What If Thought Experimentation In Philosophy Nicholas Rescher

What If Thought Experimentation In Philosophy Nicholas Rescher
What If Thought Experimentation In Philosophy Nicholas Rescher
What If Thought Experimentation In Philosophy Nicholas Rescher

1. What If Thought Experimentation In Philosophy
Nicholas Rescher download
https://ebookbell.com/product/what-if-thought-experimentation-in-
philosophy-nicholas-rescher-23551974
Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

2. Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.
What If Collected Thought Experiments In Philosophy 1st Edition Peg
Tittle
https://ebookbell.com/product/what-if-collected-thought-experiments-
in-philosophy-1st-edition-peg-tittle-10817944
What If Collected Thought Experiments In Philosophy Peg Tittle
https://ebookbell.com/product/what-if-collected-thought-experiments-
in-philosophy-peg-tittle-10825188
What If Alternative Views Of Twentiethcentury Irish History An
Entertaining And Thoughtprovoking Counterhistory Of Twentiethcentury
Ireland Diarmaid Ferriter
https://ebookbell.com/product/what-if-alternative-views-of-
twentiethcentury-irish-history-an-entertaining-and-thoughtprovoking-
counterhistory-of-twentiethcentury-ireland-diarmaid-ferriter-43575964
What If Alternative Views Of Twentiethcentury Irish History An
Entertaining And Thoughtprovoking Counterhistory Of Twentiethcentury
Ireland Diarmaid Ferriter
https://ebookbell.com/product/what-if-alternative-views-of-
twentiethcentury-irish-history-an-entertaining-and-thoughtprovoking-
counterhistory-of-twentiethcentury-ireland-diarmaid-ferriter-57010146

3. What If The Earth Had Two Moons And Nine Other Thoughtprovoking
Speculations On The Solar System Neil F Comins Comins
https://ebookbell.com/product/what-if-the-earth-had-two-moons-and-
nine-other-thoughtprovoking-speculations-on-the-solar-system-neil-f-
comins-comins-22685654
What If They Find Us Kathy Clarke
https://ebookbell.com/product/what-if-they-find-us-kathy-
clarke-46214930
What If 2 Randall Munroe
https://ebookbell.com/product/what-if-2-randall-munroe-46248644
What If You Had Animal Feet Sandra Markle
https://ebookbell.com/product/what-if-you-had-animal-feet-sandra-
markle-48412290
What If Future Publishing Limited
https://ebookbell.com/product/what-if-future-publishing-
limited-49397122

6. What If?

8. What If?
Thought Experimentation in Philosophy
Nicholas Rescher

9. First published 2005 by Transaction Publishers
Published 2017 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
Copyright© 2005 by Taylor & Francis.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or repro-
duced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopy-
ing and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trade-
marks, and are used only for identification and explanation without
intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2005043713
Library
of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rescher, Nicholas.
What if? : thought experimentation in philosophy/ Nicholas Re-
scher.
p.cm
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
ISBN 0-7658-0292-9 (alk. paper)
1. Thought experiments. I. Title.
BD265.R47 2005
101-dc22
ISBN 13: 978-0-7658-0292-7 (pbk)
2005043713

10. Contents
Preface
1. Thought Experimentation
1. Suppositions
2. Thought Experimentation
3. The Need for Context
4. Logical Aspects
5. Uses of Thought Experiments
6. Problems of Subjectivity
7. Malfunction in Thought Experimentation
2. Thought Experimentation in Science and History
1. Scientific Thought Experiments
2. Historical Thought Experiments
3. Thought Experimentation in Philosophy
1. Philosophical Thought Experiments
2. Typification vs. Counterexampling
3. A Philosophical Tool
4. Analogy and Burden of Proof
4. Thought Experimentation in Pre-Socratic Philosophy
1. Thales of
Miletus
2. Anaximander of Miletus
3. The Pythagoreans
4. Xenophanes of Colophon
5. Heraclitus of Ephesus
6. Coda

11. 5. Some Classic Philosophical Thought Experiments
1. Life is but a Dream (Plato's Dreamer)
2. Plato and the Ring of Gyges
3. Buridan's Ass
4. Descartes' Deceiver
5. Descartes' Wax
6. Locke's Locked Room
7. Locke's Changelings
8. Leibniz's Mill
9. Peirce's Stone
10. James' Squirrel
1 1. Chisholm's Changeling
12. The Prisoner's Dilemma
13. Some Lessons
6. Aporetics and Cost-Benefit Analysis in Philosophical Thought
Experimentation
1. Counterfactuals
2. Validating Counterfactuals
3. The Weakest Link in Philosophical Aporetics
4. Aporetic Clusters in Philosophy
5. The Determinative Role of Systematicity Considerations
7. Issues of Speculative Ontology
1. The Difference between Actual and Merely Suppositional
Objects and States of Affairs
2. How Fictional Possibilities Differ from Real Things
3. Impossible Objects
8. Philosophically Instructive Paradoxes
1. Paradoxes
2. The Liar and His Cousins
3. Russell's Paradox
4. Goodman's
GruelBleen Paradox
5. The Role of Distinctions
6. Reductio ad absurdum
7. Thomson's Lamp as an Illustration of Reductio Reasoning
8. Per Impossible Reasoning

12. 9. Outlandish Hypotheses and the Limits of Thought
Experimentation
1. Far-Fetched Hypotheses and Diminishing Returns
2. Meaninglessness
3. Suppositions that Go Too Far: Limits of Meaningfulness
4. How Outlandish Hypotheses Pose Problems
5. Use and Usage
6. The Shipwreck of Conjectural Analysis in Philosophy
10. On Overdoing Thought Experimentation
1. Two Worlds
2. Different Priorities
3. A Fuzzy Boundary
4. Reality Respect Endangered
Bibliography
Name Index

16. 1
Thought Experimentation
1. Suppositions
Philosophers have often said things to the effect that people whose
experience of the world is substantially different from our own are
bound to conceive of it in very different ways-and thereby operate in
terms of very different category-schemes.
Supporting considerations for this position have been advanced from
very different points of view. One example is a thought experiment
suggested by Georg Simmel in the last century-that of envisaging an
entirely different sort of cognitive being,' intelligent and actively
inquiring creatures (animals, say, or beings from outer space) whose
experiential modes are quite different from our own. Their senses
respond rather differently to physical parameters-relatively insensi-
tive, say, to heat and light, but substantially sensitized to various elec-
tromagnetic phenomena. Such intelligent creatures, Simmel held, could
plausibly be supposed to operate within a largely different framework
of empirical concepts and categories-the events and objects of the
world of their experience would doubtless be very different from our
own. The way in which they describe the realm of their experience
might differ radically. In a similar vein, William James wrote:
Were we lobsters, or bees, it might be that our organization would have
led to our using quite different modes from these [actual ones] of appre-
hending our experiences. It
might be too (we cannot dogmatically deny
this) that such categories, unimaginable by us to-day, would have proved

17. 2 What If?
on the whole as serviceable for handling our experiences mentally as those
we actually use.'
Different cultures and different intellectual traditions, to say nothing
of different sorts of creatures, will, so it has been widely contended,
describe and explain their experience-their world as they conceive
it-in terms of concepts and categories of understanding substantially
different from ours. They may, accordingly, be said to operate with
different conceptual schemes, with different conceptual tools used to
"make sense" of experience-to characterize, describe, and explain
the items that figure in the world as they view it. And it is clear that
the substantiation of any such conclusion will crucially and unavoid-
ably rest on thought experimentation.
In intellectual regards,
homo sapiens is an amphibian who lives and
functions in two very different realms-the domain of actual fact,
which we can investigate in observational inquiry, and the domain of
imaginative projection which we can explore only in thought by means
of reasoning. This second ability becomes crucially important for the
first as well, when once one presses beyond the level of a mere
description of the real to concern ourselves also with its explanation.
In the history of Western thought, this transition was first made by the
Greek nature-philosophers of pre-Socratic times. It is they-as will be
seen-who invented thought experimentation as a cognitive procedure
and practiced it with great dedication and
~ersatility.~
To us moderns, brought up on imaginative children's nursery rhymes
("If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride") exposed to mani-
fold fictions, this sort of belief-suspensive thinking seems altogether
natural. But it takes a competent logician to appreciate how complex
and sophisticated thought experimentation actually is. What it involves
is
not simply drawing an appropriate
conchsion from a putative fact;
rather, it exploits the higher-level consideration that a particular thesis
(be it fact or mere supposition) carries a certain conclusion in its wake.
Supposition is, of course, a commonplace device that operates via
such familiar locutions as "suppose," "assume," "what if," "let it be
that," "consider the hypothesis that," and the like. A supposition is not
an acknowledged fact, but a thesis that is accepted "provisionally" or
laid down "for the time being." A mere supposition must, as such, be
deemed if not false, then at least uncertain to some extent; if it were
deemed true there would be nothing assumptive about it.4 It is the

