Dogmatic Theology

by W. G. T. Shedd

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1: Theological Introduction

1. True Method in Theological Science

2. Plan, Divisions, and Subdivisions

3. Nature and Definition of Theological Science

Part 2: Bibliology

1. Revelation and Inspiration

2. Authenticity of Scripture

3. Credibility of Scripture

4. Canonicity of Scripture

Part 3: Theology (Doctrine of God)

1. Nature and Definition of God

2. Innate Idea and Knowledge of God

3. Arguments for the Divine Existence

4. Trinity in Unity

5. Divine Attributes

6. The Divine Decrees

7. Creation

8. Providence

9. Miracles

Part 4: Anthropology

1. Man's Creation

2. Man's Primitive State

3. Human Will

4. Man's Probation and Apostasy

5. Original Sin

Part 5: Christology

1. Christ's Theanthropic Person

2. Christ's Divinity

3. Christ's Humanity

4. Christ's Unipersonality

5. Christ's Impeccability

Part 6: Soteriology

1. Christ's Mediatorial Offices

2. Vicarious Atonement

3. Regeneration

4. Conversion

5. Justification

6. Sanctification

7. Means of Grace

Part 7: Eschatology

1. Intermediate or Disembodied State

2. Christ's Second Advent

3. Resurrection

4. Final Judgment

5. Heaven

6. Hell

Preface

by William G. T. Shedd

The immediate preparation of this treatise began in 1870, when the author was called to give instruction for a year in the department of systematic theology in Union Theological Seminary. The work was resumed in 1874, when he was elected to this professorship, and was prosecuted down to 1888. But some general preparation had been made for it by previous studies and publications. The writer had composed a history of Christian doctrine in the years 1854–62 (which was published in 1863) and also a volume of theological essays containing discussions on original sin and vicarious atonement and a volume of sermons to the natural man predominantly theological in their contents. The doctrinal system here presented will be found to be closely connected with these preceding investigations; and this will explain the somewhat frequent references to them as parts of one whole. Dogmatic history is the natural introduction to dogmatic theology.

The general type of doctrine is the Augustino-Calvinistic. Upon a few points, the elder Calvinism has been followed in preference to the later. This, probably, is the principal difference between this treatise and contemporary ones of the Calvinistic class.

Upon the subject of Adam's sin and its imputation, the author has been constrained to differ from some theologians for whom he has the highest respect and with whom he has in general a hearty agreement. In adopting the traducian theory of the origin of the soul, in the interest of the immediate imputation of the first sin, he believes that he has the support of some of the more careful students of Scripture and of the deepest thinkers in the history of the church. This theory, however, even when adopted has not attained much explication. Some further development of it has been attempted; with what success, the reader must judge. The doctrine of the Trinity has been constructed upon the Nicene basis, but with more reference to the necessary conditions of personality and self-consciousness and the objections to the personality of the infinite introduced by modern pantheism. In respect to the ontological argument for divine existence, the author is in sympathy with the a priori spirit of the old theology. The statement of the doctrine of the decrees and of regeneration is founded upon the postulate that all holiness has its source in the infinite will and all sin in the self-determination of the finite.

It will be objected by some to this dogmatic system that it has been too much influenced by the patristic, medieval, and Reformation periods and too little by the so-called progress of modern theology. The charge of Scholasticism, and perhaps of speculativeness, will be made. The author has no disposition to repel the charge. While acknowledging the excellences of the present period in respect to the practical application and spread of religion, he cannot regard it as preeminent above all others in scientific theology. It is his conviction that there were some minds in the former ages of Christianity who were called by providence to do a work that will never be outgrown and left behind by the Christian church; some men who thought more deeply and came nearer to the center of truth upon some subjects than any modern minds. Non omnia possumus omnes. No one age or church is in advance of all other ages or churches in all things. It would be difficult to mention an intellect in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries whose reflection upon the metaphysical being and nature of God has been more profound than that of Anselm, whose thinking upon the Trinity has been more subtle and discriminating than that of Athanasius, whose contemplation of the great mystery of sin has been more comprehensive and searching than that of Augustine, whose apprehension of the doctrine of atonement has been more accurate than that formulated in the creeds of the Reformation.

In drawing from these earlier sources, the writer believes that systematic theology will be made both more truthful and more vital. Confinement to modern opinions tends to thinness and weakness. The latest intelligence is of more value in a newspaper than in a scientific treatise. If an author in any department gets into the eddies of his age and whirls round and round in them, he knows little of the sweep of the vast stream of the ages which holds on its way forever and forevermore. If this treatise has any merits, they are due very much to daily and nightly communion with that noble army of theologians which is composed of the Élite of the fathers, of the Schoolmen, of the reformers, and of the seventeenth-century divines of England and the Continent. And let it not be supposed that this influence of the theologians is at the expense of that of the Scriptures. This is one of the vulgar errors. Scientific and contemplative theology is the child of revelation. It is the very word of God itself as this has been studied, collated, combined, and systematized by powerful, devout, and prayerful intellects.

In closing up the labors of forty years in theological research and meditation, the writer is naturally the subject of serious thoughts and feelings. The vastness and mystery of the science oppress him more than ever. But the evangelical irradiations of the sun of righteousness out of the thick darkness and clouds that envelop the infinite and adorable God are beams of intense brightness which pour the light of life and of hope into the utter gloom in which man must live here upon earth, if he rejects divine revelation. That this treatise may contribute to strengthen the believer's confidence in this revelation and to incline the unbeliever to exercise faith in it is the prayer of the author.

Union Theological Seminary

New York, May 1, 1888

Preface to Volume 3

The two volumes of Dogmatic Theology published in 1888 aimed to state and defend the Augustinian and elder Calvinistic theology. The great difference between this system and the several schools of modern Calvinism and also Arminian theology consists in the doctrine of the self-determined and responsible fall of mankind as a species in Adam. This makes original sin to be really and literally guilty and condemning in every individual who is propagated out of the species, instead of only nominally and fictionally so. It also makes the origin of sin and the consequent ruin of the race of mankind to occur at the beginning of human history. The destiny of man was decided wholly in Adam and not at all in the subsequent generations of individuals propagated from him. Individual life and individual transgression, which in modern theological systems are largely employed to explain the problem of original sin, become of no consequence. They are only the necessary effect of the real cause—the voluntary determination of the race in the primitive apostasy, of which St. Paul gives a full account in Rom. 5. Schleiermacher presents an example of this tendency to explain generic sin by individual transgression. In his Glaubenslehre §71 he argues elaborately to convert the original sin propagated from Adam into individual transgressions committed by the posterity. The former, he contends, is guilt only as it is subsequently adopted by each man in separate and conscious acts. "It is impossible," he says, "that innate and inherited corruption should be guilty and condemning, if it be torn from its connection with the personal transgressions of the individual."

The purpose of this supplementary volume is to elaborate more carefully some of the difficult points in specific unity, partly by original explanations by the author and partly by extracts from that class of theologians who have advocated it. The volume contains an amount of carefully selected citations from works in the ancient, medieval, and Reformation periods and also from the English and Continental divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that are not easily accessible and are an equivalent for a large library of treatises beyond the power of most clergyman and students to possess or have access to. The original matter connected with this endeavors to clear up the obscure features of an actual existence in Adam and a responsible agency in him.

The divisions of the supplement are the same as those of the Dogmatic Theology, and the heads under them indicate the pages in the dogmatics which find an explanation or a citation in the supplement. The author believes that the value of the two volumes of Dogmatic Theology will be substantially increased by the supplementary volume.

New York, September 1894

Part 1

Theological Introduction

1 True Method in Theological Science

A few topics require discussion preparatory to the investigation of the several divisions in theological science. Some writers bring them under the head of prolegomena, and others under the general title of introduction. The principal of these introductory topics are (1) the true method in theological science; (2) the plan, divisions, and subdivisions of theological science; and (3) the nature and definition of theological science.

The true method of investigation in any science is natural. It coincides with the structure of the object. The method in anatomy is a good example. It follows the veins, if veins are the subject matter; the muscles, if muscles are; the nerves, if nerves are. It does not cross and recross, but pursues a straight-onward course. The natural method, consequently, is marked by ease and freedom. There is no effort to force a way through. "He winds into his subject like a serpent," said Goldsmith of Burke's oratorical method.

The natural method necessitates a thorough knowledge of the nature and structure of the object. It is therefore generally the result of much study and perhaps of many attempts. The first investigator is not so likely to strike upon the intrinsic constitution of a thing as the last one because he has not the light of previous inquiries. Methods of investigation are continually undergoing correction and modification and are thus brought closer to the organization of the object. Sometimes scientific genius hits by intuition immediately upon the method of nature. But such genius is rare. Ordinary talent must make many trials and correct many errors of predecessors. The botanical method of Linnaeus, excellent as it is, has been modified by Le Jussieu and De Candolle. Goethe adopted the theory that all the parts of a plant are varieties of the leaf—a theory that had been suggested by Linnaeus himself, but rejected by that great naturalist. Oken, in physiology, advanced the view that all the parts of the skeleton are varieties of the vertebra. It is evident that the correctness of the methods of these investigators depends upon whether the view taken of the intrinsic nature and constitution of the plant or the skeleton is a correct one.

The true method of investigation is logical. Nature is always logical, because in nature one thing follows another according to a preconceived idea and an established law. The inquirer, therefore, who perceives the natural structure and organization of an object will exhibit it in a logical order. Everything in the analysis will be sequacious, and the whole will be a true evolution.

Theological science, like others, presents some variety in its methods of investigation, though less than most sciences. In the ancient, medieval, and Reformation periods the method commonly adopted was the theological. The Trinity was the basis. Beginning with divine existence and trinal nature, the investigator then discussed the acts and works of God in creation, providence, and redemption. This is the method of John of Damascus, a seventh-century Greek theologian, in his Ekthesis pisteōs; of Lombard, Aquinas, and Bellarmine in their elaborate systems; of Melanchthon, Calvin, and Turretin and of Lutheran and Calvinistic divines generally. The system sometimes followed the order of an accepted creed: that of Calvin, the Apostles' Creed; that of Ursinus, the Heidelberg Catechism. Calvin's Institutes are a fine example of the theological method. No system exceeds it in comprehensiveness, precision, lucidity, and literary elegance (for an analysis, see the general syllabus in the Presbyterian Board's edition, 41–44). (supplement 1.1.1.)

During the nineteenth century another method has been adopted by some theologians, namely, the christological. God incarnate is made the basis of theological science, and the work of redemption controls the investigation. This is virtually Schleiermacher's method. He derives the material of theological science from the Christian consciousness; and this is shaped by the feeling of dependence (a) as related to God generally, (b) as related to the fact of sin, and (c) as related to grace and redemption. Under the last two heads, most of Schleiermacher's system is to be found. Rothe's method is essentially christological. Those of Hase and Thomasius are formally so. Among English writers Chalmers employs the christological method. American theologian H. B. Smith adopts it. Edwards's History of Redemption may be regarded as a system of theology of this class (see the preface to it by his son).

While this method is interesting because it makes sin and salvation the principal theme and brings Christ the Redeemer into the foreground, yet it is neither a natural nor a logical method. God incarnate is only a single person of the Godhead; redemption is only one of the works of God; and sin is an anomaly in the universe, not an original and necessary fact. The christological method, therefore, is fractional. It does not cover the whole ground. It is preferable to construct theological science upon the Trinity—to begin with the trinal nature and existence of the Godhead and then come down to his acts in incarnation and redemption. It is not logical or natural to build a science upon one of its divisions. Christology is a division in theology.

The true method of investigation in theological science being structural, the divisions in it will be suggested by the principal objects themselves. In theology the investigator has to do with God, man, and the God-man. These are the beings who are concerned and to whom the various topics refer. Theological themes relate sometimes to the divine being, sometimes to the human being, and sometimes to the divine-human. They bring to view sometimes the works and ways of the Creator, sometimes the works and ways of the creature, and sometimes the works and ways of the Redeemer.

In this threefold series man stands for the creature generally, including angels and the material world. Man is the head of the material creation and a representative of the world of finite spirits. Angels and the material universe are neither God nor the God-man and belong under the category of finite and created, which man may very well stand for.

Besides the divisions and subdivisions which spring out of God, man, and the God-man, there are some that relate to the Scriptures and come under the general head of bibliology. Whether these should be discussed in connection with dogmatic theology is somewhat disputed. The Bible, as the source of man's knowledge of God, man, and the God-man, does not, strictly speaking, constitute one of the objects of theological investigation, and some, consequently, would separate bibliology entirely from theology. Since bibliology is concerned with demonstrating that the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures are the inspired word of God, leaving their contents to be explained by exegetical and dogmatic theology, it is contended that it should not constitute a division in theological science.

While there is some truth in this, it must be remembered that it is impossible to demonstrate the inspiration of the Bible without proving that its teachings are in harmony with the true idea of God and present rational and credible views of his works and ways. Bibliology, consequently, cannot be wholly severed from theology and investigated separately and in isolation from it, like mathematics or physics. It is organically connected with the several divisions of theological science and in some of its parts, certainly, is best discussed in connection with them.

We shall, therefore, regard bibliology as an introductory division in a complete theological system. At the same time it is obvious that as such an introductory division, the topics belonging to it cannot be discussed in much detail. The examination of the several books of the Old and New Testaments, for example, for the purpose of demonstrating their canonicity or their authenticity, can be made only in the briefest manner. The bibliological topics that require most discussion by the dogmatic theologian are revelation and inspiration.

SUPPLEMENT

1.1.1 (see p. 44). Twesten (Dogmatics 1.214) represents Melanchthon's method in the common places (loci communes) as christological: "Passing over the doctrines of God, creation, providence, and even the person of Christ which Melanchthon subsequently supplied, he begins with the sinful and corrupt state of man, then proceeds to the divine provision for the suppression and removal of this corruption, to the doctrines of the law and the gospel, of grace and its conditions and effects, and concludes with the ultimate result, the final decision of human destiny." There is a prevailing christological tendency in the Lutheran dogmatics generally, compared with the Calvinistic. The Heidelberg Catechism shows this influence in treating man's misery and man's redemption before discussing the Trinity.

2 Plan, Divisions, and Subdivisions

Description of Topics

Dividing, then, the topics that fall under the general title theological science in accordance with the four principal themes that have been mentioned, we have the following divisions: bibliology, theology (doctrine of God), anthropology, Christology, soteriology, and eschatology.

Bibliology (bibliou logos) includes those subjects that relate to the Bible: (1) revelation and inspiration, (2) the authenticity of the Scriptures, (3) their credibility, and (4) their canonicity.

Theology (theou logos) as a division in theological science is employed in a restricted signification. It denotes that branch of the general science of theology which discusses the divine being. It includes (1) the nature and definition of God, (2) the innate idea of God, (3) the arguments for his existence, (4) his trinitarian existence, (5) his attributes, (6) his decrees, and (7) his works of creation and providence and his miraculous works.

It is to be noticed that the doctrine of the Trinity is an integrant part of theology, in the restricted signification of the term, because according to revelation trinality as necessarily marks the deity as unity. Here is one of the points of difference between Christianity and deism, or theism, as this term was used by Cudworth and Warburton. Deism discusses the divine nature as mere unity, by itself and alone, because it denies trinality in the divine constitution; but Christianity, following the revealed idea of God, discusses the divine unity only as triunity or Trinity. Trinitarianism, according to Scripture, is not a subject separate from theology proper, but enters into it as a necessary constituent. The revealed idea of God as much implies his Trinity as his eternity. The Socinian and the Muslim doctrine of God is deistical, in distinction from Christian. Each alike denies interior distinctions in the divine essence and is antitrinitarian.

This intrinsic and necessary connection of trinality with unity in God is indicated in the patristic use of the term theologian as the synonym of trinitarian. In the patristic age, the Apostle John was denominated ho theologos because of the fullness with which he was inspired to teach the doctrine of the Trinity. Gregory of Nazianzus also obtained the same designation by reason of the ability of his trinitarian treatises. In modern phrase it would have been St. John the Trinitarian and Gregory the Trinitarian.

Anthropology (anthrōpou logos) treats man in his original and in his fallen condition. It comprises the following subjects: (1) man's creation, (2) his primitive state, (3) his probation and apostasy, (4) original sin: its nature, transmission, and effects, and (5) actual transgression. This division is concerned mainly with the subject of moral evil. Man as a holy being has but a brief history, because his apostasy occurred at the beginning of his career. Hence, anthropology discusses sin principally.

Christology (christou logos) treats the person of the Redeemer. The subjects under this head are (1) Christ's theanthropic person, (2) his divinity, (3) his humanity, (4) his unipersonality, and (5) his impeccability.

Soteriology (sōtērias logos) discusses the work of the Redeemer. It naturally follows Christology. Having investigated the complex person and characteristics of the Redeemer, we are prepared to examine redemption itself. Since soteriology covers the whole field of divine agency in the salvation of the human soul, it is abundant and varied in its contents. The work of Christ in atoning for sin and the application of this work to the individual by the Holy Spirit both belong to soteriology. The entire process of redemption is included, from the foundation laid in the sacrifice of the Son of God to the superstructure reared upon it by the operation of the Holy Spirit. And as the Holy Spirit in effectually applying the work of Christ makes use of instrumentalities and employs his own immediate energy, the means of grace come under the head of soteriology.

Soteriology, then, comprises the following subdivisions: (1) the mediatorial offices of Christ, as prophet, priest, and king. Since the second of these offices holds a prominent place in the economy of redemption, it naturally furnishes much material. The doctrine of atonement is central in soteriology. Hence we have (2) vicarious atonement: its nature and extent. As this atoning work is made effectual in the case of the individual by the Holy Spirit, soteriology passes to (3) regeneration and its consequences: (4) conversion, (5) justification, and (6) sanctification. But as sanctification is a gradual process carried on by the Holy Spirit in the use of means, we have to consider (7) the means of grace, namely, the word and the sacraments. And since these are employed only in connection with the Christian church, this also comes into consideration with them. Some methods make a separate division of this last subject under the title of ecclesiology.

Eschatology (eschatōn logos) discusses the final issue and result of redemption in the winding up of human history. It treats the last events in the great process and embraces the following subjects: (1) the intermediate state, (2) second advent of Christ, (3) resurrection, (4) final judgment, (5) heaven, and (6) hell.

Biblical, Systematic, and Polemical Theology

The proper mode of discussing any single theological topic is exegetical and rational. The first step to be taken is to deduce the doctrine itself from Scripture by careful exegesis; and the second step is to justify and defend this exegetical result upon grounds of reason.

Christian theology differs from every other branch of knowledge by being the outcome of divine revelation. Consequently, the interpretation of Scripture is the very first work of the theologian. When man constructs a system of philosophy, he must look into his own mind for the data; but when he constructs the Christian system he must look in the Bible for them. Hence the first procedure of the theologian is exegetical. The contents and meaning of inspiration are to be discovered. Christian dogmatics is what he finds, not what he originates.

The term dogma has two significations: (1) a doctrinal proposition derived exegetically from the Scriptures and (2) a decree or decision of the church. The authority of the dogma, in the first case, is divine; in the latter, it is human. Dogmatic theology, properly constructed, presents dogmas in the first sense, namely, as propositions formulated from inspired data. It is, therefore, biblical, not ecclesiastical in its substance. There is no difference between it and the so-called biblical theology in this respect. If a dogmatic system imports matter from uninspired sources—say a school of philosophy or a theory in physics—and makes it of equal authority with what it gets from the Scriptures, it is a spurious system. No tenets can be incorporated into systematic theology, any more than into exegetical, that are contrary to revelation. The only difference between biblical theology and dogmatic theology is in the form. The first examines the Bible part by part, writer by writer. The last examines it as a whole. Should biblical theology examine the Bible as a whole, it would become systematic theology. It would bring all the varieties under one scheme. The so-called higher unity to which the exegete endeavors to reduce the several types of biblical theology is really a dogmatic system embracing the entire Scriptures.

Dogmatic theology may be thoroughly biblical or unbiblical, evangelical or rationalistic; and so may biblical theology. The systematic theology of Calvin's Institutes is exclusively biblical in its constituent elements and substance. Calvin borrows hardly anything from human philosophy, science, or literature. His appeal is made continually to the Scriptures alone. No theologian was ever less influenced by a school of philosophy or by human science and literature, than the Genevan reformer. Dogmatic theology, as he constructed it, is as scriptural a theology as can be found in the ancient or modern church. "The first dogmatic works of the Reformers, Melanchthon's Loci communes, Zwingli's Fidei ratio, Calvin's Institutes, are in the proper sense biblical theology. They issued from the fresh, vital understanding of the Scriptures themselves" (Schenkel, "On Biblical Theology" in Studies and Reviews 1852). On the other hand the Institutes of Wegscheider is rationalistic and unbiblical. This system, while appealing to the Scriptures, more or less, yet relies mainly upon the data of reason and the principles of ethics and natural religion.

And the same remark is true of so-called biblical theology. This method, like the systematic, may construct a biblical or an unbiblical book, an evangelical or a rationalistic treatise, a theistic or a pantheistic scheme. As matter of fact, all varieties of orthodoxy and of heterodoxy are to be found in this department. In Germany, in particular, where this method has been in vogue for the last half century, both the theist and the pantheist, the evangelical and the rationalist, have been fertile in the use of it. Under the pretense of producing an eminently scriptural theology, a class of theologians and critics like Baur and Strauss have subjected the Scriptures to a more capricious and torturing exegesis than they ever received before. They contend that the idea of Christ and of Christianity, as it is enunciated in dogmatic theology and the creeds, is erroneous; that the gospels must be reexamined under higher critical principles and the true conception of Christ and his religion be derived from the very text itself, that is, what of the text is left after they have decided what is spurious and what is genuine. Baur was active and prolific in the department of biblical theology, as distinct from systematic. He composed a theology of the New Testament, but it is biblical in neither substance nor spirit. Strauss's Life of Jesus professes to present the theology of the gospels—the true biography, opinions, and religion of Jesus Christ—according to a scientific exegesis. But it is an intensely antibiblical treatise. The disciples of Baur, the so-called Tübingen school, have produced a body of biblical theology that is marked by great caprice in textual criticism and ingenuity in interpretation, but is utterly antagonistic to what the Christian mind of all ages has found in the Bible. The school of Kuenen and Wellhausen has employed this method in the same general manner in interpreting the Old Testament.

