§ 55. THE validity of the Divine forgiveness of sins is recognised as a necessary element in Christianity in some sense or other by all Christian and theological parties. It was the Socinians who first and most clearly disputed the relation between the forgiveness of sins and the death of Christ, which had been taken for granted in the Church tradition, although it had been interpreted in various ways in the course of time. The controversy stands in immediate connection with the point already discussed—that every Church theory assigns to forgiveness an essential significance for the Christian life, Socinianism only an accidental. At least it is at the outset analogous to say that all Church theology connects forgiveness with the judgment of the universal or exclusive value of Christ’s Person or whole achievement, whatever be its outcome, Socinianism with His prophetic dignity, which He shares with others. In Church theology, before the appearance of the Socinians, it is either the infinite value of Christ’s Godhead and the perfection of His satisfaction or His obedience, or the merit of the unfettered voluntariness of His action in God’s service, in short, something which belongs to Him alone, to which the general ordinance of forgiveness is referred. The Socinians derive the forgiveness of sins merely from Christ’s spoken word, which they represent as independent of His personal virtue, inasmuch as the same benefit is promised by other prophets to the same extent, and also by God immediately, without any necessary kind of mediation having to be ascribed to men. In particular, they call attention to the fact that, as Christ repeatedly gave the assurance of forgiveness by His spoken word (Mark ii. 10, 11; Luke vii. 48), this effect is not necessarily and exclusively bound up with His death.
This statement is in a measure justified as against all those estimates of Christ’s death which place that event, even in so far as it is subsumed under Christ’s determination or voluntariness, in a relation opposed to the estimate of His active life as a whole. The fact that Jesus pronounced the forgiveness of sins in those cases really refutes all those theories which are designed to show that Christ, by His death as a satisfaction for human sins, succeeded in making God willing to forgive, while they either view His morally normal life as being the expression of His duty, or regard it as enhancing the effect of His voluntary death. Nevertheless, the two cases adduced do not harmonise with the positive Socinian view, that Christ as a Prophet announces the forgiveness of sins in general on the condition of the active obedience of faith. This view amounts to saying that Christ in general gave men a knowledge of the Divine law of forgiveness; His prophetic commission the Socinians interpret in the sense of the vocation of a theoretical teacher. On the other hand, it must be remembered that Jesus, even if we refer His procedure to His prophetic dignity, receives individuals through forgiveness into the same communion with God in which He stands with God as the Son of Man, and from which He derives His correct judgment of particular cases. Moreover, the condition of the active obedience of faith which is laid down by the Socinians is not fulfilled in any of these cases. But when it is acknowledged that Christ here acted in virtue of His prophetic right, this signifies for Him not only an assertion of the truth of the words He spoke in God’s name, but the agreement of the whole course of His life on the one hand with the grace and truth of God manifested by Him, and on the other with His religious relationship to God as His Father.
Viewed from this standpoint, the forgiveness of the paralytic, associated as it is with his cure, keeps to the lines of the expectation made current by the Old Testament. For the removal of material punishment is regarded on Old Testament ground as the necessary proof of the restoration of Divine favour (vol. ii. p. 60). It is clear, however, that Jesus here accommodates Himself to the intelligence of the people around Him. But the case of the sinful woman is of a different kind. It may, indeed, be maintained that she too is freed from the punishment which corresponds to sin like hers. For the expulsion from respectable society which she had brought on herself is made invalid by Jesus, at least as regards His own Person, by His allowing the woman, to the astonishment of the Pharisee, to approach Him, and by accepting the tokens of her trust and repentance. Still her social position was not thereby fully restored; it is to be presumed that other people continued to hold aloof from the woman. That, however, makes it all the clearer what Jesus understands by the forgiveness He addressed to her. Recognising as He does her penitent faith in God in her sincere and humble trust in Himself, He makes the Divine forgiveness of sins actual by the very fact of His allowing the woman to come near Him. For just in so far as she has been attracted by His elevation and benignity, Christ gives her access to God’s grace by admitting her to that intercourse with Himself which is described in the story. Representing, as He does, in His Person both the grace of God and the normal communion of men with God, He removes the obstacle to her communion with God arising from her sin, in so far as the impression of His personality had overcome the sinful woman’s natural distrust and habitual wantonness. In this connection, then, altogether different considerations force themselves on our attention from those which come under our notice in the Socinian theory. We shall therefore from the outset have to modify our confidence in other views of Socinian origin.