18. Thought Experimentation 3
occurrence among the premisses of an argument of such a supposi-
tional hypothesis that renders such a piece of reasoning in which it
figures a "hypothetical."
Supposing something to be the case is conceptually more sophisti-
cated than affirming it to be the case. The person who does not grasp
what it is to
accept the claim that p is in no position to suppose doing
so, even as the person who imagines finding a dollar bill must know
what actually finding a dollar bill would be like. From the logical
point of view, knowing is supposing. For consider: One can only
know so what is actually true, which is obviously not so with suppos-
ing. And one can suppose something in one context of discussion, and
something else that is incompatible with it in another whereas knowl-
edge is once and for all. Supposing is conceptually more complex
than knowing.
2. Thought Experimentation
A "thought experiment" always rests on suppositions. It is an effort
at drawing instruction from a process of hypothetical reasoning that
proceeds by eliciting the consequences of some projected supposition
which, for aught that one actually knows to the contrary, may well be
false. Such a process consists in reasoning from a supposition that is
not accepted as true, and perhaps is even known to be false, but is
assumed provisionally in the interests of making a point or answering
a
q~estion.~ Such reasoning is a matter of "thinking things through"
with regard to the larger implications and ramifications of the proposi-
tion being supposed. And with suppositions, two sorts of situations
can arise. The supposition that inaugurates a thought experiment may
well supplement the body of already available information by extend-
ing it into a region that was previously terra incognita. However, it
also may, alternatively, abrogate our information by way of dismissal,
replacing at least a part of it with something that is contradictory to it.
Thought experiments of the former agnostic (belief-supplemental) type
are comparatively conservative, while those of the latter (belief-con-
flicting) type are more radical in nature. Indeed, thought experiments
can go beyond this to be based on assumptions that are viewed not
imply as false but as actually impossible. And this happens even with
scientific thought experiments such as those which stipulate things
like perfectly elastic bodies, perfectly homogeneous objects, friction-

19. 4 What If?
less surfaces, absolute vacuums, ideal market economies, social con-
tracts, and the like.
Overall, then, thought experiments fall into two principal catego-
ries. In the first instance there is:
the agnostic where we simply do not know whether or not the suppo-
sition in question is true or false. ("If that was indeed John, then he
[John] was not born in
1920.") Here it is perfectly possible that the
defining supposition is realized and the antecedent of that conditional
true: one just doesn't know, and as far as the experiment is concerned,
it just doesn't matter.
Agnostic thought experiments are perfectly genuine experiments. The
assumptions on which they pivot will involve purely speculative sce-
narios that nowise conflict with any belief to the contrary. A hired
assassin bursts into the room. With one blast of his powerful shotgun
he renders his immobile victim to smithereens. But unbeknownst to
him, this individual has just expired, killed by the poison his disaf-
fected brother slipped into his lunch. Legally, that assassin is innocent
of murder: in law one cannot murder a corpse. But surely the issue of
moral guilt remains open. Clearly-so our lesson runs-the questions
of legal and moral culpability represent quite different issues. So what
we have here is a cogent and instructive thought experiment, albeit
one that involves no recourse to counterfactuality.
However, thought experimentation is often based on suppositions
that are more "far out" than what such "agnostic" scenarios involve.
And so another important category of thought experiments is:
the disbelieved (or belief-contravening) where we actually accept some-
thing that conflicts with the supposition in question.
("If Hannibal
were alive today, he would use tanks and not elephants.")
And an important subcategory of the latter is
The fanciful where one fully realizes that the supposition is utterly
impossible.
("If 4 were a prime, there could be five prime numbers
between
2 and
12.")
The question around which it revolves is crucial to a thought ex-
periment. Thus consider the following situation: Suppose that the fol-
lowing three pieces of information are given regarding two otherwise
unspecified real numbers x and
y

20. Thought Experimentation 5
Now if the question is: "What are the values of x and y?" the thought
experiment must be deemed impracticable. There simply are no quali-
ties
x and y for which these conditions are feasible. On the other hand,
if the question is "Will there be such numbers or are the specified
conditions unrealizable?" then the thought experiment is altogether
successful and simply issues in a negative answer.
In theory, there is no limiting the nature of the supposition at issue.
Supposing is a pretty open-ended process. In
The House at Pooh Cor-
ner,
Piglet anxiously asked: "Suppose a tree fell down, Pooh, when we
were underneath
it?" With unaccustomed acuity, Pooh replied: Sup-
posing it didn't." Anything that can be talked about can be the subject
of suppositions. But while a thought experiment will pivot on a suppo-
sition, it will have to be one that is specifically designed to facilitate
the solution of a motivating problem. After all, we can suppose "for
the sake of discussion" or "for the sake of illustration" and so on. But
only when a supposition is made for the sake of instruction-for set-
ting some larger, more far-reaching issue-is a thought experiment at
hand. A thought experiment is thus by nature a combination of a
supposition
combined with a question; it is characterized by a supposi-
tion designed to resolve some larger issue.
Thus suppose people gave up on luxury, ostentation, and frivolity,
and matters of "conspicuous consumption" in general. The resulting
collapse of economic activity might well lead to economic depression
and general impoverishment-so picturesquely argued Sir Bernard
Mandeville's
Fable of the Bees. And the wider lesson he drew was
that whatever defense of rustic simplicity and abstemious virtue there
might be, its utilitarian support in terms of general advantage to the
standard of living and material well-being will not be available.
(In
this regard thought experimentation resembles real experimentation.)
And so not any and every hypothesis or assumption is a thought
experiment. For example, consider
Let us suppose a windowless room that is
bare except for a chair
positioned in the middle
of it.

21. 6 What If?
There is as yet no thought experiment at issue here. For there is no
indication of the point of the exercise-no indication of any larger lesson.
Only when that is supplied will the case afford us a thought experiment.
There is thus an important difference between thought experimenta-
tion and mere speculation as such. "What if one could converse with
flowers?" "What if I could project myself back to the time of Julius
Caesar?" "What if one could change base materials into Gold through
a 'Midas touch'?'These are interesting questions that invite enliven-
ing speculating. But they do not constitute thought experiments unless
and until one specifies some larger problematic issue whose solution
such speculation is able to facilitate.
Suppose that someone writes a word beginning with A. And sup-
pose someone then comes along and erases that A. What can we
conclude about the remaining inscription? The answer is: very little
indeed. If indeed anything is left it need not be an English word. Nor
can we say anything whatever about what its initial (or last) letter is.
Nothing whatever can be concluded. But still there is a lesson here,
viz. that thought experiments can be perfectly practicable and mean-
ingful without their launching suppositions themselves yielding any
substantively germane conclusions.
And there
is another lesson as well. Suppositions can occur within
suppositions. Just as statements can involve further statements and
questions further questions, so suppositions can involve further suppo-
sitions. We can suppose a group of people who are aware that there
are five of them in the room. And we can then go on to suppose that
one of them supposes two of
- the others to be absent. However, this is
tantamount to supposing that one of five people in a room, all of
whom are aware of there being five, one supposes that two of the
others are missing. Multiple suppositions can always be compounded
into single ones.
However, one and the same thought experimental supposition can yield
very different results. Thus suppose that telekinesis were possible. We
might go on from this to draw conclusions about the engineering of
mind-matter interactive devices. Or we might go on to draw conclu-
sions about the rule of mind in nature's scheme of things. The taxo-
nomic nature of a thought experiment (as practical say or philosophical)
does not so much hinge on the thematic nature of its launching suppo-
sition as on the nature of the lesson we propose to draw from it.
What if Anglo-American orthography abandoned capital letters and

