This doctrine of the Church was undeniably incomplete; those distinctive marks of its Divine origin were simply put forward as the most necessary and most important criteria, in order to show the continuity of the Church in the Reformation and its distinction from Anabaptism. The distinctive marks under which the fellowship of the saints set apart by God’s Word and sacraments is self-acting in its kind and towards its end,—in other words, the ethical idea of the Church,—was left untouched in these definitions. And yet this completion of the idea of the Church was needed in order to establish by regular deduction that existence as a law-ordered fellowship which was pointed to by the office of preacher.⁵ The fundamental mark of the Church as active is indicated when Luther in his treatise Von Conciliis und Kirchen (1539), amongst the seven characteristics of the Church, along with the Word of God, baptism, the supper, the keys, the function of preaching, the cross, in the sixth place reckons prayer.⁶ For this is that confession of the name of God (Heb. xiii. 15) by which the community of the saints exercises its priestly character. Melanchthon has repeatedly touched upon the same thought in academic declamations and disputations.⁷ But, in order that the invocation of God in the Church may rightly be gone about, he insists upon the true doctrine of the articles of faith as a necessary means; and yet further on he assigns the significance of a leading characteristic to this instrumentality which is subordinate to the active destiny of the Church. This fatal change of position betrays itself in the circumstance that the dogmatico-religious doctrine of the Church which, in the 2d edition of the Loci Theologici, follows the type of the Augsburg Confession, is in the 3rd edition (1543) superseded by a representation of the idea of the active Church, which is not an object of faith, but to which one is bound to attach one’s-self. It is from the standpoint of empiricism and of practical utility that the Church is defined as coetus vocatorum, profitentium evangelium Dei,—in quo articuli fidei recte docentur,—amplectentium evangelium Christi et recte utentium sacramentis. And it is only in accounting for the value of these active characteristics that the constitutive dogmatic characteristic is indicated; which is that God per ministerium evangelii est efficax et multos ad vitam æternam regenerat.⁸

This change of view was brought about when it came to be clearly felt that union with the Roman Church was no longer attainable, and when the impression gained ground that it was accordingly imperative to vindicate the true Church against the false, and to insist upon the duty of joining the former as being intrusted with the pure gospel. The bare way, however, in which Melanchthon now proclaimed the pura doctrina evangelii as the main characteristic of the Church betokens the scholastic style which distinguished the præceptor Germaniæ from the reformator ecclesiæ. It is far from being unimportant for the praxis of the Church that Melanchthon, while denying her political nature, should have found no other analogy for her real character than that of a school.⁹ In correspondence with this thought is the marked way in which he devotes chief care to the maintenance of purity of doctrine. Luther, in his treatise Von Conciliis und Kirchen, had nobly judged of divergencies between pure and impure doctrine, while the foundation was still adhered to by saying, that those who build thereupon wood, hay, and stubble shall find their work destroyed by the fire of Holy Writ.¹⁰ But Melanchthon, insisting as he does repeatedly in his declamations on purity of doctrine always, after the style of the old Church, regards Satan as the author of every divergence.¹¹ In treating the matter so, he is very far from using a mere form of speech, for even with regard to Greek philosophy he contrasts the orthodoxy of Aristotle with the teachings of Epicurus and Zeno which had the devil for their author.¹² From his imperious demand that errors in doctrine should forthwith be brought to the test of Scripture and judged by it, and from his fanatical expectation¹³ that God would then destroy the false teachers, Melanchthon was not broken off by his melancholy experiences at the hands of his own pupils, some of whom were audacious enough to direct even against himself those very rules regarding the necessity of purity of doctrine. For as early as the year 1536 Conrad Cordatus pressed him hard on account of his unfortunate expression that good works were conditio sine qua non justificationis.¹⁴ And Flacius, in the controversy with his master on the Adiaphora, held to Melanchthon’s principle with a tenacity which proved him a loyal scholar, in everything save respect for his master. In fact the whole movement of Lutheranism as against Melanchthon up to the time of the formula concordiæ, as well as the final decision of the Lutheran against the Reformed Church, were consequences brought about simply by the idea of the Church set up by Melanchthon himself, and by the scholastic concern for oneness of doctrine. The reaction of scholastic narrowness against the Catholic tendency of the Reformation is accordingly so far from being inexplicable that, in point of form, it can be understood only as the result of Melanchthon’s influence. Finally, it was Melanchthon too who gave the signal for the Lutheran Church, which was narrowing itself into a theological school, no more to recognise in the communion rightly administered God’s gift of grace, in the reception of which Churches dogmatically separated had to show forth in a practical way their confession of the unity of the Church, but only the token of adherence to a particular Church.¹⁵ Melanchthon’s disciples strengthened the doctrinaire element in the Reformed Church also, where, indeed, it had already been brought into prominence through Calvin’s individuality, but first reached its full development in the controversy against Arminianism.

As the Lutheran and Reformed Churches, alike in their confessions and in their theology, upheld the general idea of reconciliation through Christ, and belief in the oneness of the community of saints described by the well-known leading characteristics, their title and right to a Church character is established. Both branches of the Reformation Church manifest, in their theoretical statement of the doctrines of reconciliation and justification, such a measure of agreement, and their points of difference upon these heads are so subordinate in importance, that these last almost entirely disappear when confronted with Socinianism. So that it is imperative to treat the Lutheran and Reformed theology together in the following exposition; an opposite procedure would be inconsistent with the just principles of historical arrangement. Of course, in pursuing this path, I shall have to come to an explanation with Schneckenburger on more points than one.¹⁶ That acute writer certainly did not intend, by widening the distance between the Lutheran and Reformed doctrinal notions, to promote the alienation of these confessions. Although he was a Lutheran and therefore, as will afterwards appear, did not fully understand the special peculiarities of the Reformed type of doctrine, he was very far from seeking, by an exaggerated view of certain divergencies between the two, and by tracing out their antitheses, to lower the value of the Reformed as against the Lutheran doctrine. On the contrary, he often prefers the former to the latter, because he thinks that it favours the tendencies of modern, that is, Schleiermacherian theology; or that it conveys an impulse to the investigation of the problems discussed in that theology. His representation of the Reformed doctrine of reconciliation leads in more points than one to the conclusion that the opposition to Socinianism, which, to the consciousness of the Reformed theologians, appeared to be thoroughgoing, is not in reality so, but that their development of doctrine is distinguished from the contemporary Lutheran development by a secret leaning towards Socinian principles.¹⁷ These conclusions rest partly upon inaccurate and imperfect observation, and partly upon the attribution of exaggerated value to casual and isolated aberrations; but partly, too, upon the historian’s desire to find a distinct difference in kind between the two evangelical confessions, and one that shall be observable in all practical points of the theological system. Schneckenburger has undertaken this task with the disposition to look complacently upon the peculiarities of all manifestations of the human spirit within the sphere of the Christian life. But, in the instance before us, the result is, that between Lutheran and Reformed Christianity, though they stand upon a common basis, a definite difference of kind is made out, while Calvinistic Christianity and Socinianism are made to come so near each other that they appear to be mere varieties. Such a view is certainly in direct opposition to the consciousness of the orthodox Reformed Church, neither was it asserted by the earlier Lutherans at all so broadly as by Schneckenburger. From this consideration may be derived for the following discussion a measure of caution with regard to Schneckenburger’s combinations; and this can only be confirmed by the detailed proof that the Lutheran and Reformed view of the doctrine of the atonement, while standing together in specific opposition to Socinianism, at the same time prove that the two evangelical confessions, with respect to the doctrine as a whole, differ from one another only as varieties.

39. Both evangelical confessions coincide, in the first place, in their definition and explanation of the idea of satisfaction as applied to the work of Christ. The line of thought taken by the Reformers (see above, p. 198) is so carried out as, in the first place, to separate the work of Christ, which formerly had been brought into view as the means of justification, from that result, and to place the doctrine de officio Christi or de Christo mediatore over against the doctrine de justificatione as its general historical prerequisite. This procedure, however, is earlier resorted to, and in a more decisive manner, by Calvin’s successors, e.g., by Peter Martyr and by Zanchi, than by the Lutherans. Among the latter, Hutter, for example, treats of everything under the locus de justificatione; and Gerhard, under the head de officio Christi, gives only in general outline what he afterwards investigates more thoroughly as the causa meritoria justificationis. Here may be detected the influence of Melanchthon, in whom regard to the systematic construction of the doctrine was outweighed by the religious view of the connexion of justification with the historical work of Christ; while the systematic tendency of the Reformed theologians betrays the influence of Calvin as their pattern. But their common doctrine is, that God in His love or grace towards the sinful human race, which had become liable to eternal destruction, sent His Son into the world, in the unity of the Divine and human natures, in order to redeem men from sin, or to reconcile them with Himself, and that the essential or inherent justice of God prescribes the special work whereby Christ approves Himself as the mediator of salvation. The justice of God of necessity demands the punishment of sin; in other words, in the case in question, it demands the eternal condemnation of the human race. If, then, their preservation unto everlasting life is to be secured to men through Christ, this purpose of God’s grace can be realized only on condition that satisfaction be given to the penal justice of God by the suffering of a substitute in the room of sinners. For this work Christ as God-man is qualified, because, as the Sinless One, He was under no obligation to suffer and die, and because His innocent passion, by reason of the Divine and therefore infinite value of His Person, constitutes the equivalent for the infinite guilt of sin. His vicarious endurance of the punishment that was due to sinners is accordingly that satisfaction suited to the righteousness of God, which makes it possible for God, through the God-man, to confer upon men the grace of forgiveness of sins and of justification. But the idea of satisfaction includes in itself that Christ by His suffering and death endured the wrath of God which is due to sin, and that thereby he appeased and removed that wrath.

Now Schneckenburger represents it as the general Reformed doctrine, that Christ’s satisfaction is not the causa meritoria of our salvation, but simply the causa instrumentalis of the execution of God’s saving decree and of the application of salvation; thus implying that the satisfaction wrought by the historical Christ only has reference to our subjective need.¹⁸ Hereby Schneckenburger desires to indicate that the strict notion of satisfaction, as referred to the justice of God and deduced from it as necessary, has no firm basis in the Reformed theology, and is no characteristic feature in it; but that whenever it finds expression it is always either directly or indirectly again withdrawn. That this is logical in the Reformed system Schneckenburger infers from the relation in which the Person of Christ stands to the beneplacitum of God,—to that act of mere good pleasure which ordains the union between the Logos and human nature; and also from the circumstance that, properly speaking, the Divine nature of Christ is represented as the factor that offers satisfaction, while the human nature is regarded as the selfless medium by which God gives satisfaction to Himself. If, then, Christ’s human activity finds no independent place in the chain of God’s decree and personal activity, the above-mentioned denial of the meritorious value of Christ’s satisfaction is intelligible. This view has points of resemblance with John Gerhard’s assertion¹⁹ that the Socinian opposition to the interpretation of Christ’s work as causa meritoria justificationis was at least occasioned by the thought of God’s mere good pleasure in Calvin’s dogma of eternal election and reprobation. For, as Gerhard assumes, it would be Calvinistic to argue, si absoluta Dei voluntate salvandi electi sunt ad vitam æternam, utique etiam absoluta Dei voluntate peccata illis remittuntur, vel certe remitti potuerunt, neque opus erit Christi satisfactione et merito. That this deduction really applies to Calvinism, at least in respect of a certain tendency in it, Gerhard proves on the one hand by Calvin’s own confession that the idea of the meritum Christi is correlative to that of the beneplacitum Dei, for Christ as man could have no merit over against God’s righteous judgment; further, by an expression of Wolfgang Musculus in the Loci communes (loc. 26, de justific. cap. 3.), and by the declaration of Conrad Vorstius against the strict conception of satisfaction. Gerhard then, in his criticism upon Calvinism, satisfies himself with asserting a tendency implied in it that is fitted to supersede the strict conception of satisfaction; while Schneckenburger goes so far as to find in the avoidance of the idea of the causa meritoria a tangible result of that tendency. But, with regard to Gerhard, he ought not to appeal to Vorstius, who indeed took the limited assertion of God’s mere good pleasure that Calvinism makes, as an occasion for developing that thought after the manner of the Socinians, as a principle for the entire system of doctrine;²⁰ but was on that account proscribed by the Reformed Church. The expression made use of by Wolfgang Musculus, moreover, is misapplied in the deduction that Gerhard draws from it. For Musculus, after having defined the justice that is necessary for God, is merely so clumsy as to represent the grace which is just as necessary for God as an arbitrary exception from that justice, illustrating it by the arbitrary exercise of the right of pardon by earthly potentates; but, as a Calvinist, he is far from deducing as a consequence from this, that the actual pardon of the sinner by God in Christ is independent of the satisfaction offered by Christ to the righteousness of God. Faustus Socinus²¹ has also borne witness to him in this, when he appeals to the view of grace as mere good pleasure that Musculus took. With regard to Calvin’s quite casual investigation into the idea of the meritum Christi, it has already been shown that it has no relation to his doctrine of election and its explanation in the mere good pleasure of God.²²

