By Johann Peter Lange
Edited by Rev. Marcus Dods
THE HISTORICAL DELINEATION OF THE LIFE OF JESUS.
THE TREASON OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL AGAINST THE MESSIAH. THE DECISION OF THE SANHEDRIM. THE PASCHAL LAMB AND THE LORD'S SUPPER. THE PARTING WORDS. THE PASSION, DEATH, AND BURIAL OF JESUS. THE RECONCILING OF THE WORLD.
Section XI
Christ's solemn Sabbath; the
redemption and reconciliation of
the world; Christ's entrance
into the world of spirits, and
the mystery of his birth from
death to new life
While the spirit of carnal
Judaism, like an unblessed
spectre, wandered restlessly on
the quiet Sabbath-day around the
sepulchre of Jesus, and while
the Roman power guarded the seal
and the stone of His sepulchre,
Christ was resting in His
chamber, or rather in the bosom
of His Father. He was
solemnizing the great sabbath of
eternity after the heat and
labour of the day on which He
had finished the work of
redemption. Some of the finest
of the hymns which sing of our
Lord’s passion are dedicated to
His rest in the grave.1 We feel
that in them breathes the peace
of Christ’s sabbath—the second
and great sabbath of the world,
in which the first divine
sabbath has been renewed in a
higher form.
The first divine rest consisted
in this, that with the formation
of the first man God had reached
the aim of His creation. This
aim was the heart of man, to
which He could impart Himself,
in which He could reside.
Therefore Adam’s prayerful
repose was an expression of the
rest of God—of his God, who sat
enthroned in his heart.
But this first human heart
abandoned and lost its unity
with God, and thereby lost its
calmness, its composure, and its
peace. Disquiet and
restlessness, this was the heart
in the heart of the world. The
loudest expression of this
disquiet was the fierce
fanaticism with which the Jew
zealously laboured and strove
for the stiff form of a dead
sabbath-repose.
But now there was founded in the
midst of the world a second and
higher sabbath—the sabbath which
the heart of Christ had regained
in His death. Adam had lost the
sabbatic rest of his heart even
in the midst of the natural
peace of the paradise which
surrounded him. The wild
throbbing of his sinful heart
broke the appointed rest of the
world; from the disquiet of his
heart issued all the trouble and
toil which ever since has
distracted and encumbered all
below the sun. But Christ
preserved the peace of His heart
amid the disquiet of the world,
in the ardour of His contest
with all the temptations of the
world. And the sabbath of His
soul was perfected in this, that
He maintained the quietness,
composure, and stedfastness of
His soul amid the labour of the
cross, the wild excitement of
men, the pangs of shaken nature,
and the billows of God’s
judgments. See Isa 63:1-19.
The broken heart of Christ is
the pure, strong, and calm heart
which, firmly fixed in God, is
hidden in the infinite depths of
the Godhead from all the
disquiet of life, and in which
the Father can sit securely
enthroned more peacefully than
on the rocky heights of earth or
the stars of heaven. Therefore
the heart of Christ, tried and
approved, is itself the new
sabbath of the world. It is the
source whence issues all divine
peace which has been allotted to
the world. The pacification of
the world, the reducing of its
confusion to order, the stilling
of its commotions, and the
transformation of its cheerless
toils into sacred and solemn
joy, all proceed from Him in the
power of His righteousness,
Spirit, and life. For man is the
heart of the world, and Christ
is the heart of mankind; but the
heart of His heart is the divine
peace of His soul which He
preserved amid His sore labour
and won for man.
The great disquiet of man
consists in his always fleeing
from God and His judgments with
a consciousness of guilt. But
flight from God is in its very
nature the severest and most
painful toil. For where shall we
flee from His presence and find
rest? Flight from His judgments
is flight from all the ills of
life, from every semblance of
the ills, and from every thought
of that semblance. It is flight
from distress and all her
messengers, from death and all
his shadows; nay, more, it is
flight from all earnest inward
life—from conscience and all its
mysterious warnings and alarms.
Therefore this flight is the
curse of sin. While man flees
from God in His judgments, he
sinks deeper into the ruinous
unrest of sin.
Therefore the Sabbath could
return only with Him who has
destroyed the curse of sin by
putting an end to this flight
from God. This He did by making
a full and faithful surrender of
Himself to the darkest and most
unfathomable judgment of God,
the centre of all His judgments.
In the death of the cross He
sought and found for the world
the grace of God. This is the
reconciliation of the world.
But to perceive the fulness as
well as the definiteness of the
world’s redemption which Christ
has finished, we must
distinguish between redemption,
expiation, and reconciliation.