22. Thought Experimentation 7
proceeded in the manner of e. e. cummings? Think of the enormous
savings of time and effort in writing and printing. Surely on-paper
communication would be just as intelligible-after all, we do not dif-
ferentiate capitalized words in speech. All this is true enough. But
nevertheless there is no thought experiment here until such time as a
larger lesson of some sort is indicated-perhaps relating to the extent
to which man is a creature of habit.
Thought experiments often invite us to suppose a situation which
could in fact be realized if one wished to take the time and trouble. It
is simply convenience and economy of effort that leads us to
thought
experimentation here. We could actually carry out the experiment at
issue but there is no real point to it-the whole lesson to be learned
here can just as readily be secured on the basis of supposition pure and
simple. But many thought experiments cannot be carried out at all.
Some rewrite history ("How would seventeenth-century philosophy
have developed if Descartes had died at childbirth), some turn on
suppositions that are unachievable in principle. ("Suppose the diago-
nal of a square commensurable with its sides"), some are physically
unrealizable ("Suppose you were moving with a ray of light at its own
speed"), etc. Thought experiments need not be "contemplations in
thought as to how an experiment would actually work out" because
they are, often as not, dealing with
nonexperiments-procedures that
cannot possibly be carried out at all. They are not a matter of thinking
about experiments, but are, rather, experiments in thinking.
A thought
experiment need not be an imagined experiment because when the
conditions being supposed are unrealizable in principle it will not be
possible for an actual experiment to be carried out.
On this basis, thought experiments are complex courses of hypo-
thetical reasoning. They set out from a supposition, supplementing it
with a (generally tacit) group of facilitating premises. And they then
move on to establish a conclusion by standard (generally deductive)
reasoning. Moreover, they go through this process in order to answer
some experiment-characterizing questions-not because the conclu-
sion affords an answer (which it cannot do because its basis is merely
suppositional), but rather because that question is resolved by the con-
ditional fact that that particular supposition succeeds in underwriting
that particular
concl~sion.~
Effectively by definition, then, a thought experiment will have to
include:
(1) the supposition that it projects; (2) the context of
informa-

23. 8 What If?
tion into which this supposition is being introduced; (3) the conclusi~n
that is then derivable by means of this supposition; (4) the larger
question
it is designed to answer
(i.e., the lesson that is drawn from it);
and
(5) the course of reasoning through which the preceding consider-
ations are to be seen as providing the grounds for the purposed
an-
swer/lesson. Accordingly, we can say that thought experimentation
involves five stages overall: supposition, context-specification, con-
clusion-deriving, lesson drawing, and synoptic reasoning. And it is
crucial to note here that the "result" of a thought experiment is not that
conclusion itself, but rather the lesson that results from the fact that a
supposition-underwritten conclusion follows from the governing sup-
position in the context of guiding beliefs. Thus take that thought ex-
periment about the flying pigs. The supposition that sets its stage is
"Pigs can fly." The supplementing information includes such beliefs
as that creatures will, on suitable occasions, exercise the capabilities
they have. The conclusion that is derived is "Pigs will sometimes fly."
And the lesson we now propose to draw is: "Not every thought experi-
ment is all that interesting." And the course of reasoning through
which this lesson is drawn is a matter of viewing this thought experi-
ment as itself providing an instructive example of this very lesson.
An actual experiment, if experiment
it is, will have an actual out-
come of some sort. A thought experiment, by contrast, will generally
have not one outcome but a range of possible outcomes. And the
upshot of conducting a thought experiment need not lie in the actual
realization of one or another of these possible outcomes but a recogni-
tion that some are more plausible-more powerfully indicated-than
others. Actual experimentation is an exercise in the observation of
nature, thought experimentation is an exercise in rational
reflection-
in assessing the contextual plausibility of reaching a certain
conclusion in the circumstances created by stipulative conditions. A
thought experiment is no more an experiment than a plastic flamingo
is a flamingo. There may be various points of resemblance, but there is
no kinship.
It is not, however, strictly speaking, the case that thought experiments
proceed by thought alone and use no equipment or instrumentations.
Architects may build models to shape their plans, war planners may
use miniature tanks or battleships in table exercises, physicists or as-
tronomers may use computers to carry out their thought experiments.
But all of these different ways of simulating reality by use of artifacts

24. Other documents randomly have
different content

25. 4th. The Irvingian Theory, or Theory of Gradually
Extirpated Depravity.
This holds that, in his incarnation, Christ took human
nature as it was in Adam, not before the Fall, but
after the Fall,—human nature, therefore, with its
inborn corruption and predisposition to moral evil;
that, notwithstanding the possession of this tainted
and depraved nature, Christ, through the power of
the Holy Spirit, or of his divine nature, not only kept
his human nature from manifesting itself in any
actual or personal sin, but gradually purified it,
through struggle and suffering, until in his death he
completely extirpated its original depravity, and
reunited it to God. This subjective purification of
human nature in the person of Jesus Christ
constitutes his atonement, and men are saved, not
by any objective propitiation, but only by becoming
through faith partakers of Christ's new humanity.
This theory was elaborated by Edward Irving, of
London (1792-1834), and it has been held, in
substance, by Menken and Dippel in Germany.

26. Irving was in this preceded by Felix of Urgella, in Spain († 818),
whom Alcuin opposed. Felix said that the Logos united with human
nature, without sanctifying it beforehand. Edward Irving, in his early
life colleague of Dr. Chalmers, at Glasgow, was in his later years a
preacher, in London, of the National Church of Scotland. For his own
statement of his view of the Atonement, see his Collected Works,
5:9-398. See also Life of Irving, by Mrs. Oliphant; Menken, Schriften,
3:279-404; 6:351 sq.; Guericke, in Studien und Kritiken, 1843: Heft
2; David Brown, in Expositor, Oct. 1887:264 sq., and letter of Irving
to Marcus Dods, in British Weekly, Mch. 25, 1887. For other
references, see Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:496-498.
Irving's followers differ in their representation of his views. Says
Miller, Hist. and Doct. of Irvingism, 1:85—“If indeed we made Christ
a sinner, then indeed all creeds are at an end and we are worthy to
die the death of blasphemers.... The miraculous conception
depriveth him of human personality, and it also depriveth him of
original sin and guilt needing to be atoned for by another, but it doth
not deprive him of the substance of sinful flesh and blood,—that is,
flesh and blood the same with the flesh and blood of his brethren.”
2:14—Freer says: “So that, despite it was fallen flesh he had
assumed, he was, through the Eternal Spirit, born into the world ‘the
Holy Thing’.”11-15, 282-305—“Unfallen humanity needed not
redemption, therefore, Jesus did not take it. He took fallen humanity,
but purged it in the act of taking it. The nature of which he took part
was sinful in the lump, but in his person most holy.”

27. So, says an Irvingian tract, “Being part of the very nature that had
incurred the penalty of sin, though in his person never having
committed or even thought it, part [pg 745]of the common
humanity could suffer that penalty, and did so suffer, to make
atonement for that nature, though he who took it knew no sin.” Dr.
Curry, quoted in McClintock and Strong, Encyclopædia, 4:663, 664
—“The Godhead came into vital union with humanity fallen and
under the law. The last thought carried, to Irving's realistic mode of
thinking, the notion of Christ's participation in the fallen character of
humanity, which he designated by terms that implied a real
sinfulness in Christ. He attempted to get rid of the odiousness of
that idea, by saying that this was overborne, and at length wholly
expelled, by the indwelling Godhead.”
We must regard the later expounders of Irvingian doctrine as having
softened down, if they have not wholly expunged, its most
characteristic feature, as the following notation from Irving's own
words will show: Works, 5:115—“That Christ took our fallen nature,
is most manifest, because there was no other in existence to take.”
123—“The human nature is thoroughly fallen; the mere
apprehension of it by the Son doth not make it holy.” 128—“His soul
did mourn and grieve and pray to God continually, that it might be
delivered from the mortality, corruption, and temptation which it felt
in its fleshly tabernacle.” 152—“These sufferings came not by
imputation merely, but by actual participation of the sinful and
cursed thing.” Irving frequently quoted Heb. 2:10—“make the author
of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”

