By Rev. J. Gibson Smith. Wellington, N. Z.: Gordon & Gotch (London: Gordon & Gotch). 1908.1
Mr. Smith’s object in this strongly and even fervently written volume is to propose what he takes to be a new theory of the Atonement. It is not, however, as new as he takes it to be. It is in point of fact one of the most prevalent theories of the Atonement in this age of lowered conceptions of the guilt of sin, and heightened conceptions of man’s own part in the saving process. Stated in its barest outline, it is the theory that the ground on which God receives sinful man back into His favor is just man’s own repentance and faith, while the part of Christ is simply to induce acceptable repentance and faith in man. This is, of course, only a form—one of the highest forms, certainly—of the so-called “Moral Influence” theory (see “The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia,” i. 1908, p. 352b).
Mr. Smith, to be sure, formally repudiates the “Moral Influence” theory—as he states it, that is; and that means, in one of its special forms (p. 57: “as thus stated”). But his own theory is only another mode of stating essentially the same view. He thinks he draws away from the “Moral Influence” theory (of course, in the unacceptable form of it which he outlines) in two particulars—inasmuch as he gives an essential place in his theory to the death of Christ, and makes this death “answer to some demand in the nature of God, as well as to some need in man” (p. 57). The wariness of this language should not pass, however, without observation. If an essential place is given to the death of Christ, it is not that the salvation of the sinner is grounded in the death of Christ; it is grounded in the sinner’s own repentance and faith and nothing more. The necessity which is vindicated for the death of Christ arises merely out of the sinner’s need of influences issuing from the death of Christ to produce in him such repentance and faith as will be acceptable to God. And if the death of Christ may be said in this indirect way to “answer to some demand in the nature of God,” it directly meets no demand of the nature of God at all. It operates only to secure from man the repentance and faith which meet the demand of God’s “holy mercy.” The death of Christ thus terminates solely on man, affecting him; and not at all on God, affecting Him—save through the effect it works in man, by inducing in man acceptable repentance and faith.
Mr. Smith does occasionally, to be sure, incidentally use language which may seem to imply or assert that the death of Christ has an effect on God. Thus, we read (p. 54) of a “remission of sins on the ground of the death of Christ,” and again (p. 36), of “obstacles to man’s forgiveness in God” which Christ has come and removed. But these perhaps not unnatural reversions to the common language of Christianity must naturally be interpreted according to the terms of his own theory. And according to the terms of his theory Christ’s work does not terminate on God supplying the ground on which He forgives sins, and does not remove any obstacles on God’s part to the forgiveness of sin. In his view there is on God’s part no obstacle to man’s forgiveness, and God requires no death of Christ, or anything else of the kind, to enable Him to remit sin. All that is required to enable God’s free mercy to flow forth to sinful man, is that the conditions of forgiveness necessarily imposed by a holy God on sinners should be fulfilled (pp. 106 f.). And Christ’s work does not fulfill these conditions. It terminates wholly on man, enabling him to comply with the necessary conditions of acceptance with God and so be saved. “Therefore,” we read (p. 106), “even though there is mercy eternally in God, and even though God requires no satisfaction to His retributive justice before He can show mercy, yet the mercy of God must remain eternally unavailable for sinful man unless, through the mediatorship of a Saviour from sin, he is enabled to comply with the conditions which God’s holiness must always impose upon God’s mercy.” Man, in other words, is his own saviour, though, of course, only as empowered thereto by Christ. God accepts man only on the fulfillment by himself of conditions of salvation, not on the fulfillment of any conditions by Christ. Christ’s whole work is to enable man to save himself: and only as man, thus enabled, saves himself can he be saved. The function which Christ performs in the saving process is not, then, that He does anything for man, but that He enables man to do all that it is necessary to do for himself.
This line of thought is very familiar. It is, moreover, the natural line of thought for one who occupies the general theological standpoint of Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith has turned his back upon the governing conceptions of his Reformed forefathers, and adopted instead the point of sight of their Arminianizing opponents. He considers himself in doing so only to be rising out of the “earth-born mist” of “fatalism,” and to be according to men only “the full possession of their moral freedom” (p. 97). That is to say, in plain English, Mr. Smith takes his starting-point in a Pelagianizing anthropology; his position relatively to the condition of the human race being as nearly as possible that of historical Semi-Pelagianism (pp. 125–127). Man being thus conceived to need only incitement to enable him to do all that God requires of him, God is, on the other hand, conceived as requiring no satisfaction for guilt, but freely extending mercy to all who return to Him in acceptable repentance and faith. The resultant soteriological scheme travels thus in an ellipse around the two foci of the divine offer of mercy up to the uttermost (p. 215), and the free dealing accorded to this offer by man. Man may accept this offer; and the power to accept it is native to him; he needs divine aid only to work fully out to their complete issues the results of his acceptance of it. Or man may reject this offer, and may not in any mechanical or miraculous fashion be deprived of his power to reject it, even up to “the point of the Breaking-Strain of the Soul”—beyond which he can but reject it, and before which, of course, he may equally readily accept or reject it. His destiny being thus determined by his own choice, he who accepts God’s proposals of mercy will on this acceptance, being united by faith with Christ, be, through spiritual discipline received from Christ, more and more enabled to repent and believe, and on this beginning be accepted by God on the guarantee of Christ that this imperfect repentance and faith will ultimately ripen into perfect. There would seem to be implied here a doctrine of “Perseverance,” and, though this is nowhere explicitly asserted, it is everywhere implied and frequently stated in less theological language. Otherwise the scheme is the familiar Arminian one and has nothing to distinguish it from what we hear on every side of us, every day. And Mr. Smith’s acumen is to be commended for perceiving that in this scheme there is no place for a doctrine of expiatory atonement; and for seeking another doctrine more conformable to his general theological point of view. If God’s mercy is “free” and man’s will is “free” in the senses of “freedom” ascribed to them respectively by this type of thought, a doctrine of expiatory atonement is an impertinence. And this is one of the most telling evidences of the falsity of the system. For the doctrine of an expiatory atonement is undoubtedly taught in the Scriptures, and no scheme of salvation can be the true one which, we will not say can find no place for it, but does not make it central.