practically the plain lines of
revealed love and promise. With Luther (1483-1546) the subject lay more in the
background, though he was an ardent disciple of Augustine. Melanchthon (ob.
1560) assures Calvin that his views, on the whole, are Calvin’s; still,
Melanchthon certainly allowed more balance to the will of sinful man than Calvin
did. Our great theologian Richard Hooker (1554-1600), who had before his
luminous mind the Reformation literature, as well as the Patristic and Medieval,
was an Augustinian,—indeed, a moderate Calvinist. [8] He puts the doctrines of
personal election and perseverance always in proportionate connexion with other
truths, as one convinced that they are present and important in Scripture, but
not that they are the central and ruling revelation. He was the type of a large
English school in the first half of the seventeenth century.

By the middle of cent. xvii. came a reaction from extreme Calvinism, bringing in
a new dominant form of theology in the English Church. It may be called
popularly Arminian, from James Arminius, of Leyden (1560-1609). It held, in
effect, only a conditional and contingent election to life eternal. (See above,
p. 49.) The divine fore-knowledge was not effectual fore-will. The ultimate
account of salvation in any given case lay in the human will, choosing to come,
determining to persevere. Most reverently and strongly Arminius emphasized the
necessity of grace for salvation, and as the source of all good in man. But
still, as no grace was in its nature certainly prevalent, the difference lay
outside grace, and in the self-action of the will.

In such a statement lie large elements of Scripture truth. The will, and so the
responsibility, are real indeed, in Scripture. But, on the other hand, the
Arminian doctrine fails to give due place to the mysterious tone of Scripture on
divine sovereignty as one side of truth, and to the instinct of the convinced
and pardoned man to recognize mere mercy in the whole saving process.

The Arminian controversy came to a sort of climax in the Synod of Dort
(Dordrecht), in Holland, 1618. Representatives of Protestant churches, including
the Anglican, met there, and the distinctive articles of Arminianism were
finally censured. But the English delegates were more favourable than the
continentals to a moderate positive statement.

Still in the seventeenth century, that acute thinker and saintly pastor, Richard
Baxter (1615-1691), advocated a theory akin to that described above (p. 50) as
election within election. Final perseverance was possible for all the
regenerate, but was left contingent for all but an inner circle.

(4) Eighteenth Century.—In the great spiritual Revival in England, and New
England, the controversy revived. The Wesleys (John, 1703-179l; Charles,
1708-1788) were decided Arminians; Whitefield (1714-1770) a moderate Calvinist;
and so Doddridge, Venn, Newton, and Scott. Romaine and Toplady were strong
Calvinists. [9] In New England, the great thinker and saint, Jonathan Edwards
(1704-1758) wrote profoundly on the theology of the subject. With him, God’s
Holiness and Supremacy were the possessing thoughts, for rapturous adoration at
least as much as mental enquiry. He made, however, an undue application of
metaphysical method, particularly in discussions on the will, and used arguments
soon appropriated by non-Christian fatalism. The very nature of this range of
truth, as presented in Scripture as a "part of the ways" of God, is a warning in
this direction. All truths are connected in God, and so everything is,
ultimately, an ordered system. But Scripture continually warns us that in the
matter of spiritual truths we inevitably "know in part." Thus the Christian
student will always guard his use of revealed premises by revealed, rather than
merely inferred, conclusions.


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  CHAPTER 4: CHAPTER IV. THE DOCTRINE OF THE SON.
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The Doctrine of the Son

I. The Person of Christ.

We approach the subject of the Person and Work of our most sacred Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ. He is "the Son of God, the Word of the Father, begotten
from everlasting of the Father, very and eternal God, of one substance with the
Father." Being such, He "took Man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of
her substance; so that two whole and perfect Natures, that is to say, the
Godhead and the Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be
divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and very Man; who truly suffered, was
crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile His Father to us, and to be a
sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but for all actual sins of men" (Article
II.).

At His name let our spirits bow and adore, and "confess that He is Lord, to the
glory of God the Father" (Phil. ii. 11). He is "the First and the Last, and the
Living One; He became dead, and behold He is alive for evermore. Amen" (Rev. i.
17, 18).

For direct Scripture assertion of His Divine Nature, His proper Deity, see,
e.g., Joh. i. 1-4, viii. 58, xx. 28; Acts xx. 28 (probably); Rom. ix. 5
(probably); Tit. ii. 13; Heb. i. 8. For the implied assignment to Him, in the
New Testament, of the name Jehovah, see Joh. xii. 41, compared with Isa. vi. 5;
and cp. 1 Cor. xii. 3; Phil. ii. 11. But it is all-important to remember that
such passages are all the while only the crown, or nucleus, of a far wider
phenomenon, the assumption, expressed in many various ways all through the New
Testament, that He is divine. Thus He appears as fully knowable only by the
Father (Matt. xi. 27); as the object of boundless trust and love to the human
heart (Phil. iii. 7-10; Eph. iii. 19, and cp. ver. 8) ; the offerer of rest to
all mankind (Matt. xi. 28); the Lord, Head, and Bridegroom of the universal
Church (Eph. i. 22, 23, v. 25); the sovereign Disposer of the life and death of
His servants (Joh. xxi. 22; Rom. xiv. 7-9); and again as wholly devoid of that
sense of imperfection in Himself which He unvaryingly inculcates on man.

All this evidence, to give it full weight, must be studied with real research in
the Holy Scriptures, and in constant view of their jealous "Unitarianism"
(above, p. 20).

Meanwhile, being divine, being properly God, He is Filial, He is the Son. For
Scripture evidence on the eternal (as distinguished from the human) Sonship of
Christ, see e.g. Joh. i. 18, xvii. 5, 24; Col. i. 13-17; Heb. i. 2, 8, ii.
14-17; 1 Joh. iv. 9. Not only as He is Man, but as He is God, He is so related
to the Father that in divine reality, eternally and necessarily, He is the Son;
as such, truly possessing the whole nature of "His own Father" (Joh. v. 18), and
truly subordinate to Him, not in nature, but in order.

The inscrutable mode of this blessed Filiation is named in the theology of the
Christian Church "the Eternal Generation." The phrase is due to Origen (cent.
iii.), and was, like the word Trinity, an instance of the happy denomination
which at once collects and clears up truths already held. Scripture reveals that
the Christ is the Son antecedent to Incarnation. It also reveals that He is
eternal. "Eternal Generation" (gennêsis achronos, proaiônios) combines these
truths in the thought that the Begetting is not an event of time, however
remote, but a fact irrespective of time. The Christ did not become, but
necessarily and eternally is, the Son. He, a Person, possesses every attribute
of pure Godhead. This necessitates eternity, absolute being; in this respect He
is "not after" the Father. But Fatherhood is peculiar to the blessed First
Person, and in this respect the Father is the Origin (archê) of the Son,
"greater than the Son" (Joh. xiv. 28). See further above, p. 23.

The Divine Son is called "the Word," Logos (Joh. i. 14 ; Rev. xix. 13. The
reference of Heb. iv. 12; 1 Joh. i. 1; to the Son, is not certain).

The Logos of St John has been connected with the Logos of the Alexandrian Jewish
thinker Philo (cent. i.). But Philo’s Logos is rather the divine inner Reason
(the alternative meaning of the word logos) than the forthcoming Word, God’s
utterance of Himself. A truer antecedent to St John’s inspired use is the
Aramaic word Memra (Word, root âmar, dixit), employed by the Palestinian Rabbis
to convey the thought of God in intercourse. It was this "Word" which the
Apostle seems to have been led to adopt, or explain, as the title of Him (not
It) who is the Supreme Revealer of the Father, and the Living Way of union and
communion between God and the creature. [1]

The phrase "of one substance with (the Father)," (homoousios, consubstantialis),
was the battleword of the Arian controversy (see above, p. 28); a controversy of
permanent significance, affecting as it did problems inseparable from the
Scripture doctrine of Christ. The Arians rejected the word homoousios in favour,
some of them, of homoiousios, simili-substantial; while others, more extreme and
explicit, preferred anomoios, dissimilar. To a modern the word "substance" is
misleading, as it suggests in common parlance the idea of material mass. But
substantia, in the early centuries, represented the Greek ousia, Being; a thing
wholly immaterial. It means properly that which stands under phenomena, that
which they manifest; in fact, the essence of a thing. Thus the "substance" of
God is Godhead. [2] The Arian debate thus really turned on the Attributes of
Christ; were they fully divine, or only quasi-divine, or positively non-divine?
Had He fully, or only proximately, or not at all, the Divine Nature? And the
only real alternative was between the first and last. The Son could not be
almost almighty, almost eternal, almost necessary; for such conceptions are
self-destructive. He is either true God or not truly God.

The Incarnation.

For Scriptures bearing on this holy subject, the palladium of the revealed
Gospel, see Joh. i. 14, the central passage, and around it, e.g., Matt. i. 1,
18; Luke i. 31-5; Joh. vi. 51, viii. 40, 58, xvii. 5; Rom. i. 3, 4, viii. 3, ix.
5; Gal. iv. 4; Phil. ii. 5-8; 1 Tim. ii. 5; Heb. ii. 9-18, iv. 15; 1 Joh. i. 1,
2, iv. 2, 3; and, in the light of New Testament fulfilment and illustration,
e.g., Gen. iii. 15, xxii. 18; Isai. vii. 14; Micah v. 2; Zech. xiii. 7.

From these and other Scriptures emerge the following elements for a true theory
of the blessed Incarnation.

(1) One Person is in view throughout. He who undergoes birth, growth, suffering,
death, says, "Before Abraham was, I am;" "I had glory by the Father’s side
before the world was." He who "was in the form (morphê), i.e. who possessed the
manifested essence, "of God," "took the form of a bondservant, and obeyed, even
unto death."

(2) Two Natures are in view, the divine and the human, in equally real relation
to this Person. He is God; Jehovah (cp. Isai. vi. 5, with Joh. xii. 41): He
becomes man. And He becomes complete man; possessing body, soul (Matt. xxvi.
38), spirit (Luke xxiii. 46); developing in physique and in wisdom (Luke ii.
52); capable of surprise (Matt. viii. 10), and of tears (Joh. xi. 35); feeling
man’s instinctive and necessary aversion from suffering as such (Matt. xxvi.
39). His manhood, by its mode of becoming, namely, birth of a mother, is not an
alien and strange manhood, but solidaire with ours. It descends from Adam,
though in its actual production a supernatural power takes place. Its materials
are created materials, and derived (see below, p. 68).

(3) The Human Nature of the Son never, for a moment, stood or stands apart from
His Divine nature and person. "God sent forth His Son, born of a woman" (Gal.
iv. 4). He did not send His Son to join a man born of a woman; which would have
been an alliance of two persons, not a harmony of two natures in relation to one
person. The Manhood was, and is, never independently personal. It is better to
say Christ is man, than Christ is a man.

(4) The divine Person of the Son thus, in Incarnation, took human nature,
besides divine nature, into the field of personal consciousness. This is
sometimes expressed by the phrase, "divine-human Personality." It is better to
say that the Incarnate Son is Divine-Human; His ultimate Personality, Divine.

(5) Meanwhile this absolute and necessary dependency of the Manhood does not
mean the least unreality in the human experience of our Incarnate Lord. Here the
phenomena of the Gospels are clear. Christ, as man, is seen to learn, to trust,
to bear, to do, to contemplate past, present, and future, with perfect
naturalness. Peter is in these respects no more human than Christ. In some
sense, the solicitations of evil appear as a trial as real for Him as for His
followers.

(6) On the other hand, He not only did no sin; He "knew no sin" (2 Cor. v. 21).
Not for one moment did sin enter the human field of His being. In the highest
sense He was incapable of sin; not physically, (for every physical faculty and
limit which in us, as men, is an avenue for temptation, and ministers to the
sinning spirit, was in Him,) but morally and spiritually. In this respect, His
position is expressed by "ability not to sin," posse non peccare, rather than by
"inability to sin," non posse peccare.

(7) Yet, from another point, the ultimate truth is non posse peccare. The
Manhood of Christ is to be studied not in the abstract, but in its actual,
absolute, necessary harmony with His Deity, under His divine Personality. Had
the Manhood sinned, the Christ would have sinned in His Manhood; the highest
moral impossibility.

In this subject, we are reduced to the acceptance of revealed phenomena as yet,
at least, imperfectly harmonized to our thought. Our blessed Lord was really
tempted. Our blessed Lord could not sin. [3]

(8) We read in the phenomena of the Gospels the truth that our Incarnate Lord,
whatever the conditions of His humiliation, still was always God as truly as
Man, and Man as truly as God. Real temptations, real hunger, thirst, and
surprise, leave Him still able to offer rest to all the weary of mankind; to
assert His own eternity, and His eternal Being in heaven (Joh. iii. 13) to
exercise omniscience so far as He wills. [4] In Him full Godhead and full
Manhood were always present, in harmony.

(9) On certain titles of the Incarnate Lord.

(a) Son of God (Luke i. 35). The words, in the light of the context, indicate
the divine action, analogous to human paternity, in the generation of the
Manhood. Compare the same words used of Adam (Luke iii. 38), with reference also
to special divine action in his production.

(b) Son of Man. This designation is used only by our Lord, never by His
disciples. It is remarkable that in the Old Testament the phrase "Son of Man"
habitually refers to the weakness and dependency of mere man. [5] In the Gospels
the Saviour uses it in a sense apparently new, designating Himself as the True
Man, the Man of men.

(c) The Second Man (1 Cor. xv. 47). In the light of the last remarks, this title
explains itself. As Adam sums up and represents humanity as created, and as
fallen, so Christ, incarnate and "perfected" (p. 74), sums up and represents
humanity as regenerated and holy. Individually, every man, as man, is "in Adam,"
as to derivation of nature and bond of covenant; every regenerated man is "in
Christ," as to reception of renewed nature and grant of new covenant. Adam is
the head of humanity, Christ of new humanity. On the question whether the
Manhood of Christ was pre-existent, see p. 72.

Supplementary

History of the Doctrine of Christ’s Person.

Our outline of this has been in part anticipated under the History of the
Doctrine of the Trinity.

(1) First to Third Centuries.—That divine worship was from the first paid to
Christ can be amply proved. In the second century the records of martyrdoms, as
of Polycarp and of the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, and the Letters of Ignatius,
fully show the intensity of faith in the Lord’s Godhead. So does the frequency
with which heathen observers fix upon the adoration of Christ as God as a
phenomenon of Christianity. Side by side with this more popular phase of the
facts, the early teachers of the Church do, on the whole, steadfastly and with
deepest earnestness, both in replies to assailants and in instruction to
disciples, avow and glory in their adoration. From the first, as even the New
Testament bears witness, there were alien drifts of opinion; but the broad fact
remains that a main stream of conviction not only allowed, but jealously
guarded, the confession of the Godhead of Christ. The more and more careful
definitions of it were made in face of attacks upon a truth felt to be
inestimably precious, and which had been not carelessly held, but inadequately
analysed and stated.

This last remark accounts for exceptional language found in orthodox writers
earlier than the Nicene Council (325), language which favours later theories
openly heterodox; e.g., that the Son is "another God under the Creator"
(Justin); or of a nature "very near to the Supreme" (Clement of Alexandria). But
the whole evidence gives the inference that such language is accidental, not
essential; an aberration from a central truth which had not yet received full
analysis under the process of attack. From the same writers a far larger mass of
testimony to a full doctrine of our Lord’s Godhead can be adduced.

(2) Fourth to Fifth Centuries.—In the Arian controversy the question lay, as we
have seen (above, p. 28), between a Christ only quasi-God (we do not yet speak
of His Manhood) and a Christ fully God. It is remarkable that on the whole the
Arians posed as the original thinkers, as against a stationary traditionism; a
fact suggestive of the past state of belief. The Homoousion (above, p. 60), and
not simply the Godhead of the Son, was the crucial word of the discussion,
because the Arians patronized a secondary, illusory, use of the word "God,"
which thus ceased to be a test-word.

Meanwhile, the Arians taught only a quasi-manhood as well as a quasi-Godhead. To
them, the manhood altogether lacked the spiritual element (pneuma); its place
was taken by the quasi-Godhead of "the Son."

"Far from spanning the infinite abyss which philosophy, not revelation, had
placed between God and sinless man, the Arian Christ is nothing but an isolated
pillar in its midst" (Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism, p. 28).

The Arian controversy left the general Christian confession of our Lord’s proper
Godhead historically unmistakable. But the following century saw three great
after-waves raised over related questions.

(a) Appollinarius (cir. 380) represents the opinion that in the manhood of the
Christ the highest natural element, the rational soul (nous, mens) was lacking,
and that the Godhead took its place. This he taught, apparently, as if necessary
to the impeccability of the Incarnate; ignoring the surer inference from it that
it leaves Him not truly "one with us." He also held, in some sense, the eternal
pre-existence of this quasi-manhood, and that the Crucified suffered not only
being God, but as God. Apollinarianism was repudiated at the Council of
Constantinople, 381.

(b) Nestorius (Bishop of Constantinople, 428) held, in effect, a dual
Personality in the Incarnate. With him, the Manhood was not only entire, but
independent. A human being, supernaturally produced, the Virgin’s Son, was then
taken into an ineffable connexion by the eternal Son of God. The term "Mother of
God" (theotokos), then recently adopted as a title of the Holy Virgin, in
testimony to the Godhead of her Son, was earnestly censured by Nestorius. His
theory seriously obscures the relation of our Lord, as "the Second Man," to
manhood in general. The Nestorian Christ, from the human side, is not Man, but a
man. Nestorianism was reelected at the Council of Ephesus, 432. The followers of
Nestorius became a dissentient body, still existing in the East. Their
bishoprics extended at one period across the whole length of Upper Asia, to
China.

(c) Eutyches (abbot at Constantinople, 448) represents the opposite tendency of
opinion, the Monophysite, or Uni-natural. With him, Incarnation resulted in a
Single Nature, that of "God made flesh and come to dwell in man" (theou
sarkôthentos kai evanthrôpêsantos). This opinion was condemned at Chalcedon,
451. The Council issued a Confession, known as the "Definition" (horos), a
memorable document, alike for its fulness, clearness, and balance. We translate
here that part of it immediately in point.

After reciting certain circumstances, and after solemn recognition of the Creeds
of Nicæa and Constantinople, the Fathers proceed:—

"This wise and saving Watchword of the grace of God would have sufficed for the
true knowledge and establishment of our religion. But since those who seek to
spoil the proclamation of the Truth through their own wilful errors (haireseis)
have produced their idle utterances, some daring to undermine the Lord’s
Incarnation (oikonomia) for our sakes, and to reject the term ‘Mother of God,’
and others to introduce [the theory of] a compound and mixture, foolishly
feigning that the nature of the Flesh and the Godhead is one, and unnaturally
assert- ing that the divine Nature of the Only Begotten is, by the compound,
passible . . [the Synod] opposes those who seek to rend the mystery of the
Incarnation into a Pair of Sons, and thrusts from the assembly of holy worship
those who dare to say that the Godhead of the Only Begotten is passible, and
resists those who invent a mixture or compound concerning the two Natures of the
Christ, and casts forth those who teach that that ‘Form of the Bondservant’
which He took from us is of celestial or any non-human essence (ousia), and bans
those who fable two Natures of the Lord before the Union, but invent one Nature
after it. Following then the holy Fathers [of Nicæa and Constantinople], we
confess One and the Same Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ, and all with one voice
teach that He is perfect in Godhead and perfect also in Manhood, God truly, and
also Man truly, of reasonable soul and body consisting, consubstantial
(coessential, homoousion) with the Father as to the Godhead, and also
consubstantial (coessential) with us as to the Manhood, in all things like to us
without sin, begotten of the Father before the ages as to the Godhead, but also
in the end of days, for us and for our salvation, [born] of Mary, the Virgin,
the Mother of God, as to the Manhood; confessed One and the same Christ, Son,
Lord, Only Begotten, in two Natures without compound, without change, without
division, without [possible] separation, the difference of the Natures being
nowise removed because of the Union, but rather the property of each Nature
being preserved, and concurring in one Person (prosôpon) and one substance
(hypostasis), not as if He were to be partitioned . into two Persons; but One
and the same Son, and Only Begotten, God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ; as of old
the Prophets concerning Him, and also He, the Lord Himself, instructed us, and
as the Watchword of the Fathers hath handed it down to us." [6]

(3) Seventh Century.—A subordinate ancient controversy was the Monothelite, or
One-Will controversy. The Monothelite held that as there was one Person only,
there could be but one Will, though acting through two Natures. Against this
Scripture is practically clear; and, indeed, the conclusion seems to be direct
that, granting the full spiritual element to manhood in the Incarnate, we grant
the presence of human will. The doctrine of Two Wills, separable in conception,
but perfectly and always harmonious in divine plan and historic fact, was laid
down at Constantinople, 635.

Our sketch of controversies is inevitably meager and eclectic. But it may in
part be supplemented from the previous section. Its aim is to present great
specimens, suggestive of closer study. The ancient controversies are significant
for all time; not specimens of fossil species, but fossil specimens, singularly
instructive by their surroundings, of existing and permanent species of thought.

___________________

[1] Cp. Westcott, Introduction (p. xv) to St John’s Gospel (Speaker’s
Commentary).

[2] In the definition of Chalcedon (below, p. 67) the Incarnate Son is said to
be consubstantial (coessential) with us, homoousios hêmin; that is, partaker of
true manhood.

[3] As St. Anselm points out (Cur Deus Homo, ii. 17), to say "God," or "Christ,
cannot sin" is a phrase not of impotency but of potency. It expresses the utter
inability of temptation to deflect the nature and will.

[4] Mark xiii. 32 is quoted as invalidating His perfect knowledge. It no doubt
limits His knowledge on that one point. But the very phrase, from His lips,
looks like an implicit claim to knowledge otherwise complete. And the doctrine
of the Eternal Sonship, in the Gospels, makes it surely inconceivable that even
that limitation of conscious knowledge should be imposed on the Son because of
limitation of capacity. It was for unknown purposes of dispensation; and it was
the one thing of the kind. The Christian who deals eclectically with any
positive statement of His, about fact as well as about principle, is on very
dangerous ground indeed.

As regards Luke ii. 52, the "increase in wisdom" no more implies stages of
defective wisdom than the "increase in favour with God" implies stages of
defective favour. What is implied is developed application to developed subject
matter. Cp. by all means Liddon, Bampton Lectures, Lect. viii.

[5] In Dan. vii. 13, a Messianic passage, we find the True King represented as,
"like unto (a) Son of Man"; perhaps in contrast to the "beasts" symbolizing the
usurping world-powers. See Westcott on Joh. i. 51.

[6] For the original, in a generally accessible form, see Heurtley De Fide et
Symbolo, p. 19; or Canons of the First Four General Councils (Clarendon Press,
Oxford), p. 31. See also Hagenbach, Hist. of Doctrines, Eng. Trans., ed. 1850,
vol. i., p. 300; and by all means Hooker, Eccl. Polity, bk v., 51-4.

CHAPTER IV.

The Doctrine of God (continued).

The Doctrine of the Son

I. The Person of Christ.

We approach the subject of the Person and Work of our most sacred Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ. He is "the Son of God, the Word of the Father, begotten
from everlasting of the Father, very and eternal God, of one substance with the
Father." Being such, He "took Man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of
her substance; so that two whole and perfect Natures, that is to say, the
Godhead and the Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be
divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and very Man; who truly suffered, was
crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile His Father to us, and to be a
sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but for all actual sins of men" (Article
II.).

At His name let our spirits bow and adore, and "confess that He is Lord, to the
glory of God the Father" (Phil. ii. 11). He is "the First and the Last, and the
Living One; He became dead, and behold He is alive for evermore. Amen" (Rev. i.
17, 18).

For direct Scripture assertion of His Divine Nature, His proper Deity, see,
e.g., Joh. i. 1-4, viii. 58, xx. 28; Acts xx. 28 (probably); Rom. ix. 5
(probably); Tit. ii. 13; Heb. i. 8. For the implied assignment to Him, in the
New Testament, of the name Jehovah, see Joh. xii. 41, compared with Isa. vi. 5;
and cp. 1 Cor. xii. 3; Phil. ii. 11. But it is all-important to remember that
such passages are all the while only the crown, or nucleus, of a far wider
phenomenon, the assumption, expressed in many various ways all through the New
Testament, that He is divine. Thus He appears as fully knowable only by the
Father (Matt. xi. 27); as the object of boundless trust and love to the human
heart (Phil. iii. 7-10; Eph. iii. 19, and cp. ver. 8) ; the offerer of rest to
all mankind (Matt. xi. 28); the Lord, Head, and Bridegroom of the universal
Church (Eph. i. 22, 23, v. 25); the sovereign Disposer of the life and death of
His servants (Joh. xxi. 22; Rom. xiv. 7-9); and again as wholly devoid of that
sense of imperfection in Himself which He unvaryingly inculcates on man.

All this evidence, to give it full weight, must be studied with real research in
the Holy Scriptures, and in constant view of their jealous "Unitarianism"
(above, p. 20).

Meanwhile, being divine, being properly God, He is Filial, He is the Son. For
Scripture evidence on the eternal (as distinguished from the human) Sonship of
Christ, see e.g. Joh. i. 18, xvii. 5, 24; Col. i. 13-17; Heb. i. 2, 8, ii.
14-17; 1 Joh. iv. 9. Not only as He is Man, but as He is God, He is so related
to the Father that in divine reality, eternally and necessarily, He is the Son;
as such, truly possessing the whole nature of "His own Father" (Joh. v. 18), and
truly subordinate to Him, not in nature, but in order.

The inscrutable mode of this blessed Filiation is named in the theology of the
Christian Church "the Eternal Generation." The phrase is due to Origen (cent.
iii.), and was, like the word Trinity, an instance of the happy denomination
which at once collects and clears up truths already held. Scripture reveals that
the Christ is the Son antecedent to Incarnation. It also reveals that He is
eternal. "Eternal Generation" (gennêsis achronos, proaiônios) combines these
truths in the thought that the Begetting is not an event of time, however
remote, but a fact irrespective of time. The Christ did not become, but
necessarily and eternally is, the Son. He, a Person, possesses every attribute
of pure Godhead. This necessitates eternity, absolute being; in this respect He
is "not after" the Father. But Fatherhood is peculiar to the blessed First
Person, and in this respect the Father is the Origin (archê) of the Son,
"greater than the Son" (Joh. xiv. 28). See further above, p. 23.

The Divine Son is called "the Word," Logos (Joh. i. 14 ; Rev. xix. 13. The
reference of Heb. iv. 12; 1 Joh. i. 1; to the Son, is not certain).

The Logos of St John has been connected with the Logos of the Alexandrian Jewish
thinker Philo (cent. i.). But Philo’s Logos is rather the divine inner Reason
(the alternative meaning of the word logos) than the forthcoming Word, God’s
utterance of Himself. A truer antecedent to St John’s inspired use is the
Aramaic word Memra (Word, root âmar, dixit), employed by the Palestinian Rabbis
to convey the thought of God in intercourse. It was this "Word" which the
Apostle seems to have been led to adopt, or explain, as the title of Him (not
It) who is the Supreme Revealer of the Father, and the Living Way of union and
communion between God and the creature. [1]

The phrase "of one substance with (the Father)," (homoousios, consubstantialis),
was the battleword of the Arian controversy (see above, p. 28); a controversy of
permanent significance, affecting as it did problems inseparable from the
Scripture doctrine of Christ. The Arians rejected the word homoousios in favour,
some of them, of homoiousios, simili-substantial; while others, more extreme and
explicit, preferred anomoios, dissimilar. To a modern the word "substance" is
misleading, as it suggests in common parlance the idea of material mass. But
substantia, in the early centuries, represented the Greek ousia, Being; a thing
wholly immaterial. It means properly that which stands under phenomena, that
which they manifest; in fact, the essence of a thing. Thus the "substance" of
God is Godhead. [2] The Arian debate thus really turned on the Attributes of
Christ; were they fully divine, or only quasi-divine, or positively non-divine?
Had He fully, or only proximately, or not at all, the Divine Nature? And the
only real alternative was between the first and last. The Son could not be
almost almighty, almost eternal, almost necessary; for such conceptions are
self-destructive. He is either true God or not truly God.

The Incarnation.

For Scriptures bearing on this holy subject, the palladium of the revealed
Gospel, see Joh. i. 14, the central passage, and around it, e.g., Matt. i. 1,
18; Luke i. 31-5; Joh. vi. 51, viii. 40, 58, xvii. 5; Rom. i. 3, 4, viii. 3, ix.
5; Gal. iv. 4; Phil. ii. 5-8; 1 Tim. ii. 5; Heb. ii. 9-18, iv. 15; 1 Joh. i. 1,
2, iv. 2, 3; and, in the light of New Testament fulfilment and illustration,
e.g., Gen. iii. 15, xxii. 18; Isai. vii. 14; Micah v. 2; Zech. xiii. 7.

From these and other Scriptures emerge the following elements for a true theory
of the blessed Incarnation.

(1) One Person is in view throughout. He who undergoes birth, growth, suffering,
death, says, "Before Abraham was, I am;" "I had glory by the Father’s side
before the world was." He who "was in the form (morphê), i.e. who possessed the
manifested essence, "of God," "took the form of a bondservant, and obeyed, even
unto death."

(2) Two Natures are in view, the divine and the human, in equally real relation
to this Person. He is God; Jehovah (cp. Isai. vi. 5, with Joh. xii. 41): He
becomes man. And He becomes complete man; possessing body, soul (Matt. xxvi.
38), spirit (Luke xxiii. 46); developing in physique and in wisdom (Luke ii.
52); capable of surprise (Matt. viii. 10), and of tears (Joh. xi. 35); feeling
man’s instinctive and necessary aversion from suffering as such (Matt. xxvi.
39). His manhood, by its mode of becoming, namely, birth of a mother, is not an
alien and strange manhood, but solidaire with ours. It descends from Adam,
though in its actual production a supernatural power takes place. Its materials
are created materials, and derived (see below, p. 68).

(3) The Human Nature of the Son never, for a moment, stood or stands apart from
His Divine nature and person. "God sent forth His Son, born of a woman" (Gal.
iv. 4). He did not send His Son to join a man born of a woman; which would have
been an alliance of two persons, not a harmony of two natures in relation to one
person. The Manhood was, and is, never independently personal. It is better to
say Christ is man, than Christ is a man.

(4) The divine Person of the Son thus, in Incarnation, took human nature,
besides divine nature, into the field of personal consciousness. This is
sometimes expressed by the phrase, "divine-human Personality." It is better to
say that the Incarnate Son is Divine-Human; His ultimate Personality, Divine.

(5) Meanwhile this absolute and necessary dependency of the Manhood does not
mean the least unreality in the human experience of our Incarnate Lord. Here the
phenomena of the Gospels are clear. Christ, as man, is seen to learn, to trust,
to bear, to do, to contemplate past, present, and future, with perfect
naturalness. Peter is in these respects no more human than Christ. In some
sense, the solicitations of evil appear as a trial as real for Him as for His
followers.

(6) On the other hand, He not only did no sin; He "knew no sin" (2 Cor. v. 21).
Not for one moment did sin enter the human field of His being. In the highest
sense He was incapable of sin; not physically, (for every physical faculty and
limit which in us, as men, is an avenue for temptation, and ministers to the
sinning spirit, was in Him,) but morally and spiritually. In this respect, His
position is expressed by "ability not to sin," posse non peccare, rather than by
"inability to sin," non posse peccare.

(7) Yet, from another point, the ultimate truth is non posse peccare. The
Manhood of Christ is to be studied not in the abstract, but in its actual,
absolute, necessary harmony with His Deity, under His divine Personality. Had
the Manhood sinned, the Christ would have sinned in His Manhood; the highest
moral impossibility.

In this subject, we are reduced to the acceptance of revealed phenomena as yet,
at least, imperfectly harmonized to our thought. Our blessed Lord was really
tempted. Our blessed Lord could not sin. [3]

(8) We read in the phenomena of the Gospels the truth that our Incarnate Lord,
whatever the conditions of His humiliation, still was always God as truly as
Man, and Man as truly as God. Real temptations, real hunger, thirst, and
surprise, leave Him still able to offer rest to all the weary of mankind; to
assert His own eternity, and His eternal Being in heaven (Joh. iii. 13) to
exercise omniscience so far as He wills. [4] In Him full Godhead and full
Manhood were always present, in harmony.

(9) On certain titles of the Incarnate Lord.

(a) Son of God (Luke i. 35). The words, in the light of the context, indicate
the divine action, analogous to human paternity, in the generation of the
Manhood. Compare the same words used of Adam (Luke iii. 38), with reference also
to special divine action in his production.

(b) Son of Man. This designation is used only by our Lord, never by His
disciples. It is remarkable that in the Old Testament the phrase "Son of Man"
habitually refers to the weakness and dependency of mere man. [5] In the Gospels
the Saviour uses it in a sense apparently new, designating Himself as the True
Man, the Man of men.

(c) The Second Man (1 Cor. xv. 47). In the light of the last remarks, this title
explains itself. As Adam sums up and represents humanity as created, and as
fallen, so Christ, incarnate and "perfected" (p. 74), sums up and represents
humanity as regenerated and holy. Individually, every man, as man, is "in Adam,"
as to derivation of nature and bond of covenant; every regenerated man is "in
Christ," as to reception of renewed nature and grant of new covenant. Adam is
the head of humanity, Christ of new humanity. On the question whether the
Manhood of Christ was pre-existent, see p. 72.

Supplementary

History of the Doctrine of Christ’s Person.

Our outline of this has been in part anticipated under the History of the
Doctrine of the Trinity.

(1) First to Third Centuries.—That divine worship was from the first paid to
Christ can be amply proved. In the second century the records of martyrdoms, as
of Polycarp and of the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, and the Letters of Ignatius,
fully show the intensity of faith in the Lord’s Godhead. So does the frequency
with which heathen observers fix upon the adoration of Christ as God as a
phenomenon of Christianity. Side by side with this more popular phase of the
facts, the early teachers of the Church do, on the whole, steadfastly and with
deepest earnestness, both in replies to assailants and in instruction to
disciples, avow and glory in their adoration. From the first, as even the New
Testament bears witness, there were alien drifts of opinion; but the broad fact
remains that a main stream of conviction not only allowed, but jealously
guarded, the confession of the Godhead of Christ. The more and more careful
definitions of it were made in face of attacks upon a truth felt to be
inestimably precious, and which had been not carelessly held, but inadequately
analysed and stated.

This last remark accounts for exceptional language found in orthodox writers
earlier than the Nicene Council (325), language which favours later theories
openly heterodox; e.g., that the Son is "another God under the Creator"
(Justin); or of a nature "very near to the Supreme" (Clement of Alexandria). But
the whole evidence gives the inference that such language is accidental, not
essential; an aberration from a central truth which had not yet received full
analysis under the process of attack. From the same writers a far larger mass of
testimony to a full doctrine of our Lord’s Godhead can be adduced.

(2) Fourth to Fifth Centuries.—In the Arian controversy the question lay, as we
have seen (above, p. 28), between a Christ only quasi-God (we do not yet speak
of His Manhood) and a Christ fully God. It is remarkable that on the whole the
Arians posed as the original thinkers, as against a stationary traditionism; a
fact suggestive of the past state of belief. The Homoousion (above, p. 60), and
not simply the Godhead of the Son, was the crucial word of the discussion,
because the Arians patronized a secondary, illusory, use of the word "God,"
which thus ceased to be a test-word.

Meanwhile, the Arians taught only a quasi-manhood as well as a quasi-Godhead. To
them, the manhood altogether lacked the spiritual element (pneuma); its place
was taken by the quasi-Godhead of "the Son."

"Far from spanning the infinite abyss which philosophy, not revelation, had
placed between God and sinless man, the Arian Christ is nothing but an isolated
pillar in its midst" (Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism, p. 28).

The Arian controversy left the general Christian confession of our Lord’s proper
Godhead historically unmistakable. But the following century saw three great
after-waves raised over related questions.

(a) Appollinarius (cir. 380) represents the opinion that in the manhood of the
Christ the highest natural element, the rational soul (nous, mens) was lacking,
and that the Godhead took its place. This he taught, apparently, as if necessary
to the impeccability of the Incarnate; ignoring the surer inference from it that
it leaves Him not truly "one with us." He also held, in some sense, the eternal
pre-existence of this quasi-manhood, and that the Crucified suffered not only
being God, but as God. Apollinarianism was repudiated at the Council of
Constantinople, 381.

(b) Nestorius (Bishop of Constantinople, 428) held, in effect, a dual
Personality in the Incarnate. With him, the Manhood was not only entire, but
independent. A human being, supernaturally produced, the Virgin’s Son, was then
taken into an ineffable connexion by the eternal Son of God. The term "Mother of
God" (theotokos), then recently adopted as a title of the Holy Virgin, in
testimony to the Godhead of her Son, was earnestly censured by Nestorius. His
theory seriously obscures the relation of our Lord, as "the Second Man," to
manhood in general. The Nestorian Christ, from the human side, is not Man, but a
man. Nestorianism was reelected at the Council of Ephesus, 432. The followers of
Nestorius became a dissentient body, still existing in the East. Their
bishoprics extended at one period across the whole length of Upper Asia, to
China.

(c) Eutyches (abbot at Constantinople, 448) represents the opposite tendency of
opinion, the Monophysite, or Uni-natural. With him, Incarnation resulted in a
Single Nature, that of "God made flesh and come to dwell in man" (theou
sarkôthentos kai evanthrôpêsantos). This opinion was condemned at Chalcedon,
451. The Council issued a Confession, known as the "Definition" (horos), a
memorable document, alike for its fulness, clearness, and balance. We translate
here that part of it immediately in point.

After reciting certain circumstances, and after solemn recognition of the Creeds
of Nicæa and Constantinople, the Fathers proceed:—

"This wise and saving Watchword of the grace of God would have sufficed for the
true knowledge and establishment of our religion. But since those who seek to
spoil the proclamation of the Truth through their own wilful errors (haireseis)
have produced their idle utterances, some daring to undermine the Lord’s
Incarnation (oikonomia) for our sakes, and to reject the term ‘Mother of God,’
and others to introduce [the theory of] a compound and mixture, foolishly
feigning that the nature of the Flesh and the Godhead is one, and unnaturally
assert- ing that the divine Nature of the Only Begotten is, by the compound,
passible . . [the Synod] opposes those who seek to rend the mystery of the
Incarnation into a Pair of Sons, and thrusts from the assembly of holy worship
those who dare to say that the Godhead of the Only Begotten is passible, and
resists those who invent a mixture or compound concerning the two Natures of the
Christ, and casts forth those who teach that that ‘Form of the Bondservant’
which He took from us is of celestial or any non-human essence (ousia), and bans
those who fable two Natures of the Lord before the Union, but invent one Nature
after it. Following then the holy Fathers [of Nicæa and Constantinople], we
confess One and the Same Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ, and all with one voice
teach that He is perfect in Godhead and perfect also in Manhood, God truly, and
also Man truly, of reasonable soul and body consisting, consubstantial
(coessential, homoousion) with the Father as to the Godhead, and also
consubstantial (coessential) with us as to the Manhood, in all things like to us
without sin, begotten of the Father before the ages as to the Godhead, but also
in the end of days, for us and for our salvation, [born] of Mary, the Virgin,
the Mother of God, as to the Manhood; confessed One and the same Christ, Son,
Lord, Only Begotten, in two Natures without compound, without change, without
division, without [possible] separation, the difference of the Natures being
nowise removed because of the Union, but rather the property of each Nature
being preserved, and concurring in one Person (prosôpon) and one substance
(hypostasis), not as if He were to be partitioned . into two Persons; but One
and the same Son, and Only Begotten, God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ; as of old
the Prophets concerning Him, and also He, the Lord Himself, instructed us, and
as the Watchword of the Fathers hath handed it down to us." [6]

(3) Seventh Century.—A subordinate ancient controversy was the Monothelite, or
One-Will controversy. The Monothelite held that as there was one Person only,
there could be but one Will, though acting through two Natures. Against this
Scripture is practically clear; and, indeed, the conclusion seems to be direct
that, granting the full spiritual element to manhood in the Incarnate, we grant
the presence of human will. The doctrine of Two Wills, separable in conception,
but perfectly and always harmonious in divine plan and historic fact, was laid
down at Constantinople, 635.

Our sketch of controversies is inevitably meager and eclectic. But it may in
part be supplemented from the previous section. Its aim is to present great
specimens, suggestive of closer study. The ancient controversies are significant
for all time; not specimens of fossil species, but fossil specimens, singularly
instructive by their surroundings, of existing and permanent species of thought.


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  CHAPTER 5: CHAPTER V. THE DOCTRINE OF THE SON (CONTINUED).
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The Doctrine of the Son (continued).

II. The Work of Christ.

(1) As regards Creation generally, Scripture reveals the Eternal Son, the Logos,
the living Fiat of the Father’s will, is concerned specially and vitally with
the act of creation. "Through Him all things" (which begin to be) "came into
being" (Joh. i. 3); cp. Col. i. 16; [1] Heb. i. 2, iii. 3, 4. "In Him all things
were created" (Col. i. 16); words which receive illustration from others just
below (ver. 17), "all things consist, hold together, in Him." He is so related
to Creation that all its orders and their life have their reason and basis in
His being. On their creation, they came forth as ab initio rooted in the life
and will of the Son. And only as so remaining do they remain in being.

The language of Col. i. 16 may suggest, taken by itself, the thought of a
preexistence of the Creation in the Son, or, if it may be so put, the Son as the
pre-existent and archetypal World; so that every thing, and inclusively every
person, has a mysterious existence in Him, as the Eternal Idea, and not so much
begins as is developed and realized in time and history. And it has been
definitely held that some such existence in the Logos is true of all human
souls. But as we look round on the whole evidence of Scripture there is, to say
the least of it, the very scantiest support for such a view. Nothing in
Scripture is more emphatic than its teaching of the vast disparateness of the
universe and God, in this respect, that all things which become are the result,
not of an inner necessity in God to evolve and realize, but of a divine volition
as sovereign as it is benignant (Rev. iv. 11).