28. Irving's followers deny Christ's sinfulness, only by assuming that
inborn infirmity and congenital tendencies to evil are not sin,—in
other words, that not native depravity, but only actual transgression,
is to be denominated sin. Irving, in our judgment, was rightly
charged with asserting the sinfulness of Christ's human nature, and
it was upon this charge that he was deposed from the ministry by
the Presbytery in Scotland.
Irving was of commanding stature, powerful voice, natural and
graceful oratory. He loved the antique and the grand. For a time in
London he was the great popular sensation. But shortly after the
opening of his new church in Regent's Square in 1827, he found that
fashion had taken its departure and that his church was no longer
crowded. He concluded that the world was under the reign of Satan;
he became a fanatical millennarian; he gave himself wholly to the
study of prophecy. In 1830 he thought the apostolic gifts were
revived, and he held to the hope of a restoration of the primitive
church, although he himself was relegated to a comparatively
subordinate position. He exhausted his energies, and died at the age
of forty-two. “If I had married Irving,” said Mrs. Thomas Carlyle,
“there would have been no tongues.”
To this theory we offer the following objections:
(a) While it embraces an important element of truth,
namely, the fact of a new humanity in Christ of which
all believers become partakers, it is chargeable with

29. serious error in denying the objective atonement
which makes the subjective application possible.
Bruce, in his Humiliation of Christ, calls this a theory of “redemption
by sample.”It is a purely subjective atonement which Irving has in
mind. Deliverance from sin, in order to deliverance from penalty, is
an exact reversal of the Scripture order. Yet this deliverance from sin,
to Irving's view, was to be secured in an external and mechanical
way. He held that it was the Old Testament economy which should
abide, while the New Testament economy should pass away. This is
Sacramentarianism, or dependence upon the external rite, rather
than upon the internal grace, as essential to salvation. The followers
of Irving are Sacramentarians. The crucifix and candles, incense and
gorgeous vestments, a highly complicated and symbolic ritual, they
regard as a necessary accompaniment of religion. They feel the need
of external authority, visible and permanent, but one that rests upon
inspiration and continual supernatural help. They do not find this
authority, as the Romanists do, in the Pope,—they find it in their new
Apostles and Prophets. The church can never be renewed, as they
think, except by the restoration of all the ministering orders
mentioned in Eph. 4:11—“apostles ... prophets ... evangelists ...
pastors ... teachers.” But the N. T. mark of an apostle is that Christ
has appeared to him. Irving's apostles cannot stand this test. See
Luthardt, Erinnerungen aus vergangenen Tagen, 237.

30. (b) It rests upon false fundamental principles,—as,
that law is identical with the natural order of the
universe, and as such, is an exhaustive expression of
the will and nature of God; that sin is merely a power
of moral evil within the soul, instead of also involving
an objective guilt and desert of [pg 746]
punishment; that penalty is the mere reaction of law
against the transgressor, instead of being also the
revelation of a personal wrath against sin; that the
evil taint of human nature can be extirpated by
suffering its natural consequences,—penalty in this
way reforming the transgressor.
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:463 (Syst. Doct., 3:361, 362)—“On Irving's
theory, evil inclinations are not sinful. Sinfulness belongs only to evil
acts. The loose connection between the Logos and humanity savors
of Nestorianism. It is the work of the personto rid itself of something
in the humanity which does not render it really sinful. If Jesus'
sinfulness of nature did not render his person sinful, this must be
true of us,—which is a Pelagian element, revealed also in the denial
that for our redemption we need Christ as an atoning sacrifice. It is
not necessary to a complete incarnation for Christ to take a sinful
nature, unless sin is essential to human nature. In Irving's view, the
death of Christ's body works the regeneration of his sinful nature.
But this is to make sin a merely physical thing, and the body the
only part of man needing redemption.”Penalty would thus become a
reformer, and death a Savior.

31. Irving held that there are two kinds of sin: 1. guiltless sin; 2. guilty
sin. Passive depravity is not guilty; it is a part of man's sensual
nature; without it we would not be human. But the moment this
fallen nature expresses itself in action, it becomes guilty. Irving near
the close of his life claimed a sort of sinless perfection; for so long as
he could keep this sinful nature inactive, and be guided by the Holy
Spirit, he was free from sin and guilt. Christ took this passive sin,
that he might be like unto his brethren, and that he might be able to
suffer.
(c) It contradicts the express and implicit
representations of Scripture, with regard to Christ's
freedom from all taint of hereditary depravity;
misrepresents his life as a growing consciousness of
the underlying corruption of his human nature, which
culminated at Gethsemane and Calvary; and denies
the truth of his own statements, when it declares
that he must have died on account of his own
depravity, even though none were to be saved
thereby.
“I shall maintain until death,” said Irving, “that the flesh of Christ
was as rebellious as ours, as fallen as ours.... Human nature was
corrupt to the core and black as hell, and this is the human nature
the Son of God took upon himself and was clothed with.”The
Rescuer must stand as deep in the mire as the one he rescues.

32. There was no substitution. Christ waged war with the sin of his own
flesh and he expelled it. His glory was not in saving others, but in
saving himself, and so demonstrating the power of man through the
Holy Spirit to cast out sin from his heart and life. Irving held that his
theory was the only one taught in Scripture and held from the first
by the church.
Nicoll, Life of Christ, 183—“All others, as they grow in holiness, grow
in their sense of sin. But when Christ is forsaken of the Father, he
asks ‘Why?’ well knowing that the reason is not in his sin. He never
makes confession of sin. In his longest prayer, the preface is an
assertion of righteousness: ‘I glorified thee’ (John 17:4). His last
utterance from the cross is a quotation from Ps. 31:5—‘Father, into
thy hands I commend my spirit’ (Luke 23:46), but he does not add,
as the Psalm does, ‘thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth,’
for he needed no redemption, being himself the Redeemer.”
(d) It makes the active obedience of Christ, and the
subjective purification of his human nature, to be the
chief features of his work, while the Scriptures make
his death and passive bearing of penalty the centre
of all, and ever regard him as one who is personally
pure and who vicariously bears the punishment of
the guilty.
In Irving's theory there is no imputation, or representation, or
substitution. His only idea of sacrifice is that sin itself shall be

33. sacrificed, or annihilated. The many subjective theories of the
atonement show that the offence of the cross has not ceased (Gal.
5:11—“then hath the stumbling-block of the cross been done
away”). Christ crucified is still a stumbling-block to modern
speculation. Yet it is, as of old, “the power of God unto salvation”
(Rom. 1:16; cf. 1 Cor. 1:23, 24—“we preach Christ crucified, unto
Jews a stumbling-block and unto Gentiles foolishness; but unto them
that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and
the wisdom of God”).
[pg 747]
As the ocean receives the impurities of the rivers and purges them,
so Irving represented Christ as receiving into himself the impurities
of humanity and purging the race from its sin. Here is the sense of
defilement, but no sense of guilt; subjective pollution, but no
objective condemnation. We take precisely opposite ground from
that of Irving, namely, that Christ had, not hereditary depravity, but
hereditary guilt; that he was under obligation to suffer for the sins of
the race to which he had historically united himself, and of which he
was the creator, the upholder, and the life. He was “made to be sin
on our behalf” (2 Cor. 5:21), not in the sense of one defiled, as
Irving thought, but in the sense of one condemned to bear our
iniquities and to suffer their penal consequences. The test of a
theory of the atonement, as the test of a religion, is its power to
“cleanse that red right hand” of Lady Macbeth; in other words, its
power to satisfy the divine justice of which our condemning
conscience is only the reflection. The theory of Irving has no such