Schneckenburger’s argument also, to show that in the Reformed theology there prevails a tendency against the reception of the strict idea of satisfaction, is not happy; for it is simply erroneous to say that the Reformed theologians represent Christ’s satisfaction, not as the causa meritoria, but as the causa instrumentalis justificationis. Schweizer (as above, p. 378) oddly cites, as testimony to that idea, Keckermann, who, on his own showing (p. 376), ought to be regarded as unconnected with the Reformed system. I may add that Keckermann, as is usual, represents fides to be the causa instrumentalis justificationis. Henry Alting regards Christ’s work as causa meritoria as well as causa instrumentalis. But, moreover, that thought which we are told was foreign to the theologians of the Reformed Church, is expressly defended by Bucanus, Piscator, Amesius, Maccovius, Maresius, Witsius, Fr. Turretinus; and its substance is taught by all. For nothing could be further from the truth than to say that the thought of God’s arbitrary good pleasure, which is the fundamental principle of the Socinian system, also dominates the Reformed theology as a whole, and thus renders indifferent all ideas of the means employed in the plan of salvation. Rather on the contrary, in the Reformed theology, only the doctrine of twofold predestination is wrought out in accordance with that idea; but this doctrine, with Calvin, just as with Luther, is originally something incidental in the system, and without influence on the other doctrines, particularly without influence upon that of the atonement. The doctrine of reconciliation remains without change even in those Reformed theologians who, following in the footsteps of Beza and Gomarus, undertake to incorporate the doctrine of twofold predestination in that of Providence, and thus to elevate it to the dignity of the fundamental principle of the system.²³ It is undeniable that Arminianism, by referring the idea of God to the standard of indulgent reasonableness, induced many of the opponents of that system to put the idea of God under the point of view of the absolutum dominium, which is free from every inner moral necessity;²⁴ these efforts, however, always as matter of fact, have reference only to the problem of election and reprobation, and Voetius²⁵ expressly testifies that theologians like Twisse by no means intended to throw doubt upon the explanation of the necessity of punishment or of penal satisfaction as arising from the essential justice of God. Voetius, moreover, in his discussion against Twisse, on the question whether Christ’s satisfaction was necessary by reason of the immanent penal justice of God, the jus divinum naturale seu absolute necessarium, or by reason of the justice established by decree and law, has decided in favour of the first alternative,²⁶ and hereby has clearly enough indicated the standard of Reformed orthodoxy. Moreover the validity of the doctrine of satisfaction in Reformed systematic theology is not affected by the circumstance that the Person of Christ as a historical fact is subordinated to the beneplacitum Dei. For that this fact is just as contingent in the order of the universe as sin to which it is opposed does not prevent the course of its operation from being regulated in accordance with the necessary justice of God. The world also, and the human race, exist only in virtue of a sovereign decree of God; but, being in existence, they are bound by a law which corresponds to the inalienable necessary immanent right of God.²⁷ If Christ then, as the union of the Divine and human natures, exists only by the beneplacitum Dei, it does not result therefrom either actually or necessarily, or probably that the Reformed theologians display a tendency to refer His prestations for the salvation of men to an arbitrary Divine standard. Finally, it has no visible effect upon the idea of satisfaction, that occasionally, as Schneckenburger shows (pp. 47, 48), the Divine and not the human nature of Christ is chosen to form the basis of that thought. For even if that view occurred more frequently than it does,²⁸ still the thought of a reconciliation of God by Himself is, in accordance with the prevailing type of doctrine, connected with the necessity which arises from God’s righteousness; for that mere good pleasure which dominates the double predestination is, as matter of fact, kept far away from the region of the doctrine of the atonement.

40. In the second place, the two confessions have in common the thought that satisfaction is given to the Divine justice, or to the law regarded as the expression of that justice, and as the eternal rule that regulates the relation between man and God, by the suffering and death of Christ, as well as by his fulfilling of the law; in other words, by the obedientia passiva et activa Christi (see above, p. 214). At least the divergence of John Piscator upon this point, although he found supporters in the Reformed party, is to be regarded merely as an episode which rather helped than hindered the essential oneness of the Lutheran and Reformed theologians upon this point. At the same time it is particularly instructive, with reference to Piscator’s denial of the satisfactory significance of Christ’s active obedience as well as with reference to the attitude which his opponents assumed, to keep sight of the fact that the school theology of both confessions did not regulate its business of intelligent distinction by a historical understanding of the original religious chain of thought. Piscator’s view,²⁹ that only the suffering and death of Christ had a satisfactory significance, without doubt betokens the continued influence of the tradition of Melanchthon’s view (p. 213), which through the instrumentality of Ursinus³⁰ continued to be influential in the German Reformed Church. For, amongst the supporters of Piscator’s opinion whom I find cited by Gerhard, Matthew Martini, Ludwig Crocius, and Urban Pierius in Bremen, Pareus in Heidelberg, Goclenius in Marburg, are out-and-out Melanchthonians. Piscator’s assertion turns upon the thought, which, as a matter of religious experience, dominates the whole Reformation course of thinking, that forgiveness of sins and justification are synonymous terms for the same thing. While the formula concordiae still adopts this usage of language (p. 227); but, on the other hand, attributes a satisfactory significance to the active obedience of Christ, the historical position of Piscator’s doctrine is rightly determined only when contrasted with the doctrine of the formula concordiae, and only thus can the state of the question be suitably ascertained. Now, the arguments which Piscator drew from the design of the law, from the design of satisfaction towards our consciousness of salvation, lastly from the function designed for Christ, are not all of equal value. (1.) The law obliges either to obedience or to punishment. Christ has freed us from the punishment which we had deserved on account of our sins; thus there was no need that Christ in our room and stead should give obedience to the law. (2.) If Christ fulfilled the law in our place, then we are not required to fulfil it; the consequent is absurd, therefore the antecedent also is so. Gerhard rightly rejects both arguments, alleging against the former that sinners by the endurance of punishment for their transgression of the law are not released from fulfilling it, and therefore their substitute had to undertake both. As against the second, it holds good that the vicarious fulfilment of the law by Christ has the effect of abolishing it in the case of believers, only in so far as it was the original condition of salvation, but not in so far as it is the universally binding standard for the Christian life. From the design of Christ’s satisfaction for our consciousness of justification or forgiveness of sins, Piscator draws the conclusion (3.) that the death of Christ would have been superfluous had He given satisfaction by His holy life. (4.) As the thing on account of which sins are forgiven is what is contained in the satisfaction, but sins are forgiven by reason of the death of Christ, it follows that this last alone is satisfactory to God. Piscator vindicated this argument to the religious and moral self-consciousness against the objection that the imperfection of the obedience of believers needs to be covered by the perfect obedience of Christ. He says (5.) that this imperfection of believers is not imputed to them but forgiven on the same ground—the death of Christ,— which cleanseth altogether from all sin, and thus also from the sin of that imperfection. To meet this, Gerhard brings into the field a distinction which makes its appearance simultaneously among Lutherans and Reformed,³¹ to wit, that justification consists not merely in the forgiveness of sins, but also in the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, and that the latter is founded upon His active obedience to the law. Inasmuch as God in the justification of sinners could not contravene the eternal rule of the law, it was necessary that that justification should proceed upon a perfect fulfilment of the law; and this fulfilment, not being possible for the sinner, had to be accomplished by Christ in his room and imputed to the sinner. Here, in passing, I notice that that distinction is still unknown to the formula concordiae; but inasmuch as its vindication, by reference to the two co-ordinate kinds of Christ’s obedience, is likewise something new, this train of thought calls for special examination. Upon this point, accordingly, Piscator is not so easily refuted as on that which has been already considered. Piscator’s most fruitful assertion is, however, (6.) that Christ by His active obedience could not have given satisfaction vicariously for us, because as man He was Himself legally bound thereto. But in so far as Christ stood under the law (Paul being witness), that has reference only to the curse of the law, which Christ endured in His passion. Undoubtedly the active obedience of Christ to the law had also a bearing upon His satisfaction, but only the indirect one, that without Christ’s sinless life His passion would not have had its satisfactory value.

Now, in these last sentences Piscator has not indeed fully and characteristically formulated the Reformed type of doctrine, but in them he represents one interest which is maintained by the Reformed theology and disallowed by the Lutheran. Precisely in this thought, he has Ursinus³² as his forerunner, who only failed to express it quite so antithetically. In uncompromising opposition to this view is that of the Lutheran theologians, who deny Christ’s obligation to fulfil the law for His own part, on the ground that as true God he was not subject to the law but superior to it as Lord. Of necessity, therefore, must the obedience actually rendered to the law by the God-man, be regarded solely as a work done in the place of men. The two views stand in direct dependence upon the division between the two parties on the doctrine of Christ’s Person. If, in accordance with the Lutheran view, by the incarnation of the Logos the humanity of Christ was made to participate in all Divine attributes, and therefore also in superiority to the law, then the fulfilling of the law, as an act of exinanition on the part of the God-man thus constituted, can have value only for those on whose account He took the exinanition upon Himself. If, on the contrary, in accordance with the Reformed view, the Word of God is made man by foregoing the exercise of specific Divine attributes, then it is not inconsistent with Christ’s divinity, that as man he does what belongs to all men and so also renders obedience to the law. But the chief representatives of Reformed theology by no means hesitate on this account to say that Christ’s active obedience is yet also vicarious on behalf of His people. In support of this they adduce two arguments of unequal breadth and force, of which the second is not invariably conjoined with the first. Alsted, Keckermann, Amesius, Walaeus, Witsius affirm, that inasmuch as Christ became man only for our behoof, therefore even His individual fulfilment of the law pertains to His satisfaction and His merit.³³ Bucanus, Polanus, Amesius, Voetius, Heidanus, Witsius affirm with growing distinctness that Christ’s whole activity as Mediator, His endurance of death as well as His obedience, are based on the consideration that from the very first He is fulfilling His destination as Surety and Head of all those who are to be redeemed.³⁴ For this thought Calvin had paved the way, in so far as he had subordinated the priestly to the kingly office of Christ, and made the former to depend on the latter (p. 189). By this it is meant that Christ’s actions have atoning efficacy, because He by His personal dignity is qualified as the party who has to act in the room of the elect who belong to Him. The necessity of this connexion lies here, that not merely the efficacy but also the purpose of Christ has reference to the elect, who from all eternity are chosen by God in Him as their Mediator and Head,—in other words, so that He from all eternity is designed by God to be the instrumentality whereby grace shall take effect upon the elect. Thus the typical character of Reformed theology gains its perfect expression herein, that the subject of the mediatorial work is characterized (as had already been done by Thomas Aquinas, p. 54) as caput ecclesiæ. But hereby it becomes possible to assert a vicarious value, not merely for Christ’s innocent suffering, but also for His fulfilment of the law, irrespective of its obligation upon Himself.

Lutheran theologians have avoided this line of thought; but I do not see why they should not have adopted it. Only external causes can be assigned to explain why they did not actually do so. perhaps because the idea was rendered suspicious in their eyes by its connexion with the thought of election; or perhaps because among Reformed theologians themselves it found expression too late; and even when it was brought forward, was not stated with sufficient clearness to break through the ban of confessional exclusiveness that had already become so inveterate. But yet, if the Lutheran doctrine of the Person of Christ defines Christ’s Kingship as an attribute of His incarnation, the fact of His exinanitio is no reason why, in His intention of founding the Church by His twofold obedience, He should not already be regarded as its active Head. That this thought was never attained, arises from the want of talent for system in the Lutheran divines. That talent should have exhibited itself in linking together individual truths in relation to the final end contemplated; but, in place of this procedure, the Lutheran theology always advances only by means of the ideas of cause and effect. On this account also it never brings into view the way in which each one of the offices of Christ is reciprocally conditioned by the two others, but contents itself with such an account of them as can only be regarded as a preliminary chronological arrangement of the matters to which they have respect, after which the real work of coming to a comprehension of the oneness of Christ’s mediatorial activities should only begin. In mitigation of this judgment, the circumstance must of course be considered that even the Reformed theologians do not handle the systematic method in a thoroughgoing way. Precisely in their representation of the three offices of Christ have they failed to make use of the advantage Calvin gained for them in ranking the kingly above the priestly office of Christ. They avail themselves rather of the same external scheme and sequence which the Lutherans adopted, following the chronological order of the life of Christ; and for this reason even with them the idea of Christ as caput ecclesiæ is not so clearly and thoroughly expounded as was to be expected. Still less did the Lutherans detect the value of that idea towards an understanding of Christ’s mediatorial work. It could not but have been for the advantage of these had they taken it up. For, so far as the Lutheran explanation of the exclusively vicarious significance of Christ’s active obedience is concerned, it is little in harmony with the other principles of the Lutheran Church. That God is the Lord of the law, and that the God-man is therefore not bound to fulfil it on his own behalf, is a view unworthy of the Lutheran theology. Here indeed the Scotist idea of God inexplicably shows itself—an idea which the Lutherans are on other occasions so skilful in avoiding,—and the presence of which in Calvin’s doctrine of predestination gave occasion to a Gerhard very unwarrantably to misrepresent the Reformed doctrine of atonement (p. 244). It is the old story of the mote and the beam! Luther of course as Nominalist knew nothing other than that God is exlex; but the Lutherans, in rejecting Luther’s doctrine of predestination, repudiated precisely this view; and at the very foundation of their doctrine of reconciliation lies the clearly expressed thought that the law is expressive of the eternal will of God Himself. Is it not then rather in harmony with this fundamental proposition that Walaeus (p. 398) sets right the Lutherans in their inference from Matt. xii. 8, that Christ as God is lege superior, by adding, nec tamen propterea potuit se ipsum abnegare, quia natura divina sibi ipsi lex est? The divinity of Christ would, according to this, be precisely the reason for saying that the God-man cannot, so far as He is concerned, do otherwise than live in conformity with the law. What I wish to be inferred from this is, that the opposition between the theologians of the two parties with reference to the interpretation of Christ’s active obedience betokens no immoveable. specific difference between their doctrines, but is merely accidental and not essential.³⁵

The criticism which Schneckenburger (p. 61 sqq.) bestows on the Reformed theologians’ line of thought which we have been discussing, does not come to the point, but loses itself in erroneous deductions from certain assumptions of Reformed Christology; and this because he entirely overlooks the fact that the standard for estimating Christ’s historical work is His position as caput et sponsor electorum. The remark is a just one, that the vicarious value of Christ’s active obedience is not proved against Piscator merely by pointing out that Christ is not man on His own behalf but only for our sakes. For this destination would still be Christ’s even if, like Piscator, we were to regard His perfect obedience merely as the condition which was indispensable before He could endure punishment in our room and stead. But by His destination as caput et sponsor electorum, Christ is so qualified that His actions on behalf of His Church can be regarded just as if they had been done by the Church herself. In the further course of his criticism, Schneckenburger certainly takes notice of the thought of the unio fidelium cum Christo. He calls to mind the assumption (to be again referred to) that Christ merited gloria for Himself and at the same time for those others who are one with Him, and to whom therefore His merit can be imputed; but he thinks that this fellowship with Christ is only regarded as a result of Christ’s meritorious fulfilment of the law, to which fulfilment, however, no vicarious value can be assigned, since His people, as such, are bound to fulfil the law. But these remarks are not in harmony with the sense of Reformed theology. The actual union of the elect with Christ is explained as resulting through His efficacia (in the Holy Spirit) from His satisfactio and meritum, because He, in the deliberate discharge of His offices, is represented at the outset ideally as the the Head and Surety of those who are to be redeemed, on the ground of the elective decree or of the everlasting covenant.³⁶ That He in that capacity fulfilled the law in the room and stead of the elect is moreover not disproved by the stress laid on their obligation towards the law. For, as the older theologians clearly enough explain, the vicarious value of Christ’s active obedience rendered to the law as the condition of attaining to blessedness for one’s-self, serves to do away with this function of the law for the elect. Thus it is possible at the same time to assert the duty of obedience on the part of the elect to the law regarded as part of the Divine order of grace. There is thus no contradiction between the two positions, that the law is abolished as a covenant of life by Christ’s vicarious fulfilment of it, and that God causes those whom He has graciously chosen to attain to eternal life in the way of fulfilment of the law.