Christ comes as the great
Prophet from God. In His name He
comes to men. As the Mighty One
of God He puts Himself at the
head of mankind to redeem them
from their hereditary
enemies—from sin, death, and
hell, and from that servitude to
the prince of darkness into
which they had fallen. The power
of this enmity is represented by
the ungodly principles,
suppositions, and powers of the
old world.2 The bonds of their
servitude consist above all in
the fear of death, which
includes fear of hatred,
persecution, suffering, and
shame.3 Even Christ was claimed
as vassal by the old world
because He was man. He seemed to
it to be a servant as all others
are, because He had the form of
a servant. So the old weapons of
the kingdom of darkness,
calumnies, suspicions,
examinations, excommunication,
and outlawry, the scourge and
the cross, must be employed to
disable and bind Him. But He
yielded not before the spell of
these old-world terrors. He
maintained the glory of His new
life unshaken by all its
imperiousness and power. In
order to retain its honour, its
repose, its life, the old world
entered into conflict with Him,
seeking to seize and bind Him to
itself; but He relinquished all,
even His body, to secure His
independency of it. If freemen,
when contending against outward
odds, would gain security from
slavery, the infallible means is
to yield their life to the
enemy. At this price Christ
maintained His freedom against
the power and the claims of the
old world, and at the same time
laid the foundation of the
world’s freedom. He purchased
the freedom of mankind; it was
not for Himself alone, but for
mankind, that, while opposing
the darkness of the world, He
maintained His inward life by
surrendering the outward. He
destroyed the spell which the
fear of death laid upon them.
The preaching of the cross
produced on earth the holy
courage to face death and the
cross, against which the power
of darkness put forth its might
in vain. All who believe on Him
know that in Him they are
already free. And this freedom
becomes theirs by their entering
into the fellowship of His
death, and being ready for His
sake to surrender their lives to
the old world. This is the
redemption which Christ has
obtained by His blood.4
But in that despotic sway which
the hostile powers exercised
over man, the judgment of God
was revealed under which men as
sinners had justly fallen. But
this at first only deepened the
estrangement arising from sin.
Man, with his guilty conscience,
perceived the righteous
judgments of God in the
consequences of sin. But God’s
goodness he could not perceive
in His judgments. The
righteousness of God was to him
something harsh and inexorable.
With the cowardly and slavish
mind of conscious guilt, he saw
hostility in the countenance of
the Judge. Hence his continual
fleeing from God. Hence the
infinite difficulty of bringing
this terrified slavish mind to
stop and turn. But Christ
removed this ban. Coming as the
great Prophet from God to men,
He has gone to God as the great
High Priest in the name of
mankind. Submission to God is
the soul of all religion, and
the root of all sacrifice. The
full and free submission to the
judgments of God which one
relatively guiltless yields in
fellowship with guilty persons,
and for them, forms the heart
and essence of priesthood. And
every surrender of this kind to
a death of relative sacrifice
has something relatively
expiatory. Many a priestly heart
has thus atoned for the historic
crimes of his house, and by
expiation prevented the
reappearance of its curse. But
the essential expiation must
extend over all time and all
space: it must embrace mankind
in the power of the Eternal
Spirit. This reconciliation
Christ has effected. God’s
judgment on the world lay in
their nailing Him to the cross.
This He clearly and consciously
perceived, felt it in sympathy;
and, in faithful submission to
God, transformed it into light
and salvation. He freely
surrendered Himself to the
unsearchable and unfathomable
depths of divine judgment, in
the full confidence of finding
therein His God, and the grace
of His God for His people. Thus
He expiated the infinite flight
of the world from God by an
infinite fleeing to Him, through
the midst of all His judgments.
And now, through the power and
blessing of His offering, men
are drawn to God, as formerly
they had fled from Him. The
symbol of this drawing is the
brightness and glory of the
cross. All who find essential
expiation in Christ, have at the
same time learnt to see the
rescuing hand of God even in the
judgments which they undergo,
and to turn these sufferings,
through priestly submission,
into salvation and blessing.5
Thus Christ, in the eternal
spirit of His surrender, has
brought in the ever-abiding and
efficacious atoning sacrifice.
But when Christ comes in God’s
name to men to redeem them, and
in their name appears before God
to expiate their guilt, He is
not divided, but One, in this
twofold acting. Nay, He thereby
completes the eternal unity of
His divine-human life, and
exhibits in this unity the
consciousness of kingly power.
As the true King of man, He
maintained the unity of His
being and His freedom of spirit
in a contest in which the
feeling of discord between man
and the righteousness of God
pierced His soul, and in which
the distractions of the world
sought to distract His heart. He
held fast by God, and preserved
the divinity of His life, when
in His oneness with mankind, in
His sympathy with man, He was
shaken by the feeling of God’s
desertion. And He held fast by
man when with perfect and divine
consciousness He acknowledged in
His death God’s judgment on the
world as death-deserving. And
thereby He achieved the
reconciliation between God and
the world. God was in Christ
reconciling the world unto
Himself.6 In His heart God remained His
God, notwithstanding that He
withdrew Himself from the world
in its judgment; the world
continued the world beloved by
Him in His heart,
notwithstanding that it seemed
separated from God and sunk in
death; and He Himself maintained
the union of the divine and
human by maintaining His
position as the God-man, while
it seemed as if the waves of
human anguish in His breast
would quench His divinity, and
the thunderbolts of divine
justice would destroy in Him the
humanity of the Son of man. Thus
in this victory of Christ lay
the reconciliation of the world
and the removal of its curse.