34. power. Dr. E. G. Robinson verged toward Irving's view, when he
claimed that “Christ took human nature as he found it.”
(e) It necessitates the surrender of the doctrine of
justification as a merely declaratory act of God; and
requires such a view of the divine holiness,
expressed only through the order of nature, as can
be maintained only upon principles of pantheism.
Thomas Aquinas inquired whether Christ was slain by himself, or by
another. The question suggests a larger one—whether God has
constituted other forces than his own, personal and impersonal, in
the universe, over against which he stands in his transcendence; or
whether all his activity is merged in, and identical with, the activity
of the creature. The theory of a merely subjective atonement is
more consistent with the latter view than the former. For criticism of
Irvingian doctrine, see Studien und Kritiken. 1845:319; 1877:354-
374; Princeton Rev., April 1863:207; Christian Rev., 28:234 sq.;
Ullmann, Sinlessness of Jesus, 219-232.
5th. The Anselmic, or Commercial Theory of the
Atonement.
This theory holds that sin is a violation of the divine
honor or majesty, and, as committed against an

35. infinite being, deserves an infinite punishment; that
the majesty of God requires him to execute
punishment, while the love of God pleads for the
sparing of the guilty; that this conflict of divine
attributes is eternally reconciled by the voluntary
sacrifice of the God-man, who bears in virtue of the
dignity of his person the intensively infinite
punishment of sin, which must otherwise have been
suffered extensively and eternally by sinners; that
this suffering of the God-man presents to the divine
majesty an exact equivalent for the deserved
sufferings of the elect; and that, as the result of this
satisfaction of the divine claims, the elect sinners are
pardoned and regenerated. This view was first
broached by Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) as a
substitute for the earlier patristic view that Christ's
death was a ransom paid to Satan, to deliver sinners
from his power. It is held by many Scotch
theologians, and, in this country, by the Princeton
School.
The old patristic theory, which the Anselmic view superseded, has
been called the Military theory of the Atonement. Satan, as a captor
in war, had a right to his captives, which could be bought off only by
ransom. It was Justin Martyr who first propounded this view that
Christ paid a ransom to Satan. Gregory of Nyssa added that Christ's
humanity was the bait with which Satan was attracted to the hidden

36. hook of Christ's deity, and so was caught by artifice. Peter Lombard,
Sent., 3:19—“What did the Redeemer to our captor? He held out to
him his cross as a mouse-trap; in it he set, as a bait, his blood.”
Even Luther compares Satan to the crocodile which swallows the
ichneumon, only to find that the little animal eats its insides out.
These metaphors show this, at least, that no age of the church has
believed in a merely subjective atonement. Nor was this relation to
Satan the only aspect in which the atonement was regarded even by
the early church. So early as the fourth century, we find a great
church Father maintaining that the death of Christ was required by
the [pg 748]truth and goodness of God. See Crippen, History of
Christian Doctrine, 129—“Athanasius (325-373) held that the death
of Christ was the payment of a debt due to God. His argument is
briefly this: God, having threatened death as the punishment of sin,
would be untrue if he did not fulfil his threatening. But it would be
equally unworthy of the divine goodness to permit rational beings, to
whom he had imparted his own Spirit, to incur this death in
consequence of an imposition practiced on them by the devil. Seeing
then that nothing but death could solve this dilemma, the Word, who
could not die, assumed a mortal body, and, offering his human
nature a sacrifice for all, fulfilled the law by his death.” Gregory
Nazianzen (390) “retained the figure of a ransom, but, clearly
perceiving that the analogy was incomplete, he explained the death
of Christ as an expedient to reconcile the divine attributes.”
But, although many theologians had recognized a relation of
atonement to God, none before Anselm had given any clear account

37. of the nature of this relation. Anselm's acute, brief, and beautiful
treatise entitled “Cur Deus Homo” constitutes the greatest single
contribution to the discussion of this doctrine. He shows that
“whatever man owes, he owes to God, not to the devil.... He who
does not yield due honor to God, withholds from him what is his,
and dishonors him; and this is sin.... It is necessary that either the
stolen honor be restored, or that punishment follow.” Man, because
of original sin, cannot make satisfaction for the dishonor done to
God,—“a sinner cannot justify a sinner.” Neither could an angel make
this satisfaction. None can make it but God. “If then none can make
it but God, and none owes it but man, it must needs be wrought out
by God, made man.” The God-man, to make satisfaction for the sins
of all mankind, must “give to God, of his own, something that is
more valuable than all that is under God.” Such a gift of infinite
value was his death. The reward of his sacrifice turns to the
advantage of man, and thus the justice and love of God are
reconciled.
The foregoing synopsis is mainly taken from Crippen, Hist. Christ.
Doct., 134, 135. The Cur Deus Homo of Anselm is translated in Bib.
Sac., 11:729; 12:52. A synopsis of it is given in Lichtenberger's
Encyclopédie des Sciences Religieuses, vol. 1, art.: Anselm. The
treatises on the Atonement by Symington, Candlish, Martin,
Smeaton, in Great Britain, advocate for substance the view of
Anselm, as indeed it was held by Calvin before them. In America, the
theory is represented by Nathanael Emmons, A. Alexander, and
Charles Hodge (Syst. Theol., 2:470-540).

38. To this theory we make the following objections:
(a) While it contains a valuable element of truth, in
its representation of the atonement as satisfying a
principle of the divine nature, it conceives of this
principle in too formal and external a manner,—
making the idea of the divine honor or majesty more
prominent than that of the divine holiness, in which
the divine honor and majesty are grounded.
The theory has been called the “Criminal theory” of the Atonement,
as the old patristic theory of a ransom paid to Satan has been called
the “Military theory.” It had its origin in a time when exaggerated
ideas prevailed respecting the authority of popes and emperors, and
when dishonor done to their majesty (crimen læsæ majestatis) was
the highest offence known to law. See article by Cramer, in Studien
und Kritiken, 1880:7, on Wurzeln des Anselm'schen
Satisfactionsbegriffes.
Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 88, 89—“From the point of view of
Sovereignty, there could be no necessity for atonement. In
Mohammedanism, where sovereignty is the supreme and sole
theological principle, no need is felt for satisfying the divine justice.
God may pardon whom he will, on whatever grounds his sovereign
will may dictate. It therefore constituted a great advance in Latin
theology, as also an evidence of its immeasurable superiority to
Mohammedanism, when Anselm for the first time, in a clear and

39. emphatic manner, had asserted an inward necessity in the being of
God that his justice should receive satisfaction for the affront which
had been offered to it by human sinfulness.”
Henry George, Progress and Poverty, 481—“In the days of feudalism,
men thought of heaven as organized on a feudal basis, and ranked
the first and second Persons of the Trinity as Suzerain and Tenant-in-
Chief.” William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 329, 830
—“The monarchical type of sovereignty was, for example, so
ineradicably planted in the mind of our forefathers, that a dose of
cruelty and arbitrariness in their Deity seems positively to have been
required by their imagination. They called [pg 749]the cruelty
‘retributive justice,’ and a God without it would certainly not have
struck them as sovereign enough. But to-day we abhor the very
notion of eternal suffering inflicted; and that arbitrary dealing out of
salvation and damnation to selected individuals, of which Jonathan
Edwards could persuade himself that he had not only a conviction,
but a ‘delightful conviction,’ as of a doctrine ‘exceeding pleasant,
bright, and sweet,’ appears to us, if sovereignly anything,
sovereignly irrational and mean.”
(b) In its eagerness to maintain the atoning efficacy
of Christ's passive obedience, the active obedience,
quite as clearly expressed in Scripture, is
insufficiently emphasized and well nigh lost sight of.