41. Gerhard had rebutted Piscator’s exception to the vicarious value of Christ’s active obedience by drawing the distinction that justification comprehends the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, and that the former proceeds upon the vicarious value of Christ’s death, the latter upon that of His life (p. 250). This formula, in which Thomasius of Erlangen recognises the genuine meaning of justification (p. 227), is indeed to be found in Lutheran as well as in Reformed dogmatic theologians; but as it goes against the usus loquendi of the Reformation period it has by no means met with universal acceptance. Gerhard himself (tom. vii. pp. 260, 261, Loc. 17, cap. 4, sect. 199) is compelled to admit that the two benefits are to be distinguished not in fact, but only secundum rationem; that is, in accordance with a very superficial mode of viewing the matter; and Quenstedt is of the same opinion. Baier (Theol. Pos. iii. 5, 11) appealing to Hülsemann indicates at least that if those benefits are to be distinguished, then in logical order imputatio justitiæ precedes the remission of the guilt of sin; and the same view is taken by the Reformed divines Polanus (Syntagma, p. 840), H. Alting (Theol. probl. nova, p. 726), and F. Turretine (Compend. theol. conscr. a L. Riissenio, p. 427). That priority of the forgiveness of sins to the imputation of righteousness, which Thomasius vindicates, is only the superficial view of an apparent progress from the terminus a quo to the terminus ad quem. For if we bring this wisdom of the schools to the test of actual comparison with the phenomenon of consciousness which has to be explained, we find that that consciousness embraces the two propositions, “I am free from guilt” and “I am pronounced righteous,” regarding them as perfectly identical. The distinction, therefore, is not made from any regard to the subjective consciousness of justification, but only from regard to the co-ordination between Christ’s active and passive obedience to the law, so far as these may be considered as possessing satisfactory value. Thus Gerhard’s argument against Piscator appears to be irrelevant. The satisfactory value of the active as compared with the passive obedience is to be recognised from the corresponding distinction between forgiveness of sins and imputation of righteousness. But the believer is not conscious of these two things as separate attainments. Thus the believer cannot be convinced of the necessity of the other distinction.

If the assertion of the satisfactory value of Christ’s active obedience unanimously made against the school of Melanchthon cannot stand the appeal to consciousness as a test, it is still involved in another regard as a consequence of premisses which are acknowledged by both branches of the theology of the Reformation. But in spite of all the acuteness of the theologians of the seventeenth century, the consideration of this point has not been clearly brought out; much less have their present successors showed themselves capable of supplying the deficiency. The thought in question is often enough expressed by the elder theologians, but only in an apologetic connexion, without having its place assigned to it in systematic theology; because it does not convey anything immediately implied in the religious consciousness. F. Turretine, for example, enunciates it with great precision (as above, p. 425): Objectio: Ergo nos non tenemur ad obedientiam activam, quia Christus eam pro nobis praestitit. Resp. Negatur consequentia. Sequitur quidem, nos ad eam non teneri eundem in finem, sc. ut per eam vivamus: sed non obstat, quominus teneamur ad idem obsequium Deo praestandum, non ut vivamus, sed quia vivimus, non ut jus acquiramus ad vitam, sed ut juris acquisiti possessionem adeamus.³⁷ I have already (p. 228) in speaking of the doctrine embodied in the formula concordiæ pointed out the value of this thought. Though the believer be conscious that through Christ he has forgiveness of the guilt that he has incurred by transgression of the law, yet the gracious nature of the righteousness before God of which he is at the same time conscious, is not securely placed unless he be at the same time aware of his release from that legal obligation imposed by the eternal law, in accordance with which righteousness or eternal life is attained by means of the fulfilment of its commands on the part of men.³⁸ By this consideration, taking for granted the common presuppositions, is confuted Piscator’s assertion that Christ by His vicarious passion has only freed us from the curse of the law. For that would mean that, after the abolition of our guilt towards the law we should anew have to seek eternal life under Christ by means of a fulfilment of the law in accordance with legal principles. Thus on the presupposition that the law as an expression of everlasting righteousness legally binds men in the beginning (in the fœdus operum) to obtain everlasting life by means of actual fulfilment of its injunctions, and on the further presupposition that the dispensation of grace under Christ makes the forgiveness of men’s transgressions of the law to be the permanent basis of the believer’s life, then the author of this dispensation must at the same time stand security that the law as the legal condition of the attainment of everlasting life shall make absolutely no further claim on believers. But, assuming that the dispensation of grace cannot at all contradict God’s eternal justice and the law which is its expression, and assuming that Christ’s fulfilment of the law must be understood as exsecutio et explicatio and not as abrogatio et dispensatio, it then necessarily follows that Christ in the place of men as sinners has fulfilled the law’s demand for punishment, and in the room of men as men has fulfilled the demands of the law as a covenant of life.³⁹

Christ’s satisfaction to the wider and to the narrower demands of the law as the ground of our justification, is deduced, as is well known, from God’s justice. But by our justification is intended the direct result of God’s love and grace. Christ’s satisfaction, therefore, to the Divine righteousness can be regarded only as indirect—only as a conditio sine qua non of the justification of believers. In so far as Christ’s prestations are reckoned as satisfaction given to the law on behalf of believers, we have an explanation why God’s forensic righteousness ceases to be the standard; but the bringing in of His positive justifying grace as a new standard is still left unaccounted for. Theologians often enough have failed to put this point clearly to themselves. But, it may be noticed, that the formula concordiæ (p. 226) meets it; for along with the co-ordinated forms of the passive and active obedience of Christ, which have satisfied the demands of the law, it embraces both in one voluntary obedience which Christ, active even in His passion, yielded to the will of God, and which is graciously imputed to believers as their righteousness. It might have been expected, as a logical consequence of the doctrine of the Person of Christ, that while the God-man as the representative of men, fulfilled by His doing and suffering the conditions that the justice of God had imposed as necessary to the justification of believers, the obedience of the whole life of the God-man (flowing as it did from love to men) should, at the same time, be regarded as representing the love and grace of God, and that to this obedience should have been attributed, not merely the matter, but also the form-giving power of positive justification. Only thus would expression be given to that balance in the interpretation of Christ’s priestly functions which is required by the doctrine of the two natures. But, as the doctrine has actually been developed, whether by Lutherans or Calvinists, the Divine nature of Christ comes into play in His passion only as a feature that gives it value, and in His action only as a condition of its perfection; but neither in His action nor in His passion is it regarded as the acting subject, as it is considered to be in His prophetical and kingly offices. In spite of all their zeal against the scholastic view, that the human nature of Christ was the subject of His earthly doing and suffering, the view of the evangelical divines amounts to nothing different. So far, therefore, as God’s grace is taken into account as contributing to the progress and efficacy of Christ’s doing and suffering, the opinion of these theologians goes no further than to affirm that it is God’s grace that brings the God-man into being, and that imputes His acts to believers unto righteousness. But the immanence of God’s love is not set forth even in the love and obedience of Christ; nor is that immanence allowed to have its due place in the connexion of the doctrine. Rather is the obedience or righteousness of Christ, as the matter which is imputed to believers, brought under the idea of merit and set over against God’s purpose of grace, which is the form-giving power that causes its application to individual believers, and which comes into exercise only through the kingly functions of Christ.

The evangelical divines originally make absolutely no distinction between satisfactio and meritum, and the prestations made to the justice of God, which, strictly speaking, fall under the notion of satisfactio, are designated also as meritum, without any consciousness of a difference. This use of language continues to prevail among the Reformed theologians also. But the formula concordiæ had at one time distinguished the active from the passive obedience of Christ, and referred them to distinct grades in the demands of God’s justice; and, at another time, had comprehended the opposite phenomena of Christ’s suffering and doing under the one head of Christ’s loving obedience towards God (p. 226). Hereby the negative was distinguished from the positive condition of justification. Now, although the indifferent use of the ideas of satisfactio and meritum might possibly be continued with reference to the negative condition of the satisfaction of God’s justice, it betokens a true instinct that the forensic idea of satisfactio is suppressed when the righteousness or obedience of Christ, which is viewed as the material cause of justification by grace, comes to be spoken of. In place of it is found throughout, from a very early period (as in Selnecker, for example), the exclusive use of meritum to denote the positive condition of justification. This is very clearly seen in the case of Gerhard. Although he does not deliberately separate between the two ideas, he first takes the title causa meritoria justificationis to embrace the whole compass of Christ’s work, then designates the negative condition involved in Christ’s twofold fulfilment of the law indiscriminately as satisfactio and as meritum; and then proceeds to set forth the positive condition of justification under the title Per quod Christus justitiam coram Deo valentem promeruerit (loc. xvii. 2. 55): Tota Christi obedientia, tam activa quam passiva ad illud meritum concurrit. Quamvis enim sæpe morti Christi redemtionis opus tribuatur, id ideo fit, quia nusquam illuxit clarius, quod nos dilexerit ac redemerit Dominus, quam in ipsius passione et morte, et quia mors Christi est finis et perfectio totius obedientiæ. Plane ἀδύνατον est, activam obedientiam a passiva in hoc merito separare, quia in ipsa Christi morte concurrit voluntaria illa obedientia et ardentissima dilectio, quarum prior patrem cœlestem, posterior nos homines respicit.

From this we can understand how a deliberate distinction between the two points of view comes in. Of course it must be a notional distinction. Amesius (Medulla, i. 20, 13), where I find it for the first time, expressly says it does not hold good, re ipsa ita ut in variis et inter se differentibus operationibus debeant quæri, sed varia ratione in una eademque obedientia debent agnosci. This distinction, however, has not been duly applied by Amesius. He refers the satisfactio to the endurance of punishment, the meritum to the active obedience, without distinguishing between the two aspects of the latter as active fulfilment of the law, and as the totality of fulfilment of the will of God. Not before the climax of theological development is a tolerable explication of the matter reached by Quenstedt.⁴⁰ For in No. 1 the result of satisfaction is is taken too narrowly, and the passive obedience is regarded only as the matter of that idea, while at the same time it results from No. 4 that His vicarious fulfilment of the law also falls under the idea of satisfaction. On the other hand, following out the formula concordiæ, it ought to have been brought more clearly forward under No. 4 that both kinds of obedience are in their co-ordination satisfactory, and in their conjunction meritorious. Moreover, under No. 2 the relation between the two ideas is not happily expressed in the schema of cause and effect, if No. 5 is right in affirming that the same transactions, according to their diverse references to God, are distinguished by means of that pair of ideas. But since the freeness of Christ’s obedience, which betokens merit, is the characteristic feature that transcends the congruence of that obedience with the law, and is not excluded by the idea of satisfactio, the satisfactory value of His prestations is rightly recognised rather as the conditio sine qua non of their meritorious value. Moreover, in No. 4 account is taken in an awkward way of the meritorious value of those acts of Christ’s exaltation which do not belong to the priestly office, and therefore do not fall to be considered at all. The chief scientific deficiency, however, of the whole treatment of this subject lies in the fact that the idea of merit is not elucidated at all; in particular, that no account is given of the attitude of God to which the idea of merit corresponds. The theologians of that epoch have none of them set this task before them, because it was inconceivable to them, in virtue of their whole religious feeling, that Christ’s merit could be of any advantage to God; non ipsi Deo, sed nobis Christus meruit. Even those who are distinguished by their acquaintance with the scholastic theology of the middle ages, betray no suspicion of the importance of the conclusions of Thomas and Duns respecting the idea of merit and its application to Christ. With reference to this point it is easy to see that the so-called Protestant schoolmen of the seventeenth century do not come up to the scientific spirit and élan of the schoolmen of the middle ages. At the same time the problem remains in this position, that it falls to be considered whether the good pleasure of God which, according to Calvin (p. 208) and Polanus is the condition of the validity of the merit of Christ, and is thus the correlate of that idea, gives adequate expression to the grace and love of God when placed alongside of the idea of His justice.