But another class of German theologians and critics, like Neander, Tholuck, Ebrard, Weiss, and others, handle the biblical method very differently. The results to which they come in their lives of Christ and their studies of John, Paul, Peter, and James are drawn from an unmutilated text and agree substantially with the historical faith of the church and with systematic theology as contained in the creeds. As, therefore, we have to ask respecting systematic theology, whose system it is? so, also, in regard to biblical theology, we must ask whose biblical theology it is?

Systematic theology should balance and correct biblical theology, rather than vice versa, for the following reasons. First, because biblical theology is a deduction from only a part of Scripture. Its method is fractional. It examines portions of the Bible. It presents the theology of the Old Testament, apart from the New (e.g., Oehler's Biblical Theology of the Old Testament); of the New Testament apart from the Old (e.g., Schmid's Biblical Theology of the New Testament); of the gospels apart from epistles; of the synoptists apart from John's Gospel; the Petrine theology in distinction from that of the Pauline; the Pauline in distinction from that of James; etc. Now this method, while excellent as a careful analysis of materials, is not so favorable to a comprehensive and scientific view as the other. Science is a survey of the whole, not of a part. True theological science is to be found in the long series of dogmatic systems extending from Augustine's City of God to the present day. To confine the theologian to the fragmentary and incomplete view given in biblical theology would be the destruction of theology as a science. A second reason why biblical theology requires the balance and symmetry of systematic theology is the fact that it is more easy to introduce subjective individual opinions into a part of the Bible than into the whole of it. It is easier (we do not say easy) for Baur to prove that Christianity was originally Ebionitism, if he takes into view only the gospels and excludes the epistles than it is if he takes the entire New Testament into the account. It is easier to warp the four gospels up to a preconceived idea of Christ and Christianity than it is to warp the whole Bible. This is the danger to which all interpretation of Scripture is exposed, which does not use the light thrown by the interconnection and harmony of all the books of the Old and New Testaments; and perhaps this is the reason why the pantheistic and rationalistic critic is more inclined to compose a biblical, than a systematic theology. The attempt to understand revelation piecemeal is liable to fail. In every organic product—and the Bible is organized throughout—the whole explains the parts, because the parts exist for the whole and have no meaning or use separate from it. The interpretation of Scripture should be "according to the proportion of faith" (kata tēn analogian tēs pisteōs; Rom. 12:6).

When the work of deriving doctrines from Scripture has been done, the theologian must defend them against attacks, answering objections, and maintaining the reasonableness of revealed truth. The elder Protestant divines devoted great attention to this part of theological science, under the title Theologia polemica. Here is where religion and philosophy, faith and science meet. Human reason cannot reveal anything, but it can defend what has been revealed.

It is important to notice at this point that in respect to the doctrines of Christianity the office of reason is discharged, if it be shown that they are self-consistent. A rational defense of the doctrine of the Trinity, for example, consists in demonstrating that there is no contradiction between the several propositions in which it is stated. To require of the theologian a complete explanation of this truth in proof of its rationality is more than is demanded of the chemist or the astronomer in physical science.

When the individual doctrines have been deduced, constructed, and defended by the exegetico-rational method, they are then to be systematized. Systematic theology aims to exhibit the logical order and connection of the truths of revelation. Schleiermacher mentions as a rule that is to guide in the construction of a system of Christian doctrine, the exclusion of all heretical matter and the retention of only what is ecclesiastical (Glaubenslehre §21). Only the historical and catholic faith belongs to the Christian system, because it is more probable that the one catholic church has correctly understood and interpreted the Scriptures than that the multitude of heretical schools and parties have. The substantial unity of the church upon the cardinal doctrines of Trinity, apostasy, incarnation, and redemption can be expressed in one self-consistent system. But the diversity and contrariety of the numerous heretical sects cannot be.

3 Nature and Definition of Theological Science

Theological introduction not only divides and arranges the parts of theological science, but also defines its general nature and assigns it a place in the sum total or encyclopedia of knowledge. The important point of definition belongs here, and also the connection of theology with other sciences. This brings us to consider the nature and definition of theological science.

Definition of Theology

Theology is a science concerned with both the infinite and the finite, with both God and the universe. The material, therefore, which it includes is vaster than that of any other science. It is also the most necessary of all the sciences. "Divinity," says Coleridge (Table Talk for 14 March 1833), "is essentially the first of the professions, because it is necessary for all men at all times; law and physics are only necessary for some men at some times."

Theology must not be identified with ethics. This is greatly to narrow it. Ethics, strictly, is the science of morals or duties and is very limited compared with theology. It includes duties toward God and duties toward man. Ethics is concerned only with the moral law in both tables. It does not properly include the gospel or redemption. Ethics is wholly legal. It is true that ethics is affected by Christian theology, so that Christian ethics differs greatly from pagan ethics. It is more comprehensive because pagan ethics is confined to duties between man and man, while Christian ethics embraces duties toward God. Christian ethics differs also from pagan in respect to the motive presented. In pagan ethics the motive is legal and founded in fear; in Christian ethics the motive is evangelical and founded in love. St. Paul indicates the motive in Christian ethics: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God" (Rom. 12:1); "having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit" (2 Cor. 7:1). The motive for the discharge of Christian duty is the love of God in Christ toward the forgiven sinner. There is no such motive as this in pagan ethics. (supplement 1.3.1.)

Yet theology contains immensely more than belongs even to Christian ethics, because it includes the doctrines of the Trinity, incarnation, apostasy, and redemption, together with those of eschatology. None of these divisions belong properly to ethics. Some of the systems of Christian ethics, like that of Rothe, for example, are unscientific because they confuse and confound departments of science, erase the lines between law and gospel, morality and religion, and under the title of ethics discuss all the mysteries of revelation.

Theology (theou logos) is the science of God. The Supreme Being is the object and theme of theological investigation. The term as we have before remarked has a wide and a restricted signification. In the wide and common meaning in which we now employ it, theology includes not only the trinitarian nature and existence of God, but also the relations of man and the universe to him. It is thus inclusive of religion; and some define theology to be the science of religion. This definition has had considerable currency. It is defective, however, because it mentions God, the proper object of the science, only by implication and inference. But a technical definition ought to specify directly, not indirectly, the principal subject matter.

Religio, according to Cicero, is derived from relego and signifies a careful reflection or meditation of the mind:

Moreover, those who diligently observed and repeated, as it were, everything having to do with the worship of the gods were called "religious," from the verb relegere. Analogously, we speak of "elegant persons" (elegantes) from the verb eligere; of "diligent persons" (deligantes) from the verb deligere; and of "intelligent persons" (intelligentes) from the verb intellegere." (Concerning the Nature of the Gods 2.28)

According to this etymology, religion means reverence and worship. These result from reflection upon God and divine things. But Lactantius disputes this etymology and derives religio from religo: "By this chain we are bound and tied (religati) to God. From this we derive the very word religion, and not from the verb relego as Cicero interpreted it" (Institutes 4.28). According to this etymology, religion denotes duty or the obligation of the creature toward the Creator. Man is bound or tied back to God. In this sense, Shakespeare speaks of "religion to the gods" (Timon 4.1). Lactantius asserts, further, that mere meditation would not distinguish religion from superstition, the true God from false gods. Hence the notion of obligation afforded by religo is necessary. Augustine takes the same view with Lactantius (City of God 10.3).

But whichever etymology be adopted, only the relations of man to God, not God himself, are indicated by the word religion. To derive the definition of theology from this term is to define a science from one of its parts or phases rather than from its subject matter or principal object of investigation. Religion, strictly, would discuss only the relations of man to the deity; but theology treats first of the deity himself and then inferentially of the relations of the creature to him.

Augustine (City of God 8.1) defines theology to be "rational discussion respecting the deity (de divinitate rationem sive sermonem)." Turretin (1.5.1) defines the object of any science to be "that which is principally treated and to which all the conclusions refer" and affirms that the object of theology is God and divine things. He argues that this is so from the names of the science (theologia and theosebeia) and from the fact that the Scriptures, which are the fountainhead of the science, treat principally God. Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 3 also favors this definition of theology in its statement that the "Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man." Here, the nature and attributes of God are regarded as the primary matter, and man's relations and duty to him the secondary. Aquinas also adopts this definition: "In sacred doctrine everything is treated with respect to God: either because the topics under consideration are God himself, or because they are related to God as their beginning and end. It follows from this that God truly is the subject of this science" (Summa 1.1.7).

Whether Theology Is a Science

It has been objected by John of Damascus (Concerning the Orthodox Faith 3.24) that theology is not properly speaking the science of God because it is impossible to say what God is. Aquinas (Summa 1.1.7) replies to this objection that "if the qualities and relations of an object are the subject matter of any science, it is proper to call it the science of this object." And it is certain that there could be no science of anything if it is asserted that there must first be a perfect comprehension. There is no science of matter any more than of God, if by science be meant a knowledge that excludes all mystery. The ultimate elements in chemistry are as much beyond complete apprehension as the divine attributes.

Science is profound and self-consistent knowledge. Depth and logical coherence are the two characteristics of scientific in distinction from popular apprehension. If statements result from a superficial view, they are not scientific; and if they clash with one another, they are not science. The distinction between popular and scientific knowledge is founded upon this. The common mind oftentimes adopts errors and contradictions which the educated mind detects and rejects. Sometimes science itself is superficial and unworthy of the name. Astronomy previous to Copernicus was founded upon a superficial view of the heavens; merely upon what every man's eyes saw when he looked abroad upon the surface of the earth or above upon the surface of the sky. Space had no depth. It was only a plane surface. The result was a self-contradictory astronomy. New motions in the heavens were continually appearing that conflicted with the old, and when they were described upon the map of the heavens, it was, in Milton's phrase, "with cycle and epicycle scribbled o'er." Astronomical science was science falsely so called. But the mathematical studies—combined with the more careful observations of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton—penetrated the abysses of space, introduced depth into astronomy, threw out these contradictions, and now the scientific astronomy is truly such.

Sometimes theories in physics pass for science for a generation or two but are subsequently found to be superficial and self-contradictory. Examples of these are the theory of vortices invented by Descartes; the theory of spontaneous generation advocated by Lamarck; and the theory of pseudoevolution which just now has taken the place of the rejected doctrine of spontaneous generation and is popular with the materialistic school of physicists. These theories are denominated scientific by their authors; but true scientific progress finally demonstrates their falsity.

The skeptical estimate of theology is unscientific because it is founded upon a superficial knowledge of the sources and objects of the science. A few examples will show this. One of the most acute of modern skeptics was David Hume. His argument against miracles is the most ingenious of any that has been constructed and is the arsenal from which modern infidelity obtains its keenest weapons. It was Hume's subtlety that awoke Kant's dogmatic slumbers, according to Kant's own statement. But Hume had no knowledge of Christianity that deserves the epithet scientific. He was not versed in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. According to Johnson (Boswell's Life), "Hume owned to a clergyman in the bishopric of Durham that he had never read the New Testament with attention." No one would respect a critical estimate of Brahminism by one who had never carefully examined the Vedas and the body of Hindu literature growing out of them. Nor was Hume skilled in doctrinal theology. He was unacquainted with the careful analysis and close reasoning of Nicene trinitarianism, Chalcedon Christology, the Schoolmen, and the Protestant divines. The whole immense body of patristic, medieval, and modern divinity was comparatively a terra incognita to him. His knowledge of the Christian religion did not go beyond what was floating in the atmosphere. He lived in a Christian country, among a theological people, and knew something of Christianity by absorption. But he never studied the documents and mastered the doctrines of the Christian religion as Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin studied and mastered them; as Cudworth studied pagan theology, and Schleiermacher studied Plato; as Schlegel and Coleridge studied Shakespeare. The language of Bentley, the first classical scholar of his century, to Collins, is applicable to Hume in substance. Collins had remarked that the Bible "is the most miscellaneous book in the world and treats the greatest variety of things: creation, deluge, chronology and laws, ecclesiastical institutions, nature, miracles, building, husbandry, sailing, physics, pharmacy, mathematics, metaphysics, and morals" and draws the inference from this fact that "free thinking" is necessary; "for to understand the matter of this book, and to be master of the whole, a man must be able to think justly in every science and art." "Very true!" says Bentley, in reply:

And yet all he has here said of his sciences is requisite, were the English Bible supposed to be the very original. Add, therefore, to all the requisites here enumerated a sufficient skill in the Hebrew and Greek languages. Now pass your verdict on the man from his own evidence and confession. "To understand the Bible," says he, "requires all sciences"; and two languages besides, say I. But it is plain from his book that he has condemned the whole Bible for a forgery and imposition. Did he do this without understanding the matter of it? This is too scandalous for him to own. We must take it then that he professes himself accomplished in all sciences and arts, according to his own rule. But where has he, or any of his sect, shown any tolerable skill in science? What dark passages of Scripture have they cleared? Or of any book whatever? Nay, to remit him to his "sciences" and "arts," what have they done in the languages, the shell and surface of Scripture? A great master of the whole Bible, indeed, that can scarce step three lines in the easiest classic authors cited by himself without a notorious blunder."

Hume was not more learned than Collins in Christian theology, and these remarks of Bentley hold true of him in all essential points.

Another illustration of the superficial knowledge of the skeptic in the province of Christian theology is seen in Gibbon. Few writers have been more conscientious in their scholarship than the historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He had read with great thoroughness all the Greek and Latin pagan writers who treat the period with which he was concerned. His quotations from the Byzantine historians are never secondhand. But when he derives historical material from the Christian fathers, he is not so conscientious. He obtains much of his information in this instance from Tillemont—a very trustworthy authority, it is true, but still a secondary source. Gibbon's study of the Greek of Athanasius and the Latin of Augustine was not so thorough as his reading of Zosimus and Marcellinus. And the reason lay in his contempt for the former as ecclesiastical writers. A church father—though subtle like Athanasius or profound like Augustine, though among the finest intellects of the race and so reckoned in literary history—was, in his view, a superstitious man, and therefore his writings did not deserve continuous and complete perusal, but might be examined cursorily and through the eyes of others.

These remarks apply with equal force to the skepticism of this generation; for there are no names in it superior to those of Hume and Gibbon, whether regard be had to learning or mental power. Such products as the survey of modern civilization by Buckle and of the intellectual development of Europe by Draper are specimens of superficial information and thinking concerning theological and metaphysical science. Almost exclusive attention is devoted to the material and physical aspects of civilization; the moral and religious elements in modern culture are overlooked, and the great problems of philosophy and theology are either unnoticed or else denied to be problems at all. The judgment passed upon either doctrinal or practical Christianity from this point of view is neither profound nor self-consistent.

As an example of the ignorance of a literary man in scientific theology, consider the following from Froude (Short Studies, 3d series, 115):

To represent man as an automaton sinning by the necessity of his nature, and yet as guilty of his sins; to represent God as having ordained all things, yet as angry with the actions of the puppets whom he has created as they are; is to insist on the acceptance of contradictory propositions from which reason recoils, and to make Christianity itself incredible by a travesty of Christian truth.

Froude believes this to be a true account of Protestant theology as formulated by Luther and Calvin. But it is pure misrepresentation—not intentional, but the misrepresentation of ignorance. A writer versed in the history of opinions would not have attributed such views to Calvin and the creeds of the Reformation. An erudite skeptic like Baur, for example, does not so describe systematic Augustinianism and Calvinism.

And when we pass to the infidelity of the masses, the truth of our assertion is still more evident. In no quarter is there so little scientific knowledge of the most powerful and beneficent religion on earth as in the popular infidelity represented not by the treatise, but by the magazine and newspaper. The unbeliever of this grade may be moderately versed, perhaps, in some sections of natural science and in the lighter parts of literature, but he is unacquainted with the loftier products in secular letters and wholly ignorant of the systematic literature of the Christian church.

The skeptical estimate of Christian theology, consequently, is an unscientific one. A profound and accurate judgment must come from experts. As the scientific comprehension of law is expected from jurists and not from laymen, so that of theology must be sought among philosophers and divines and not among physicists and littérateurs whose studies are devoted to very different branches of knowledge from ethics and theology and who make guerrilla incursions into this field merely for the purpose of attack. Every branch of knowledge has its recondite and abstract side, and hence, as in the case of law and medicine, the popular and superficial judgment must be corrected by the professional and scientific. "No one," says Winckelmann (History of Art 1.1), "can form a correct judgment of Greek art, or of Greek literature, without having read repeatedly everything in the latter, and without having seen and examined if possible all the remains of the former." Such thoroughness is eminently requisite in order to a just estimate of theological science because it extends over all spheres of being and includes the deepest problems and mysteries of existence.

Theology, then, as the science of God aims to obtain a knowledge of him free from contradictions and is as profound as is possible, considering the nature of the subject and the limitations of the human mind. If therefore it makes a statement of an abstruse doctrine like the Trinity, it continues true to science. It does not affirm and deny one and the same thing. It asserts that God is one in respect to essence and is three in respect to personal distinctions. These two propositions do not clash, because the idea of essence is different from that of person. Could it be proved that essence and person are identical conceptions, trinitarianism would be shown to be self-contradictory and therefore unscientific. Again, the theological statements respecting the decree of God and the liberty of man are scientific, so far as self-consistence constitutes science. The theologian does not affirm that one and the same future event is necessitated for God and free for man, or free for God and necessitated for man. But he affirms that one and the same future event may be certain for God and uncertain for man; and that for both God and man it may be a free event, like the decision of the human will, or for both God and man a necessitated event, like the fall of a stone to the ground. Such is the creed statement: "Although in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly, yet by the same providence he orders them to fall out according to the nature of second causes; either necessarily, or freely and contingently" (Westminster Confession 5.2). That is to say, when the second cause is a free cause, such as the human will, then the future act, which is free for both God and man, is uncertain for man and certain for God; and when the second cause is a necessary cause, such as the force of gravity, then the future event, which is necessitated for both God and man, is certain for God and uncertain for man. Whether I shall exert a particular volition tomorrow is uncertain to me but not to God. But if exerted, it is for both God and me alike a free act. Whether a particular stone shall fall tomorrow is uncertain to me, but not to God. But if it fall, it is for both God and me alike a necessitated event. There is no clashing or contradiction in these statements, and they contain the essential truth respecting divine sovereignty and human liberty.

When theology is denominated the science of God, it is not meant that God is completely comprehended. There may be science without omniscience. Otherwise, science would be impossible for any but the infinite intelligence. Yet the tendency of science is to explain exhaustively and completely. The longer a science is pursued, the more is known of the subject. The aim and endeavor is to reach a final and perfect comprehension. In theology, which embraces the infinite as well as the finite, the goal can never be reached, either in this world or the next; but more and more will be known, and the progress of the science will be onward forever and forevermore. "The nature of a thing," says Aristotle (Politics 1.2), "is judged by its tendency." The tendency and aim of science toward a complete view evinces that it is profound in its nature. The superficial view is not rested in. Consider, for illustration, the anthropomorphic and materializing conception of God. This is unscientific. The descriptions of the deity borrowed from some resemblance to visible things are taken literally by the anthropomorphist. But the theologian goes behind them to the real truth:

Thus, when the Scriptures speak of God, and ascribe hands, eyes, and feet, to him, it is not designed that we should believe that he has any of these members according to the literal signification; but the meaning is that he has a power to execute all those acts, to the effecting of which these parts in us are instrumental; that is, he can converse with men as well as if he had a tongue or a mouth; he can discern all that we do or say as perfectly as if he had eyes and ears; he can reach us as well as if he had hands and feet; he has as true and substantial a being as if he had a body; and he is as truly present everywhere as if that body were infinitely extended. (King, On Foreknowledge, 468)

Theology as an Absolute Science

In defining the nature of theology, we remark in the first place that it is absolute science, in contradistinction to relative knowledge. Theological doctrine is not true merely or only for the human intellect, but for all rational intelligence. The cognition, it is true, does not extend to the uttermost limits of the object, but so far as it does extend and so far as the formulated statement is categorical and positive it is conformed to the real nature and truth of the object. Man's conception of matter may be very different from that of the angel; but man's conception of divine holiness is the same in kind with that of the angel and of God himself, though different in degree. The word holy conveyed the same idea to St. Paul that it would to the seraphim; and it conveys the same idea to us that it did to him. It is erroneous to assert that what man calls righteousness in God might be unrighteousness for the angels; and that what the angels call wickedness in Satan might be moral excellence for man. The ideas of right and wrong are the same in kind in all rational intelligence. Two diverse and contradictory conceptions of sin and holiness are impossible. There may be diverse and contradictory judgments as to whether a particular action is sinful or holy, but not as to whether sin is wrong and holiness is right. All rational beings have common principles of intelligence respecting moral truth, and this species of truth, if known at all, must be known absolutely. Relative knowledge is sufficient in the sphere of time and matter, but not of morals and eternity. There is too much at stake in the latter sphere. Whether man's knowledge of matter is accurate or not is of little consequence, taking the whole of his endless existence into account; but if his knowledge of God and morals is erroneous, his immortality is ruined. The cognition, consequently, in such an important province as that of ethics and religion must be absolute, not relative. "A relative notion of a thing," says Reid (Essay 2.18), "is, strictly speaking, no notion of the thing at all, but only of some relation which it bears to something else." (supplement 1.3.2.)

There is no science so rightly entitled to be denominated absolute and metaphysically certain as theology. It is the assertion of materialistic schools in every age that the science of matter and physical nature alone is certain and that the science of mind and of God is not science in the strict sense. But the fact is exactly the contrary; and this because of the nature of the objects in each province. "That knowledge," says Milton (Reason of Church Government, 2), "that rests in the contemplation of natural causes and dimensions, must needs be a lower wisdom as the object is low." It is clear that no science can be any more a priori and necessary than its subject matter. If an edifice rests upon the solid ground, it must be stationary; if it rests upon the waves, it must fluctuate. An a priori science like geometry retracts no positions and is immutable because its data are mental axioms and the logical conclusions from them. An a posteriori science like geology is continually altering its positions, because it derives its data from the notices of the senses, and new notices show that old deductions were errors. Whether, therefore, the science of physical nature and matter is as necessary and immutable as the science of God and the human mind will depend upon whether physical nature and matter are as necessary and immutable in their substance and properties as God and the rational soul of man. Let us compare the two.