The heaviest curse of sin
consists in this, that man
turned the knowledge that divine
punishment necessarily follows
sin into a new and pernicious
delusion. He began by
misunderstanding that
connection. He was not satisfied
with identifying sin and
punishment, and thus confounding
the rule of the prince of
darkness with the rule of God’s
righteousness. He accustomed
himself more and more to see in
sin only an ill of life, an
inevitable fatality, and again
in this ill the real evil. He
let himself be fettered by sin,
as if it were an unavoidable
destiny, or even a fixed law of
life; on the other hand, he grew
terrified at the judgment of God
on guilt, as if that were the
real evil to be avoided at any
price, and which he could
succeed in escaping from. This
fearful confounding of sin and
suffering decided the slavery of
man in the service of darkness.
It cast a spell over him, which
made temptations seem right, and
God’s judgments wrong.
This curse none but Christ could
abolish. And this He did by
becoming a curse and suffering
for us, while preserving the
blessing in His heart. Seemingly
given up by God to die as man,
He held fast by the divine and
drew it down with Him into the
depths of death; rejected and
thrown back by man into the
bosom of God, in the
faithfulness of His heart He
drew humanity up with Him into
the Father’s bosom. As the
Prophet of God, He broke sin’s
power of temptation—as the High
Priest of man, He revealed the
gracious design of God’s
judgments; but it was as the
royal God-man that He demolished
the delusion in men’s minds
which had changed temptation
into a divine law, and judgment
into temptation. He demolished
this delusion in the one great
fact of sacrificing His life.
For this sacrifice was so
voluntary, that to this day it
appears wilful to most men, and
its accordance with the higher
law is completely hidden from
the eyes of the world. But its
spontaneity proclaims in the
strongest manner the freedom, in
the exercise of which Christ
gave a pure and absolute denial
to the pretensions of the
world’s temptation, and at the
same time laid down His life.
But this sacrifice was as
legally demanded by God, and
historically necessary, as it
was voluntary; and therefore it
is altogether a deed of Christ’s
submission to the will of God,
when His judgment on the world
was revealed, and a testimony of
perfect confidence that God’s
gracious presence is to be found
in His judgments. And thus is
the old curse abolished: the
temptation of the cross was
entirely different from the
judgment in it; temptation was
proved powerless, but judgment
was glorified as a heavenly
power of rescue.
The death of Jesus finished
redemption, expiated sin, and
brought in reconciliation. Thus
He entered into the realm of
spirits surrounded by the glory
of this victory, Himself being
made perfect and His work of
redemption completed.
If we believe in the certainty
of immortality, we must also
believe that there is a world of
separate spirits corresponding
to the world of men in the body.
But as men in this world are
subject to mutual influence, we
must assume the same in respect
to men in the kingdom of the
dead, and this the rather, as
there is no absolute separation
between the two worlds. Hence it
follows, that the entrance of
Christ into the world of spirits
was for it a great event, the
report of which must have spread
far and wide through it. And so
much the more, as through the
realm of death He was going to
the Father. For that must imply
that, in the unfolding of His
life beyond the grave, He
ascended through the domains of
imperfect life, of longing and
waiting, to the height of
perfect spiritual life; through
all the regions of that
spiritual kingdom which is poor
in manifestations, to the region
of the highest and richest
revelation of the Father’s
glory. Thus His death was
necessarily and essentially a
triumphant march through the
waiting lower world in paradise.
Now as He went in the power of
the unfolding of His being
through every region of the life
beyond the grave, from the
lowest limits of the kingdom of
the dead to the highest of the
resurrection, He had experience
of them all, and His transit
affected them all. But as He
passed through them in the full
power of the living Redeemer
made perfect in God, His passing
through each region necessarily
caused commotion in it, and
assumed the shape of a divine
revelation of salvation for its
inhabitants.
The very entrance of Christ into
that kingdom was, in fact, an
announcement of the completion
of redemption, a preaching of
the Gospel for departed spirits,
and an actual transforming of
the relations of that world.
If we, as Christians, are
convinced of the reality of the
world of spirits beyond the
grave, we must at the same time
believe that, so long as
redemption was not decided, its
relations necessarily remain
more or less undecided, as
states of longing, of waiting,
and of formation. But we must
equally assume that in that
region thousands of God’s elect
had grown ripe for the day of
decision; as in this world there
had been matured Zacharias,
Elisabeth, Simeon, Anna, and
especially Mary; and that it
needed only the annunciation of
the perfected Redeemer to make
them partakers of the blessings
of the New Covenant, and joyful
messengers of salvation for the
world of spirits, so that Christ
needed not go through a course
of wandering, wonder-working,
and teaching there. Everything
was ready for the final
decision. His entrance into the
world of spirits announced His
victory with a shock of life
which could not fail to shake
all its regions, and the working
of that mighty power, from its
very nature, continues active
through all times and spaces of
that world.