All that Scripture entitles us to affirm is that, Creation being divinely
willed, there was an eternal fitness in the function of the Son as its immediate
Head and Root. Through Him the Father, never passive and quiescent, works. In
Him as Cornerstone, the work held, and holds, together. The secret force and
substance of things has, for its true account, His will. And Creation is related
to Him as, under the Father, its Final Cause, its Raison d’être: "all things
have been created for Him" (Col. i. 17).

He is thus "the Beginning" (archê, Origin) "of the creation of God" (Rev. iii.
14; "Firstborn of all creation" (Col. i. 15); that is, "Elder with reference to
all created being" (see ver. 16); not the first thing brought into being, but
antecedent causally to every such thing, whether material or immaterial.

In the Old Testament see Prov. viii. 22-31 for a passage which harmonizes with
this New Testament revelation.

(2) As regards Man, the doctrine of the work of the Son is of course included,
in a measure, under the last heading. Man is a part of the created world. But he
also stands apart in some great respects.

The doctrine of the Incarnation is sometimes so stated as to place the Eternal
Word in a union aboriginal and necessary with every man. The view indicated is
that manhood stands in so near a revealed relation to God that it must be
eternal, a parte ante, in the Person of the Son. He is thus, eternally, Primal
and Archetypal Man, summing up in Himself all mankind, all man, all men. In
Incarnation accordingly He did not become man, but became "flesh" (Joh. i. 14);
entering in His own Person on the conditions of human "life in the flesh" as a
special phase of that life, for special ends.

And thus, it is maintained, Incarnation was divinely inevitable, quite
irrespective of the Fall. It was a thing of original and supreme purpose, in
order to the realization of the eternal Idea of Humanity, the glorification of
man in the Son, and the Son in man. The Fall occasioned an application, as it
were, of this sublime process to a special end by the way. In passing towards
the original goal of a final and universal glorification the Incarnate deals
with the intruding, isolated, and finite problem of sin, by suffering and dying
with relation to it. That relation, however, is not of a substitutionary kind,
or at least not nearly so much of that kind as of the kind of a mysterious
effusion of Christ’s life and power into humanity through the liberating process
of His self-sacrifice in death.

From such a doctrine one result appears to be that the Eternal Christ is in a
necessary and eternal union, as Primal Man, with every man; holding a connexion,
vital and federal, with him, antecedent to and independent of the work of
atonement and of regeneration. In the original constitution of the Christ, on
this view, every man is in Him, and He in the man. The spiritual awakening of
the man, on this view, may be explained as a discovery of the Archetypal Christ
latent in him, and his place in that Christ in the eternal order. Gal. i. 16 has
been so explained.

But this refined and abstruse theory has very slight semblance of support in
Scripture. There the creation of man is "in the image of" not distinctively
Christ, but God (Gen. i. 26, 27; Jas iii 9). And a New Creation (2 Cor. v. 17),
New Birth (Joh. iii. 3), of the individual is revealed as wholly necessary, and
as expressly related both to a previous spiritual death, and disunion from God
(Eph. ii. 1, 12), and to a pre-temporal choice and adoption in Christ,
redemption by His Death, incorporation into Him, and likeness to Him (Eph. i. 4,
7, 13). And the view stated fails to harmonize with Scripture as regards the
position of man, as man, before God. Scripture does indeed represent man is made
in the image of God, and capable of a most wonderful and blissful union with
Him. But this is represented as due not to an eternal and necessary order, but
to divine free goodness and condescension. Humanity is certainly not, in
Scripture, either a phase of Deity, or one of Its contents.

The above view of the relation of Christ to man plainly has no necessary
connexion with a doctrine of Propitiation. And, in fact (above, p. 72), it is
often found combined with theories of our Lord’s Death which deny, or minimize,
its expiatory purpose.

Certain Scriptures seem at first to favour the view of a necessary relation
between Christ and men, such as would harmonize with an archetypal and eternal
Manhood in Him. Such are Joh. i. 9; 1 Cor. xv. 22, 47. But Joh. i. 9 does not
reveal an archetypal connexion between the Word and man. And 1 Cor. xv. 22, like
its whole context, is concerned with the resurrection not of man is such, but of
those who "are Christ’s" (ver. 23); a distinct limit to the reference of the
"all." 1 Cor. xv. 47, in view of its context, speaks of the Lord’s coming "from
heaven" as the Second Man, not at the Incarnation, but at the Second Advent. It
in nowise makes Him the Second Man in His pre-existent state.

Meanwhile it is amply revealed that the Son of God, in eternal regard to
Incarnation and Atonement, has deep and gracious connexion not only with certain
individuals, or sections, of the race, but with man. To Him, as the Eternal Word
Incarnate "for us men and for our salvation," every man is so related as to have
the right to say, "I am of that nature which in Christ is united to God; I am of
that human world (1 Joh. ii. 2) for which Christ is the Propitiation; I am of
that mankind which He redeemed."

As a fact, the unity of the human race, taken along with the historical
Incarnation, places every man of all time in natural, while most wonderful,
contact with the Incarnate Lord. And this fact is preliminary to all truths of
regeneration and incorporation.

But now comes up for study what we hold to be, from man’s actual point of view,
the central truth in the work of Christ for man:

(3) The Atoning Sacrifice of Christ in His Death.

We have already noted the fact (p. 72) that many thinkers find the central point
elsewhere, as in the Incarnation. But we affirm that the Scriptures teach
otherwise, largely and distinctly. From the point of view of fallen and sinful
man, the Cross is central. True, there is little definite teaching about it in
the Gospels (but see Matt. xx. 28 ; Joh. vi. 51, and all the accounts of the
Institution of the holy Supper). But the business of the Gospels is narrative;
and the narrative gives an overwhelming prominence to the close of the Lord’s
life, and to the indissoluble other side of His death—the Resurrection. The
death and its work is the main truth of almost all the discourses in the Acts.
In the Epistles and Revelation it appears in still larger development,
culminating in the vision of "the Lamb as it had been slain," the object as such
of universal adoration. [2]

Nor must we forget the Old Testament; the New forbids us to do so. If the Old
Testament is to us what it was to our Lord, definitely prophetic of Him, we
shall see in it His sacrifice foreshadowed on a scale, and in a detail, to which
predictions even of His Incarnation afford no parallel. See, e.g., the Levitical
ritual, especially of the atonement day (Lev. xvi.), as interpreted in the
Epistle to the Hebrews (ch. ix.); the Passover and its application; and above
all Isai. liii., of which almost every verse is quoted in the New Testament.
According to the Risen Lord Himself (Luke xxiv. 26, 46) the main burthen of
prophecy was that He should suffer and rise again. The Pauline Gospel had for
its main article ("first of all") that "the Christ died for our sins according
to the Scriptures (1 Cor. xv. 3).

The reason of this prominence is plain, from one point of view. We shall say
more hereafter (p. 169) of the Fall, Sin, and Guilt of Man. But it must be
affirmed at once here that an indispensable requisite to a just view of the
Scripture doctrine of the Atonement is a profound personal view of the guilt of
human sin. In Holy Scripture sin is not only calamity, disease, disturbance of
the constitution of humanity. It is guilt; it is the violation of the
categorical authoritative Law of God, bringing with it a liability to holy
punitive retribution. No consideration is more important than this in limine, if
the Atonement is to be studied in its revealed proportion.

The first requisite of man in this view is a righteous Acceptance, despite his
guilt. The first requisite of the holy Law is a righteous Satisfaction, good for
man. Antecedent to all man’s needs of elevation, or development, or realization
of his ideal, is his need of a Propitiation for his sins.

Meanwhile, no view of the matter is more liable to be forgotten and ignored in
our own time. The claims connected with the great words Law, Guilt, Retribution,
have been greatly obscured and lost sight of in cultivated thought in general.
The cause is to be sought sometimes in an exclusive attention to the blessed
truth of divine Benevolence, but much more in less worthy directions; in
slackening of conviction about the eternal difference of right and wrong, in
lowered views of the authority of Scripture, in a growth of indifference or
doubt about the supernatural altogether.

However, we venture to assert that a study of the doctrine of the Cross cannot
be successful where the recognition of sin, as guilt, is not present in
strength. And we venture to assert also that to this recognition the deepest
instincts of unsophisticated man, really awakened, respond. Now what, on the
whole, according to Scripture, is the purport and significance of the Death of
the Son of God?

To a true theory, the following elements, presented in Scripture, are necessary.

The Person in question is the Blessed Son, Incarnate. His Sufferings are
ordained in eternal purpose (Matt. xxvi. 24; Acts iv. 28). They are essential,
not accidental, in His work (Luke xxiv. 26, 44-6; Acts iii. 18, xxvi. 23; 1 Cor.
xv. 3, etc.) They stand in a vital connexion with the pardon and acceptance of
sinful man. [3] They are the supreme evidence of divine Love. We may add that
Scripture represents the Eternal Father as "giving" the Sufferer (Rom. viii.
32), and, in some sense, inflicting the suffering (Psal. xxii. 1; Isai. liii. 6;
Acts ii. 23). And the suffering is felt by the Sufferer to be ineffable and
unique; and, observe, ineffably His own, so that He would, if the end were
otherwise attainable, put aside the awful "cup." On the other hand, it lies with
Him, to the last, to put it away, if He pleases; so that the suffering was no
mere inevitable result of His collision with the sinful will of man (Matt. xxvi.
53; Joh. x. 18). [4]

Another element for a true theory is the fact that this suffering procures not
only the pardon of the guilty, but their pardon, full and gracious, at once,
upon acceptance, of the Crucified. It is a pardon for His sake; not for the sake
of their own moral revolution caused somehow by His sufferings. The procuring
reason, the merit, lies always in Him.

Again, the effects of the suffering are expressed in such terms as these:
redemption, or deliverance by ransom (Matt. xx. 28, etc.); purchase, as by a
price (1 Cor. vi. 20); covering, as by an interposition (Rom. iv. 7 ;
undertaking of responsibility, as by a surety (Heb. vii. 22); bearing, in the
sense of endurance of penalty (Heb. ix. 28; cp. Lev. xxiv. 15; Numb. xviii. 22,
etc.); acceptance, as of a propitiatory sacrifice by an offended God (see 1 Joh.
ii. 2, 3); deliverance from the death-sentence of a Law, by virtue of one who
has borne it (Gal. iii. 13). As to the word Atonement itself, it has been said
that its etymology, "at-one-ment," reconciliation, indicates that the true work
of the sufferings of Christ is such a bringing of God and man together as would
be needed if the need of conciliation lay wholly on man’s side. In this view,
the difficulty lay wholly in man’s unsubdued will; in God there has never been
anything but pure benevolence, yearning for the alienated to see it and come,
and asking no condition but such coming. But, on this theory, the Atonement
resides in whatever Christ was, or did, with a view to break down man’s
misconceptions of God. And thus Christ’s Death stands in no unique position in
His work; for what did He ever do, or be, or bear, that did not tend, if studied
aright, to illuminate the eternal beauty of the Character of God? On such a view
"at-one-ment" would be effected, for many minds, not by His Death, but by the
self-sacrificing beneficence of His Life, including the mingled majesty and love
of the miracles, or by the divine charm of His words.

But an inductive study of Scripture negatives such a view. For the Lord’s Death
stands there in a place mysteriously unique. And besides, the words "atonement,"
"reconciliation," in Scripture, do not lend themselves to such applications.
Usage is often a safer guide than etymology to the meaning of words. So it is
with "atone." The word is used in the Old Testament to represent the Hebrew
"cover," [5] in connexions sacrificial and propitiatory. In the New Testament
(Rom. v. 10) it is used, in the Authorized Version, for the Greek katallagê.
That word, and its cognates, habitually point to the winning rather the pardon
of an offended King than the consent of the rebel to yield to His kindness. [6]
Thus "be ye reconciled to God" (2 Cor. v. 20) will mean not so much, "bend your
pride to His unalterable benevolence," as "secure, while you can, His
acceptance;" an acceptance connected (ver. 21) with the sufferings of His Son.

We believe that an impartial review of these elements, and of the whole manner
of the Scriptural presentation of the Saviour’s death, will tend to the
conviction (antecedent to many further possible enquiries in detail) that the
immediate necessary purpose of the blessed Death was propitiatory, expiatory;
not the moral suasion of man, nor even the procurement for man of new spiritual
power, but expiation as towards God. It was the sine quâ non, under a divine
plan, in order to lodge in the Sufferer, being Man, being the Second Man, a
Merit, such as divine Holiness, without which God would not be God, should
recognize as capable of more than balancing the demerit, the guilt, of sin. In
the recognition of that guilt in its mysterious greatness lies some approach to
a solution of the mystery of such an Atonement. There, certainly, lies the true
secret of sympathy and submission as regards the fact of it.

It has been well said that Creation, relatively to God, is little, "a very
little thing," but that Sin is not. Sin—shall we dare to say it?—is the one
formidable fact, the one difficulty, before God. Its Pardon, with Him, is
anything but "a very little thing." That He may deal with the awful fact of its
guilt, in view of His Law, in view of Himself as Holy Legislator and Judge,
there must be brought in something which shall also be, in His sight, great and
wonderful. This something, according to a Scriptural induction, is the
propitiatory death of His Son, One Divine Person, united in His manhood to man;
a Victim most willing, and whose unique union of Natures in one Person secures
for that death perfect human reality along with absolute wonder and merit.

The death of Christ, thus viewed, looks rather towards God than towards man. The
death, or rather the glorious Person whose holy willingness put, so to speak,
Himself into the death, possesses for ever a merit on the ground of which goes
the pardon and acceptance of guilty man, once brought into connexion with Him.
[7] The holy and blessed Sufferer takes a position of awfully real relation to
the Law, viewed as carrying with it the death sentence of the guilty. He does
not only suffer, or only sacrifice self, or only go all lengths in sympathy with
the demands of the Law; He presents Himself to be "made sin," to be "made a
curse," to be the Antitype of the sin-offerings of the altar.

Seen thus, the Cross is meanwhile the supreme manifestation of divine Love. Let
the Godward, expiatory aspect be fully recognized, and it will be seen to carry
fully with it this tender manward aspect. Divine Love, as seen in Scripture, is
in its nature absolute, but in its action limited, by the limits not of external
constraint, but of God’s own Nature, in His absolute jealousy against evil; in
brief, by all that is involved in His being holy. By His Nature, His Love cannot
act along any line but one which shall glorify at once both love and holiness.
Nothing can do this, to the unsophisticated conscience and instincts of man,
like the willing giving, by the Father, of the infinitely good and beloved Son,
as a willing Altar-Victim, through His holy Humanity, with reference to the doom
of the Law, for man and in his place.

Thus the strictly expiatory view of the Atonement carries along with it, as its
sacred accessory, one of the views often preferred to it—the view of the
Atonement as a moral attraction of man’s will, and enlightening of man’s eyes,
towards God. The same may be said of other alternatives to the expiatory view.
Thus, the expiatory view fully allows for the fact that the Saviour’s holiness,
colliding with man’s sin, was the occasion of action to those who actually slew
Him. It fully allows for the martyr-aspect of His death. It fully allows for all
sides of its work of example. It fully allows for His agonizing sense of the
evil of man’s sin and the misery of the sinner’s position. Only, it includes all
these precious things under the sacred centre of a real, proper, valid ransom of
and propitiation for the guilty, and bids us, in the awful light of Divine
Holiness and Law, recognize its main purport there.

Detached Remarks on Atonement Doctrine.

(1) From some remarks above, it appears how deep is the significance of the
phrase (1 Joh. ii. 2), "He" (emphatic in the Greek) "is the propitiation for our
sins." It is He, not it; the Sufferer, rather than the death. The Doer gives its
absolute and eternal merit to the Work.

(2) The imagery of "purchase" is entirely scriptural (see e.g. Rev. v. 9).

But Scripture regards the price rather as paid for us, to buy us to be the
Lord’s possession, than for our pardon. The importance of this will appear
later.

(3) To whom is the price paid? (below, p. 89). To eternal and necessary
Holiness; to divine Law; to the claims of God, who is, by His Nature, the holy
Lawgiver. He who was "made a curse for us" "bought us from the curse
(death-sentence) of the law" (Gal. iii. 13).

(4) Did our Lord suffer a precise equivalent for the sufferings due to man? The
question is not really raised by the Scripture doctrine. There we see absolute
merit, in view of the broken law, lodged in guilty man’s Representative, by
virtue of sacrificial death. This is a thought concerned with quality, not
quantity.

(5) Were our Lord’s sufferings the same in kind as those due to guilty man? In
some respects, indeed not. They could not include that personal remorse which
must be one awful element of the future woe. But the Lama sabachthani, as well
as the horror of Gethsemene, inexplicable on common human grounds, [8] at least
favours the belief that the all-blessed Sufferer willed to bear, and the Father
to ordain, the personal experience of a desertion such as enters into the final
doom. But the reverent disciple will avoid all detailed speculation in such a
matter.

(6) Is our Lord’s Life a constituent, with His Death, in the Atonement? In some
very important. respects, it is not. In Scripture everywhere the death stands in
a position distinctive and apart, as the Sacrifice. But, on the other hand, the
connexion of the life with the death is deep and necessary. The life was a
necessary qualification for the death, not only as manifesting Christ’s absolute
worthiness, but as making it, in the sphere of His holy manhood.

If, per impossibile, He could have gone to Calvary having lived an imperfect
life, He would not have been the all-worthy Sacrifice. His life had to do with
His being all-worthy. But it did not, in whole or part, constitute the
Sacrifice.

(7) On certain New Testament phrases.—The Lord "suffers," or "gives Himself," or
the like, (a) "for us" "for sinners," etc.; (b) "for our sins," "for sins," etc.
The two classes of expressions mean, in effect, the same. The second may be
described as an ellipsis for the first. He died for us, in respect of the guilt
of our sins.

The Greek prepositions vary under both classes. Oftenest, we find hyper, "on
behalf of" (etymologically, "over," as of protection); see e.g. Rom. viii. 32 ;
Gal. ii. 20 ; Tit. ii. 14, Sometimes anti, "instead of" (Matt. xx. 28 ; Mark x.
45 ; cp. 1 Tim. ii. 5, 6). Sometimes peri, literally "about;" but by usage the
word is strongly sacrificial and propitiatory, in contexts at all open to such
ideas; see e.g. Rom. viii. 3; Gal. i. 4; 1 Pet. iii. 18; cp. Heb. x. 6.
Sometimes dia (with the accusative), "on account of;" Rom. iv. 25. These phrases
all harmonize in substantial meaning. The Lord died "on account of" the fact of
our sin and need; "about" us and our sins, as sin-offering; "instead of" us, as
our substituted Representative, substituted in the obvious sense that He so gave
Himself, and was given, to suffer, as lawfully to procure our exemption; "on
behalf of" us, in a sense including all these, and further implying the personal
will and love with which He suffered. Observe further that, in Greek literature
generally, where the preposition hyper, apart or in compound, occurs in
connexion with ideas of death, the thought suggested tends to be that of
substitution; death "on behalf of" another in the sense that the other therefore
does not die.

(8) "The Blood of Christ"—Some expositors draw a distinction between this phrase
and "the Death of Christ," maintaining that the ideas of blood and Life are
deeply connected in Scripture, and inferring that the blood-shedding of the
Redeemer has to do less with propitiation, by the immolation of life forfeited,
than with vivification, by surrender to God and impartation to man of life
strengthening. Thus to be "cleansed by the blood of Christ" (1 Joh. i. 7) would
mean to be morally purified by the inflow of the surrendered, and now infused,
life of the risen Christ. To "drink the blood of the Son of Man" (Joh. vi. 53)
would mean, not to appropriate His propitiatory sacrifice, but to imbibe the
powers of His risen life. Against such a view, we think, the Scripture speaks on
the whole decisively. The text appealed to as the first warrant for the view is
Lev. xvii. 11; as if it so connected "blood" and "life" [9] that where the blood
goes the life goes, as life. But observe the wording; "the life of the flesh is
in the blood." The thought is directed to the deadness of the "flesh" when the
blood is shed; not to the persistence of "life" in the shed blood. And as the
word "blood" in anything like kindred connexions is traced through Scripture,
the preponderating idea is that of death, not life. Where "blood" denotes not
the current in the veins but the stream poured from them, the suggested idea is
by no means life surrendered for service, or transfused for another’s
invigoration. Blood shed is not a vehicle of power, but an evidence of death,
especially by sacrifice or execution. (See among the numerous examples, Gen. ix.
4, 5; Deut. xxi. 8; 2 Sam. i. 16; Psal. lxxii. 14 (cp. cxvi. 15); Micah vii. 2;
Matt. xxvii. 4; Acts v. 28). A remarkable detail of its usage is in connexion
with making covenants (Exod. xxiv. 8; Zech. ix. 11), an association quite alien
to ideas of infusion.

The following are the passages in which the word "blood" occurs in connexion
with the work of Christ: Matt. xxvi. 28; Mark xiv. 24; Luke xxii. 20; 1 Cor. xi.
25 (in all which the word covenant occurs); Joh. vi. 53-6; Acts xx. 28; Rom.
iii. 25, v. 9; 1 Cor. x. 16, xi. 27; Eph. i. 7, ii. 13; Col. i. 20; Heb. ix. 12,
14, x. 19, 29, xii. 24, xiii. 20; 1 Pet. i. 2, 19; 1 Joh. v. 6, 8; Rev. i. 5, v.
9, vii. 14, xii. 11. (In Col. i. 14 the words "in His Blood" are to be omitted
from the text.)

It is not too much to say that the bearing of these passages as a whole is
decisively towards ideas of not life but death, not of infusion but of effusion,
of the blood of death, the striking of covenant, the propitiation wrought at an
altar, the sprinkling of a mercy-seat, the signified acceptance of pardoned
suppliants, the lawful purchase of condemned men from death by death.

On the meaning in particular of 1 Joh. i. 7 compare by all means Lev. xvi. 30,
especially in the Greek.

(9) Were our Lord’s sufferings properly penal? It has been earnestly maintained
that they were not. But the denial appears to arise from a too limited
definition of the word "punishment." If punishment can only mean judicial
retribution for the sufferer’s own transgressions, personally done, of course He
could not suffer personally. But nothing forbids the use of the word "penal"
when suffering is judicially inflicted on a person who, by whatever process, is
legally liable. If the Redeemer, in His own gracious freewill, laid Himself
actually under liability for our transgressions, then the "curse of the law"
dealt penally with that liability, laid on Him. His sufferings had regard to
broken Law and its satisfaction; they were thus penal.

The language of Isai. liii. certainly points in this direction: "the
chastisement of our peace was upon Him"; "the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity
of us all"; "it pleased the Lord to bruise Him"; "my righteous Servant shall
justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities" (5, 6, 10, 11). And see ver.
8, with the alternative rendering of the Revised Version: "He was cut off out of
the land of the living, for the transgression of My people, to whom the stroke
was due."

Supplementary.

History of the Doctrine of the Atonement.

(1) First Four Centuries.—The controversies of these centuries turned more upon
the Person than the Work of Christ. But, nevertheless, there was a practically
continuous sub-reference to the Work, as that which gave the problem of the
Person its supreme importance. That Work, under many variations of language and
thought, as different aspects of its central idea come up, was viewed on the
whole as no mere means of influence on men, as by witness or example, but as a
transaction related to God. We append a few out of the wealth of possible
references.

Clement of Rome (cent. i.)—Epistle to the Corinthians, c. 7: "Let us fix our
eyes on the blood of Christ, and see how precious it is to His God and Father,
because, being shed for our salvation, it won for the whole world the grace of
repentance." Cp. ibidem, cc. 12, 16, 21, 49. In this last place the words are;
"Our Lord Jesus Christ gave His blood for us in the will of God, and His flesh
for our flesh, and His life (psychê) for our lives."

The Epistle to Diognetus [10] (early cent. ii.)—c. 9: "When our unrighteousness
had reached the full, God Himself gave His Son a ransom for us (lytron hyper
hêmôn) . the just for the unjust . . For what else was able to hide our sins,
but His righteousness? . Oh blessed exchange! That so the iniquity of many
should be hidden in One Righteous, and the righteousness of One should justify
many iniquitous."

Irenæus (cent. ii.)—Against Heresies, bk v., i. 1: "The Lord ransomed us by His
own blood, and gave His life for our life and His flesh for our flesh" (cp.
Clem. Rom. supra). In the immediate context Irenæus dwells on the fact that the
Atonement had for a main end the satisfaction of the claims of justice. The
"persuasive" power of the Atonement appears in the same context as grounded on
an effected redemption. See further, bk v., xiv. 3, 4.

Justin Martyr—(cent. ii.) Dialogue, c. 95: "The universal Father willed that His
own Messiah, on behalf of men of every race, should receive on Him the curses of
all, knowing that He would raise Him up after crucifixion and death."

Origen (cent. iii.)—On the Romans, iii., c. 8: "God set Him forth to be a
propitiation, through faith in His blood; that is, through the sacrifice of His
body (per hostiam sui corporis) to make God propitious to men . . For God is
just, and the just cannot justify the unjust; therefore He willed the
intervention of the Propitiator, that through faith in Him they might be
justified who could not be through their own works." See further, towards the
close of the same chapter.

Athanasius (cent. iv.)—Oration i. against the Arians, c. 60: "The Son of God
came into the world, not to judge the world, but that He might redeem all men,
and that the world might be saved through Him. For of old the world as an
accused person was judged, under the Law; but now the Word (Logos) hath received
on Himself the judgment, and, suffering in His body on behalf of all men, hath
granted salvation unto all." On the Incarnation, c. 20: "He offered His
sacrifice (tên thysian) for all (peri pantôn), giving up to death His own Temple
(naon) in the stead (anti) of all; that He might set all free from the guilt
(anypeuthynous) of the original transgression," etc.

Augustine (cent. iv.-v.)—On Psalm xc., § 2: "The transgressions belong to us;
the suffering for us belongs to our Head. But because of His suffering for us,
all that belongs to us of transgressions is discharged."

These are only specimens of a great store of doctrine. All along there appears
in the Fathers the recognition of a profound propitiatory value in the Lord’s
death; certainly no tendency the other way, no reluctance akin to modern
objections.

One curious phase of patristic teaching was the view that the Lord’s Death was
in some sense a ransom paid to the Evil One for his captives, and that the
purpose and full value of the Death was hidden from the Evil One till all was
over. This latter thought appears as early as Ignatius, early cent. ii. (To the
Eph., c. xix.; often quoted by later Fathers). But this relation of the
Atonement to the supposed claims of the Enemy is, as a fact, no main or vital
element in patristic teaching, either in quantity or logical weight. It is more
than balanced by constant unreserved assertions of the iniquity of the enemy’s
action, and Christ’s mighty triumph over him for us. It is an excrescence of
doctrine, not a genuine limb. Meantime it witnesses to a belief in the truth
that underlay it, the need of far more than moral suasion, or even spiritual
change, for our redemption. [11]

(2) Eleventh to Sixteenth Centuries.—In the eleventh century appeared the short
treatise of Anselm (Abp. of Canterbury 1093-1114), Cur Deus Homo? Why was God
made Man? This is a discussion, as reverent as it is logically clear and subtle,
of the nature and purpose of the Atonement. The thought which it emphasized is
the satisfaction of the claims of (not the Enemy, but) the Lawgiver. This was
only a clearer statement of what the Church belief had always implied, though
previous thought had dwelt rather on fulfilment of divine threatening (of death
for man’s sin) than on satisfaction of the inherent claims of God’s holy Nature.
In Anselm’s view the Lord, as Man, satisfies those claims by a coordinate
obedience, which results in His infinite merit, applied to win our remission.
Anselm speaks less strongly than Scripture on the "bearing of the curse" as the
central mystery of the obedience. But it is plain that he felt no aversion to
this aspect of the truth.

Bernard of Clairvaux, commonly known as St. Bernard (cent. xii.), writes
(Epistle cxc.): "Man it was who owed, man it is who hath paid . . The Head
satisfied for the members, Christ for His own vitals."

Peter the Lombard (cent. xii.-xiii.), the "Magister" of the Schoolmen, dwells at
some length on the Merit of the Lord (Sententiæ, Bk iii., Dist. xviii.-xx.). The
relation of the Atonement to the devil’s power appears in his discussion. But he
regards the Enemy not as a power entitled to contract for ransom, but as one
whose actual grasp on man came only of man’s unpaid debt to God. This debt the
death of the Sinless One discharges. Throughout the discussion, with all its
logical clearness, runs a certain confusion, due to an imperfect apprehension of
the Scriptural meaning of justification (below, p. 250). But this leaves
untouched the view of our Lord’s Death as a proper "sacrifice, oblation, and
satisfaction for the sins of the whole world."

Thomas Aquinas (cent. xiii.), following Lombard, brought out more fully the
relation between the Atonement and the Union of Christ and His members.

The Mystics are among the most interesting phenomena of the Middle Ages. But
clear statements of Atonement Doctrine are not to be looked for in them. Their
absorbing theme was the union of the soul with God, and they tended to lose
sight of the guilt as compared with the disease and power of sin. See Dorner,
Person of Christ (Div. ii., vol. ii., Introduction), for an account of the
German Mystics, and of their failure to see "in the Cross on the one hand the
condemnation, on the other the atonement, of guilt."

(3) Age of the Reformation.—The Reformers, continental and English, were more
concerned to vindicate the Scriptural doctrine of the application of the
Atonement (Justification), than of the Atonement itself. (See below, p. 187.)

(4) To trace the history of opinion on the Atonement, in detail, onwards to our
own time, would far overstep our limits. But through the mass of theories and
explanations there are apparent two main directions of thought; the one, towards
an insistence upon the need of propitiation Godward, in view of divine Holiness
and Law; the other, towards explanations in which this view is denied, or
minimized, in favour of either a moral work of reconciliation, an exhibition of
divine love persuading and alluring men, or of a deeper mystic belief in the
"liberation," by death, of the life-power of Christ, for the animation of His
members. The appeal between real divergences must be to the Holy Scriptures. And
in the theory rejected on such an appeal, elements of important truth may yet
very probably be present for which place must be found in a true theory, though
the characteristic of that theory will remain not the less distinctive.

In close connexion with the Atoning Death occur other points of doctrine
concerning the Work of Christ. And first

The Descent into Hell.

The precise wording of this belief is not Scriptural; we nowhere find in
Scripture the words "descent" and "hell" used together, with reference to our
Lord. But the substance is Scriptural. See Psal. xvi. 10, interpreted Acts ii.
26, 27.

Of no other passage can it be affirmed with certainty that it refers to, much
less that it teaches, this belief. Those commonly adduced are Luke xxiii. 43;
Eph. iv. 9; 1 Pet, iii. 18-20, iv. 6 (on which further below). But only Acts ii.
26, 27 is unmistakable in its reference. What is its interpretation?

The word Hell, etymologically akin to heal, i.e., to cover (a wound with skin),
and meaning the covered, hidden region, represents the Hebrew Sheôl, and the
Greek Hades. Around these two words a mass of interpretation has gathered. But
their prevalent reference is to the state of the immaterial part of the dead,
viewed as a state of awful, abnormal separation of man from his proper state of
being. That state receives the good and the bad, and may contain abodes of
comparative bliss, or of woe. But in all cases it is in that respect evil that
it is for man a state of separation and dislocation; of abnormal mystery; of
connexion with the sentence of death.

Hell, as rendering Hades, must thus be distinguished clearly from Hell as
rendering Gehenna (geenna, Matt. v. 22, 29, 30, x. 28, xviii. 9, xxiii. 15, 33;
Mark. ix. 47; Luke xii. 5; Jas iii. 6). Gehenna is the place, or state, of final
woe; a word of unrelieved awfulness. [12]

No doubt the words Hell and Inferi (Art. III.) represent Hades, not Gehenna. The
truth taught is that our Lord entered the State of Spirits, accepting all its
essential conditions. To teach as revealed truth anything beyond this fact is an
intrusion into the Unseen. And to lay stress upon the local cast of the phrase,
and on the word descend, is unsafe; for all local conceptions are unsettled in
the absence of bodily conditions. Nothing is demanded by Scripture phraseology
but that the descent of the body into the earth transmits its idea to the motion
of the soul into the Unseen. In the light of New Testament language about the
presence of the believer with Christ now at death (2 Cor. v. 8; Phil. i. 23),
and of the apocalyptic visions of redeemed and praising multitudes "before the
throne," in what seems to be a pre-resurrection state (Rev. vii. 9, xix. 1),
[13] the belief of a literal "underworld" of departed spirits may be dismissed
from thought.

The substance of the doctrine thus relates to our Lord’s submission to all the
essentials of the Separate State, for our sake. As His human body entered a
grave, His human spirit entered Hades. Whatever awfulness that entrance had for
any of His saints, it had for Him.

1 Pet. iii. 18-20 is often quoted as plainly referring to this Descent. But St.
Augustine recognized it as difficult of interpretation, and inclined, at one
time at least, as does Bishop Pearson (Exposition of the Creed), to refer it not
to the Descent at all, but to the work of Christ by His Spirit before the Flood,
in warning the antedeluvians now "in prison." On the other hand many Christian
thinkers, ancient ,and modern, have deduced from the words the doctrine that,
either to the lost antediluvians, or to all the then departed, Christ
disembodied offered His salvation; and inferences have been drawn to the effect
that death does not, for man in general, end probation and evangelization.

Awful is the mystery of the questions involved. To God, not to us, it appertains
to say absolutely and in detail what justice and mercy demand in the case, for
instance, of man who has never heard the Gospel. But we earnestly commend the
following cautions in speculation. [14]

1 Pet. iii. 18-20 is a passage practically unique, unless indeed, which is
doubtful, 1 Pet. iv. 6 is to be grouped with it.

It occurs in a context not of hope, but of exhortation and warning.

It mentions the antediluvians only, and distinctively, and without any hint that
it has a wider application.

It does not reveal what our Lord "proclaimed" (ekêryxe), nor does it indicate
with certainty that His hearers, supposing them to be departed spirits, had
actually died impeditent. [15]

The warnings of Scripture as to the mysterious connexion of probation and
judgment with our embodied, that is our complete and natural condition, lie in
the opposite direction to that of a "larger hope." See 2 Cor. v. 10. And see
below, p. 160.

So does the urgency of Scripture language about the necessity of the human
messenger in order to the "salvation" of those who have not heard the Gospel.
See Rom. x. 13-15; and cp. Acts xi. 14; 1 Thess. ii. 16. (See further, p. 116.)

And, in general, the subject should be approached with a watchful, reverent
remembrance, to be secured only by the convincing grace of God, of the
"exceeding sinfulness" of sin and the immovable, eternal claims of the divine
holiness.

History of Belief about the "Descent."

In the Commentary of Rufinus of Aquileia (cent, iv.-v.) on the "Apostles’
Creed," the article, "He descended into hell" (inferna), appears as part of the
Creed. But Rufinus observes that it was absent from the then Roman creed, and
from the creeds of the East. Nor does it appear, as far as can be gathered, in
the Western creeds as known to St. Augustine.

However, the belief of a mysteriously special "Descent" appears already
developed (cent. ii.-iii.) in, e.g., Irenæus, Tertullian, and Clement of
Alexandria. With some variety in detail, these three Fathers (Pearson, On the
Creed, pp. 237, 241, and notes) held that the Lord descended to impart His
Gospel and salvation, in the unseen world, to those who looked for Him before
His coming, or perhaps (Clement) to the dead in general.

In the early "apocryphal" literature the Descent appears in a luxuriance of
strange and awful detail. Under the common name of the Gospel of Nicodemus
several documents are included, among them the Descensus ad Inferos. In it the
Lord appears in the Underworld, the realm of Hades (Inferus, Latin Version), and
sets free Adam and the old saints, bringing them to "the glory of Paradise."
This document has been assigned to the second century, but its present form is
probably not older than the fourth.

In the belief of a Descent the Fathers are unanimous. But as to its purpose and
work there was very various speculation. Some held that the lost souls
themselves were all delivered; others, that some only of them: the former view
was commonly held heretical. Some held that the souls of the old saints were
translated to blessedness in Paradise, some that they were only illuminated
where they were, and not locally removed. See Pearson, and Ussher’s Answer to a
Jesuit, for ample detail.

Later, discussions arose as to the nature of the Descent; whether it were local
and literal, or virtual—an action of the Lord’s will in the depths of the
Unseen.

It is instructive to turn from the detail and certainty of even the earliest
ecclesiastical statements, to the extreme reserve of Scripture. Between the date
of the main body of the New Testament and the earliest extent patristic teaching
on the subject two generations at least intervened; and this, on a topic so
alluring to human curiosity, is time enough for a great growth of unauthorized
belief.

One fact transpires from the enquiry; namely, the absence from early belief of
the conception of the Intermediate State as a Purgatory. This nowhere appears,
certainly not within the first three centuries. Augustine speaks of some such
possibility with great hesitation. As a rule, the Fathers of the first four
hundred years speak of the faithful as going to a condition not pitiable but
bright and blessed, under angel’s escort, into eternal rest, into the kingdom of
God, into the company of saints and angels. It is remarkable that the custom of
Prayer for the Departed should nevertheless appear (certainly as early as the
end of cent. ii.). But such prayers met with evidently frequent criticism; and
it was alleged in explanation that they asked only for a continuance of
blessing, and that this continuance was certain, yet, like other certainties,
might be prayed for; or that the prayer referred to the prospect of the Last
Day, and the eternal open acquittal then—which again was a certainty for the
true believer departed, yet to be prayed for. These defenses are inadequate,
against the total silence of Scripture. But they are significant as against
purgatorial theory in any of its forms. See Ussher, Answer, vi., vii., viii.

Returning to the divine simplicity of Scripture, we find:—

(a) No evidence for a change of place and condition of the old saints at the
Lord’s death, but rather allusions to their rest and glory from the first:

(b) No evidence for a "going down" of the departing Christian, but full and
joyful reference to his immediate presence with the glorified and ascended
Christ at death. This hope, as it seems to us, stands in a place faint and
secondary in patristic teaching as compared with the Scriptural view:

(c) Full recognition of a vast accession of power and bliss when the "redemption
of the body" (Rom. viii. 23) comes. Holy Scripture fully recognizes an
intermediate state, while it maintains great reserve, to say the least, about an
intermediate place. "Paradise," in Scripture, far from being locally
distinguished from Heaven, the upper world, appears as in it and of it. See 2
Cor. xii. 2-4; Rev. ii.7, with xxii.2-5. And cp. e.g. Acts vii. 55, 56 with 59;
and Phil. i. 23 with Col. iii.1-3.


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  CHAPTER 6: CHAPTER VI. THE WORK OF CHRIST (CONTINUED).
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The Doctrine of Christ (continued)

III. The Work of Christ (continued)

The Resurrection, Ascension, Session, and Return.

We do not state here the proof of the fact of our Lord’s Resurrection. That
all-important question falls under Christian Evidence. We assume here the
convergence of manifold demonstrations on the belief that the buried Lord
reappeared, in bodily identity, "on the third day;" blessed His followers;
taught them; and before their eyes arose upwards out of sight. Our concern is
with the Scripture doctrine of these facts.

Christ rose as the supreme attestation of His own truth, and victory, and of the
certainty of His eternal triumph. See e.g. Joh. ii. 19; Acts ii. 24, 35, v. 31,
xiii. 30-9, xvii. 31; Rom. i. 4, iv. 24, 25, vi. 9, viii. 34, xiv. 9; 1 Cor. xv.
3-22; Eph. i. 20, 21; Col. i. 18; 1 Thess. iv. 14; Heb. xiii. 20, 21; 1 Pet. i.
3, 21; Rev. i. 17,18.

He rose, identical, yet with differences. His body risen was the same as His
body buried. But we need not insist on an identity of particles, which certainly
is not necessary to our own continuous bodily identity. That identity appears to
rest on personal spiritual identity. The sameness of a hand at two times of life
lies, not in its consisting of the same matter, but in its holding the same
relation to the same spirit. What the Gospels make clear on the one hand is the
reality and permanence of Jesus Christ’s resurrection body, under tests of
sense, to which the all-truthful Lord Himself appeals. On the other hand it is
plain that the body’s mode of being and action was new. It appears that it was
capable of transitions, inconceivable to us, through material mass. It was in
some new way under the control of His spirit. He could [1] manipulate it, so to
speak, as He pleased. Some interpreters have seen in this the meaning of the
words, "the last Adam (became) a quickening (‘alive-making’) spirit" (1 Cor. xv.
45). They explain this to mean that He rose in a condition in which His spirit
was now no longer only "living soul." It no longer animated only, but as it were
perpetually caused, its holy bodily vehicle.

This at least reminds us of what is implied by the context of 1 Cor. xv. 45;
namely, that our Lord "became" the Second Adam, at Resurrection. Historically,
He was constituted then, and not before, the Source of the regenerating and
sanctifying Spirit (see Joh. vii. 39) which effectually makes Him the Life-Head
of the New Race. [2] True, there are other points of view. From the beginning
the Son of God has been always the true secret of the spiritual life of all the
saints (above, p. 41, and below, p. 191, etc.). But this fact was vitally
related always to His Incarnation and Work, which were always present to the
Divine Mind. And when historical realization was added to the eternal purpose
the spiritual results were so developed in human experience as to make, as it
were, a new beginning. In any case, it is important in Christian doctrine to
remember that not Incarnation alone, but Incarnation as conditioned by the Death
and Resurrection of the Incarnate, fully constitutes Him the Second Man; the
Origin and Cause, for the New Race, of life and peace.

Organically connected with the Resurrection is the Ascension. The two are indeed
one in essence. Scripture does not reveal any decisive change at Ascension in
our Lord’s resurrection state. "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of
God" (1 Cor. xv. 50); and Luke xxiv. 39 suggests that the Resurrection Body was
already without blood. On the other hand Ascension did not annul its literal
corporeity. [3] At the conversion of St. Paul, Jesus was seen, not in "vision,"
but so that Paul was a witness of His bodily Resurrection (1 Cor. ix. 1, xv. 8).
We are soon lost in the effort to follow the Ascension in detail. But to this we
are not called. Our part is to grasp the certainty of revealed facts, and to
appropriate them in their form of manifestations of the work of the Redeemer.