40. Neither Christ's active obedience alone, nor Christ's obedient passion
alone, can save us. As we shall see hereafter, in our examination of
the doctrine of Justification, the latter was needed as the ground
upon which our penalty could be remitted; the former as the ground
upon which we might be admitted to the divine favor. Calvin has
reflected the passive element in Anselm's view, in the following
passages of his Institutes: II, 17:3—“God, to whom we were hateful
through sin, was appeased by the death of his Son, and was made
propitious to us.”... II, 16:7—“It is necessary to consider how he
substituted himself in order to pay the price of our redemption.
Death held us under its yoke, but he, in our place, delivered himself
into its power, that he might exempt us from it.”... II, 16:2—“Christ
interposed and bore what, by the just judgment of God, was
impending over sinners; with his own blood expiated the sin which
rendered them hateful to God; by this expiation satisfied and duly
propitiated the Father; by this intercession appeased his anger; on
this basis founded peace between God and men; and by this tie
secured the divine benevolence toward them.”
It has been said that Anselm regarded Christ's death not as a
vicarious punishment, but as a voluntary sacrifice in compensation
for which the guilty were released and justified. So Neander, Hist.
Christ. Dogmas (Bohn), 2:517, understands Anselm to teach “the
necessity of a satisfactio vicaria activa,” and says: “We do not find in
his writings the doctrine of a satisfactio passiva: he nowhere says
that Christ had endured the punishment of men.” Shedd, Hist.
Christ. Doctrine, 2:282, thinks this a misunderstanding of Anselm.
The Encyclopædia Britannica takes the view of Shedd, when it

41. speaks of Christ's sufferings as penalty: “The justice of man
demands satisfaction; and as an insult to infinite honor is itself
infinite, the satisfaction must be infinite, i. e., it must outweigh all
that is not God. Such a penalty can only be paid by God himself,
and, as a penalty for man, must be paid under the form of man.
Satisfaction is only possible through the God-man. Now this God-
man, as sinless, is exempt from the punishment of sin; his passion is
therefore voluntary, not given as due. The merit of it is therefore
infinite; God's justice is thus appeased, and his mercy may extend to
man.”The truth then appears to be that Anselm held Christ's
obedience to be passive, in that he satisfied God's justice by
enduring punishment which the sinner deserved; but that he held
this same obedience of Christ to be active, in that he endured this
penalty voluntarily, when there was no obligation upon him so to do.
Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 2:431, 461, 462—“Christ not only
suffered the penalty, but obeyed the precept, of the law. In this case
law and justice get their whole dues. But when lost man only suffers
the penalty, but does not obey the precept, the law is defrauded of a
part of its dues. No law is completely obeyed, if only its penalty is
endured.... Consequently, a sinner can never completely and
exhaustively satisfy the divine law, however much or long he may
suffer, because he cannot at one and the same time endure the
penalty and obey the precept. He owes ‘ten thousand talents’ and
has ‘not wherewith to pay’ (Mat. 18:24, 25), But Christ did both, and
therefore he ‘magnified the law and made it honorable’ (Is. 42:21),
in an infinitely higher degree than the whole human family would

42. have done, had they all personally suffered for their sins.” Cf.
Edwards, Works, 1:406.
(c) It allows disproportionate weight to those
passages of Scripture which represent the atonement
under commercial analogies, as the payment of a
debt or ransom, to the exclusion of those which
describe it as an ethical fact, whose value is to be
estimated not quantitatively, but qualitatively.
Milton, Paradise Lost, 3:209-212—“Die he, or justice must, unless for
him Some other, able and as willing, pay The rigid satisfaction, death
for death.” The main text [pg 750]relied upon by the advocates of
the Commercial theory is Mat. 20:28—“give his life a ransom for
many.” Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion, 1:257—“The work of
Christ, as Anselm construed it, was in fact nothing else than the
prototype of the meritorious performances and satisfactions of the
ecclesiastical saints, and was therefore, from the point of view of the
mediæval church, thought out quite logically. All the more
remarkable is it that the churches of the Reformation could be
satisfied with this theory, notwithstanding that it stood in complete
contradiction to their deeper moral consciousness. If, according to
Protestant principles generally, there are no supererogatory
meritorious works, then one would suppose that such cannot be
accepted even in the case of Jesus.”

43. E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 258—“The Anselmic theory was
rejected by Abelard for grounding the atonement in justice instead
of benevolence, and for taking insufficient account of the power of
Christ's sufferings and death in procuring a subjective change in
man.” Encyc. Brit., 2:93 (art.: Anselm)—“This theory has exercised
immense influence on the form of church doctrine. It is certainly an
advance on the older patristic theory, in so far as it substitutes for a
contest between God and Satan, a contest between the goodness
and justice of God; but it puts the whole relation on a merely legal
footing, gives it no ethical bearing, and neglects altogether the
consciousness of the individual to be redeemed. In this respect it
contrasts unfavorably with the later theory of Abelard.”
(d) It represents the atonement as having reference
only to the elect, and ignores the Scripture
declarations that Christ died for all.
Anselm, like Augustine, limited the atonement to the elect. Yet Leo
the Great, in 461, had affirmed that “so precious is the shedding of
Christ's blood for the unjust, that if the whole universe of captives
would believe in the Redeemer, no chain of the devil could hold
them” (Crippen, 132). Bishop Gailor, of the Episcopal Church, heard
General Booth at Memphis say in 1903: “Friends, Jesus shed his
blood to pay the price, and he bought from God enough salvation to
go round.” The Bishop says: “I felt that his view of salvation was
different from mine. Yet such teaching, partial as it is, lifts men by

44. the thousand from the mire and vice of sin into the power and purity
of a new life in Jesus Christ.”
Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 221—“Anselm does not clearly
connect the death of Christ with the punishment of sin, since he
makes it a supererogatory work voluntarily done, in consequence of
which it is ‘fitting’ that forgiveness should be bestowed on sinners....
Yet his theory served to hand down to later theologians the great
idea of the objective atonement.”
(e) It is defective in holding to a merely external
transfer of the merit of Christ's work, while it does
not clearly state the internal ground of that transfer,
in the union of the believer with Christ.
This needed supplement, namely, the doctrine of the Union of the
Believer with Christ, was furnished by Thomas Aquinas, Summa,
pars 3, quæs. 8. The Anselmic theory is Romanist in its tendency, as
the theory next to be mentioned is Protestant in its tendency. P. S.
Moxom asserts that salvation is not by substitution, but by
incorporation. We prefer to say that salvation is by substitution, but
that the substitution is by incorporation. Incorporation involves
substitution, and another's pain inures to my account. Christ being
incorporate with humanity, all the exposures and liabilities of
humanity fell upon him. Simon, Reconciliation by Incarnation, is an
attempt to unite the two elements of the doctrine.

45. Lidgett, Spir. Prin. of Atonement, 182-189—“As Anselm represents it,
Christ's death is not ours in any such sense that we can enter into it.
Bushnell justly charges that it leaves no moral dynamic in the Cross.”
For criticism of Anselm, see John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity,
2:172-193: Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, III, 2:230-241;
Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV, 2:70 sq.; Baur, Dogmengeschichte, 2:416
sq.; Shedd, Hist. Doct., 2:273-286; Dale, Atonement, 279-292;
McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 196-199; Kreibig,
Versöhnungslehre, 176-178.
6th. The Ethical Theory of the Atonement.
In propounding what we conceive to be the true
theory of the atonement, it seems desirable to divide
our treatment into two parts. No theory [pg 751] can
be satisfactory which does not furnish a solution of
the two problems: 1. What did the atonement
accomplish? or, in other words, what was the object
of Christ's death? The answer to this question must
be a description of the atonement in its relation to
holiness in God. 2. What were the means used? or, in
other words, how could Christ justly die? The answer
to this question must be a description of the
atonement as arising from Christ's relation to
humanity. We take up these two parts of the subject
in order.

46. Edwards, Works, 1:609, says that two things make Christ's sufferings
a satisfaction for human guilt: (1) their equality or equivalence to the
punishment that the sinner deserves; (2) the union between him
and them, or the propriety of his being accepted, in suffering, as the
representative of the sinner. Christ bore God's wrath: (1) by the sight
of sin and punishment; (2) by enduring the effects of wrath ordered
by God. See also Edwards, Sermon on the Satisfaction of Christ.
These statements of Edwards suggest the two points of view from
which we regard the atonement; but they come short of the
Scriptural declarations, in that they do not distinctly assert Christ's
endurance of penalty itself. Thus they leave the way open for the
New School theories of the atonement, propounded by the
successors of Edwards.
Adolphe Monod said well: “Save first the holy law of my God,—after
that you shall save me.” Edwards felt the first of these needs, for he
says, in his Mysteries of Scripture, Works, 3:542—“The necessity of
Christ's satisfaction to divine justice is, as it were, the centre and
hinge of all doctrines of pure revelation. Other doctrines are
comparatively of little importance, except as they have respect to
this.” And in his Work of Redemption, Works, 1:412—“Christ was
born to the end that he might die; and therefore he did, as it were,
begin to die as soon as he was born.” See John 12:32—“And I, if I
be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself. But this he
said, signifying by what manner of death he should die.” Christ was
“lifted up”: 1. as a propitiation to the holiness of God, which makes
suffering to follow sin, so affording the only ground for pardon
without and peace within; 2. as a power to purify the hearts and