To the Lutherans also, in accordance with their Christological premisses, the idea does not occur that the merit of the God-man has a reflex influence upon Himself, or that He earned any advantage to Himself. The older theologians of the Reformed Church,—Calvin, Beza, Keckermann,⁴¹ concur in this, partly because Christ is man not on His own account but only for the sake of sinners; partly, as Beza observes, because of His Divinity, which makes Him worthy of eternal life from the beginning. On the other hand Zanchius (De Incarnatione, Opp. viii. pp. 173, 174), Gomarus (In Ep. ad Philip. Opp. i. p. 531), Voetius (L. c. ii. pp. 279, 280), assert that Christ not only as man merited exaltatio or gloria for Himself, but also as God merited the plenior gloriæ patefactio which was veiled by the incarnation or humiliation of the Logos. This view then is possible according to the Christological premisses of the Reformed theologians. H. Alting (Theol. probl. i. 43) mediates between the two views in such a way as to make it appear that Christ achieved merit in the first instance only for us, and for Himself only in so far as He fully dedicated His whole being to the object of attaining our salvation.

I believe I may venture to assert that the divergence of the Reformed type of doctrine from the Lutheran on this point extends no further than to this feature. The other points upon which Schneckenburger traces differences between the two schools are either not controverted, or find but little support, and that not from important Reformed theologians. He gives it out as essentially a Reformed view, that not merely Christ’s actual obedience unto death, but also the habitual sanctity of His nature, as the opposite of original sin, had a vicarious value so as to be imputed to us. For this is adduced (Schneckenburger, p. 66) the answer to the 36th question in the Heidelberg Catechism: quod sua innocentia ac perfecta sanctitate mea peccata, in quibus conceptus sum, tegat. Now, even assuming that by this is meant Christ’s habitual as distinguished from His actual purity (a thing of which I am not quite sure), the thought would be very far from being a specifically reformed one. For Gerhard (Loc. xvii. 2. 56) also teaches that the habitualis humanæ naturæ Christi justitia a merito nostræ justitiæ minime exulabit. Schneckenburger appeals on this point to Ursinus also, the compiler of the Heidelberg Catechism, who writes in the Doctrinæ Christianæ Compendium, sive Commentarii Catechetici (Genev. 1584), p. 479: Imputatur nobis et prior illa legis impletio, nempe humiliatio et justitia humanæ Christi naturæ,—propter obedientiam vel satisfactionem ipsius.⁴² But, when looked at more closely, this sentence resolves itself into another point of difference that has been formulated by Schneckenburger, as separating the Reformed type of doctrine from the Lutheran. For he maintains that it is Reformed doctrine to include also the assumtio carnis as an act of obedience on the part of the Logos in the imputed and therefore substitutionary righteousness of Christ. Schneckenburger (p. 68) certainly calls attention to the fact that this act does not suitably come under the idea of substitution, for in the sphere of human duties there is nothing analogous to this act. But, just for this reason, is this view hailed by him as a breach made in the idea of substitution, which, as he thinks, has no very firm footing in Reformed theology. Now, it cannot be doubted that in addition to the later theologian Rodolf (Catech. Palatina illustrata, Bernæ, 1697, p. 214), Ursinus had already hinted at the same view. He says (Opp. i. p. 232): Justitia nostra est sola satisfactio Christi præstita legi pro nobis, seu pœna, quam sustinuit Christus pro nobis, atque ideo tota humiliatio Christi, hoc est assumtio carnis, servitutis, penuriæ, ignominiæ et infirmitatis, passionis et mortis tolerantia. By adding ea enim satisfactio æquipollet vel impletioni legis per obedientiam vel pœnæ æternæ propter peccata, ad quorum alterutrum lege obligamur,—he indicates his standpoint (pp. 250-1), according to which he attributes vicarious value to the passive obedience only. If then he includes in the category of suffering and of punishment even the act of the incarnation of the Logos, that is certainly an isolated view. I meet with it also in M. Martini (Christiana et Catholica fides, Bremae, 1618, p. 259), who, as a follower of Piscator, views the fulfilment of the law of love by Christ as a duty of the creature, therefore not as vicarious, nor as an element of the exinanitio. But to the question quomodo sancta Christi conceptio nostra peccata tegit? his answer is quatenus in ea consideratur Domini altissimi exinanitio, in qua tota et sola posita est satisfactio pro peccatis nostris. But this is no more than a momentary exaggeration; as substratum of satisfaction only the exinanition in suffering of the incarnate one avails. For at p. 294 we read Christus proprie et per se exinanitus, quatenus homo: and at p. 298 it is said, si exinaniri sit privari aliquo bono, incarnatio non est exinanitio. Very little weight is thus to be attached to that view which the proper representatives of Reformed orthodoxy manifestly declined to adopt, from the very consideration stated by Schneckenburger. For the view in question is incorrect just when tried by that very theory of the pactum æternum to which he refers us for a right understanding of it. For the pactum of the Logos-Son contemplates the obedience of the Incarnate One; the incarnation itself, however, as the first act of humiliation, is regarded as an act equally independent with the pactum itself, and accordingly does not fall within the compass of that obedience which it first makes possible.⁴³ Finally, the extraordinary view which Eglin (De magno insitionis nostræ in Christum mysterio, Marburg, 1613) propounds in exaggerated opposition to Piscator (Schneckenburger, 128, 129),—that Christ’s vicarious obedience continues even in his status exultationis—is not a Reformed one, and has exercised absolutely no influence. It does not recur anywhere else; and Gomarus (as above) shows its falsity with the observation that the meritum Christi consummatum est in terris in statu humilitatis.

Schneckenburger has ignored the fact that these views occur only in an isolated way amongst Reformed theologians, because they had to serve as his proofs that Reformed theology as a whole, in the reaction against Piscator, betrays a tendency to resolve the significance of Christ’s passive into that of His active obedience (p. 64 seq.) As this resulted from the consideration that it is only the Divine intention of the God-man that gives value to His passion, and that therefore the latter really appears as the climax of His active obedience, Schneckenburger believes that he can detect in the Reformed doctrine the idea that the active obedience avails as vicarious only in so far as it is more than vicarious, and overflows to others with the Divine power that actuates it. This is for him proof of the assertion which had been previously made, that Reformed theology from the beginning is based upon the idea (formally defined by Schleiermacher) of a living fellowship subsisting between men and God—a fellowship which Christ brought about by means of His peculiar manifestation of life. And such a train of thought he holds is inadmissible in the Lutheran system (p. 69). But this is a very surprising misapprehension of the real state of the case. The Lutheran doctrine is no less deeply interested than the Reformed in combining in that one active obedience which shows itself in suffering and death, and for the end of the positive justification of believers, the two co-ordinate species of Christ’s obedience which are satisfactory in relation to God’s justice and to the law; and this it is which the Lutherans actually and designedly denote by the term meritum (pp. 260-1). Both systems, moreover, notwithstanding the divergence of their Christologies, alike set forth the God-man as the subject of Christ’s obedience thus summed up. But both theological schools see in the merit of Christ only an indirect bearing on the establishment of a living fellowship with God, which they associate directly with the prophetical and kingly offices of the exalted God-man. Nay, it is precisely by the Reformed theologians that these functions are placed under the idea of efficacia, and so brought into very clear logical contrast with the contents of that meritum. This may be gathered from that third form of Christ’s fulfilment of the law which Ursinus enumerates (see above, p. 250), but which Schneckenburger (p. 69) has quoted in a mutilated and therefore obscure form, and has applied in an inaccurate way. For even the view that Christus nobis justificationem meruit does not mean that a direct unbroken line is traced from Christ’s obedience to the result of that obedience in believers. Meritum has still a direct bearing upon God, though this thought does not find expression in either school. Only under the correlated idea of præmium, i.e. from an act of God that logically corresponds to the meritum Christi, is Christ in his state of exaltation qualified to procure for individuals the Divine gifts of grace, to the bestowal of which God suffers Himself to be induced by the meritum obedientiæ Christi.⁴⁴

42. In no element of the doctrine of justification and reconciliation does the divergence between the exhibition of matters that dogmatic theology gives and the religious conception of the order of things, so plainly appear as in the way in which the data of the status exaltationis Christi are applied by the dogmatic theologians. The interval of time between the acts of obedience rendered by Christ, pertaining as they do to the past, and the present effect on believers;—an interval which does not exist where justification by the obedience of Christ is realized in the religious consciousness—must be filled up by the aid of these data. Now in that region the theologians of both confessions have in common all that relates to the status exaltationis in the schema of the three offices of Christ. To the priestly office belongs the intercession of the heavenly High Priest, which secures the continuance of that merit towards God which He earned during His earthly life; but, as a whole, the applicatio gratiæ, or, as the Reformed divines call it, the efficacia, falls under the kingly office of Christ, insomuch as His efficacy by the Holy Spirit, who is the organ of that activity, is at the same time the actual exercise of His Divine lordship over the Church. The indirect exercise of the prophetical office through the instrumentality of the ministri verbi divini is subordinate to the exercise of the kingly office. The opposite directions of His mediatorial activity towards God and towards men, which Osiander was the first to formulate, are not distributed over both the states of Christ’s life, but are both contemporaneously included in the state of exaltation. For the rest, the Reformed divines, by their view of the exaltation of Christ, have established a closer and stricter connexion between Christ’s merit and justification than has been done by the Lutherans. In Baier’s much esteemed Compendium Theol. Posit. (first published in 1686), the treatment of the officium sacerdotale is followed by the description of the officium regium, which, in the Lutheran style, according to the assumption of the communicatio idiomatum, is first exhibited in the regnum potentiæ, and afterwards in the regnum gratiæ. The latter is exercised by Christ in gathering together and sustaining His Church by means of the Word and sacraments, and in furnishing it with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In order now to experience in one’s-self that saving efficacy of the Mediator which, as merit and as promise, is de se indeterminata; in other words, in order to complete the effect of Christ’s merit, which is not yet finished, one must believe. Thus the doctrine of faith comes next. But as believer the sinner is born again and converted; thus we must proceed or revert to the doctrines of regeneration or conversion. The cause which moves God to the conversion of a sinner is the merit of Christ; the instrumentality whereby God effects it is the word, baptism, and, in their sphere, the ministers of the Church. The immediate purpose and result of regeneration, as of faith, is justification. Thus follows the doctrine of that justification to which a man who as believer is regenerate, yet presents himself as a sinner, who, at the moment when he exercises that act of faith which decides his conversion, experiences the judgment of God imputing to him the righteousness of Christ. This series of thoughts progresses only in the schema of efficient causes; and even these are not brought before us so completely as they might have been. Had it been otherwise, many difficulties would have been observed regarding which the Lutheran theologians unfortunately show too little concern.

The Reformed divines, on the other hand, had it before them to secure justification as the purpose of Christ’s merit, as the dominant form of all God’s gracious dealings with individuals, by means of their view of the exaltation, and particularly of the kingship of Christ. This is gained, in the first instance, by means of a view respecting the value of Christ’s resurrection, which is possible on the assumption that Christ as our Head is the subject of satisfaction and merit. He thus died for us, because our sins were imputed to Him; so His resurrection is His and our justification from our sins.⁴⁵ This is supported by Rom. iv. 25, and by the prevailing impression left upon the mind by the New Testament usus loquendi regarding the resurrection of Christ by the Father. But this does not preclude from regarding the resurrection as at the same time an independent act of Christ and as His entry on His kingly office. (Amesius.) That the Lutheran theology did not adopt this combination, but attributes to the resurrection merely the second meaning, and concedes to it only a remote bearing upon the purpose of justification (Quenstedt), was caused by the circumstance that it counted as a step of His exaltation the descensus Christi ad inferos. But for this obstacle, it is difficult to see that any inner motive could have led the Lutherans to object to the other thought of Christ’s resurrection. For Luther has given the impression of the intimate connexion between Christ’s resurrection and His death among other expressions in certain phrases which can adequately be explained only by reference to that view of Reformed theologians.⁴⁶ And those who strictly follow the authority of the formula concordiæ must adopt that view.⁴⁷ Calvin, on the other hand (ii. 16. 13), upon this point expresses himself exclusively in the Lutheran sense, connecting with the resurrection of Christ only His operation in transferring the power of His death to us.