But we cannot consider this
effect of Christ’s victory as
unintentional; nay, it rather
belongs to His mission and the
work of His life. He was sent to
mankind, not merely to men in
this world.7
The old predilection of the
Israelite for this world shows
itself again in the tendency of
the old orthodox scholasticism
to assign to it exclusive claims
to the redemption which is in
Christ; and perhaps this is
partly the cause that in our day
the ‘modern’ spirit turns away
in disgust from considering the
state of the dead, owing to the
gloomy representations given of
it. This abridging and limiting
the sphere of the Gospel
contradicts not only the
Apostles’ Creed,8
but also the Holy Scriptures,9—not only
Scripture, but also the power
and grace of Christ, the whole
idea and significance of His
work and kingdom. When He, as
the perfected Saviour of the
world, entered into the kingdom
of the dead, and thousands of
elected saints, millions of
repentant souls, were waiting
for Him there, was it not quite
in accordance with His spirit
and His relation to this great
waiting congregation, that He
should preach the Gospel to them
on His entrance? (See Psa 22:25)
And He really did preach the
Gospel in the kingdom of the
dead. But the proclamation of it
was so prepared for these, that
it only needed His salutation of
peace to form a church of
spirits, and to surround Him
with a triumphant congregation.
Thereby the new paradise was
founded, into which He received
the penitent thief also, a
centre for the saving work of
Christ in the other world. But
as the Gospel works in this
world under conditions of
freedom, so also there. There
are many who would maintain that
the preaching of the Gospel to
them that are dead could only
tend to condemnation, while
others think that it could tend
only to salvation. These are two
contrary kinds of superstition
which are doomed to maintain a
resultless contest with each
other; but they both agree in
making time lord over grace, and
in exalting space into a fate
over the freedom of man’s
self-determination. The Gospel
acts everywhere according to its
nature and the nature of the
sinful human heart. It is of
itself a savour of life unto
life, which yet unto many
becomes a savour of death unto
death through their own fault.
It produces decision everywhere,
in the other world as in this,
and so lays the foundation for
judgment and for resurrection.10
The expression usually employed
by Christ, when speaking of His
coming death, was, that He was
going to the Father. His death
was in the most proper sense a
merging and sinking Himself into
the bosom and heart of God,
which implies that by death in
God He recovered from death.
Therefore, maltreated,
suffering, and toilworn, He had
to die really—to yield to
death—in order to be thoroughly
quickened and revived to new
life in God. Had He recovered
from being half dead, or from a
semblance of death, He would
have brought His deadly wounds
back with Him into life, and the
apparently Risen One would have
been in reality a sick person,
who afterwards must have
succumbed to the effects of the
deadly strokes which He had
received. There would then have
been a sickly and diseased human
form, where now the Christian
may and must see only the Risen
One—the essential type of
eternal life-the embodied power
of the resurrection. It is death
which first frees the sufferer
from His sickness; it is death
which first destroys the effect
of deadly wounds.
Thus Christ was really dead, and
by death became free from the
fatal effects of His sufferings,
and from the power of the death
of this world. But His death,
when accomplished, had to be
transformed immediately to
resurrection in the mystery of a
new birth.
We must, in the first place,
consider His death as the
absolute repose of His spirit in
God, in the enjoyment of the
victory He had achieved;
further, as the deepest and most
inward life, and consequently as
the most vitally powerful
impulse to become visible, as a
power which forthwith develops
itself into a living paradise,
and begins to form a new
paradise surrounded with
spiritual beauty.
But as Christ sinks Himself and
moves in God, God works in Him.
Christ’s repose in God
corresponds to God’s solemn joy
in the perfection of His heart.
Thus the victor-joy of Christ in
God meets with an absolute
announcement of God’s joy over
Him in His Spirit. But the most
inward revelation of the
Father’s quickening glory in the
Son, corresponds to the inward
life of the Son in the Father.
Finally, God’s breath of life,
as the creative power which
awakes Him from the dead, meets
with the tendency to
manifestation and appearance of
the life of Christ in God.
In any case Christ must have
risen again from the dead,
because His being as man had
been perfected in God, and
thereby became the perfected
power of life and appearance;
therefore He must have risen
again immediately, or very
shortly after His death, because
He, in the glory of His being,
had risen above the matter and
the time of this world. Even if
He had not risen in it, yet He
must have solemnized His
resurrection in the other world.
But would that have been perfect
resurrection? Was the power of
His spirit and life to obtain
dominion over the whole world,
and not over His own dead body?