The Ascension was His actual entrance on His work as Head of His Church. He
became this at Resurrection; but He was now fully inducted into His action as
such. Then He sent forth from the Father the Spirit, as being also His Spirit,
by virtue of ineffable connexion with His Person and Work (below, p. 125). Then
He entered historically on His work as enthroned Mediator and Intercessor. See
especially the Epistles to the Ephesians and Hebrews, and the Revelation; but
also a large range of detached Scriptures, e.g. Joh. vii. 39; Acts ii. 33-6;
Rom. viii. 34.

As incarnate, sacrificed, and risen, He is now Mediator. This word bears a
general and a particular sense. The general appears, e.g. 1 Tim. ii. 5, where
"Christ Jesus, Man," is presented as "the one Mediator (mesitês) between God and
man"; the one way of true approach to God, with special reference (ver. 6) to
His Atonement. The more particular sense appears, e.g. Heb. ix. 15, "the
Mediator of the new covenant" (and cp. Heb. vii. 22, "the Surety of a better
covenant"; see also viii. 6). Here the Mediator is not only the glorious Person
one both with God and man, and dying for man, but specially that Person as
undertaking relations to a covenant, to secure and convey its benefits. That
Covenant (above, pp. 40, 41) is between God and His true Israel, the true
Church. Its two main blessings are full acceptance of the sinner, and a new
heart, inscribed with the law of God. This Covenant lies, directly, between God
and (not man, or men, anyhow, but) Christ for Man; or, otherwise, Man in Christ.
The Epistle to the Hebrews, the great treasury of covenant doctrine, leads us,
along with the rest of the New Testament, to the conclusion that the covenant
blessings were so won by the perfect work of the Lord Christ as to be lodged in
Him for His Church, and to become actually theirs on their becoming His. He, for
them, both "re- deemed transgressions" (ix. 15), and "received of the Father"
the promised Spirit (Acts ii. 33), the Bond between Christ and His people (see
Rom. viii. 9, 11 ; 1 Cor. vi. 17), and, as such, the Maker of their new nature.
Thus the glorified Lord holds as Surety and conveys as Mediator the fulness of
blessing for man.

The ascended Lord is the Intercessor (see Rom. viii. 34; Heb. vii. 25. Cp. Isai.
liii. 12). Scripture represents Him as interceding, not as a suppliant, but with
the majesty of the accepted and glorified Son once slain. He does not stand
before the throne, but is seated on it (see especially Rom. viii. 34; Heb. i. 3,
iv. 14-16, viii. 1, x. 11-13.) "With authority He asks, enthroned in glory now."
It is vain, of course, to ask how in detail He thus acts for us. The essence of
the matter is His union with His people, and His perpetual presence, in that
union, with the Father, is the once slain Lamb. As to the scope of the
Intercession, Scripture appears to limit it to the Church. We must not for a
moment limit within the Church our Lord’s compassion. But the special work of
the Intercession appears thus limited.

A truth closely kindred to this last is that of the High Priesthood of Christ.
For this the Epistle to the Hebrews is by far the chief authority. Guided by it,
we see in Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, and sanctified and glorified, the
fulfilment of the types embodied in the royal and unsuccessive Priesthood of
Melchisedec and in the atoning work of the Aaronic High Priest on the Atonement
Day (Lev. xvi.). [4]

According to the Epistle, He is now as the High Priest was on the Atonement Day,
when, having slain the victim out of doors, he had entered the Holiest Place,
bearing and offering the blood as evidence of sacrifice. But one significant
difference appears. The "great High Priest," in the true Sanctuary, mounts the
throne. (Heb. viii. 1, x. 11, 12; cp. Zech. vi. 13.) The true Aaron merges into
the true Melchisedec. When "the throne of grace" (iv. 16) is approached, upon it
the eternal Priest is found seated, like the Shechinah above the ark, to
dispense the blessings of His once offered and for ever perfect sacrifice. The
Epistle insists (i. 3, ix. 25, 26, x. 10, 12, 13, 14) on the fact that not only
the sacrifice, but also the offering, or presentation, of it is over for ever;
while the royal, high-priestly intercession and benediction, based upon it, are
present and continuous. [5]

Does Scripture represent the Lord as ministering at an altar in heaven? The
Holiest of the Tabernacle contained no altar. Only the blood of victims slain
outside entered it, as evidence of finished sacrifice. In the Epistle to the
Hebrews no mention occurs of an altar in the Presence of God. In xiii. 13 the
context fixes the reference to His "suffering without the gate" on earth. In the
Revelation, indeed, we twice find an altar in the mystical scenery. But in vi. 9
the word is part of the imagery of martyr-sacrifice; the souls of martyrs, as if
poured out, blood-like, on an altar, are seen at its foot. And in viii. 3, 5,
the altar is the golden altar; not of blood but of incense, and the ministrant
is "an angel."

Nor is the presentation of His sacred Blood in the Presence regarded in
Scripture as continuous, or as literal. In the type, the carrying of the blood
into the Holiest was an act single and decisive, the accomplished security for
continuous blessing. The passages which speak of the Antitype accordingly
connect the presentation of the Blood of Christ with His decisive entering in
"at Ascension" (Heb. ix. 12). His "entering in" as the Crucified One Risen is
the presentation.

A cognate question is, does "the Victim-state" continue in heaven? Such a
thought is quite absent from the Epistle to the Hebrews. In the Revelation,
indeed, the Lord appears as "a Lamb as it had been slain." But the whole
context, and book, explain this to mean that as the once Crucified He now, not
continues a Victim, but wields royal mediatorial power in heaven and earth. See
ch. v. throughout, vi. 16, vii. 9, 17, xiv. 1, 4, 10, xvii. 14, xxi. 22, 23,
xxii. 3.

In brief, the Lord is a High Priest for ever; a High Priest upon His throne;
eternally characterized as atoning Sacrificer and Sacrificed, once for ever; now
and always doing the high-priestly work no longer of offering but of
intercession related to it. [6]

Meanwhile He is King, in a respect separable in thought from Priesthood. The
Risen One has all authority given Him in heaven and in earth" (Matt. xxviii.
18). This royalty is not for a moment a supersession of the Eternal Father’s
action. But in it the Incarnate Son, One with the Father, is the divine Agent of
the Father’s will for the great special purpose of carrying into its eternal
issues the plan of Redemption, to the glory of the Father in the Son. It has
respect to God’s final triumph over sin and death, and to the glorification in
it of His Church. When sin and death shall be "put under the feet" of the Son,
this royalty will have done its glorious work. In respect of it "the Son Himself
shall be subject unto Him that put all things under Him" (1 Cor. xv. 20-8).
Whatever that supreme crisis means, it will be no eclipse of the glory of the
Son. The eternal kingdom is "the kingdom of Christ and of God" (Eph. v. 5) ; the
throne is "of God and of the Lamb" (Rev. xxii. 3).

Scripture reveals very fully a present personal action of the glorified Christ
in the ingathering of His Church, and the sanctification of its members. But
this subject will be best treated below, under the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit
(p. 132).

Of the Return of the glorified Redeemer we speak on purpose in outline only, and
without conclusions in detail. Unfulfilled prophecy is a vast field of study.
And there is this difference between it and the study of "the way of salvation,"
that an interpretation of general history enters necessarily into it. The
questions of Reconciliation, Regeneration, Sanctification, and the like, lie in
the field of eternal principle and truth. Those of the time and mode of the
Lord’s Return, of the events conditional to it, and of the sequel to it, lie in
part in a different field. Answers to them have to be sought (in many important
details) not in Scripture simply, but in Scripture interpreted by history.

Scripture solemnly enjoins a reverent and earnest study of the things "not seen
as yet," truly and miraculously foreshown in prophecy. Yet this is a region of
enquiry quite sui generis and calling for constant recollection of the cautions
just given. What we are content to do here is to collect specimens of Scripture
testimony on some main points separately, rather to aid the reader’s inferences
than to give our own; and then to summarize the history of opinion.

(a) Scripture evidence for a Second Coming of the Lord, not mystical but
literal:—See, among the wealth of testimonies, Acts i. 11; 1 Cor. xv. 23, 47,
52; Phil. iii. 20, 21; 1 Thess. i. 10, iv. 14-16; 2 Thess. i. 7, 8; 2 Tim. ii.
18 (with e.g. 1 Cor. xv.); 1 Pet. v. 4; 1 Joh. ii. 28; iii. 2 (with 1 Pet. i.
8).

Evidence from the Revelation is not here adduced, because the symbolism of the
Book makes it difficult to bring it in without careful discussion. But the
evidence above will of course make for a literal interpretation in many places
(both in Gospels and Revelation) where there might otherwise be doubt. This
principle is kept in view in the following groups of references.

(b) Scripture evidence for its connexion with the glorification of the
Church:—Matt. xxv. 10, 19, 21, 23, 46; Joh. v. 28, 29 (with vi. 39, etc.), xiv.
3; Acts iii. 21; Rom. viii. 18-23, xiii. 11; 1 Cor. xv. 23, 35-7; Phil. iii. 21;
Col. iii. 4; 1 Thess. iii. 13, iv. 16, 17, v. 9, 10; 2 Thess. i. 7, 10; 2 Tim.
iv. 8 ; Jas v. 8; 1 Pet. i. 7, iv. 13, v. 4; 2 Pet. iii. 12, 13; 1 Joh. iii. 2;
Jude 24; Rev. iii. 11.

(c) Scripture evidence for its connexion with judgment on the wicked:—Matt.
xiii. 41, 42, 49, 50, xxv. 11-13, 30, 46; Luke xiii. 27; Joh. v. 28, 29; Acts
xxiv. 15 (with Joh. v. 29); Rom. ii. 16; 1 Thess. v. 2, 3; 2 Thess. i. 7-9; 2
Pet. iii. 7: Jude 14, 15; Rev. i. 7, vi. 16, 17, xx. 15, xxii. 12.

(d) Scripture evidence, apparent, for its connexion with the close of the
present order of nature:—Rom. viii. 21; 1 Cor. xv. 50 (with 23), 53; 2 Cor. iv.
18 (with 14); Phil. iii. 21; Col. iii. 2, 4; Heb. xii. 25-8; 1 Pet. i. 4; 2 Pet.
iii. 10-13; Rev. xx. 11, xxi. 1.

(e) Scripture evidence, apparent, for its connexion with the beginning of a
period of felicity on earth:—A large tract of Old Testament prophecy comes under
this head; e.g. Psal. lxvii.; Isai. xxv., xxxiii., xxxv., lx., lxv.; Jer.
xxxiii. In interpretation of such prophecies, meanwhile, the student, devoutly
believing the reality of Old Testament predictions, will remember that these
prophecies, by their failure to indicate a decline or end to the promised bliss,
may seem to point to the eternal Age under terrestrial imagery rather than to a
terminable period, however long, under terrestrial conditions. In the New
Testament, see, under this head, Rev. xx. 2-7.

(f) Scripture evidence, apparent, for its connexion with the close of such a
period:—Rev. xx. 7-11.

(g) Scripture evidence, apparent, for its connexion with the (1) temporal, (2)
spiritual restoration of the Israelite race:—Under (1), the Old Testament
prophecies, of which examples were given under (e), are of course in point. And
see Luke xxi. 24; Acts i. 6. Under (b), see Rom. xi. at large, and cp. Rev. vii.
4-8, xxi. 12.

(h) Scripture evidence, apparent, in qualification of this expectation:—As
regards the expectation of a spiritual restoration of Israel, on a great and
phenomenal scale, Rom. xi. appears to be decisive, by the nature of the passage,
in which the symbolic element is practically absent. It is difficult, however,
even there to say that the crisis in view is revealed as concurrent with the
literal Return of Jesus Christ. Ver. 26 is not decisive; its possible reference
is to the first Advent in its developed results.

As regards the expectation of a temporal restoration, while nothing in the
nature of the Gospel creates a difficulty against it, and the present aspect of
events is even suggestive of it, it is remarkable that the New Testament is
extremely reserved on the subject, and that on the other hand it applies to
spiritual events some predictions which in the Old Testament read like a
temporal restoration of Israel. See e.g. Joh. vi. 45 ,.and Rev. xxi. [7]

SUPPLEMENTARY

History of Opinion on the Subject of the Lord’s Return.

(1) From the New Testament it is plain that the expectation of a literal Return
(parousia, epiphaneia) was universal. And there was a persuasion, at least in
some Churches, that it would be soon (2 Thess. ii. 1). Did the Apostles share
this persuasion? Many passages (e.g. 1 Thess. iv. 17) look that way. But the
language always falls short of a distinct statement, and along with it appears
the same person’s distinct anticipation of death in the Lord (Phil. i. 23; 2
Tim. iv. 8; and see 1 Cor. vi. 14; 2 Cor. iv. 14; Phil. iii. 11). The Lord
Himself had implied that His absence would be prolonged (Matt. xxv. 19), and
that death would be the practically universal experience of Christians (John vi.
39, 40, 44, 54).

(2) In cent. ii. we find the expectation that the Coming would be attended by
the general Resurrection (Justin, Dialogue, 45). Justin (Dial., 81, 82) looks
forward to a Millennium of splendour for the saints, living and raised, in and
around the (rebuilt) earthly Jerusalem, to be followed by the glorious Coming,
general Resurrection, and Judgment. He says, however, that this was not the
universal tenet of orthodox Christians. Irenæus (especially v. 33, etc.) holds
like expectations, but seems to place the Coming before the Millennium, general
Resurrection, and Judgment. He notices a difference of opinion on the subject
among orthodox Christians.

(3) In cent. iii., Origen, and the Alexandrians generally, took an opposite line
of interpretation, wholly idealizing and spiritualizing. Dionysius of Alexandria
(255), finding "Chiliasm," the belief of a terrestrial Millennium, widely spread
in his district, brought about a general reversal of opinion, after a conference
(Euseb., Eccl. Hist., vii. 24).

(4) In cent. iv., St. Augustine advocated a view of prophecy in which the
"binding of Satan" dated from the beginning of the Gospel, and his "loosing" was
to be looked for at the close of the sixth millennium of the world. This view
found wide acceptance.

(5) Throughout the Middle Ages the belief on the whole was that the Millennium
was in progress, and was not far from its close. The Reformers in general held
this view, and regarded their own epoch as the beginning of that "little season
" which should precede the end.

(6) In cent. xvii., the expectation of a future Millennium of bliss and
spiritual triumph on earth, preceded by the Lord’s Return, was revived, mainly
by the learned Joseph Mede (1586-1638). Particularly within the last
half-century this expectation has attracted the deepest attention of Christian
students.

A summary of the main views on this subject is subjoined, inevitably brief and
imperfect.

It must be premised that the interpretation of the Revelation enters of course
very largely into the formation of views. And among those who cordially agree in
accepting that book as divine and infallible, there are two main divisions of
interpretations. For some, the book is a prophetic history, which has been
working out ever since the Ascension, so that much of its fulfilment is already
to be recognized in history. For others, its predictions (e.g. chapters xvii.,
xviii.) concern very mainly a series of events still wholly in the future.

Under the first type of interpretation differences again occur. For some, as we
have seen, the Millennium (ch.xx.) is already past; a thousand years of
comparative freedom from unbelief and fundamental heresy in Christendom. The
present time falls accordingly within the "little season" (Rev. xx. 3) of
temptation and tribulation which is to precede the final Coming and the eternal
order of things.

For others, the Millennium is yet to be, and perhaps ere long. It is to be a
period of great blessedness on earth, under divine power and rule, in a new
manner. Interpreters differ in detail as to the character of the period. But on
the whole it is to be a blessed age, only with such a survival of elements of
evil as that they shall revive in great force at its close. Then the "little
season" will come in, before the End.

Under this interpretation again there are two important divisions. For some,
this great period is brought in and maintained by the exercise indeed of divine
power, whether or not in modes openly miraculous, but not by a visible Personal
Return of the Lord. For others, His visible pre-millennial Return is the central
point of hope. It is the return predicted 1 Thess. iv., and will bring with it
the resurrection of the buried saints, and the transfiguration of the living, to
meet the Lord in the air, and to reign with Him either upon, or however over,
the beatified earth.

With the interpreters of this latter school, in particular, but not with them
only, the Millennium is to be a time of well-nigh universal triumph for the
cause of God on earth, in the sense of general conversion. Whether by means of
the great tribulations, or by the immediate power of the manifested Lord, no
longer individuals here and there, but the nations, are to come to Him. Israel,
converted as a nation, will occupy a pre-eminent place in the life of the
blessed earth, the Lord Himself perhaps reigning in Jerusalem below; while new
modes and degrees of intercourse may bind, as it were, heaven and earth
together. In the belief of many, the risen saints of the Old Testament will then
inherit their portion of the earthly Canaan.

Whether human birth and death will still take place is a point of difference.
The glorious scene will, however, wane at last. The enemy will be released for
his last "short time," and the last conflict of good and evil will be fought on
earth. It will close with the final manifestation of the Judge, the collapse and
transfiguration of the present order of things, and the coming in of the eternal
state, with its endless issues of glory and perdition. Then shall be seen "new
heavens and a new earth," and therein "righteousness shall dwell."[8]

We have said enough to indicate the range and complexity of this sacred subject.
We can only add here a very few of the reasons of most weight on the side of the
chief theories.

(a) In favour of a future Millennium of more or less material, with spiritual,
blessedness are—the large mention in Old Testament prophecy of a time when
"nature" shall be renewed on the earth, and the state of Eden restored; the
indications in the New Testament (see above, p. 108) of a restoration of Israel,
and of a triumph of the Gospel vastly more extensive than any now seen, or
(humanly speaking) on its way to be seen, on earth; promises of a reward "on
earth" for the righteous (e.g. Matt. v. 5) and the great prediction in Rev. xx.
7, etc.

(b) In favour of the belief of a premillennial Advent of our Lord are—-the
language of the prophets concerning e.g. a divine reign in glory "in Mount
Zion," language large in quantity and most impressive in manner; passages in the
New Testament (e.g. 1 Cor. xv. 23, 24) which may be interpreted of a great
double crisis, a twofoldness, in the one great fact of the Second Coming (such a
passage is 1 Cor. xv. 23, 24) the predictions of the Revelation, especially xx.
4, 6 and, above all, the many passages which exhort the believer to be on the
watch for the sudden Coming of his Lord.

(c) In favour of the post-millennial view are the passages which connect the
Resurrection with both the Coming and the final Judgment; the language of 2 Pet.
iii.; the solemnity with which, in the matter of the Coming, the "second time"
is named, without any explicit similar mention of a third; and the complicated
difficulties to thought when the idea of a terrestrial reign of the glorified
Lord is considered carefully. These difficulties are not necessarily
impossibilities, nor do they affect all pre-millennial views; but they are, of
course, cautions.

(d) In favour of an interpretation of the Millennium in a sense more mystical
than literal is the fact of the isolated character and, when studied closely,
very peculiar wording of the great passage in Rev. xx., and the manifest
rightness of explaining, on the whole, in Scripture, the obscurer passages by
the clearer, the more isolated by the more extended.

Observe, too, the fact, mentioned above (p. 109), that some of the amplest
prophecies of coming blessedness on earth in the Old Testament are applied in
the New Testament not to a future millennial age, but to the present age, that
of the Gospel.

Amidst the divergency of interpretations it is an important and happy
reflection, that all those we have sketched leave possible a profound agreement
on those central truths which concern the Person of Christ, His sacrificial and
sanctifying work, and the "blessed hope" of His personal glorious Coming and
Triumph. They no doubt affect the views of their holders as to the purpose and
efficacy of the present agencies and resources of the Church, and the scope of
its work, as revealed in the Scriptures. On the whole, however, we leave this
subject as we entered upon it, with a reverent avowal of the conditions of
mystery and, in some respects, inevitable suspense which attend its study. [9]
On no topic of revelation should believing students be more watchful against
premature conclusions and unloving mutual criticisms than on that of the details
of the prediction of our Blessed Lord’s most certain, literal, glorious and
desirable Return. Meanwhile, let the topic invite an ever deeper, more hallowed,
and more submissive study, and kindle a more ardent longing, and animate to a
holier walk.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

The Judgment.

Scripture abounds in predictions of a future Judgment, closely connected with
"the Last Day." As a central passage see Joh. v. 29 (where read, "resurrection
of judgment"); and see Matt. x. 15, xii. 36, 41, xxv. 34-6; Joh. v. 22, 24, 27;
Acts x. 42, xvii. 31, xxiv. 25; Rom. ii. 5-16, xiv. 10; 1 Cor. iv. 4, 5, xi. 32;
2 Cor. v. 10; 1 Tim. v. 24; 2 Tim. iv. 1; Heb. vi. 2, ix. 27, x. 27; 2 Pet. iii.
7; 1 Joh. iv. 17; Jude 6; Rev. xx. 11-15.

The Judge is "God Himself" (Psal. l. 6; Rom. ii. 16; Heb. xii. 23), All-knowing
and All-just. But especially the Son, the Christ, appears as the Judge. This is
explained Joh. v. 22 (and cp. Acts x. 42, xvii. 31) to be a matter of eternal
inner fitness; "because He is the Son of man." His gracious and mysterious
one-ness with Man, while He is also the Eternal Son, designates Him as the fit
Judge of the tribes of which He is, as it were, the Patriarch. In His human
experience of temptation, "yet without sin," the heart of man is afforded a
divine guarantee, if the word may be reverently used, of perfect mercy and
perfect justice in the scrutiny of its sins.

The subjects of the Judgment are the race, in all its individuals. Such is the
plain hearing of e.g. Matt. xxv, 32; Joh. v. 28; Rev. xx. 12; and cp. Gen.
xviii. 25; Eccl. xii. 14. The question at once arises what the incidence of
judgment will be in view of the incalculable varieties of capacity, character,
and circumstances. The reply must be that we know too little to reply; too
little of the mystery of hereditary sinfulness and of the responsibility
involved in the lowest phase of conscience, and generally of the nature and
secret history of the soul. It is well to remember that the judgment is not in
our hands, that "God is both legislature and executive." In each one of the
innumerable cases the "Judge of all the earth will" infallibly "do justly" (Gen.
xviii. 25). Nothing will be decided roughly and in the mass. No one will be
condemned for ignorance of what it was impossible for him to know. The sentence
will always have respect to sin. And the sin, though real and condemning, of the
man never reached by the divine message of salvation will not be as the sin of
the man who has heard it (Matt. x. 15; Luke xii. 47, 48). On the other hand, the
awfulness of the least disobedience to conscience, even where there has been no
explicit revelation, will then appear (Rom. ii. 12).

But the whole problem of the sentence on those who have never received
revelation is of the deepest mystery. He who entirely submits to the teaching of
Scripture will leave it in solemn silence to the Judge, remembering on the one
side His absolute mercy and justice, on the other side the insistence of Holy
Scripture upon the urgent necessity that the Gospel should be carried to men
everywhere in this world with a view to their salvation. And meanwhile his own
heart’s experience tells him of man’s profound need to know that Gospel, in its
fulness, in order to do the will of God. Whatever speculation may do, the Holy
Scriptures do not encourage vague hopes of human salvation apart from that
Gospel. See Rom. x. 14, 15; and cp. Acts xi. 14.

It is clearly revealed that the accepted, the saved, the true Church, will then
be somehow judged. See Rom. xiv. 10; 2 Cor. v. 10; and cp. 1 Cor. iii. 15. And
on the other hand it is revealed, in verbal contradiction to this prospect, that
the believer in the Son of God "cometh not into judgment" (John v. 24; cp. Rom.
viii. 33). If a reconciliation may be reverently sought, the saved shall be then
seen, without a doubt or fear, to be indeed amply and eternally accepted, but
for them too the book of conscience shall be solemnly and entirely opened, and
results from the discipline of time shall be carried on into eternity, making
differences related to the quality of their service of love on earth (Matt. xxv.
19-23).

Again we gather that the "saints," the "members" of Christ the Judge, shall
mysteriously share in His action as Judge. See 1 Cor. vi. 2; and cp. Dan. vii.
22; Matt. xix. 28; Rev. xx. 4. Speculation in detail is vain. We may humbly
think that this participation will be a solemn approval of the verdict of the
Son of Man, in absolute harmony with His whole mind in giving it, and as by
those whose union with Him will then be supremely seen. It is indicated that
"angels" as well as men will be subjects of the judgment. See Jude 6; perhaps
Matt. xxv. 41; and cp. Matt. viii. 29 (a passage of mournful significance); 1
Cor. vi. 3. This prospect seems to indicate close relations between these
"angels" and mankind.

The whole revelation of the Judgment points to it as to an event, not merely, as
has been sometimes suggested, an eternal fact figured under the imagery of
crisis and time. Doubtless a figurative and pictorial element is present in the
Scripture presentation, in which we read, for instance, of opened "books" on
which the sentence is based. But this is wholly different from a solution of the
prospect into a vision, so to speak, of things which are not themselves an
event. This great adjudication by the Son of Man is firmly linked in prospect to
the Resurrection of the Dead, [10] an event (whatever be its details) definite,
and wholly future.

In brief, the Judgment is presented to us in Scripture as the close of the
dealings of God with man in probation and redemption. As that process had
historical points of beginning and development, so it is to have an historical
point of conclusion. We say "point," of course, not in a needlessly narrow
sense. It is no part of the Creed to believe that the "Last Day" shall contain
just twenty-four hours, or twelve. It may be a decisive period rather than a
common day; it may on the other hand indicate a crisis of inconceivable
rapidity, to which a common day should be as a thousand years; so little can we
know of the judgment process. But we mean that it is presented in Scripture as
an event. Every event of time has relations to God’s eternity other than those
it bears to us who "become." But this does not make it less truly an event of
time. And this is as true of the coming Judgment as of the First Advent.

"We believe that Thou shalt come to be our Judge: We, therefore pray Thee, help
Thy servants whom thou hast redeemed with Thy precious blood."

___________________

[1] We say "could" with reference, of course, not to His omnipotence in itself,
as to which He always "all things can," but to the order of His work, regulating
the exercise of power.

[2] See C.H. Waller, Doctrine of Christ as the Last Adam.

[3] The glorification of the Body does not appear to have lifted it above the
laws of place. As true human Body, it is not ubiquitous; it is "in heaven, and
not here" (last Rubric of the Communion).

[4] Observe that this special and pre-eminent occasion of Aaronic High-Priestly
work is almost alone in view in the Epistle. The type is not the Priests, but
the High Priest, and the High Priest not anyhow, but as on the Atonement Day.

[5] From Heb. viii. 3 it has been argued that our Lord must be now "offering
somewhat," or He would not now be a Priest. But a Priest is a Priest (as to the
altar-part of his function) not as always offering but as always being an
Offerer. Our Lord is for ever characterized as an Offerer by His unique and
ever-efficacious sacrifice once offered. He is "a Priest for ever," not as
offering for ever but as ever carrying out, on the ground of His finished
offering, His regal, sacerdotal intercession and benediction.

[6] Cp. Archd. Perowne, Our High Priest in Heaven.

[7] Many of the Old Testament prophecies, taken literally, foretell a great
restitution of the Temple and sacrificial Ritual, under the favor of God. See
Jer. xxxiii. 18-21; Ezek. xl.-xlviii. But this is difficult to reconcile with
statements of primary spiritual principle in the New Testament. See Joh. iv.
21-4; Acts vii. 48, 49, and the whole argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews,
especially vii.-x., xiii. Is it not probable that this range of Old Testament
prediction has its fulfilment in realities of the spiritual order, which is the
highest? And if so, the question arises whether the same principle does not rule
other Old Testament predictions of the future of Israel.

[8] With Mede and his followers the entire "burning up" of the earth (2 Pet.
iii.) was to precede the Millennium.

[9] For able presentations of the Pre-millennial view, see the Rev. H. G.
Guinness, Approaching End of the Age, and Light for the Last Days. For the
contrasted view, see the Rev. David Brown, D.D., The Second Advent, and Bp
Waldegrave, New Testament Millennarianism.

[10] Some theologians have explained even the promise of "the resurrection of
the body" as not foretelling a vast future event, but presenting in a single
idea numberless events of all time; the liberation at death, of a spiritual body
supposed to be latent in the natural. But if such be the meaning of the New
Testament it is consistently concealed by its words. See e.g. 1 Cor. xv. 51, 52;
1 Thess. iv. 14–v. 2; and cp. 2 Tim. ii. 18. To support such an interpretation
it is surely necessary to go yet further, and to say that the Return of the Lord
is not an event, but an ideal presentation of innumerable events. To the
submissive student of Scripture, one passage is sufficient correction to this;
Acts i. 11.

CHAPTER VI.

The Doctrine of God (continued)

The Doctrine of Christ (continued)

III. The Work of Christ (continued)

The Resurrection, Ascension, Session, and Return.

We do not state here the proof of the fact of our Lord’s Resurrection. That
all-important question falls under Christian Evidence. We assume here the
convergence of manifold demonstrations on the belief that the buried Lord
reappeared, in bodily identity, "on the third day;" blessed His followers;
taught them; and before their eyes arose upwards out of sight. Our concern is
with the Scripture doctrine of these facts.

Christ rose as the supreme attestation of His own truth, and victory, and of the
certainty of His eternal triumph. See e.g. Joh. ii. 19; Acts ii. 24, 35, v. 31,
xiii. 30-9, xvii. 31; Rom. i. 4, iv. 24, 25, vi. 9, viii. 34, xiv. 9; 1 Cor. xv.
3-22; Eph. i. 20, 21; Col. i. 18; 1 Thess. iv. 14; Heb. xiii. 20, 21; 1 Pet. i.
3, 21; Rev. i. 17,18.

He rose, identical, yet with differences. His body risen was the same as His
body buried. But we need not insist on an identity of particles, which certainly
is not necessary to our own continuous bodily identity. That identity appears to
rest on personal spiritual identity. The sameness of a hand at two times of life
lies, not in its consisting of the same matter, but in its holding the same
relation to the same spirit. What the Gospels make clear on the one hand is the
reality and permanence of Jesus Christ’s resurrection body, under tests of
sense, to which the all-truthful Lord Himself appeals. On the other hand it is
plain that the body’s mode of being and action was new. It appears that it was
capable of transitions, inconceivable to us, through material mass. It was in
some new way under the control of His spirit. He could [1] manipulate it, so to
speak, as He pleased. Some interpreters have seen in this the meaning of the
words, "the last Adam (became) a quickening (‘alive-making’) spirit" (1 Cor. xv.
45). They explain this to mean that He rose in a condition in which His spirit
was now no longer only "living soul." It no longer animated only, but as it were
perpetually caused, its holy bodily vehicle.

This at least reminds us of what is implied by the context of 1 Cor. xv. 45;
namely, that our Lord "became" the Second Adam, at Resurrection. Historically,
He was constituted then, and not before, the Source of the regenerating and
sanctifying Spirit (see Joh. vii. 39) which effectually makes Him the Life-Head
of the New Race. [2] True, there are other points of view. From the beginning
the Son of God has been always the true secret of the spiritual life of all the
saints (above, p. 41, and below, p. 191, etc.). But this fact was vitally
related always to His Incarnation and Work, which were always present to the
Divine Mind. And when historical realization was added to the eternal purpose
the spiritual results were so developed in human experience as to make, as it
were, a new beginning. In any case, it is important in Christian doctrine to
remember that not Incarnation alone, but Incarnation as conditioned by the Death
and Resurrection of the Incarnate, fully constitutes Him the Second Man; the
Origin and Cause, for the New Race, of life and peace.

Organically connected with the Resurrection is the Ascension. The two are indeed
one in essence. Scripture does not reveal any decisive change at Ascension in
our Lord’s resurrection state. "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of
God" (1 Cor. xv. 50); and Luke xxiv. 39 suggests that the Resurrection Body was
already without blood. On the other hand Ascension did not annul its literal
corporeity. [3] At the conversion of St. Paul, Jesus was seen, not in "vision,"
but so that Paul was a witness of His bodily Resurrection (1 Cor. ix. 1, xv. 8).
We are soon lost in the effort to follow the Ascension in detail. But to this we
are not called. Our part is to grasp the certainty of revealed facts, and to
appropriate them in their form of manifestations of the work of the Redeemer.

The Ascension was His actual entrance on His work as Head of His Church. He
became this at Resurrection; but He was now fully inducted into His action as
such. Then He sent forth from the Father the Spirit, as being also His Spirit,
by virtue of ineffable connexion with His Person and Work (below, p. 125). Then
He entered historically on His work as enthroned Mediator and Intercessor. See
especially the Epistles to the Ephesians and Hebrews, and the Revelation; but
also a large range of detached Scriptures, e.g. Joh. vii. 39; Acts ii. 33-6;
Rom. viii. 34.

As incarnate, sacrificed, and risen, He is now Mediator. This word bears a
general and a particular sense. The general appears, e.g. 1 Tim. ii. 5, where
"Christ Jesus, Man," is presented as "the one Mediator (mesitês) between God and
man"; the one way of true approach to God, with special reference (ver. 6) to
His Atonement. The more particular sense appears, e.g. Heb. ix. 15, "the
Mediator of the new covenant" (and cp. Heb. vii. 22, "the Surety of a better
covenant"; see also viii. 6). Here the Mediator is not only the glorious Person
one both with God and man, and dying for man, but specially that Person as
undertaking relations to a covenant, to secure and convey its benefits. That
Covenant (above, pp. 40, 41) is between God and His true Israel, the true
Church. Its two main blessings are full acceptance of the sinner, and a new
heart, inscribed with the law of God. This Covenant lies, directly, between God
and (not man, or men, anyhow, but) Christ for Man; or, otherwise, Man in Christ.
The Epistle to the Hebrews, the great treasury of covenant doctrine, leads us,
along with the rest of the New Testament, to the conclusion that the covenant
blessings were so won by the perfect work of the Lord Christ as to be lodged in
Him for His Church, and to become actually theirs on their becoming His. He, for
them, both "re- deemed transgressions" (ix. 15), and "received of the Father"
the promised Spirit (Acts ii. 33), the Bond between Christ and His people (see
Rom. viii. 9, 11 ; 1 Cor. vi. 17), and, as such, the Maker of their new nature.
Thus the glorified Lord holds as Surety and conveys as Mediator the fulness of
blessing for man.

The ascended Lord is the Intercessor (see Rom. viii. 34; Heb. vii. 25. Cp. Isai.
liii. 12). Scripture represents Him as interceding, not as a suppliant, but with
the majesty of the accepted and glorified Son once slain. He does not stand
before the throne, but is seated on it (see especially Rom. viii. 34; Heb. i. 3,
iv. 14-16, viii. 1, x. 11-13.) "With authority He asks, enthroned in glory now."
It is vain, of course, to ask how in detail He thus acts for us. The essence of
the matter is His union with His people, and His perpetual presence, in that
union, with the Father, is the once slain Lamb. As to the scope of the
Intercession, Scripture appears to limit it to the Church. We must not for a
moment limit within the Church our Lord’s compassion. But the special work of
the Intercession appears thus limited.

A truth closely kindred to this last is that of the High Priesthood of Christ.
For this the Epistle to the Hebrews is by far the chief authority. Guided by it,
we see in Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, and sanctified and glorified, the
fulfilment of the types embodied in the royal and unsuccessive Priesthood of
Melchisedec and in the atoning work of the Aaronic High Priest on the Atonement
Day (Lev. xvi.). [4]

According to the Epistle, He is now as the High Priest was on the Atonement Day,
when, having slain the victim out of doors, he had entered the Holiest Place,
bearing and offering the blood as evidence of sacrifice. But one significant
difference appears. The "great High Priest," in the true Sanctuary, mounts the
throne. (Heb. viii. 1, x. 11, 12; cp. Zech. vi. 13.) The true Aaron merges into
the true Melchisedec. When "the throne of grace" (iv. 16) is approached, upon it
the eternal Priest is found seated, like the Shechinah above the ark, to
dispense the blessings of His once offered and for ever perfect sacrifice. The
Epistle insists (i. 3, ix. 25, 26, x. 10, 12, 13, 14) on the fact that not only
the sacrifice, but also the offering, or presentation, of it is over for ever;
while the royal, high-priestly intercession and benediction, based upon it, are
present and continuous. [5]

Does Scripture represent the Lord as ministering at an altar in heaven? The
Holiest of the Tabernacle contained no altar. Only the blood of victims slain
outside entered it, as evidence of finished sacrifice. In the Epistle to the
Hebrews no mention occurs of an altar in the Presence of God. In xiii. 13 the
context fixes the reference to His "suffering without the gate" on earth. In the
Revelation, indeed, we twice find an altar in the mystical scenery. But in vi. 9
the word is part of the imagery of martyr-sacrifice; the souls of martyrs, as if
poured out, blood-like, on an altar, are seen at its foot. And in viii. 3, 5,
the altar is the golden altar; not of blood but of incense, and the ministrant
is "an angel."

Nor is the presentation of His sacred Blood in the Presence regarded in
Scripture as continuous, or as literal. In the type, the carrying of the blood
into the Holiest was an act single and decisive, the accomplished security for
continuous blessing. The passages which speak of the Antitype accordingly
connect the presentation of the Blood of Christ with His decisive entering in
"at Ascension" (Heb. ix. 12). His "entering in" as the Crucified One Risen is
the presentation.

A cognate question is, does "the Victim-state" continue in heaven? Such a
thought is quite absent from the Epistle to the Hebrews. In the Revelation,
indeed, the Lord appears as "a Lamb as it had been slain." But the whole
context, and book, explain this to mean that as the once Crucified He now, not
continues a Victim, but wields royal mediatorial power in heaven and earth. See
ch. v. throughout, vi. 16, vii. 9, 17, xiv. 1, 4, 10, xvii. 14, xxi. 22, 23,
xxii. 3.

In brief, the Lord is a High Priest for ever; a High Priest upon His throne;
eternally characterized as atoning Sacrificer and Sacrificed, once for ever; now
and always doing the high-priestly work no longer of offering but of
intercession related to it. [6]

Meanwhile He is King, in a respect separable in thought from Priesthood. The
Risen One has all authority given Him in heaven and in earth" (Matt. xxviii.
18). This royalty is not for a moment a supersession of the Eternal Father’s
action. But in it the Incarnate Son, One with the Father, is the divine Agent of
the Father’s will for the great special purpose of carrying into its eternal
issues the plan of Redemption, to the glory of the Father in the Son. It has
respect to God’s final triumph over sin and death, and to the glorification in
it of His Church. When sin and death shall be "put under the feet" of the Son,
this royalty will have done its glorious work. In respect of it "the Son Himself
shall be subject unto Him that put all things under Him" (1 Cor. xv. 20-8).
Whatever that supreme crisis means, it will be no eclipse of the glory of the
Son. The eternal kingdom is "the kingdom of Christ and of God" (Eph. v. 5) ; the
throne is "of God and of the Lamb" (Rev. xxii. 3).

Scripture reveals very fully a present personal action of the glorified Christ
in the ingathering of His Church, and the sanctification of its members. But
this subject will be best treated below, under the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit
(p. 132).

Of the Return of the glorified Redeemer we speak on purpose in outline only, and
without conclusions in detail. Unfulfilled prophecy is a vast field of study.
And there is this difference between it and the study of "the way of salvation,"
that an interpretation of general history enters necessarily into it. The
questions of Reconciliation, Regeneration, Sanctification, and the like, lie in
the field of eternal principle and truth. Those of the time and mode of the
Lord’s Return, of the events conditional to it, and of the sequel to it, lie in
part in a different field. Answers to them have to be sought (in many important
details) not in Scripture simply, but in Scripture interpreted by history.

Scripture solemnly enjoins a reverent and earnest study of the things "not seen
as yet," truly and miraculously foreshown in prophecy. Yet this is a region of
enquiry quite sui generis and calling for constant recollection of the cautions
just given. What we are content to do here is to collect specimens of Scripture
testimony on some main points separately, rather to aid the reader’s inferences
than to give our own; and then to summarize the history of opinion.

(a) Scripture evidence for a Second Coming of the Lord, not mystical but
literal:—See, among the wealth of testimonies, Acts i. 11; 1 Cor. xv. 23, 47,
52; Phil. iii. 20, 21; 1 Thess. i. 10, iv. 14-16; 2 Thess. i. 7, 8; 2 Tim. ii.
18 (with e.g. 1 Cor. xv.); 1 Pet. v. 4; 1 Joh. ii. 28; iii. 2 (with 1 Pet. i.
8).

Evidence from the Revelation is not here adduced, because the symbolism of the
Book makes it difficult to bring it in without careful discussion. But the
evidence above will of course make for a literal interpretation in many places
(both in Gospels and Revelation) where there might otherwise be doubt. This
principle is kept in view in the following groups of references.

(b) Scripture evidence for its connexion with the glorification of the
Church:—Matt. xxv. 10, 19, 21, 23, 46; Joh. v. 28, 29 (with vi. 39, etc.), xiv.
3; Acts iii. 21; Rom. viii. 18-23, xiii. 11; 1 Cor. xv. 23, 35-7; Phil. iii. 21;
Col. iii. 4; 1 Thess. iii. 13, iv. 16, 17, v. 9, 10; 2 Thess. i. 7, 10; 2 Tim.
iv. 8 ; Jas v. 8; 1 Pet. i. 7, iv. 13, v. 4; 2 Pet. iii. 12, 13; 1 Joh. iii. 2;
Jude 24; Rev. iii. 11.

(c) Scripture evidence for its connexion with judgment on the wicked:—Matt.
xiii. 41, 42, 49, 50, xxv. 11-13, 30, 46; Luke xiii. 27; Joh. v. 28, 29; Acts
xxiv. 15 (with Joh. v. 29); Rom. ii. 16; 1 Thess. v. 2, 3; 2 Thess. i. 7-9; 2
Pet. iii. 7: Jude 14, 15; Rev. i. 7, vi. 16, 17, xx. 15, xxii. 12.

(d) Scripture evidence, apparent, for its connexion with the close of the
present order of nature:—Rom. viii. 21; 1 Cor. xv. 50 (with 23), 53; 2 Cor. iv.
18 (with 14); Phil. iii. 21; Col. iii. 2, 4; Heb. xii. 25-8; 1 Pet. i. 4; 2 Pet.
iii. 10-13; Rev. xx. 11, xxi. 1.