I now place in contrast with the train of thought developed by the Lutheran Baier that of the Calvinist Amesius, who in precision is equal to the other, and in genius and talent for combination excels him as well as the greater number of his party, so far as I know them. By the well-known reference of Christ’s resurrection to the justification of those who belong to Him as their Head is, in the first place, explained the assumption uniformly made by Reformed divines, that Christ’s Kingship extends, in the first instance, to His Church, or at least that, as dominion over all, it is applied for the benefit of those who are His. Amesius then makes the priestly intercession and the prophetical sending of messengers to be elements of the kingly character of Christ, so that thus the pleading of His merit in our behalf finds an emphatic certainty. The doctrine of the application of the mediatorial work of Christ to particular men next follows. Being brought about by the instrumentality of the Holy Ghost, it in the first instance depends upon the Father’s decree of election which has given to the Redeemer certain men to be redeemed; in the second instance, it depends on the purpose wherewith Christ gave satisfaction for these. Thus our deliverance from sin is determined in God’s decree, but at the same time communicated to Christ, and in Him to us, before it actually is received by us. The application of grace to this end takes place accordingly to the same extent to which Christ embraced and carried out the purpose of redemption. For the decree of election, to the consideration of which we have now passed, relates to those definite individual men in their connexion with the body of Christ who is the Head of this new humanity, just as the creation of natural humanity in Adam was one act. The applicatio consists of the following parts: Union with Christ in effectual calling, and Participation in the benefits of redemption that are found in Christ. In so far as the calling of the elect is effectual as conversio or regeneratio, there pertain to it objectively the preaching of the gospel (with preparation by means of the law), inner appropriation by the Holy Ghost, and its implanting in the will, which subjectively appears as the act of faith. In faith is attained that condition upon which participation in Christ’s benefits depends; these consist partly of changes in relation, to wit, justification and adoption, partly in the real change of sanctification. Justification is the judgment whereby God declares free from sin and from death, and accepts as righteous the believer for the sake of Christ, whom he lays hold of by faith. This judgment was (1.) existent in God’s thought in virtue of the decree of justification; (2.) declared in the resurrection of Christ; (3.) virtually (that is to say without being unfolded in the subjective consciousness) pronounced in that first relation, which results from implanted faith, i.e. in the primary union with Christ which corresponds to subjective faith (according to Rom. viii. 1); (4.) expressly pronounced by the Spirit of God, who bears witness in us of our reconciliation with God. Justification, as a relation to God, is objectively complete in one act; although, as regards its appearance in the subjective assurance, and as regards the sense of its presence, it has diverse degrees. This is a self-consistent and definite exhibition in which not even an apparent contradiction results from the two propositions (Amesius, p. 124), that faith precedes justification as its cause, and that faith presupposes justification and is its consequence. For justification as contained in the subjective consciousness presupposes faith, but as an objective act of God it precedes faith, and is operative in the believing subject before he is conscious of its presence, because it is previously contained in God’s electing decree, in Christ’s redeeming purpose and in His resurrection. In this exhibition, moreover, justification is regarded as a synthetic judgment upon the believer as sinner. Of the four steps in the sentence of justification, as they are to be met with in Amesius, the first two, in mente Dei and in resurrectione Christi, are, without any doubt, synthetical. That the fourth step, justification in the consciousness of the believer, is not analytical, follows from the assumption of the third step which virtually presents justification in the unio cum Christo in regeneration.⁴⁸ The relation to Christ, which arises from regenerating grace in the act of faith, is the very same as that which is denoted in the idea of justification. If thus the unio cum Christo is formally justification, it cannot be thought of as preceding the judgment of justification with self-contained reality; rather if regeneration is regarded as bestowed on the elect, then is the sentence of justification, which is virtually made known in the act of regeneration, synthetic even at this stage, and therefore also necessarily so at the fourth. Now, it is again a deduction drawn by Schneckenburger (p. 57), the correctness of which would be acknowledged by no orthodox Reformed divine, that justification, as Schleiermacher maintains, properly speaking, resolves itself into that one eternal act of election which is the effective imputation of Christ to humanity in general (!), which realizes itself subsequently as faith begins in individuals. To this Maccovius (Loci communes, p. 608), appealing to Worton (de reconciliatione), as well as F. Turretine (Compendium, 452 sq.), have already answered that the decree of justification and its execution are to be distinguished from each other. For the attention they bestow on the ultimate ground of salvation is as far as possible removed from making the Reformed divines indifferent with regard to the historical instrumentalities by which it is brought about; though certainly Lutheran theology, from its regard to the latter, has become indifferent to the methodical exposition of the former. Turretine, for example, also recognises justification as a historical act performed on the individual (p. 453): (1.) In momento vocationis efficacis, per quam homo peccator transfertur a statu peccati ad statum gratiæ et unitur Christo capiti suo per fidem. Hinc enim fit, ut justitia Christi illi imputetur a Deo, cujus merito per fidem apprehenso absolvitur a peccatis suis et jus ad vitam consequitur, quam sententiam absolutoriam. (2.) Spiritus in corde pronunciat, quum ait, confide fili, remissa sunt tibi peccata tua. This representation, moreover, is in complete harmony with the third and fourth steps of justification which are assumed by Amesius, and which are not only distinguished from one another by the unvarying usus loquendi as justificatio activa and passiva, but also referred to one another as mutually complementary.⁴⁹ In order to understand this relation of the ideas, however, we must disregard Schneckenburger’s observation (p. 57, note), that when regeneration is represented as justification, justification must be taken to mean the actual change whereby the sinner is really made righteous. He ought rather conversely to have concluded that if regeneration or union with Christ is identified with justificatio activa, it is precisely thereby declared to be not a real change, but an ideal relation to Christ; and that it first of all acquires its significance as a real change when in accordance with the nature of the case justificatio passiva,—i.e. consciousness of justification, presents itself in the subject.

A misapprehension of a similar sort, but of a more clearly marked character, appears however in Schneckenburger’s assertion,⁵⁰ which has already been proved to be incorrect, that it is the unanimous opinion of Reformed theologians, in opposition to Lutheranism, that the sentence of justification as judicium secundum veritatem holds good with regard to the believer, not as a sinner, but as unitus cum Christo; so that it is an analytical judgment expressing the import of the regeneration that precedes it. I have already (p. 192), when speaking of Calvin, confuted this assertion which Schneckenburger supports only by references to a few theologians, without consulting the leaders of the Reformed school. But the same view is held by Dörtenbach also,⁵¹ at least with reference to a section of the Reformed divines, of whom he mentions Bucanus, Witsius, van Til, in addition to Rodolf, Melchior, Hulsius, F. Turretine, who are referred to by Schneckenburger. He adds also Claude Albery,⁵²—not felicitously, however. For he, the counterpart of A. Osiander in the sphere of the Calvinistic Churches, was on this very account censured by an assembly of divines at Berne (1588), and thus does not belong to the number of recognised representatives of the Reformed doctrine. With regard to Bucanus, it is obvious that he had no intention at least to teach in the way that has been indicated (Institutiones theol. Loc. 29. 11. 12), although by one or two sentences he may give rise to an appearance of such a tendency. That appearance vanishes whenever the connexion is observed, and the old gentleman receives indulgence for a certain want of skill. He lays down two steps of justification (sect. 17) whereby the elect (sect. 20) are declared righteous, first as sinners, then as believers. This is the first, but by no means sufficiently elaborated form of the distinction which has already been adduced from Amesius and Turretine. Bucanus next (sect. 18) proposes the question how God can declare the unjust to be just in the face of his own prohibition (Prov. xvii. 15). To this he answers awkwardly enough that God is above the law, that the person to be justified, who with respect to nature is a sinner, is a chosen one with respect to grace, and finally, that he must be a penitent sinner. Here undeniably are the elements of a divergence into Osiander’s tendency; but sect. 19 shows that they do not find any consistent application. Bucanus does not give up the assumption of the two degrees—the justification of the sinner to whom faith is given in consequence, and the justification of the believer. He indeed expresses the difference between them by saying that God in non renatis nihil invenit præter horrendam malorum colluviem, in renatis vero sua etiam dona complectitur Deus; but he winds up by saying in a harmonizing way that God utrosque tamen eodem modo justificat, namely, by imputation of Christ’s merit, not therefore by a judgment upon the value of His own gifts of grace in the believer. In Witsius (De Œcon. Fœd. iii. 8, 22) I find the sentences, in virtue of which Dörtenbach indicates the standpoint of the Reformed theologians named by him, to the effect that in regeneration we are liberated from the crimen profanitatis et hypocriseos; non potest Deus homines aliter considerare, aliter declarare, quam reapse sunt. These sentences, however, are incomprehensibly misapplied to a purpose which they by no means serve according to their context. For the fundamental principle of the Divine judgment (judicium Dei secundum veritatem est, Rom. ii. 12), is applied by Witsius partly to gross sinners, and partly to the actively righteous, to the regenerate who are slanderously accused of impiety and hypocrisy, like Job. For the latter in particular he coins the absolutio a crimine profanitatis et hypocriseos not, as our untrustworthy reporter represents, for believers as a whole. Witsius adds that this justification of the righteous, presupposing as it does the sanctitas et justitia inhærens which an individual possesses by the grace of God, is totally distinct from the justification of sinners, prout in sponsore censentur. This last he represents, in the familiar way, as an imputation of the righteousness of Christ, as a synthetic judgment upon sinners; but he is at the same time convinced that God in this procedure also judges secundum veritatem. This affirmation he proves simply on the ground that it is an actual righteousness which God imputes, and that God knows that that righteousness was not wrought by us but by Christ in our room, to the end ut nos illius merito juste coronari possimus. Quod tam verum est, ut summa sit totius evangelii (sect. 38). John Melchior (Fundamenta Theol. Didascalicæ, Opp. ii. p. 108-110) develops the following line of thought: men were destitute of the righteousness prescribed by the law, while no righteousness can be accepted by God which does not receive the approbation of the law. For God’s judgment is secundum veritatem. Whereupon the wisdom of God devised a plan for acquitting the unrighteous while yet He should maintain His justice—i.e. should judge in conformity to the law. In accordance with that plan, Christ as our Surety had to fulfil the law, so that He was justified, and has acquired the right, as God’s righteous servant, to justify His own, or through His own obedience to exhibit many as righteous. Men come to the participation of this righteousness of Christ by means of faith, to which therefore especially justification is attributed. Non enim amplius pro injusto potest haberi, si quis sit in Christo, cui nos fides inserit. Quod judicium Dei de fidelibus in communione justitiæ Christi jam constitutis vocatur justificatio. It is obvious that Melchior does not intend to diverge from the usual doctrine; but, unless we judge unfairly of his line of thought, we shall not find that as matter of fact he has gone beyond bounds in the two last sentences. For the judicium secundum veritatem takes place with reference to the state of faith, not in so far as that state is an operation wrought by the Holy Ghost on the analogy of the legal righteousness of Christ, but in so far as faith fulfils that condition under which Christ’s fulfilment of the law, which is the only possible object of God’s truthful judgment, can be imputed to the sinner. F. Turretine receives from Schneckenburger (pp. 16, 24) the testimony that he approaches most nearly to the Lutheran type of justification (compare above, p. 272); yet to him also are attributed divergencies towards the pretended Reformed interpretation of the doctrine. The allegations, however, taken by Schneckenburger from his Theologia elenchtica, ii. p. 705 sq. (Lugd. Bat. 1696), are neither complete nor trustworthy. The view-point of the judicium Dei secundum veritatem, which proceeds upon the rule that God can declare no one to be righteous unless he have a perfect righteousness, is never intended by Turretine to represent the imputation of Christ’s righteousness as something impossible, or that needs to be supplemented; nay, rather he applies that fundamental principle precisely to this case. Qui destituitur propria justitia, aliam debet habere qua justificetur. The imputation of the righteousness of the vicarious surety to those whom He represents thus constitutes the judicium secundum veritatem. Of course to this result attaches the condition of unio cum Christo. But when Turretine anew defends the rightness of God’s judgment of imputation against the charge of fiction, he does not appeal to that unio cum Christo, thus not to “Christ in us,” but to the relation of suretiship in which the validity of the action of one as legally representing others constitutes the type of Christ’s work as our substitute. Finally, his attaching to justification the condition of unio cum Christo (p. 713) does not render invalid the thought justificatur impius, for renovatio per gratiam does not precede justification but follows it; and the believer, in spite of his faith, must be regarded with respect to justification as impius, quatenus opponitur operanti, adeoque impius partim antecedenter, partim respective ad justificationem, non autem concomitanter, minus adhuc consequenter. In opposition to Schneckenburger I have to remark that this sentence has nothing to do with any reference to judicium secundum veritatem. Of course the justificandus is from one side represented as “already a regenerate person;” but it is not at all in this aspect that he is brought before the judgment of God, but only as impius. Schneckenburger (p. 15) appeals for support to Rodolf also (Catechesis Pal. Illustrata): but wrongly, for he omits the decisive sentences of the author he cites. Rodolf, just like Turretine, says that imputatio non denotat fictionem mentis et opinionem, sed verum justumque judicium, quo Deus judicat eos, qui credunt, esse in Filio, atque adeo justitiæ et omnis juris ipsius, ut capitis et fratris primogeniti, consortes (p. 340). Hujus imputationis fundamentum est (1.) sponsio Christi. Quidquid Filius Dei legi subjectus fecit, id voluntaria sponsione loco electorum fecit et passus est; merito igitur id ipsis imputatur; (2.) unio electorum cum Christo per spiritum fidei tam arcta ut unum fiant corpus. Quapropter in Christo fecisse ac tulisse censentur, quod fecit tulitque ipsorum vice Christus (p. 341). Schneckenburger, by citing only the second condition as the fundamentum imputationis, without bringing forward the previous fundamentum, or the subsequent elucidation, has really falsified the evidence of his witness. Solomon van Til (Theologiæ utriusque compendium, cum naturalis tum revelatæ, ed. quarta, 1734), discusses justification after regeneration, and certainly might seem in some sentences to regard the former as an analytical judgment proceeding upon the latter. Sicut homo cum dono fidei in regeneratione accipit immutationem status, ita quoque novam subit relationem, qua relatus ad amorem Dei concipitur ut conciliatus, amicus, id que summo jure propter ejus communionem cum Christo (ii. p. 160). By this, however, is expressed, not the object, but the condition of justification; for the latter is described as a judicium fori divini, quo a reatu absolvitur redemtus fidelis propter satisfactionem Christi præstitam, et jus vitæ seu justitiæ imputatur propter meritum Christi, dum censetur per fidem arctissimam habere communionem cum Christo. Subsequently (p. 164) we read again: totum fundamentum justitiæ judicii divini in justificatione fundatur in credentis conjunctione cum Christo. But, as at the same time, objectum justificationis ponitur improbus, the synthetical character of the sentence of justification is placed beyond all doubt. Only in the judgment of grace passed on the sinner is at the same time introduced a judgment of righteousness which has regard in the first instance to Christ’s work: but on account of the fellowship we have with Him in faith, omnia quæ Christi sunt, jure censentur nostra.⁵³

In fact, the Reformed thought that Christ is the subject of satisfaction and of merit, as Surety and Head of the Church, leads further to the remarkable conclusion that the justification of the individual believer is not merely regarded as an act of grace (which to the Lutherans is its only value), but, at the same time, as an act of God’s justice. If Christ as Head of the Church has suffered in their room, the sins of the elect being imputed to Him; if, therefore, also, as Head of the Church, He was declared free from its sins, then it is only just that the forgiveness of sins should be transferred to the individual member of His Church. Just as had been signified by van Til, H. Alting says (Loc. comm. i. 14, Opp. i. p. 117): Consideratur homo electus bifariam, prout est in se et natura sua et prout est in Christo satisfaciente. Priore modo Deus justificat impium, posteriore justificat eum, qui est ex fide Jesu. Illud facit pro sua erga nos gratia, istud facit pro justitia sua, qua satisfactionem a Christo acceptam credentibus imputat. So also Cocceius: (Summa Theologiæ, cap. 48): Imputatio justitiæ sive imputatio fidei in justitiam est judicium Dei justum, quod illi, qui credunt in Christum et in eo sunt, propter justitiam Christi capitis et filii in judicium non venire, dono Dei debeant, tanquam si eam obedientiam patrassent et nullum peccatum commisissent. There was no need, therefore, that Schneckenburger should adduce, in support of this thought, only so late a writer as Beveridge (p. 23, 24), who, moreover, in his purpose of practical edification, puts it in connexion with the condition supposé que je remplisse les conditions, qu’il exige dans son alliance, and so glides into an Arminian point of view. But Schneckenburger ought to have formulated that thought more distinctly than he has done. For actual unio cum Christo is indeed represented as a condition of the true and righteous judgment of God, but its cause is the ideal oneness in virtue of election with Christ, who gives satisfaction. In this way is the interest maintained which Reformed theologians no less than Lutherans feel in the affirmation of the proposition quod justificatur impius.