Was He, in the power of His
life, again to assume a living
visible form, and, in doing so,
pass by and neglect the body
which had first really served to
manifest His life? That would
have been to pass by and neglect
humanity. For how could men be
able to recognize Him as the
Risen One, had He appeared in
another body? And if He had not
appeared to men here in His
resurrection, His resurrection
would have had no significance
for man. Would it then have been
the real, full, and perfect
resurrection? Would the
redemption of the world have
been decided, to say nothing of
its being crowned and sealed by
the resurrection? The tendency
of Christ’s life to
manifestation in newness of life
was, above all, an impulse of
His heart to bring to His
mourning people here, and to
this sinful world, the greeting
of peace—the peace of the
resurrection and of
reconciliation. But it is not
merely on these more general
grounds that we must hold the
dead body of Christ to be the
necessary organ of His
resurrection. Was not this body
the pure image of His being, the
pure formation of the Holy
Ghost? Was it not impenetrated
by His holy disposition, His
works of wonder and spiritual
victories? And now, finally, it
had been impenetrated by His
sufferings—the fire of sacrifice
had passed through it, permeated
and dedicated by the lightning
flash of justice. Thus the body
of Christ was thrice dedicated
for His resurrection—by His holy
birth, by His holy life, and by
His holy death. Therefore this
sacred body was brought always
nearer and nearer to eternal
life, and that chiefly and at
last by means of death. When
death deprived it of existence
in this world, it reposed in the
bosom of the presence of God as
the pure life-form of the Holy
One, which corruption durst not
approach, which the Father only
needed to breathe upon and
Christ to touch in His tendency
to resurrection to raise it up
to eternal life, to awaken in it
the holy initiative to
resurrection, to beget the first
birth from the dead.11
We must here remember that,
according to the deep and living
view of Christianity, man was
originally to pass to eternity,
not by entire separation from
his body, but by transformation.
The idea of the transition in
paradise was without doubt that
of a metamorphosis, resembling
death, but not really death. Not
the corruptible corn of wheat,
but the butterfly bursting forth
from the chrysalis, is the
symbol of the transition
originally designed for man.
Christ had to go the way of
death with sinners to redeem
them from death. But as soon as
He was dead, the power of the
resurrection had to be realized
in His body, in that form of
transformation in which man in
paradise was destined to pass
from the first to the second
life, and which shall be
realized in the case of the
righteous at the end of the
world.12 Thus it was in the
central point of the body in
which He had formerly existed
that the spark of the new life
commenced, that mysterious
movement of transformation which
was completed with His
resurrection on the third day.
He was not, like Lazarus, to
return into the old and first
life. He was not to belong
exclusively to either world; but
His perfect life was to embrace
both realms of life. He had to
experience the death of
separation from the body as well
as that of transformation, so
that, as Prince of the
resurrection, He might have
power over the entire realm of
death, and at last entirely
abolish it, transforming it into
life. Thus the divine mystery of
the coming resurrection was
working unseen in the sanctuary
of our Lord’s sepulchre. The
powerless spirits of corruption
dared not approach that mighty
form which the Spirit of eternal
life had already breathed upon
with His breath of flame.
The world knew not this mystery.
Its dominant thought was death;
its desire, the stillness of the
grave. But the kingdom of
spirits was in great commotion;
the gentler movements also of
the earthquake seemed still to
continue; and even the men of
this world had secret
presentiments, of which they
were not clearly conscious,
respecting that mystery. His
enemies were guarding the stone
and the seal with superstitious
fear; His friends were preparing
the anointing for the dead with
as devoted love as if they had
been providing royal honours for
the living.
───♦───
Notes
1. Among the hymns referred to
which celebrate with deep
Christian feeling the death of
Christ, and His rest in the
grave, we may mention the
following in particular: Es ist
vollbracht! Er ist verschieden,
by S. Frank; O Traurigkeit, O
Herzeleid, by J. Rist; Am Kreuz
erblasst, by Ch. Fr. Neander;
Nun schlummerst du, nach: So
ruhest du, by S. Frank. The
three last hymns have the same
tune, which touchingly expresses
the feeling of Christ’s
sabbath-rest. [The air referred
to may be seen in ‘The Chorale
Book for England;’ the hymns
translated by Cath. Winkworth,
the melodies arranged by Prof.
Bennett and Otto Goldschmidt.
Lond. 1863.—Ed.]