(e) Scripture evidence, apparent, for its connexion with the beginning of a
period of felicity on earth:—A large tract of Old Testament prophecy comes under
this head; e.g. Psal. lxvii.; Isai. xxv., xxxiii., xxxv., lx., lxv.; Jer.
xxxiii. In interpretation of such prophecies, meanwhile, the student, devoutly
believing the reality of Old Testament predictions, will remember that these
prophecies, by their failure to indicate a decline or end to the promised bliss,
may seem to point to the eternal Age under terrestrial imagery rather than to a
terminable period, however long, under terrestrial conditions. In the New
Testament, see, under this head, Rev. xx. 2-7.

(f) Scripture evidence, apparent, for its connexion with the close of such a
period:—Rev. xx. 7-11.

(g) Scripture evidence, apparent, for its connexion with the (1) temporal, (2)
spiritual restoration of the Israelite race:—Under (1), the Old Testament
prophecies, of which examples were given under (e), are of course in point. And
see Luke xxi. 24; Acts i. 6. Under (b), see Rom. xi. at large, and cp. Rev. vii.
4-8, xxi. 12.

(h) Scripture evidence, apparent, in qualification of this expectation:—As
regards the expectation of a spiritual restoration of Israel, on a great and
phenomenal scale, Rom. xi. appears to be decisive, by the nature of the passage,
in which the symbolic element is practically absent. It is difficult, however,
even there to say that the crisis in view is revealed as concurrent with the
literal Return of Jesus Christ. Ver. 26 is not decisive; its possible reference
is to the first Advent in its developed results.

As regards the expectation of a temporal restoration, while nothing in the
nature of the Gospel creates a difficulty against it, and the present aspect of
events is even suggestive of it, it is remarkable that the New Testament is
extremely reserved on the subject, and that on the other hand it applies to
spiritual events some predictions which in the Old Testament read like a
temporal restoration of Israel. See e.g. Joh. vi. 45 ,.and Rev. xxi. [7]

SUPPLEMENTARY

History of Opinion on the Subject of the Lord’s Return.

(1) From the New Testament it is plain that the expectation of a literal Return
(parousia, epiphaneia) was universal. And there was a persuasion, at least in
some Churches, that it would be soon (2 Thess. ii. 1). Did the Apostles share
this persuasion? Many passages (e.g. 1 Thess. iv. 17) look that way. But the
language always falls short of a distinct statement, and along with it appears
the same person’s distinct anticipation of death in the Lord (Phil. i. 23; 2
Tim. iv. 8; and see 1 Cor. vi. 14; 2 Cor. iv. 14; Phil. iii. 11). The Lord
Himself had implied that His absence would be prolonged (Matt. xxv. 19), and
that death would be the practically universal experience of Christians (John vi.
39, 40, 44, 54).

(2) In cent. ii. we find the expectation that the Coming would be attended by
the general Resurrection (Justin, Dialogue, 45). Justin (Dial., 81, 82) looks
forward to a Millennium of splendour for the saints, living and raised, in and
around the (rebuilt) earthly Jerusalem, to be followed by the glorious Coming,
general Resurrection, and Judgment. He says, however, that this was not the
universal tenet of orthodox Christians. Irenæus (especially v. 33, etc.) holds
like expectations, but seems to place the Coming before the Millennium, general
Resurrection, and Judgment. He notices a difference of opinion on the subject
among orthodox Christians.

(3) In cent. iii., Origen, and the Alexandrians generally, took an opposite line
of interpretation, wholly idealizing and spiritualizing. Dionysius of Alexandria
(255), finding "Chiliasm," the belief of a terrestrial Millennium, widely spread
in his district, brought about a general reversal of opinion, after a conference
(Euseb., Eccl. Hist., vii. 24).

(4) In cent. iv., St. Augustine advocated a view of prophecy in which the
"binding of Satan" dated from the beginning of the Gospel, and his "loosing" was
to be looked for at the close of the sixth millennium of the world. This view
found wide acceptance.

(5) Throughout the Middle Ages the belief on the whole was that the Millennium
was in progress, and was not far from its close. The Reformers in general held
this view, and regarded their own epoch as the beginning of that "little season
" which should precede the end.

(6) In cent. xvii., the expectation of a future Millennium of bliss and
spiritual triumph on earth, preceded by the Lord’s Return, was revived, mainly
by the learned Joseph Mede (1586-1638). Particularly within the last
half-century this expectation has attracted the deepest attention of Christian
students.

A summary of the main views on this subject is subjoined, inevitably brief and
imperfect.

It must be premised that the interpretation of the Revelation enters of course
very largely into the formation of views. And among those who cordially agree in
accepting that book as divine and infallible, there are two main divisions of
interpretations. For some, the book is a prophetic history, which has been
working out ever since the Ascension, so that much of its fulfilment is already
to be recognized in history. For others, its predictions (e.g. chapters xvii.,
xviii.) concern very mainly a series of events still wholly in the future.

Under the first type of interpretation differences again occur. For some, as we
have seen, the Millennium (ch.xx.) is already past; a thousand years of
comparative freedom from unbelief and fundamental heresy in Christendom. The
present time falls accordingly within the "little season" (Rev. xx. 3) of
temptation and tribulation which is to precede the final Coming and the eternal
order of things.

For others, the Millennium is yet to be, and perhaps ere long. It is to be a
period of great blessedness on earth, under divine power and rule, in a new
manner. Interpreters differ in detail as to the character of the period. But on
the whole it is to be a blessed age, only with such a survival of elements of
evil as that they shall revive in great force at its close. Then the "little
season" will come in, before the End.

Under this interpretation again there are two important divisions. For some,
this great period is brought in and maintained by the exercise indeed of divine
power, whether or not in modes openly miraculous, but not by a visible Personal
Return of the Lord. For others, His visible pre-millennial Return is the central
point of hope. It is the return predicted 1 Thess. iv., and will bring with it
the resurrection of the buried saints, and the transfiguration of the living, to
meet the Lord in the air, and to reign with Him either upon, or however over,
the beatified earth.

With the interpreters of this latter school, in particular, but not with them
only, the Millennium is to be a time of well-nigh universal triumph for the
cause of God on earth, in the sense of general conversion. Whether by means of
the great tribulations, or by the immediate power of the manifested Lord, no
longer individuals here and there, but the nations, are to come to Him. Israel,
converted as a nation, will occupy a pre-eminent place in the life of the
blessed earth, the Lord Himself perhaps reigning in Jerusalem below; while new
modes and degrees of intercourse may bind, as it were, heaven and earth
together. In the belief of many, the risen saints of the Old Testament will then
inherit their portion of the earthly Canaan.

Whether human birth and death will still take place is a point of difference.
The glorious scene will, however, wane at last. The enemy will be released for
his last "short time," and the last conflict of good and evil will be fought on
earth. It will close with the final manifestation of the Judge, the collapse and
transfiguration of the present order of things, and the coming in of the eternal
state, with its endless issues of glory and perdition. Then shall be seen "new
heavens and a new earth," and therein "righteousness shall dwell."[8]

We have said enough to indicate the range and complexity of this sacred subject.
We can only add here a very few of the reasons of most weight on the side of the
chief theories.

(a) In favour of a future Millennium of more or less material, with spiritual,
blessedness are—the large mention in Old Testament prophecy of a time when
"nature" shall be renewed on the earth, and the state of Eden restored; the
indications in the New Testament (see above, p. 108) of a restoration of Israel,
and of a triumph of the Gospel vastly more extensive than any now seen, or
(humanly speaking) on its way to be seen, on earth; promises of a reward "on
earth" for the righteous (e.g. Matt. v. 5) and the great prediction in Rev. xx.
7, etc.

(b) In favour of the belief of a premillennial Advent of our Lord are—-the
language of the prophets concerning e.g. a divine reign in glory "in Mount
Zion," language large in quantity and most impressive in manner; passages in the
New Testament (e.g. 1 Cor. xv. 23, 24) which may be interpreted of a great
double crisis, a twofoldness, in the one great fact of the Second Coming (such a
passage is 1 Cor. xv. 23, 24) the predictions of the Revelation, especially xx.
4, 6 and, above all, the many passages which exhort the believer to be on the
watch for the sudden Coming of his Lord.

(c) In favour of the post-millennial view are the passages which connect the
Resurrection with both the Coming and the final Judgment; the language of 2 Pet.
iii.; the solemnity with which, in the matter of the Coming, the "second time"
is named, without any explicit similar mention of a third; and the complicated
difficulties to thought when the idea of a terrestrial reign of the glorified
Lord is considered carefully. These difficulties are not necessarily
impossibilities, nor do they affect all pre-millennial views; but they are, of
course, cautions.

(d) In favour of an interpretation of the Millennium in a sense more mystical
than literal is the fact of the isolated character and, when studied closely,
very peculiar wording of the great passage in Rev. xx., and the manifest
rightness of explaining, on the whole, in Scripture, the obscurer passages by
the clearer, the more isolated by the more extended.

Observe, too, the fact, mentioned above (p. 109), that some of the amplest
prophecies of coming blessedness on earth in the Old Testament are applied in
the New Testament not to a future millennial age, but to the present age, that
of the Gospel.

Amidst the divergency of interpretations it is an important and happy
reflection, that all those we have sketched leave possible a profound agreement
on those central truths which concern the Person of Christ, His sacrificial and
sanctifying work, and the "blessed hope" of His personal glorious Coming and
Triumph. They no doubt affect the views of their holders as to the purpose and
efficacy of the present agencies and resources of the Church, and the scope of
its work, as revealed in the Scriptures. On the whole, however, we leave this
subject as we entered upon it, with a reverent avowal of the conditions of
mystery and, in some respects, inevitable suspense which attend its study. [9]
On no topic of revelation should believing students be more watchful against
premature conclusions and unloving mutual criticisms than on that of the details
of the prediction of our Blessed Lord’s most certain, literal, glorious and
desirable Return. Meanwhile, let the topic invite an ever deeper, more hallowed,
and more submissive study, and kindle a more ardent longing, and animate to a
holier walk.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

The Judgment.

Scripture abounds in predictions of a future Judgment, closely connected with
"the Last Day." As a central passage see Joh. v. 29 (where read, "resurrection
of judgment"); and see Matt. x. 15, xii. 36, 41, xxv. 34-6; Joh. v. 22, 24, 27;
Acts x. 42, xvii. 31, xxiv. 25; Rom. ii. 5-16, xiv. 10; 1 Cor. iv. 4, 5, xi. 32;
2 Cor. v. 10; 1 Tim. v. 24; 2 Tim. iv. 1; Heb. vi. 2, ix. 27, x. 27; 2 Pet. iii.
7; 1 Joh. iv. 17; Jude 6; Rev. xx. 11-15.

The Judge is "God Himself" (Psal. l. 6; Rom. ii. 16; Heb. xii. 23), All-knowing
and All-just. But especially the Son, the Christ, appears as the Judge. This is
explained Joh. v. 22 (and cp. Acts x. 42, xvii. 31) to be a matter of eternal
inner fitness; "because He is the Son of man." His gracious and mysterious
one-ness with Man, while He is also the Eternal Son, designates Him as the fit
Judge of the tribes of which He is, as it were, the Patriarch. In His human
experience of temptation, "yet without sin," the heart of man is afforded a
divine guarantee, if the word may be reverently used, of perfect mercy and
perfect justice in the scrutiny of its sins.

The subjects of the Judgment are the race, in all its individuals. Such is the
plain hearing of e.g. Matt. xxv, 32; Joh. v. 28; Rev. xx. 12; and cp. Gen.
xviii. 25; Eccl. xii. 14. The question at once arises what the incidence of
judgment will be in view of the incalculable varieties of capacity, character,
and circumstances. The reply must be that we know too little to reply; too
little of the mystery of hereditary sinfulness and of the responsibility
involved in the lowest phase of conscience, and generally of the nature and
secret history of the soul. It is well to remember that the judgment is not in
our hands, that "God is both legislature and executive." In each one of the
innumerable cases the "Judge of all the earth will" infallibly "do justly" (Gen.
xviii. 25). Nothing will be decided roughly and in the mass. No one will be
condemned for ignorance of what it was impossible for him to know. The sentence
will always have respect to sin. And the sin, though real and condemning, of the
man never reached by the divine message of salvation will not be as the sin of
the man who has heard it (Matt. x. 15; Luke xii. 47, 48). On the other hand, the
awfulness of the least disobedience to conscience, even where there has been no
explicit revelation, will then appear (Rom. ii. 12).

But the whole problem of the sentence on those who have never received
revelation is of the deepest mystery. He who entirely submits to the teaching of
Scripture will leave it in solemn silence to the Judge, remembering on the one
side His absolute mercy and justice, on the other side the insistence of Holy
Scripture upon the urgent necessity that the Gospel should be carried to men
everywhere in this world with a view to their salvation. And meanwhile his own
heart’s experience tells him of man’s profound need to know that Gospel, in its
fulness, in order to do the will of God. Whatever speculation ma


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  CHAPTER 7: CHAPTER VII. THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.
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The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit

I. The Personallty of the Holy Spirit.

II. The Work of the Holy Spirit.

III. History of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

(1) We have already (p. 22) touched on the revelation of a Third Person within
the Divine Being, a Third Agent in the divine action on and in creation in
general, and man in particular. This Third Person appears under several
designations: "the Spirit," "the Spirit of God," "the Spirit of Christ," "the
Spirit of the Son of God," "the Holy Spirit," or, in older English, "the Holy
Ghost," "the Paraclete," [1] paraklêtos, Advocate, i.e. the invoked Helper of
the soul.

This holy Power plainly belongs to the divine sphere. Thus, the Spirit "searches
the depths of God" (1 Cor. ii. 10): wholly comprehends God, an impossibility but
to infinite Mind (cp. Matt. xi. 27); "dwells in" the saint as in "a temple" (1
Cor. vi. 19), a phrase pointing direct to Godhead, in view of the jealous Theism
of Scripture. The Spirit is such that "blasphemy," railing, against the Spirit
is irremissible sin (Matt. xii. 31, 32); a statement which clearly points
towards the supreme order of being. The Spirit was at one time (p. 148) taken to
be a created Personality. But this view is so palpably discrepant with Scripture
that it has long been practically obsolete. The only controversy now is about,
not the order, but the mode, of the Spirit’s being. Is the Spirit a divine
Faculty, or Mode of action, in brief, a divine thing,-or a divine Person? For
the former view there is much colour. Pneuma is neuter, and means "Breath," and
so cannot of itself indicate personality. And the analogy of the human spirit
suggests rather an element, condition, or phase in the divine Personality than a
constituent Personality within Godhead. And in studying the Scripture view of
the Spirit’s Work it is often hard to draw a line between Operant and Operation,
Giver and Gift. May not this difficulty lie in the facts? May not "the Spirit"
be but a phrase, or symbol, for God spiritually working and giving?

But against all this appear some great phenomena of Scripture.

The scriptural doctrine of the Spirit is best studied from the centre outwards,
or, to put it otherwise, from the development to the embryo. That centre, that
development, is found in our Lord’s Paschal discourse, Joh. xiv.-xvi. There He,
at a crisis of infinite solemnity, speaks emphatically of the Spirit as a
Person. In the Greek this emphasis is even stronger than in the English; the
masculine pronouns hos, ekeinos, autos and noun paraklêtos, are freely used,
though the noun pneuma is neuter. (See esp. xiv. 16, 17, xv. 26, xvi.7, 8.)
Fully to appreciate this central testimony, the whole discourse must be read.
[2]

In connexion, we next take the large group of passages which attribute
consciousness and personal action to the Spirit. First among them stands the
warning already referred to, Matt. xii. 31, 32. Then, throughout the Acts, the
Spirit appears as personal; see v. 3, 9, vii. 51, viii. 29, 39, x. 19, xiii, 2,
4, xv. 28, xvi. 6, xx. 23, 28, xxi. 11, xxviii. 25. In the Epistles and
Revelation a similar chain of statements and allusions occurs: see Rom. viii.
14, 16, 26, 27, xv. 30 ; 1 Cor. ii. 10, iii. 16, vi. 19, xii. 11; Eph. iv. 30; 1
Tim. iv. 1; Heb. iii. 7, ix. 8, x. 15; Jas iv. 5 (?); 2 Pet. i. 21; Rev. i. 4,
ii. 7, 11, 17, 29; iii. 6, 13, 22, xiv. 13, xxii. 17.

The above are a few out of a multitude of mentions of the Spirit; they are those
only in which the wording points more or less distinctly to personality and its
action. They are enough to show the deep harmony between the Paschal discourse
and the teaching of the Apostles; and meanwhile there is nothing in the mass of
remaining mentions to negative the idea of personality.

Here again, as with the Godhead of the Son, the "Unitarianism" of Scripture (p.
20) secures the fullness of its Trinitarianism. Jealous for the glory of the One
God, Scripture would not even seem to indicate to us the personality of the
Spirit, the Spirit presented as knowing and doing divine things, if the Spirit
were not both a Person, and of the Eternal Being.

As we go back from the New Testament to the Old Testament we find, undoubtedly,
a much less explicit revelation. "The Spirit of God," or "of the Lord," (ruah
YHWH, ruah elôhim) appears very frequently, from Genesis to the later Prophets;
acting in Creation (Gen. i. 2; Job xxvi. 13; cp. Psal. civ. 30); and in
particular in the gift of personal human life (Job xxvii. 3; cp. Gen. ii. 7);
giving men special force (Judg. iii. 10) and skill (Exod. xxxi. 3) for the
purposes of the kingdom of God; "poured out" for man’s enlightenment and
sanctification (Prov. i. 23),and remaining with them for such ends (Psal. li.11;
Isai. lxiii. 11); and, particularly, giving supernatural insight and foresight,
and true utterance of it (2 Sam. xxiii. 2; 1 Chron. xxviii. 12; 2 Chron. xv. 1;
etc.). But it is hard to say that any of these passages reveals of itself, and
apart from the New Testament, the Personality of the Spirit. Not that therefore
this truth was unknown to the ancient Church. That Church had a living line of
prophetical teachers during the whole formation of the Old Testament, which thus
was less exclusively the channel (though always the test) of Revelation then
than the completed Scripture is for the universal Church now. Certainly the
belief in the Spirit’s Personality seems to be assumed by the Lord and the
Apostles. As we have seen, they treat the Personality as a fact, but they never
give it as a new truth.

But, returning, and viewing the whole revelation from its centre, we find in
these Old Testament passages precious contributions to the doctrine of the
Spirit, bearing, however, rather on the work than on the Person.

Under the head of the divine Personality of the Paraclete falls the enquiry into
His designation as The Spirit.

Why should the Third Person be specially "The Spirit," when, altogether, "God is
Spirit" (Joh. iv. 24)? The answer is to be humbly sought both in the inner
relations of the Persons and in Their outgoing redeeming work. "The Spirit,"
"the Breath," is the fit designation of the Third Person if, in the ineffable
intercourse of Godhead, He is the eternal Nexus of the Father, and the Son, the
eternal Resultant and Vehicle, if we may venture on such words, of Their
infinite mutual Love in its yearning and breathing. [3] Again, He is fitly
designated "the Spirit," "the Breath," if in Redemption His work is to apply
subjectively the holy objectivity of the Father’s Will and Love and the Son’s
Work and Life; penetrating with awakening whispers and new-creating afflatus
into the subjects of the work of grace, and becoming their "breath of (new)
life." We recall in this connexion His revealed work in the material creation.
The Old Testament, in deep and suggestive intimations, shows us the Spirit as
the immediate Cause of material things, as e.g. Psal. civ. 30. [4] His intimate
impalpable Presence and Virtue finds here also its verbal counterpart in the
word "Breath," "Spirit." And we may observe further that in Nature, as in Grace,
it is the Son, the Word, who is, through the Spirit, the immediate divine secret
of Life.

As we pass from this enquiry about the Holy Spirit’s Personality, let us reflect
on the sacred practical moment of the subject. A clear view of His Personality
will indefinitely deepen, solemnize, and soften, all our belief and all our
action in regard of the work of grace. A mysterious and living glory is thrown
upon the revelation and experience of the New Birth and Life, upon Regeneration,
Sanctification, Union with Christ, when the soul remembers that indeed a Person
is the Influence at work, that its Life is the Life Giver, its Comfort the
Comforter; no impersonal force, itself incapable of loving and being loved, but
One who is Himself archetypal Kindness and Tenderness.

The Procession of the Holy Spirit is a phrase sadly associated with theological
strife (see below, p. 149). Let us view it here, if possible, in a different
light. It has to do with revelations of the mysterious inner blessedness of the
"Blissful God" (1 Tim. i. 11).

(a) The word Procession has its origin, for this subject, in Joh. xv. 26, "the
Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father" (ho para tou patros
ekporeuetai). The precise Greek verb is not employed of either the Generation or
the Mission of the Son; and it, and its Latin equivalent, have been adopted to
denote the eternal Origination of the Spirit from the Fount of Godhead, the
Father (above, p. 23). That Origination must be eternal, supernatural,
necessary, or there would have been, at some time a great change developed
within God. It must on the other hand be Origination; the Spirit, as a Person,
is not His own Cause, or He would be an independent God. As regards mode, the
Procession is wholly inscrutable. Only, it is not Filiation. But every word
touched in such an enquiry is a divine secret.

(b) The Procession is from the Father and the Son. The history of this doctrine
comes below (p. 149); let us here look at the truth in itself.

What this says is, in effect, that while the Father is the eternal Origin of the
Spirit, the Son is concurrently His eternal Origin; Deity is in the Spirit,
eternally, because of the Son as well as because of the Father. The Scripture
evidence for this is briefly as follows. The Spirit is repeatedly called "the
Spirit of Christ," "the Spirit of the Son" (e.g. Rom. viii. 9; Gal. iv. 6; 1
Pet. i. 11), just is He is called "the Spirit of God," "the Spirit of the
Father." And the work of the Spirit is subordinate (in a reverent sense of that
word) to that of Christ; He "testifies of Christ," "glorifies Christ" (below, p.
132). Now the "economical" relations and works of the Blessed Persons appear to
rest upon their "immanent" relations (above, pp. 24, 25). Thus, He who is "sent
by" Christ (Joh. xv. 26), and is "the Spirit of Christ" (1 Pet. i. 11, etc.), in
the work of Redemption, is to be believed to be ineffably connected with the
Eternal Son, in the inner relations of Godhead, in some way akin to emission.
Not, again, that the Son is an Origin independent of the Father. All that He is
in the Godhead, He is "of the Father," and of Him alone. But inter alia He is,
of the Father, this-the concurrent Origin of the Blessed and Eternal Spirit.
Does not the view (see above, p. 123) of the Spirit as the eternal Nexus between
the Father and the Son, the Effect and Channel of Their inner Love, combine
these revealed mysteries into one deep harmony?

And does not the work of the Spirit for us, in connexion with the work of
Christ, gain indefinitely in our view as we contemplate the dual Procession? He
who testifies of Christ, and glorifies Him, and imparts Him, does this not only
as His holy Messenger and Co-operator, but as the Stream of love and life from
Him the Fountain. Strong is the concord of such co-operation.

(2) We proceed to the Work of the Holy Spirit; and first to His work in material
Nature. We have already seen (p. 123) indications of His work in the creation of
the world, and in its renewal and sustentation-a work as divine as the initial
act, for the momentary permanence of things rests ultimately only on the will of
God (Rev. iv. 11). We reverently infer from Scripture that the immediate divine
cause of things is the Spirit (e.g. Gen. i. 2), while yet "all things came to be
through the Son" (Joh. i. 3), and "hold together in the Son" (Col. i. 17). It is
remarkable that things material (Job xxvi. 13), as well as conscious existences,
should thus be seen to have "the Spirit" for their immediate true cause.

As regards His work in Mankind at large, the Spirit appears as man’s Maker, in a
special sense (Job xxxiii. 4). In Job xxvii. 3, the Spirit’s sustaining power in
man is vividly expressed: "the Spirit of God is in my nostrils;" and cp. Gen.ii.
7. But His revealed work for man goes mainly towards the moral and spiritual
(Gen. vi. 3; whatever be the translation of the verb), and the supernatural in
knowledge and action.

The Scripture indications, however, of His work outside the region of revelation
and covenant are very sparing. Moses indeed freely quotes a Pharaoh speaking of
"the Spirit of God" (Gen. xli. 38). But such words from such a speaker are quite
exceptional, whatever their value. Gen. vi. 3 possibly indicates that a certain
original universality of His work on men ceased afterwards in the order of
dispensations. Yet no positive revelation forbids the thought that the Spirit
has somehow dealt, and deals, with every human spirit, morally and spiritually,
besides His work as Creator and Sustainer.

As the Messianic Age approaches, the prophecies indicate a coming universal
"effusion" of the Spirit (upon all flesh; Joel ii. 28). The universality seems
to refer to an extension to all races and ranks of men. The New Testament (Acts
ii. 16-21) finds this fulfilled at Pentecost, when representatives of the race
received the Gospel, and the universal believing Church definitely began to be,
under the power of the Spirit. True, that beginning has a future in which "all
the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord" (Psal. xxii. 27).
Limits upon the work of grace at one period are no proof that it will be always
limited. But the passages here in question indicate not so much a work in every
individual, certainly not an "effusion upon" every individual, as a world-wide
extension of the Spirit’s full action upon individuals, resulting in union with
Christ in His Church universal.

So of the great passage, Joh. xvi. 8-11. The Spirit when He "comes," "will
convict the world concerning sin, and righteousness, and judgment," in connexion
with Jesus Christ. We must not here infer a new and developed action of the
Spirit, in the Christian Age, upon every human conscience, for the work spoken
of is connected with knowledge of Christ, and belief or unbelief in Him; things
practically limited within the range of the work of the Church. "The world" here
means man rather than men, the race in the mass; man, irrespective of individual
time, place, and character.

It is not ours to prescribe how and where the Holy Spirit shall or shall nor
work upon men. Ours is to "gather up the fragments" of things revealed. Among
these fragments is not found such a universality of the Spirit’s higher work as
to indicate, as a revealed truth, that grace, in a special sense of the word, is
universal.

Does the Holy Spirit do a work of conviction and conversion, in the Intermediate
State? Many conjecture this, or affirm it. Who would not humbly welcome any real
relief under the awful mysteries of the future of the impenitent? But Christian
enquirers must beware of alleged relieving discoveries which are not in true
proportion with the great outlines of the Gospel. Such a discovery we believe
this to be. Its one apparently definite suggestion is 1 Pet. iii. 19, 20 (with
possibly, iv. 6). That passage, on which we have already spoken (p. 94), warns
us by its very isolation not to build on it any large inference not amply
supported by Scripture. But the inference demanded is not only large but vast,
practically modifying the whole aspect of the warnings of Scripture. Such a line
of exegesis is an inversion of true principles. Never, for a moment, must we
exaggerate the threatenings of the Word, of God. In this as in all things we
must be jealous of divine proportion. We must cherish the profoundest confidence
in the equity, pity, and love of God. But on the other hand, and this in the
direction where fallen man needs most to watch himself, we must cherish a sense
of the awfulness of Sin, wherever it is, and of the dread sanctities of the Law,
written or unwritten (Rom. ii. 14, 15, iii. 19). Above all, let the student
cherish this sense, in humble and prayerful study of the Scripture, with regard
to himself.

In studying, the Spirit’s work in the Church, we assume some results approached
in more detail below (pp. 202, etc.). We assume a distinction between the
conception of the visible Church and that of the invisible; the Church from the
viewpoint of registration and organization, a body ascertainable by man, and the
Church from the view-point of true life in Christ, of genuine faith and love, a
body ascertainable (as to its limits) only by God. [5]

As regards the Visible Church, the registered and ordered Christian community,
the work of the Spirit is deeply connected with the use within it of the Holy
Scriptures and of the Christian Ministry. As we shall explain below (pp. 202,
etc.), there does not seem to be evidence, either in revelation or experience,
for holding that initiation into the visible Community secures ipso facto the
regenerating presence and power of the Spirit in the individual. But as regards
the community it is certain that the power of the Spirit works normally within
the Church Visible as it does not without; acting along the lines of the Word
read and preached, the Sacraments duly ministered, discipline maintained, and,
more generally, conscience quickened and informed by the diffused presence of
Christian ideas, whether or not the individual has the New Life. Meanwhile it is
to be remembered earnestly that this His action, inestimable in its own sphere,
is not His highest and deepest; is not different in kind from action which He
continually exercises outside the Church Visible, excepting the particular
benefits of Sacraments.

As regards the Invisible Church, the Community in which every member is in God’s
view true, and whose total is the true "mystical Body of Christ, the blessed
Company of all faithful people," we can speak much more definitely of the
Spirit’s work. Here again we must anticipate much that will be explained below.

The Work of the Spirit in the Individual first claims attention. The individual
believer as one of the fallen race, invariably begins fallen; alienated from
God; spiritually "dead." See further, p. 182. This is as true within as without
visible Christendom. (See this implied Rom. viii. 1-11; and cp. 1 Joh. ii. l9.)
Accordingly, in order to the gift of new life, wherever it is given the Spirit
works; the man is "born of the Spirit" (Joh. iii. 8). The normal order of the
life-giving process is Conviction, Faith, Union.

(1) Conviction, of sin, righteousness, and judgment, is the first work of the
Spirit, for Christ, upon "the world" (Joh. xvi. 8, 9); and all men begin as
members of "the world." [6] When conscience sees not only in general the fact of
personal moral disorder and the certainty of retribution, which things can be
seen without grace, [7] but also the relation of sin to the holiness of God, and
the relation of condemnation to His infinitely sacred justice; when in fact it
sees sin in the light of God and Christ, in some true measure; this is (Joh.
xvi. 8, 9) the Spirit’s personal and special work. The signs of that work may
vary indefinitely with the character, age, training, of the man. And the
conviction in question may occur not always at the same point of the process.
And it is a consciousness certainly intended not to be once felt and over, but
to underlie all after experiences. But the words of Joh. xvi. 8, 9 indicate that
in the order of the divine thought it comes first.

In passing, let us point out the extreme importance of the doctrine of the
Spirit’s convictions. Shallowness, and passingness, of religious experience are
often due to inadequate attention to this side of truth, and to a consequent
weakness of hold on the revealed facts of acceptance and life. It is the parable
of the Sower realized. The crop "dureth for a while" (Matt. xiii. 20, 21)
because the stratum of rock (petra) beneath the thin soil has not been broken;
there is no "contrition," no bruising.

(2) Conviction of sin does not itself secure the man’s part in salvation.
Conceivably it may be deeply felt and yet leave him devoid of "life eternal."
Scripture indeed indicates, in our view, that where it does fully take place it
is, as a fact, followed by the new life. To be really "awake" is an idea always
associated with the new "life" (e.g. Eph. v. 14). But it is not identical with
new life, and conceivably might come and go without it, but for the mercy of the
Worker. Accordingly, the work must proceed, and proceeds, to the point of Union
with Christ "who is our Life" (Col. iii. 4; 1 Joh. v. 11, 12). The convinced man
"sees the Son, and believes on Him" (Joh. vi. 40). He "hears the voice of the
Son of God" (Joh. v. 25). He confides himself, convinced of sin, righteousness,
and judgment, to a discovered Redeemer and Lord, capable of meeting his great
need (e.g. Matt. xi. 28; Joh. iii. 36, vi. 37, ix. 35, 38, xx. 31; 2 Tim. i.
12). Now it is revealed to us as a divine fact that the man so doing enters
indeed into a position of forgiveness, and more than forgiveness-acceptance with
God. (e.g. Rom. iv. 23, 25, v. 1). But the deepest of all truths about the fact
of "coming to Christ," the truth which carries all others with it is that the
man is united to Christ, as to the Head of a spiritual organism, as to which He
stands in a connexion altogether unique. The contact of faith is perfectly
simple in itself; it is no less and no more than the personal confidence of the
awakened soul, on the ground of divine truth and promise. But it carries with it
profound and incalculable results, because of the Object which it touches, Jesus
Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, Second Man, Mediator and Surety of the New
Covenant (above, p. 102). The man, awakened by the Spirit, and confiding in the
Son, not only approaches Christ; he is joined to Him, one Spirit (1 Cor. vi.
17), he is "in Him" (1 Joh. v. 20, etc.; cp. Joh. vi. 37; 1 Cor. i. 30),
partaker of His life (2 Cor. iv. 10, 11; cp. Joh. xiv. 19) in a sense
illustrated in Scripture by the union of limb with Head, branch with Vine, etc.
(Eph. iv. 15, 16; Joh. xv. 1-5). He is not only forgiven, but spiritually
new-created (2 Cor. v. 17).

This mysterious but most real contact is the basis of all the men’s spiritual
gains and possessions. One with Christ, he possesses, and is enjoined to use,
all that Christ has for His true member. The acceptance of the Head, the Second
Adam, in His perfect merits, is for the member. (See further, p. 189.) The
virtues of the glorified manhood of the Head, the Second Adam, are for the
member; he has "put on the New Man" (Eph. iv. 24, with Gal. iii. 27). The simple
but magnetic contact of faith is the way to all this range and depth of result;
or more truly still, is the reception of it. (See further, p. 182.)

But now all this is the work of the Holy Spirit, and from more than one point of
view. First, He is the direct Author of faith; He is "the Spirit of faith" (2
Cor. iv. 13). That the man sees Christ and acts upon the sight, is due to the
Spirit’s skill and power (Eph. ii. 8; Phil. i. 29; 2 Pet. i. 2). Nor is this
all. The Spirit acts in all this not merely as an Instructor, external to his
pupil, or an artificer, external to his work. True to his divine Name, He
penetrates the man’s being as the vehicle of the New Birth, the breath of the
New Life (John iii. 8; Gal. v. 25, etc.). He enters into a deep, tender harmony
with the human spirit (e.g. Rom. viii. 26, 27), not creating it, for it is
already there (p. 163), but recreating it into restored unison with Himself; not
abolishing, or absorbing, but possessing. Thus the man becomes "spiritual" (1
Cor. ii. 14, 15). And again, the Spirit does all this to the member while being
also the Spirit who abides in supreme fulness in the Head. He is thus bond of
divine strength and tenderness between member and Head.

For we have to carry into all thoughts of the relation between the Spirit and
the Christian, the mysterious relation between the Spirit and Christ. We have
seen above (p. 124) how the Procession from the Son throws a secret glory over
the inner relations of the Eternal Persons, and over the work of the Spirit as
the Witness of and Worker for Christ in the Gospel Age. To this must now be
added the truth that all through the historical process of Incarnation and
Redemption the Spirit has intense relations with the Incarnate Son. He is the
immediate Agent in the holy Conception (Luke i. 35). He "descends." in ineffable
speciality, upon the Son at Baptism (Matt. iii. 16, etc.), so that He goes to
Temptation (Matt. iv. 1), and Ministry (Luke iv. 14, 18), " in the power of the
Spirit." The Spirit secures for the Son of Man that He shall "speak the words of
God" (Joh. iii. 34). It is "by means of the eternal Spirit" that the Lord
"offers Himself without spot to God" (Heb. ix. 14). He is profoundly concerned
in the Resurrection (Rom. viii. 11). After Resurrection, it is "by the Holy
Spirit" that the Lord "gives commands to the Apostles" (Acts i. 2). And when the
glorified Christ speaks to the Churches, as the Slain One risen, His voice is
also the voice of the Spirit (Rev. ii. and iii.).

Thus the Regenerator of the Christian is He who was Agent in the Generation of
Christ; the Strengthener of the Christian for spiritual conflict, service,
sacrifice and witness, is He who did this work supremely in the Second Adam
Himself, and that in quite the same reality, and with the same necessity, as in
our case. For the passages just recited, amongst others, indicate that the Human
Nature of our Lord was produced, and maintained, in its absolute and
indefectible moral and spiritual perfection, not by His own action as God, but
by that of the Spirit as God. Not after the manner of Fatherhood, but yet with
true causation, the Spirit wrought the Manhood of the Incarnate. [8]

These considerations, taken along with the truths that the true Christian is
"born of the Spirit" and "has life, having the Son" (1 Joh. v. 12), lead us to
the conclusion that the believer’s union with his Head is altogether by the Holy
Spirit. It is not material, or quasi-material, or materially infused. It is
spiritual, while perfectly real and unfigurative. The details are, at most, very
partially revealed, and are quite beyond our independent speculation. But the
general inference is that the life of the Second Adam is in the new man, because
by the Spirit’s grace he believes, and because the Spirit of Grace is at once in
the Head and in the member. The man has the new nature, the re-created nature,
now, and will enjoy its results through his whole being hereafter, "because
(Rom. viii. 11) of the Spirit that dwelleth in him" (see further below, p. 251).

As we leave the inexhaustible topic of the Spirit’s work in regard of our Union
with Christ, we observe that one result of the Scripture testimony is that while
the Blessed Spirit is to zôopoion "the Giver of Life," in respect of His
immediate impartation of Life eternal to the man, He is not Himself the Life. In
the last analysis, this Life is the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the incarnate,
sacrificed, and glorified Head of His true Church (Eph. i. 20-23) and of every
true member (1 Cor. vi. 17, xi. 3). The Spirit is the eternal and divine
personal Vehicle; Jesus Christ, "who is our Life" (Col. iii. 4), is the Thing
conveyed, given, united to the regenerate man. The eternal Life is not only from
Christ; not only even in Christ; it is Christ. On the other hand the impartation
of Christ is such as to leave absolutely intact the reality and freedom of the
personality of the Christian. The personality of the member is not absorbed
into, but annexed to, and adjusted under, that of the Head.

Thus, from different points of view, the believer "lives by the Spirit" (Gal. v.
25), and "lives by faith in the Son of God," who "lives in him" (Gal. ii. 20).
The Spirit "dwells in Him" (1 Cor. iii. 16), and "Christ dwells in his heart, by
faith" (Eph. iii. 16, 17; cp. Rom. viii. 9-11). The Spirit "sanctifies" him (1
Pet. i. 2); and Christ "is made unto him sanctification" (1 Cor. i. 30). To
borrow an imperfect analogy from physical science, Christ is in the Sun of the
soul, the Spirit is as the luminiferous Ether by whose vibration we have the
Sun’s light and heat.

(3) In the study of the life-giving work of the Spirit, as He unites the man to
Jesus Christ, we must not forget His concurrent and related work of illumination
and witness. The connexion is deep and necessary. Putting aside (see further
below, p. 181) the abnormal case, for in the light of Scripture it is abnormal,
of human life closed in infancy, we see in our enquiry thus far that the
Spirit’s decisive life-giving takes effect in the man in and through his coming
to believe, to commit himself to Jesus Christ. The Spirit is distinctively "the
Spirit of faith" (2 Cor. iv. 13). And He produces faith, of the unifying sort,
that is the man’s entrustment of himself in spiritual reality to the Saviour of
sinners, by "revealing the Son in him" (Gal. i. 16); by bringing the man to "see
the Son and believe on Him" (Joh. vi. 40). Under this head falls accordingly all
we read of the Spirit’s "testifying of Christ," "glorifying Christ," by "taking
of Christ’s things and showing them" (Joh. xv. 26, xvi. 14); bringing man to
"say that Jesus is Lord" (1 Cor. xii. 3); "opening the heart to attend to "the
things of Christ" (Acts xvi. 14). [9]

(4) In connexion with the whole subject, let us remark on the revealed freedom
and sovereignty of the Spirit’s work. "The wind bloweth where it listeth" (Joh.
iii. 8). "The Spirit divideth to every man severally as He will" (1 Cor. xii.
11). This indeed is a general characteristic, in Scripture, of divine action in
the things of grace (see e.g. Joh. v. 21; Jas i. 18), whether or no the Holy
Spirit is in immediate view. But here, as elsewhere, it needs special and
reverent remembrance. In particular, it reminds us here of what we shall see
more in detail below (p. 252), the impossibility of restricting, even normally,
much less universally, the Spirit’s action, in the vital union of the man to
Christ, to a sacramental ordinance, or to any ordinance at all. Such ordinances
have a most sacred work to do; but not to be the normal vehicles of the Spirit’s
vital operation. For, as we are seeing, a characteristic of that operation is
its incalculable freedom; and the practical limitation of that operation, in a
normal way, to a system (though divinely instituted) of external ordinance,
capable of being worked and registered as to its material side by human agents,
is a contradiction to that characteristic. Deus non alligatur sacramentis is a
dictum which, in the light of Scripture, is not a concession in detail but a
leading and ruling principle. Perfectly true it is that, in the deepest
analysis, the free will of God has a sovereign place in all facts. But this
leaves where it was the assertion in Scripture of a special phase of freedom in
the Spirit’s life-giving work. That work, to be characteristically free, must
be, not capricious or arbitrary, which nothing divine can be, but incalculable
as regards conditions and tests capable of reduction to, or correspondence to, a
system of material operations falling within man’s power. In the nature of
things, a register of baptisms cannot with certainty tabulate a series of
sovereignly wrought new births.

All the while the sovereignty of the Spirit’s operation, whatever mysteries may
surround it, is a sovereignty of perfect wisdom working with the tenderness of
eternal love.

And throughout the whole life of faith, as at its beginning in the new birth, He
maintains the soul in faith by keeping and developing in its view the glorious
Object of faith and by inwardly drawing its confidence in that divinely
reasonable direction. (For faith in Christ is indeed on the one hand a
supernatural grace, because the fallen heart, apart from grace, shrinks from
self-entrustment to the Holy One. But on the other hand, viewed as the action of
the soul, it is the most reasonable and natural movement and direction of
personal trust that can be named.)

The Spirit’s manner of action and influence as Guide and Friend, in this blessed
life, must, of course, be beyond our analysis in countless details. Only some
salient facts about it are given in Scripture. Among them we gather that the
Spirit exercises a most real, while mysterious, personal influence on the
subjects of His work (Rom. viii. 14); that He gives them intuitions, not to be
explained by natural emotion or imagination, into eternal realities (1 Cor. ii.
9, 10); that He directs the judgment in things spiritual so that the believer,
as such, has an instinct for the true and against the false in such things (1
Joh. ii. 27). "He witnesses with" the believer’s human "spirit, that we are the
children of God" (Rom. viii. 16); that is, He meets their filial faith and love
with the supernatural assurance of divine paternal faithfulness and tenderness.