Were it not so, one could at all events retort upon the Lutheran doctrine, precisely in the terms in which Schneckenburger has spoken of the Reformed view—that it places the doctrine of regeneration before that of justification, in order to indicate that this judgment of God presupposes that man is in an actual state, which is the opposite of the state of sin. And yet this is not the case; for the interpretation of regeneration as a presupposition of justification is guarded in a very special way. Baier, for example (theol. pos. iii. 4. 2. 3. 12. 15), recognises a widest sense of the word regeneration; embracing conversion, justification, renovation; and a narrowest one, in which it is equivalent to justification, qua confertur jus filios Dei fieri (the justificatio activa of Reformed divines). According to another less narrow idea, regeneration is made equivalent to renovation or sanctification. But what Baier actually understands and explains under that heading is just the donatio fidei as a condition of the justificatio peccatoris, and to this does he limit the equivalent ideas of nova creatio, vivificatio, spiritualis resuscitatio. Accordingly he admits, indeed, that in this is implied mutatio aliqua spiritualis; but as he defines this with respect to justification as being the proximus finis et effectus justificationis, as he regards the vires spirituales which are bestowed in regeneration as relating merely ad credendum in Christum vitamque adeo spiritualem inchoandam, while he makes real renovation to be dependent on justification, it is easy to see what the purpose of the doctrine is. As actual conscious justification is intelligible as a new relation of the sinner to God only on condition of faith, and as the bestowal of faith is a real change of the will, it is important to attenuate the latter as much as possible in relation to justification. For indubitably the first mentioned formal change cannot be exhibited at all without a material change of the sinner, and such a change lies already in the directing of his will to Christ. But this aspect of the process is not regarded as the matter but only as the condition of the judgment, whereby the new relation of the sinner to God is first established. Inasmuch, then, as it is impossible to avoid representing the act of faith as the initial stage of the new life, it does not follow that it is to this value of faith that regard is had in the sentence of justification. But the Reformed doctrine is conditioned in the same way. It also cannot think of regeneration or union with Christ, merely as the mere empty schema of a relation, which is intended when it is represented as a step in the pronunciatio justificationis. For the direction of the will to Christ, which pertains thereto, is an efficax conversio voluntatis.⁵⁴ But by this is always meant a condition, and not the object, of justification. I do not at present enter into the question whether and how the difficulties that cluster round this point could be avoided or otherwise put to rest. At all events, no one party ought to reproach the other with the fact that in determining the relation between justification and regeneration, it has betrayed or even dropped out of sight the common interest of both parties in the former of these.

43. On the other hand a most pertinacious controversy, between the two schools, is raised by the question regarding the extent of Christ’s purpose of salvation in relation to the actual result of that purpose. The Reformed party assert that both are equal in extent, that the merit and efficacy of Christ alike refer only to the elect, even although the power and worth of Christ’s merit was sufficient for the salvation of all. The Lutherans, on the other hand, teach that Christ’s saving purpose had the same universal extent as His power; that He purposed to give satisfaction for all, even for the reprobate, but that the efficacy of His work is limited to the elect, who by faith fall in with His purpose of salvation, and appropriate to themselves His work. This opposition of views not merely served in its time as a theological Shibboleth, but even divided the popular religious consciousness; although both of the opposing views, when externally regarded, are equally strongly supported in the New Testament, and although the same contrariety had exhibited itself between Thomas and Duns (p. 64), without extending its influence beyond the limits of the school. In the influence of this opposition of different schools upon the religious and church consciousness in the evangelical confessions, we have thus a striking proof how the importance given by religious interest to school questions has complicated the church-development of the Reformation. But this contrariety, like most of the divergencies that have been already noticed, was caused by the circumstance, that the systematic impulse in the theology of the Reformed Church operated with a strength which the Lutherans did not experience. The defectiveness of the latter as regards their interest in systematic theology, was inherited from Melanchthon (p. 231), since even in method they made no use of the pattern that had been set before them by Calvin, who was the one systematic theologian of the later Reformation period. This is not the place to come to a conclusion upon that dogmatic difference. I will only point out how desire after unity of system was operative both in the one and in the other assertion. On both sides it is equally recognised as the result of the Divine redemption, that it is appropriated by a part of the human race—by the fideles, electi. Both parties moreover are at one in maintaining that this result was from all eternity contemplated by God, and that in fact the whole ordering of the universe and the whole of God’s providence refer to this number of men and their benefit. But only the Reformed Church explains this connexion from the stand-point of the independence of God’s willing and doing; the Lutherans make the result, as also God’s eternal decree regarding that result, to depend upon the independent decision of individual men with regard to faith and upon foresight of this. For, so far as His inmost mind is concerned, God earnestly strives after the salvation of all men; but His actual decree for the ruling of the universe is regulated by regard to the moral freedom of men with respect to their faith. Now, as faith is a condition of salvation, inasmuch as it recognises and appropriates the merit of Christ, the eternal election of future believers has its motive in the fact that God foresaw the merit of Christ which should make the accomplishment of election possible,⁵⁵ although, indeed, from another point of view, God appointed this work of Christ from grace. Now, whether the doctrine of predestination precede or follow the doctrine of Christ’s person and work with Lutheran theologians, it is a thing of course that the latter doctrine is not affected by the former, but conversely. For while God indeed has the desire (desiderium) to save all by the mission and exhibition of His Son, but yet that salvation takes place only in those who believe, in the exercise of their own independent will, there is a contradiction between the result of Christ’s work or the extent of justification and the purpose for which Christ was sent; and the decree of election, regulated as it is by the option of men, is in contradiction with the purpose which precedes in the mind and wish of God. In short, the Lutheran assertion that Christ was designed to be pro omnibus et singulis hominibus, a destiny which, even by the eternal decree of God, is not realized, renders it impossible that the carrying out of one Divine purpose can be recognised in the history of redemption; and therefore the theology of the Lutherans in the seventeenth century never became a system (although this title was sometimes made use of), but remained an aggregate of loci theologici.

On the other hand, the Reformed assertion that Christ’s saving purpose at the outset was limited to the persons in whom it comes to applicatio or efficacia, is in accordance with the systematic position that, in the course of the history of redemption, guided as that is by God, His previous purpose must be recognised. If now the result of Christ’s influence upon men be the formation and organisation of a part of mankind into the fellowship of the kingdom of God under Christ as the Head, this body must have been contemplated in God’s eternal election. This fellowship, therefore, is the objectum applicationis gratiæ (Keckermann, H. Alting, Amesius). Christ, in fine, acts as the subject of satisfaction and of merit, because He is regarded as the caput et sponsor electorum, and directs His intention in accordance with this. Were this otherwise, says Amesius (p. 106), like Bucanus (p. 226), Christ’s work of redemption would be of ambiguous result; the Father would have appointed the Son unto death, and the Son would have submitted Himself thereto, in uncertainty whether any one at all was to be saved by Him; the whole result of this mystery would depend upon the unrestrained arbitrariness of men. And Bucanus (p. 396) points out that this seeming vocation of all, upon which the Lutheran assertion proceeds, really is not directed to omnes et singuli, but rather is indefinite.

However this controversy may be decided with the aid of the exegetical and dialectic means at present available, and however we may obviate the difficulty which the Lutherans felt with regard to the Reformed view of the thought of election, in counterpoise to which view is the offensiveness of that estimate of human freedom which the Lutherans borrowed from the Arminians, the Reformed theory at all events has this advantage: that it gives strong emphasis to the idea of the Church. Christ, in His doing and suffering, having been conscious, as Head of the elect, that He was doing and suffering for them and in their room, the formation of the Church is recognised as the direct end of His historical activity, even although yet other means secured by the activity of the exalted Saviour are necessary to the attainment of the actual result. The Church being represented as the immediate object of the efficacia—in other words, of those operations of the exalted Christ—the identity of the subject of exinanitio and of exaltatio (which in appearance are opposed) is put on a firm footing by the oneness of the purpose to which they related. Finally, on this presupposition the advantage is gained that the regeneration and justification of the individual cannot even be conceived outside of the Church, which, binding him up with Christ and the other members of Christ, embraces the individual in idea and in fact before he is at all conscious of his justification. Thus is the assumption made possible that the justificatio activa of the individual, whether it be represented as a transient act of regeneration or as an immanent act of God in foro cœli, is valid and effectual for all the elect in virtue of the general sentence of justification, previous to justificatio passiva and the consciousness of a change of state that the testimony of the Holy Ghost brings. At the same time, the objective validity of this fact for the individual is maintained, even though the subjective sense of it, the feeling of peace and joy in the Holy Ghost cannot be detected with equable strength and continuous duration. The Lutheran doctrine has not equalled these attainments. No doubt, it also, by referring to Christ’s kingly and prophetical office in His state of exaltation, deduces the rise of the Church as an indirect consequence of the priestly activity of the God-man in His state of humiliation. But it does not accomplish this by exhibiting any relation of purpose. On the contrary, it only places Christ’s two offices in chronological sequence, and arranges the facts contained in them in the order of the three offices. The Lutheran doctrine amounts to this, that Christ, who in the state of humiliation has given satisfaction for all men to God, in His state of exaltation gathers, maintains, and equips with the gifts of salvation His Church,—in His office of prophet mediately by sending the ministri verbi divini, and in His kingly office by the Word and sacraments, the vehicles of the Holy Spirit. That no mutual connexion between these two facts is traced must indeed be charged against the Reformed divines as much as against the Lutherans. But this error is less fatal to the Reformed than to the Lutheran doctrine. For the Reformed view of Christ’s merit is brought into direct connexion with the purpose of founding the Church, and is dominated by the supreme idea of the regnum gratiæ Christi, and the applicatio meriti has for its object the Church, and the individual only as a member of the Church. This order of ideas could not be destroyed even though it was omitted to ingraft the mission of the ministers of the Word by Christ as a prophet into the active exercise of his kingship in forming and maintaining His Church.

The Lutheran view of the matter, on the other hand, does not satisfy the interests of the Christianity of the Evangelical Church, and therefore tends to injure it. Inasmuch as the two facts are brought into close conjunction, that Christ in His state of exaltation sends the ministers of the Divine Word as a Prophet, and gathers and maintains the Church by Word and sacrament as King, it certainly seems, when viewed from one side, that the connexion of the thought of the Church with the doctrine of the meritum Christi is very strongly brought out. It seems as if we had only to note that the ministers are the mediate organs of Christ in His state of exaltation, the depositaries of the Divine Word, and the administrators of the sacraments, in which the merit of Christ is applied to believers, in order to draw the conclusion that the community of believers is to be regarded as the immediate product of the official functions of the ministers, and as the mediate product, in His state of exaltation, of the God-man, who made them possible by His merit in His humiliation. But this is not the intention of the Lutheran doctrine. For the article “Of the Church” declares that vocatio ordinaria is the constitutive characteristic of the minister of the Word. Now the jus vocationis indeed pertains in the last instance to Christ, but ecclesia est minus principalis causa vocationis ministrorum (Baier). In other words, the Church is not merely the product, but also the efficient prerequisite or the intermediate cause of the ministry of the Word. But why do we not meet with these conditions earlier, viz., in the doctrine of the application of grace, where it is much needed to prevent the wrong conclusion that has just been pointed out? Because, we answer, theologians did not rise above the isolation of theological loci to a systematic arrangement of the thoughts that demand to be brought into mutual relation. Lutheran theology maintains indeed its evangelical character unstained in the proposition that the Church of believers is the immediate cause as well as the end of the ministerium ecclesiasticum (p. 184), that the latter accordingly is only a middle term in the notion of the Church. But this truth, which was never denied, falls short of its full effect in the Lutheran doctrine, because the idea of the Church is not brought directly into connexion with the doctrine of Christ’s merit, and laid at the foundation of the doctrine of the applicatio gratiæ. What the Reformed doctrine has done in this respect is quite the reverse of being anti-Lutheran in principle. The Reformed divines have only soared above the Lutherans, and advanced their common task from which the latter shrank.