2. From not sufficiently
distinguishing the three
elements in the deliverance of
the world, namely, redemption,
expiation, and reconciliation,
the most one-sided notions have
been adopted; and these notions
again have been much
misapprehended. It was in
accordance with the natural
development of this threefold
dogma that the fathers Irenæus,
Origen, &c., should specially
bring forward and unfold the
element of redemption; that
afterwards the Scholastics,
particularly Anselm of
Canterbury, should develop the
element of expiation; and
finally, modern theology that of
reconciliation in the narrower
sense. What is one-sided in this
development arises from
neglecting these distinctions,
and still more from
misapprehending them. For
example, how many contemptible
and unfair remarks have been
made on this doctrine of Origen
and his associates: The Redeemer
gave His soul as a ransom, not
to God, but to the devil! (See
Von Baur, die christliche Lehre
von der versöhnung, &c., 49.) It
has not been considered that the
fathers were specially called
upon to exhibit the first
practical side of redemption,
the freeing of man from the
power of darkness. Von Baur
shows how they were specially
led to this in order to correct
the doctrine of the Gnostics,
according to which Christ had to
satisfy the law of the Demiurge
by His death. They felt
themselves bound to insist, at
least mainly, upon the element
of redemption, but they
virtually included that of
expiation. Similarly we may
explain the one-sidedness of
Anselm’s theory, and also the
one-sidedness of many unfair
critiques on it. Thus it is
said, Anselm should have given
special prominence to the idea
of reconciliation; but his
calling was to set forth the
weight and importance of
expiation. Modern theories of
reconciliation (in the narrower
sense) are pretty generally
one-sided and inadequate from
the same cause, for the ideas of
redemption and expiation are apt
to be left too much out of view
when giving a one-sided
prominence to the idea of
reconciliation. While making the
above-mentioned distinctions, we
must firmly hold that the three
elements work together in living
unity in the concrete fact of
salvation, and the practical
expression of Scripture agrees
with this view. The idea of
redemption least of all bears
being treated of apart; because
the judicial government of God
must always be taken into
account when treating of the
historic power and prevalence of
the darkness of the world. What
Von Baur says (p. 7) by way of
distinguishing between
redemption and reconciliation,
is partly inadequate and partly
incorrect. Thus he says,
‘Reconciliation is consequently
the inner, which necessarily
presupposes redemption as the
outer;’ or, as Christ is
Redeemer, by His whole
manifestation and actions, He is
Reconciler by His death.
He further remarks by way of
explanation (p. 9):
Reconciliation may be regarded,
in the first place, as a process
in the being of God Himself,
whereby He mediates with
Himself, in order to realize the
conception of His own being.
This view, which flows from
later Greek, to say nothing of
later and lower Christian
notions, can only confuse the
Christian’s idea of God. The
distinction between the idea of
expiation and that of
reconciliation has been insisted
upon and explained by Nitzsch in
his System der christlichen
Lehre (Clark’s Tr. 268). Nitzsch
points to the difference between
καταλλαγὴ, reconciliatio, and
ἱλασμὸς, expiatio. By
reconciliation he understands
the testimony—completed by the
death of Jesus—of God’s grace to
men; by expiation, the fact,
that Jesus as innocent, who had
not to suffer for Himself but
for others, consequently
suffered death in their stead,
and overcame death, so that He
might be the end of all purely
legal condemnation or pardon.
Although this, and what he
further says in explanation,
does not quite express the idea
of expiation, yet the venerable
divine plainly condemns the
aversion which is felt by many
theologians to the very idea of
expiation. On the relation
between punishment and guilt,
and the connection between
punishment and forgiveness,
compare the profound treatise by Göschel:
Das Strafrecht und die
christliche Lehre von der
Satisfaction in der Schrift
desselben: Zerstreute Blätter, i. 468. Another jurist, F. J.
Stahl, in his work, Fundamente
einer christlichen Philosophie,
has, in his doctrine of
expiation, 156, given a
contribution which throws light
upon the doctrine of
reconciliation. Yet he appears
to us to have failed in his
attempt to disconnect the idea
of expiation from that of
punishment. He fails to perceive
that the two stand in eternal
relation to each other, that
punishment (as it proceeds from
God) always tends to expiation,
that expiation (as appropriated
by man) is always brought about
by free submission (in
conformity to a moral demand) to
punitive justice. He says of
punishment: ‘It is morally and
intrinsically, like guilt
itself, infinite, eternal; the
incessant pain,’ &c. He should
have stated here that he refers
to punishment not in its active
but in its passive sense, not as
it is inflicted by God, but as
it is suffered by man. Then we
dispute the proposition, that
the endurance of punishment
must, as a matter of course
(even in the case of those who
are conscious of the presence of
the spirit who punishes),
continue eternally, incessant
pain. When it is said of
expiation, It is distinguished
from punishment by its effect,
this difference in effect must
be founded upon the difference
between the mind and spirit of
him who makes the expiation and
the disposition of him who is
punished. Our author then cites
a series of examples in which
relative expiation is
illustrated, and very properly
dwells on the example of Antigone.
He then gives this definition:
The idea of expiation is to
avert eternal punishment by
submitting to sufferings which
come to an end. This
proposition, by being general,
is too inexact, for it includes
mere relative expiation. To
guard against misunderstanding,
it is well to remark, that any
particular kind of expiation
always bears reference to a
particular law and its sphere of
operation, and to the sin,
curse, punishment, and removal
of the curse within that sphere.