As "the Spirit of Christ in the Prophets" (1 Pet. i. 11), the Third Person is
the true Author of the Scriptures. See especially Acts i. 16, xxviii. 25; Heb.
iii. 7, x. 15, and cp. ix. 8. See also 2 Pet. i. 21, and cp. 2 Tim. iii. 16. It
is interesting and important to observe the great prominence of this truth in
the belief of the primitive Church. Thus Clement of Rome (cent. i.) quotes Isai.
liii. in full (Ep. ad. Cor., c. xvi.) as "spoken by the Holy Spirit about"
Christ, and bids Christians study the Scriptures as "the true, the (Scriptures)
of the Holy Spirit" (c. xlv.). And by the way he speaks of St. Paul, as of the
Old Testament prophets, as "writing by inspiration" (pneumatikôs c. xlvii.).
Justin (cent. ii.) uses the strongest language about the function of the Spirit
in the production of Hebrew prophecy. The prophets’ part was to yield themselves
to His operation, in purity, that the divine power, descending from heaven,
might "deal with just men as the plectrum deals with harp or lyre" (Cohortatio,
c. viii.). Theophilus of Antioch (cent. ii.) calls the Scripture-writers
"vehicles of the Holy Spirit … so that in things to come the fulfilment will be
as they say" (ad Autolycum, ii. 9). Irenæus (cent. ii.) calls them men
accustomed to carry (portare) God’s Spirit (Adv. Hæreses, v. 14). Tertullian
(cent. ii.-iii.) speaks of them as "inundated with the Holy Spirit"
(Apologeticum, c. xviii.); and of their writings as the "writings (litteræ) of
God." Cyprian (cent. iii.) speaks repeatedly of the Holy Spirit as speaking in
Law and Gospel. Clement of Alexandria (cent. iii.) speaks of those who "reject
the Scriptures, that is, the Holy Spirit" (Stromata, vii. 16, 98). Origen (cent.
iii.) gives it as a point in the teaching of the universal Church, that "the
Scriptures were written by the Spirit of God." [10]

The catena might be indefinitely extended and enriched. See above, p. 7.

The submissive recognition of the Holy Spirit’s authorship of the Scriptures
leaves quite free our conceptions of the consciousness of Inspiration in the
inspired writers. [11] But it fixes for us the all-important fact that the
"divine Scriptures" (to use a favourite patristic term), whatever the external
circumstances of their production, are His Word, and carry His authority. It
leaves us free to trace to the full each writer’s individuality. But it sees in
these individualities the intention of the Inspirer, who divinely molded the
instrument for His infallible use; that instrument being not the voice only, or
the pen, but the whole personality, and its adjustment in time and place. We are
amply free to see the genuine human character of a Moses, or a Jeremiah, or a
Paul in their inspired writings. But surely we are not free to believe that a
fabricated writing under their names, used with a view to false prestige, could,
by moral possibility, be one of the "writings of God."

We proceed to the Spirit’s work for the community of the true Church. Thus far
we have studied His action for the individual, in new birth and new life. This
is the just and scriptural order of thought from man’s point of view. From the
point of view of the plan of God the true Church precedes the true believer; the
holy Organism is in its measure the "final cause" for which the personal
regeneration takes place. But in the history of the individual, and of the
Church, personal regeneration brings the man into the true spiritual Organism,
and contributes to the realization of its idea. The man is not in the true
Church, and so of course does not contribute to it, till he is personally
regenerated.

But on the other band this regeneration is always related to the Organism of the
regenerate company. Accordingly the Spirit’s work appears prominently in
Scripture as in and for the whole Body. See e.g. 1 Cor. xii. 4-13; Eph. iv. 3,
4; and perhaps 1 Cor. vi. 19. And cp. 2 Cor. xiii. 14; Phil. ii. 1; "the
communion of the Holy Spirit." The truth of such Scriptures is that the divine
Worker, residing at once in the Head and the members of the mystical Body, works
always in each member with regard to all, and with supreme and all-including
regard to the Head. To this end He directs His working always, alike in its
multiplicity of mode, and in its unity of character. Meanwhile, in His infinite
thought and skill the true interests of the member never suffer for those of the
Body, nor those of the Body for those of the member. He maintains each
individual in a union with the Head as direct, as vivifying, and as sanctifying,
as if the one member were all. He maintains the Body in its union with an
adjustment as delicate and perfect as if there were no complexity in the Body.
[12]

On some special points.

(1) "Spiritual gifts" (charismata). In the New Testament Church we find the
manifestation, in Christians, of supernatural powers in the material sphere;
"tongues," "gifts of hearing," besides prediction and specially illuminated
instruction. These "gifts" are always attributed to the Holy Spirit as the
immediate Giver (see 1 Cor. xii. etc.). Were they a grant to the Church for its
initial work only, or so as to be always present at the call of faith? The
answer is not easy. And it is not ours to be decisive where Scripture is
reticent. But on the whole Scripture points to a cessation of charismata (as
distinguished from charis in its larger and deeper sense) in the normal life of
the Church. In the Acts, while the exercise of the charismata was distributed
widely, though not universally (1 Cor. xii. 28-30), the power thus exercised was
very rarely given (see Acts x. 44-6, for the one clear exception) without a
human medium, and this medium was the imposition of the hands of an Apostle (see
Acts viii, 14-15). At least, no clear contrary case occurs. With this fact
compare the intimation (1 Cor. xiii. 8) of a certain transiency in these
manifestations, in contrast to the permanency of "grace."

(2) On the meaning of Grace (charis). This all important word presents a large
field for Scriptural study. We can only summarize results.

The word habitually implies the gratuitous freeness of the gift, or act,
denoted. Thus it means sometimes the free pardon and acceptance of the sinner,
under the Gospel covenant, in contrast to an acceptance earned (Rom. xi. 6; Eph.
ii. 8, 9, etc.). Or, again, unbought divine kindness in general (2 Cor. viii.
9). But it often specially denotes a gift and blessing working in the soul and
will (e.g. 2 Cor. viii. 7). Here the characteristic of gratuitousness is still
as present as ever, but the action is different. What is saving grace, thus
present in the Christian? The answer lies not in any analysis of the word, nor
in any explicit Scripture, for there is none, but in the harmony of revealed
truths. "Grace" manifested, for example, in regenerate love, or patience, is a
distributed and specialized phase of the central gift, "eternal life." And what
is that life? Nothing less than the possession (expressed Joh. xvii. 3 as the
"knowledge") of God in Christ; the "having the Son of God" (1 Joh. v. 12). It is
participation of the divine Nature (2 Pet. i. 4), which is holiness and love.
[13]

Grace, in its highest sense, is nothing less than "God working in us, to will
and to do, for His good pleasure’s sake" (Phil. ii. 13). It is not a separate or
separable entity, projected, as it were, from God into man. It is God Himself,
"in-working" in special ways for special ends; above all, for His glory in the
salvation of His Church from condemnation and from sin, and in its conformation
to the likeness of His Son. In the light of our view of the Spirit’s work, grace
may thus be described as the freely given presence of the Holy Spirit in the
man, applying Christ to him, and manifesting Christ in and through him.

(3) The work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament saints. What is the
essential difference between the work of the Spirit in believing individuals
before and after the First Advent? Like many other Scripture problems, this is
far easier to state than to answer.

The indications are somewhat thus:

The Spirit was not only with, but in, the true believers of the old time. The
New Testament believer has "the same Spirit of faith as they" (2 Cor. iv. 13).
The New Testament writers quote them as illustrious examples of faith, without
any suggestion that their faith was inferior in kind. The terms used in the Old
Testament, especially in the Psalms, about spiritual life, are highly
evangelical (e.g. Psal. li. 10-12, xci. 1, 9; Isai. lxiii. 11): indeed, the
Christian believer everywhere finds in the language of the elder saints the
expression of his own deepest experiences. And the effect of Old Testament faith
was essentially the same as that of faith now; the God-given reliance carried
with it spiritual union with God, the God of Covenant and of the great Promise,
the God of the coming Christ. Thus the blessed Spirit’s work was, in kind,
always the same in the saints. The "old fathers" were, as truly as we are,
united by Him to Him in whom is Life; to Christ who is our Life. They were, as
truly as we are, made by Him partakers of the divine Nature; regenerated to be
true followers of God (see e.g. Isai. lxiii. 16, lxvi. 8; and cp. p. 240,
below). There was thus a sense in which the Spirit, long before the effusion of
Pentecost, had "come," and was doing His sacred work in the world; convincing,
transforming, giving life.

On the other hand it is equally plain from the New Testament that the "coming"
of the Spirit, on the glorification of Christ, was in a sense new; a "new
departure," if the phrase may be reverently used. Perhaps the reconciliation of
these phenomena lies in a very simple statement. The newness of the presence and
the work was not of kind but of degree. The Spirit, having now to deal with men
in connexion with the historically manifested, perfected, and glorified Son of
God, was (if we may venture to put it so) able now to deal in a vastly developed
manner with men; in fuller and more intense convictions; in a larger impartation
to faith of the glories and virtues of its Object, and, to the renewed will, of
its Example; in a far brighter illumination of the regenerate mind as to the
full purposes of Redemption. It is remarkable that the great work of the Spirit
at Pentecost was to enable the saints for a totally new energy, of testimony to
Christ; a fact which leaves it abundantly credible that His visitation was new
rather in degree than in kind. Meantime, so profound is the development in
degree that in effect it is, in many respects, a quite new manifestation. See
the language of Joh. vii. 39, and cp. Joh. xiv. 17. [14]

This question is an example of many others in Scripture, where the dealings of
God with man in time are in view, and particularly where the difference between
the circumstances before and after the Incarnation is in view. We have to
remember on the one hand the equal relation to God always of all times; on the
other hand the mystery of His dealing with men after the conditions of
successive time. From the first point of view the Incarnate Head is and was ever
present to be the life of His members. From the second point of view the fulness
of the promise waited for "the fulness of the times."

SUPPLEMENTARY.

History of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit

Our Lord, in the baptismal formula, had associated the Holy Spirit with the
Father and the Son, under the One Name. And we have seen above how decisive was
Christ’s testimony (Joh. xiv.-xvi.) to the truth that the Spirit is not only
principle but Person. Just outside the Canon, Clement of Rome (Ep. ad Cor., c.
58 [15]) recognizes both the power and personality of the Spirit in the words,
"God liveth, and the Lord Jesus Christ liveth, and the Holy Spirit." Ignatius
(Magn. c. 13) speaks of Christians as "in the Son and the Father, and in the
Spirit." A curious testimony to the early belief in His Personality is given by
the appearance of a "Holy Spirit" in the Gnostic systems. Their theory is indeed
wholly distorted from the Scripture view, but yet their "Holy Spirit" is as
personal as their "Christ." Meanwhile the language of some of the early Church
teachers is undoubtedly sometimes wavering, sometimes plainly unscriptural. The
Shepherd of Hermas identifies the Spirit with the pre-existent Son (Simil., 5,
9); so does the primitive homily called the Second Epistle of Clement of Rome
(c. 14). Justin Martyr speaks varyingly on the point (see Apolog. I., c.33).
And, on the other hand, the works scripturally assigned to the Spirit are by
some assigned to the Eternal Word,-a fact capable, however, of scriptural
explanation.

A little later, in Irenæus, Tertullian, and Origen, clearer views are more
prominent. The relation of the Spirit to the Father and the Son, not only in
work but in being, in "immanence" (p. 24), is discerned and stated. Before all
creation (constitutio) the Spirit (identified with the Wisdom of Prov. viii.)
was, like the Son, with the Father (Iren., iv. 34, 3). He is one of the two
"Hands" of the Father (iv. præf.). He is eternal. He is the communicatio
Christi. He is the great Teacher of the Church, through prophets and apostles,
and her abiding Enlightener. Tertullian’s teaching is closely akin to this. He
discerns and teaches the Personality, and the divine Essence, of the Spirit. He
is the first who distinctly calls the Spirit "God." On the other hand, he
emphasizes His subordination to and derivation from the Son "as fruit from
branch, stream from river" (adv. Prax., 2, 8). Tertullian is one of the first
writers to use the word Trinitas. [16] Origen does not definitely call the
Spirit "God," but clearly holds His Deity, and His distinct "hypostasis," which
with Origen means, usually, "person" (Bigg’s Bampton Lectures, pp. 163, 172). He
uses the word Triad (Trinity). The Spirit is, through the Son, of the Father,
who is "Fountain of Deity." As to His work, Origen taught that its speciality
was confined within the circle of believers; He works life in them that believe.
All men have being from the Father, and "reason" from the Word; but not all
share in the Spirit. Meanwhile, however inconsistently, he speaks of the Spirit
as "coming into being" (egeneto) by the Son; and even as a Creature. But He is
before time.

The Arians regarded the Spirit as a quasi-divine Person, but lower than, and
created by, the Son.

At Nicæa (325) the controversy scarcely touched the doctrine of the Spirit.
Later (360 and onwards), Athanasius took the question up earnestly, and
discerned and stated the full Scripture truth of His Person, as distinct, and as
uncreated; fully and eternally within the blessed Trinity, "which is all One
God." He is less distinct on the doctrine of the Spirit’s Work. The semi-Arians,
or Macedonians, confessing the Deity of Christ, denied that of the Spirit. For
some time, it is evident, popular religious opinion hesitated and wavered over a
full confession. Very much by the labours of Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil, and
Gregory of Nyssa (late cent. iv.), the view which alone harmonizes all the facts
of Scripture won its way to full prevalence; the Spirit, with the Father and the
Son, is a not separated but distinct Bearer, Subject, of the divine Essence; one
with the Two in nature, and in operation; so that the divine action is of the
Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. The differentia of the Spirit is His
eternal and mysterious (not Generation, but) Procession, Forthcoming.

The Dual Procession. Was the eternal Forthcoming from the Son as well as from
the Father? The teaching of St. Augustine made the affirmative view prevalent in
the West; for he insisted to the utmost on the eternal inner unities of the Holy
Trinity. In particular, he brought out the thought that the Spirit is the
eternal Bond and Vehicle of the mutual Love of the Father and the Son (de Trin.,
vi. 20: above, p. 123). In the East, without at first any formal denial, the
tendency was to a negative; though Athanasius approaches very near to the Dual
Procession. The Spirit, in his teaching, is by (dia tou) the Son, but His
"Cause" is the Father only. In the next century this view was largely repudiated
in the East, in favour of a wholly single Procession. The question did not come
up at Chalcedon (451).

In cent. v., in Spain, heretical attacks led to a special emphasis on the
belief, long current in the West, of the Forthcoming from Both; and cent. vi.
(589) saw the words "and from the Son" inserted in the Spanish version of the
"Nicene" Creed, apparently without any intention of innovation. Not till more
than a century later was the divergence of East and West a subject of Church
debate. It was discussed at a council at Gentilly in 767. Just later,
Charlemagne advocated with great energy the Dual doctrine, and sought, but in
vain, to secure the Pope’s consent to the insertion of the words "and from the
Son" into the Roman Creed. The issue of the doctrinal struggle was the Great
Schism of cent. xi., in which East and West excommunicated each other.

The last effort for reconciliation was made at the Council of Florence (1439),
when the Greek Empire was tottering to its fall. An unreal compromise was the
only result. As lately as 1863 a Greek encyclical denounced as heretical the
doctrine of the words "and from the Son."

Of modern views of the doctrine of the Person of the Spirit we notice only one,
widely prevalent in Germany, and within the vast sphere of German theological
influence. It is that which scarcely, if at all, recognizes the Personality of
the Blessed Spirit; but takes "the Spirit to be rather the God-taught Geist of
the Christian community-a mysterious "Christian consciousness;" to be described
from another side as the manifestation of God in the Church, God acting in the
Church, the Union of God with the Church. The view is essentially Sabellian. It
needs little but a careful comparison with Scripture to bring out its
discrepancy with apostolic views.

It is observable that a lax view of the authority of the Holy Scriptures
ordinarily accompanied this doctrine. The "Christian consciousness" is the judge
and touchstone of Scripture. And another characteristic is an inadequate
conviction of sin as transgression of the Law. [17]

To trace fully the history of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s Work is quite
beyond our limits. On the whole, in the patristic period, the doctrine of His
new-creating work, in regeneration and sanctification, is less fully dealt with
in the Eastern than in the Western theology. The Montanist movement (cent. ii.),
joined by Tertullian, in which a revival of the gift of prophecy was asserted,
did not at first, perhaps, connect itself doctrinally with the Holy Spirit, but
more generally with "the Lord God Almighty." But inevitably it drew both its
followers and opponents to a deeper reflection on the promises of Joh.
xiv.-xvi., and so was overruled to bring home anew to the Church the abiding and
most real personal action of the Spirit, as (in Tertullian’s phrase) the true
Vicarius Christi (see Smith’s Dict. Christian Biography and Doctrines, iii., p.
116). St. Augustine, next after St. Paul, is the chief expositor of this truth,
of which he had learnt much in his own experience. His great successor was St.
Bernard (cent. xii.), who wrote on Grace and Free Will, on Augustine’s lines,
and with deep personal realization. The Mystic theology of the middle ages, as
of later times, was greatly occupied with the doctrine of the Holy Ghost, as the
means of the soul’s fellowship with God in Christ. At and after the period of
the Reformation, a great revival and development of the doctrine of the Spirit
came in; bringing, alas, tares with its wheat, and an inevitable sequel of
controversy, above all on the relations between the Holy Spirit and the human
will in the work of salvation (p. 174. And see Smeaton as quoted just above).

At the present moment the minds of innumerable Christians are powerfully
directed towards the truth of the Holy Spirit’s Personality, Power, and living
Presence with the believing soul and the true Church. Not only in the important
way of doctrinal accuracy, but in that, yet more important, of living
realization, it is owned more and more that the Eternal Paraclete is the supreme
need of the soul, and of the Church, as regards saving faith in Christ, entirety
of obedience to Him, and powerful witness for Him. This is a happy and holy
omen. All Church history bears witness to the fact that with the greater or less
recognition of His reality and glory, and of our need of Him, flows or ebbs the
life and witness of the Body and Bride of Christ.


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  CHAPTER 8: CHAPTER VIII. THE DOCTRINE OF MAN.
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The Doctrine of Man.

I. Man as Created.

II. Man as Fallen.

III. Man as Restored.

I. Man as Created.

Scripture gives no formulated Anthropology. But in its representation of man, as
in its revelation of God, it gives facts and principles, inviting reverent
formulation. It implies meanwhile two provisos; first, that it considers man
from the divine viewpoint, above all as the subject of redemption; secondly,
that the theory which it suggests must be tempered by the remembrance that about
ourselves, as truly as about God, "we know in part."

Man appears, on the first page of the Scriptures, as the last work of the Sixth
Day. Gen. i. 26, 27 gives the creation of man in the abstract, so to speak; Gen.
ii. 7-25, the creation of the first man in the concrete; not different events,
but different views. From the first passage we gather that man is a result of
specially deliberate and direct creative will. Neither "the earth" "brings him
forth" (vers. 11, 24), nor "the waters" (vers. 20, 21); Elôhim (above, p. 24)
consults within Himself, and makes him.

Further we gather that man in his creation was related to God in a way quite
peculiar, among the works of the Six Days. He was made "in the image, after the
likeness," of God. And he was made to be head of the orders of terrestrial
creation.

From the second passage we gather that the First Man was produced from the
existing "dust of the ground," that the Maker "breathed into his nostrils a
breath (neshâmah) of life;" that he thus became "living soul;" and that his
spouse was "builded," by the direct will of the Maker, out of the man’s own
body.

We attempt here no detailed enquiry how far these narratives are to be read
"literally." We only remark, first, that they are assumed in the New Testament
to be historical (e.g. Matt. xix. 4-6; 1 Tim. ii. 13, 14), and not only so, but
fundamental to after revelation (see Rom. v. 12-19; 1 Cor. xv. 45-9). For the
New Testament writers, beyond doubt, Adam was as real a personage as Christ. The
minute account of the locality of the garden (Gen. ii. 8-14), an account on
which recent research throws clear light, [1] looks in the same direction. On
the other hand the narrative, by its manner and subject matter, as a very brief
account of natural and spiritual "origins," allows us to read beyond the letter
as regards details. We are free to explain "the dust" not narrowly, but as
probably meaning existing matter, proper for the end; and the "breathing into
the nostrils" as a pictorial phrase for the divine act of will by which the
lifeless frame became the seat of life and personality. So with the making of
Woman; the same creative will which long after worked the multiplication of the
loaves, willed the origin of the human female from "the side" of the male; but
we need not figure to ourselves a mechanical operation.

It is impossible to avoid all mention of the modern evolutionary philosophy. We
only point out, modestly but firmly, what that philosophy cannot lawfully say
against the Scripture account of man’s origin; an account endorsed by One whom
Christians believe to be man’s Maker (Matt. xix. 4-6).

It cannot, from observed phenomena, pronounce it proved that man was not a
properly "new departure." No strictly scientific evidence to that effect has yet
appeared. It is difficult even to imagine the future appearance of any, even
should the present manifold deficiencies in the physical links between man and
the most nearly related beasts [2] be yet much reduced. For Scripture allows, or
rather asserts, a plan, progression, harmony in Nature. Not one word makes it
unlikely that, when man was to be willed into being, he should prove to be
moulded of the same matter as that of predecessors and coevals, and on a similar
plan. What Scripture does none the less assert is a mysterious new departure
when the first human pair was produced. There was not a dislocation of
immaterial design, but a break of mere material continuity, when there was to
appear the creature, at once spiritual and material, who should resemble, know,
and love the Creator.

No discoveries in material nature can properly disprove this. One thing is
certain, that the earliest discovered human skulls are even finely developed,
and on a plan, in some respects, divergent (as now) from that of the skulls of
the highest "anthropoid" beasts, Another and far more significant certainty is
that man, amidst his many variations, is found to be everywhere, even at his
lowest, capable of loving and obeying God; a gulph between him and the highest
lower animals which has neither bottom nor bridge. The exceptional origin of
such a creature is the reverse of an anomaly.

We may here briefly remark on the general prevalence of an evolutionary
philosophy, claiming more or less distinctly to explain the universe by matter
and impersonal force. Such a philosophy gets a high prestige from its present
adoption by a host of eminently skilled students of material nature. Their
proper studies are concerned with phenomena, capable of precise observation and
verification as such; and from this an impression arises that all inferences of
such observers carry a peculiar weight of accuracy and certainty. But as soon as
these observers pass from physical observation, and from inferences of the
nature of mathematical reasoning on proper subject matter, to philosophize on
the nature and origin of things, they are on the open ground of universal human
thought. The physical observer, as such, has no more knowledge than his
neighbour about things which are not physical phenomenon, and has no peculiar
mental apparatus. If, because of his knowledge of the phenomena of the body, he
claims a right to say that the brain originates thought, or that the beast can
be true ancestor of the man, he is off his ground. Wrong or right, he no longer
speaks as the observer of verifiable phenomena.

More particularly, the word "evolution," now irrevocably familiarized, needs
careful usage if we would avoid confusion. It means "unrolling" of something
already there. If what is unrolled is an ascending and all-including plan and
progress, already in the eternal Mind and Will, Scripture is evolutionary. If
what is unrolled is all organic life from primary inorganic material, excluding
the factor of creative purpose, (which must be free to act as uniformly or as
acutely as eternal Mind shall order, now modifying by degrees, now effecting
"new departures," by its own at once sovereign and immanent action,) Scripture
is anti-evolutionary. Most decisively it is so when "evolution" is taken to mean
that it is proved that man is merely the result of insensible variations from
below; that human nature as a whole is continuous with animal.

And if Scripture is, in this sense, non-evolutionary, so is the vast phenomenon
of man as he is, amidst the lower races as they are, and as the rocks show
"animals" to have been in the remotest past. Too often we fail, in this matter,
"to see the forest for the trees."

As regards the Antiquity of Man, it is allowed that the chronology of the early
chapters of Scripture must be handled with great reserve. Not that it is
therefore loose and mythical. But it lies in a narrative presented, so to speak,
enigmatically, by its very brevity, and it goes very probably on principal of
enumeration not yet fully understood. Still, Scripture represents man as
originating in a past quite recent, compared with what it allows for nature in
general. On the other hand it has been asserted by naturalists that the origin
of man must be put back hundreds of millenniums into past time. This belief
rests partly on à priori reasoning on "origins," partly on the occurrence of
human relics in certain geological surroundings. But the believing Scripture
student need not "make haste in this matter," while yet he takes care not to
assert hastily on his own side. An eminent geologist, Sir J. W. Dawson, recently
President of the British Association, has just (1888) published his conviction
that the origin of man is to be fixed, geologically, within a moderate number of
millenniums, say seven or eight. [3] To him, on the whole, geological evidence
and the comparatively brief chronology of Scripture appear to be converging. He
regards "palæolithic man" as the antediluvian of Scripture, and finds geological
indications of a general, if not universal, deluge within the human period.

As regards the Unity of Mankind, clearly asserted by Scripture (Acts xvii. 26,
with Gen. i., ii., ix. 19), naturalists have often asserted, or conjectured,
many centres of origin. But their researches now strongly favour the proper
unity of the race.

The Image and Likeness of God.

Of the mysterious and much-discussed words of Gen. i. 26, we offer no minute
exegesis here. Even to examine the different references of Image (Tselem,
Shadow) and Likeness (D’mûth) is beyond our scope; we only notice one suggestive
interpretation, that God made man, as to constitution, in His Image, to be
brought out, as to development, into His Likeness. Our more possible enquiry
here is, What is the Image? Is it reason, in its highest sense? Or power to know
God? Or actual holiness, positive sanctifying knowledge of God? Or immortality?
Or sovereignty over the creatures? We reject the last as inadequate. And as to
the theory of positive holiness, it is a fact against it that fallen men are
viewed in Scripture as "made in the image of God" (Gen. ix. 6; Jas iii. 9); the
original making of man in that image is a fact permanent for all men.

The solution which to us seems most comprehensive is that the Image lies in the
mysterious gift of Personality, bringing not only mental but, much more, moral
capacity, and true free-will and free-agency, such that man within his sphere
becomes a true self-guiding Cause, as God is in His sphere.

The beasts are not so. They are not moral, not responsible, not disengaged from
material circumstance; not true causes. Man is all this; and so can know God as
like knows like. God, the Archetype of all Personality, supremely
self-conscious, self-acting, moral, has made man to be, in the remarkable words
of the Apocrypha, "the image of His own peculiar nature" (Wisd. ii. 23: eikona
tês idias idiotêtos).

Such is Man, as Man, as possessing "the abysmal deeps of personality," [4] that
the individual, profound as are his relations to the race, and particularly to
his immediate ancestry, still is never their irresponsible effect, but always a
responsible moral cause amidst and above them. We know it, in our inmost
self-knowledge. Be "heredity" what it may, the man is so himself that he, not
his ancestry in him, has each moment to face, for himself, the mysteries of
right and wrong, as truly as if he had waked up, at the first touch of the
Creator, in an immaterial environment. Our individual personality, and our
generic continuity, are "antinomies"; truths equally certain always, however
impossible fully to reconcile while "we know in part."

Thus interpreted, the Image stands, in a sense, apart from man’s "Original
Righteousness." The Righteousness he could and did lose. The Image he retains,
whatever fatal disorder may have touched it; he is for ever personal, moral,
responsible. And in this view it is the Image which makes him capable of
redemption and regeneration, while yet it gives no contradiction to his "death
in trespasses and sins." Nay, it is this possession which makes that "death"
possible. Only a true personality can be "alienated" from God.

Here too seems to lie the deepest indication in Scripture of man’s natural
immortality. We believe that immortality to be a revealed fact, taken for
granted in some awful passages, where the "second death," the hopeless
retribution on the impenitent, is seen to have no necessary tendency to
cessation of being (see, e.g., Matt. xxv. 46; Joh. iii. 36; Rev. xiv. 11, xx.
10, 15). It seems to be indicated, not precisely that "the substance of the soul
is indissoluble, and therefore indestructible," but that moral personality is
mysteriously permanent, as God has constituted things. This seems to underlie
our Lord’s reasoning for the Resurrection of the dead (Matt. xxii. 31, 32). He
assumes, for one thing, the necessary ultimate coherence, so to speak, of body
and spirit in man, so that if man lives for ever his body must ultimately share
that life. But He assumes also, and first, the natural permanence of the
creature constitutionally capable of knowing God, of having God for "his God."
[5]

The enquiry about the Image of God suggests that about man’s constitution,
according to Scripture, as Body, Soul and Spirit. Here first observe the
peculiar language of Scripture about the Body. It puts an honour on the body
found nowhere else. The formation of the body, in Scripture, is not an accident
of man’s creation, but the first step to his becoming "living soul." Scripture
nowhere makes the body, apart from the awful accident of sin, the prison, or
clog, of the spirit, [6] so that the summum bonum should be to quit it. It is
the spirit’s congenial home, and its true normal vehicle of experience and
action. We do not read that it was created immortal, so that had man not sinned
his body, apart from the special will of God, would not have died. But it is
implied that such was that will that had man not sinned his entire constitution,
body and "breath of life," would have known no dislocation. Somehow, through
whatever transfiguration, the whole being would have "lived for ever" (Gen. iii.
22). Accordingly redemption, salvation, sanctification, glorification, is for
body as well as soul (Luke xxiv. 39; Joh. ii. 21; Rom. viii. 23; 1 Cor. vi.
13-20; Phil. iii. 20, 21); and so is retribution also (Matt. xviii. 8, 9; Joh.
v. 28, 29; 1 Cor. vi. 18). There awaits man, as an essential for his vast final
future, a re-embodiment, most mysterious, but not figurative. The "spiritual
body" (1 Cor. xv. 44) will not be made of spirit.

With this agrees the consistent indication of Scripture (especially 2 Cor. v.
10) that the final judgment of man, as a responsible personality, will proceed
upon his embodied life, "the things by means of the body" (2 Cor. v. 10, lit.),
the things done through it as the vehicle of formation of habit and registration
of result. This is a solemn intimation of a fallacy in the hope of repetitions,
in the Intermediate State, of the offers and graces of the Gospel. (See above,
p. 95.)

Finally, in this sacred importance of the body, resting upon relations of matter
and spirit inscrutable to us, we read some of the reasons of our blessed Lord’s
Incarnation. Only by taking both the immaterial and material sides of our nature
could He become entire Man, and so entirely man’s Representative and Head. Thus
too "the body of His glory" (Phil. iii. 21) is now an everlasting fact in His
blessed Life.

The words Spirit (Ruach, Pneuma) and Soul (Nephesh, Psychê) suggest a host of
doctrines, Christian and non-Christian. We can only ask what, on the whole, they
mean in Scripture. Are they two separable immaterial elements, so that man can
have one and not the other; can lose the one, while keeping the other? Or two
departments of consciousness, such that one denotes emotions, the other the pure
reason which guides them? Or again, such that soul is our point of contact with
the world and man, spirit with God?

None of the above distinctions seem fully to satisfy the Scripture data. The two
words, in Scripture, perpetually cross each other, while again they are
certainly not mere synonyms. The explanation which best includes all facts seems
to be this. Both words denote man’s being as immaterial, the "inner man;" but
from different aspects. "Spirit" is man’s being considered as God’s gift; "Soul"
is that being considered as the individual’s possession in life and experience.
Put somewhat otherwise, Soul may be described as Spirit organized; Spirit viewed
in the workings of human personality, inseparably linked, for its development,
with the body. But they are not separate elements of existence, and many
experiences may be described in terms of either. It will thus be further seen
how natural, on the other hand, is the occasional reference of higher aspects of
experience to the human Spirit, and that the action of the Eternal Spirit is
specially connected with it; while lower aspects of experience, such as vehement
emotions, are often assigned to the Soul. If Spirit is man’s inner being viewed
as given from God, and Soul man’s inner being viewed as his own, that fact is at
least partially explained; while yet it is constantly crossed by other facts.

Here too is a suggestion why the human person disembodied is called a spirit
rather than a soul (e.g. Luke xxiv. 37, 39; Heb. xii. 23), [7] and why personal
existences other than human, and about which we read nothing analogous to man’s
corporeity, are called spirits, never souls.

All this indicates that while man’s being is in one aspect threefold it is more
essentially twofold. Some modern Christian thinkers [8] have held that the human
spirit was lost, or at least thrown into abeyance, at the Fall; that it was not
infected by the Fall; that it alone is immortal; that salvation consists in its
restoration, or awakening, without which the whole being ends at length in the
annihilation of personality.

This theory falls if Scripture attests the ultimate identity of soul and spirit.
[9] Most certainly Scripture indicates the possession of "spirit" by "all flesh"
(Numb. xvi. 22); and, on the other hand, the share of the "spirit" in the Fall;
its sinful defilement and disorder (2 Cor. vii. 1).

Thus, on the one hand, Man is dual. The familiar (but not scriptural)
distinction between matter and spirit may indeed be pressed too far, till it
suggests the anti-Christian idea of the necessary evil of matter. But Scripture
freely presents "body and soul" as distinct and separable constituents of man’s
normal state (Matt. x. 28). And it always assumes the actual existence of man’s
spirit, without the body, after death (e.g., Luke xxiv. 37, 39; 2 Cor. v. 8;
Heb. xii. 23). On the other hand, it views Man as yet more essentially single
and homogeneous; "living soul," embodied spirit. It knows no theory that matter
is evil, or again that in man’s inner world, by original constitution, there is
a necessarily rebel element, held more or less in check by a higher and purer;
the psychology of Plato. Not nature, but its invasion by sin, has produced an
inner discord. Man, as man, is the homogeneous and good work of God; body, soul,
and spirit. He is a true unity, alike in creation, in fall, and in grace.

Scripture says much about man’s heart. The word is large; its possible reference
embraces understanding, conscience, affections, will. It is thus "the organ,
rather than the seat, of personality." Man has, and is, "a soul;" man has, not
is, "a heart."

Scripture speaks of the inner man (Rom. vii. 22; 2 Cor. iv. 16; Eph. iii. 16).
In itself the phrase is morally neutral; it means the inner world of
consciousness. But by usage it refers to the regenerate state.

Man has, in Scripture, mind (nous), in the sense of both mental and moral
perception (Rom. vii. 23, 25; Eph. iv. 23). By usage, the word seems to denote
man’s highest faculties viewed out of special relation to God and grace.

Man has conscience (syneidêsis); the knowledge in himself of moral differences.
The word sometimes refers specially to the sense of guilt before God (Heb. ix.
9, 14, x. 2, 22).

Man has free will. He is not the product of circumstances; he is responsible
amongst them for moral choice (see above, p. 158). This is always assumed in
Scripture, especially in divine reasonings and appeals (e.g., Jer. xxvii. 13;
Joh. v. 40). True, Scripture is always jealous for the supremacy and sovereignty
of the Will of God (e.g., Dan. iv. 35; Luke xxii. 22; Joh. i. 13; Acts ii. 23,
iv. 27, 28; Rom. ix. 19; Eph. i. 11; Rev. xvii. 17). This is one of its great
and conspicuous characteristics. His will has sovereign relations to all events,
such that all events somehow contribute to the perfect realization of its
purposes. But among these "all things" is the reality of the will of the created
personality, such that man is a true though secondary cause. We fail, by the
necessary limits of our viewpoint, to see mentally the harmony of the absolute
sovereignty of the will of the Holy Creator, and the true freedom, and so true
respon- sibility, of the will of the personal creature. But the two facts are
equally plain in revelation, and equally important in a true theology. [10]

Man’s Original State.

"The Man whom the Lord God had formed" is seen in Scripture as "put" into (not
created in) a scene of outward safety and beauty, with occupation, and with the
dominion of a true personality over the unpersonal animals (Gen. ii. 8-15). The
primal narrative, and the later Scriptures (e.g., Eccl. vii. 29), imply that his
moral state was "very good;" particularly, that he held untroubled intercourse
with God, as friend with friend. We are not to assume that his moral state, or
his mental, was of developed excellence. But it was nobly innocent; childlike in
some respects, but also infinitely higher, as it, unlike the child-life now,
contained no germ of sinfulness waiting only the development of faculty. Adam
"walked with God," in holy simplicity, in inner harmony; "upright" with his
eternal Friend and Father (Luke iii. 38). No "lower element" of his constitution
wrestled with a "higher" for primacy; nothing in his nature resisted his blessed
concord with the divine Nature.

We give thus the account of Man unfallen which seems to us clearly scriptural.
Very different views have been taken of man’s first state.

Non-scriptural theories usually assume that man, however originated, began at a
low level, one remove above the brutes, and was slowly disciplined into
something higher. Great difficulties of common reason attend this view. Man’s
muscular inferiority to the beasts, and other physical characteristics, e.g.,
the unclad human skin, make his early survival and propagation a mystery, unless
under exceptional original conditions. But to the believer it is enough that
Scripture assumes all along the primeval goodness and greatness of human nature.
Adam was simple, but not savage; undeveloped, but noble; inexperienced, but
conversant with God.

The Roman Catholic theology, as worked out by the Schoolmen, holds an elaborate
theory of Original Man. He was created morally neutral, and with conflicting
elements in his nature. Then, perhaps after a first probation, he received a
supernatural gift, by which he became positively holy and immortal. This gift,
and only this, is lost in the Fall, which thus has left man as he was at first,
only somewhat weakened morally. (See further below, p. 169.)

This view minimizes, in a way alien from Scripture, both the glory of our nature
and the awfulness of its fall. Everywhere in Scripture Man is, from one point of
view, kept profoundly low before God; not only as sinner, but as creature. Man
owes everything to God; creation to begin with. He is no necessary outcome of
the Divine Nature. He is not such that God, being God, need, or must, have made
him. He is, in these respects, "the potter’s clay"-which the Potter has first
freely willed into existence. But, on the other hand, he is the most glorious
work of the Creator; "the image and glory of God" (1 Cor. xi. 7). No theology
true to Scripture must decry Human Nature. Not man the creature, but man the
sinner, is to be criticized and censured. And again, everywhere Scripture
assumes that sin is an incalculably discordant and unnatural thing in man; not a
mere gravitation of his nature as created and finite, inevitable but for an
abnormal intervention. It is a terrible distortion, anomaly, and discord. He
ought never to have been and never to be, a sinner. No theology true to
Scripture must venture to minimize the mystery and horror of the Fall, which is
correlative to the essential glory of Human Nature. [11]

Thus as we now approach the revelation of the Fall, we emphasize again the
height that went before it. Man was "made upright;" spiritually harmonious with
God; so formed that his moral "habit" (habitus), the cast and condition of his
being, the source of actions, was "very good." All this was by the Holy Spirit;
but by Him in normal action, not abnormal.

Man thus appeared on earth, the crown of God’s works, made in His image, knowing
and enjoying Him as a kindred Nature. He was not divine; not God in disguise. He
was as entirely a subject product of creative will as the beasts, or the plants.
To this all Scripture bears witness. But he was "the son of God" (Luke iii. 38).
Not that he was so yet in that deeper and loftier sense, the ultimately true
sense, reached through redemption and regeneration in Christ. (See above, p.
34.) No hint in Scripture (above, p. 72) indicates that man is by creation "in"
the Only-Begotten Son. But as a direct production, "in Image and after
Likeness," Adam was "son of God" as truly as Seth was Son of Adam (Gen. v. 3).
And the son walked with his Eternal Father, in peace and light, and in conscious
intercourse. [12]

One great mystery and fact about Primal Man remains to be spoken of. It comes
out explicitly in the later Scriptures, (Rom. v.; 1 Cor. xv., especially; and
cf. Eph. iv. 22-4; Col. iii. 9, 10 ) But the whole revelation prepares for this,
in its manifold witness to the spiritual as well as physical unity of the race;
not least in its one word for Adam, the individual, and for Man, the race. It is
the position of the First Adam as Head and Representative of Man. Adam was a
true individual, as truly as Abel. But, unlike his son, he was, what only one
other Being ever has been, the moral intelligent Head of a moral intelligent
race; not only the first specimen of a newly created Nature, but in such a sense
the Spring of that nature to his after-kind that in him not only the individual
but the race could, in some all-important respects, be dealt with. His
incalculable advantages were theirs; his gentle probation was theirs. This,
certainly nothing less, is the mystery taken for granted in Rom. v. (see below,
p. 175).

No revelation of Scripture leads us more abruptly, so to speak, to the edge of
the unknown. And the strongest efforts of thinking have been spent in the search
for a complete theory of it. We believe that its rationale rests upon unrevealed
relations between Race and Head. Our safest course, till eternal light is cast
upon it, is to keep strictly to what "is written;" to be quite sure that nothing
capricious, nothing not purely good, entered into the sovereign divine
appointment; and to study it, not in the abstract, but in the glory of its
counterpart, the Headship of Christ.

II. Man Fallen.

The record of the Fall, in its stern yet pathetic simplicity, must be read at
once as fact [13] and as mystery (above, p. 153). The story of the Garden is
given as a fact, without a hint of discontinuity in kind between it and the
record, for instance, of the Flood. On the other hand, its position, its
brevity, and the later expositions of its significance, all prepare us both to
forbear asserting a mere literality in all details, and to see in every detail a
revelation.

Man, originally holy, was invaded by a personal Intelligence hating God. [14]
Man, in the female, suspects a lack of love in God; and, in the male, prefers
the creature’s will to His (1 Tim. ii. 14). God’s will, in its one known
prohibition, is violated. Thereupon, by a law quite mysterious in some aspects,
but firmest self-evident in others, the personal creature not only loses the
bliss of intercourse with God, but suffers moral revolution in his being. There
is no change in the nature, or constitution, of man, which retains all its noble
parts and faculties. Man is still "living soul;" spirit, soul, and body; still
has conscience and will. But the "habit" (habitus) of the personality, the state
of the "subject" of all these parts and faculties, is distorted (depravatus).
Man no longer loves and obeys God as the law of his life. Moral discord is
there. Knowledge and choice no longer delightfully converge upon right, upon the
will of God. Man "knows good and evil" (Gen. iii. 5, 22). The very idea of
discord with God apparently had as yet been absent from his happy being; now it
is awfully present. He is now "like God," in knowing that such a thing is; but
with what a difference! God knows it as the infinite Observer and Judge; man, as
the guilty subject of its experience.