If there be anything fixed and uniform in the material world, it is the laws and forces that prevail there. These are sometimes denominated the necessary laws of matter. But when examined, the necessity of material laws is found to be only relative. They are necessary under the present arrangement and in the existing system. Had the constitution of the material universe been different, they would have been different. There is no contradiction in the supposition that there might be a different system of nature from the present one, that matter might have some different properties from what it now has, and that material laws might be other than they are. There is no escaping this unless we adopt the position that matter is eternal. In this case, the properties and laws of matter have absolute, not relative necessity. But if we adopt the position of the theist and concede that matter with its properties and laws was created ex nihilo by omnipotent power, then we can conceive, without self-contradiction, that the Creator could have constituted the material world upon a law of attraction operating inversely as the cube of the distance as easily as he has made it upon the existing law operating inversely as the square. If he could not, then he is conditioned. There is something in the nature of matter, such as was supposed in the ancient hylē, which compels him to establish and form the material universe in the manner he has. There is an insuperable limit set by nature and matter to divine power, so that God is powerless in any other direction than the one actually taken. He is merely a gnostic demiurge, not a biblical Creator.

The same is true of vegetable and animal types and forms. Granting that they are creations ex nihilo, there is nothing to forbid the supposition that they might have been made upon a plan very different from the one actually employed by the Creator. It is absurd to suppose that the omnipotent has exhausted his power in the existing universe or that the omniscient can have only one scheme within his ken. (supplement 1.3.3.)

These views of the sovereignty of God over the properties and laws of matter and of his free power to constitute the system of nature differently from what he has are adopted by the leading minds in physical science. Newton, at the close of his Optics, remarks that "the motions of the planets are marked by certain small irregularities which appear to come from the mutual action of the planets and comets, and which will probably become greater and greater, in the course of time, until at last the system will again require its author to put it in order." Leibnitz (Theodicy 2.345) thus speaks concerning the laws of motion:

The laws of motion which are operative in nature and are verified by experience and observation are not absolutely demonstrable like a geometrical proposition. They do not spring from a principle of necessity, but from a principle of perfection and order; they are an effect of the will (choix) and wisdom of God. Hence these laws are a wonderful proof of the existence of an intelligent and free being, in opposition to the system of absolute and unreasoning (brut) necessity taught by Strato and Spinoza.

Similarly, Whewell (Astronomy and General Physics 1.3) remarks that

the force of gravity, so far as we can judge, might have been different from what it now is. It depends upon the mass of the earth; and this mass is one of the elements of the solar system which is not determined by any cosmic necessity of which we are aware. We cannot see anything which would have prevented either the size or the density of the earth from being different, to a very great extent, from what they are. We can very easily conceive the solar system so adjusted that the year should be longer or shorter than it actually is. If the earth were removed toward the solar center by about one-eighth of its distance, the year would be shortened by about a month.

After saying that the vegetable world has been adjusted to the year as it now is, Whewell adds, that the length of either the solar or the vegetable year "might have been different from what it is, according to any grounds of necessity which we can perceive." Only, if one were altered the other would be adjusted accordingly.

Statements to the same effect are made by a writer in the July 1876 London Quarterly Review:

The law of the inverse square is but the mathematical expression of a property which has been imposed on matter from the creation. It is no inherent quality, so far as we know. It is quite conceivable that the central law might have been different from what it is. There is no reason why the mathematical law should be what it is, except the will of the being who imposed the law. Any other proportion would equally well be expressed mathematically, and its results calculated. As an instance of what would occur if any other proportion than the inverse square were substituted as the attractive force of gravity, suppose at distances 1, 2, 3, the attractive force had varied as 1, 2, 3, instead of the squares of these numbers. Under such a law any number of planets might revolve in the most regular and orderly manner. But under this law, the weight of bodies at the earth's surface would cease to exist; nothing would fall or weigh downward. The greater action of the distant sun and planets would exactly neutralize the attractive force of the earth. A ball thrown from the hand, however gently, would immediately become a satellite of the earth and would for the future accompany its course, revolving about it for the space of one year. All terrestrial things would obey the general law of the system, but would acknowledge no particular relation to the earth.

Again, to take an illustration from optics. If the undulatory theory of light be adopted, there does not appear to be any eternal and absolute necessity that exactly 458 billion vibrations per second of the supposed ether should produce the sensation of violet color for the human eye, and 727 billion should produce the sensation of crimson. The will that created the eye and established these numbers and proportions could have created a different eye and established different proportions.

If these positions of Newton, Leibnitz, and Whewell are correct, it follows that absoluteness cannot characterize physical science, because the subject matter of cognition within this province is not itself a priori and necessary. Knowledge, speaking generally, is the cognition of entity. Nonentity cannot be the subject matter of human investigation. A substance or real being of some kind is requisite for this. It is evident, therefore, that the absoluteness and certainty of a science will depend upon that of its subject matter. If the subject matter of a science has no necessity and absoluteness, the science will have none. Knowledge, then, that has physical and material substance and its properties for its basis must be marked by contingency and relativity. For since matter and its laws might have been different, or might not have been at all, the knowledge of them is the knowledge of the contingent, the conditioned, and the mutable. When the subject matter has a priori necessity, cognition acquires absolute certainty from it. This is the case with geometry. The data here are the intuitions of the mind and the necessary conclusions from them. Geometry does not deal with matter and its phenomena, but with ideal points, lines, and surfaces. It is absolutely necessary that the radii of a circle should be equal, but not that there should be a circular body like the sun. The laws of matter are not derived intuitively from the mind (like geometrical axioms) and then attributed to matter, but they are derived from matter and then impressed upon the mind. Physical laws, as formulated, are deduced from the outer world and have only relative necessity and certainty because the outer world has only such. Axioms, on the contrary, are derived from the mind itself and have a kind of certainty that cannot attach to a generalization drawn from the observation of material phenomena.

Ethics and pure mathematics have this in common: they deal with ideas, not with substances. Right and wrong, like a mathematical point and line, are not objective beings. Physics, on the contrary, deals with physical substances. The former, consequently, are more certain sciences than the latter; because there is no dispute about the nature of an intuitive idea, but there is about the nature of a physical substance. There cannot be two different views of a triangle or of right and wrong; but there can be of a piece of protoplasm or a bit of granite.

When we pass from the world of matter to that of mind and of morals, we find more than a relative necessity in the object of cognition. Unextended, incorporeal, spiritual substance is the entity in this case. The divine mind and the human are the subject matter of theological and metaphysical science. But mind is reason, and reason is marked by necessary and immutable properties. It differs from matter in this respect. Matter, conceivably, may be of an indefinite variety; but we can conceive of only one species of reason. When God creates a rational being, he makes him after his own image; but when he creates a physical substance, he does not create it after his own image, but as he pleases. This makes reason to be one and invariable in its essential properties, while matter is variable. We cannot conceive of God's creating two diverse kinds of rational mind, but we can conceive of his creating many kinds of matter. All finite reason must resemble the infinite reason in kind. When God creates a rational spirit, he must, from the nature of the case, make it after his own likeness and after no other pattern. But when he creates physical substance, he is not thus restricted. God is immaterial, a pure spirit, without body parts or passions; therefore when he creates physical substance, he creates something that has no resemblance whatever to himself. Matter, consequently, has nothing a priori or intrinsically necessary in its properties. Even gravity, says Whewell (General Physics 2.10), "is a property which we have no right to call necessary to matter, but have every reason to suppose is universal." Not being made after any original and eternal pattern drawn from divine essence, it may be made as God pleases, in an indefinite number of modes. But when finite mind and reason are created, they are made after the divine image and therefore can be of only one species and quality.

Accordingly, the laws of mind have more necessity in them than the laws of material nature have. The laws of thought, as enunciated in logic, are more immutable than physical laws. Logic is a priori in its regulative principles. Mathematics is necessary and absolute in its axioms and conclusions. We cannot conceive of a different species of logic or mathematics; but we can conceive of a different astronomy, chemistry, and geology—a different physics generally. The movements of the planets might, conceivably, have been different; but the movement of the human intellect in logical and mathematical processes could not have been otherwise.

This is true also of moral law as well as of mental. When we pass from the world of physics to the world of ethics and examine the laws that rule and regulate in this realm, we find more than a relative necessity. Take the Decalogue as summed up by our Lord: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself." This is for the rational universe what the law of gravitation is for the physical. And it is necessary and absolute for all intelligences. We cannot conceive that it might have been different from what it is; that the command might have run thus: "You shall hate the Lord your God and your neighbor." Neither can we conceive of such a modification of it as to allow an equal degree of love toward the Creator and the creature. The golden rule, "Whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do even so to them," is absolutely necessary. Neither the contrary nor any modification of it is conceivable. No other rule for the conduct of finite rational beings could have been laid down by the Supreme Reason.

Testing, then, the entity or substance which is the object of cognition in physics and metaphysics, respectively, by the properties and laws belonging to each, it is clear that absolute scientific certainty is to be claimed for the latter, not for the former.

There are three reasons, in particular, why physical science is relative knowledge. In the first place, it is to a great extent empirical or experimental. It is founded upon the observations of the five senses. But the senses never teach any a priori or absolute truth. They show what may be and what actually is, but not what must be. They disclose what occurs under certain actual circumstances, but not under all conceivable circumstances. By the senses, we know as a present fact that the sun rises in the east once in every twenty-four hours; but the senses do not teach that this could not possibly be otherwise and that the sun must of necessity rise in the east from eternity to eternity. Says Hume (Inquiry, 5): "The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible, because it can never imply a contradiction, and is conceived by the mind with equal facility and distinctness, as if ever so conformable to reality." That the sun will rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmative that it will rise. Similarly, Leibnitz (New Essays, foreword) remarks:

Though the senses are necessary in order to the knowledge of actual facts, yet they are not sufficient in order to knowledge of all kinds; since the senses give only present examples and instances and teach only particular and individual truths. No matter how great the number of examples may be that establish a particular truth, they are insufficient to demonstrate the universal necessity of this truth; because it does not follow that since a thing has uniformly occurred up to this moment, it will continue to occur forever. The Greeks and Romans noticed that in twenty-four hours, day uniformly turned into night, and night into day. But they would have erred had they concluded that this fact is necessary and universal; since it is not a fact in Nova Zembla. And it would be a yet more mistaken judgment to conclude that this alternation of day and night is absolutely necessary at least within the temperate zone; because it is possible for both the earth and the sun to cease to exist.

Second, the judgments of the senses are relative and variable, from the nature of the sensuous organs themselves. Tested mathematically and absolutely, no two persons see the same-sized object. The tree is taller for one man than for another. The shade of red is deeper for one eye than for another; and not red at all for the color-blind. Pascal, perhaps the most metaphysical of mathematicians, speaking of the effect of magnifying glasses, asks: "After all, who is to take upon himself to affirm that these glasses have really altered the natural dimensions of the objects in question, but that, on the contrary, they may not have had the effect of restoring them to their original proportions, which our eyes had altered and contracted, in the same way that is done by the action of diminishing glasses" (Geometrical Spirit). The following experiment from a treatise on heat illustrates the relativity of sensuous perceptions. Plunge the right hand into a vessel of tepid water, and the left hand into one of iced water. Then put both into water of ordinary temperature. The latter will now seem to be cold, if we decide according to the sensation experienced by the right hand; but warm, if we judge by the left. Hence, says the author, it appears that there is no difference between heat and cold when we abstract our sensations and consider only the body that impresses us.

Thus it is evident that the sensuous data which enter so largely into natural and physical science are wholly subjective. They depend upon the structure and condition of the organ. Size and figure are all in the eye. Sound is in the ear. If human eyes and ears had been made upon one plan, Lilliput would have been the actual world. If they had been made upon another, Brobdingnag would have been. "Sensation," says Cudworth, "is not science or intellection, because the soul by sense does not perceive the things themselves, or the absolute natures of them, but only her own passions from them. Were sensation knowledge and understanding, then he that sees light and colors, and feels heat and cold, would understand light and colors, heat and cold; and the like of all sensible things."17

"All that the optic nerve reports to us," says Helmholtz,

It reports under the form of a sensation of light, whether it be the beaming of the sun, or a blow on the eye, or an electric current in the eye. The acoustic nerve, again, transforms everything into phenomena of sound; the nerve of the skin transforms all things into sensations of temperature or touch. The same electric current, whose existence the optic nerve reports as a flash of light, which the nerve of taste reports as an acid, awakens in the nerve of the skin the feeling of burning. The same sunbeam, which we call light when it falls upon the eye, we call heat when it strikes the skin.

This shows the relativity of sensuous perception. A material object appears to us only in accordance with the sensuous organ which transmits the impression, and not as an immutable object independent of the organ of sensation. But it is altogether different in the instance of a spiritual object like God or the soul. God makes only one and the same impression of holiness or wisdom or omnipotence, if any is made at all; and the very same qualities are attributed to him by all intelligence that is not abnormal and vitiated. The list of divine attributes is one and invariable. The same is true of the human soul as an object of knowledge and of its qualities. The human spirit has only one conceivable set of properties, and these are the same for all who are self-conscious and make an accurate report of self-consciousness. (supplement 1.3.4.)

Third, the inferences from sensible phenomena in physical science are relative and uncertain because all the phenomena have not been seen. The material universe is too vast for all of it to come under the notice of men's senses. Though perhaps improbable, yet it is possible that some established and accepted generalizations, in the existing physics may be overthrown by future observations and new phenomena. The following facts illustrate the uncertainty of which we are speaking. Water in cooling contracts down to forty degrees Fahrenheit; then if it continues to cool it begins to expand, and at thirty-two degrees freezes, which is very great expansion. Nature here reverses herself and contradicts herself. The first part of her process would yield the generalization that cold contracts substances; the second, that cold expands substances. He who should have observed only the phenomena above forty degrees would have deduced the general law that water invariably contracts in cooling; and were he of a certain school of physicists, he would add to this that it necessarily contracts. If upon this planet there were no natural or artificial temperature below forty degrees, the law that cold uniformly contracts substances would be regarded as well established and indisputable as the law of gravitation.

It is for this reason that theories in physics are so uncertain and changing. Geology furnishes abundant example. Arnold (in Life of Stanley, 1.142), speaking of the discussions of the British Association in 1839, says that "Murchison convinced Greenough and De La Beche that they must recolor their geological maps; for what were called the Greywackes of North Devon, he maintains to be equivalent to the coal formation; and the limestones on which they rest are equivalent to the Old Red Sandstone which now is to be sandstone no more, but is to be called the Devonian system." Agassiz, in his eulogy upon Humboldt, remarks that "Humboldt's work upon the position of the rocks in the two hemispheres tells the history of that formation as it could be told in 1823 and is of course full of anachronisms." But what absolute certainty is there that the statements of any geologist in 1880 respecting the rocks of the globe may not likewise be full of anachronisms? There would be more approach to scientific certainty in these empirical departments of knowledge which depend upon tentative experiments and repeated observations if all the facts could be observed or even a majority of them. But the conclusions of the physicist are drawn from only a small, oftentimes infinitesimal portion of the phenomena. Only the testimony of an eyewitness, an actual observer with instruments, is regarded as of the first rate. But how little of such testimony enters into geological theories generally. What observer was on the ground when the coal beds were forming? We may grant that inferences that are plausible and even probable may be drawn from what is seen in a coal mine today as to what was being done in that spot ten million years ago, but absolute certainty is impossible. A convulsion by earthquake, a fusion by fire, a deposit by flood, or some sudden catastrophe of nature might so dislocate strata and melt materials and overlay with sediment as entirely to alter a previous plan upon which nature had been working for a million years. But the observer of the present day sees only the shattered debris, scoriae, mud, or gravel of the earthquake, fire, or deluge and knows nothing at all of that preexistent plan which lay behind them and which was entirely obliterated by them. Yet he assumes that he is beholding the very first and original plan of all and upon the strength of what he sees at this moment lays down a theory respecting the very creation and beginning of the globe.

For these reasons, a theory in physics cannot have the completeness and certainty of a theory in ethics. There is no eternal and immutable physics, as there is an eternal and immutable morality. The principles that should govern the action of all moral agents throughout the universe are necessary; but the principles that rule the material world are contingent. In this reference, the remark of Coleridge is correct:

The use of a theory in physical sciences is to help the investigator to a complete view of all the hitherto discovered facts relating to the science in question. It is a collected view, theomria, of all he knows, in one survey. Of course, so long as any pertinent facts remain unknown, no physical theory can be exactly true, because every new fact must necessarily, to a greater or less degree, displace the relation of all the others. The only necessarily true theories are those of geometry; because in geometry all the premises are necessarily true and unalterable. But to suppose that in our present exceedingly imperfect acquaintance with the facts, any theory in chemistry or geology is necessarily correct, is absurd. (Table Talk for 29 June 1833; cf. Herschel, Discourse §183)

The skeptical attitude, then, which Hume asserted to be the proper one toward religion is far more appropriate in reference to physical science, founded as it is upon the observations of the senses and deductions from them. "The whole subject of religion," he remarks, "is a riddle and an inexplicable mystery; doubt, uncertainty, and suspension of judgment are the sole result of our closest examination." The way and manner in which the material universe arose from nonentity and in which it is upheld from millennium to millennium "is a riddle and an inexplicable mystery" to physical science. The deep and learned minds in this province acknowledge this. To the question "how did man originate?" Quatrefages (Human Species 1.11) answers: "I do not know." It is impossible to explain either the origin or the perpetuity of things by physical science. Neither self-motion nor perpetual motion belongs to matter. But the former is requisite in order to the origin, and the latter in order to the perpetuity of anything in nature. Respecting the mode in which the material universe came into existence, the question of God to Job (38:4, 16–21) is conclusive:

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Have you entered into the springs of the sea? or have you walked in the search of the depth? Have the gates of death been opened to you? Have you perceived the breadth of the earth? Where is the way where light dwells? And as for darkness, where is the place thereof? Know you it because you were then born? or because the number of your days is great?

Compared with the sum total of phenomena in universal space and time, only a little is known of matter and its laws, and if the exclusive claim to an absolute cognition is set up for physical science, then it is proper to subject it to a skeptical criticism and compel it to bring forth its proofs. Especially is this proper when the theory is novel and contradicts the historical physics. "I am a skeptic in physics," said one to an enthusiastic scientist who was endeavoring to convince him that life is an evolution from the lifeless. Extremes produce extremes; and if the fanciful biology of Haeckel shall succeed in driving out the sober biology of Agassiz, there will be more scientific than there is of religious skepticism.

But skepticism in the bad sense of the term is an error both in science and religion. If anything in the great domain of material nature has been demonstrated by valid reasoning, the human mind will accept it as truth. There is much of this in the higher departments of physical science, for example, in astronomy. Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton have conclusively established truths and facts within this province. Astronomy contains much of certain knowledge, because it contains much that is mathematical. "The apparent motions of the sun, moon and stars," says Whewell, "have been more completely reduced to their causes and laws, than any other class of phenomena." And it should be observed, that in this instance more has been accomplished by mental and metaphysical processes than by sensuous and physical. Mathematical calculation has enabled the astronomer to solve astronomical problems which the senses, even aided by instruments, could not have solved. Le Verrier discovered Neptune by calculus, not by the naked or the armed eye. Fresnel, by mathematical calculation, established certain facts respecting refraction which contradicted the results of previous experiment; and certain other facts that had escaped experiment and observation. An eminent geometer demonstrated by mathematical optics that the center of the shadow made by a small circular plate of metal in a beam of light coming through an aperture is in fact no shadow, but an illumination precisely as bright as if the metal plate were away. This is utterly contrary to what appears to the eye of the observer (Herschel, Discourse §§23–24). But as we descend to lower departments in natural science, like geology, for example, we find nothing of this mathematical certainty and much doubtful theorizing built upon sensible experiments and observations. Astronomy, moreover, is a comparatively certain science, not only because it employs calculus, but because it confines itself to existing facts and phenomena. Its aim is to ascertain the present structure and motions of the solar system. Geology is uncertain because it proposes to describe a past state of things. It attempts to tell what existed millions of years ago and even how the worlds were originally made—which involves agencies and phenomena that occurred in "the dark backward and abysm of time" and which may have been totally different from what the present phenomena and agencies would imply as interpreted by the theorist.

Still another reason for the greater certainty of astronomical science is found in the fact of its greater simplicity. It is confined to its own problems and does not attempt those of other sciences. Says Herschel (Discourse §183):

It can hardly be pressed forcibly enough on the attention of the student of nature, that there is scarcely any natural phenomenon which can be fully and completely explained without a union of several, perhaps all, of the sciences. The great phenomena of astronomy, indeed, may be considered exceptions; but this is merely because their scale is so vast that one only of the most widely extended forces of nature takes the lead, and all those agents whose sphere of action is limited to narrower bounds, and which determine the production of phenomena nearer at hand, are thrown into the background, and become merged and lost in comparative insignificance. But in the more intimate phenomena which surround us, it is far otherwise. Into what a complication of different branches of science are we led by the consideration of such a phenomenon as rain, for instance, or flame, or a thousand others which are constantly going on before our eyes.

By reason of this simplicity and comparative freedom from complication with other sciences, astronomy enables the investigator to be more certain in his conclusions than does chemistry or geology. It does not, like these latter, burden him with a multitude of particulars or tempt him to solve the difficulties arising from fanciful hypotheses and conjectures.

It is worthy of notice that astronomy generally speaking has been believing, while geology has often been skeptical. The Keplers and Newtons were reverent minds, and the main current of astronomical science has corroborated both natural and revealed religion. It is also noticeable that none of the great discoveries in physics, like the laws of planetary motion and the law of gravitation, have been made by materialists and atheists. Skeptical sections in the history of physics are barren sections, so far as original discovery is concerned. This is conceded by Lange in his History of Materialism (1.1.4). The inventive and powerful intellects who discover laws and make a positive addition to the knowledge of material nature express their faith and worship in the language of Kepler: "Father of the universe, what moved you to raise a little feeble creature of earth so high as to make him a king, and almost a God, in thinking your thoughts after you? I thank you, Lord and Creator of all, that you have filled me with rapture over the works of your hand and have enabled me to disclose to men the glory of your creation, so far as a finite mind can comprehend your infinity." The skeptical naturalists, on the other hand, belong to the second and third class of investigators and have made few original contributions to science. The identification of matter and mind by the materialist blinds the human intelligence, so that its generalizations are false. The materialist may be an accurate observer of phenomena, but his conclusions from them are erroneous. The theories of spontaneous generation and the origin of species by natural selection are examples. Their authors were minute examiners of nature with both the naked and the armed eye, but little more. The report of what they saw is trustworthy; but what they inferred is not. This inferiority is explained by Whewell's distinction between inductive and deductive habits of mind (Astronomy and General Physics 3.6). Investigators of the first rank by induction discover hitherto unknown laws and then those of the second rate by deduction draw conclusions and construct schemes from them. The Newton or the Kepler, when the law of gravitation or of planetary motion bursts upon his view with "the rapturous eurēka," is impressed with the idea of God as the author of it. But the investigator of a secondary grade, who merely uses the discovery and applies it, is sometimes a disbeliever in a personal Creator, a preconceived purpose, and a final end because he regards the law itself as the eternal first cause. He converts the law which has been discovered by his predecessors in science into a god, as the African savages worshiped the plow which produced such wonderful effects in comparison with their rude mattock. The inventor of the plow never would have thought of deifying it. (supplement 1.3.5.)