Expiation, in its highest grade,
is the removal of sin from man
by means of punitive suffering.
Sin as the curse always
increases suffering, but free
submission to God’s grace in
this punitive suffering turns
the curse into a blessing. The
significance of the submission,
however, is always to be judged
according to the sphere in which
it is exercised and to which it
bears relation. For example—Antigone
expiates the historical
blood-guiltiness of her house,
its offence as a family against
the spirit of social morality.
She does this by voluntarily
devoting herself to death,
approving her fidelity as a
sister and priestess, and so
glorifying the spirit of the
family which that guilt
substantially quenches. But in
the sphere of universal
spiritual law, in which
righteousness in God’s sight is
demanded, she must be regarded
not as expiating, but as
standing in need of
reconciliation. The author
himself brings out this
distinction, since he regards
reconciliation in Christ as
expiation in its absolute form.
‘Here alone,’ says he, ‘is true
expiation; elsewhere, only
presentiment and symbol.’ This
is perhaps going too far on the
other side. Certainly relative
expiations are mere presentiment
and symbol in relation to the
absolute expiation. But in their
own conditioned conception and
sphere, they have at the same
time a real side. Even the Old
Testament expiations by the
blood of animals had a real side
in relation to the sphere of
Levitical law. This law was,
indeed, altogether symbolical;
and if the offerer did not
acknowledge this, his Levitical
righteousness was an offence
against the essential law of the
kingdom of God. But that did not
nullify the conditioned value of
his offering. The penitent thief
on the cross could not expiate
his guilt before God, but by his
death he gave satisfaction for
his civil offence against
society, nay, he even expiated
it in this relation so soon as
he, by reconciliation in Christ,
freely accepted God’s punishment
in his sufferings. The author
therefore is wrong in thinking
that the guilty can never
accomplish expiation through
punitive suffering; for if a
pardoned criminal still thought
death his proper due, that would
be held as an expiation of his
former guilt, that is, when we
speak of expiation in a somewhat
indefinite sense. When a prince
pardons a criminal, he does so
because he finds the expiation,
in the circumstances of the
case, supplemented by a
mitigated punishment, or because
he takes it on trust that the
crime is expiated. How else
would the pardon have removed
the punishment? But as the
pardon of the criminal can
expiate his punishment, so also
can his voluntary surrender to
punitive suffering. True, this
is only relative expiation of
relative punishment, and not
absolute reconciliation.
Expiations of this kind are so
rare, because the criminal
generally sees only an act of
hostility in his sentence, and
therefore in his suffering sin
still continues a curse. The
more superficial or external the
sphere is, so much the easier is
it for him who is punished to
make expiation through the
blessing of a deeper region of
life. Conversely, the difficulty
is increased with the increasing
power of the curse and of fear.
Finally, in the sphere of
absolute justice all men were
enemies, that is, they all saw
hostility in God, the Judge; and
so here the unshaken, holy, and
pure consciousness of Christ
could alone stand before all the
terrors of God, and accomplish
expiation by full surrender, in
divine confidence, to grace in
judgment. Stahl is right in
maintaining that the first
requisite in expiation is
voluntariness; yet we must
add—connected with a deep moral
necessity. Further, he who makes
the expiation must be innocent
(at all events, innocent
relatively to the sphere in
which the guilt is contracted
and the expiation made), when he
removes by expiation another’s
punitive sufferings. Yet, we
must add, that besides freedom
from guilt, community of life
with the guilty is requisite,
and such a community as can
legally be considered unity of
life. Finally, expiation
requires vicarious suffering; at
least, as the rule, it requires
this. Keeping in view this last
limitation, we can remember
nothing against this definition.
Nay, it may be maintained that
even the penitent thief, who
expiated his civic guilt by his
believing death, suffered more
or less vicariously for the
crimes of his associates. Our
author rightly maintains,
against one-sided scholastic
views, that Christ was not
punished by God, that He did not
undergo divine punishment simply
as punishment; but He has not
sufficiently taken into account
that His suffering was punitive
suffering for guilt and for the
guilty, although he has
acknowledged that Christ really
underwent a great punitive
judgment of God on men, and
thereby turned it into a
blessing. Could men, in the
centre-point of time, incur a
greater judgment than crucifying
the Lord of glory, in the
blindness to which they were
given over? This was the guilt
of the world and the divine
punishment which lay upon Him,
the burden of which He felt by
His sympathy with us, that we
might have peace; for His love
outweighed the guilt, and His
firm trust made the punishment
an act of love. Stahl has shown
that the contrast between God’s
love and righteousness in the
work of reconciliation forms no
dualism. His distinction also
between expiation and punishment
must tend to throw light on the
doctrine of reconciliation, by
leading us to distinguish more
clearly than has hitherto been
done between the voluntary
expiatory suffering of an
innocent person which turns
judgment into deliverance, and
the involuntary punitive
suffering of the guilty which
perverts salutary punishment
into a baleful curse. It is
cheering to see the doctrine of
reconciliation advanced thus by
believing jurists, while many
theologians are unthinkingly
opposed to all the deeper
spiritual relations of human
life, and especially deny
entirely the historical
significance of guilt, curse,
and reconciliation. How many are
there who cannot conceive of the
love of God except as identical
with an eternal natural
tenderness, and think this so
passive, that they cannot suffer
in it the contrast of
righteousness and grace! They
will not hear of punishment,
curse, and reconciliation, least
of all of a curse which the
innocent can suffer along with
the guilty, or of an expiation
which the guilty may partake of
through the innocent. They talk
more willingly of dark mishap,
death, and destruction; and
instead of discovering in the
Greek tragedians presentiments
of judgment and expiation allied
to Christianity, they rather
introduce their own later-Greek,
pagan ideas of destiny into the
works of those tragedians. We
may safely assert that
Sophocles, in particular, knew
more of guilt, curse, and
expiation, than many a doctor of
divinity. For the doctrine of
the Rabbis regarding
reconciliation, see Sepp, iii.