47. lives of men, Jesus being as “the serpent lifted up in the wilderness”
(John 3:14), and we overcoming “because of the blood of the
Lamb”(Rev. 12:11).
First,—the Atonement as related to Holiness in God.
The Ethical theory holds that the necessity of the
atonement is grounded in the holiness of God, of
which conscience in man is a finite reflection. There
is an ethical principle in the divine nature, which
demands that sin shall be punished. Aside from its
results, sin is essentially ill-deserving. As we who are
made in God's image mark our growth in purity by
the increasing quickness with which we detect
impurity, and the increasing hatred which we feel
toward it, so infinite purity is a consuming fire to all
iniquity. As there is an ethical demand in our natures
that not only others' wickedness, but our own
wickedness, be visited with punishment, and a keen
conscience cannot rest till it has made satisfaction to
justice for its misdeeds, so there is an ethical
demand of God's nature that penalty follow sin.
The holiness of God has conscience and penalty for its correlates
and consequences. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 216—“In old Athens,
the rock on whose top sat the Court of the Areopagus, representing
the highest reason and the best character of the Athenian state, had

48. underneath it the Cave of the Furies.” Shakespeare knew human
nature and he bears witness to its need of atonement. In his last
Will and Testament he writes: “First, I commend my soul into the
hands of God, my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through
the only merits of Jesus Christ my Savior, to be made partaker of life
everlasting.” Richard III, 1:4—“I charge you, as you hope to have
redemption By Christ's dear blood shed for our grievous sins, That
you depart and lay no hands on me.” Richard II, 4:1—“The world's
Ransom, blessed Mary's Son.”Henry VI, 2d part, 3:2—“That dread
King took our state upon him, To free us from [pg 752]his
Father's wrathful curse.” Henry IV, 1st part, 1:1—“Those holy fields,
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet, Which fourteen
hundred years ago were nailed For our advantage on the bitter
Cross.” Measure for Measure, 2:2—“Why, all the souls that are were
forfeit once; And he that might the vantage best have took Found
out the remedy.” Henry VI, 2d part, 1:1—“Now, by the death of him
that died for all!”All's Well that Ends Well, 3:4—“What angel shall
Bless this unworthy husband? He cannot thrive Unless her prayers,
whom heaven delights to hear And loves to grant, reprieve him from
the wrath Of greatest justice.” See a good statement of the Ethical
theory of the Atonement in its relation to God's holiness, in Denney,
Studies in Theology, 100-124.
Punishment is the constitutional reaction of God's
being against moral evil—the self-assertion of infinite
holiness against its antagonist and would-be
destroyer. In God this demand is devoid of all

49. passion, and is consistent with infinite benevolence.
It is a demand that cannot be evaded, since the
holiness from which it springs is unchanging. The
atonement is therefore a satisfaction of the ethical
demand of the divine nature, by the substitution of
Christ's penal sufferings for the punishment of the
guilty.
John Wessel, a Reformer before the Reformation (1419-1489): “Ipse
deus, ipse sacerdos, ipse hostia, pro se, de se, sibi
satisfecit”—“Himself being at the same time God, priest, and
sacrificial victim, he made satisfaction to himself, for himself [i. e.,
for the sins of men to whom he had united himself], and by himself
[by his own sinless sufferings].” Quarles's Emblems: “O groundless
deeps! O love beyond degree! The Offended dies, to set the offender
free!”
Spurgeon, Autobiography, 1:98—“When I was in the hand of the
Holy Spirit, under conviction of sin, I had a clear and sharp sense of
the justice of God. Sin, whatever it might be to other people,
became to me an intolerable burden. It was not so much that I
feared hell, as that I feared sin; and all the while I had upon my
mind a deep concern for the honor of God's name and the integrity
of his moral government. I felt that it would not satisfy my
conscience if I could be forgiven unjustly. But then there came the
question: ‘How could God be just, and yet justify me who had been
so guilty?’... The doctrine of the atonement is to my mind one of the

50. surest proofs of the inspiration of Holy Scripture. Who would or
could have thought of the just Ruler dying for the unjust rebel?”
This substitution is unknown to mere law, and above
and beyond the powers of law. It is an operation of
grace. Grace, however, does not violate or suspend
law, but takes it up into itself and fulfils it. The
righteousness of law is maintained, in that the source
of all law, the judge and punisher, himself voluntarily
submits to bear the penalty, and bears it in the
human nature that has sinned.
Matheson, Moments on the Mount, 221—“In conscience, man
condemns and is condemned. Christ was God in the flesh, both
priest and sacrificial victim (Heb. 9:12). He is ‘full of grace’—
forgiving grace—but he is ‘full of truth’ also, and so ‘the only-
begotten from the Father’ (John 1:14). Not forgiveness that ignores
sin, not justice that has no mercy. He forgave the sinner, because he
bore the sin.” Kaftan, referring to some modern theologians who
have returned to the old doctrine but who have said that the basis of
the atonement is, not the juridical idea of punishment, but the
ethical idea of propitiation, affirms as follows: “On the contrary the
highest ethical idea of propitiation is just that of punishment. Take
this away, and propitiation becomes nothing but the inferior and
unworthy idea of appeasing the wrath of an incensed deity. Precisely
the idea of the vicarious suffering of punishment is the idea which

51. must in some way be brought to a full expression for the sake of the
ethical consciousness.
“The conscience awakened by God can accept no forgiveness which
is not experienced as at the same time a condemnation of sin....
Jesus, though he was without sin and deserved no punishment, took
upon himself all the evils which have come into the world as the
consequence and punishment of sin, even to the shameful death on
the Cross at the hand of sinners.... Consequently for the good of
man he bore all that [pg 753]which man had deserved, and
thereby has man escaped the final eternal punishment and has
become a child of God.... This is not merely a subjective conclusion
upon the related facts, but it is as objective and real as anything
which faith recognizes and knows.”
Thus the atonement answers the ethical demand of
the divine nature that sin be punished if the offender
is to go free. The interests of the divine government
are secured as a first subordinate result of this
satisfaction to God himself, of whose nature the
government is an expression; while, as a second
subordinate result, provision is made for the needs of
human nature,—on the one hand the need of an
objective satisfaction to its ethical demand of
punishment for sin, and on the other the need of a
manifestation of divine love and mercy that will
affect the heart and move it to repentance.

52. The great classical passage with reference to the atonement is Rom.
3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in
his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of
the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God; for the showing,
I say, of his righteousness at this present season: that he might
himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith is Jesus.” Or,
somewhat more freely translated, the passage would read:—“whom
God hath set forth in his blood as a propitiatory sacrifice, through
faith, to show forth his righteousness on account of the
pretermission of past offenses in the forbearance of God; to declare
his righteousness in the time now present, so that he may be just
and yet may justify him who believeth in Jesus.”
Exéoëition of Rom. 3:25, 26.—These verses are an expanded
statement of the subject of the epistle—the revelation of the
“righteousness of God” (= the righteousness which God provides
and which God accepts)—which had been mentioned in 1:17, but
which now has new light thrown upon it by the demonstration, in
1:18-3:20, that both Gentiles and Jews are under condemnation,
and are alike shut up for salvation to some other method than that
of works. We subjoin the substance of Meyer's comments upon this
passage.
“Verse 25. ‘God has set forth Christ as an effectual propitiatory
offering, through faith, by means of his blood,’ i. e., in that he
caused him to shed his blood. ἐν τῷ αὐτοῦ αἵματι belongs to
προέθετο, not to πίστεως. The purpose of this setting forth in his
blood is εἰς ἔνδειξιν τῆς δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ, ‘for the display of his