It appears then, after this examination of the materials and subject matter of physical and theological science respectively, that in point of absolute validity and certainty the superiority is with the latter. Tested rigorously, the sphere of natural science is a region of only relative knowledge and certainty. There is nothing absolutely and eternally necessary in the laws and phenomena of matter. There is no absolute knowledge within this domain because there is no absolute object to be known. Kant was correct in his celebrated but sometimes misapprehended position that all cognition within the province of the natural and sensuous—within the region which falls to the understanding, in his nomenclature—is unaxiomatic and conditional and that only within the domain of the moral and spiritual is there an absolutely certain intuition. What the practical reason perceives to be true is true for all intelligence. The metaphysical ideas of God and the soul, of free will and immortality, of right and wrong, are absolute; and all science founded upon them is of the same nature. But physical sensations and perceptions are individual, subjective, and relative. Even the conceptions of space and time are only forms of the finite understanding, under which these sensations are massed and unified. The finite mind when cognizing sensible phenomena must cognize them as successive in time and located in space, and its cognition of them is consequently gradual and incomplete. But the infinite mind is untrammeled by this gradual and sequacious mode of apprehension in time and space and beholds all phenomena in the simultaneous and complete intuition of omniscience. Successive sensuous cognition is relative knowledge. It is true for man's senses, but not for the divine reason. Material and sensible things, which are the subject matter of physical science, are in continual flux and change. And even in regard to the invisible principles or forces beneath them, even in regard to the laws of nature themselves, we have seen that we cannot ascribe to them such a necessary and immutable quality as we must to spiritual and metaphysical realities. For they are creations from nonentity and are only one of the many various manners in which the divine mind can express itself in a material universe. But the mental and moral universe has no such conceivable variety. Reason is one and simple; matter is manifold and complex. The whole domain of physical nature is only a means to an end. It was created to be subservient to mind. It cannot, therefore, like the domain of the moral and spiritual, which is an end in and of itself, have absolute and immutable characteristics and therefore cannot be the object of an absolutely certain knowledge. Says Frank (Christian Certainty, 104):

Moral certainty, in distinction from natural certainty, is characterized by a firmness which in the latter case has its equal at most only as regards mathematical and logical certainty. A man may doubt the reality of the objects which he sees with bodily eyes and hears with physical ears, and still he does not on that account doubt the reality of the moral world, of which he is conscious. That is the abiding truth of the Kantian philosophy, which in the moral domain sets limits to the skepticism regarding objective realities; the truth also of Fichte's doctrine of the moral order of the world, the validity of which is not affected by the idealism in other respects.

Theology as a Positive Science

A second characteristic of theology is that it is positive science in contradistinction to negative knowledge. This ground is taken by theologians in the affirmation that faith is intelligent and not the blind and ignorant credulity of superstition. There is some real and true knowledge of the object of faith, although the object is still a mystery in many respects. Some of its properties and relations are known, but not all of them. For example, man knows that God is spirit and not matter. This is a positive and absolutely true knowledge. Man also knows that spiritual substance is intelligent and immortal, that is, incapable of dissolution by material causes. This also is a positive and absolutely true knowledge. But how the intelligence of God is eternal and omniscient, comprehending all things simultaneously and without succession, and how his omnipresence is the presence of the whole deity at every point of space and a multitude of other similar particulars—of these, he is ignorant. Man knows God "in part" with a true and valid knowledge; but being also ignorant "in part," and by far the greater part, God is a mystery for him. But it would be absurd to say that because man knows only in part, therefore he does not know at all; that because he does not know everything, he knows nothing. Faith, therefore, though relating to the mysteries of God and the universe, is yet an intelligent act. It is denominated in Eph. 3:18–19 a "comprehension" of the "breadth and length and depth and height" of revealed truth; a "knowledge" of "the love of Christ which passes knowledge." Faith is defined in Heb. 11:1 as the "evidence" of unseen things. The word elenchos in this passage denotes a mental conviction; and a conviction is both intelligent and positive. Christian faith is a rational and confident conviction of the mind.

Accordingly, Calvin (3.2.14–15) defines faith to be "a solid constancy of persuasion and a certain and steady knowledge" and adds that

the knowledge of faith consists more in certainty than in comprehension. When we call it knowledge, we intend not such a comprehension as men commonly have of those things which fall under the notice of their senses. The mind which attains to faith does not perfectly comprehend what it perceives, but, being persuaded of that which it cannot comprehend, it understands (intelligit) more by the certainty of this persuasion, than it would comprehend (perspiciret) of any human object by the exercise of its natural capacity.

In this last statement, Calvin implies that a believer knows more certainly concerning some of the qualities of God than he does concerning any of the properties of matter, that religious cognition is closer to absolute truth than sensuous cognition is. It is more certain that God is holy and omnipotent than that light is the undulation of an ether and not a separate substance by itself. With this, the eminent Schoolman Hales agrees:

If we compare the way in which the relation of faith, or conviction, to knowledge, is determined in theology, with the way in which it is in the other sciences, we shall find that the order is a reverse one. In the other sciences, conviction is brought about by the activity of reason, or mediated by thought, and scientific knowledge precedes conviction; while the reverse holds true of religious matters. It is not till we have appropriated them by faith, that we can attain to a knowledge of them conformable to reason. These things can be understood only by those who are of a pure heart; and we get this purity by keeping God's commandments.

Hales "distinguishes," says Neander (4.427), "a certainty of speculation, and a certainty of experience; a certainty grounded in the intellectual agency, and another grounded in the feelings. Of the latter kind is the certainty of faith; and with reference to this kind of certainty, theology is superior to the other sciences."

The term positive signifies that something is laid down (positum) respecting an object or idea. An affirmation is made that it is thus and so; and not a mere denial that it is thus and so. To say that water is not fire conveys no information as to what water really is. But to say that water is a fluid resulting from the union of oxygen and hydrogen gas imparts some real knowledge of the nature of water, though it does not explain all the mystery connected with it. This is a positive statement springing out of a positive yet not exhaustive cognition. Water really is a fluid and really consists of two gases. Taking Aquinas's definition of science as the knowledge of the qualities and relations of an object, it is evident that there may be positive without perfect comprehension. An object has, we will say, fifty qualities or properties. I know twenty of them and do not know the remaining thirty. My knowledge is valid and positive, so far. It is not merely negative and invalid in respect to the twenty known qualities. Again an object, we will assume, has twenty relations to other objects. I know ten of them. My knowledge to this extent is positive. I have so much true information upon the subject. To illustrate from the science of optics: The properties of transmission, reflection, and refraction of light were known before those of double refraction and polarization. Suppose that the latter were not known at all, at the present time. It would not follow that the knowledge of light, so far as the properties of transmission, reflection, and refraction are concerned, is merely negative and not real and true cognition. The knowledge conforms, so far, to the real nature of light. Again, the final cause or use of these latter properties of light is still unknown. They are not needed in order that the eye may see the outer world of forms and colors. "So far as has yet been discovered," says Whewell (Astronomy and General Physics 1.16), "these latter properties and laws exert no agency whatever and have no purpose in the general economy of nature." But the fact that the final cause and use of these properties and laws of diffraction and polarization is still unknown does not prove that the existing knowledge which the physicist has of light is a mere negation.

A negation may be employed after an affirmation has been made in order to define an object or idea more carefully. Negative statements are of little value prior to affirmative. After affirming of God what is excellent in the creation, we may then remove from the affirmation any defect by the negative method: as when it is said that reason in God is the same in kind with reason in man, but not in degree. After saying that God is immanent in the universe, we may say negatively, in order to guard against a pantheistic interpretation of the term immanent, that God is not identical with the universe. And after saying that God is distinct from the world, we may add that he is not separate from it, in order to avoid a deistical interpretation of the term distinct.

The denial that theology is positive science and that knowledge in morals and theology is positive cognition is a skeptical position. Hobbes took this ground and was combated by Cudworth (Intellectual System 5.1). The theologian Buddaeus (in Theses concerning Atheism and Superstitions) opposed Hobbes "because he denied a positive conception of the infinite and allowed only a negative one." The theologian Huet, after having defended Christianity in the vigor of his life in his Evangelical Demonstration, at the age of ninety wrote his treatise On the Weakness of the Human Mind to prove that before we affirm anything of an object we must perfectly comprehend it and that therefore we have less right to affirm anything respecting the Supreme Being because we have a less perfect knowledge of him than of any other subject. This view has been run out to its logical result in the recent agnosticism, which contends that we know nothing concerning God and therefore can affirm nothing concerning him.

Theology has been denied to be a positive science by some of its friends as well as by its foes. The views of Hamilton and Mansel convert theology into a science of negations. In asserting that man has no positive cognition of the infinite being and especially in contending that the human mind cannot logically think of the infinite being either as a person or a cause because these conceptions are said to be contradictory to infinity, these philosophers, without intending it, lay the foundation for the same skepticism that Hobbes and Huet maintained. And their speculations have undoubtedly strengthened the hands of the present generation of agnostics. If all that can be said by the theologian respecting God is that he is not this or that, then the mind has in fact no object before it and no cognition whatever. It may not affirm anything whatever respecting such a being. It cannot assert either that he is holy or unholy, mighty or weak, wise or foolish. The deity becomes the unknown and the unknowable—a position that cuts up religion by the root and introduces atheism in theory and practice.

Mansel would save the mind from skepticism by the remark that the contradiction which he finds between the conception of the infinite and that of personality and causation is only relative. It is a contradiction for the human but not for the divine mind. Hence man can believe in the existence of an infinite being who is also personal and a cause, though it is self-contradictory to human intelligence. "It is true," he says (Religious Thought, 106), "that we cannot reconcile these two representations with each other; as our conception of personality involves attributes apparently contradictory to the notion of infinity. But it does not follow that this contradiction exists anywhere but in our own minds; it does not follow that it implies any impossibility in the absolute nature of God." But this reasoning implies that a man can believe what appears to him to be self-contradictory. This is impossible. It also implies that a contradiction for the human mind may be rational and logical for the divine mind. This makes reason in man to differ in kind from reason in God; so that what is logical and mathematical for one would be illogical and unmathematical for the other. If this be so, man was not created in the image of God.

Let us test this theory of negative knowledge by some particulars. Theology defines God to be a spirit. The idea which the human mind has of "spirit" is not exhausted when it is said that spirit is not matter or substance occupying space. This would not distinguish it from a mathematical point or from a thought or from a volition. We have over and above this negative definition a positive notion, which we proceed to enunciate by specifying certain definite properties of spirit such as intelligence and self-determination and certain qualities such as benevolence, justice, and veracity. These properties and qualities are as positively conceived as are the properties of matter: hardness, color, shape, and the like. That our knowledge of spirit is not all expressed in the statement that spirit is not matter is also proved by the fact that if it should be asserted that spirit is something semimaterial we should deny it. This evinces that we have a notion in our minds of the real nature of spirit which throws out an imperfect and inadequate definition like this.

Consider, again, the eternity of God. Of this, it is contended we have only a negative apprehension. All that the human intellect can know, it is said, is that eternity is not time. But that our idea of eternity is not exhausted by this negation is proved by the fact that we are not content to stop with it, but go beyond it and endeavor to convey some further notion of eternity by specifying positive characteristics. We define it as duration: as duration without beginning or end and as duration without succession. We thus differentiate eternity from time, which is conceived of as duration beginning and ending as a series of sequences and as measured by the successive motions of the heavenly bodies. Again we define eternity as stationary, time as flowing. These are figures, it is true, but they are employed to illustrate a positive idea in the mind. If we were content with a negative definition—with merely saying that eternity is not time—we should not make use of any metaphors at all because we should not attempt any further enunciation of our idea of eternity. On the theory of a negative knowledge, time might be as well defined by saying that it is not eternity, as eternity would be by saying that it is not time; and matter would be as well defined by saying that it is not mind, as mind would be by saying that it is not matter. But man's knowledge of either of these contraries, though imperfect in the sense of not exhaustive, is yet more than these negations express.

The doctrine of a merely negative knowledge of spiritual objects and ideas originates in a tendency to materialism. The theorist is prone to regard nothing as positive and real in human conceptions that cannot be imaged to the senses. Mansel defines a conception to be a "representative image," and an image implies sensuous imagination. According to this view, positive knowledge is sensuous knowledge. But this is an error. Consider the common definition of God as "an essence absolutely perfect, infinitely good, wise, powerful, necessarily existent and the cause of all other beings." There is not a word in this definition that is unintelligible or that does not convey a positive notion, and yet there is no sensible idea, no idea that can be imaged to the senses, answering to any one of these words. Says Cudworth (Intellectual System 1.5):

We have intelligible notions, or ideas, which have no phantasms belonging to them. Of which, whosoever doubts may easily be satisfied and convinced, by reading a sentence or two that he understands in any book almost that shall come to his hand; and reflexively examining himself whether he have a phantasm, or sensible idea, belonging to every word, or no. For whoever is ingenuous will quickly be forced to confess that he meets with many words which, though they have a meaning or intelligible notion, yet have no phantasm belonging to them. And we have known some who were confidently engaged in the other opinion, being put to read the beginning of Tully's Offices, presently nonplused and confounded in the first word although: they being neither able to deny that there was a meaning belonging to it, nor yet to affirm that they had any phantasm thereof, save only of the sound or letters.

Cudworth then gives the definition of God which we have just cited in further proof of his position and then adds that

it is nothing but want of meditation, together with a fond and sottish dotage upon corporeal sense, which has so far imposed upon some, as to make them believe that they have not the least cognition of anything not subject to corporeal sense; or that there is nothing in human understanding or conception which was not first in bodily sense: a doctrine highly favorable to atheism. But since it is certain, on the contrary, that we have many thoughts not subject to sense, it is manifest that what falls not under external sense is not therefore inconceivable and nothing. Which, whosoever asserts, must needs affirm life and cogitation itself, knowledge or understanding, reason and memory, volition and appetite, things of the greatest moment and reality, to be nothing but mere words without any signification.

It is indeed true that these positive definitions of eternity, spirit, and kindred ideas do not exhaust the subjects and leave them free from mystery. In the recent controversy respecting the knowledge of the infinite and the unconditioned, which was stimulated into life by the views of Hamilton, sufficient care was not taken upon either side to distinguish a positive from a perfect and complete conception. It seemed to be taken for granted by both parties that man's knowledge of the finite is superior to his knowledge of the infinite in respect to exhaustiveness and absoluteness. But man's cognition of matter and sensible phenomena has limits and imperfection as well as his cognition of God and the soul. "If anyone," says Jacobi (Loose Leaves), "will tell me what sense is, I will tell him what spirit is. We talk more easily about sense than about spirit, because there are at least five senses and only one spirit." The blade of grass which the naturalist picks up in his fingers and subjects to the microscope and chemical analysis contains an ultimate mystery which he can no more clear away than he can the mystery of divine eternity or Trinity. For the constitution of the smallest atom involves such baffling questions as "what is matter?" and "how does it originate?" Everything, be it finite or infinite, matter or mind, runs out into mystery. Speaking of law in material nature, Hooker (Polity 1.3), remarks that it "has in it more than men have as yet attained to know, or perhaps ever shall attain; seeing the travail of wading herein is given of God to the sons of men, that perceiving how much the least thing in the world has in it more than the wisest are able to reach unto, they may by this means learn humility." Natural philosopher Boyle entitles one of his essays thus: "Of man's great ignorance of the uses of natural things; or, that there is no one thing in nature whereof the uses to human life are yet thoroughly understood." Much advance has been made in the knowledge of physical nature since Boyle's day, but the title to his essay is still suited to all physical treatises. "What in fact," says Frederick Schlegel (Philosophy of Life, lect. 4), "is all our knowledge of nature considered as a whole, and in its inmost essence, but a mere speculative conjecture and guess upon guess? What is it but an endless series of tentative experiments by which we are continually hoping to succeed in unveiling the secret of life, to seize the wonderful Proteus and to hold him fast in the chains of science?"

There is as much reason for asserting that man's conception of matter is merely negative because there is an unsolved mystery in it as there is for asserting the same respecting spirit and the supernatural. Perfect definitions are as difficult in one case as in the other. It is no easier to define time than to define eternity. "I know what time is," said Augustine, "when you do not ask me." That is to say, he had an intuitive notion of time that is trustworthy and valid, but not clear of all obscurity and which he found it difficult to enunciate. The same is true of the definition of space. Is it a real object? Or only a form of thought, a scheme under which the understanding masses and unifies phenomena? If by a positive conception be meant a cognition that is in accordance with the real nature of the object so far as the cognition extends, if the term positive be understood to refer to the quality not the quantity of the knowledge; then man's knowledge of the infinite or of spirit is no more a negation than this knowledge of the finite or of matter. But it is the quality not the quantity of an idea or a cognition that determines its validity and trustworthiness, that is, its conformity to the real nature of the object. Man's knowledge of God is like his knowledge of the ocean. He does not perfectly comprehend the ocean, but this does not render what knowledge he has of the ocean a merely negative knowledge. Says Cudworth (Intellectual System 1.5):

When we affirm that God is incomprehensible, our meaning is only this, that our imperfect minds cannot have such a conception of his nature as does perfectly master, conquer, and subdue that vast object under it; or at least is so fully adequate and commensurate to the same, as that it does every way match and equalize it. Now, it does not at all follow from hence, because God is thus incomprehensible to our finite and narrow understandings, he is utterly inconceivable by them, so that they cannot frame any idea at all of him, and he may therefore be concluded to be a nonentity. For it is certain that we cannot fully comprehend ourselves and that we cannot have such an adequate and comprehensive knowledge of the essence of any substantial thing, as that we can perfectly master and conquer it. Though we cannot fully comprehend the deity nor exhaust the infiniteness of his perfection, yet we may have an idea or conception of a being absolutely perfect; as we may approach near a mountain and touch it with our hands, though we cannot encompass it all round and enclasp it in our arms. Whatsoever is in its own nature absolutely inconceivable is nothing; but not whatsoever is not fully comprehensible by our imperfect understanding.

But while the deity is in one sense the most mysterious of all objects of knowledge, in another sense he is the most luminous. No idea so impresses universal man as the idea of God. Neither space nor time, neither matter nor mind, neither life nor death, not sun, moon or stars, so influence the immediate consciousness of man in every clime, and in all his generations, as does that presence that in Wordsworth's phrase "is not to be put by." This idea of ideas overhangs human existence like the firmament, and though clouds and darkness obscure it in many zones, while in others it is crystalline and clear, all human beings must live beneath it and cannot possibly get from under its all-embracing arch. The very denial of divine existence evinces by its eagerness and effort the firmness with which the idea of God is entrenched in man's constitution. A chimera or a nonentity would never evoke such a passionate antagonism as is expressed in the reasonings of atheism. Were there no God, absolute indifference toward the notion would be the mood of all mankind, and no arguments either for or against it would be constructed.

In this reference, the striking remark of Cudworth (Intellectual System 1.5) applies:

It is indeed true, that the deity is more incomprehensible to us than anything else whatever; which proceeds from the fullness of his being and perfection, and from the transcendency of his brightness; but for this very same reason may it be said also, in some sense, that he is more knowable and conceivable than anything else. As the sun, though by reason of its excessive splendor it dazzle our weak sight, yet is notwithstanding far more visible, also, than any of the nebulosae stellae, the small misty stars. Where there is more light there is more visibility; so where there is more entity, reality, and perfection, there is more conceptibility and cognoscibility; such an object filling up the mind more, and acting more strongly upon it. Nevertheless, because our weak and imperfect minds are lost in the vast immensity and redundancy of the deity, and overcome with its transcendent light and dazzling brightness, therefore has it to us an appearance of darkness and incomprehensibility.

SUPPLEMENTS

1.3.1 (see p. 51). One great difference between Christian and pagan ethics consists in the more searching and truthful estimate of human character made by the former. The sense of sin which is elicited by the Decalogue, as explained by the Sermon on the Mount, is far deeper than that produced by an ethics which omits the relations of man to God and is confined to those between man and man. A comparison of the two will demonstrate this. St. Paul says: "The law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwells no good thing; for to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. I see a law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom. 7:14–24). Says Augustine (Confessions 9.1; 10.2, 36): "Who am I, and what man am I? Rather what evil have I not been, either in my deeds or if not in my deeds in my words or if not in my words in my will? But you, O Lord, are good and merciful, and your right hand had respect unto the depth of my death, and from the bottom of my heart emptied that abyss of corruption. From you, O Lord, unto whose eyes the abyss of man's conscience is naked, what could be hidden in me even though I would not confess it? I might hide you from me, not me from you. By these temptations we are assailed daily, O Lord; without ceasing, we are assailed. And in this way, you command us self-denial. Give what you enjoin, and enjoin what you will. You know on this matter the groans of my heart and the floods of my eyes. For I cannot learn how far I am cleansed from this plague, and I much fear my secret sins, which your eyes know, mine do not." Says Richard Baxter (Dying Thoughts): "O you that freely gave me your grace, maintain it to the last against its enemies, and make it finally victorious. O let it not fail and be conquered by blind and base carnality or by the temptations of a hellish enemy; without it I had lived as a beast, and without it I should die more miserably than a beast. My God, I have often sinned against you; but yet you know I would fain be yours. I have not served you with the resolution, fidelity, and delight as such a master should have been served, but yet I would not forsake your service nor change my master or my work. I have not loved you as infinite goodness, and love itself and fatherly bounty should have been loved, but yet I would not forsake your family. Forsake not, then, a sinner that would not forsake you, that looks every hour toward you, that feels it as a piece of hell to be so dark and strange unto you." Says Leighton (on Ps. 130): " 'If you, Lord, should mark iniquity, O Lord, who could stand?' An uninstructed and incautious reader might perhaps imagine that the psalmist was here seeking for refuge in a crowd and desirous of sheltering himself under the common lot of human nature; at least, that he would endeavor to find some low excuse for himself in the mention of its universal degeneracy. But the design of the sacred writer is far different from this. He confesses that whatever he or any other person, on a transient and inattentive glance, may imagine of his innocency, yet when the eye of the mind is directed inward in a serious and fixed manner, then he sees the sum and bulk of his sins to be so immensely great that he is even struck with astonishment by it; so that he finds himself beset as it were on every side with armed troops which cut off all possibility of escape otherwise than by flying to the divine mercy and to the freedom of pardoning grace. He perceives himself unable to bear the examination of an awakened conscience exercising itself in impartial self-reflection; and arguing from thence how much less he would be able to endure the penetrating eye and strict scrutiny of divine justice, he cries out as it were, in horror and trembling, under an apprehension of it, 'If you, Lord, should mark iniquity, O Lord, who could stand?' It cannot be doubted that they who daily and accurately survey themselves and their own hearts, though they may indeed escape many of those evils which the generality of mankind who live as it were by chance fall into, yet in consequence of that very care and study see so much the more clearly their own impurity and contract a greater abhorrence of themselves and a more reverent dread of divine judgments. It is certain that the holier and more spiritual anyone is the viler he is in his own eyes."