589.13
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1) See Note 1. 2) Ἐλυτρῴθητε ἐκ τῆς ματαίας ὑμῶν ἀναστροφῆς πατροπαραδότου. 1 Pet. i. 18 3) See Heb. ii. 15. 4) The λύτρωσις or ἀπολύτρωσις. In the New Testament redemption is generally conjoined with reconciliation in accordance with its concrete view and manner of expression. Hence these expressions commonly denote reconciliation ; but we take it here in the narrower sense, with special reference to 1 Pet. i. 18. 5) This is the expiation included in the λύτρωσις or ἀπολύτρωσις, and denoted more distinctly by ἱλασμός or ἱλαστήριον. 6) This is the καταλλαγή. See 2 Cor. v. 19 7) Compare Nitzsch, System of Christian Doctrine (Tr. Clark) 391 ; Köuig, Die Lehre Christi Höllenfahrt, 213.
8)
Descendit ad inferna. The
rendering, descended into hell,
is certainly liable to be
misconstrued; yet this might
lead to an exaggeration of the
doctrine of salvation 9) Compare Matt, xxvii. 52, 53 ; Eph. iv. 8-10 ; 1 Pet. iii. 19, iv. 6 10) On the doctrines of the Jews and heathens concerning Hades, compare Sepp, iii. 621. The doctrines of the fathers and of the moderns are exhibited in the learned and valuable work of König which we have referred to. [The opinions of the fathers are very fully exhibited by Pearson on the Creed (article, He descended into Hell ). He is himself opposed to the view advocated above; saying of it, that as the authority is most uncertain, so is the doctrine most incongruous. The days which follow after death were never made for opportunities to a better life. . . . If they be in a state of salvation now, by the virtue of Christ s descent into hell, which were numbered among the damned before His death, at the day of the general judgment they must be returned into hell again; or, if they be received then into eternal happiness, it will follow, either that they were not justly condemned to those flames at first, according to the general dispensations of God, or else they did not receive the things done in their body at the last; which all shall as certainly receive as all appear. Pearson s own view, that the end for which He descended was, that He might undergo the condition of a dead man as well as of a living ('legem mortuorum servare,' Irenaeus). seems on many accounts preferable even to Calvin s, for which see Instit. II. xvi. 10.—ED.] 11) Schmieder (in his treatise, The Spirit of the United Evangelical Church] ingeniously refers the article in the Apostles' Creed, descendit ad inferna, in the first place to this event. But, at the same time, he ascribed to our Lord an activity in accordance with this transformation. 12) The first proposition follows from the second. On the second, see 1 Cor. xv. 51, comp. 2 Cor. v. 2; Rom. viii. 22. See my essay in Stud, und Krit. 1836, iii. 693. 13) [The precise meaning and scriptural usage of the words spoken of above; the connection between expiation, reconciliation, and redemption ; and the relation of the sufferings of Christ to the punishment clue to sinners and to the punitive justice of God, are discussed in all the works bearing on the Socinian controversy at large. Those who desire to compare the author s views with the ordinary and received opinions, will find ample material in Grotius, Defensio Fid. Cathol. de Satisfactione Christl adv. F. Socinum (c. vi. 'An Deus voluerit Christum puuire,' and following chapters, De placatione, reconciliatione, redemptione, expiatione per mortem Christ! facta). Also, the defence of this work by G. J. Vossius, and the reply to Crellius attack upon it, by Stillingfleet, in his masterly Discourses on Christ s Satisfaction; Turrettin, De Satisf. Ckristi Disput. pp. 70, 200, 324 (Ed. 1696); Magee, Discourses on Atonement, Illustrations 26, 27, 28; Pye Smith's Four Discourses on the Sacrifice and Priesthood (especially Disc, iv.) ; Cunningham, Historical Theology, ii. 286.—ED.]
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