53. [judicial and punitive] righteousness,’ which received its satisfaction
in the death of Christ as a propitiatory offering, and was thereby
practically demonstrated and exhibited. ‘On account of the passing-
by of sins that had previously taken place,’ i. e., because he had
allowed the pre-Christian sins to go without punishment, whereby
his righteousness had been lost sight of and obscured, and had
come to need an ἔνδειξις, or exhibition to men. Omittance is not
acquittance. πάρεσις, passing-by, is intermediate between pardon
and punishment. ‘In virtue of the forbearance of God’ expresses the
motive of the πάρεσις. Before Christ's sacrifice, God's administration
was a scandal,—it needed vindication. The atonement is God's
answer to the charge of freeing the guilty.
“Verse 26. εἰς τὸ εἶναι is not epexegetical of εἰς ἔνδειξιν, but presents
the teleology of the ἱλαστήριον, the final aim of the whole
affirmation from ὂν προέθετο to καιρῷ—namely, first, God's being
just, and secondly, his appearing just in consequence of this. Justus
et justificans, instead of justus et condemnans, this is the summum
paradoxon evangelicum. Of this revelation of righteousness, not
through condemnation, but through atonement, grace is the
determining ground.”
We repeat what was said on pages 719, 720, with regard to the
teaching of the passage, namely, that it shows: (1) that Christ's
death is a propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main effect is
upon God; (3) that the particular attribute in God which demands
the atonement in his justice, or holiness; (4) that the satisfaction of
this holiness is the necessary condition of God's justifying the

54. believer. It is only incidentally and subordinately that the atonement
is a necessity to man; Paul speaks of it here mainly as a necessity to
God. Christ suffers, indeed, that God may appear righteous; but
behind the appearance lies the reality; the main object of Christ's
suffering is that God may be righteous, while he pardons the
believing sinner; in other words, the ground of the atonement is
something internal to God himself. See Heb. 2:10—it “became” God
= it was morally fitting in God, to make Christ suffer; cf. Zech. 6:8
—“they that go toward the north country have quieted my spirit in
the north country”—the judgments inflicted on Babylon have
satisfied my justice.
[pg 754]
Charnock: “He who once ‘quenched the violence of fire’ for those
Hebrew children, has also quenched the fires of God's anger against
the sinner, hotter than furnace heated seven times.” The same God
who is a God of holiness, and who in virtue of his holiness must
punish human sin, is also a God of mercy, and in virtue of his mercy
himself bears the punishment of human sin. Dorner, Gesch. prot.
Theologie, 98—“Christ is not only mediator between God and man,
but between the just God and the merciful God”—cf. Ps. 85:10
—“Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have
kissed each other,” “Conscience demands vicariousness, for
conscience declares that a gratuitous pardon would not be just”; see
Knight, Colloquia Peripatetica, 88.
Lidgett, Spir. Principle of the Atonement, 219, 304—“The Atonement
1. has Godward significance; 2. consists in our Lord's endurance of

55. death on our behalf; 3. the spirit in which he endured death is of
vital importance to the efficacy of his sacrifice, namely, obedience....
God gives repentance, yet requires it; he gives atonement, yet
requires it. ‘Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift’ (2 Cor.
9:15).” Simon, in Expositor, 6:321-334 (for substance)—“As in prayer
we ask God to energize us and enable us to obey his law, and he
answers by entering our hearts and obeying in us and for us: as we
pray for strength in affliction, and find him helping us by putting his
Spirit into us, and suffering in us and for us; so in atonement, Christ,
the manifested God, obeys and suffers in our stead. Even the moral
theory implies substitution also. God in us obeys his own law and
bears the sorrows that sin has caused. Why can he not, in human
nature, also endure the penalty of sin? The possibility of this cannot
be consistently denied by any who believe in divine help granted in
answer to prayer. The doctrine of the atonement and the doctrine of
prayer stand or fall together.”
See on the whole subject, Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 272-324,
Philosophy of History, 65-69, and Dogmatic Theology, 2:401-463;
Magee, Atonement and Sacrifice, 27, 53, 258; Edwards's Works,
4:140 sq.; Weber, Vom Zorne Gottes, 214-334; Owen, on Divine
Justice, in Works, 10:500-512; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV, 2:27-114;
Hopkins, Works, 1:319-368; Schöberlein, in Studien und Kritiken,
1845:267-318, and 1847:7-70, also in Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.:
Versöhnung; Jahrbuch f. d. Theol., 3:713, and 8:213; Macdonnell,
Atonement, 115-214; Luthardt, Saving Truths, 114-138; Baird,
Elohim Revealed, 605-637; Lawrence, in Bib. Sac., 20:332-339;
Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre; Waffle, in Bap. Rev., 1882:263-286;

56. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:641-662 (Syst. Doct., 4:107-124);
Remensnyder, The Atonement and Modern Thought.
Secondly,—the Atonement as related to Humanity in
Christ.
The Ethical theory of the atonement holds that Christ
stands in such relation to humanity, that what God's
holiness demands Christ is under obligation to pay,
longs to pay, inevitably does pay, and pays so fully, in
virtue of his two-fold nature, that every claim of
justice is satisfied, and the sinner who accepts what
Christ has done in his behalf is saved.
Dr. R. W. Dale, in his work on The Atonement, states the question
before us: “What must be Christ's relation to men, in order to make
it possible that he should die for them?” We would change the form
of the question, so that it should read: “What must be Christ's
relation to men, in order to make it not only possible, but just and
necessary, that he should die for them?” Dale replies, for substance,
that Christ must have had an original and central relation to the
human race and to every member of it; see Denney, Death of Christ,
318. In our treatment of Ethical Monism, of the Trinity, and of the
Person of Christ, we have shown that Christ, as Logos, as the
immanent God, is the Life of humanity, laden with responsibility for
human sin, while yet he personally knows no sin. Of this race-
responsibility and race-guilt which Christ assumed, and for which he

57. suffered so soon as man had sinned, Christ's obedience and
suffering in the flesh were the visible reflection and revelation. Only
in Christ's organic union with the race can we find the vital relation
which will make his vicarious sufferings either possible or just. Only
when we regard Calvary as revealing eternal principles of the divine
nature, can we see how the sufferings of those few hours upon the
Cross could suffice to save the millions of mankind.
Dr. E. Y. Mullins has set forth the doctrine of the Atonement in five
propositions: “1. In order to atonement Christ became vitally united
to the human race. It was only by assuming the nature of those he
would redeem that he could break the power of their captor.... The
human race may be likened to many sparrows who had been caught
in the snare of the fowler, and were hopelessly struggling against
their fate. [pg 755]A great eagle swoops down from the sky,
becomes entangled with the sparrows in the net, and then spreading
his mighty wings he soars upward bearing the snare and captives
and breaking its meshes he delivers himself and them.... Christ the
fountain head of life imparting his own vitality to the redeemed, and
causing them to share in the experiences of Gethsemane and
Calvary, breaking thus for them the power of sin and death—this is
the atonement, by virtue of which sin is put away and man is united
to God.”
Dr. Mullins properly regards this view of atonement as too narrow,
inasmuch as it disregards the differences between Christ and men
arising from his sinlessness and his deity. He adds therefore that “2.
Christ became the substitute for sinners; 3. became the

58. representative of men before God; 4. gained power over human
hearts to win them from sin and reconcile them to God; and 5.
became a propitiation and satisfaction, rendering the remission of
sins consistent with the divine holiness.” If Christ's union with the
race be one which begins with creation and antedates the Fall, all of
the later points in the above scheme are only natural correlates and
consequences of the first,—substitution, representation,
reconciliation, propitiation, satisfaction, are only different aspects of
the work which Christ does for us, by virtue of the fact that he is the
immanent God, the Life of humanity, priest and victim, condemning
and condemned, atoning and atoned.
We have seen how God can justly demand
satisfaction; we now show how Christ can justly
make it; or, in other words, how the innocent can
justly suffer for the guilty. The solution of the
problem lies in Christ's union with humanity. The first
result of that union is obligation to suffer for men;
since, being one with the race, Christ had a share in
the responsibility of the race to the law and the
justice of God. In him humanity was created; at
every stage of its existence humanity was upheld by
his power; as the immanent God he was the life of
the race and of every member of it. Christ's sharing
of man's life justly and inevitably subjected him to
man's exposures and liabilities, and especially to
God's condemnation on account of sin.

59. Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.
More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge
connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.
Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and
personal growth every day!
ebookbell.com