The pagan estimate of human character is found in the ethical writings of Plato and Aristotle, neither of whom expresses any sense of personal guilt and corruption like that contained in the above extracts from Christian writers, though they acknowledge their own failure to attain the philosopher's ideal and condemn the crimes of the openly vicious and denounce the judgments of the gods upon them. They describe man as ideal, rather than actual. Aristotle defines the virtuous man as self-sufficient (autarkes), having resources within himself for right action and happiness: "We attribute self-sufficiency to him who lives for his parents and children and wife and for his friends and fellow citizens. The proper work of man is an energy of the soul according to reason. The goodness which we are in search of will exist in the happy man, for he will live in the practice of virtuous actions, will bear the accidents of fortune nobly, and in every case as a man truly good, a faultless cube. The virtues are produced in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature, but we are naturally adapted to attain them, and this natural capacity is perfected by habit. By performing good actions in our intercourse with men we become just" (Ethics 1.7; 2.1).

Plato (Republic 1.330–31) distinguishes between the vicious who fear the punishments of the future world and the virtuous who do not: "When a man thinks himself to be near death, he has fears which never entered his mind before; the tales of a life below, and the punishment which is exacted there for deeds done here were a laughing matter to him once, but now he is haunted with the thought that they may be true. Either because of the feebleness of age or from the nearness of the prospect, he seems to have a clearer view of the other world; suspicions and alarms crowd upon him, and he begins to reckon up in his own mind what wrongs he had done to others, and when he finds that the sum of his transgressions is great, he is filled with dark forebodings. But he who is conscious of no sin has in old age a sweet hope which, as Pindar says, is a kind of nurse to him: 'Hope cherishes the soul of him who lives in holiness and righteousness and is the nurse of his age and the companion of his journey.' " Plutarch (Pyrrhus and Marius) borrows and endorses the sentiments of Plato: "The avenging Fury began to punish Marius in this life and call him to a severe account for all the blood he had spilt. So true is what Plato says that the impious and wicked at the approach of death begin to fear everything of which they had made a mock before. Then does dread and distrust seize them, remorse torments them, and their only companion is despair. Whereas that person who can reproach himself for nothing and who has spent his life in innocency is always full of hope, which Pindar calls the tender nurse of old men. 'They,' says he, 'who have walked in the ways of purity and justice are always possessed of that comfortable hope which is the tender nurse of age.' For it is an incontestable truth that a happy old age is a crown of glory and is nowhere to be found but in the paths of justice."

The moral treatises of Cicero are remarkably devoid of the sense of personal sin and demerit and are equally remarkable for their comparatively good ethics. Though subject to the doubts incident to natural religion, yet, in the main, Cicero defends with an eloquence and positiveness not exceeded by any pagan writer the doctrines of divine existence, immortality and spirituality of the soul, freedom of the will, providence as against fate, and of future reward and punishment; and his denunciation of vice and wickedness is earnest and vehement. But the virtuous man, he teaches, has nothing to fear in this life or the next from the divine tribunal. At the close of his treatise On Old Age he gives glowing expression to his feelings at the prospect of death. "I am not disposed to lament the loss of life, as many men, and those learned men, too, have done; neither do I regret that I have lived, since I have lived in such a way that I conceive I was not born in vain; and from this life I depart as from a temporary home. For nature has assigned it to us as an inn to sojourn in, not a place of habitation. Oh, glorious day! when I shall depart to that divine company and assemblage of spirits and quit this troubled and polluted scene. For I shall go not only to those great men of whom I have spoken before, but also to my son Cato, than whom never was better man born nor more distinguished for pious affection. If I am wrong in this, that I believe the souls of men to be immortal, I willingly delude myself; nor do I desire this mistake in which I take pleasure should be wrested from me as long as I live; but if I when dead shall have no consciousness, as some narrow-minded philosophers imagine, I do not fear lest dead philosophers should ridicule this my delusion. Even if we are not destined to be immortal, yet it is a desirable thing for a man to expire at his fit time. For as nature prescribes a boundary to all other things, so does she also to life. Now old age is the consummation of life, just as of a play, from the fatigue of which we ought to escape, especially when satiety is superadded." Two thousand years later, from the plane of deism and natural religion, Hume (Essay 1.16) presents the same general view of human virtue and the future state: "Glory is the portion of virtue, the sweet reward of honorable toils, the triumphant crown which covers the thoughtful head of the disinterested patriot or the dusty brow of the victorious warrior. Elevated by so sublime a prize the man of virtue looks down with contempt on all the allurements of pleasure and all the menaces of danger. Death itself loses its terrors when he considers that its dominion extends only over a part of him and that in spite of death and time he is assured of an immortal fame among all the sons of men. There surely is a being who presides over the universe and who with infinite wisdom and power has reduced the jarring elements into just order and proportion. Let speculative reasoners dispute how far this beneficent being extends his care and whether he prolongs our existence beyond the grave in order to bestow on virtue its just reward and render it fully triumphant. The man of morals, without deciding anything on so dubious a subject, is satisfied with the portion marked out to him by the supreme Disposer of all things. Gratefully he accepts that further reward prepared for him; but, if disappointed, he thinks not virtue an empty name, but justly esteeming it its own reward he gratefully acknowledges the bounty of his Creator, who by calling him into existence has thereby afforded him an opportunity of once acquiring so invaluable a possession."

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius contain this view of human self-sufficiency and virtue in an extreme form. Though often represented as teaching an excellent morality, they are defective in the highest degree: (1) because the Stoic doctrine of fate is the foundation of the ethics and (2) because of the egotism and pride which pervade them. These two characteristics place the ethics of Antoninus upon a lower level than that of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, who combat the doctrine of fate and assert free will, and do not claim for human nature such an exorbitant grade of moral excellence. The following extracts from Casaubon's translation evince this.

The doctrine of fate is taught in these terms: "The nature of the universe has prescribed unto this man sickness or blindness or some loss or damage or some such thing. Whatsoever does happen to any is ordained unto him as a thing subordinate unto the fates. Nothing shall happen unto you which is not according to the nature of the universe. All that I consist of is either form or matter. No corruption can reduce either of these to nothing; for neither did I of nothing become a subsistent creature. Every part of me, then, will by mutation be disposed into a certain part of the whole world; and that in time into another part; and so in infinitum; by which kind of mutation I also became what I am, and so did they that fathered me, and they before them, and so upward in infinitum. Consider how swiftly all things that subsist and all things that are done in the world are carried away and conveyed out of sight. For both the substances themselves as a flood are in continual flux, and all actions in a perpetual change; and the causes themselves subject to a thousand alterations; neither is there anything that may be said to be settled and constant. Next unto this and which follows upon it, consider both the infiniteness of the time already passed and the immense vastness of that which is to come wherein all things are to be resolved and annihilated. Are you not then a very fool who for these things are either puffed up with pride or distracted with cares or can find in your heart to make such moans as for a thing that would trouble you for a very long time? Consider the whole universe whereof you are but a very little part and the whole age of the world together whereof but a short and momentary portion is allotted unto you and all the fates and destinies together. All substances come soon to their change, and either they shall be resolved by way of exhalation, if so be that all things shall be reunited into one substance, or shall be scattered and dispersed. As for that rational essence by which all things are governed, it best understand itself both its own disposition and what it does and what matter it has to do with. Let this be your only comfort from one action to pass into another, God being ever in your mind. All things come to pass according to the nature and general condition of the universe, and within a very little while all things will be at an end; no man will be remembered" (5.8, 10, 13, 19; 6.4–6; 8.4).

That man's duty and virtue consist in submitting his will to the nature of the universe and to fate is taught in these terms: "The matter itself of which the universe does consist is very tractable and pliable. That rational essence that does govern it has in itself no cause to do anything that is evil; neither can anything be hurt by it; and all things are done and determined according to its will and command. Be it all one to you, therefore, whether half frozen or well warm, whether only slumbering or after a full sleep, whether discommended or commended for doing your duty, or whether dying or doing something else: for dying must be reckoned as one of the duties and actions of our lives. Even then also must it suffice you that you do well acquit yourself of that duty of dying. Let not things future trouble you. For if necessity so require that they come to pass, you shall be prepared for them by the same reason by which whatsoever is now present is made both tolerable and acceptable unto you. All things are linked and knit together, and the knot is sacred, neither is there anything in the world that is not kind and natural in regard to any other thing. For all things are ranked together, and by that decency of its due place and order that each particular does observe, they all concur together to the making of one and the same cosmos or orderly composition. Through all things there is one and the same God, the same substance, the same law. There is one common reason, the one common truth that belong unto all reasonable creatures; for neither is there more than one perfection of all creatures that are homogeneous and partakers of the same reason. To a reasonable creature the same action is both according to nature and according to reason. As several members in our body are united, so are reasonable creatures in one body divided and dispersed, all made and prepared for one common operation. And this you shall apprehend the better if you use yourself often to say to yourself: I am a member (melos) of the mass and body of reasonable substance. Through this substance of the universe, as through a torrent, pass all particular bodies, being all of the same nature and all joint workers with the universe itself; as in one of our bodies so many members cowork among themselves. How many such as Chrysippus, how many such as Socrates, how many such as Epictetus has the age of the world long since swallowed up and devoured. Let this come into your mind upon every occasion, be it either of men or business, that you have to do work. Of all my thoughts and cares one only shall be the object: that I myself do nothing which is contrary to the constitution of man. The time when I shall have forgotten all things is at hand; and the time also is at hand when I myself shall be forgotten. Upon every action that you are about put this question to yourself: How will this, when it is done, agree with me? Shall I have no occasion to repent of it? Yet a very little while, and I am dead and gone, and all things are at an end. What then do I care for more than this, that my present action may be the proper action of one that is reasonable; whose end is the common good; who in all things is ruled and governed by the same law by which God himself is?" (6.1.2; 7.6, 8, 10, 16; 8.2).

The self-sufficiency of man is taught in these terms: "The time of a man's life is as a point; the substance of it is ever flowing, and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption. His soul is restless, fortune uncertain, and fame doubtful; in brief, as a stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream or a smoke so are all things that belong unto the soul. Fame after life is no better than oblivion. What is it, then, that will remain and support? Only one thing, philosophy. And philosophy consists in this: For a man to preserve that spirit which is within him from all manner of contumelies and injuries and, above all, pains and pleasures; never to do anything either rashly or feignedly or hypocritically; wholly to depend upon himself and his own proper actions; to embrace contentedly all things that happen unto him, as coming from him from whom he himself also came; and above all things, with meekness and a calm cheerfulness to expect death, as being nothing but the resolution of those elements of which every creature is composed. And if the elements themselves suffer nothing by this their perpetual conversion of one into another, why should that dissolution, which is common to all, be feared by any? Is it not thus according to nature? But nothing that is according to nature can be evil. He lives with the gods who at all times affords unto them the spectacle of a soul both contented and well pleased with whatsoever is allotted unto her and performing whatsoever is pleasing to that spirit whom, being part of himself, love has appointed to every man as his overseer and governor: which is, every man's intellect and reason. Let not this chief commanding part of your soul be ever subject to any variation through any corporal pain or pleasure, but let it both circumscribe itself and confine those affections to their own proper parts and members. But if at any time they do reflect and rebound upon the mind and understanding, as in a united and compacted body it must needs be, then must you not go about to resist sense and feeling, it being natural and necessary. How ridiculous and strange is he that wonders at anything that happens in this life in the ordinary course of nature! Either there is fate and an absolute necessity and an unavoidable decree; or a placable and flexible providence; or a universe of mere casual confusion, void of all order and government. If an absolute and unavoidable necessity, why do you resist? If a placable and exorable providence, make yourself worthy of divine help and assistance. If all be a mere confusion without any governor, then have you reason to congratulate yourself that in such a flood of confusion you yourself have obtained a reasonable faculty whereby you may govern your own life and actions" (2.15; 5.20–21; 12.10–11).

The difference between these two estimates of human character, as has been remarked, is owing to the difference between the two standards. Christian ethics places the relation of man to God in the forefront and tests him by his feelings and actions toward the Supreme Being. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart" is the first and great commandment. It then passes to the relations of man to his fellowmen: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Tried by these two commandments human nature finds itself to be deeply defective and corrupt. Pagan ethics omits the first test. Its virtue does not consist in the love and service of God, but in outward fidelity to the family, society, and the state. If a man is free from vice and reputably discharges his domestic, social, and civil duties, he is free from fault and entitled to the rewards of loyal obedience.

The Stoic philosophy was the source and support of this view of human nature and human virtue, and Milton (Paradise Regained 4.300–321) puts the following description of it into the mouth of Christ, in his reply to the suggestions of Satan:

The Stoic last in philosophic pride,

By him called virtue; and his virtuous man,

Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing

Equal to God, oft shames not to prefer,

As fearing God nor man, contemning all

Wealth, pleasure, pain, or torment, death and life,

Which when he lists, he leaves; or boasts he can,

For all his tedious talk is but vain boast,

Or subtle shifts conviction to evade.

Alas, what can they teach, and not mislead!

Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,

And how the world began, and how man fell

Degraded by himself, on grace depending?

Much of the soul they talk, but all awry,

And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves

All glory arrogate, to God give none;

Rather accuse him under usual names,

Fortune and fate, as one regardless quite

Of mortal things. Who therefore seeks in these

True wisdom, finds her not; or by delusion

Far worse, her false resemblance only meets,

An empty cloud.

1.3.2 (see p. 58). Respecting the inferiority and unimportance of knowledge in physics compared with knowledge in morals and religion, Johnson (Life of Milton) remarks as follows: "The knowledge of external nature and of the sciences which that knowledge requires or includes is not the great or the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and justice are virtues and excellences of all times and of all places; we are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary and at leisure. Physical learning is of such rare emergence that one may know another half his life without being able to estimate his skill in hydrostatics or astronomy; but his moral and prudential character immediately appears."

Augustine (Enchiridion 9) notices the same fact: "When the question is asked what we are to believe in regard to religion, it is not necessary to probe into the nature of material things, as was done by those whom the Greeks call physici; nor need we be in alarm lest the Christian should be ignorant of the force and number of the elements; the motion and order and eclipses of the heavenly bodies; the form of the heavens; the species and natures of animals, plants, stones, fountains, rivers, mountains; about chronology and distances; the signs of coming storms; and a thousand other things which those philosophers either have found out or think they have found out. For even these men themselves, endowed though they are with so much genius, burning with zeal, abounding in leisure, tracking some things by the aid of human conjecture, searching into others with the aids of history and experience, have not found out all things; and even their boasted discoveries are oftener mere guesses than certain knowledge. It is enough for the Christian to believe that the only cause of all created things, whether heavenly or earthly, whether visible or invisible, is the goodness of the Creator, the one true God; and that nothing exists that does not derive its existence from him; and that he is the Trinity; to wit, the Father, and the Son begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the same Father, but one and the same Spirit of Father and Son."

In the same vein Guizot (History of Civilization, lect. 4) remarks: "Moral sciences nowadays are accused of a want of exactitude, of perspicuity, of certainty; they are reproached as not being sciences. They should, they may be sciences, just the same as physical sciences; for they also are occupied with facts. Moral facts are not less real than others; man has not invented them; he discovered and named them; he takes note of them every moment of his life; he studies them as he studies all that surrounds him, all that comes to his intelligence by the senses. Moral sciences have, if the expression be allowed, the same matter of fact as other sciences; they are, then, not by any means condemned by their nature to be less precise or less certain. It is more difficult, I grant, for them to arrive at exactitude, perspicuity, precision. Moral facts are, on the one hand, more extended and more exact and, on the other, more profoundly concealed than physical facts; they are at once more complex in their development and more simple in their origin. Hence arises a much greater difficulty of observing them, classifying them, and reducing them to a science. This is the true source of the reproaches of which the moral sciences have often been the subject. Mark their singular fate: they are evidently the first upon which the human race occupied itself; when we go back to the cradle of societies we everywhere encounter moral facts, which, under the cloak of religion or of poetry, attracted the attention and excited the thought of men. And yet in order to succeed in thoroughly knowing them, scientifically knowing them, all the skill, all the penetration, and all the prudence of the most practiced reason is necessary. Such, therefore, is the nature of the moral sciences that they are at once the first and the last in the chronological order; the first, the necessity of which works upon the human mind; the last, that it succeeds in elevating to the precision, clearness, and certainty, which is the scientific characteristic."

Plato (Phaedo 96–99) represents Socrates as asserting the inferiority of physical to moral science: "When I was young, Cebes, I had a prodigious desire to know that department of philosophy which is called natural science (physeōs historian); this appeared to me to have lofty aims, as being the science which has to do with the causes of things and which teaches why a thing is and is created and destroyed; and I was always agitating myself with the consideration of such questions as these: Is the growth of animals the result of some decay which the hot and cold principle contract, as some have said? Is the blood the element with which we think, or the air or the fire? or perhaps nothing of this sort, but the brain may be the originating power of the perceptions of hearing and sight and smell, and memory and opinion may come from them, and science may be based on memory and opinion when no longer in motion but at rest. And then I went on to examine the decay of them and then to the things of heaven and earth, and at last I concluded that I was wholly incapable of these inquiries. For I was fascinated by them to such a degree that my eyes grew blind to things that I had seemed to myself, and also to others, to know quite well; and I forgot what I had before thought to be self-evident. Then I heard someone who had a book of Anaxagoras, as he said, out of which he read that mind was the disposer and cause of all, and I was quite delighted at the notion of this which appeared admirable. I seized the book and read it as fast as I could. But, as I proceeded, I found my philosopher altogether forsaking mind or any other principle of order and having recourse to air and ether and water and other eccentricities. I might compare him to a person who began by maintaining generally that mind is the cause of the actions of Socrates, but who, when he endeavored to explain the causes of my several actions in detail, went on to show that I sit here because my body is made up of bones and muscles; and the bones, as he would say, are hard and have ligaments which unite them, and the muscles are elastic, and they cover the bones, which have also a covering or environment of flesh and skin which contains them; and as the bones are lifted at their joints by the contraction or relaxation of the muscles, I am able to bend my limbs, and this is why I am sitting here in a curved posture; and he would have a similar explanation of my talking to you, which he would attribute to sound and air and hearing, and he would assign a multitude of causes of the same sort, forgetting to mention the true cause, which is that the Athenians have thought fit to condemn me, and accordingly I have thought it better and more right to remain here and undergo my sentence; for I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off to Megara or Boeotia—by the dog of Egypt they would, if they had been guided only by their own idea of what is best and if I had not chosen as the better and nobler part, instead of playing truant and running away, to undergo any punishment which the state inflicts. There is surely a strange confusion of causes and conditions in all this. It may be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles and the other parts of the body, I cannot execute my purposes. But to say that I do as I do because of them, and that this is the way in which mind acts and not from the choice of the best, is a very careless and idle mode of speaking. I wonder that they cannot distinguish the cause from the condition."

Varro, in Cicero's Academic Questions 1.4, declares that "Socrates called philosophy away from the obscure subjects with which previous philosophers had been occupied and brought it down to practical common life, namely, to the consideration of virtue and vice, good and evil; being of the opinion that questions in physics (caelestia) are difficult to be known, and if known contribute nothing to right living."

In periods noted for excessive attention to physical science the higher and finer products of literature decline. Originality and creative power in these provinces disappear, owing to the materializing influence of physical studies and observations, and only ephemeral composition is produced. The last decades of the nineteenth century, when standard treatises are displaced by periodicals and fiction, are an example.

1.3.3 (see p. 59). The necessity of postulating the agency of a personal will in the origination and control of the impersonal forces of matter is shown by a writer in the Foreign Quarterly Review 3 on Laplace's Celestial Mechanics. After remarking that the mathematical investigations of Newton, Clairaut, d'Alembert, Euler, Lagrange, and Laplace demonstrate the stability of the solar system, he says: "The conditions which assure its stability and exclude all access to confusion are the three following: First, that the eccentricities of the orbits are inconsiderable and their variations confined to very narrow limits. Second, that all the planets, primary and secondary, move in the same direction. Third, that the inclinations of their orbits to the plane of the ecliptic are very small. These conditions are not necessary consequences of gravitation or of mechanical motion; of their prime causes, however, we are entirely ignorant and probably will ever remain so: some barrier will always be interposed between the curiosity of man and omniscience. They cannot for a moment be admitted to result from chance; for on comparing, by means of calculus of probabilities, the unique combination on which they depend with all the other combinations possible, it is found that there is almost infinity to wager against one, that the arrangement of the system is the effect of a special cause."