Was this a growth, an enrichment, of man’s consciousness? Some have ventured to
call it "a fall upward," as if the incoming of moral discord were a normal
condition of human development. But this is the precise contrary to the witness
of Scripture. It contains a fragment of truth; for supernatural, abnormal grace
overruled the Fall to glorious ends. [15] The eternal plan mysteriously included
the fact of the Fall, in its vast progression towards the final glorification of
God in Christ. But all this leaves untouched the awfulness, ruin, loss, guilt of
the Fall, as it was man’s free act. For it was wholly free. No faintest force
was put on man’s will by God . Man’s personality, and it alone, chose and caused
the disobedience. And so actual evil, sin, had its "origin" for man.

Scripture nowhere reveals the absolute "origin of evil," that dark nucleus of
all distressing mysteries. It does not even state the (to us) insoluble problem,
why one moment’s wrong was permitted in the sovereignly created universe of an
all-holy God. Thought has laboured at the problem. An approach to its answer
lies in St. Augustine’s teaching, that evil has no origin, inasmuch as it is
negative, not positive; defect, failure; illustrated by the discordant state of
a damaged harp. And plainly the abstract possibility of such defect lies in the
conception of a probation. But, on the other hand, we cannot say that free and
willing holiness is impossible without a moral precariousness, an actual
liability to fall. God is holy, with infinite willingness and yet with eternal
inner necessity. Is it inconceivable, on any abstract principle, that He should
will a finite nature into being in a truly kindred state?

No; the solution of the problem of permitted evil lies beyond our sight. What we
know is that sin is a fact, a fact in our own inmost personality; and that
wherever it is, there, by its idea, it is condemnable-that is, by its very idea
it makes the subject of it, the person., condemnable and that the all-holy God
not only is not its cause, but "hates" it with infinite repulsion. That "hatred"
is wholly unlike the bitterness and gloom of fallen man’s hatred, but it is none
the less an absolute personal aversion. And in graciously dealing with its
presence in us God has shown His estimate of its formidable, incalculable
greatness (above, p. 80) by "giving up His own Son" (Rom. viii. 32).

We cannot thus examine the Scripture estimate of sin without a grave appeal once
more to the student. It has been said that every heresy shows some subtle
connexion with inadequate views of the "exceeding sinfulness of sin" (Rom. vii.
13). Great differences, affecting whole systems of theology, are traceable to
deeper or shallower views of the extent of the Fall; of the malign power of the
infection of sin in man; and, not least, of the awful reality of its guilt
(reatus), its essential liability to condemnation; the profound fact that the
sinner, as such, has no claim on God, no title to grace, whether in remission or
amelioration.

Meanwhile, Scripture, as we have seen, plainly indicates that man’s nature, as a
constitution, remained intact. Fallen, he was just as much man as before; a true
Ego, possessing understanding, affections, will. No force ab extra upon his will
compelled him now, any more than before, to rebel against God despite himself.
In sorrowful truth his will was bound towards God; he was unable to choose God
as his All. But the bondage was from within; not in circumstances, or fate, but
in himself; analogous to God’s holy inability to choose evil. Conscience still
spoke of moral difference. Reason still tended to affirm the claim and glory of
God, the beauty and duty of virtue. Emotions could still be stirred about God
and goodness. But the ultimate decision of the Ego now ran in the line of the
Fall, away from God’s full rights, and towards self and the creatures. God, as
not merely a glorious Object of thought, but the absolute and holy Possessor,
End, and All, was now not loved but dreaded by the very centre, so to speak, of
the personality. No better response was to be found by awakening, or
discovering, some deeper and "better self." The fall was thus "total." The
central and ultimate choice was wrong.

What man thus became, men are. Scripture bears witness, with the vast experience
of mankind, to the "depravity" of men, to their distortion (depravatio)
universally (e.g., 1 Kings viii. 46; Psal. li. 5, cxliii. 2; Jer. xvii. 9; Matt.
vii. 11; Rom. iii. 19, 20; Eph. ii, 1-3). One implied testimony is the universal
necessity of a "new birth;" except a man (a person, tis) be born again, he
cannot see the kingdom of God" (Joh. iii. 3. In Rom. viii. 5-8, under different
imagery, the same truth is put with solemn decisiveness.) Sinful tendency,
underlying sinful action, is co-extensive with mankind. In terms of conscience,
no man, of himself, does all the right he knows. In terms of divine right, no
man, of himself, fully loves the true God, beheld in all the truth of His holy
claims. Here is the deepest of mysteries; but it is also one of the surest of
facts. The phenomenon of strictly universal sinfulness is remarkably attested
not only by Scripture, but by universal human thought. [16] One distant instance
may serve for many. The ancient Chinese moralists, who moulded national thought
to a high degree, take a lofty theoretical view of the goodness of man.
Confusing, probably, conscience with will, the approbation with the love of
right, they teach that "man is born good." Yet an ancient Chinese proverb speaks
of "two good men; one dead, the other unborn."

The fact of universal sin points direct to a mystery below it; to a "law," in
the naturalist’s sense; to a normal tendency correlative to the uniform
phenomenon. This leads to the statement of the doctrine of Original Sin.

"If all the individuals who come under the head of a certain nature have sin in
them, then one mode of expressing this law is, to say that it belongs to the
Nature, the nature being the common property and ground in which all meet"
(Mozley, Lectures, etc., No. ix.).

"It is the fundamental article of Christianity that I am a fallen creature that
an evil ground existed in my will, previously to any given act, or assignable
moment of time, in my consciousness; I am born a child of wrath. This fearful
mystery I pretend not to understand. I cannot even conceive the possibility of
it; but I know that it is so and what is real must be possible" (S. T.
Coleridge, Omniana, at the end). The Christian, with a true insight into
himself, and with the Scriptures before him, owns and affirms this. "He knows
that it is so." He is himself a sinner. He did not at any point in his
individual life choose to leave unbroken personal goodness for sin. He was
sinful before he sinned. He also knows that this antecedent sinfulness cannot be
rightly conceived as mere misfortune; it was implicit rebellion, real guilt. It
was the free attitude of his true personality. When it came to expression, that
expression was not due to a mastering fate, wrong while the victim-self was
right, though weak. It was the due to-himself.

As of man fallen (above, p. 172), so of the individual, Scripture attests the
"totality" of this "depravity," or distortion. That is, it has not only touched
every region of the individual’s constitution; it is lodged at its centre, so
that there is nothing deeper in the Ego with which the Ego can reverse it, or
lead up to a reversal of it. A more than reversal, great and full, is possible.
But this is due altogether, in its true causation, not to the Ego, but to God.

Meanwhile, as with man so with the individuals the nature is complete, though
the being is fallen. Every faculty and aspect of the nature is there. The man is
a free moral personality, the Creator’s image. No fatalism has invaded him. But
in one direction, that of the blessed Maker and His holy will, he is held
fast-not from without, but from within. He wills freely, choosing truly, but
always, in the ultimate, crucial choice, choosing not to be "subject to the law
of God" (Rom. viii. 7), bonâ fide, toto corde. Conscience must protest; the
affections may kindle and waver; the mind may assent to truth; but the man
ultimately wills not for God.

All this leaves wide room for differences of character, and of inter-human
morality. And these differences are not nothing in themselves, or in the sight
of God. But they do not touch the central fact of sin-that men, as fallen, are
of themselves alienated from the true God, and of themselves cannot, because
they will not, reverse that alienation,

These statements, supported as we hold by Scripture, and by the inmost voice of
Christian experience, [17] are connected in one remarkable passage, Rom. v.
12-21 (cp. 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22, 45-9), with Adam and the Fall (see above, p. 168).
There we gather that (a) our normal sinfulness has a profound connexion with
Adam’s sin; and (b), a mystery even deeper still, that the connexion is such
that we have from him not only an infected nature but an inherited exposure to
condemnation, antecedent to our acts (vers. 12, 14, 16, 18). Indeed, this is the
point of the Apostle’s argument. Not "infection," primarily, but "condemnation,"
lies on the race, and on the individual, "for that all sinned" (ver. 12) in "the
offense of the one" (ver. 15).

The greatest force of thought has been spent in the study and discussion of this
mystery for fifteen centuries. And in the study of the thoughts of an Augustine,
an Anselm, a Bernard, or a Calvin, the student will surely gain spiritual as
well as mental benefit. But after all they leave us in face of the mystery as a
mystery still. We need less to analyse than to adore and act. We return to the
Scripture, and to the awakened soul, and there, as we believe, are found
affirmed and confessed the universality of sinfulness, the solidarity of the
race in guilt (reatus pœnæ) and in pollution (macula), the totality of the
distortion of the fallen being from the holy will of the true God as such, and
so the absolute need of a mercy which man cannot claim, and of a power not his
own, for his recovery. We read in Scripture, and in awakened consciousness, the
unresolved "antinomy" of our true responsibility yet guilty impotency. We read
another contradiction too, less of speculation than of practice, in the facts
that (a) we are unable, without special grace, even to "prepare ourselves to
faith and calling upon God" (Art. X.), yet that (b) every hearer of the Gospel
is invited with the sincerity of eternal goodness. "As I live, I have no
pleasure in the death of him that dieth. Turn ye; why will ye die?" (Ezek.
xxxiii. 11).

For the practical needs of the heart, the doctrines of the Fall are meant wholly
for mercy; meant to drive the last vestige of self-trust and self-esteem from
the mind, shutting us up into "the confidence of self-despair" as we turn to the
glorious opposite pole of truth, the revelation of love and grace in Jesus
Christ.

III. Man Restored

Much has been anticipated here under the doctrine of the Work of the Eternal
Persons. There we saw the Father’s holy love for the fallen world, His provision
for the call and salvation of the Church in His beloved Son, the covenant of
eternal grace, in which the Church was "blessed with all spiritual blessing" by
the Father in the Son. We saw the Son’s undertaking to be the Mediator and
Surety of the Covenant, providing in Himself for His members all things needful
for acceptance and holiness-in His sacred incarnation, atoning death, and
resurrection-life and headship. We saw the Holy Spirit’s office and efficacy in
dealing with the soul for its new birth and life in union with the Son by faith,
that union of which the Spirit is Bond and Channel. It remains to consider the
Scripture revelation of man, of man, thus restored, regarded as the effect of
these divine Causes.

One or two points call for brief remark first.

We shall here again recognize those apparent contradictions (antinomies) which
always appear when we deal with the relations of eternity and time, God and man.
Scripture richly assures us that God is Love, that His every act and purpose is
of transcendent moral goodness, that He is to be loved and trusted by His
creatures without reserve. Accordingly, it represents Him as meeting the Fall
with a gift of redemption immeasurably great and sincere; and as purposing to
bring out from the facts of evil, in the end, only a nobler victory of goodness
and love. (See esp. Rom. v. 20, 21.) But, on the other side, Scripture makes it
solemnly plain (certainly, from the first, to the vast majority of submissive
students) that there will not be an actual salvation of all men. From the first
Scriptures to literally the last runs the doctrine of Two Ways, and Two Ends.
(See, e.g., Gen. iv. 1-16; Deut. xxx. 15; Psal. lxxiii. 27, 28; Prov. xv. 24;
Dan. xii. 2; Hos. xiv. 9; Mal.iii. 17, 18; Matt. vii. 13-27, xxv.; Joh. iii. 16,
19-21, 36, v. 28, 29, ix. 39; Acts xiii. 38-41; Rom. ii. 2-11; 1 Cor. xi. 32;
Gal. vi. 7, 8; Eph. v. 6; Phil. iii. 18, 19; Heb. vi. 4-8; 1 Pet. iv. 17, 18; 1
Jon. v. 16; Rev. ii. 11, xxi. 1-8, 27, xxii. 14, 15.) Efforts are made (and who
can wonder, that has really felt the mystery?) to read a universal hope between
these dark lines. The phrase (Acts iii. 21), "the restitution of all things,"
and the words of Eph. i. 10, Col. i. 20, are earnestly adduced as witnessing to
an ulterior future in which the two ends shall, as it were, result in one-the
good and peace of every individual man. But is the awful weight of the main
drift of Scriptural warnings meant to be thus ultimately neutralized? Acts iii.
21 expressly refers to "the things which God spake by the prophets;" i.e., the
final triumph of His cause after such seeming defeats as the rejection of Israel
(cp. Matt. xvii. 11). The language of Eph. i. and Col. i. significantly refers
to heaven and earth, without inclusion of "things under the earth." But the
great alternative appears not only in explicit passages. It is present, in its
most tender and solemn form, in the divine entreaties to the Christian to watch
and pray against powers of ruthless evil; in the tears of the Lord and the
Apostles over the impenitent (Luke xix. 41; Acts xx. 31; Phil. iii. 18). Below
all articulate statements there lies in such facts the infinitely grave
assurance of an alternative which knows no compromise, no solution.

When, on our knees, we ask the account of this, the one reply, as we believe,
is, that it lies with the account of the origin of sin, and of the full wrong
and malignity of sin; that is, it lies out of our sight. Sin is both an
insoluble riddle, and a terrible fact, in the freely created universe of the
Holy God. It is impossible to reason à priori on the effects of an unknown
cause.

If with deep reverence we may figure the action of the Eternal Mind in terms of
the action of a finite mind, as Scripture does, we may put the case somewhat
thus [18]:-The Blessed God, in absolute wisdom and goodness, willing to create,
chose of all possible orders of things the best. For ultimate ends of pure good
that system involved the moral probation of finite moral beings, and this
involved the certainty that some of these would, of themselves, depart from God.
In the case of man, a race having a Head in whom the nature was tried, it
involved the result that the race, in the Head, would so fall as quite to lose,
by moral judicial sequel, the power of self-recovery, and that some of that race
would never be recovered, from within or from without. Yet He who is love,
knowing the whole of things, saw it best, truly best, that thus it should be.
And He bids us, looking on His face, in His Son, be sure that for the most
magnificent possible "bringing" of human "sons unto glory," the order chosen was
the best. As a fact, it shall result in a redeemed host incalculably great (Rev.
vii. 9). And we know absolutely nothing of its extra-human effects, except that
"the whole creation" (Rom. viii. 22) longs for its issue, and "angels desire to
look into" its process (1 Pet. i. 12).

Here we confessedly present a conception of divine and eternal thought in terms
of human thought. But this is not to limit God. Scripture and our being alike
witness to the necessary and eternal absoluteness of God in every attribute, or
characteristic. But in every revelation of the relations of God to the world, of
the Eternal to time, we come by strict necessity to seeming inconsistencies of
thought (p. 37). We have to view the Absolute as under relations; to observe the
Almighty Creator as using means, working through design. The limits thus induced
are real; but they lie not in the Nature of God, but in that of finite being and
its thought.

It remains to add that those who hold what we may call the Augustinian doctrine
of grace, as read in Scripture (where they see it revealed, but also on every
hand balanced, and limited, by the unrevealed), hold that He who chose that
order chose it as both the most righteous and most benignant of all, for His
dealings with man. They will bow to His doings, confessing them to be "past
finding out" (Rom. xi. 33). But they will also work for God and man with the
simplicity and energy of faith in the Almighty. And they will look for the day
when, though our minds will never be infinite, we shall yet no longer "know in
part," but "as we were known" (1 Cor. xiii. 12). Then we shall praise the
infinitely Wise, Mighty, and Loving, in a song free from all under-notes of
sadness, sung above the clouds of time.

To resume ;-on "Man Restored" our statement, as we have said, has been largely
anticipated; especially under the heads of the work of the Son, and of the
Spirit.

It is perhaps necessary to point out that the great restoration is not revealed
as acting apart from the knowledge, more or less articulate, of the true God. It
is not revealed as a process which silently and without known means penetrates
Humanity, so that, for example, the Incarnation of the Son has affected the
condition of body, soul, or spirit where no moral and spiritual means have been
brought to bear on men or nations. The great and urgent missionary commission to
the Church speaks clearly in this direction. (And see Rom. x. 12-15.) The
gracious "Judge of all the earth will do right" with every human individual. We
may trust Him with His own handiwork. But the Scripture is deeply silent as to
any restoration of man, certainly normally, without the message of grace.

One great exception there is. The innumerable multitude of infants "dying before
they commit actual sin" belongs, as we firmly believe, to "man restored,"
everywhere and always. Opinion on this has differed in the Church of Christ. The
loss of the infant soul without baptism has been widely held. [19] To us the
words of our Lord (Mark x. 14, 15) seem to carry us far beyond the baptismal
limit, and to encourage the belief that where human life terminates here as
infant-life, though the very fact of that death is (Rom. v. 14) a testimony to
the extension over humanity of the liability of its fallen Head, yet for the
sake of the Second Adam there is such an application of His merits and His
Spirit as assures us of life eternal. The case, immensely common as to numbers,
is quite abnormal in idea. Only the Creator knows the limits of it, and of all
the other cases which fall under its class.

Normally, the individual restored was at once an instance of fallen human nature
(a subject of original sin), and an actual transgressor (Eph. ii. 1-3). He now,
from the point of view of God, has been regenerated, new-created. From his own
point of view he has, with genuine willingness, "come to Christ" (Joh. vi. 35,
37), "received Christ, believing on His Name" (Joh. i. 12), coming to
"obedience, and the sprinkling of His blood" (1 Pet. i. 2). To use a word
familiarized by our version of Psal. li. 13, Matt. xviii. 3, etc., he has been
"converted," "turned about," as to affections and will, from original inner
alienation from God, so as to submit, believe, and love. The subjective
experience of this conversion (metanoia) may, and does, widely vary. To
consciousness, it may be gradual, and even imperceptible, or intensely
otherwise. But it is essentially one thing in all cases, a forsaking of all else
as the man’s peace, strength, and aim, in favour of "Christ as the power and
wisdom of God" (1 Cor. i. 24); for this He is to "the called," the apostolic
term most closely akin to our "converted." The relations of time between
regeneration and the consciousness of conversion are secret. The consciousness
of conversion is not precisely of the essence of conversion. It is conceivable
(not natural, or probable) that a man truly regenerate may pass through mortal
life to death not fully conscious of the divine life; not able to analyse and
affirm it to himself. But it seems also to be clear that where true regeneration
is, there, by a spiritual law, it always tends to come out in a new life (Joh.
iii. 8, an all-important verse), whether or no the man recognizes it as such. We
infer that ordinarily no assignable interval separates actual (not ceremonial,
see pp. 249, 255) new birth and its potential manifestation.

The man, then, thus restored, new-born, and turned to God, is a person who, once
"alienated," is now united really to Jesus Christ by the indwelling of that
Spirit who also dwells in his Head, and who has brought him to repentance (i.e.,
humble turning from sin to God) and to faith in Christ (Acts xx. 21). In this
mysterious, but most true and vital, Union he (above, p. 133), possesses the two
great covenant blessings (Heb. x. 16, 17), acceptance for his Redeemer’s merits,
and a regenerated state of nature, and particularly of will and affections, by
His Spirit. Not to retrace old ground, we only deal here with certain main
questions about the actual condition of the restored individual in Christ.

(1) His justification. The word "justify" is frequent in Scripture, not only in
doctrinal connexions (see, e.g., Exod. xxiii. 7; Deut. xxv. 1; Prov. xvii. 15).
The great passages for its doctrinal application are the first half of the
Epistle to the Romans, part of the Epistle to the Galatians, and Jas ii. 14-26.
It is clear everywhere that the essence of the idea is judicial acceptance; not
pardon merely, but a verdict of the law’s contentment with the person. The
quality of such contentment will vary with that of the law. Human law, speaking
broadly, demands a minimum; abstinence from positive and exterior disobedience.
And its acquittal accordingly avouches this and no more. Divine spiritual law
demands in its nature a maximum; supreme love of God and unselfish love of men.
And so its "justi- fication" avouches that the person examined contents it in
these respects. But how can this actually be, when "in the sight of God no man
living shall be justified" (Psal. cxliii. 2) on his own merits? Here comes in
the mystery and fact of the application of the merits of Christ (see above, p.
81), the substituted Victim, valid Representative, and Covenant-Head, of "all
who come to God by Him" (Heb. vii. 25). The great justification-argument of the
Roman Epistle is in effect this: that such is Jesus Christ, the sacrificed Son
of God, and such is the relation, to believing sinners, of the propitiation He
wrought in death, that they for His sake, being personally guilty and
de-meritorious, are accepted with unreserved contentment by the eternal law as
its fulfillers. That this amazing but holy paradox is meant is shown by the fact
that the truth did from the first suggest the perversion (meaningless, without a
real counterpart in the thing perverted) that it favored moral license (Rom.
iii. 8, vi. 1). And the Apostle meets this, not by modifying the paradox, but by
placing it unmodified (ch. vi.) in organic connexion with the other truth of
concurrent spiritual life. Pauline justification, isolated for study, is the
acceptance of the sinful person, believing, irrespective, (in this isolation) of
any consideration whatever but the sacrifice of Jesus Christ accepted by faith.

This grandly simple and heart-moving view of justification has been impugned
from many quarters. Thus, it has been held that by "the works of the law," or
more simply by "works," is meant, not personal morality of practice, but either
Judaist observances or morality practised in the definitely Pharisaic spirit.
But that the phrase goes far deeper is plain from Rom. iii. 19, 20 with the
previous context. There "the works of the law" are defined by their contraries,
enumerated vv. 9-18. And it thus appears that these "works of the law"
are-seeking after God, fearing God, doing good, right use of the tongue,
reverence for human life, and the like. The practical issue of the argument is,
that the eternal standard in such things is such that personal obedience on the
part of fallen man always and fatally falls short, by whatever intervals. And
the eternal law, in its nature, knows no compromise; so that acceptance before
it, in a saving sense, is hopeless for man on his merits, even if his merits are
only a part of his plea. And the deep need is met, not partially, but wholly, by
the sacrifice of Christ, by Christ the Propitiation, appropriated as such by
faith.

Again, the simplicity and depth of the truth have been weakened by disturbing
the simplicity of the idea of faith. To has been held that faith is a short
expression for true Christianity; faith, or credence, along with its assumed
results of obedience and piety. This was the view, in essence, of Bishop Bull,
cent. xvii. And most other theories impugning the view above given as the
Pauline view, run up ultimately into this. But a full study of the word "faith"
in Scripture, and in common human speech, will, we think, be conclusive the
other way. Particularly, our Lord’s use of it (e.g. Matt. vi. 30, viii. 10)
gives it an essential connexion with the idea of personal reliance. Such
reliance, by the nature of the case, assumes an underlying credence of, or
assent to, expressed or implicit statements. But its vital characteristic is an
act of accepting reliance, not on immediate evidences but in imme- diate trust.
The woman of Canaan shows her faith by invincible trust in Jesus against all
appearances.

St. James’ words (ii. 14-26) are undoubtedly a grave problem on the other side.
But we believe the solution lies in the fact that by "faith" St. James means
orthodox credence (ii. 19), not personal reliance; and that in this meaning he
does not give his own view of faith, but takes his opponents on their own
ground. One thing is practically certain, that St. James is cautioning his
leaders, not against ultra-Paulinism, but against Rabbinism, with its tenet that
the Orthodox Jewish "confession of faith" (Deut. vi. 4) was a passport to life
eternal.

The large scale, of revelation on this subject in the Pauline Epistles warns us
that, while both Apostles convey infallible truth, the bearing of St. James’
words should be inferred from St. Paul’s, rather than the other way.

Again, it has been held that while the simplest doctrine of Justification by
Faith applies to the Christian’s first entrance on the new life, a more complex
doctrine applies to the sequel. The man is welcomed in for the mere sake of
Christ the Propitiation. He is allowed to remain, he is held in acceptance,
because, of his regenerate obedience, or because of it concurrently with the
first ground. The deepest answer to this, apart from explicit Scripture, lies,
we think, in the inmost consciousness of all true believers, of many varying
types of thought, when brought at any moment of their course face to face with
the Eternal Holiness. At such moments of intuition it is seen, or rather felt
and known, that something "not ourselves," absolute and perfect, availing in the
legal sphere, must stand between the man and the "fiery law." Psal. cxliii. 2,
for the true Christian as for the true Israelite, alone expresses the soul’s
conviction then. From this, point of view there is no room for a "first and
second justification;" the first by faith in the Propitiation only, the second
on the ground of our obedience too. "I know whom I have believed" (2 Tim. i. 12)
is a word as fit for the latest as for the earliest conviction of the saint. See
too, by all means, Phil. iii. 9, with its whole context.

The words of the dying Hooker are in point: "Though I have, by His grace, loved
Him in my youth, and feared Him in my age, and laboured to have a conscience
void of offense yet if Thou, O Lord, be extreme to mark what is done amiss, who
can abide it? And therefore, where I have failed, Lord, show mercy to me; for I
plead not my righteousness, but the forgiveness of my unrighteousness, for His
merits who died to purchase pardon for penitent sinners." [20]

Nothing is more essential to a full view and humble enjoyment of our salvation
than a reverent hold on the divine paradox of Justification by Faith, as
(speaking broadly) that paradox was brought into the foreground of Christian
thought by Luther, and as it will be found in our Eleventh Article, illustrated
(as the Article directs) by the "Homily of Justification," i.e., the third
Homily of the First Book. See, too, Hooker’s great sermon On Justification. That
paradox is only the correlative of the glorious fundamental of the Gospel,
"Christ is all." In the full view of what Scripture says of His all-precious
Sacrifice, it will be less a tenet than an instinct to remit the whole weight of
our acceptance to Him as our Propitiation, and to recognize faith, that is, a
trustful acceptance, as deep as it is absolutely simple, as that which on our
side puts us into contact with the Propitiator. Not our sufferings or sacrifices
unite us savingly with His, for our acceptance. He is all, and we sinners accept
Him as He is.

A few words may come in here on the Imputed Righteousness of Christ. This
phrase, once widely accepted, and not least by such Anglicans as Andrewes and
Beveridge (cent. xvii.), is now much disputed, and even repudiated. But it rests
securely upon Rom iv. 6, with its context. There has been a tendency to
over-refinement upon it; a too elaborate distinction between our Lord’s active
keeping of the moral law and His awful suffering beneath the penalty of our
sins; the one considered as supplying our defects, the other as meeting our
violations. But this is not the essential view of the phrase; and we see this
all the more as we remember (above, p. 83) the profound connexion between the
obedience of our Lord’s life and the merit of His Passion. The essential of the
phrase is just this, that the Son of God, as the supremely meritorious One, as
infinitely satisfactory to law, is, before the law, and for the purposes of law,
accepted, reckoned as the believing sinner’s substitute. The man, incorporated
in Him, is counted, reputed, as involved in His whole merit, as the Lord was
counted, reputed, as involved in the man’s sin. His merit is thus imputed, that
is to say, set down, to the man.

Alike for his defects and his violitions,-which intimately run up into one idea
of anomia (1 Joh. iii. 4), i.e., non-correspondence to the holy law,-the man
involves himself, or rather consents that he should be involved, in that perfect
merit. As thus involved, he stands accepted. His ground of justification and
peace is not only not his own "works," but not even (as some hold) the presence
of Christ in him, taken along with its eternal development in prospect. It is
Christ for him, in the quite different region of merit, of law.

We do not repeat here what we have said above (p. 132), on the connexion of this
sacred paradox of free justification with our Union with Christ. But the subject
is all-important, and calls for the devout attention of the Christian. To the
last, the ultimate rationale of the Atonement of our Lord, and so of our
acceptance through faith on its account, "goes off into mystery." But within the
circle of light and revelation on the subject lies the fact that the effectual
application of the Atonement is for the living members of the living Head of the
mystical Body, one with their Lord in an unspeakable reality of conjunction; and
that it is faith, the acceptance of Christ for salvation by the awakened soul,
which from our side is the nexus of that union. Faith is ipso facto entrance
into Christ. And in Christ, the Propitiation, resides perfect merit for
acceptance before God, for all that are "found in Him" (Phil. iii. 9).

Meanwhile it is abundantly revealed that the justified man, while decisively and
continuously accepted before God from this point of view, is, from other points
of view, under paternal discipline, liable to paternal displeasure and
correction (see, among the wealth of references, 1 Cor. xi. 29-32; Heb. xii.
5-11; and cp. Deut. viii. 5; Psal. xciv. 12). And not only so, but (p. 44) the
justified man, if he is not only to stand accepted before God, but to enjoy the
bliss of the fact, must, as a spiritual con- dition, "walk humbly with his God,"
in regenerate obedience. The act, and yet more the habit, of admitted and
willing sin is fatal to personal assurance in that sense.

(2) We are led now, in considering the actual condition of man restored, to the
direct view of his Sanctification, or personal and internal separation from sin
to God. The connexion of this with his justification is close and manifold.
Justification is, we may say, (a) his entrance on the possibility of
Sanctification; for a true because willing and loving holiness has a necessary
connexion, by way of resulting gladness, gratitude, and love, with an entrance
into "peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received
the atonement" (Rom. v. 1, 11). And Justification thus also, and as a yet deeper
truth, has to do with Sanctification because (b) our entrance on acceptance is
altogether for the very purpose of our holiness. This is manifest, and most
important. Scripture nowhere forbids or condemns the profoundly natural and
human gladness of our personal deliverance in Christ from "the wrath to come"
(e.g. 1 Thess. i. 10). Scripture is not committed to the doctrine, rather
unnatural than supernatural, that gratitude for the rescue of our personality
from eternal woe, and unto eternal bliss, is an unworthy element among motives
to obedience; that the Glory of God is the one possible element in true motive.
But it does place that Glory in such supremacy over every other kind of motive,
and adjusts every other so to it, as to make it spiritually impossible for the
renewed man to rest short of it as the recognized goal of his being, his blessed
raison d’être. From this point of view, sanctification is greater than
justification somewhat as end is greater than means. We are justified for an
ulterior purpose. We are sanctified, we are subdued and transfigured, as the
fulfilment in us of the will of God, for whom we exist; and the ulterior purpose
is attained.

We do not deal here with Christian ethics, and therefore do not enter on the
discussion of the holy precepts for renewed man in detail. We only observe that
they amount, in their sum, to just this-a total abstinence in Christ’s name from
admitted sinning, of motive and act, and a true and entire dedication of
"spirit, soul, and body" to the will of God.

What we have to say here concerns the restored man’s personal equipment, in
Christ, for this holy purpose.

The work of faith in Sanctification. This is manifold. As by faith we ent


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  CHAPTER 9: CHAPTER IX. THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH.
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The Doctrine of the Church.

"That Church of Christ which we properly term His body mystical, can be but one;
neither can that one be sensibly discerned by any man, inasmuch as the parts
thereof are some in heaven already with Christ, and the rest that are on earth
(albeit their natural persons be visible) we do not discern under this property
whereby they are truly and infallibly of that body. Only our minds by
intellectual conceit are able to apprehend that such a real body there is, a
body collective, because it containeth a huge multitude; a body mystical,
because the mystery of their conjunction is removed altogether from sense.
Whatsoever we read in Scripture concerning the endless love and the saving mercy
which God showeth towards His Church, the only proper subject thereof is this
Church. Concerning this flock it is that our Lord and Saviour hath promised: ‘I
give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any
pluck them out of My hands.’ They who are of this society have such marks and
notes of distinction from all others as are not object unto our sense; only unto
God, who seeth their hearts and understandeth all their secret thoughts and
cogita- tions, unto Him they are clear and manifest. All men knew Nathanael to
be an Israelite. But our Saviour, piercing deeper, giveth further testimony of
him than men could have done with such certainty as He did, ‘Behold indeed an
Israelite, in whom there is no guile.’ If we profess, as Peter did, that we love
the Lord, and profess it in the hearing of men charitable men are likely to
think we do so, as long as they see no proof to the contrary. But that our love
is sound and sincere who can pronounce, saving only the Searcher of all men’s
hearts, who alone intuitively doth know in this kind who are His? And as those
everlasting promises of love, mercy, and blessedness, belong to the mystical
Church, even so on the other side when we read of any duty which the Church of
God is bound unto, the Church whom this doth concern is a sensible known
company. And this visible Church in like sort is but one . Which company being
divided into two moieties, the one before, the other since the coming of Christ,
that part which since the coming of Christ partly hath embraced and partly shall
hereafter embrace the Christian religion, we term as by a more proper name the
Church of Christ . The unity of which visible body and Church of Christ
consisteth of that uniformity which all several persons thereunto belonging
have, by reason of that one Lord, whose servants they all profess themselves;
that one faith, which they all acknowledge; that one baptism, wherewith they are
all initiated . Entered we are not into the visible Church before our admittance
by the door of baptism . Christians by external profession they are all, whose
mark of recognisance hath in it those things (one Lord, one faith, one baptism)
which we have mentioned, yea, although they be impious idolaters, wicked
heretics, persons excommunicable, yea and cast out for notorious improbity . Is
it then possible that the self-same men should belong both to the synagogue of
Satan and to the Church of Jesus Christ? Unto that Church which is His mystical
body, not possible; because that body consisteth of none but only true servants
and saints of God. Howbeit of the visible body and Church of Jesus Christ, those
may be, and oftentimes are, in respect of the main parts of their outward
profession . For lack of diligent observing the difference, first between the
Church of God mystical and visible, then between the visible sound and
corrupted, sometimes more, sometimes less; the oversights are neither few nor
light that have been committed." (Hooker, Eccl. Polity, iii. 1.)

We quote this classical passage as introductory to an outline of the doctrine of
the Church, mainly because in it a singularly representative theologian states a
distinction essential, as we believe, to just opinions on that doctrine. The
Church as an organized society, open to human observation, is to be
distinguished from the Church as a spiritual organism, living with a life whose
secret and limits are fully known only to God, and whose manifestation is by
faith, hope, and love (above, p. 129). The importance of the passage does not
stop here. In respect of the Church as visible, it both describes it as one, so
that its division by discordant polities is an accident, contrary to its ideal;
and also it states with Scriptural moderation the essential marks (notes) of its
oneness. (See further, p. 210.)

Now to examine the subject as presented in Scripture. The word Ecclesia (lit.,
company, or assembly, called out) is common in Old Testament Greek. In the
Pentateuch it is frequent for the Assembly of Israel, Israel as "called out"
(from tents and work) to meet before God. Elsewhere it often means any assembly,
more or less sacred. In the New Testament it occasionally means an "assembly
other than Christian (Acts xix. 32, 39, 41). Very often it means the Christians
of a district, town, or even household, regarded as "called out" of the
unbelieving world, associated, and organized (e.g., Acts viii. 1, xiii. 1, xv.
41; Rom. xvi. 1, 4, 5, 16; 1 Cor. i. 2, iv. 17; Gal. i. 2, 22 ; Phil. iv. 15 ;
Philem. 2; Rev. i.-iii. passim, xxii. 16). Less often it means Christians of
every place, or rather irrespective of place; one ideal assembly or society,
"called out" from the world to Christ (e.g. Matt. xvi. 18, xviii. 3; Acts xx.
28; 1 Cor. x. 32, xii. 23, xv. 9; Gal. i. 13; Eph. i. 22 and always, Phil. iii
6; Col. i. 18, 24; 1 Tim. iii. 15; and ? Heb. xii. 23). In many of these latter
places the word seems to keep to the sphere of the visible and temporal; meaning
the total of accredited Christians, irrespective of locality. In some places,
and especially in Ephesians, it rises to a higher sphere, and means that ideal
which is also in this matter the ultimate real; the company, society, organism,
of which in full spiritual reality Christ is vital Head, and which shall be His
Body and His Bride in glory. That a man may belong to a Church, or the Church,
as organized within human observation, and not to the Church in the supreme
tense, is plain from e.g. Acts viii. 21; Rom. viii. 9; 2 Cor. xiii. 5.

The distinction thus noticed by Hooker lies in the nature of the case. Union
with Christ, if union indeed, is by the Spirit (p. 132). But it is possible to
be within Christian organization and yet to be devoid of the Spirit (see the
texts last quoted); so it was with Simon at Samaria (Acts viii.). But no
register at all dependent on human observation can infallibly exclude such names
from the Christian roll. And if but one such name is upon it, the coincidence of
the Church as visible with the Church as spiritually real is not perfect. On the
other hand, the guardians of the register have no right normally to exercise
such an excluding power as would even seem to claim supernatural insight into
the man’s inner union or disunion with Christ. Within limits, certainly,
scrutiny must be applied to protect the privileges of membership from scandalous
misuse. But no such scrutiny can ever claim to go infallibly, by its nature, to
"the thoughts and intents of the heart."

This principle is illustrated by Rom. ii. 25-29, where a distinction is drawn
between the "Jew" who is such by the register of (divinely ordered) circumcision
and the "Jew" who is such "inwardly." This bears à fortiori on the case of the
Christian Church. For the community of Israel had more to do, at least on the
surface, with merely external tests of membership than the community of the
Christian Church has. The Jewish Church was, from one point of view, a nation,
as capable of census as any other; a society in which physical pedigree was
highly important. Yet even in its case, with a view to ultimate realities,
Scripture recognizes the difference of nominal and real, visible and not
(humanly) visible; an Israel fully recognized by God, narrower than the Israel
lawfully recognized by man. À fortiori the limits of a Community which is lifted
above tests of pedigree and nationality, and whose watchwords are Christ, the
Spirit, faith, saintship, must admit such differences. There must be Christians
and Christians, Church and Church, Body and Body, Vine and Vine; not opposed
camps, but gravely different aspects of one word.

This distinction was stated strongly by St Augustine. In his De Doctrinâ
Christianâ (iii. 32) he discusses with general approval a book, by one
Tichonius, The Seven Rules for clearing up Scripture mysteries, and writes: "The
second rule is that ‘Concerning the Lord’s twofold Body.’ He should have said,
‘Concerning the Lord’s true and mingled Body’ or ‘true and feigned Body,’ or the
like. For not only eternally, but now, hypocrites are not to be described as
being with Him, however they may seem to be in His Church Often the Scripture,
turning from one party to speak of another, seems to be still speaking of the
first, as if the two made one Body, by reason of their temporal commingling and
equal share in sacraments." The distinction thus drawn was strongly insisted
upon in the Reformation theology. See, e.g., Bishop Ridley (Works, Parker
Society, pp. 126-7):— "That Church which is His Body and of which Christ is the
Head standeth (consisteth) only of living stones and true Christians, not only
outwardly in name and title, but inwardly in heart and in truth. But forasmuch
as this Church as touching the outward fellowship, is contained within that
great house [2 Tim. ii. 20], and hath, with the same, outward society of the
sacraments and ministry of the Word, many things are spoken of that universal
Church (which St Augustine calleth the mingled Church) which cannot be truly
understood but only of that purer part of the Church."

If this is true,—and it lies in the nature of the case,—the greatest care is
needed in the use of the sacred word Church, lest claims should be made for the
outward organization, even in its original and truest form, which ought to be
made only for the spiritually living organism.

On the other hand it is plain, both from Scripture and the reason of the case,
that the external aspect of the Church is a thing of high sacredness and
importance. If from one point of view the Christian community is (in the full
truth of those terms) "the blessed company of all faithful people," known to
their Lord and Head as truly "His" (Rom. viii. 9; 2 Tim. ii. 19), from another
point it is meant to be a visible Society, combined for work and witness in the
actual human world. As such, we find it from the very first (below, p. 217)
possessing ordained officers, and external order however simple, and ordinances
outward and visible connected with entrance on membership and maintenance of it
(p. 236). And we find repeated warnings and appeals to the members to be loyal
to the society; to avoid division, and all that leads to it—whether
insubordination or arrogance (see, e.g., Heb. xiii. 17; 1 Pet. v. 1-5). All this
leaves quite untouched the ruling truth of the purely spiritual secret and bond
of the life of the true Church. But it does solemnly emphasize the claims of
visible order. That order is a thing not indeed of the first rank, yet next to
the first. Can it be doubted that the work of the Church for God in the world
would have its "freest course" and influence if it were never forgotten on the
one hand that "he is a Christian which is one inwardly," and on the other that
the collision and friction of rival polities con- tradicts the idea of the
visible Church, and most gravely obstructs its mission? The Christian who
recollects these principles amidst actual circumstances will never venture to
unchurch a Christian community, confessing the truth of God in Christ, because
it is not organized on what he thinks the ideal model, and so far diverges from
or even collides with his own community. But he will not acquiesce in this state
of things as right, as best. He will never put true order before true creed and
true life; but he will never despise true order. He will revere it as an
ordinance of God, while he remembers that an institution may be divinely
sanctioned which yet in divine order and proportion may need, in a measure, or
for a season, to give way to divine commandments of a yet higher kind. See in
illustration the language of the prophets about the divine sacrificial ritual
(e.g. 1 Sam. xv. 22); and cp. Mark ix. 38-40.

The Christian in this attitude of thought will pray and lawfully seek for a
healthful re-union of visible Christendom, now so deplorably broken by
discrepant and competing organizations. He will value highly the witness of
history (p. 228) to the truth of any claims of apostolicity in an organization.
Meantime he will be reasonably sure that, at this date, no re-union can hope to
be not merely feasible but just where concessions are all on one side. And he
will recognize in many organizations which he holds to be imperfect yet the
presence of enough of the ideal often to command his reverence, and at least
enough of the divine institution of order to be immeasurably better than
anarchy. And he will always qualify his claims by remembering that the true
unity of the true Church is in its inmost essence spiritual. Each true member is
in direct and vital contact with the glorious Head, through faith, by the
Spirit. The worst and deepest schism is after all that which slights that holy
bond. And thus reverent loyalty to order, to the order held to be divinely
sanctioned, will yet not lead down into definitions of the Church which
contradict its inmost nature. Firm convictions about the rule will yet see the
justness of even large exceptions. The man may be an Episcopalian, by the
maturest results of thought and enquiry, and may consistently wish to see a
genuine (not exaggerated) Episcopacy universal; yet he will heartily recognize
and honour the Church position of his Presbyterian, or Independent, or Baptist,
or Methodist, brethren. He will prize the divine blessings of Sacraments,and
pray that they may be everywhere revered and used, and yet will see in the
saintly "Friend" a true member of the eternal Head, and so of the true Body. He
will love, and seek for, not only the precious unity of Christian love, but its
lawful counterpart in a temperate uniformity of Christian order; yet he will
never suffer the claims of the latter to break the antecedent and more sacred
bond of the former.