But not merely does the evangelical character of Lutheranism fall short in this representation; the churchly character of Christendom does so also. The applicatio gratiæ,—first the donatio fidei (regeneratio), then also pœnitentia, and, in consequence, justificatio come to pass, according to the Lutheran doctrine, in such a way that the individual sinner experiences the appropriate influence of law and gospel, which are set before him by the ministers of the word. As passing through contritio he attains faith, i.e. confidence in the promise of grace and in Christ’s merit, objective justification, as an immanent act of God,⁵⁶ coincides, in point of time, with his consciousness of it, that is, with the awakening of consolatio conscientiæ and lætitia spiritualis. In this view no account is taken of a feeling of fellowship with the Church of believers, without a previous impression of which, however, no individual religious consciousness finds place, and without which that consciousness has no Church-quality. As rather the justificandus or justificatus, in spite of the instrumentality of word and sacraments, is confronted with God in a position of individual isolation, he is led by an inevitable craving to recognise his objective justification in the constancy of his lætitia spiritualis, and so to an artificial tension of sentiment which at best can be gained in the smaller circle of persons who share his aspirations, i.e. in a state of sectarian separation; and, even in that case, only with interruptions by moments of despair, or with the risk of lasting self-deception.⁵⁷ Now, Schneckenburger⁵⁸ calls attention to the fact that the course of the Reformed doctrine of justification, referring to the individual only in so far as he is counted a member of the Church, corresponds to those demands which Catholicism alone pretends to satisfy, and that too in a higher sphere of spirituality. Lutheranism, on the other hand, maintains the principle of individualism; or, in its interpretation of justification, it represents the individual as an independent and special quantity determined by the transcendent judgment of God. But at the same time, Schneckenburger notices that the Lutherans recognise the value of the external objectivity of the Church as the means whereby that judgment of God is conveyed to the consciousness; and that herein this system also appears to approximate in a special manner to Catholicism. Further comparisons associated with this opinion I leave untouched, because in them are presented uncertain deductions from a statement which is itself incomplete. For the more spiritual character which is ascribed to the Reformed use of the idea of the Church as distinguished from the Catholic must be attributed to the circumstance that the justification of the individual is, in the Catholic view, made to depend upon the ecclesia repræsentans—upon the legal guild of sacramentally privileged clergy; while in the Reformed sense it is made to depend upon the Church as the ecclesia electorum—upon the previous consideration that the individual possesses all the benefits of grace, and above all, justification only in the corpus mysticum Christi, within which the word of God and the sacraments assert their objective significance as indispensable Divine means for the realization of the idea of the Church. Between these two positions there is nothing but opposition. If now the Lutheran apprehension of the matter appears to approach the Catholic, because it makes the justification of the individual to depend upon these objective things—the word of God and the sacraments—the difference still holds good, that however distinctly the ministri ecclesiæ are here presupposed, yet those instrumentalities of the Divine activity are never at all identified with, or referred to, any empirical prerogative of the clergy. But as in the Lutheran representation of the doctrine it is not stated in the right place that the keys principaliter ecclesiæ traditæ sunt, and that the sacraments cannot be conceived of apart from and previous to the communio fidelium, it is easy to understand why the continued obscurity on this subject causes the appearance of a community of interest between the Lutheran and Catholic conceptions of the matter, and in the case of many leads to an aimless grasping at this phantom. But the negligent treatment of the idea of the Church on this point avenges itself in the way that has been already specified, in that the justification of the individual, although subordinated to the Church instrumentalities, seems to require to be maintained as a conscious possession in the way of isolated excitement of feeling. The defect of the Lutheran doctrine on this point thus explains why, within the limits of Lutheranism, the problem of evangelical Church-life is always hampered, either alternately or simultaneously, with aberrations towards Romanizing over-estimation of the ecclesiastical office, or towards pietistic isolation and self-torture of individual Church members, as well as spiritual pride on the part of these in their narrower fellowship with each other.⁵⁹

44. The divergencies between the two evangelical Confessions in the doctrines of reconciliation and justification do not betray any generic difference. For the tendency of the doctrine is in both cases the same, namely, to guarantee to the believer, standing in the Church or under the influence of the Church’s means of grace, the right of religious intercourse with God, notwithstanding the presence of actual sin. The steps of the progress of the thought are identical in the leading points, and the differences in this respect partly arise from the diverse degrees of scientific zeal, and partly from mutual misunderstandings which did not admit of being cleared up in the then state of exegetical knowledge and of dialectical culture. But the community of interest between the two confessions in these doctrines is seen most clearly when they are brought into conflict with unchurchly and antichurchly efforts to set aside the doctrine of reconciliation through Christ. These culminate in Socinianism, and have been worked out with the greatest technical care by the founders of that school. But they have their origin within the circle of the Anabaptists.

The phenomenon of Anabaptism, in the many forms in which it appears, proceeds, first, on the principle that Christianity must be realized as the fellowship of actively holy persons—of such holy persons as attain to the highest possible degree of freedom from all sin, or to inability to sin. In the second place, it results from this effort (analogous to Donatism), that the Church is represented as the sum of actively holy and sinless persons, but not as the prior whole within which the individual receives his Christian character. The mark of this principle is the rejection of infant baptism as worthless; and, from the circumstances of the time, the practice of re-baptism of adults, whereby they made public profession of their adherence to the party. Thirdly, all our common Christianity that has existed up till now—the Christian state as well as the Church—is declared to be worthless, as being an inadmissible commixture of the kingdom of God with the world. In the expectation of the hyper-historical kingdom of Christ, therefore, a complete reconstruction of society, both religious and social, is aimed at; in the regulation of which the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are adopted as the law-book, and in the realization of which, at one time, abstinence from military service, from public offices, from oaths, was prescribed; at another time, violent outbreak was attempted. In all these points the revolutionary reform that arose from the principle of mystic piety conflicts with the Reformation properly so called, which maintains the ground of the Christian fellowship of the Roman Empire, which takes into account the interests of the universal Church, and which, finally, in its opposition to the legal character of Catholic Christianity, is all the less allied to the Donatistic pursuit of active sinlessness, which however really resolved itself into low views of sin, and therefore of the moral law. Anabaptism rather originates in motives which specifically belong to the stage of Christianity that preceded the Reformation, and each of which was tolerated by the Catholic Church of the middle ages. But, when mysticism no longer chose to continue as ecclesiola in ecclesia; when the principle of flight from civilly-organized society no longer chose to confine itself within the limits of the monkish orders, and to submit itself to Church authority; when active sanctity sought other aims than canonization by the Pope; when, on the contrary, these forces sought to overthrow the Christian world, and to lead it back to a visionary ideal of primitive Christianity; then of course Anabaptism came into conflict with the mediæval constitution of Christian society at large.

Since the Anabaptist sect is as guiltless of theology as it could well be; since, as a revolutionary movement, it was propagated among the uneducated classes by means of practical watchwords only,—there are but few persons of theological culture in whose writings instructive consequences crop up, whereby they remove themselves still further from the common convictions of Christendom. Thus when the task of active holiness was prescribed, and the significance of sin depreciated, the religious craving of man’s nature sought in Christ only the pattern of doing and of suffering, not the mediator of forgiveness of sins. In this the Christian ideal that had been set up by the mendicant orders shows its continued influence as transmitted by German mysticism. In accordance with this Thomas Münzer accentuates the exemplary character of Christ, but passes in silence over His significance as the Reconciler.⁶⁰ John Denk,⁶¹ on the other hand, got so far as to deny Christ’s vicarious fulfilment of the law. Though he allows himself to be drawn to a repudiation of that only by a misinterpretation of the Reformation doctrine, as if our fulfilling of the law were rendered superfluous by Christ’s substitutionary work (p. 249), yet his denial has to himself the value of a principle. For he is of opinion that every one can atone for his own sins by assenting to his own condemnation, by mortifying his own flesh, and thus re-instating the law in its due place so far as he himself is concerned. And along with his rejection of reconciliation in general through Christ, Denk abandoned his faith in the Divinity of Christ. The former view, and partly also the latter, passed from Denk to the Anabaptists of upper Germany, Jacob Kautz, Balthasar Hubmaier, Ludwig Hetzer.⁶² In like manner David Joris, the Anabaptist prophet, explains faith in the blood of Christ as the life of the spirit of Christ, as the experience of God’s Almighty Word and everlasting power which is attained in faith.⁶³ On the other hand the party of the Mennonites or Baptists, in which the wild Anabaptist movement was moderated, and therefore gained a more enduring existence, couples with the task of building up a community of actively holy persons the recognition of the Reformation principle of justification by Christ’s perfect obedience as the sole ground of salvation to which good works belong, only as necessary results of faith. At the same time, the Quakers again, in whose society the later movement of the revolutionary sectarian spirit found rest in the seventeenth century, showed themselves so hostile to the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction, as to specify that doctrine as a distinctive mark of the church of Babylon.⁶⁴ For the Quaker principle of the inner light, the operation of which, as Barclay admits, is independent of historical knowledge of Christ, excludes the possibility of attaching any real significance to His work, either in doing or in suffering. When, therefore, Barclay in his Theologiæ vere christianæ apologia undertakes to show the harmony of the principles of Quakerism with Scripture, the ancient church, and the Reformers, the ambiguousness of his procedure becomes palpable precisely when it takes up the doctrines of reconciliation and justification. For the Reformation form of these doctrines is gainsaid as soon as it is formulated. God did not treat Christ on the same footing as sinners, He is only quasi in Christo nobis reconciliatus; Christ’s death therefore is only the offer of reconciliation, is only the type and symbol of that true redemption and change which Christ’s spirit, the divine light, brings about within the man. This is also real justification, and though it is conceded to Protestantism that man is not regarded as righteous on account of works (which, however, he is capable of producing), Barclay betrays a radical misunderstanding of the fundamental principle of the Reformation, and approximates the Catholic view regarding good works in justification as causa sine qua non.⁶⁵

Previous to this the Mystics alongside of the Lutheran Church, and the Theosophers within it, had expressed themselves much as Barclay does. Not merely do they let the doctrine of the sacrificial death of Christ pass, it is even of some value to them as the victorious struggle with the evil principle; but that historical event is not regarded as the manifest and openly efficient cause of the change which every individual must undergo, but only as a more or less important presupposition of that inner experience upon which the decisive weight is laid by sectarian indifference to the historical central points of the Christian religion. Caspar Schwenkfeld⁶⁶ sometimes felt himself able to regulate the consciousness of justification by referring to the cross of Christ as the Reformers did; but the conflict between his main effort after active sanctity in those who were Christians, and his caricature of the Lutheran doctrine, as if it meant a merely historical faith and an imaginary righteousness, obscured that truth as a whole and made it ineffectual. That lively religious realization of the doing and suffering of Christ, which overleaps the significance of Christ’s state of exaltation and only rests upon that ethico-historical representation of Christ’s historical works which takes place by the preaching of the word, is combated by him; and against it he maintains that redemption and satisfaction, as well as all other gifts of Christ, must by faith be sought in the spiritual and reigning Christ, in whom everything is summed up and everything is to be found; from Him it must really be derived and conveyed into the ministerial work and office. Rightly considered, this amounts merely to a completion of the fundamental view of the Reformation which has been accomplished by theology; it is no instance of a genuine contradiction. But this last it really is in the intention of Schwenkfeld, for as a Mystic he isolated himself from the historico-ethical and churchly surroundings of Christianity, and taking faith as the means of participation in Divine nature overleaped all historical intermediate agencies. The assumption that the true faith which comes immediately from God rests on God himself in Christ, that it is based upon Being and lays hold of eternal truth, gives so abstract and supernatural a tendency to piety, that it naturally gave the preponderance to the intuition of the exalted Christ over the consideration of His earthly life and death. But now if the soul in its religious exercise moves between a faith thus understood and the intuition of an exalted Christ, it is only consistent that Schwenkfeld will not hear of an imputed righteousness, but rather refers justification or righteous-making to the gracious dealing of God with man, with a view to his blessedness, from first to last, wherein the sinner is converted, regenerated, made devout, righteous, holy, and blessed. If in regeneration Christ imparts His own righteousness, His own piety, His own nature, and the fellowship of His being, it is easily explained why we seek them in Him not in His first state historically viewed, but in His other state, as He is now glorified in order to dispense heavenly blessings, and also has been appointed by God the Father to be Head of the Church.⁶⁷ For the former standpoint is suited at most for the children who are satisfied with the milk of the word; grown men need strong food, the knowledge of the exalted Christ.⁶⁸

John Denk and his followers abandoned the doctrine of reconciliation because it was practically indifferent and superfluous to them; Schwenkfeld was able to let it pass because he deprived it of its real practical meaning. In opposition to this circle of ideas Socinianism has in the first instance a theoretical motive for its opposition to this doctrine, which indeed became operative in that direction only under certain practical conditions. All the arguments of Faustus Socinus against the doctrine of reconciliation by Christ as a whole proceed upon the idea of the unlimited arbitrariness of God, as conversely the Reformation view of the doctrine is based upon the assumption of a relation of God to men regulated a priori by law. The former idea of God is that of Duns Scotus, the theologian of the Franciscan Order. Now I have shown in another place⁶⁹ that this theological principle, the serious effects of which upon the doctrine of reconciliation had already been hinted at by Duns as possible (p. 69), took effect in this direction through Bernardino Ochino upon Lælius Socinus, and through him again upon his nephew Faustus. Duns, however, had only hinted it to be possible in God’s unfettered arbitrary choice that a mere man might make atonement for all, or that each man might do so for himself; in all other respects he had categorically adhered to the profession of the Church’s faith in the atonement by the God-man. Now the fact that Faustus asserted that hypothesis to be the actual and necessary fact presupposes a complete breach on his part with the universal faith of the Church. But to this his uncle was brought, like himself and so many other Italians, by the state of Christian society in Italy. Here the empire had not regained the power it had lost to Gregory VII. and Innocent III.; here, therefore, the Romish Church presented itself as the only possible form in which Christian society could be organized. It dominated the masses of the people, which was not prepared by any expectation of Church reform for accepting Reformation influences from Germany and Switzerland. Men who had received a literary education were almost the only persons that were accessible to these influences; but these were almost invariably prevented by the state of public opinion, and by the unshaken power of the agencies of the Church from forming themselves publicly into congregations, and were thus compelled to meet only in secret. Their part in the Reformation therefore, even though it originally directed itself towards the ethical central points of that movement, found neither the stimulus nor the restraint which were needful, and which are guaranteed by the public activity of the general church consciousness. This is the reason why amongst so many of the Italians, who attached themselves to the Reformation, it was not the churchly spirit, but, on the contrary, either Anabaptist sectarianism or the inclination to scholastic criticism of all dogmas, or both together, that was cherished. For, to the interests of the school, criticism of the doctrine of the Trinity and of the doctrine of reconciliation lies quite as near as the construction of the right idea of justification.