The origination of curvilinear motion requires the agency of a power higher than that of matter because it cannot be produced by the forces inherent in matter. The curvilinear motion of a planet around its central sun requires two motions in order to account for it, namely, a centripetal motion and a tangential. If the earth obtains a tangential motion which causes it to move away into space, while at the same time it has a pull toward its solar center, the result will be a circular movement. The force of gravitation will give the latter, but not the former. None of the forces of attraction inherent in matter are tangential. They are all centripetal. There must, therefore, be a tangential impulse given ab extra if there is to be the movement of a body in an orbit. And this tangential impulse can come only from the Creator of matter, by an exertion of will similar to that by which a man gives a tangential or lateral impulse to a stone that is falling in a perpendicular line by the force of gravity. Were there only the centripetal force of attraction, every planetary mass would merely be pulled into its sun and remain there. The orbital motion cannot therefore be explained by the force of attraction between particles of matter. The writer of the article "Mechanics" in the Penny Cyclopaedia describes Newton as postulating a tangential impulse along with the centripetal attraction in his Principia: "The Principia commences with the three well-known laws of motion. Assuming, then, as a hypothesis that all the bodies of the universe and all the particles of every body exert on each other mutual attractions; assuming also that the planetary bodies were originally put in motion by impulsive forces; the rotations of these bodies on their axes, their revolutions in their orbits, and all the perturbations by which these movements are varied are explained by means of the elementary theorem for the composition and resolution of motions." According to this, the rotary motion of the earth on its axis is the resultant of two motions, only one of which can be explained by the attraction of gravitation; and so also is its orbital motion. There are two assumptions, namely, that of the inherent attraction of matter and that of an impulsive force. But inherent attraction has no impulse and cannot impart one.

And this is not all. For the tangential force requisite to curvilinear motion that proceeds from a personal will requires to be perpetuated by the same will that originated it, because of the resistance and impeding by the ether in which the planet moves. If not continually reinforced by the Prime Mover, it will cease. Not only, therefore, must the first tangential impulse be imparted, but it must be perpetuated by the author of it.

"The doctrine of a resisting medium," says Whewell (Astronomy and General Physics 2.8), "leads us toward a point which the nebular hypothesis assumes: a beginning of the present order of things. There must have been a commencement of the motions now going on in the solar system. Since these motions, when once begun, would be deranged and destroyed in a period which, however large, is yet finite, it is obvious we cannot carry their origin indefinitely backward in the range of past duration. There is a period in which these revolutions, whenever they had begun, would have brought the revolving bodies into contact with the central mass; and this period has in our system not yet elapsed. The watch is still going, and therefore, it must have been wound up within a limited time. The solar system, at this its beginning, must have been arranged and put in motion by some cause. If we suppose this cause to operate by means of the configurations and the properties of previously existing matter, these configurations must have resulted from some still previous cause, these properties must have produced some previous effects. We are thus led to a condition still earlier than the assumed beginning—to an origin of the original state of the universe—and in this manner we are carried perpetually further and further back, through a labyrinth of mechanical causation, without any possibility of finding anything in which the mind can acquiesce or rest, till we admit a first cause which is not mechanical."

Whewell (Astronomy and General Physics 1.18) continues his argument as follows: "It has been shown in the preceding chapters that a great number of quantities and laws appear to have been selected in the construction of the universe and that by the adjustment to each other of the magnitudes and laws thus selected the constitution of the world is what we find it and is fitted for the support of vegetables and animals in a manner in which it could not have been if the properties and quantities of the elements had been different from what they now are. We shall here recapitulate the principal of the laws and magnitudes to which this conclusion has been shown to apply:

1. the length of the year, which depends on the force of the attraction of the sun and its distance from the earth

2. the length of the day

3. the mass of the earth, which depends on its magnitude and density

4. the magnitude of the ocean

5. the magnitude of the atmosphere

6. the law and rate of the conducting power of the earth

7. the law and rate of the radiating power of the earth

8. the law and rate of the expansion of water by heat

9. the law and rate of the expansion of water by cold below forty degrees

10. the law and quantity of the expansion of water in freezing

11. the quantity of latent heat absorbed in thawing

12. the quantity of latent heat absorbed in evaporation

13. the law and rate of evaporation with regard to heat

14. the law and rate of the expansion of air by heat

15. the quantity of heat absorbed in the expansion of air

16. the law and rate of the passage of aqueous vapor through air

17. the laws of electricity; its relations to air and moisture

18. the fluidity, density, and elasticity of the air, by means of which its vibrations produce sound

19. the fluidity, density, and elasticity of the ether, by means of which its vibrations produce light

"These are the data, the elements, as astronomers call the quantities which determine a planet's orbit, on which the mere inorganic part of the universe is constructed. To these the constitution of the organic world is adapted in innumerable points by laws of which we can trace the results though we cannot analyze their machinery. Thus the vital functions of vegetables have periods which correspond to the length of the year and of the day; their vital powers have forces which correspond to the force of gravity; the sentient faculties of man are such that the vibrations of air, within certain limits, are perceived as sound, those of ether as light. And while we are enumerating these correspondences we perceive that there are thousands of others, and that we can only select but a very small number of those where the relation happens to be most clearly made out or most easily explained.

"Now, in the list of the mathematical elements of the universe which has just been given, why have we such laws and such quantities as occur and no other? For the most part the data there enumerated are independent of each other and might be altered separately, so far as the mechanical conditions of the case are concerned. Some of these data probably depend on each other. Thus the latent heat of aqueous vapor is perhaps connected with the difference of the rate of expansion of water and of steam. But all natural philosophers will probably agree that there must be in this list a great number of things entirely without mutual dependence—such as the year and the day, the expansion of air and the expansion of steam. There are, therefore, it appears, a number of things which in the structure of the world might have been otherwise and which are what they are in consequence of choice or else of chance. We have already seen, in many of the cases separately, how unlike chance everything looks—that substances which might have existed anyhow, so far as they themselves alone are concerned, exist exactly in such a manner and measure as they should to secure the welfare of other things; that the laws are tempered and fitted together in the only way in which the world could have gone on, according to all that we can conceive of it. This must, therefore, be the work of choice; and if so, it cannot be doubted, of a most wise and benevolent chooser.

"The appearance of choice is still further illustrated by the variety as well as the number of the laws selected. The laws are unlike one another. Steam certainly expands at a very different rate from air by the application of heat and probably according to a different law; water expands in freezing, but mercury contracts; heat travels in a manner quite different through solids and through fluids. Every separate substance has its own density, gravity, cohesion, elasticity, its relations to heat, to electricity, to magnetism, besides all its chemical affinities, which form an endless throng of laws connecting every one substance in creation with every other, and different for each pair, however taken. Nothing can look less like a world formed of atoms operating upon each other, according to some universal and inevitable laws, than this does; if such a system of things be conceivable, it cannot be our system. We have, it may be, fifty simple substances in the world; each of which is invested with properties and both chemical and mechanical action, altogether different from those of any other substance. Each portion, however minute, of any of these possesses all the properties of the substance. Of each of these substances there is a certain definite and fixed quantity in the universe; when combined their compounds exhibit new chemical affinities, new mechanical laws. Who gave these different properties to the different simple substances? Who proportioned the quantity of each? But suppose this done. Suppose these simple primary substances in existence, in contact, in due proportion to each other. Is this a world, or at least our world? No more than the mine and the forest are the ship of war or the factory. These elements with their constitution perfect are still a mere chaos. They must be put in their places. They must not be where their own properties would place them. They must be made to assume a particular arrangement, or we can have no regular and permanent course of nature. This arrangement must again have additional peculiarities, or we can have no organic portion of the world. The millions of millions of particles which the world contains must be finished up in as complete a manner and fitted into their places with as much nicety as the most delicate wheel or spring in a piece of human machinery. What are the habits of thought to which it can appear possible that this could take place without design, intention, intelligence, purpose, knowledge?

"In what has thus far been said we have spoken only of the constitution of the inorganic part of the universe. The mechanism, if we may so call it, of vegetable and animal life is so far beyond our comprehension that, although some of the same observations might be applied to it, we do not dwell upon the subject. We know that in these processes, also, the mechanical and chemical properties of matter are necessary; but we know, too, that these alone will not account for the phenomena of life. There is something more than these. The lowest stage of vitality and irritability appears to carry us beyond mechanism, beyond chemical affinity. All that has been said with regard to the exactness of the adjustments, the combination of the various means, the tendency to continuance, to preservation, is applicable with additional force to the organic creation, so far as we can perceive the means employed."

1.3.4 (see p. 64). Sensible objects may be differently conceived of at the same moment; but moral and spiritual objects cannot be. A man may have simultaneously two diverse ideas of the sun: one from the senses and one from the mind. The first makes the sun a small body—as large as a cartwheel. The last makes it an immense body—eight hundred thousand miles in diameter. The first is the idea of the savage; the last is that of the astronomer. But a man cannot have two such diverse ideas of God simultaneously. If he conceives that God is a wooden idol, he must renounce this idea in order to conceive of God as a spirit. He cannot conceive of God as related to both the senses and the mind; as being both an idol and a spirit. But if he conceives of the sun as being as large as a cartwheel for the senses, it is not necessary that he should renounce the idea that it is eight hundred thousand miles in diameter for the mind.

1.3.5 (see p. 68). The following are some of the great discoveries in physics which have been made by believers in Christianity: the heliocentric theory by Copernicus, the laws of planetary motion by Kepler, the law of gravitation by Newton, the sexual system in botany and the classification of the vegetable and animal systems by Linnaeus, the circulation of the blood by Harvey, the identity of fixed alkalies and metallic oxides by Davy, magneto-electric induction and electrochemical decomposition by Faraday, and the distinction between the nerves of motion and sensation by Bell.

Part 2

Bibliology

1 Revelation and Inspiration

Bibliology (bibliou logos) includes all the topics relating to the written revelation of God, namely, the inspiration, authenticity, credibility, and canonicity of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. As has already been observed, this division is not so strictly necessary as are the others to the integrity of a theological system, yet since theological science depends for its validity and credibility upon the contents of the Bible, it is requisite in order to comprehensiveness to devote some preliminary attention to the authority of these contents. The subject of inspiration, in particular, cannot well be omitted.

The Scriptures are entitled a revelation, and hence it is necessary first of all to define this term. It is employed in two senses: (1) general or unwritten revelation and (2) special or written revelation.

General Revelation

Revelation in its general and wide signification is any species of knowledge of which God is the ultimate source and cause. In this sense, all that man knows intuitively is revealed to him; for even his axiomatic knowledge does not originate from himself independently and apart from his Creator. All that he knows in this manner, he knows through his intellect, and this intellect is the workmanship of God. Man cognizes in accordance with the laws of human intelligence, and these laws are established by his maker.

General or unwritten revelation, consequently, includes all that belongs to ethics and natural religion. In Scripture, that moral and religious truth which man perceives immediately by reason of his mental constitution is called "revelation." For example, the knowledge of future retribution possessed by the pagan is so denominated. "The wrath of God," says St. Paul, "is revealed (apokalyptetai) from heaven" (Rom. 1:18); and this wrath is subsequently described as operating in the workings of an accusing conscience (2:15). The pagan's knowledge of the unity of God and of such attributes as eternity, omnipotence, and sovereignty (theiotēs) is also represented as a divine teaching. "That which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God has showed it unto them" (1:19–20). This inward knowledge is also denominated a "law written in the heart" (2:15), which has led to its being called an unwritten law. Turretin (2.1, 6) denominates it "natural revelation."

Unwritten or general revelation, then, is a particular form of human consciousness that is ultimately referable to God. It is denominated by English writers the "moral" or "religious" consciousness, by which is meant a mode of consciousness that relates to moral and religious objects and truths and is determined by them. The Germans call it the "God-consciousness," meaning thereby a form of consciousness of which God is the object. As the "sense-consciousness" denotes the sum total of all the inward experience that results from the impression made upon man by the material world, so the God-consciousness denotes the inward experience resulting from the impression made by God upon the human spirit. This mode of man's consciousness not only has God for the object of it, but for the cause of it. And this in two ways.

First, the object generally is the cause of the subjective impression, by reason of the correlation between subject and object. The objective coal of fire is the cause of the subjective sensation. The consciousness of physical pain is not produced by an act of will. The man is not the author of the sensation, but the object that causes it is. In like manner, man's consciousness of God is not produced by man's volition but by God as an object that impresses him. (supplement 2.1.1.)

Second, God is not only the object of knowledge, but he is also a personal and active agent who operates on the human mind so that it shall have this knowledge of himself. In the phrase of St. Paul, God "reveals" and "manifests" his being and attributes within the human spirit. The coal of fire is the cause of the sense-consciousness, by the mere correlation between itself and the physical sense. But God is the cause of man's knowledge of God not merely by the correlation between the two beings, but also by a direct energy operating upon man. An irrational object like a stone or a planet exerts no direct efficiency upon the cognizing mind of man; and neither does a rational object like a human person. Sensation and cognition, in these instances, result from a passive impression made by the object. But in the God-consciousness, the object actively assists in the cognition. God causes the human mind to know God by an inward and immediate efficiency, in addition to the correlation which he has established between the finite and infinite spirit. In St. Paul's phrase, he "shows," "reveals," and "manifests" himself.

The Scriptures go yet further than this and refer all the operations of reason to the author of the human intellect. Nothing in human consciousness is independent of God and isolated. God is the "Father of lights" of every kind (James 1:17). God "shows" whatever is known by virtue of the human constitution. Even human reason, which in the intuitions of mathematics and in the laws of logic seems to be a self-sufficient faculty, is represented in Scripture as dependent. Man is able to perceive intuitively, only because the Supreme Reason illumines him. "The Logos," says St. John (1:4, 9), "is the light of men and coming into the world enlightens every man." "There is a spirit in man," says Elihu who in this instance speaks truly, "and the inspiration of the Almighty gives them understanding" (Job 32:8).

Human knowledge, then, considered from this point of view, is an unwritten revelation because it is not aboriginal and self-subsistent but derived. It issues ultimately from a higher source than the finite intelligence. Human reason has the ground of its authority in the Supreme Reason. This is seen particularly in that form of reason which Kant denominates "practical" and whose judgments are given in conscience. This faculty has an authority for man that cannot be accounted for except by its being the voice of God. If conscience were entirely isolated from the deity and were independent of him, it could not make the solemn and sometimes terrible impression it does. No man would be afraid of himself if the self were not connected with a higher being than self. Of the judgments of conscience, it may be said literally that God reveals his own holy judgment through them. "Whence comes the restraint of conscience?" asks Selden (Table Talk); "from a higher power; nothing else can bind. I cannot bind myself, for I may untie myself again; an equal cannot bind me, for we may untie one another. It must be a superior power, even God Almighty."

The wide use of the term revelation was more common in the patristic church than it has been since. The first defenders of Christianity were called to vindicate it against polytheism. They would naturally, therefore, select for defense such of its truths as were more particularly combated by paganism, such as the unity of God and the first principles of natural religion generally. This led them to point out the grounds of these first truths of morals and religion in the human constitution; so that the distinction between natural and revealed religion though recognized was not emphasized. All religious knowledge was represented as a revelation from God, partly through the light of nature and partly in a supernatural manner (Justin Martyr's Apology 1.8, 18, 57 is an example of this). But when polytheism ceased to be the great foe of Christianity and deism took its place, it became necessary to lay special stress upon the distinction between unwritten and written revelation. When the skeptic himself defended the claims of natural religion and asserted the needlessness of the gospel, then the Christian apologist was compelled to discriminate carefully between that knowledge which comes to man in the structure of his mind and that which he receives through a supernatural source and in a written word, in order to show the insufficiency of the former to meet the wants of man as a sinner.

General or unwritten revelation, though trustworthy, is not infallible. This differentiates it from the special or written revelation.

In the first place, the ethical and religious teaching of God through the structure of the human mind is vitiated more or less by human depravity. (a) Sin darkens the intellect so that there is not that clear perception which characterizes the angelic intuition and which was possessed by the unfallen Adam. (b) Sin gives a bias to the will against the truth so that even when there is an accurate perception there is an endeavor to get rid of it. Men know God to be holy, but do not like to retain this knowledge (Rom. 1:28). (c) Sin weakens the power of intuition itself. Vice debilitates the spiritual and rational faculty by strengthening the sensuous nature. (d) It is a part of the punishment of sin that God withdraws for a time his common grace so that there is little or no intuitive perception of moral truth. The human mind is left to sin: God "gave up to uncleanness those who changed the truth of God into a lie" (1:24) and "gave them over to a reprobate mind" (1:28).

Second, infallibility cannot be attributed to unwritten revelation because of the limitations of the finite mind. Natural religion cannot be any more trustworthy than the human intellect itself is. But the human intellect cannot be infallible unless it is preserved from all error by an extraordinary exertion of divine power. That ordinary operation of God in the human mind which is seen in ethics and natural religion, though sometimes reaching a high degree of certainty and validity, never reaches the point of absolute infallibility. Even when unwritten revelation is rectified by written revelation, we cannot attribute to it the absolute authority of the latter because the rectification is more or less imperfect. The purest form of ethics and natural religion is to be found in Christendom, not in paganism. The ethical system of Plato is not as correct as that of Butler. But infallibility cannot be attributed to either, as it is to the ethics of the Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount (see Ursinus, Christian Religion Q. 92).

Third, unwritten revelation is inadequate to the needs of man as a sinner because it does not include those truths which relate to redemption. Its doctrines are sufficient only for a sinless being. Natural religion is silent respecting the exercise of mercy. It reveals only law and justice: orgē not agapē. St. Paul affirms that the wrath, not the compassion of God, is taught to men in the workings of conscience. This is the fatal lack in all the natural religions of mankind. Many current treatises on comparative religion are erroneous and misleading here. It is frequently contended that Buddhism and Confucianism are coordinate religions with Christianity because they teach the golden rule and other principles of ethics. But this does not prove the point. The distinguishing characteristic of Christianity is not the teaching of sound ethics, but the offer of mercy through a divine mediator and a radical change of human character. Christianity is gospel, not law; but Confucianism and Buddhism, so far as they contain truth, are law, not gospel. If it can be shown that Buddhism and Confucianism actually secure the forgiveness and extirpation of human sin, then they may be classed with Christianity. But there is no pardon and no regeneration in any religion but that of Jesus Christ: "Who is he that forgives sins, but God only?" Hence the modern Christian, like the primitive, cannot concede that Christianity is merely one among several religions, merely one of the legitimate religions.9 Christianity is an exclusive religion for man because it is the only redemptive religion for him (Shedd, Theological Essays, 374–76).

Special Revelation

In the common use of the term, revelation is employed in the restricted signification and signifies the written word of God. The contents of written revelation are as follows.

Scripture includes among its teachings those of unwritten revelation, namely, the first truths of ethics and natural religion. It assumes the validity of the doctrines of divine existence, unity of God, immortality of the soul, freedom of the will, and future reward and punishment.

But these doctrines as taught in Scripture differ from the same doctrines as taught in Plato, for example, (a) by stronger evidence and greater certainty. Immortality in the Phaedo is a hope and aspiration; in the Gospel of John it is the absolute assurance of personal knowledge and experience. Christ is an eyewitness in respect to the other world and the other life. The Son of Man speaks that which he knows and testifies that which he has seen (John 3:11). These scriptural doctrines also differ from Plato's (b) by freedom from erroneous elements. Morality in the Decalogue and in the Sermon on the Mount is not mixed with false ethics. Plato and Aristotle speak of, for example, the destruction of sick infants and the community of wives (Republic 5); the justifying of slavery (Ethics 1.4–8) and of abortion; and the destruction of feeble offspring (Ethics 8.16). Natural religion in the unwritten form is vitiated by its connection with the impure reason of man; in the written form, it is the pure reason of God. The Bible gives an inspired statement of natural religion; Plato gives an uninspired statement. The first is infallible; the second is more or less trustworthy but not free from error. Whether polygamy is intrinsically immoral cannot perhaps be determined by natural religion as deduced from the human mind alone; but natural religion as enunciated by Christ makes polygamy to be wrong: "From the beginning it was not so" (Matt. 19:8). Christ teaches that monogamy is founded in the created nature and constitution of man. Again, the monotheism of the Bible is without error; that of natural religion is more or less vitiated—either in teaching too much severity in God (as in paganism) or too much indulgence in him (as in the deistical schools of Christendom).

Written revelation contains many truths and facts that result from human observation and reflection. All that is historical in both the Old Testament and the New is of this kind. The narrative, for example, of the journeyings of the children of Israel is the record of eyewitnesses. The history of the rise of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah as recorded in the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles is an account drawn from contemporary sources. All that is geographical is of this kind; and all that is chronological. The natural history of the Scriptures is also the product of man's observation.

But all of this biblical history, chronology, and geography differs from corresponding matter in uninspired literature by being unmixed with error. Biblical history is not legendary like that of early Greece and Rome. Biblical chronology is not extravagant like that of Egypt, as reported to Herodotus by the priests. Here the influence of inspiration is very apparent. Moses was guided in collecting and composing the historical narratives in the Pentateuch. Herodotus was not thus preserved from error in gathering and writing his accounts of the Egyptians, Persians, and Greeks. Says Hodge (1.155):

Many of the sacred writers although inspired, received no revelation. This was probably the fact with the authors of the historical books of the Old Testament. The evangelist Luke does not refer his knowledge of the events which he records to revelation, but says he derived it from those "who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word" (Luke 1:2). It is immaterial to us where Moses obtained his knowledge of the events recorded in the Book of Genesis; whether from early documents, from tradition, or from direct revelation. If the sacred writers had sufficient knowledge in themselves, or in those about them, there is no need to assume any direct revelation. It is enough for us, that they were rendered infallible as teachers.

The written word, besides the truths of natural religion and the facts and truths that come within the ken of the ordinary human intelligence, contains a series of truths that are altogether different from these. These are the most important part of the contents of Scripture and constitute the most strictly supernatural element in the written word. Speaking generally, they are those truths and facts that relate to man's salvation from sin, namely, Trinity, creation and apostasy of man, incarnation, and redemption. The doctrine of sin, though a fact of consciousness and thus belonging also to natural religion, has in the Scriptures certain features that imply special teaching, since human consciousness unassisted could not discover them, namely, the account of the temptation by Satan and the fall in Adam; and a profound analysis and delineation of sin itself, such as is given in Rom. 7–8. The doctrine of sacrificial atonement for sin is also a truth of natural religion; but the Mosaic system of sacrifices, so peculiar in its features, was given by the teaching of the Holy Spirit: "The Holy Spirit signified this, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while the first tabernacle was yet standing" (Heb. 9:8).