"Notes" of the (visible) Church.—Article XIX., "Of the Church," states the
"notes," or testmarks, [1] thus: "The visible Church of Christ is a congregation
(cœtus) of faithful men, in the which the pure word of God is preached, and the
Sacraments be duly (rectè) ministered, according to Christ’s ordinance, in all
things that of necessity are requisite to the same." The earliest comment on
this (Rogers, 1586) runs: "The Lord only knoweth them that are His. For to man
the Church of Christ is partly invisible, and visible partly. The invisible are
all the elect, who be or shall be either in heaven triumphing or on earth
fighting not because the men be not visible, but for that their faith Godward is
not perfectly known unto us." Hooker’s "notes" of corporate visible unity have
been given above (p. 203). Field (Dean of Gloucester temp. James I.), in his
treatise Of the Church (ii. 2), gives the notes of the "true (visible [2])
Catholic Church" to be (a) "the entire profession of those supernatural verities
which God hath revealed in Christ His Son; (b) the use of such holy ceremonies
and sacraments as He hath instituted to serve as provocations to godliness,
preservations from sin, memorials of the benefits of Christ, warrants for the
greater security of our belief, and marks of distinction to separate His own
from strangers; (c) an union or connexion of men in this profession and use of
the sacraments, under lawful pastors and guides, appointed, authorized, and
sanctified, to lead them in the happy ways of eternal salvation." Pearson (Of
the Creed, pp. 339-350) cautiously but clearly distinguishes in the Church those
who are "efficaciously called, justified, and sanctified," and says of others
that they have "no true internal communion with the members and Head (of the
Church)," "the congregation of those persons here on earth which shall hereafter
meet in heaven;" and he finds the notes of the organized Church in (a) agreement
in one faith; (b) observance of the same sacraments; (c) expectation of one
heaven; (d) sympathy in one mind and love; (e) use of one discipline and
government. "As there is no Church where there is no order, no ministry, so
where the same order and ministry is, there is the same Church."

It will be observed that none of the writers here quoted explicitly lays down
episcopal government as a "note" of the Church, though Pearson seems to approach
the position. It was certainly not made a "note" by the leading Anglicans of
cent. xvii., as a class (see further below, p. 231). On the other hand, all the
great leaders of Reformed Christendom, cent. xvi., xvii., set high and reverent
value on Church order as a principle, whatever their views were about details of
system.

The word Catholic (Univesal) applied to the Church, appears first in Ignatius
(early cent. ii.), in the famous sentence (Ep. to Smyrna, c. 8), "Wherever Jesus
Christ is, there is the Catholic Church." A little later, the contemporary
account of Polycarp’s martyrdom speaks of "all the sojourning-bodies (paroikiai)
in every place of the holy and Catholic Church." Later, the term is very
frequent. Athanasius (cent. iv.), says that the Church is called Catholic
"because it is diffused universally (katholou) in the world." The first notion
of the word was plainly local diffusion; Christians combined in a way
irrespective of territorial limits. It glided not unnaturally from this to mean
also "orthodox" as against heretical; with regard to the central body of
professing Christians, holding the primary revealed truths, as against numerous
divergent or rival bodies. It certainly referred to consent about revealed truth
more prominently than to uniformity of polity.

The claim of the Papal Church is to be, in her own words ("Creed of Pius IV.,"
1568), "the holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church, Mother and Mistress
(magistra) of all Churchs." Her Trent Confession of Faith, the "Creed of Pius
IV.," is "the true Catholic faith, outside which no man can be saved." No
assertions can be more completly met by historical and scriptural disproof than
these. [3]

Before quitting the subject of Catholicity, we quote the following weighty
words: "The early Christian fathers often urged the name and authority of the
Church Catholic against heretics. The thoughtful student will, however, perceive
a very important distinction between our position and theirs, which may
materially affect, not the truth and point of their assertions, but their
application to the changed circumstances of the Church. We have arrayed against
us the bulk of the Western Church, which has overlaid, added to, and corrupted
the ancient faith, and abandoned the rule of faith in Scripture. We are severed
by almost as serious differences from the varied sections of the Eastern Church.
And there have grown up amongst us communities of Christians differently
organized, and often opposing our action, and yet for the most part readily
acknowledging the same creeds and doctrinal articles. There is no parallel to
this state of things in antiquity . Ignatius might truly say (Ep. ad Trall., c.
3), speaking of the three orders of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, ‘Apart
from these there is no Church.’ Apart from them there might be Jew, Heathen, or
Gnostic, but not the Church. But to take these sayings of old, and to force
their application dogmatically to a condition of the Church of which the
venerable martyr had not the faintest glimpse, must surely be unjust to his
memory, and untrue to the facts" (Boultbee, Exposition of the Articles, pp. 160,
161).

We may add that in almost every great instance of secession from the main
organization it will be found that part of the cause was the neglect, or
repression, of some great principle of life or order on the part of the main
body or its representative authorities.

Meanwhile we reassert none the less earnestly that a temperate uniformity of
polity is the true counterpart of the inner unity of the true Church. May He who
is able "hasten it in its time," and in His way.

Authority of the (visible) Church. Two English Articles (XX., XXXIV.) are
devoted to this subject. In them, and by the nature of the subject, the
authority discussed takes two directions: doctrine, and order, including order
of worship. The question of authority in doctrine is practically that of
authority in interpretation of Scripture. This we have briefly discussed already
(pp. 7, 8). It may be enough to repeat here that the authority of the Church as
an Interpreter is (a) real, such that the individual should treat it with deep
reverence; (b) not ultimate, so that it can silence the individual’s appeal to
Scripture by anything other than Scripture. This latter principle may of course
be gravely misapplied, to excuse or assert the wildest claims of individual
ignorance, folly, or pride. But the misapplication must be met, not by denial of
the principle, but by adjustment of it to other principles. And undoubtedly the
Church, as an organized community, has the right (which is also the most grave
responsibility to God) of making terms of external communion, and of denying
outward privileges of membership to persons refusing certain articles. This
right must, however, be exercised under recollection of the overruling truths of
the spiritual nature of the true Church (p. 202), and the immediate connexion of
each of its true members with the Head, and the inalienable right of that Head
to "know," in His own sense, "them that are His." The full recognition of the
constitutional rights of the visible Church (in its total or in a substantive
"branch") is one thing; the assertion that those rights will always be rightly
exercised is another. And history bears conclusive witness to the fact that the
visible Church has no gift of inerrancy; certainly not until all its members are
"ruled by the Spirit and Word of God." Christendom owes great blessings to the
early ecumenical Councils, particularly to Nicæa and Chalcedon, where in God’s
providence the truth of Christ’s Person, gathered from the Scripture, was
affirmed and published with an authority which gave it in time universal
currency. But ecumenical Councils have contradicted each other. And of none of
them can it be said that it was, in its actual constitution, an ideal
representation of the visible Church.

The Church of England (Art. XX.), while asserting the rights of the visible
Church, is still more careful to limit their exercise constitutionally, under
the divine supremacy of Scripture. She nowhere claims for herself, or the whole
Church visible, the right of either interpreting Scripture by a mere dictum, or
of adding anything to Scripture as de fide. Only that which is laid down in
Scripture, or lawfully to be proved by it (Art. VI.), (not by even the Church’s
mere word about it), is to be believed as "of faith." Even a general Council
must be overruled by this principle (Art. XXI.), if need be.

As regards order of worship, the exercise of authority is a manifest right (and
responsibility) of the visible Church, within the limits (given in Articles XX.,
XXXIV.) that nothing be ordered "contrary to God’s Word written," and that "all
things be done to edifying." It is remarkable that the New Testament, as
compared with the Old, is nearly silent as to the procedure of public worship.
This fact, along with the great general principle of order, so amply recognized
in the New Testament, indicates that rules of Christian worship are, as things
sacred but secondary, committed in a large measure to the Church’s discretion.
Usages of worship are thus not necessarily unscriptural, anti-scriptural, merely
because they are not prescribed or described in the holy Scriptures.

Some valuable statements on this subject will be found in those sections of the
Introduction to the English Prayer Book headed "Concerning the Service of the
Church" (1549), and "Of Ceremonies" (1552).


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  CHAPTER 10: CHAPTER X. THE DOCTRINE OF THE MINISTRY.
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The Doctrine of the Ministry

The New Testament contains numerous allusions to offices and officers in the
visible Church, and to a special designation and ordination of men to Church
functions, sufficient to justify the words of Art. XXIII.: "It is not lawful for
any man to take upon him the office of public preaching, or ministering the
sacraments in the congregation (ecclesia), before he be lawfully called and sent
to execute the same. And those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent which
be chosen and called to this work by men who have public authority given unto
them in the congregation (ecclesia) to call and send ministers into the Lord’s
vineyard."

Cp. (besides references to the Apostles of Christ) Acts vi. 3-6, xi. 30, xiii.
1, xiv. 23, xv. 2, 4, 6, 23, xvi. 4, xx. 17-35, xxi. 18; Rom. xii. 6-8; 1 Cor.
xii. 28; Eph. iv. 11, 12; Phil. i. 1; Col iv. 17; 1 Thess (the earliest of St.
Paul’s Epistles) v. 12, 13; 1 Tim. iii. 1-13, iv. 14, v. 1 (?), 22 (?); 2 Tim.
i. 6; Tit. i. 5-8; Heb. xiii. 7, 17; Jas v. 14; 1 Pet. v. 1-4; 3 John. 10 (an
instance of misuse of apparently real authority); and perhaps Rev. i. 20, ii. l,
8, 12, 18, iii. l, 7, 14.

That office of some kind, a constitional leadership and order, should appear in
the Church visible arises from its nature as a Society, founded for work,
extension, and cohesion (p. 208). The additional facts indicated by the notices
in Scripture are about as follows. At first, after the Ascension, the ministry
was lodged in toto with the Apostles, whose authority, used temperately and in
full consultation with the community, was, however, derived, not from the
community, but from Christ. Then, with growth of operations and numbers, began a
"differentiation" of functions. Assistants, for practical work along with
spiritual effort (the Church has called them "deacons," diakonoi, from almost
the first), were, by apostolic advice or order, chosen by the community and
consecrated by the Apostles. Then, somewhat later, appear "elders" (Acts xi. 30,
etc.), grouped, at Jerusalem, around a president, St James, and frequently
mentioned as in fact the council and leaders of the Church. The same officers
are otherwise called "bishops" (episcopus, "superintendent;" Anglo-Saxon
biscop), overseers of the flock. And in the case of James at Jerusalem, and
Timothy and Titus later, we see a pastor who is not an Apostle exercising a
presidential pastorate, which in the latter cases is plainly one of some
authority (whether permanent or not) over pastors, and with power to constitute
or ordain new pastoral elders. We gather that, on the whole, this system of
ministry was such that the "deacon," and "presbyter" or "overseer," was never
(at least normally) constituted merely by the voice of the community. He was at
least ratified in his function by a representative or representatives of the
existing ministry. And 1 Cor. xii. and Eph. iv. in a remarkable way connect the
origin of a ministry with the direct will of God, and particularly of Christ
glorified.

Meanwhile there is much to indicate that the sacred rule had its considerable
exceptions. Proclamation of Christ was certainly not restrained to the ministry
(Phil. ii. 16). Apollos (Acts xviii. 24-28) preaches, without any hint that he
was, or was to be, formally ordained. And the presence of the mysterious
charismata (p. 142) in the primeval Church plainly modified to some degree the
otherwise normal order of the ministerial work.

In the very earliest sub-apostolic writings we find the Christian ministry a
most important factor in the life of the Church. In the Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles (cent. i.) "bishops and deacons" appear as the stated ministry, just as
at Philippi (Phil. i. 1). In Clement of Rome (cent. i.) "presbyters" (whose
office is called an "episcopate") and "deacons" similarly appear. In Ignatius
(early cent. ii.) bishop, presbyters, and deacons are conspicuous, and are for
him a vital requisite in the Church. It would be needless to travel lower in
illustration.

To recur for a moment to the origin. The apostolate (of the Twelve) [1] stands
in many respects quite apart from ministerial "orders." For one thing, the
Twelve are viewed often in the New Testament (e.g. Joh. xiv.) as rather the
Church by representation than ministers or rulers of the Church; so that
promises to them are often promises to all the faithful, who are all in this
sense their successors. And as regards ministerial orders, the apostolate as a
ministry is succeeded to, not by one order, but by all. All are "differentiated"
out of it. The deacon (Acts vi.) succeeds the Apostle as table-server; the
presbyter as one of the local rulers and pastors of the flock; the bishop (in
the later sense) as presiding presbyter, competent in a special way to ordain or
constitute others. But in the apostolate proper, with its immediate divine
authority, and its witness-bearing, there is no succession. Matthias and Paul
were not ordained by the Church to be Apostles, but designated by the Lord
Himself, like Peter and John. Paul was (with Barnabas) ordained (Acts xiii.),
but not to be an Apostle. His Church commission, given by divine direction, was
to be (may we say?) a missionary bishop, a travelling constitutor of churches.
Thus the whole ministry succeeds the Apostles, but succeeds them so as not
properly to claim their prophetic authority. And further, a ministry which does
not contain all the offices in which they were succeeded, yet if it contains
any, has apostolicity, about it, though imperfectly.

Special Points in the Doctrine of the Ministry.

Succession.

The idea of a ministerial succession is clearly to be seen in the New Testament,
as in the Pastoral Epistles, and is amply confirmed by the earliest
sub-apostolic writings. As the idea of a ministry at all is implied in the fact
that the Church as visible is an organized society, so the idea of a succession
in the ministry is implied in the fact that it is a society with a continuous
work to do and development to follow. What are the conditions of succession, and
the powers it gives, are great questions quite separable from these facts. It is
quite possible, by unjustified inference, to argue, e.g., that a developed
episcopacy is of the very essence of the Church, from the fact that the
presidential or mon- archic element is traceable in the New Testament, and
appears in full growth two generations later. But this argument is not warranted
by fact or reason. Church government is a great pheonomenon of the New
Testament. But it does not appear there as a thing of the vital order, in the
sense of the above theory. It appears as a matter of the very highest rank of
expediency and common benefit; certainly as a thing which cannot be despised and
rejected without grievous sin. But it is not a thing of the rank of saving
truth. Neither in scale nor solemnity of treatment does it stand with the truths
of repentance, faith, acceptance, and holiness; with union and communion with
Christ by faith. And while the New Testament, as we shall see, indicates a
certain system of government originating in the apostolic age, it does not
assign that system to the immediate commands of Christ, and it does not so
develop its idea as to allow us to make it a test of communion or
excommunication from the Church visible as a whole. On the other hand, a
historical succession, rightly viewed, is an invaluable benefit, to be
reverently guarded and used. A just estimate of it has much to do with the
recollection that the ministry is a divine monumental institution, one thing
ideally from age to age; not a mere aggregate of workers for God dispersed
through time, but an ordinance once appointed as a means of salvation, a lasting
witness to divine truths, and a divinely intended guardian of religious order.

Sacerdotalism.

The word is difficult to define. But perhaps it is fair to say that it marks an
idea of the ministry in which the minister is the mediator between God and the
individual Christian, particularly as an offerer of sacrifice, a guardian of
sacraments, and a conveyer of pardon by special absolution. Here first it is
important to distinguish between mediator and medium. A medium of communication
is not necessarily mediatorial. A friend sends me a gift by a messenger; here is
a medium. I can approach God only through Christ; here is the Mediator. The
medium may be highly convenient and useful, and in an ordinary way needful. A
mediator is, for the purpose, indispensable.

Now the deepest principles of Christianity preclude the idea of an ultimately
indispensable ministry. The primary and ruling idea of the Church is that of a
body whose every member, by the Spirit, lives directly by his Head (above, p.
132); and a ministerial theory which really crosses that idea is untenable. [2]
The ministry may be, and in the immemorial order of the Church is, the guardian
and dispenser of sacraments; though Tertullian (Exhort. Castit., c. 7) held that
under real exigency the Church (of laymen) has full right to supplement this in
its inherent character as "a royal priesthood" (cp. Hooker, Eccl. Polity, vii.,
c. 14). But the ministry is not so the guardian of sacraments that it can
withhold for a moment the grace and fulness of the blessed Head from the true
receptive faith of the individual, by withholding "the sacrament of so great a
Thing." The ministry is a medium, not a mediator. If it wrongly withholds the
holy sealing ordinance, or if that ordinance is on any account inaccessible, the
true idea of the Church assures us that the benefit will come some other way to
the believing man. The guilt and loss will be with the minister, not with the
believer.

It is remarkable that the Christian minister as such is never in the New
Testament called hiereus, sacerdos. [3] (See Addenda, p. 268.) As one of the
true Israel, he is "a king and priest to God" (1 Pet. ii. 9; Rev. i. 6, v. 9,
10), but on a footing precisely that of his lay brethren. It has been reasoned,
indeed, that he may in a guarded and secondary sense be called, officially, a
sacerdos, as he is in some respects the representative of the congregation to
God, and of God to the congregation. But such reasoning and usage is absent from
the New Testament, in which the pastoral aspect of the ministry is (to say the
least) very far more conspicuous than the representative.

On this whole subject the reader should, if possible, consult Bishop Lightfoot’s
Dissertation on the Christian Ministry (Philippians, pp. 181-269, especially pp.
244, etc.). The Bishop cautiously defends the secondary use of the word
sacerdos. But he dwells on the fact that "an exclusive sacerdotalism (as the
word is commonly understood) contradicts the general tenour of the Gospel;" and
that the sacerdotal idea, under which the threefold Christian ministry is held
to be the counterpart and analogue of the Aaronic orders, is fallacious. He
traces the entrance of the sacerdotal idea of the ministry into the Church to
the pagan sacerdotalism to which vast numbers of converts had been used, and
sees in the Aaronic analogy an ex post facto justification of the idea thus once
introduced. As a fact, it is an idea scarcely traceable before the age of
Tertullian (late cent. ii.), and even then largely controlled by the strong
parallel assertion of the priesthood of all Christians. Not till cent. iii., the
age of Cyprian, do we find it fully developed.

Confession and Absolution.

The New Testament is extremely reticent on this great matter. In general terms
the duty of confession to man, as well as to God, is plainly stated (Jas v. 16;
cp. Josh. vii. 19; 2 Sam. xii. 13; Matt. iii. 6, xviii. 15-17; Acts xix. 18).
But nothing explicit in the New Testament makes the minister the special
recipient of confession. An obvious fitness and reasonableness suggests that he
must, within careful limits, be the trusted friend and adviser in the Lord of
each member of his flock—a principle which fully authorizes private consultation
in cases of need. But the Scriptures give no hint of the reduction of this
sacred and important branch of pastoral work to a system, certainly not to a
system considered as vital to the individual Christian’s maintenance of Church
communion. Such a systematization did however at length come in, and in the
Church of Rome is one of the most powerful factors in Church life. In order to
reception of the holy Eucharist, the sine quâ non is a secret and particular
confession, followed by a judicial allotment of penance, and the utterance of an
absolvo te conceived to convey sacramentally the divine pardon to the confessing
person supposed to have right dispositions. We make no attempt to discuss this
system in detail; to point out its terrible risks to both penitent and
"confessor," risks indicated only too well in the minute and often deplorable
rules for the confessor current in the Roman Catholic Church; nor to speak of
the too often futile and perfunctory character of "penances." We only note one
special spiritual fallacy in the system; that the absolvo is held to be rightly
received, even if the penitent is not contrite (lovingly sorry for sin as sin),
provided only he is attrite (conscious of the disgracefulness of the sin, or
alarmed at its coming retribution, in a way to stay the actual sinning: Canons,
etc., of Trent, Sess. xiv., c. 4). Attrition and penance are, as it were, the
equivalent of contrition. It is obvious how gravely such a theory deviates from
the Scripture doctrine of repentance.

Yet the system, grievously in error as it is, is related to truth. The Christian
pastor, as the commissioned minister of the Word, has an important absolving
function. The proof of this lies not in Joh. xx. 23 (Matt. xvi. 19, xviii. 18,
have a quite different reference), for there the whole Church appears to be
addressed, not only the pastorate. [4] It lies in the pastoral commission
generally. So far as pastoral absolution refers to the outward order of the
Church, the presbyter must in a great degree be the responsible guardian of
order and ordinances (1 Tim. iii. 5), with the entrusted function of admission
and exclusion, to be constitutionally used. And so far as it refers to the
inward sphere, to the divine pardon, the pastor, as the commissioned "messenger,
watchman, and steward," will not only, as every Christian man and woman may and
should, point the burthened soul to the revealed secret of peace in the Word of
God, but will announce the certainty of pardon to the true penitent with just
that authority which belongs to his divinely instituted office. His absolution,
in this sense, is no more prophetic as regards insight into the individual than
the private Christian’s is. But he is the representative of that sacred
monumental ordinance, the Ministry, founded by Christ Himself. And that fact,
though it cannot make divine truth truer in itself, can, and should, and (in
proportion to the man’s spiritual correspondence to his office) will, make it
specially certain to the penitent, specially tangible to faith.

SUPPLEMENTARY.

History of the Confessional. [5]

In the primitive Church the three great sins, murder, adultery, apostasy,
excommunicated the offender ipso facto on discovery; though never without hope
of readmission.

Cent. ii. The re-admission was either denied wholly, or granted only once.
Re-admission (to communion) was the one mode of absolution.

Cent. iii. Origen advises, in cases of burthen of conscience, the consultation
of the clergy.

Cent. iv. An official, the Penitentiary, at Constantinople, receives private
confessions of burthened consciences, and reports them to the Church, for public
prayer for divine pardon. The office, however, on account of certain scandals,
was by Chrysostom’s time abolished. He constantly exhorts to confession to God,
with or without human aid.

Cent. v. Leo the Great, of Rome, ordains that it is sufficient that the priests
would know the offences, and ask prayer in general terms. Re-admission (for
which no verbal form was used) is to be by the bishop, except on the death-bed.

Cent. vii. The classification of sins, and commutations of penalty due, began at
this period to be elaborated. About now was composed the original of the Prayer
following the Absolution in our Visitation of the Sick (which see). It was to be
said by the priest with the penitent in public at the altar.

Cent. xiii. Innocent III. ordains, 1215, that private confession and absolution
shall be necessary in order to retain communion—a principle wholly different
from the primitive. In 1268 the "indicative" formula, absolvo te, as against a
solemn prayer for pardon, was pronounced alone effectual.

Cent. xiv. The words, "Whose sins thou dost remit, etc.," were introduced into
the ordination of presbyters. They had been used before in the ordination of
bishops, plainly with reference to the bishop’s function (see above, cent. v.)
of re-admission to communion.

It will be observed that the solemn exclusion from or admission to the Holy
Communion is the thing mainly in view in much of this legislation. Even among
Roman Catholic theologians many have held that the absolvo te, indicative and
positive, refers not to the divine pardon, but to the Church’s Pardon, so to
speak. Such is the true reference of it in the Anglican Visitation of the Sick.
The presbyter has received, and thus exercises, the responsible function of
solemnly reinstating the perhaps dying penitent, then and there, into Church
communion, or of assuring him of his part and lot in it. It will be observed
that even this is to be done only at the sick person’s own desire.

Grace of Orders.

In the ideal of the Christian ministry, the minister is a man, on the one hand,
inwardly called by the Spirit, and given by the Lord, for the sacred work; on
the other, recognized as such by the Church, and sent forth with its solemn
blessing, attestation, and, so to speak, counter-signature upon the heavenly
commission. Such a sending is in itself a seal of the divine call, and, as such,
a special occasion, to the believing recipient, of all the grace needed for his
work. But no ordination can so "give the Holy Ghost" as that by virtue of it the
man, not otherwise spiritual, shall become so, or, being already spiritual,
shall for certain acquire new and supernatural discernment of character, or of
doctrine, influential power, or the like. In 1 Tim. iv. 14 we do not know for
certain what the "gift" was. And it was given "by means of prophecy, with the
laying on of the hands of the presbytery." Joh. xx. 21-23, as we have said, is a
commission rather to the Church than to the pastorate. Archbishop Whitgift says
well: "The Bishop, by speaking these words [‘Receive the Holy Ghost,’ etc.] doth
not take upon him to give the Holy Ghost, no more than he doth to remit sins
when he pronounceth the remission of sins; but by speaking these words of Christ
[Joh. xx. 22, 23] he doth show the principal duty of a minister, and assureth
him of the assistance of God’s Holy Spirit if he labour in the same accordingly"
(Works, Parker Society, i. 489).

Episcopacy.

The title bishop (episcopus, "overseer") does not in the New Testament denote a
minister ruling over other ministers; this is generally admitted. The New
Testament episcopus is the overseer of not the shepherds but the flock. One
local church (Phil. i. 1) might have several such "bishops." But this leaves the
question quite open whether such a ruling ministry, however named, existed under
immediate apostolic sanction. That it did so may, we think, be safely inferred,
as follows.

By the close of cent. ii. a definite "episcopacy," in the later sense of the
word, appears practically everywhere in the Church.

And the word episcopus is used in this connexion (e.g., by Irenæus), without the
knowledge, seemingly, of a previous other use. As early as 110 (probably) the
ruling episcopus appears, in the Ignatian Letters, as a most important factor in
Church life, at least in a large circle of churches. Early Church history
presents us consistently thenceforward with the same general constitution. [6]
Now between Ignatius and St. John the interval is not great; say thirty years at
most. It seems unlikely, to say the least, that so large an institution of order
should have arisen, apparently unopposed, without some definite apostolic
precedent. Such precedent we find in the New Testament (a) in the presidency of
Apostles during their lifetime (e.g., of St. Paul at Corinth, and at Ephesus);
(b) in that of their immediate delegates (perhaps appointed pro tempore), as
Timothy and Titus; (c) in that of James the Less in the mother-church
(Jerusalem) of Christendom—a presidency more akin to later episcopacy than
anything else in the New Testament. We further find that all early indications
point to Asia Minor as the scene of the chief development of primeval
episcopacy, and to St John at Ephesus as in a sense its fountain head. It is as
least possible that he, when he took up his abode in Asia, began or developed
there the régime he had known at Jerusalem, and that his example (if not
precept) was rapidly and widely followed.

Meanwhile there is reason to think that the episcopate rather grew out of the
presbyterate, in the order of Providence, than otherwise. The primeval bishop
was not so much of another order as first of his order, for special functions of
government and ministration. Such is St. Jerome’s view, (on Titus, i. 5), cent.
v.; and he regards the bishop as being what he is, not by direct divine law, but
by "the custom of the Church."

On the whole, the data of the New Testament and of the next earliest records
confirm the statement of the Preface to the English Ordinal, that "from the
Apostles’ time there have been these orders of ministers in Christ’s Church,
Bishops, Priests, and Deacons." On the other hand, in view of the sublimely
spiritual character of the Church in its true idea, and of the revealed
immediate union of each member with the Head, by faith, and of the reserve of
the New Testament, we are not authorized to regard even apostolic organization
as a matter of the first order in such a sense as that we should presume to
unchurch Christian communities, holding the apostolic faith of God in Christ,
but not fully organized on what we believe to be the apostolic model. And we
should take good care not to develop that model for ourselves into unlawful
proportions; as in the theory that the bishop is the normal channel of grace to
the lower clergy and the people. On the other hand, no thoughtful Christian will
wish to forget the sacred obligations and benefits of external harmony, and of
continuity and unity of organization, things meant to yield only to yet greater
claims from the side of the highest spiritual truth.

___________________

We append a few statements of opinion on Episcopacy, in the direction of liberal
moderation, by Anglicans of cent. xvi.-xvii. (See Goode, Divine Rule, etc., vol.
ii., pp. 236-348; ed. 1853.)

Jewel (Bishop of Salisbury, 1560-71), Defence of Apology, II., ix., § 1; v., §
1, dwells on the essential oneness of presbyter and bishop, and maintains that
even were the continuity of English episcopal succession broken (as the
Romanists held) it could be restored from within.

Whitgift (Archbishop of Canterbury, 1583-1604) meets the Presbyterian’s claim
that their system was jure divino, not by a counter-claim for episcopacy, but by
the assertions (Defence of Answer, etc.) that (a) no one certain and perfect
form of government is prescribed in Scripture to the Church of Christ; (b) the
essential notes of the Church are only the true preaching of the Word of God and
the right administration of the Sacraments.

Bancroft (Bishop of London and then Archbishop of Canterbury, 1597-1610), at a
conference of bishops (1609) before the consecration to Scottish sees of certain
clergymen in presbyterian orders, maintained, in answer to a doubt raised by
Andrewes (then Bishop of Ely), that there was no necessity for their
re-ordination (as presbyters), "seeing where bishops could not be had,
ordination by presbyters must be esteemed lawful" (Abp Spotswood’s History, iii.
209, ed. 1851). Andrewes concurred. Bancroft held very high views meanwhile of
the vital necessity of episcopacy to the Church ideally.

Hall (Bishop of Exeter and then Norwich, 1627-56) Laud’s chosen literary
defender of Episcopacy, writes (Defense of Remonstrance, § 14; and cp. his
Peacemaker, § 6), "I, onewhere, reckon Episcopacy amongst matters essential to a
Church; anotherwhere, deny it to be of the essence thereof. [But see] the
distinction that I make expressly between the Being and the Well-being of a
church: affirming that those churches to whom this power and faculty is denied
lose nothing of the true essence of a church, though they lose something of
their glory and perfection."

Andrewes (Bishop of Ely and then Winchester, 1609-28) writes to Du Moulin, 1618
(Letter ii.): "Though our government be by divine right, it follows not either
that there is no salvation, or that a church cannot stand, without it. He must
needs be stone blind that sees not churches standing without it; he must needs
be made of iron that denies them salvation."

Ussher (Archbishop of Armagh, 1624-56): "An ordination made by such presbyters
as have severed themselves from those bishops unto whom they have sworn
canonical obedience cannot possibly by me be excused from being schismatical .
Yet for the testifying my communion with those churches (of France and the
Netherlands), which I do love and honour as true members of the Church
Universal, I do profess that with like affection I should receive the blessed
Sacrament at the hands of the Dutch ministers if I were in Holland, as I should
do at the hands of the French ministers if I were at Charenton" (Works, i., 259,
ed. 1847).

Cosin (Bishop of Durham, 1660-74), when actually in exile at Charenton, attended
the Huguenot sacrament, and wrote to a friend (Mr. Cordel, Feb. 7th 1650), who
had scruples on the point: "Considering there is no prohibition of our Church
against it (as there is against our communicating with the Papists, and that
well grounded upon the Scripture and will of God) I do not see but that you may
(either in case of necessity or in regard of declaring your unity in professing
the same religion ) go otherwhiles to communicate reverently with them of the
French Church" (Works, Anglo-Cath. Library, iv., 407. See also the extract from
his Last Will, ibidem, i., xxxii).

See at large Goode, as above; Dean Perowne, Church, Sacraments, and Ministry;
and The Huguenots and the Church of England, a Sermon before the University of
Cambridge (1885), by the Rev. J. de Soyres.

Our purpose in this brief collection will not be mistaken. At the present day we
meet everywhere the two opposite forces of ecclesiastical anarchy and of a
theory which unchurches all Christian societies not of the episcopal regimen. We
have sought to deal with the first above (p. 208). No better means of dealing
with the other appeared than the quotation of the weighty and well-balanced
utterances of men who were no hesitating Anglicans, and not modern
controversialists.

As we leave the subject of the Doctrine of the Ministry, let it be remembered
that the very last purpose of the divinely founded Ministry is to absorb, or to
repress, the energies of the Church at large for witness and service. The words
of Eph. iv. 12 are memorable: "He gave some as pastors and teachers, with a view
to the equipment of the saints for (their) work of active service, for (their)
upbuilding of the body of Christ."


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  CHAPTER 11: CHAPTER XI. THE DOCTRINE OF THE SACRAMENTS.
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The Doctrine of the Sacraments.

"Sacraments ordained of Christ be not only badges or tokens of Christian men’s
profession, but rather they be certain sure witnesses and effectual signs of
grace and God’s good-will towards us, by the which He doth work invisibly in us,
and doth not only quicken (excitat), but also strengthen and confirm our faith
in Him . The Sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon, or to be
carried about, but that we should duly use them. And in such only as worthily
receive the same, they have a wholesome effect or operation. But they that
receive them unworthily purchase to themselves damnation, as St Paul saith"
(Art. XXV.).

The Latin word Sacramentum was long used loosely by Latin Christian writers, so
as to include nearly anything sacred, e.g., a revealed truth (mysterium). By a
large consent of the Christian Church, however, the word is restricted to denote
such Christian rites as have an immediate divine institution and a revealed
connexion with the conveyance of spiritual blessings. Baptism and the Supper of
the Lord alone answer this description. They thus stand in a sacred position of
their own.

The Roman Church reckons Confirmation, Penance, Extreme Unction, Ordination, and
Marriage, as con- stituting with Baptism and the Supper the Seven Sacraments,
each instituted by Christ, and each "a visible sign of an invisible grace,
instituted for our justification," i.e., in the medieval sense of justification,
"for our acceptance and purification." With great ingenuity, but in vain, proof
is alleged that each of the five rites has the authority of Christ as to its
"matter," or element, and its "form," or efficacious verbal formula. (See
Boultbee, On the Articles, pp. 212-16; and Jenkins, Romanism, pp. 87-101.)

As regards the efficacy of Sacraments in general, the medieval theology holds
[1] that the Sacraments so contain grace that the reception of the Sacrament is
the reception of the grace, ex opere operato, and that grace cannot be obtained
by other than sacramental channels, certainly not by faith in the divine promise
alone (see Canons, etc., of Council of Trent, Sess. vii., c. 6, 8). The medieval
idea of "grace," in the sense here in view, is of a mysterious somewhat, an
almost physical agent, capable of being contained and carried by a material
vehicle, and which, received into the soul, gives it a new "habit" (habitus), a
new cast, such as will come out (not of itself, but under proper impulses) in
holiness and righteousness. Grace, "habitual grace," which, on this theory, only
sacraments can infuse (so that they alone are, in this sense, "means of grace"),
is thus nearly akin to "new birth," "new nature." Thus baptism infuses grace in
the form of new birth; while it needs other impulses, divine or human, or both
together, to call out the new born "habit" into holy action. (Mozley, Baptismal
Controversy, Pt I., ch. vii.)

Do we gather from Scripture that this theory rightly represents the function of
Baptism and the Eucharist? We think not. Let us make a brief enquiry, and with
special recollection of the need here of watchfulness over fairness, truth, and
peace of spirit as before God, in view of the controversies which have so long
agitated this sacred region.

The New Testament passages which beyond doubt deal with Sacraments are not very
many. We put aside, by the words "beyond doubt," the discourse of our Lord, Joh.
vi.; a passage about which wide differences of interpretation (in this respect)
have existed in all periods (Waterland, The Eucharist, ch. vi.), and which
cannot be proved exegetically to refer directly to the Eucharist. We cannot
similarly exclude (as has been done) Joh. iii. as not referring to literal
Baptism in the word "water." The collocation there of that word with "Spirit"
seems clearly to point to something so far not of the spiritual order; while yet
the question remains, of course, what is the connexion of the water with the new
birth. Besides this passage we have our Lord’s parting command to His Church to
baptize in the Triune Name (Matt. xxviii. 19; cp. Mar. xvi. 16), and many places
in the Acts, recording the practice, and here and there indicating the doctrine
("for the remission of sins," ii. 38; "wash away thy sins," xxii. 16). In the
Epistles eight or nine places deal with Baptism, teaching that in it we are
baptized into our Lord (Gal. iii. 27), into His death, into His grave (Rom. vi.
3, 4; Col. ii. 12); raised with Him (Col. ii. 13); clothed with Christ (Gal.
iii. 27); saved, that is, saved by the answer of a good conscience in it (1 Pet.
iii. 21); all knit into one body (1 Cor. xii. 13). The Church is (Eph. v. 26)
"sanctified and cleansed by the laver of the water, attended, or conditioned, by
an utterance" (of the divine name and promise). Baptism is the "laver of new
birth" (Tit. iii. 5). On the other hand, baptizing appears as a work secondary
to preaching the gospel (1 Cor. i. 17). The Second Sacrament appears rather more
rarely in didactic passages. We have in the Acts five mentions, without comment,
of the Breaking of Bread (ii. 42, 46, xx. 7, 11, xxvii. 35). We have in the
Epistles two great didactic passages, only two, but fuller than any baptismal
passage (1 Cor. x. 16-21, xi. 17-34). There we gather that the "cup of blessing"
is the common partaking of Christ’s Blood, and the Bread, broken, of His body;
that the partakers of the one bread, or loaf, are as such one body; that the Cup
and the Table (so called, not altar) are the Lord’s; that the Ordinance is the
Lord’s Supper [2]; that it is done "in remembrance of Him" (below, p. 264); that
the partakers "show," announce, proclaim, "the Lord’s death, till He come;" that
to partake unworthily is to be "guilty of His body and His blood," committing a
sin which calls down "judgment," because of "non-discernment of the Lord’s
Body." There is a possible further reference to the rite in 1 Cor. xii. 13; "We
were all made to drink into one spirit. Then, above all, we have the holy
fourfold Record of the Institution (Matt. xxvi.; Mark xiv.; Luke xxii.; 1 Cor.
xi.), from which we gather the ruling fact that the Lord’s Supper stands in
immediate, indissoluble connexion with His Death; that the Bread is the Body not
under any aspect, but as "given," being given, yielded up in sacrifice "for us;"
that the Wine is the Blood not under any aspect, but as "shed," being shed, "for
us," as the Blood of Covenant.

Such is the special New Testament material for sacramental doctrine. It will be
seen that its bulk is not great. It is amply enough to secure the believing
reader’s deep and reverent attention. But it is not enough to justify the
inference that the holy rites stand in the front, so to speak, of Christianity.
If they do stand there, it is a strange paradox that large tracts of the New
Testament are as a fact silent about them, just where emphatic mentions might be
looked for; e.g., the Epistles to the Ephesians and to the Hebrews. [3] And
meanwhile the New Testament directly cautions us against the risk of allowing
even divine rites, whatever their function, to obscure the function of the
moral, spiritual action of the soul (1 Cor. i. 17, x. 1-13; 1 Pet. iii. 21; cp.
Mar. xii. 33, 34; Joh. iv. 23, 24; Rom. ii. 25-9). The Scripture, certainly, is
far more ample and emphatic on Grace than on the Sacraments of grace; on the
efficacy of penitent faith directed with profound simplicity to God and Christ,
rather than on that of the administration of divine ordinances. And we believe
this fact to be a pregnant and directive fact for this whole enquiry, in which
sometimes investigation seems to approach first Sacraments, then Grace, instead
of taking the true order.

The Sacramentalism of the New Testament will not be viewed aright if viewed in
isolation from that of the Old. The Gospel Sacraments are most sacred parts of a
sacred whole, the sacramental Idea pervading Scripture. From the beginning
onward the covenantal Idea appears, and everywhere, at its side, the sacramental
Institution; "certain sure witnesses and effectual signs of grace and God’s good
will," "whereby He doth work invisibly in us," in the world of thought and will,
"and doth not only arouse," as by a vividly presented object of sense, "but also
confirm," as by its revealed designed significance, "our faith in Him;" working
on the soul by way of divine (nothing less than divine) attestation and
ratification. Perhaps the Tree of Life to Adam, certainly the Rainbow to Noah,
Federal Sacrifice (Gen. xv.) and Circumcision (Gen. xvii.; Rom. iv. 10, 11) to
Abraham, the Passover Sacrifice and Feast to Israel; are all instances of one
idea-the giving of an external, and usually lasting or recurring, divine sign
along with a divine promise. [4] It is the same thing, in its last and noblest
development, when at length the eternal Covenant appears fully revealed, and
brings with it its Laver, its Bread, its Cup.

Taken thus in harmony with the long past of the ways of God, the Christian
Sacraments are, as to their place in Christianity, as intelligible (we use the
word most reverently) as divine. They are in plain harmony with the first truths
and inmost genius of that Gospel of sovereign and mysterious grace, of direct
spiritual contact between God and believing man, of which they are the
Sacraments. It would be an anomaly, requiring quite peculiar evidence, if the
crowning Dispensation of salvation should depend for its spiritual efficacy not
less but more than earlier Dispensations (as that represented in the Psalms and
Prophets) on bodily actions and receptions. It is in proportion at once with the
Old Testament and the Gospel that the two physical Institutions of the Gospel
(the phrase will be understood) should have a work to do precious, venerable,
holy, divine, but a work of not infusion but attestation; as divine Seals upon
the eternal Covenant, working in the line of humble but luminous faith, and in
entire accord with the observed phenomena of that manifested Life of Grace which
is the "intrinsic final cause" of the Gospel.

Thus let special sacramental study be approached in the line of pre-evangelical
sacraments. It is a line not much followed at present; but in earlier times it
was not so. Bernard (cent. xii.) speaks (Sermo in Cœnâ, Opera, ed. Paris, 1839,
vol. i., p. 1948) of Circumcision as the "former sacrament" of the grace of
baptism. And Mozley (Bapt. Controversy Pt i., ch. vii. and Note 19) very fully
illustrates the antiquity of such views as against a later tendency to
depreciate the grace and the sacraments of the Old ‘I’estament.

That the Christian Sacraments are covenanting rites appears clearly from the
words of the Institution of the Eucharist. In every account the Cup, the
sacramental Blood, is "of the Covenant, the New Covenant;" while the whole rite
is linked indissolubly to the covenant sacrifice and feast of the Passover. And
the connexion of Baptism with "the Name" of the Christian’s God speaks to the
same fact. In each rite God in Christ attests and ratifies His relations and
gifts of life and peace with His true Israel, individually and also as to the
community. The community is especially prominent in the eucharistic rite, whose
significance is quite expressly connected (1 Cor. x.) with common partici-
pation; a fact recognized by our Churrch in the strict prohibition (see Rubrics
after the Communion Office, and after the Communion of the Sick) of a solitary
Eucharist, even in the hour of death.