The idea of Christian society, which the Socinians define and strive after under the name of church, is nothing but a school. The Reformers had defined the Church as the fellowship of believers or saints, the marks of which fellowship are the preaching of God’s word and the right use of the sacraments, by means of which instrumentalities God accomplishes and secures the existence of sanctified believers. As a condition of the Church (in subordination to the word of God) was also required the recognition of those theological truths which betoken the right understanding of God’s word, and without which therefore the exhibition of the contents of the Divine word comes to nothing. But it was always firmly maintained that this pura doctrina evangelii is only a mark of the Church, and that participation in that function of the Church does not necessarily imply that one actually belongs to the number of persons set apart by God. In opposition to this line of thought, now, the Racovian Catechism maintains: Qu. 488: Ecclesia visibilis est coetus eorum hominum, qui doctrinam salutarem tenent et profitentur. Qu. 489: Salutaris doctrina, quam quicunque coetus habet ac profitetur, est vera Christi ecclesia… . Tenere salutarem doctrinam, cum ecclesiæ Christi sit natura, signum illius, si proprie loquaris, esse non potest, cum signum ipsum a re, cujus signum est, differre oporteat.⁷⁰ This thought is thus antithetically elucidated by Faustus: Though it is necessary to salvation that one should be within the true Church of Christ, it does not follow that he must set himself to seek out the true Church, but only that he should set himself to discover the saving doctrine of Christ. He who attains to this will also find out the others who possess this doctrine in common with himself. For it is not enjoined upon anybody to learn the doctrine of salvation from the true Church. For the true Church itself can only be recognised by its saving doctrine, which therefore must previously be recognised and possessed as such; and hereby participation in the true Church is already attained.⁷¹

Now the fellowship, the essence of which is a doctrine, and which therefore continues to exist only so long as that doctrine expresses the convictions of the members of that fellowship, is a school. The doctrine, moreover, which is polemically and dialectically set forth in the Racovian Catechism as the result of technical investigation of Scripture, makes only a school possible. It is thus an illusion, or a fiction, or an expression of embarrassment when Socinianism, which in these principles opposes itself to all churches, still at the same time embraces other churches with itself under the idea of the universal Church. For the other churches in fact affirm neither in form nor in substance the salutary doctrine of Christ as Socinianism understands it. It is also a mere illusion on the part of Faustus, in which he has been followed by modern theological radicalism, when he thinks that, by his denial of the doctrines of reconciliation and the Trinity, he is carrying out to its true consequence the reformation of Luther and Zwingli.⁷² For the school as such is not a thing higher than the Church; two views of Christianity, which are specifically opposed and mutually exclusive, arise according as its destination is to be realized in the religious community or in the school of theology and morals. In fact the Socinian form of Christianity as a school has relationship only with the sectarian manifestation of Anabaptism. In both Christian fellowship is regarded exclusively as a product of special activity on the part of the members. Both, too, oppose themselves to the conditions of the Christian fellowship of the Roman Empire. It is, therefore, not an accidental circumstance that Faustus found a congenial soil for his principles in the Anabaptist circles of Poland; and although the community he founded, like the Mennonites, refrained from direct opposition to the power of the state, it never attained to any clear and undisputed principles respecting the right and duty of military service, and of investiture with public offices as long as it existed in Poland.⁷³ That, on the other hand, Faustus strove after the abolition of Anabaptism in the Unitarian congregations all his life, and accomplished it shortly before his death (1603, at a Synod at Rakow) shows that he was able to direct the enthusiastic tendency of sectarianism into the path of scholastic moderatism, the theological apparatus of which was designed merely to put on a secure footing the moral self-culture of the individual, the effort after ethical perfection in accordance with the commandments and promises of Christ as against the opposing pretensions of the universal faith of the Church.

45. If the tendency of Socinianism is ascertained to be this, then the positive motive power of its rejection of the Church’s doctrine of reconciliation is also known. Accordingly, at the outset it must be doubted whether the Socinian arguments against it, however acute, reach so far as to prove the falsity and untenableness of the tendency of the Church doctrine. But unless we should state the issue thus, the controversy would appear insoluble. No standpoint could be reached from which both parties could be judged, and it would be impossible to draw any lesson from the history of the dispute. The peculiar Socinian view of the purpose and of the contents of Christianity is historically conditioned by that mediæval doctrine which regards God as the absolute Will, that is, the law and perfect rule of all things, whose attitude to man is determined by no a priori fixed universal principle, and therefore is necessarily referred to the standard of judgment that the principles of private law afford. This is seen, in particular, in the principle stated by Thomas with which we are already acquainted (p. 52), that sin has the character of a personal injury or of a pecuniary obligation, and that God therefore, like any private individual, is entitled to forgive sins without anything further. Socinianism has brought this tendency to its full issues after its own fashion, having carried out the character of finitude, which this freedom from moral restrictions implies, in other directions also, particularly by explaining away the eternity of God into a life enduring without beginning and without end. With the rights and reasonableness of God are confronted single men in their individuality, conceived as possessing a freedom equally devoid of all moral contents. By the man Christ Jesus they, according to a free determination of God, are led out of their natural condition away to immortality and eternal life. Christ contributes to this end, having as Prophet in His historical existence declared the commandments and the promises, and having also given the example of a perfect life, and ratified it by His death. Christ transcends the limits of the Old Testament, inasmuch as He reformed the Mosaic law, added to it new moral precepts and sacramental appointments, gave a strong impulse to the observance of these by the promises of everlasting life and the Holy Spirit, and assured men of the general purpose of God to forgive the sins of those who repent and seek to reform themselves. It is admitted that no man can perfectly fulfil the moral law; and justification, therefore, results not from works but from faith. But faith means that trust in the giver of the law which includes in itself actual obedience to Him so far as that is practicable to men. Now Christ, by His resurrection, by His having obtained Divine power, guarantees to all those who in this meaning of faith attach themselves to Him,—in the first instance, actual liberation from sin according to the measure in which they follow the impulse He gives them to newness and betterness of life; and, further, the attainment of the supernatural end set before them; and also by the Holy Spirit, which He bestows, the previous assurance of everlasting life, with the commencement whereof the forgiveness of sins of the individual is complete. In this we have a palpable indication of the practical antithesis between Socinianism and Church Protestantism. In the latter the forgiveness of sins is regarded as the beginning, in the former as a more remote result of the Christian life. The opposition of Socinianism to the doctrine of Christ’s satisfaction, which lies at the foundation of the former view, thus admits of explanation from this point; but this Socinian estimate of the forgiveness of sins as an accident of the Christian life is at the same time an indication that in Christ the founder merely of an ethical school is discerned, and not the founder of a religious fellowship. And if this contrariety does not always show itself with clearness, if rather it must be allowed that Socinianism establishes peculiar religious aims, regulative principles and conditions, the circumstance is to be accounted for by the fact that Socinianism, as being the first attempt at an exhibition of Christianity as an ethical school, was still exposed to the influences of the view of Christianity which up to that time had exclusively prevailed, and from which it had in principle withdrawn itself.

The arguments of Faustus Socinus against the Church view of Christ’s place as a Saviour, are directed against the necessity and against the possibility of the idea of satisfaction.⁷⁴ The necessity of satisfaction in relation to sin, and to God’s purpose to forgive sins, had been founded by the Church-theology on the consideration that God is necessitated by His Being to punish sin, and if He does not punish the guilty persons directly, He must yet punish their innocent representative. Faustus, on the other hand, from his diametrically opposed idea of God, maintained that He is at liberty to punish or to forgive sins: that His penal justice or His wrath and His pity are not habitual properties, but only momentary alternating acts; that sin is analogous to an insult to honour, or to a pecuniary debt, and, therefore, just like these, can be remitted without further condition. If God under the Old Testament forgave sins without receiving satisfaction, He can do so also under the New; and the parable in Matt. xviii. 21 sqq. evidences that absolute unconditioned mercy is a fundamental principle of action with God. All the less can God’s justice be regarded as laying the foundation of the idea of satisfaction, because it is simply unjust to let the guilty go unpunished, and to punish the innocent in their stead. The impossibility of satisfaction is clear to him (1.) from the relation that it is asserted to have to the purpose of forgiveness. For here between the purpose proposed and the assumed means, a pure contradiction emerges. Remission is conceivable only where a debt is presupposed; but there is no longer any debt to be remitted where satisfaction has been given. Remission involves in itself two conditions—that the debtor is freed from his obligation; and that the creditor renounces his claim to satisfaction. Should, perhaps, Christ’s satisfaction be judged of in accordance with the analogy of the legal proceeding of novation, then it is quite clear that the debt is not remitted, but the debtor only deceived. (2.) Satisfaction is unthinkable when viewed in connexion with the scheme of substitution which is applied. For (a.) pecuniary mulcts can indeed be paid by other persons than the debtor, because one person’s money can easily become another’s; but not personal, corporal punishments, such as eternal death. Or their transference to an innocent person would be unjust. Undoubtedly it may be observed in history that sins not their own are imputed to men, and that men suffer in the punishment of a guilty person. But that always presupposes implication in the sin that is punished: at all events, companionship in another’s punishment has not for an innocent person the character of punishment. The orthodox doctrine, finally, cannot support itself by the assertion that Christ as Head of the Church was qualified to take punishment upon Himself in room of His members. For that relation first came into existence in virtue of His resurrection; but as an earthly Man, and with respect to His suffering unto death, Christ does not stand in any special connexion with other men, and His dying does not deliver His disciples from the necessity of undergoing death. (b.) Neither can the positive fulfilment of the law have any substitutionary value for others; for Christ was bound to fulfil the law for Himself, and His obedience, no more than His passion, can be separated from Him in thought and transferred to others. (c.) The assertion, that Christ in our room has fulfilled the law and also endured the punishment, is inconsistent with the righteous exercise of the law, which demands either the one or the other, but not both together. (3.) Christ’s suffering unto death does not as matter of fact come up to the necessities of the case implied in the idea of satisfaction. For (a.) satisfaction, as full payment of a debt, can only be thought of if every one who was liable to eternal death had found a special substitute. (b.) Christ as our substitute would have had to endure eternal death, against which His resurrection shows that He did not suffer such a penalty. (c.) That His passion did not amount to eternal death, cannot be explained by asserting Christ’s Godhead, and the infinite value of His death that resulted therefrom. For, in that case, it were cruel in God to impose upon Him so bitter a passion; when a much smaller degree of suffering would have been sufficient in room of the punishment deserved by us. But Christ’s divinity cannot give any higher value at all to His passion, for His Godhead itself could not suffer. But even were this possible, and even if the divinity had suffered in Christ, still the infinite value of Godhead ought to be attributed only to the being of God, but not to the temporal acts or moments of suffering. But, finally, the infinity of punishment necessary for every sinner would demand an equal number of satisfactions of infinite value. (4.) The connexion of the idea of imputation with that of satisfaction is superfluous and contradictory; and so is the exhortation to have faith in Christ’s satisfaction. For, assuming that Christ gave to God satisfaction for our guilt, the matter is then at an end. An imputation finds place in legal transactions only where no prestation has preceded; but where, as in the assumed case of Christ’s vicarious satisfaction, the prestation has been made, then an imputation (accepti latio) has no meaning.⁷⁵ Just as absurd is the assumption that Christ’s satisfaction requires our faith ere it can be valid. For either that act of His is perfect in itself, in which case its validity for the individual does not depend upon the circumstance of his believing it to have been done for him; or, if the latter condition holds good, then is the satisfaction not complete in itself. (5.) The doctrine of Christ’s satisfaction is inconsistent with the recognition of the duty of a righteous and law-abiding conduct of life, and opens up the way to sin, or, at least, to carelessness with respect to sin. While Faustus thus denies the validity of the idea of satisfaction at all points, it is not without interest to notice that he admits the idea of Christ’s merit in a certain sense. Indubitably, if the strict sense of duty is to be accepted, then every merit of Christ, whether for Himself or for us, is excluded: Nihil fecit quod ipsi a Deo injunctum non fuisset. Ubi debitum, ibi nullum verum et proprium meritum. Thus the idea admits of application only in an improper sense, on the presupposition of definite divine decree and of divine promise. As, however, the latter adds nothing to our idea of the obligatory character of a course of action, it can explain the idea of merit only by bringing into consideration in an exceptional way, not the obligation in duty, but the voluntary nature of the action criticised. This thought virtually amounts to the definition of the idea as laid down by Duns and by Calvin (p. 205). And even when Faustus contradicts the latter, applying like Thomas the strict idea of merit to the legal judgment upon an action, he is nevertheless in the admission of Christ’s merit, which as matter of fact he makes, at one with Calvin. This is a new proof of what has already been said, that the ideas of Christ’s merit and of His satisfaction are derived from quite different modes of viewing the question. That of satisfaction is derived from the presupposition of a reciprocal relation, regulated by purely legal considerations; that of merit from the presupposition of a reciprocal ethical relation which, however, is not viewed from the highest standpoints of law and duty.