Nature of Inspiration

This twofold variety in the contents of the Bible necessitates two varieties or modes of divine operation upon the human mind: (1) inspiration and (2) revelation proper. The distinction between these two is important, and the neglect of it has led to confusion.

Inspiration is like revelation in that it is a superhuman influence upon the particular person selected to be the organ of the divine mind. But inspiration goes no further than to insure freedom from error in presenting that truth which has been obtained in the ordinary ways in which men obtain truth, while revelation discloses new truth that is inaccessible to the ordinary human mind. A man may be inspired and yet not reveal anything. Much of the Bible is of this kind. But a man to whom a revelation is communicated is also inspired to express and record it. Inspiration is more of the nature of superintendence; revelation is more of the nature of instruction and information.

The distinction between inspiration and revelation is an old one. Edwards (Mysteries of Scripture) marks the distinction in the following manner:

We ought to distinguish between those things which were written in the sacred books by the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit and those which were only committed to writing by the direction of the Holy Spirit. To the former class belong all the mysteries of salvation, or all those things which respect the means of our deliverance taught in the gospel, which could not be known from the principles of reason and therefore must be revealed. But to the other class those things belong which either are already known from natural religion, but are of service to inculcate duty on man and to demonstrate the necessity of a revelation of the means of salvation; or all histories, useful to illustrate and assure us of the doctrines revealed and which point out the various degrees of revelation, the different dispensations of salvation, and the various modes of governing the church of God; all of which are necessary to be known in the further explanation of mysteries.

Claude Frassen, a Franciscan monk and theologian of the seventeenth century, assumed three kinds of inspiration: (1) antecedent inspiration or the revelation of things before unknown (this is revelation proper); (2) concomitant inspiration or the security against error in the statement of truths or facts known in the ordinary way (this is inspiration in distinction from revelation); and (3) consequent inspiration12 or divine authority stamped by inspired men upon writings composed without inspiration, for example, the gospels of Mark and Luke approved by Peter and Paul (see Knapp, Theology, introduction).

Lee (Inspiration, lect. 1) has made the distinction with care, but he errs in contending that it is not found in the older writers. Citing Quenstedt as one who holds the mechanical theory, he quotes the following from him: "The matters which Scripture contains were consigned to letters not only through assistance and infallible divine direction, but, having been received, should be attributed to the singular suggestion (suggestio), inspiration (inspiratio), and dictation of the Holy Spirit." Here, evidently, suggestio denotes "revelation" and inspiratio denotes "inspiration." In the same connection, Quenstedt speaks of "matters altogether unknown naturally to the biblical writers; those that were indeed naturally knowable but which, nevertheless, were actually unknown; and those matters that not only were naturally knowable but which they actually knew," and brings them all under the head of inspiration.

Marking this distinction, the first position to be taken respecting the Bible is that all of it is inspired. The original autograph volume of inspiration was free from error. This does not mean that every sentence or proposition in Scripture contains a truth. The words of Satan to Eve (Gen. 3:4) were a falsehood. But those words were actually spoken, and they are recorded with infallible accuracy. Some of the reasonings and inferences of Job's friends were false, but they occurred as they are related by the inspired penman.

This theory of plenary inspiration has been the generally received doctrine of the church. The following statement of Turretin (2.4.5) contains it: "The sacred writers were so moved and inspired by the Holy Spirit, both in respect to thought (res ipsas) and language, that they were kept from all error, and their writings are truly authentic and divine." Quenstedt defines in a similar manner: "Scripture is infallible truth, free from all error; each and everything contained in it is absolute truth (verissima); be it doctrine, morals, history, chronology, topography, proper names." Similarly Hollaz remarks that "matters of genealogy, of astronomy, of politics, though the knowledge of them is not necessary to salvation, are yet divinely revealed, because they serve to interpret and illustrate the truths that are necessary to salvation" (Hase, Hutterus §44). These theologians in these affirmations have reference to the original autograph. The statement—be it doctrinal, historical, chronological, or geographical—as it came from the inspired person himself was accurate. But they concede that some minor errors have subsequently come into biblical manuscripts from copyists and translators and that some have been introduced by critics and exegetes. (supplement 2.1.2.)

Westminster Confession 1.2.6 teaches that "all the books of the Old and New Testament are given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life" and that "our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts." The scriptural proofs of the authority and infallibility of the Scriptures are the following: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2 Tim. 3:16); "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken unto us by his Son" (Heb. 1:1–2); "which things we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches" (1 Cor. 2:13); "holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit" (2 Pet. 1:21); "search the Scriptures" (John 5:39); "unto them were committed the oracles of God" (Rom. 3:2); and "look to the law and to the testimony" (Isa. 8:20).

The theory of plenary inspiration prevailed in the patristic, medieval, and Reformation periods. Luther has sometimes been cited as adopting a different view because of his opinion respecting the authority of the Apocalypse and the Epistle of James. But he questioned the canonicity of these portions of Scripture. All Scripture that he conceded to be canonical, he held to be infallible.

The Christian fathers are sometimes said to have held a loose view of inspiration. But the view of Augustine was certainly a strict one, and it had high authority in the patristic and medieval churches. In his Harmony of the Gospels 1.35 he says: "Christ is the head and his apostles are the members. Whatever he wished us to read concerning his words and deeds, he ordered to be written down as if with his own hands; and he who reads the narratives of the evangelists will believe them as if he saw Christ himself writing by their hands and pens." (supplement 2.1.3.)

Calixtus (1650), in Germany, introduced a less strict middle theory according to which the sacred writers were preserved from all error in regard to doctrine necessary to salvation but not in regard to subjects that have no such importance. His view found few advocates in his own day. Baumgarten (1725) reaffirmed it, maintaining that divine influence preserved the sacred writers from error only so far as the purpose of a revelation required, which is the salvation of the soul from sin; this purpose, he said, would not be frustrated by unimportant errors in chronology, history, topography, etc. During the nineteenth century, this view has gained ground, particularly in Germany. Such evangelical theologians as Tholuck, Twesten, and Müller adopt it. Dorner (Christian Doctrine §59) accepts it in part: "There are historical matters which stand in essential connection with the meaning and spirit of revelation. In this case, inspiration does not apply merely to nonhistoric eternal truths." The theory is presented eloquently by Coleridge in his Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (for a criticism, see Shedd, Literary Essays, 336–42). The objections to this middle theory of inspiration are the following:

1. The primary and the secondary matter in Scripture, such as doctrine and history, are so indissolubly connected with each other that uncertainty in respect to the latter casts uncertainty upon the former. If, for example, the history of the residence of the Israelites in Egypt and of their exodus and wanderings is mythical and exaggerated like the early history of Assyria and Babylon, this throws discredit upon the Decalogue as having been received from the lips of God on Sinai. If the history, geography, and chronology, in the middle of which the doctrinal elements of the Pentateuch are embedded, contain fictions and contradictions, these doctrinal elements will not be accepted as an infallible revelation from God. The same reasoning applies to the history and chronology of the New Testament. If the narrative by the four evangelists of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ is more or less legendary, it will be impossible to secure for the doctrines of Christ that undoubting belief which the church in every age has exercised in regard to them. This is clearly perceived by the skeptic. Strauss well knew that if he could succeed in proving the mythical character of the New Testament history, he would have little difficulty in destroying human confidence in the New Testament dogmas. To say that if the doctrines of Scripture are held to be infallible it is of no consequence whether the history and geography of Scripture are free from error is like Schenkel's assertion that if the spirit of Christ is with the church it is of no consequence whether his body rose from the grave. It would be impossible for the church to believe that the spirit of Christ dwells and operates in his people if the church at the same time were denying or doubting that Christ rose from the tomb. The primary and the secondary, the doctrinal and the historical elements of Scripture stand or fall together. This is illustrated by a fact in the history of rationalistic criticism:

Graf assigned a postexilian origin to the great body of legislation found in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. The historical portion of this Grundschrift he still maintained to be the oldest part of the Pentateuch. But here, as Kuenen said, was the Achilles heel of his theory. Hence Riehm and others insisted that he had no right to separate the legislative from the historical portions unless he renounced the leading principles of analysis as hitherto employed. Graf then yielded and announced his conviction that the whole of the first Elohist, history as well as laws, is postexilian. This view was afterward elaborated by Wellhausen. (Chambers, Pentateuchal Criticism, essay 1.14)

2. It is improbable that God would reveal a fact or doctrine to the human mind and do nothing toward securing an accurate statement of it. This is particularly the case when the doctrine is one of the mysteries of religion. Such profound truths as the Trinity, incarnation, vicarious atonement, etc., require the superintendence and guidance of an infallible Spirit to secure an enunciation that shall not be misleading. Hence it is more natural to suppose that a prophet or an apostle who has received directly from God a profound and mysterious truth inaccessible to the human intellect will not be left to his own unassisted powers in imparting what he has received. Especially is it improbable that communications from the deity would be veiled in extravagant and legendary costume.

3. The middle theory of a partial inspiration is more difficult to be maintained than is the theory of plenary inspiration. Because if only a part of Scripture is infallible, it becomes necessary to point out which part it is. If anyone asserts that there are errors in the Bible, he must demonstrate them. This is an arduous task. It is more difficult to prove that the narratives of the Pentateuch are forgeries of later writers than to prove that they were composed by Moses. No one can demonstrate that the history of the exodus is legendary. The evidence for it as history is much greater than against it as fable. The arguments in favor of the scriptural chronology are stronger than those against it. If they were not, the chronology would long ago have been rejected by the majority of students of the Bible; the number of believers would have been as small as the existing number of skeptics.

It must be remembered that unsolved difficulties are not equivalent to a proof of the falsity of Scripture. Because a particular link in the chain of biblical chronology, for example, cannot now be put in, it does not follow that this chronology as a whole is erroneous. The mere absence of complete proof of the affirmative is not a proof of the negative. When there is a strong body of proof for a proposition, the mere fact that at a certain point the proof is weak or lacking is not sufficient to discredit the demonstrative force of this body of proof. The fact that the skeptic can ask a question which the believer cannot answer is not a proof that the skeptic's own position is the truth or that the believer's position is false. The unsolved difficulties respecting inspiration have often been palmed off as positive arguments for his own position by the unbeliever.

In maintaining the plenary inspiration of the Bible, we shall consider it first as containing matter that is revealed in distinction from inspired. All such revealed truth is infallible, that is, free from error.

Nature of Revelation

Revelation in the restricted sense, we have seen, denotes the communication of truth or facts hitherto unknown to man and incapable of being deduced from the structure of the human intellect or derived through the ordinary channels of human information. It is generally indicated in the Old Testament by such phraseology as the following: "The vision of Isaiah which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem" (Isa. 1:1); "the burden of Tyre" (23:1); "the word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah concerning the dearth" (Jer. 14:1); "then was the secret revealed to Daniel in a night vision" (Dan. 2:19; 10:1); "thus says Jehovah, Call unto me, and I will answer you and show great and mighty things which you know not" (Jer. 33:2–3). In the New Testament, St. Paul describes a revelation as a species of divine communication: "What shall I profit you, except I shall speak either by revelation (en apokalypsei) or by knowledge" (1 Cor. 14:6); "when you come together, everyone of you has a doctrine, has a revelation (apokalypsin), has an interpretation" (14:26); "I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord" (2 Cor. 12:1). The product of a revelation is denominated a "mystery": "We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery" (1 Cor. 2:7); "let a man so account of us as stewards of the mysteries of God" (4:1); "behold I show you a mystery" (15:51). A mystery is a truth or fact revealed without an explanation of it. The Trinity is such. Oftentimes when a proof of a revealed truth is demanded, it is really an explanation that is asked for. The objector requires that the fact or truth be made clear to his mind, in which case the mystery is at an end.

As an example of a revelation, consider 2 Thess. 2:3. St. Paul here informs the Thessalonian church of a fact that had been divulged to him from God, namely, that the second advent of Christ to the final judgment will not occur until after a great apostasy in Christendom has taken place. He could not have obtained the knowledge from any human source. It was a secret which God disclosed to him. And it was infallible information. The future history of the world will evince that it is. Other examples of revelation are seen in the account of the resurrection of the body (1 Cor. 15:35–55), the cessation of the work of redemption (15:24–28), and the conversion of the Jews after the conversion of the Gentiles (Rom. 11:25). The account in Gen. 1 of the order and succession of events in the creation of the world is a revelation. This is a history which is both revealed and inspired. In this respect it differs from the history of the exodus of the Israelites and similar histories in Scripture, which are inspired but not revealed. There was no human observer to witness the process of creation and to compose an account of it. The information of what was done in the six days must have been imparted by the Creator himself, who was the only actor and the only spectator. It could not have been derived from human records or human science. Again the doctrine of the Trinity is a truth not deducible by rational reflection, and therefore it is a revelation. In this respect, it differs from the doctrine of the unity of God. This latter is a truth capable of being inferred by the human intellect, as St. Paul (Rom. 1:19) teaches, from a contemplation of the works of creation outwardly and the operations of the human soul inwardly. The Trinity is a part of written revelation; but divine unity is a truth of natural religion or unwritten revelation. The doctrine of the Trinity as stated in the Bible is both revealed and inspired; the doctrine of divine unity as stated in the Bible is inspired but not revealed.

Again, the doctrine of vicarious atonement is a revelation. The doctrine of personal atonement, namely, that the transgressor must himself suffer, is a truth of natural religion; but that another competent person may and will suffer for him is a truth only of revealed religion. "The soul that sins, it shall die" (Ezek. 18:4) is natural religion. Christ "was made a curse for us" (Gal. 3:13) and Christ "is the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 2:2) is revelation. Whether God will pardon sin and in what way he will do it can no more be determined by a priori reasoning, than it can be determined by a priori reasoning whether another poet like Shakespeare will appear. It is a question of fact and of intention on the part of God; and a fact must be known either by history or by prophecy, which is history beforehand. And the only historical statement respecting the fact that God will forgive sin is that of God himself in written revelation. There may be conjectures and hopes in regard to divine mercy, but no certain knowledge except by a word from the divine lips. The exercise of justice being necessary, the fact that it will be exercised, is a part of unwritten revelation. The wrath of God is revealed in the human conscience (Rom. 1:18). But the exercise of mercy being optional and contingent upon the divine will, the fact that it will be exercised is a part of written revelation only.

To determine then how much of the Bible is revelation proper and how much is only inspiration, we have but to examine its contents. Anything in its pages that may indisputably be deduced by human reasoning or be drawn from human sources of information is not revealed. But everything else is. The genealogical tables in Matthew and Luke are not revelation. Much of the historical narrative in the Old Testament and New Testament is not revelation. Geographical and statistical data are no part of revelation in distinction from inspiration.

Revelation in the restricted and technical use of the term is not human education and development. When the human mind unfolds its own powers and manifests its own internal resources, the product is human. Philosophy, ethics, and natural theology are not an extraordinary communication from the Supreme Reason. They are the evolution of finite reason and the product of human inquiry and investigation. It is true that inasmuch as the human intellect is the workmanship of God and its laws of thinking are imposed by its author the result may be denominated a revelation in the wide sense of the term. But while it is an unwritten revelation, it is also a natural operation of the human mind. It has the characteristics of the human mind and is associated with the darkness and error of the fallen human mind. For apostasy has hindered the pure development of the finite reason, so that while unwritten revelation is sufficiently valid and trustworthy to render man inexcusable for his polytheism and sensuality, it is not an infallible and unerring light.

The theory of Lessing, in his tract entitled Education of the Human Race, that revelation, meaning by it the Christian system, is education or human development is exactly wrong. He regards the Scriptures as only anticipating what the human mind could find out for itself, only more slowly and much later. But the distinguishing truths of the Christian Scriptures are of such a nature that they cannot be deduced from premises furnished by man's intellect. They are historical, not a priori. They must be made known by testimony, not by reasoning. The mathematician by mathematical calculation cannot discover in what order the different species of creatures were made. The a priori method can do nothing here. If any man had happened to be present and witnessed the creative work, he could have reported what he had seen. But no man can in an a priori manner discover the way and manner in which the world was created. Similarly, no man can deduce in an a priori manner from the nature and structure of the human mind the doctrines of the Trinity, incarnation, vicarious atonement, and redemption. These are not an evolution of the human mind, but a disclosure from the divine mind.

For the same reason, revelation is not the product of national education and development. The Old Testament is not Hebrew literature in the sense that the Iliad and Greek drama are Greek literature. The whole Hebrew nation was not inspired by the Holy Spirit, but only a chosen few individuals in it. The merely natural and national development of the Hebrew mind produced the Targums and Talmud and the rabbinic literature generally, not the Old Testament Scriptures. The latter were the work of Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah, and others—a small circle of Hebrews who were selected out of the Hebrew nation and supernaturally taught in order that they might instruct their own people and through them all other peoples. The sacred writers claim this for themselves, and it was conceded by the nation (see Josephus, Against Apion 1.8). That the Old Testament Scriptures are merely one of the literatures of the world, the work of the Hebrew nation and not a special revelation, is the postulate and foundation of all rationalistic criticism. Says Maurice (Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, chap. 1):

The Old Testament is not the history of men's thoughts about God, or desires after God, or affections toward him. It professes to be a history of God's unveiling of himself to men. If it is not that, it is nothing; it is false from beginning to end. To make it the history of the speculations of a certain tribe about God, we must deny the very root of any speculations which that tribe ever had. For this root is the belief that they could not think of him, unless he had first thought of them; that they could not speak of him, unless he were speaking to them.

An error of the same general nature is found in some evangelical critics, such as Weiss, for example. In his Biblical Theology of the New Testament he assumes that the gospels were primarily the product of the primitive church as a whole, not of the apostolic circle exclusively. In its first form, the life of Christ was a narrative floating about in the first Christian brotherhood and not a narrative composed directly or indirectly by four apostles under the guidance of inspiration. The primitive account of Christ's words and deeds was very fragmentary and was subsequently supplemented and worked over into the four gospels as the church now has them. There was an original Mark, from which the present Mark was derived, and that original came from the oral tradition of the first Christian brotherhood: "Our Synoptic Gospels in their present form are probably of later origin than most of the other books of the New Testament, and it is possible that many sayings of Jesus have been taken up into them which were either altogether, or at least in their present shape, foreign to the earliest tradition. The Johannean tradition is altogether excluded from the earliest tradition" (Weiss, Theology of the New Testament §§10–11). This view makes the life of Christ to be the product not of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but of the primitive church; and this requires this church to have been divinely guided in describing the life and actions of Christ, if the description is an infallible one. Accordingly, the advocates of this view do not claim that the biography of our Lord is free from error, though truthful in the main.

But the fact in the case is that the first Christian brotherhood obtained all the knowledge it had of the life of Christ from its instructors and guides, the apostles. The Christian brotherhood came into existence only because the apostles related what they had seen and heard during their discipleship and intercourse with the ascended Redeemer. The twelve apostles were expressly commissioned by their master to prepare an account of his life and teachings and were promised divine aid and guidance in doing it (Matt. 10:5–20; John 14:25–26; 15:13–15). This important work was not left to the random method of an early ecclesiastical tradition—a method that would inevitably have mingled legend with true history, as is seen in the apocryphal gospels. This theory of Weiss and others is exposed to the same objection that the Protestant urges against the Romish view of ecclesiastical tradition. To go back to a fallible tradition of the first Christian brotherhood for the life of Christ, which is the foundation of Christianity and of Christendom, is like going back to the fallible tradition of the Romish church for Christian doctrine and polity.

That the gospels had an apostolic not an ecclesiastical origin is proved by the fact that there was a didachē tōn apostolōn in which the first brotherhood "continued" (Acts 2:42). This was the common narrative of the twelve apostles respecting the life, teachings, and miracles of their Lord. This common oral account given by the Twelve, "which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word" (Luke 1:2), some of the brotherhood attempted to commit to writing (anataxasthai diēgēsin; 1:1); and to prevent the errors that would inevitably creep into the life of Christ by this method, Luke under the superintendence of Paul writes the third gospel. In order that the original number of eyewitnesses might be kept full after the death of Judas, a twelfth apostle was chosen out of those who had "companied with them all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among them." Matthias was chosen and ordained as an apostle "to be a witness of Christ's resurrection" (Acts 1:22). This testimony "with great power gave the apostles" in witnessing "of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus" (4:33). This didachē tōn apostolōn was committed to writing by those four of the twelve apostles to whom the four canonical gospels have been attributed by the church for nearly twenty centuries. These four evangelists put into a fixed form the oral gospel which the Twelve had been teaching in their missionary work. The four were the agents of the apostolic college, in doing what Christ commanded them to do when he promised "to bring all things to their remembrance whatsoever he had said unto them." Justin Martyr, as early as 160, expresses the common belief of the church on this point when he says that "the apostles in the memoirs composed by them, which are called gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them" (Apology 1.66; see Presbyterian Review, Jan. 1887:164–67). (supplement 2.1.4.)

Infallibility of Inspiration

That the Bible as containing revealed truths and facts is infallible is allowed by those who hold the middle theory of inspiration. All truths and doctrines of Scripture that are necessary to salvation are certainly without mixture of error and are the infallible rule of faith and practice. It is not therefore the fact of infallible revelation that is disputed, but the fact of infallible inspiration. We turn to the consideration of this, which is the more difficult part of the general subject.

Inspiration is not sanctification. It is the operation of the Holy Spirit upon the human mind for the purpose of conveying religious truth to mankind. It has therefore a certain resemblance to regeneration in having a divine author and source. But it differs from it in that the aim is not to impart holiness but information. Inspiration is intellectual, while regeneration is spiritual. When the Holy Spirit inspires a person, he does not necessarily sanctify him; he only instructs him and conveys truth by him. Balaam was inspired temporarily upon a certain occasion: "The Lord put words into his mouth" (Num. 23:5). And all that he said while under the influence of the Lord was free from error. Caiaphas also was temporarily inspired: "This he spoke not of himself, but prophesied" (John 11:51); and the prophecy was fulfilled. Nay more, even an animal may be employed as the organ through which God conveys truth to men, as was the case with Balaam's ass: "The Lord opened the mouth of the ass" (Num. 22:28); and her expostulation was full of sense and truth. The ass made no mistake in anything she said to Balaam. The divine message through her, as an instrument, was infallible. In the same manner, even a piece of unconscious matter like the pillar of cloud or the burning bush may be employed as the medium of a theophany and of divine instruction through symbols. (supplement 2.1.5.)