The covenant-sealing work of Sacraments was the ruling view of the framers of
our Articles and Offices, in their maturest convictions. It is instructive to
read, in illustration of this, the three Sacramental Sermons of Bullinger (vol.
v., Parker Society,) in which that view is largely expounded. Bullinger, though
a foreigner, was a chosen friend of the Anglican reformers and specially
esteemed by them as a sacramental teacher. And in the reign of Elizabeth his
doctrinal sermons (Decades, sets of ten) were systematically imposed by
Convocation on the less educated clergy as their authorized body of divinity.
Bullinger is equally ernest to preclude a false mysteriousness of theory, and to
enjoin a deep intelligent reverence in use.

In our conviction, this view of the function of the holy Sacraments secures as
no other view does just those two objects. In this view, alike at the Font and
at the Table, the conception and expectation of blessing will be as clear and as
purely spiritual as when the "means" used is, for instance, the Scripture, or
secret prayer. Yet will the Sacrament have a peculiar and inestimably precious
function. In it, as in nothing else, God in Christ, through ordered human
ministration, but most really, is present to meet spiritual faith with material
token, stepping out of His invisible and spiritual region of action just so far
as to touch, as it were with a sensible contact, the believer in his faith. The
Water is not transubstantiated, nor transformed, into the Spirit, nor the Bread
and Wine into Christ (see further below, p. 260). But the Water, the Bread, the
Wine, are not bare signs, mere occasions of reminiscence, however tender. They
are the personally given Warrants and Witnesses of eternal realities; such that
as surely as they are used in faith, so surely are the blessings faith seeks
certified, not by man but God, definitely, specially, infallibly, to the user.
The hour of communion is thus indeed an hour with God, with the Son of God, "who
loved us and gave Himself for us." It is a blessed hour of remembrance, of
meditation; but far more. It is an hour in which He speaks to us, and as it were
sensibly touches us, in the ordinance of, not our invention, but His command.
The holy Bread, the holy Cup, are received as from His hand, as truly (to faith)
as they were received at the first Administration. The disciple literally in
them "touches his salvation," in its attesting and lawfully conveying Seal. He
goes forth fed and refreshed with Jesus Christ, who has thus solemnly made over
to him anew His sacrificed Body and His outpoured Blood; that is, His finished
Sacrifice, bearing its "innumerable benefits" (below, p. 260).

This view is no modernism. In one well known passage St Bernard thus describes
the special function of Sacraments (Sermo in Cœnâ, c. 2, as referred to above,
p. 240): "A sacrament is a sacred sign, or sacred mystery (secretum). Many
things are done for themselves alone; but other things in order to designate
something else, and are themselves called signs, as they are. To take an
instance from common life: a ring is given for the ring’s sake, and there is no
significance; it is given to invest an heir in some inheritance, and it is a
sign. The recipient can in that case say, The ring avails nothing, but yet is it
the inheritance which I sought. In this manner the Lord, drawing near His
passion, took means so to invest His people in His grace, that the invisible
grace might be granted (præstaretur) by some visible sign. To this end were all
sacraments instituted . Investitures vary with the things in question; for
instance, a canon is invested by (per) a book, an abbot by a staff, a bishop by
a staff and ring." The function of the sacrament here is that of lawful
attestation, obsignation, conveyance, after the manner of title-deed. It is
remarkable that a century later this passage of "the last of the Fathers" was
criticized by Aquinas Summa iii., lxii., i., § 3), as inadequate, as making the
sacrament a (legal) sign only, whereas "by many testimonies of the saints" it
was a "cause of grace."

The statements of Bernard afford, as we venture to believe, a clue to an inner
or underlying meaning in much (we certainly do not say all) of the exalted
language of the ancient Church about the Sacraments. From the very first, even
in the New Testament itself (cp. Gal. iii. 26 with 27), language tended, because
this is a deeply natural tendency, to speak of the sign and seal in terms of the
thing signed and sealed, of the Sacrament in terms of the Thing (Res); so that
Baptism came to be called "regeneration," "illumination," and the like, while
all the time it was possible to receive the Sign without the Thing, and the
Thing without the Sign (as Cornelius did, Acts x.). As time went on, it proved
only too possible for the visible and tangible in religion to overlay the
related spiritual and eternal; and so it was with the Sacraments. But witnesses
to the original idea were still not wanting. In the patristic treatment, e.g.,
of Baptism (Mozley, as quoted above) it is remarkable that regeneration and
kindred terms, however close their identification with Baptism, are usually
treated as meaning not merely changes of status, or gifts of latent faculty but
actual and positive changes of character from evil to good, from love of sin to
love of holiness. Such language is difficult, we think impossible, to reconcile,
in a sacramental theory, with facts, unless the theory be that indicted in St
Bernard’s words. And so far the presence of such language in the Fathers is a
witness to what at least had been believed of the work of Sacraments. So we
think is the primitive custom of administering Baptism by preference at Easter
and Whitsuntide. If the holy rite is the infusion of new birth and nature, its
delay by a day, by an hour, much more by months, is terrible. Not so if it is
the solemn sealing of a covenant, whose internal realities rise above limits of
date and season. And this view comes out, as it seems to us, in the discussions
of the Schoolmen themselves. Lombard (cent. xii.) examines the work of Baptism
in his Sententiæ, in a passage full not only of subtle thought but of strong
common sense. One statement is remarkable (Lib. iv., Dist. iv., § 7): "Do not
wonder that the Thing sometimes precedes the Sacrament, since sometimes it
follows long after."

Much that we have said as to this aspect of language has reference to baptismal
doctrine. But it bears equally on eucharistic; for the Sacraments are things of
one kind. The late Dr T. S. L. Vogan (True Doctrine of the Eucharist) has shown,
with much wealth of proof and strength of reasoning, that views now widely
current on the Holy Communion (e.g., that in or with the Elements in the
Eucharist, there, where they are, is the "Real Objective Presence of the
glorified Body of Christ, and that the blessed rite is a sacrifice of peace and
propitiation), are not only not the meaning of Holy Scripture, but not the
teaching of primitive antiquity when words come to be weighed. See by all means
his work, especially chapters v.-xiv. The older and classical work of Waterland,
On the, Eucharist (early cent. xviii.), bears in the same direction. Much of his
enquiry and discussion, highly technical in parts, comes to the Bernardine view,
if we may call it so, to which full reference is made by Waterland, ch. vii. One
remark which he makes (at the close of chap. vii.) on the theory of
Transubstantiation is a key to much of his teaching. He says that it is a
needless theory, for "will nothing satisfy, except the wax and parchments [of a
deed or conveyance] be transubstantiated into terra firma?"

We have said above, what our older divines fully owned, that the Sacrament is
often spoken of in terms of the Thing. This, carefully remembered, explains an
observable fact in much of the Anglican theology of cent. xvi, xvii. The
teachers of that time habitually use the highest and noblest language about
Baptism. "Our second birth is by the water of baptism," says Cranmer, for
instance; and the quotation might be paralleled indefinitely. Yet these same
writers, when speaking to individual consciences, speak of justification, and of
regeneration, very much as the modern "Evangelical" might do. It was Cranmer who
composed the Third Homily. Bishop Hall (Works, vi., 249, ed. 1837; see the
passage) says, "Christ dwells in our hearts by faith; a man may have a saving
faith before baptism." And Ussher (Body of Divinity, ch. xlii., ed. 1841) has
this remarkable passage: "We may rather deem and judge [as against the theory
that in the baptism of infants a ‘habit of grace is infused’ [5]] baptism is not
actually effectual to justify and sanctify until the party do believe and
embrace the promises . Baptism is a seal of the righteousness of Christ, to be
extraordinarily applied by the Holy Ghost, if [the infant] die in its infancy;
to be apprehended by faith if it live to years of discretion. So that as Baptism
administered to those of years is not effectual, unless they believe; so we can
take no comfortable use of our baptism administered in our infancy, until we
believe All the promises of grace were in my Baptism estated upon me, and sealed
up unto me, on God’s part; but then I come to have the profit and benefit of
them, when I come to understand what grant, God, in Baptism, hath sealed unto
me, and actually to lay hold on it by faith."

In the same spirit speaks the learned and saintly Beveridge. His language about
the dignity of Sacraments is most exalted, but when he comes to enforce the need
of Regeneration (Sermon lxxiii.) in practical preaching, he scarcely alludes to
the font, but makes his whole appeal take the line of the enquiry, "Are you
bringing forth the fruit of the Spirit? For there, and only there, is the sure
proof that you have ever been born of Him." (See Addenda, p. 268.) So Jeremy
Taylor (On the Spirit of Grace, Sermon i.), addressing unspiritual church-goers:
"They were washed with water, but never baptized with the Spirit . They would
think the preacher rude if he should say they are not Christians, they are not
within the covenant of the Gospel. But it is certain the Spirit of manifestation
is not yet upon them; and that is the first effect of the Spirit whereby we can
be called sons of God . If the Spirit be in you, you are in It . If the Holy
Ghost be not come on you to great purposes of holiness, ye are yet in the
flesh." The great Hooker uses language (Eccl. Pol., bk v., cc. 58-65) of the
highest technicality about holy Baptism, and seems to assign to it (we do not
think, by the context, that he really does so) the function of positively
beginning the sanctified life where that life begins at all. Yet when he, like
Beveridge and Taylor, speaks to living men, he speaks otherwise, because from
another point of view. In his two Sermons on St Jude, 17-21 (Ser. i., § 4), he
depicts (surely from his own consciousness) the experience of a true conversion,
in words which might be used by a Whitefield, or a Wesley; and concludes : "If
the Spirit have been thus effectual in the secret work of our Regeneration unto
newness of life we say boldly with the blessed Apostle, ‘We are not of them
which withdraw ourselves unto perdition, but of them which follow faith to the
salvation of the soul.’" Long before Hooker, Augustine had written (on 1 Joh.
v., § 7) : "Let all be baptized, let all enter the Church walls; the children of
God are only distinguished from the children of the devil by love. They who have
not love are not born of God."

Certain points of detail connected with both the holy Sacraments, and with each,
are briefly noticed below. We conclude our general treatment with the confession
of belief that in the whole study two drifts of opinion are to be watchfully,
while in a spirit of holy charity, avoided. One goes towards making them the
means of grace, channels sui generis for the infusion of divine nature and life.
The other goes towards making them mere symbols, illustrations, occasions of
recollection. It is not so. They are not creative, but obsignatory. They are not
human, but divine.

SUPPLEMENTARY.

Certain Points of Sacramental Doctrine.

Sacraments in General.

The Church Catechism, (in its sacramental section, added 1604; drawn up by Dean
Overall, on the basis of the Smaller Catechism of Dean Nowell) is verbally
ambiguous on the word Sacrament; see the second and third answers. But it is
plain that the first of these two is the stricter and defining statement. The
other will naturally describe the word in a larger and derived sense; the
sacramental institution, or occasion. Art. XXIX. is sufficient witness that the
sign may be wholly disconnected from the grace.

"A means whereby we receive the same." These words of our Catechism are never to
be forgotten. The question remains, however, what class or kind of means? The
word "means" may equally denote either lawful "conveyance," as of title (see
above, p. 242) to inheritance or possession, or infusion, as of substance or
nature. We think that the former alternative is indicated as the intention of
the passage, by the cast of the theology (above, p. 241) on which, as a whole,
this part of the Catechism was based. Nowell’s Longer Catechism, sanctioned by
Convocation, 1570, fully explains the work of sacraments, and makes no reference
to infusion of life or nature. Their function is: (a) "that God’s promises may
be presented to our senses, that they may be confirmed to our minds without
doubting;" (b) "that they should be certain marks and tokens of our profession."
Meanwhile he says of them just below, "by the one we are born again, and by the
other we are nourished unto everlasting life" (ed. Parker Society, pp. 205-207).

We may say that the Sacrament is "a means whereby we receive," inasmuch as it is
the divinely given ordinance of institution (p. 242), in which the worthy
receiver sees and touches, as it were, the Hand that consigns to faith the gifts
of life and peace; in which he receives from it, as in a holy "deed," his
possessions. It is "a pledge to assure us thereof," in closest connexion with
that fact. As it is God’s ordinance of institution, so faith, taking and
pondering it, finds it its powerful present "excitation and confirmation," and
also its "pledge" of a glorious future. (See further Addenda, p. 268.)

"Generally necessary to salvation." The word "generally" cannot here mean
strictly "universally" for no one, certainly in Western Christendom, holds this
of the Eucharist in the case of infants. See further the important third Rubric
(based on St Augustine) after the Office of Communion of the Sick; and, with
regard to the "necessity" of Baptism "where it may be had," see the Comment on
the Gospel in the Adult Baptismal Service. The word "necessary" is to be
interpreted in relation to the divine blessings "conveyed" in the two
Sacraments, compared with those conveyed in the alleged other five Sacraments.
Without death to sin and life to righteousness, and without the Body and Blood
of Christ, there is no salvation ; not so without "grace of orders," for
instance. And as in the order of the Church Visible the two Sacraments are the
divine counterparts of those absolutely necessary graces, they are, in relation
to that order, generally necessary.

Language of Ceremony. Ceremony, by a general law of language, freely borrows the
terminology of the facts related to it, but only in a certain sense. A man may
be ceremonially "made" king before he actually "becomes" king (so David, 1 Sam.
xvi.) ; or again, after he actually "has become" king, as at almost every
coronation. This is not accidental or arbitrary, but has to do with the
permanent relations between facts and their symbols and seals. Meanwhile symbol
and seal have a great work to do, only not the work of origination.

As regards the origination of grace, so to speak, by sacraments, our Articles
nowhere speak of it, nor does the sacramental part of the Catechism. On the
words "in my baptism," at the beginning of the Catechism, see just below.

On the word "in":-"in my Baptism"; "our spiritual food and sustenance in [the
Lord’s Supper]." The phrases are ideal, mystical. "In," in sacramental language,
is not a synonym for "at" so as decisively to tie the reception of the Grace to
the moments of the Sacrament. Those moments have indeed a most special
sacredness and blessing for the faithful recipient of the holy Elements. But the
analogy of the words "in circumcision" (Rom. iv. 10) indicates, as the essential
meaning of these phrases, connexion with the covenant thus sacramentally
signified and ratified. And the inmost principles of the Gospel of grace warn us
against the least needless pressure of conditions of time and place in the
matter of reception of the life eternal.

The Scholastics, in discussing the blessings of adult baptism, argued with much
subtlety that the moment of the rite cannot be the moment of "justification"
(which with them means, practically, regeneration). For the sincere catechumen
is already justus before God, as already repenting and believing, and the
insincere can only become justus later, on repenting and believing, when, and
not before, the covenanted blessing of justification becomes his.

See on this whole question the important discussion of Mozley, Bapt. Contr., Pt
ii., ch. ix; and cp. Pt i., ch. ix.

Extension of the Incarnation. One important and influential view of the
Sacraments may be stated somewhat as follows. Our Lord, by His holy Incarnation,
provided for the re-creation in us of the whole Nature of which He became the
Second Head, and of course therefore for the re-creation of flesh as well as
spirit. Now as His Incarnation was no mere abstract, or spiritual, "becoming
flesh," so the impartation of its blessings must be by means not only spiritual
but physical. In the Sacraments the physical and spiritual so concur that by
them man in his double nature is put into not partial but complete vivifying
contact with the Incarnate Glorified Lord in His whole Being (see Addenda, p.
268). This refined and in some respects beautiful theory, seems, however, to
lack solid support from Scripture, though related to some of its deepest truths.
The share (yet future, Rom. viii. 23) of the body in redemption, and the
connexion of our union with Christ with the present sanctification and future
glorification of the body, are truths most surely revealed. But Rom. viii. 11, a
pregnant verse in a context full of primary truths bearing on this problem,
indicates to us that in the order of grace the body is, as it were, approached
through the spirit; that its glorification will be "by," or "because of," the
present inhabitation of the Holy Spirit in the saint, such an inhabitation as
has to do with his "minding the things of the Spirit" (ver. 5). His body
meanwhile, as to actual conditions, is "dead, because of sin" (cp. 2 Cor. iv.
16), in a sense antithetical to that in which "the Spirit is life" (ver. 10).
And when that body is "sown" it is "not that body that shall be" (1 Cor. xv.
37). With the Incarnate and Glorified we are indeed one, in our whole being, so
that our whole being shall share the transfiguration due to that union. But that
union is by the Holy Spirit alone, not by the subsidiary way of physical or
quasi-physical contact with the Glorified Body of the Redeemer, however the idea
of such contact may be subtilized. (See above, p. 135.)

Holy Baptism.

"Baptism is not only a sign of profession, and mark of difference, whereby
Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened (a non
Christianis), but it is also a sign of Regeneration or New Birth whereby, as by
an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly (rectè) are grafted into the
Church" [defined Art. XIX.]; "the promises of the forgiveness of sin, and of our
adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost, are visibly signed and sealed;
faith is confirmed, and grace increased by virtue of prayer unto God.

"The Baptism of young children is in any wise to be retained in the Church, as
most agreeable with the institution of Christ." (Art. XXVII.)

Certain Theories of the Work of Baptism. We have indicated already in outline
one widely prevalent theory; that at and by Baptism, by the will of God, the
recipient gets a germ of life eternal, not otherwise ordinarily given. This germ
is held to be rather a faculty than a tendency; it not only may but will come to
nothing but for after mercies of God. But when, in His after dealings, spiritual
fruit appears, it is to the baptismal germ, to the then implanted framework of
the new nature, that we are to go back for one great part of the cause. Not many
years ago a man, awakened to divine faith and love, called to see his devout and
holy pastor, and told his tale of peace and joy. "These are fruits of your
Baptism," was the response. But it appeared that the new convert, "born again to
a living hope," had not been baptized, and came to seek the blessing of Baptism.

We have sought already to point out what seem to us to be grave objections to
the theory thus indicated, objections from the nature of the Gospel, and from
the facts of life-a branch of evidence never to be forgotten.

Another theory, also widely influential, is that to the worthy recipient of
Baptism are given, at and through the rite, as God’s appointed vehicle, pardon
of original sin and of all past sins; the certainty of the special presence of
the Holy Spirit with the soul, specially to plead with it, and generally to
renew it; and also eternal life, in the sense of glory to come, contingently
upon persevering faith and obedience. Such is Baptism to the sincere adult, and
this is the regeneration of Baptism. The insincere gets none of these gifts in
present fruition; though he gets the real benefit of recognized connexion with
the Church of Christ. As regards the infant, brought to Baptism, the gifts are
always certain, because the infant can oppose no obstacle to grace. As life
developes the will may, or may not, yield to the Spirit: the spiritual gift may,
or may not, be followed by moral transformation. (Bishop Browne on Art. XXVII.)

A serious difficulty in this view appears to us to be that it takes a lower idea
of regeneration, new birth, divine spiritual filiation, than the Scriptures. A
regenerate person in this view might be, and alas too often is, one who has
never shown the least special yielding to the Holy Spirit’s power; who has
always ignored or resisted it. But both Scripture and on the whole the Fathers
(see above, p. 244) connect with regeneration, and the large mass of kindred
phraseology ("child of God," etc.), the idea of actual moral goodness-not the
mere faculty, but the seen character; the state of a really changed heart. And
it is to be observed further, that the view of infant regeneration as secured by
the absence of obstacle is nowhere stated in our Articles, or Services, or
Catechism. It was noted as an innovation in England early cent. xvii.

Another view is, that the function of Baptism is to convey an outward status, to
induct into Church privileges, to give to the recipient a position in which
Gospel promises are, by an act of divine appointment, brought specially near for
use, so that whatever belongs to the Church Visible is lawfully and already
possessed for use. This very nearly approaches the last view, only with the im-
portant difference that it does not teach the definite and special dwelling of
the Holy Spirit with or in the baptized. The same difficulty occurs here as in
the other case; that of the use of the word Regeneration. See further below, p.
255.

To us, no view of the work of holy Baptism more commends itself than that of
Archbishop Ussher, given above (p. 246). We may call it the federal view. The
immemorial ritual of Baptism reminds us that from the earliest days, not to
speak of Scripture itself (above, p. 240), Baptism has been viewed as a federal
covenanting transaction. And in Scripture, in cases of covenanting, there is a
tendency (not arbitrary, but natural) to use positive terms, and in the present
tense, about things which from another point are contingent and future; the
visible token being taken for the coming reality (e.g., Gen. xv. 18; Exod.
xxxiv. 10, 11).

The federal view may be briefly stated as asserting that the promises of grace
and salvation are assured to the recipient (child or adult), under the new and
better Covenant, by its divine Christian Seal, which is to be used in humble
boldness by faith, either then and there by the conscious adult Christian, or in
due time by the then unconscious child.

Remission of Original Sin in Baptism (Homily iii.). This mysterious gift
(Mozley, Bapt. Contr., Pt i., ch. iv., calls it "incomprehensible forgiveness,"
because it is of "incomprehensible sin") has been widely and anciently held to
be given specially "in" Baptism, even where other gifts, as of true
regeneration, were not given. Our Church refers to it in Hom. iii., but does not
anywhere define it dogmatically. It cannot be said to be a direct revelation, as
regards any distinction it implies between remission of sin and remission of
sins. We may venture to say that its practical significance, as presented for
our assent, is that Baptism is the divine sacramental attestation that, in and
through Christ, man, as man, despite the Fall and its mysterious results of
inherited guilt, is wholly welcome to come personally to God in Christ.

Joh. iii. 1-8. This great passage includes a distinct allusion (above, p. 236)
to the baptismal rite. But it does not say that the concurrence of the Water and
the Spirit is necessary, or even normal, certainly not in point of time. And it
lays down with divine emphasis the principle that in every case (ver. 8) of
spiritual regeneration two facts concur, whatever are the other conditions; (a)
sovereignty and mystery, "the wind bloweth where it listeth; thou knowest not
whence or whither"; and (b) verifiable result, "thou hearest the sound thereof."

Ecclesiastical Regeneration. We have indicated above (p. 253) the view which may
be thus designated. We refer to it here to remark that it is a true view just so
far as it is held in relation to the doctrine of the Church as invisible and the
Church as visible (above, p. 202). As there is Church and Church, Body and Body,
so, and only so, there is Regeneration and Regeneration. The outward and visible
may, and ideally should, coincide with the spiritual and real. But, alas, it
does not do so actually, in too many instances. In all instances, however, the
outward rite has a real and true relation to the outward and visible aspect of
the Church, and has from this point "much profit every way." But this leaves
untouched the question what, really and ultimately, does New Birth mean, and
what makes it, and what shows it. And this question is supremely important.

Confirmation of the Baptized. This rite appears so early in Church History as to
warrant its derivation from the apostolic laying on of hands in the reception of
(not the graces of faith, hope, and love, but) the miraculous charismata; which
do not appear in Scripture to have been ever received through any but the
Apostles (p. 142). As our Service stands, it is practically the completion, or
realization, of Baptism; the baptized openly and ceremonially acknowledging his
baptismal covenant engagement. And the chief Pastor both beseeches from the Lord
the developed power of the Holy Spirit in the soul-thus claiming in faith its
baptismal covenant heritage-and assures it, in the name of the Church, by the
apostolic manual act of imposition, of the certainty of the divine promise.
Confirmation is just not a sacrament, because lacking the Saviour’s institution.
But it carries all the weight of attestation and "conveyance " (p. 243) that can
be given by apostolic suggestion and primeval practice. It may be viewed, inter
alia, as the quasi-sacrament of what some Christians call the "second blessing;"
the realization of the highest life of the new-born soul in the more fully
received power of the Spirit.

Infant Baptism. It is well known that a large body of Christians, since cent.
xvi. especially, maintain that Baptism is only for those already believing. In
our view the question is very nearly reduced to this: is Holy Baptism a
covenanting ordinance? If it is, as we think most assuredly it is, then both the
analogy of the Abrahamic covenant (of grace, Gen. xvi.), and the express words
of the New Testament (Acts ii. 38, 39; cp. 1 Cor. vii. 14), indicate that in
some sense, and certainly up to the length of a right to outward Church
privileges, the children of the already members of the covenant are within it.
And if so they have a right to its visible seal.

In the New Testament we have not indeed any mention of Infant Baptism. But we
find not the least explicit caution against it, and no injunction to Christian
parents to prepare their children for Baptism. There is, on the other hand, at
least high probability that existing Jewish usage made it regular for a
proselyte to be baptized with his children (Wall, Infant Baptism, Introduction).
The whole analogy of circumcision (which is surely present to St Paul’s mind,
Col. ii. 11, 12) goes in the direction of Infant Baptism; and makes it fair to
say that the silence of our Lord is much more for than against Infant Baptism.
It may fairly be said that the commission, Matt. xxviii. 19, if we may for the
moment imagine it given by Moses, not Christ, might have run; "Make disciples of
all nations, and circumcise them into the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob"; and that this would not have excluded, but implied, infant-circumcision
as the extension (which it was) of adult.

It is true that few certain notices of Infant Baptism are to be found before
cent. iii., and that Tertullian even seems to deprecate it (de Bapt., c. 19).
Much later still, devout Christians, like Monnica, Augustine’s mother (cent.
iv.), often postponed the Baptism of their children (though getting them
initiated as catechumens) till evidences of conversion appeared. But we think
the evidence against the primeval use of it quite insufficient, and that such
practices as Monnica’s arose not a little from an oblivion of its covenantal
function and an exaggerated view of its purifying power opere operato.

Meanwhile, observe the very temperate language of Art. XXVII. on the subject.
And Infant Baptism is not in such a sense "of faith" that the Christian who
reverently declines its use for his children is therefore heretical. Dr Wall,
whose History of Infant Baptism (1705) received the thanks of Convocation,
entirely declines to make it thus de fide. He pleads, on that very ground, with
the Baptists of his day not to break with the National Church on this point.
Were he in a country where the national Church was not pædo-baptist he would
seek Infant Baptism, in conscience, for his children, but he would attend the
Communion Table of the national Church (vol. ii., ch. xi.).

Sponsors in Baptism. This institution is traceable to Jewish usage (Wall, vol.
i., p. 35). Tertullian (late cent. ii.) refers to it as an established Christian
institution. The purpose is partly theoretical and doctrinal, to signify that
the candidate is brought to Baptism, not in virtue of merely physical descent,
but because of Church connexion, which gives a reason why parents should not be
sponsors; partly practical, to secure in a special way fuller Christian
influence for the baptized. In Infant Baptism the child is treated, symbolically
and federally, as a catechumen; and this aspect of the rite (an aspect the exact
opposite to superstition) is kept prominent by the answers given pro tempore in
its name by the Sponsors. Those answers are formally and ceremonially "taken
over" by the baptized at Confirmation. It is almost needless to say that morally
and spiritually they are to be "taken over" so soon as reason and conscience can
at all understand their import. The thought that the Sponsors till then, or till
Confirmation, bear the moral responsibility for the child is not an uncommon one
among the people; but it is of course an illusion. The sponsorial responsibility
is most real and solemn, but (see the language of our Services) widely different
from this.

Order of study. Observe that our Articles and Catechism study Baptism first in
the adult, then in the infant, not vice versâ. Ideally, the baptized person
"seeks the faith," is instructed, admitted as a believer, and so baptized. So,
ideally, the Israelite (if Abraham was his prototype) was circumcised. But the
ideal, as in many another case, while remaining a testimony and exposition of
principles, ceased at once in Circumcision, and (as we believe) in Baptism, to
be the rule of usage. We baptize infants because of the Covenant; we study the
Covenant, and its terms, and seals, in the adult.

Sprinkling or Immersion. Baptist Christians hold that entire bodily immersion is
absolutely essential to Christian Baptism. We believe this to be untenable by
Scripture. True, Scripture indicates a usage of immersion in the apostolic
missions, very plainly. And it connects Baptism with our Lord’s Death, Burial,
and Resurrection, doctrinally. But characteristically it gives no directions in
detail how to baptize; and it seems more scriptural to believe that any
"washing" with the prescribed Element, in the Blessed Name, is (though a
minimum) valid, than to hold that the covenanting ordinance depends for validity
on the literal immersion of the person. It is remarkable that the earliest
sub-apostolic account of Baptism (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, ch. vii.)
expressly provides for "pouring water on the head" where immersion cannot be
had. The Church of England makes immersion her first alternative, meanwhile, in
the baptismal rubrics.

The Holy Communion.

"The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to
have among themselves one to another; but rather it is a Sacrament of our
Redemption by Christ’s death: insomuch that to such as rightly, (ritè),
worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the bread which we break is a
partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the cup of blessing is a partaking
of the Blood of Christ.

"Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of bread and wine) in the
Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by Holy Writ; but it is repugnant to the
plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given
occasion to many superstitions.

"The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an
heavenly and spiritual manner. And the means whereby the Body of Christ is
received and eaten in the Supper is Faith.

"The Sacrament" (observe the exact use of the word) "of the Lord’s Supper was
not by Christ’s ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped."
(Art. XXVIII.)

"The wicked, and such as be void of a lively faith, although they do carnally
and visibly press with their teeth (as St Augustine saith) the Sacrament" (again
note the word) "of the Body and Blood of Christ, yet in no wise are they
partakers of Christ; but rather, to their condemnation, do eat and drink the
sign or Sacrament of so great a Thing." (Art. XXIX.)

"The offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and
satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and
there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone. Wherefore the
sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the Priest did
offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt,
were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits." (Art. XXXI.)

The Body and Blood of Christ. The devout and accurate study of these sacred
words in their sacramental use is a pre-requisite to all true eucharistic
teaching. To ascertain their divinely-intended meaning we go of course to the
four Records of the Institution; by SS. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul. We find
that SS. Matthew and Mark give only, "Take, eat; this is My Body;" St Luke,
"This is My Body, which is being given for you; this do in remembrance of Me;"
St Paul, "This is My Body which is being broken for you," or simply, "which is
for you" (the reading is questioned; but even in the latter reading the omitted
word is implied by the previous context). Again, SS. Matthew and Mark give,
"This [Cup] is My Blood of the New Covenant which is being shed for many" ("for
the remission of sins," adds St Mark); St Luke, "This Cup is the New Covenant in
My Blood which is being shed for you;" St Paul, "This Cup is the New Covenant in
My Blood; do this, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of Me."

In interpretation, we must take the longer forms. And these show us that the
Body in the Eucharist is not the Body absolutely, but the Body regarded as being
"given for us." And the Wine (which indeed is not verbally mentioned) is not the
Blood absolutely, but the Blood regarded as being "poured out for many, for the
remission of sins." It is "the Cup of the New Covenant in Christ’s Blood as
being shed for us;" "the New Covenant in His Blood."

Further, we find the two Elements, two utterances, and two deliveries, side by
side, but separate; the Blood separate from the Body. At the blessed moment of
the first Lord’s Supper our Lord and Saviour was living Man, His blood flowing
in His veins. The qualifying words, used at such a moment, were all significant.
He was putting Himself before His disciples as already in the then fast
approaching state in which the Blood should be parted from the Body; that is, in
the state of death. In that state the holy sacrificed Body, given for us, would
be apart, and the holy Blood, poured out for us, apart. The separation of the
Elements, along with the full words of delivery, is eloquent of the state of
Death.

Thus indeed, "as often as we eat that bread and drink that cup, we proclaim,
tell forth" (katangellein, see below, p. 264), as our creed and our peace, "the
Lord’s Death, till He come."

The words, thus studied, give no real support to certain famous theories of the
Eucharist, which yet claim to be above all things jealous of the words. The
Roman doctrine [6] is that at consecration the "Substance" (i.e. essence,
supposed to underlie all "accidents" or physical manifestations) of the whole
glorified Christ, Body, Blood, Soul, Spirit, Deity, takes the place of the
"substance" of the bread and wine, so that every particle of each Element is He,
as truly as His glorified Person on the throne is He; and is likewise to be
worshipped. The doctrine of Luther was that, at consecration, "in, with, or
under the bread is the Glorified Body;" but Luther did not teach "eucharistic
adoration." A widely prevalent teaching in the English Church now is that the
consecrated bread "has under its form the presence of the Glorified Body;" and
that Christ is to be adored accordingly as in the Elements-a very different
thing from adoring Him as present in His ordinance, as He is present in every
other ordinance, e.g. in prayer, private or public, and in His Word. The words
of Institution give no real support to any of these views. Let those words be
fully preserved in our interpretation, and let the sacred Blood have its place
of distinct and equal honour, and it will be seen that a very large range of
inferences, sometimes taught as if directly revealed truths, prove to have no
basis in the words of the Lord Himself. His words point directly, not to Glory,
but to Death; not to the Throne, but to the Cross; to Propitiation, Atonement,
Sacrifice, Offering, there completed for ever.

It is observable that under the often glowing language of the Fathers this
aspect of the Eucharist is on the whole in view. They see in the Elements not
Christ as He is, but the Body and Blood of Christ as He was, and is (actually)
no more, for us (see Vogan, True Doctrine of the Eucharist, Pt i., ch. xiv.). So
do our Reformed Anglican divines till well within this century (ibid., ch. xv.).
So certainly does our Church in Liturgy, Articles, and Catechism.

It is clear that in this view a Presence of Christ in the Elements is not to be
sought. For "the Body and the Blood" are not the equivalent for Christ. They are
not the whole Christ, but those parts of His blessed Constitution whose
separation testified His Death. And again, that state of them and of His
constitution is for ever past. As to actual being, as a state, it is no more. It
therefore cannot be "there," except "in a certain manner." That manner is
sacramental, mystical. The Elements which He ordained to represent validly to
His true disciples His Body as slain for them, and His Blood as shed for them,
now eighteen centuries ago, are most truly "there," as His warrant and
conveyance to their faith of all the benefits of the Passion. In that sense, the
Body and the Blood are there, and in no other sense at all revealed.

The words of Waterland (On the Eucharist, ch. vi.) are remarkable. "Spiritual
feeding in this case, directly and primarily, means the eating and drinking our
Lord’s Body broken and Blood shed; that is, partaking of the Atonement made by
His death and sufferings; this is the ground and basis of all the rest . The
foundation of all our privileges is our having a part in that Reconciliation."

Waterland insists, as of course he must, on our blissful union and communion
with the Glorified Lord, and how this has a holy and delightful connexion with
the Eucharist. But he points out that the connexion is not direct, but indirect.
Directly, we "feed on" Christ as He was, or more strictly on His Body and Blood
as they were; upon the finished Work of Calvary, as our avenue to all other
blessings, "the innumerable benefits of His Passion." "To be refreshed with His
Body and Blood" is thus a phrase which points, directly, not to the infusion of
His life-power, but to the reconciliation, peace, and joy of our acceptance in
Him slain for us. Meanwhile, let the disciple never forget that the eucharistic
hour is meant to be a sacredly special occasion of that exercise of faith by
which indeed we "feed on Him" in the whole range of what He is to us.

The word "is." It is quite certain from the context, in the Three Gospels, and 1
Cor. xi. 1, that this word must be interpreted not literally but "in a certain
manner." For the words are not only, "This is my Body," but also, "This Cup is
the new Covenant." The Roman and kindred interpretations, (as Vogan shows,) in
jealousy for the letter really wander remotely from it, to support a theory
which it only negatives. But the important point to notice is that the use of
the word "is" here by our most Blessed Lord must be understood "in a certain
manner," not arbitrarily, but by a law of that human speech which He, the Man of
men, used most truly of all men. For wherever in human speech the word "is"
connects two nouns or thoughts not obviously homogeneous or identical, it is
invariably understood "in a certain manner," that is, it needs explanation.
"This Cup is the Covenant" is a linguistic phrase of the same order as, "This
note is a thousand pounds." Here we think Dr Vogan stops somewhat short of his
own just conclusions. He simply declines, in deep reverence, to interpret the
"is" at all. But may we not say that to seek an interpretation of "is," is as
much, or little, irreverent, as to interpret "My Body and My Blood"?

But let his book by all means be read with earnest care ; it will repay the
labour. An able resumé of its main argument will be found in a pamphlet by the
late Dr Boultbee, The Presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. See too a book
little noticed, but well worthy of attention, An Exposition of the Lord’s
Supper, "by a Presbyter of the Church of England;" and The Finished Offering of
Christ, by the Rev. C. H. Waller.

"Do this in remembrance of Me;" lit., "unto My remembrance, or memorial." The
word poiein (do) is frequently used in the LXX. for the "doing" which in the
case of a sacrifice means "offering;" and the LXX. use anamnêsis (reminiscence)
once only (Lev. xxiv. 7; elsewhere, mnêmosynon) for a sacrificial "memorial." It
has been held accordingly that the words of our Lord should be rendered, "Offer
this to be My" (as distinguished from a Mosaic) "sacrificial memorial" (before
the Father). But the word poiein is never used elsewhere in the New Testament in
sacrificial connexions. And if the Lord’s words had borne a sacrificial meaning
it is surely inexplicable that the New Testament should be so entirely reticent
as it is (above, p. 223) about a sacerdotal function of the Christian ministry.
Observe further the connexion of thought in 1 Cor. xi. 25, 26; the "for" in ver.
26. St Paul plainly means that to "show" (literally, and far better, "proclaim,"
as messengers or preachers, to each other and the world) "the Lord’s death, till
He come," was the way to carry out His precept about His anamnêsis. It has been
said that to "proclaim" there means our pleading, asserting the fact of, His
Sacrifice, before the Father. But the verb katangellein is frequent in the New
Testament, and invariably elsewhere in it bears the common meaning of telling
news to human hearers.

Bp Chr. Wordsworth renders Luke xxii. 19, "for the recordation of Me;" and says:
"anamnêsis is not simply remembrance, which may be involuntary, but a deliberate
inward act of the will, showing itself by outward signs." See his whole note,
and that on "Do this," just before it.

The Hour of Communion. St Augustine, Epistt., lib. ii., ep. liv., speaks of the
practice of fasting communion as apostolic, and due to the teaching of the Holy
Spirit. And the obvious inference would be against communicating after the
morning. But Augustine is not borne out by facts. In Egypt there were evening
Communions after meals (Socrates, Hist. Eccl., v. 22). This was noted as
singular, but it was the singularity of a very eminent Church. Chrysostom speaks
of Communion after eating with deprecation, but quite without horror, and blames
those who turned away because they had eaten. Cyprian notices without blame the
use of wine in the evening, at Communion, by a sect (the Aquarians) who used
water in the morning. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles speaks of the
receiving the Eucharist "after being filled" words whose natural meaning is,
"after a meal," i. e., after the Agapé. Bp Lightfoot, on Ignatius, ad Smyrn., c.
8, says "In the apostolic age the Eucharist formed part of the Agapé . This
appears from 1 Cor. xi. 17 seq . from which passage we infer that the Eucharist
came, as it naturally would, at a late stage in the entertainment." See too Acts
xx. 7, with Wordsworth’s note. It appears highly probable that the change to
morning Eucharists took place in deference to an edict of Trajan’s (early cent.
ii.) against hetæriæ-guilds, or clubs; an edict which would have included in its
scope the Christian Agapæ. These, as not of divine ordinance, were probably laid
aside for a time; to be resumed later (as they were) apart from the Eucharist.
And so the Eucharist was attached to the morning Sunday service.

We are much indebted to a learned paper by the Rev. N. Dimock, in The Churchman,
March, 1886.

Attitude at the Holy Communion. The Ordinance supposes the Lord to be Master of
the Feast; it is His Table (1 Cor. x. 21, xi. 20). Mediately, by the ministry of
His Church, but most truly, He, as at the first Eucharist, says, "Take, eat;
drink ye all." In this sense He is indeed "really present." [7] And as really
present He is to be reverenced and adored. Our Church enjoins us accordingly to
kneel; guarding and explaining her practice in the last Rubric (as authoritative
as any other) after the Communion Office. It is the custom of some Christians to
sit, on the supposition that the Apostles reclined (Luke xxii. 14, etc.). In the
earliest picture of the Last Supper, a.d. 586 (Marriott, Vestiarium Christianum,
p. xxvi.) the Apostles appear reverently standing.

Non-communicating attendance was unknown in the primitive Church (Bingham,
Antiquities, Bk xv., ch. iv., § 1, 2).

_______________

It is not willingly that we close these notes, and leave this sacred subject,
and conclude this little book, with discussions which pointedly refer to
differences and controversy. Let us at least, by way of actual conclusion, in
some of the most ancient liturgical words still used in the Christian Eucharist,
"Lift up our hearts unto the Lord." To Him, directly to Him, Son of the Father,
Lamb of God, Lord of Resurrection, Head of the Church, Life of the soul, across
and above all controversies between disciple and disciple, we will, and do, lift
up our hearts, as He descends to dwell in them by His Spirit, and rule them for
Himself. For Him we long, looking for Him to come again, "this same Jesus, in
like manner as He went up into heaven." May not one word we have written, if His
mercy will grant it, becloud that look, or chill that longing, for any follower
of His. If He be pleased in sovereign kindness to grant it, may some words we
have written direct and clear that look, and make that longing only tenderer and
deeper, till He come.

___________________

[1] Not without exceptions. It was held by many that Matrimony conferred no
grace.

[2] The passage as a whole clearly includes under this name the Eucharistic Rite
proper, not only the Agapé.

[3] That Heb. xiii. 10 refers to the Holy Table is by the context extremely
improbable. See Kay in the Speaker’s Commentary; and Lightfoot, Philippians, p.
265, note. Did the Writer mean to designate the Table "our altar," it is, to say
the least, difficult to explain why, in view of the special perplexities of his
readers, he did not make very much more of the fact.

[4] See Bp Hopkins (cent. xvii.), Doctrine of the Covenants.

[5] "For if there were such a habit of grace infused, it could not be so utterly
lost, or secreted, as never to show itself but by being attained by new
instruction."-Ibid.

[6] Transubstantiation (the word dates from late cent. xi.) was first definitely
approached cent. ix., by Radbert, more distinctly taught in the Church cent.
xi., imposed as de fide 1215.

[7] Though not in the sense of the technical phrase Realis Præsentia; i.e. the
actual and unfigurative "presence," with and in the Elements, "of the Thing"
(Res)-in this case the actual Body and Blood. That phrase, in connexion with the
Eucharist, appears to be no older than early cent. xvi. See Vogan, True
Doctrine, etc., p. 91. On the subject at large see a learned book, Doctrine of
the English Church on the Eucharistic Presence, by the Rev. N. Dimock. <267/268


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