This shows that inspiration is only intellectual illumination and is entirely distinct from sanctification. If inspiration involved sanctification, the degree of each must be equal, and infallibility in knowledge would require sinlessness in character. Most of the organs of inspiration were in point of fact good men: "Holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." None of them however were sinless and perfect men, and yet they were infallible. They had a perfect knowledge on the points respecting which they were inspired, but they had not a perfect character. Peter was inspired, but he was defective in character and was rebuked by Paul for his inconsistency in conduct. If we compare the result of the apostolic council related in Acts 15 with the individual action subsequently of Peter spoken of in Gal. 2:11–13, we see that the same person may as an imperfectly sanctified man recede from a position which he had taken previously as an inspired man. The decision of the council respecting the Mosaic ceremonial law was the teaching of the Holy Spirit; but the weak yielding of Peter to the demands of Jewish Christians was the working of sinful imperfection—of which Peter subsequently repented under the fraternal rebuke of Paul. Solomon was inspired to teach a certain class of truths, mainly ethical in distinction from evangelical, but his religious character, particularly in his old age, has led some to doubt his salvation. (supplement 2.1.6.)

The fact that inspiration is instruction, not sanctification, and that revelation is an objective information from God which does not depend on subjective characteristics in the person chosen as the medium of communication explains how it is that a volume containing the most profound views of God and man that have yet been published on earth could have been produced among a people comparatively low in knowledge, civilization, and culture. The Hebrews were inferior to the Greeks and Romans in merely humanistic characteristics: inferior in literature, art, and science. They produced very little in these provinces. But nothing in Greek or Roman theology and ethics will compare with the Scriptures of the Old Testament. The Decalogue is the highest of moral codes; but Moses was the leader and head of a half-civilized and degraded body of Egyptian slaves. Had his theological and religious knowledge been only that which his own environment in Egypt at the court of Pharaoh would have furnished, he could no more have composed the Decalogue or the account of the creation in the opening of Genesis than he could have composed Hamlet or the Principia. The immense disparity between the Old Testament as a book and the Hebrew people as a nation shows that the knowledge of God and divine things contained in the former, but wanting in the latter, came ab extra. It was communicated from on high. (supplement 2.1.7.)

Inspiration is not omniscience. The operation of the Holy Spirit does not impart all truth to the inspired mind, but only a portion of it. And it is religious truth that is principally conveyed. The Holy Spirit communicates secular truth only so far as this is necessary to the imparting of religious truth: "The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man" (Westminster Larger Catechism 5). They teach secular and scientific truth only in subserviency to this.

Again, the knowledge of one inspired man may be less than that of another. There is a gradation in imparting religious truth. In the beginning of the old economy, the Holy Spirit disclosed the doctrine of the incarnation only to that extent in which it is seen in the promise respecting the "seed of the woman." The doctrine continues to be divulged with increasing details, until in Isaiah it is greatly widened and enlarged. In the New Testament, the doctrine is as fully revealed as it will be, until the vision of the church by faith becomes the vision face to face. The Apostle John knew more than Moses respecting the preexistence, incarnation, and death of the Son of God. Yet the latter was infallibly inspired upon all points respecting which he has said anything. But he has not spoken upon as many points as St. John has. (supplement 2.1.8.)

Inspired truth is not necessarily completely comprehensible. A doctrine or fact may be infallible and yet mysterious. Because the Bible is not level to human intelligence in all its teachings, it does not follow that it is not free from error. In 1 Pet. 1:10–11, the Old Testament prophets themselves are described as "inquiring and searching" into the meaning of the prophecies taught them by the Holy Spirit: The "sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow" are points that are mentioned.

Defining inspiration positively, it may be described as the influence of the Holy Spirit upon a human person whereby he is infallibly moved and guided in all his statements while under this influence. The general notion is that of an afflatus. There is an inbreathing of the Holy Spirit upon the human spirit. The epithet employed by St. Paul (2 Tim. 3:16) is theopneustos. The consequence is an inward impulse and actuation of the mind: "Holy men of God spoke as they were moved (carried along, pheromenoi) by the Holy Spirit" (2 Pet. 1:21).

This contains (a) suggestion of matter both as to thought and language (aiding the memory is included in this; John 14:26), (b) impulse to speak or write, and (c) direction by which the mind is preserved from error. We are aided in conceiving of the operation of the Holy Spirit in inspiration by its analogy with his operation in regeneration: (a) it violates no laws of thought; (b) it leaves the individual peculiarities as it finds them; and (c) it is thorough and all pervading. Hence it affects the language as well as the thought.

At this point, there is a difference of opinion among those who hold to plenary inspiration; some affirming and some denying the doctrine of verbal inspiration in connection with it. Everything depends, in settling this question, upon the view taken of the connection between thought and language. If words are merely arbitrary signs of ideas, like the algebraic symbols plus and minus—mere marks having no affinity with the ideas and not prompted by them—then an idea might be suggested by inspiration without any prompting or suggestion of a word to express it. Thought and language in this case are wholly diverse and disconnected, and if words are given to the prophet by which to exhibit the wordless thoughts that have been started in his mind, it must be by dictation. Dictation is the standing objection to verbal inspiration. Upon this theory of language, it is assumed that the two processes of thinking and expressing thought can each go on by itself independently of the other and that the thought does not naturally and inevitably prompt the word. When an author dictates to a scribe, the scribe does not go through the mental process along with the author, any more than does the typesetter in setting up type or any more than does the parrot in repeating human words. The scribe does not think the author's thoughts along with him, but mechanically writes down what he hears with his ear. In this instance, the ideas and the words for the scribe are entirely separated from each other. If this be the true theory of the relation of language to thought, then verbal inspiration would be dictation.

But if it be held that there is a natural affinity and a necessary connection between thought and language, then whatever prompts thought prompts language, and an influence upon one is an influence upon the other. The suggestion of ideas inevitably involves the suggestion of words. Thought and language upon this theory are inseparable, so that when the Holy Spirit inspires a prophet, the mind of the prophet is so moved that he not merely thinks, but utters his thinking in language that is suitable and simultaneously inbreathed and prompted along with the thought. Both alike are theopneustic. This is wholly different from dictation. Dictation separates thought and language; verbal inspiration unites them. Verbal inspiration is the truth if thought is prior to and suggests language; but not if language is prior to and suggests thought. The inspired writer in this latter case does not have the thought until he has had the word, and the word is dictated to him by the Spirit, not prompted in him by the inspired thought in his own mind.

That words are not arbitrary signs of ideas, having no natural connection and affinity with the ideas expressed by them, is proved …

1. By Scripture: According to the Bible, an idea and its word are the same thing essentially. They are human thought in two different modes or forms. When a thought is in the mind, or unuttered, it is an idea. When that same thought is out of the mind, or uttered, it is a word. An idea is an internal word; and a word is an external idea. To speak is to think externally; and to think is to speak internally. Accordingly, the Scriptures denominate thinking internal speaking: "The fool has said in his heart, there is no God" (Ps. 14:1); "begin not to say within yourselves" (Luke 3:8); "afterward he said within himself" (18:4). In these instances, thinking is mental speaking, and consequently speaking is vocal thinking. With this agrees our own modern usage. In common parlance, when men utter their thoughts in words, they are said to "think aloud." In Greek, logos signifies both reason and word. Reason is internal thought (logos endiathetos); word is external thought (logos prophorikos).

2. By comparing the sounds of human language with other sounds: Human language is not mere unmeaning noise, like the sounds in material nature, such as that of falling water or of thunder. These sounds have no sense or signification for the human reason. Nor is human language like the cries of animals or the singing of birds. These sounds, though approaching nearer to human speech than do the sounds of material nature, yet contain no intellectual ideas or conceptions. They are thoughtless inarticulate cries, not language proper. But the sounds of every human language are thoughtful and waken thought. They are not mere sounds, but sounds filled with sense and meaning for the human mind (see Torrey, Theory of Fine Art, 236). (supplement 2.1.9.)

3. By the fact that shades of an idea suggest varieties of words: This explains the origin of synonyms. The author of Proverbs denominates the second trinitarian person Wisdom; St. John denominates him Reason. The two phases of the revealed idea suggest the two different terms for it.

4. By the fact that men think in words: (a) If an Englishman reads or speaks the French language, his thinking is connected with English words alone, unless he has made the French language as familiar as his own and can think in it. Before he can grasp the idea, he must transfer it from the French word to the corresponding English one. Not until this process has been gone through is he master of the thought. Here, thought is necessarily connected with language. The following from a work of fiction illustrates this:

Madame de Lalouve spoke very good English indeed, and her accent, especially, was all but faultless, but she had the defect of thinking in French and translating afterward into our vernacular, and hence her speech occasionally lapsed into Gallic idioms and turns of language. It was quite otherwise with that other linguist whose nickname was Chinese Jack. He was one of those polyglot talkers who are possessed of the rare gift of thinking in any articulate tongue, from Hebrew to Japanese, and therefore of expressing his thoughts as a Malay or a Persian or a Spaniard would do and not as a scholar with an elaborate acquaintance with the language would do.

(b) Intense thinking often causes audible wording or phrasing of the thought, for example, whispering or speaking aloud to oneself. (c) The mute person attempts to utter his thoughts in an inarticulate murmur or sound of some kind. His ideas struggle for utterance, implying that an idea is incomplete without its word. (d) A tribe of men without an articulate language, if such could be found, would be without human ideas. Their range of consciousness would be like that of the brutes. Sometimes a particular word is found to be wanting in a language, and it is also found that the particular idea is wanting also. The missionary Riggs reports that the Dakota language contained no word for one-quarter or one-eighth and so on because the people had no idea of such fractions. They stopped with the notion of one-half in their calculations and went no further mentally:

Only one word exists—hankay, half. We missionaries in writing out and improving the language can say hankay-hankay, the half of a half; but the tribe do not. Besides hankay, there is nothing but the word for a piece. But this is an indefinite word and not suited for the certainties of mathematics. The poverty of the language has been a great obstacle in teaching arithmetic. But the poorness of the language shows their poverty of thought in the same line.

5. By the fact that a peculiar kind of thought expresses itself spontaneously in a particular kind of phraseology: Poetic thought suggests and prompts poetic forms of language; philosophic thought suggests and prompts philosophic forms; etc.

Scripture itself asserts verbal inspiration: "I have put words in your mouth" (Jer. 1:9); "I will give you a mouth and wisdom" (Luke 21:12–15); "it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaks in you" (Matt. 10:20); "they spoke as the Spirit gave them utterance" (Acts 2:4); "holy men spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit" (2 Pet. 1:21). Words are carefully selected by the inspired mind under divine guidance. In John 10:35 stress is laid upon the use of the word gods as applied to prophets and magistrates; and in Gal. 3:16 upon the use of the singular seed not the plural seeds. The neuter is employed instead of the masculine when the idea of the impersonal becomes of great consequence; for example, to gennōmenon hagion (Luke 1:35) and hen instead of heis35 (John 10:30). In Phil. 2:6 morphē theou is used instead of ousia theou38 because the idea is that of a particular trinitarian person, not of the divine essence simply. In John 17:24 the Textus Receptus reads hous dedōkas, and the uncials read ho dedōkas. If the idea in the mind of the inspired writer was that of the church as a collective unity, the thought suggested the word ho. If it was that of particular individuals, the thought suggested the word hous. (supplement 2.1.10.)

The objections urged against the plenary inspiration of the Bible are the following.

There are discrepancies and errors in the history, geography, and chronology. In replying to this objection, it is to be remarked in the outset that the correction of a book by itself is different from its correction by other books. There is only apparent error in the first case; in the second there is real error. If the witness himself while upon the stand explains satisfactorily certain variations in his own testimony, this does not invalidate his testimony. But if another witness contradicts or corrects him, this awakens doubt and may invalidate. (supplement 2.1.11.)

Now it is a fact that many of the difficulties of which we are speaking do not arise from a discrepancy between the Bible and other books, but between parts of the Bible itself. For example, 2 Kings 8:26 asserts that Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he began to reign, and 2 Chron. 22:2 asserts that he was forty-two years old at that time. One of these must be corrected by the other. Again, Luke relates that one of the malefactors reviled Christ, and the other did not; Mark says that "they that were crucified with him reviled him"; and Matthew that "the thieves also which were crucified with him" insulted him. These variations can be shown to be consistent with one another by comparing Scripture with Scripture, as is done in the ordinary harmonies of the gospels. It is plain, in reference to such seeming discrepancies, that inasmuch as each sacred writer knew what had been said by his predecessors, what appears to be contradiction to a modern reader must have been none for the original author. He evidently was not aware of any real discrepancy. For had he been, he would either have referred to it and harmonized it with his own or else would have avoided it altogether by verbally conforming his own statement to that of his predecessor.

The Bible then is self-rectifying. The book furnishes the materials for its own verification. This is wholly different from rectification from human sources, such as profane literature. When Scripture explains or if need be corrects Scripture, the divine explains and verifies the divine; inspiration explains inspiration; spiritual things are compared with spiritual (1 Cor. 2:13). But if Scripture requires to be explained and corrected by human authorities, then the divine is rectified by the human. In the first case, the error is only seeming; in the last, it is real.

Another preliminary remark is that minor and unessential variations are positive proofs of truthfulness in a witness. Had the gospels been forged, there would not have been even seeming discrepancies, because pains would have been taken to avoid them. Discrepancies of a certain kind are sure proof of an absence of collusion and previous agreement between the evangelists. Variations are not necessarily contradictions. The testimony of witnesses in court who agree in the general is not rejected because of some unessential diversity. If each witness exactly and parrotlike repeated the other's testimony, he would be suspected for the very reason of exact similarity. There may be too much agreement between witnesses as well as too little.

Minor variations, consequently, are not inconsistent with plenary inspiration. As they are compatible with a true account, they are also compatible with an infallible account. In saying that the Holy Spirit inspired both Matthew and John in writing a memoir of Christ it is not meant that he guided them in such a way that each related the very same incidents in the very same manner and in the very same words—that he inspired them to produce two facsimiles. But the meaning is that he guided each in such a manner that the individuality of each writer was preserved in the choice of incidents, in their arrangement, and in the phraseology; and yet in such a manner that neither writer attributes to Christ a parable which he did not teach, a miracle which he did not work, or describes him as concerned in occurrences with which he really had nothing to do. Luke's order differs in some particulars from that of Matthew, but this does not prove that there is historical error in either of them. A biographer may know the actual and true order and yet alter it for logical or rhetorical reasons. He may, for such reasons, throw together in one group a series of parables or miracles which were spoken or wrought at different times, and still his account of the parables and miracles cannot be charged with mistake because the grouping is apparent on the face of his narrative.

Four different persons may be inspired to relate the biography of Christ and may produce four narratives that are infallible or free from error, without mentioning the very same incidents, in the very same order, in the same degree of detail, and in the same phraseology. The objector oftentimes seems to suppose that infallibility means not only freedom from error, but such an identity of statement as would amount to a facsimile. The inscription on the cross is an example: "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews" (Matthew); "The King of the Jews" (Mark); "This is the King of the Jews" (Luke); "Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews" (John). Now if infallibility means freedom from error in the statement actually made, and not the exclusion of every kind of variety in the manner of stating a fact, and so the production of a mere facsimile, these four reports are infallible. Mark is not in error when he says that the inscription was "The King of the Jews." These words were in the inscription, as the other reports show. He states the truth, though not the whole truth. Had he said in addition that these were the ipsissima verba and were all the words, he would have stated an error. (supplement 2.1.12.)

From the list therefore of alleged discrepancies and errors must be deducted all such as Scripture itself enables the reader to correct. To these belong:

1. Errors of copyists: "Azaziah was twenty-two years old when he began to reign" (2 Kings 8:26) compared with "forty-two years old when he began to reign" (2 Chron. 22:2). According to 1 Sam. 6:19 50,070 men were slain for looking into the ark; 70 men probably being the number (Speaker's Commentary in loco). Says Rawlinson ("Introduction to Chronicles" in Speaker's Commentary):

The condition of the text of Chronicles is far from satisfactory. Various readings are frequent, particularly the names of persons and places which occur in different forms not likely to have been used by the same writer. Numerous omissions are found, especially in the genealogies, where sometimes important names have dropped out; and sometimes the names which remain do not agree with the numerical statement attached to them. But the most important corruptions are in the numbers in Samuel or Kings, sometimes unreasonably large, and therefore justly suspected. Other defects are a derangement in the order of the words and the substitution of a more familiar term for one less known.

2. Errors in translation.

3. Discrepancies which greater fullness of detail in the narrative would remove: brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio, says Horace. A harmony of the four gospels that removes every difficulty without exception is probably not possible because of the sketchlike nature of the narrative. The gospels are memorabilia and were called apomnēmoneumata45 at first. A series of memoranda, though agreeing in principal features, are generally difficult to reconcile in all particulars. The conciseness and brevity of one evangelist at a particular point sometimes makes it difficult or even impossible to show his agreement in this particular with another evangelist who is fuller at this point. But no evangelist ever differs so greatly from the others as to destroy his own historical credibility or that of the others. Differences sometimes arise from silence on the part of a writer, and these are alleged to be contradictions. Mark and John give no account of the miraculous conception of Christ by the Holy Spirit, yet both of them imply it. He is a supernatural and divine person for them both. There is nothing in Mark and John that contradicts the miraculous conception. John gives no account of the institution of the Lord's Supper, but he records conversations of Christ that involve the fact (see John 6:45–58). Two inspired narratives may be each infallible and yet one contain more information than the other. Had Matthew, for example, related two of Christ's temptations in the desert and omitted the third, while Luke related all three, both accounts would have been inerrant, provided that Matthew had not positively asserted that there were only two temptations. There would be no just ground for saying that the two accounts contradicted each other. It is not necessary that an inspired person should know all things or even report all that he does know; but only that what he does report should be true. The evangelists were permitted and thus inspired to omit some incidents in Christ's life; for it is improbable that the contents of the four gospels contain all that the four evangelists knew concerning him: "There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written everyone, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written" (John 21:25).

4. Discrepancies arising from a general statement by one witness and a particular statement by another and sometimes by one and the same witness: Matthew 27:44 and Mark 15:32 say that the thieves crucified with Christ reviled him. The reference here is to a class of men. Luke 23:39–43 says that one of them reviled him and the other did not. He enters into detail, as the other evangelists do not. According to Acts 9:7 the companions of Saul heard the heavenly voice but "saw no man"; according to 22:9 they saw the light but "heard not the voice." The very same person, namely, Luke, who made the first statement made the last and was not aware of any contradiction between the two. In the first passage an indistinct sound from heaven is intended, as in Matt. 24:31 (salpingos phōnē); in the last passage articulate words are meant. The companions of Saul saw the light, but not a human form; they heard a sound, but not intelligible language.

5. Difficulties arising from an incorrect interpretation of Scripture: The explanation of the word day in Gen. 1 is a marked instance. Exegetes for many years interpreted it to mean a day of twenty-four hours, thereby bringing Genesis and geology into collision. But so far as the text is concerned, there is full right and reason to explain it as a period. This was the first interpretation, because it was the most natural one. The patristic exegetes so understood the word. Says Whewell (Inductive Sciences 1.286):

The meaning which any generation puts upon the phrases of Scripture, depends more than is at first sight supposed upon the received philosophy of the time. Hence while men imagine that they are contending for revelation, they are in fact contending for their own interpretation of revelation. At the present day, we can hardly conceive how reasonable men should have imagined that religious reflections in Scripture respecting the stability of the earth, and the beauty and use of the luminaries which revolve around it, would be interfered with by the acknowledgment that this rest and motion are apparent only.

6. Difficulties in biblical chronology arising from the fact that the sacred writer does not give a full list of all the names in a series but only a selected list: Sometimes he omits the name of the son and passes to that of the grandson or great-grandson, whom he calls a "son." In Gen. 46:16–18 three generations—sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons—are all called the "sons" of Zilpah. The genealogical tables of the Jews were drawn up artificially. That of our Lord by Matthew is an example. Fourteen names are selected in each of the three periods mentioned. But it would be a great error to infer that Matthew intended to teach that there were exactly fourteen generations, no more and no less, in each of these periods, and should calculate the time accordingly (Gardiner, Harmony 1.39). The evangelist took the catalogue of names given in the temple records and modified it to suit his purpose. This method makes it impossible for one living many centuries later to construct a biblical chronology that shall be mathematically precise down to a year or a score of years. Only an approximation was intended by the writer himself and the Holy Spirit who guided him. Sometimes in quoting, a round number is given instead of the exact. Stephen says 400 for 430 in Acts 7:6 (Speaker's Commentary in loco). In addition to this, there is the difference between the Hebrew text from which the modern versions have been made and that from which the Septuagint version was made. There is a difference of fifteen hundred years. Which is the original text? Only the original is the inspired text. But while the biblical chronology is only approximately, not mathematically accurate, it does not follow that it is erroneous. There can be no mathematically exact chronology. The scriptural chronology is free from the fatally damaging error which characterizes all the early ethnical chronology—namely, of attributing an immense antiquity to man and nations. The inspired writers bring all human history within a period of six thousand or eight thousand years. In so doing, they teach no error. This chronology is confirmed by the monuments and records of Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt ("Introduction to Kings" and "Hosea" in Speaker's Commentary; Beecher in Presbyterian Review, July 1881).

7. Difficulties arising from attributing to the sacred writer statements that are not his, but which he merely records: These make a large list and furnish some of the most specious objections to the doctrine of plenary inspiration. It is objected, for example, that the discourse of Stephen in Acts 7 contains chronological and other errors. Even if this can be made out, these errors are not imputable to Luke who reports the discourse. Stephen is indeed said to have been "full of the Holy Spirit" (6:5), and so is Barnabas (11:24). But neither of them belonged to the apostolic college of infallible teachers of the church. This is one of a multitude of statements in Scripture, both of fact and of opinion, whose authorship is not referable to the inspired writers who merely report them.

8. Variations in citations from the Old Testament in the New: These are neither errors nor contradictions, because the variation is intended by the New Testament writer. The statement of Davidson in the earlier edition of his Hermeneutics expresses the catholic opinion: "Every mode of quotation has been employed, from the exactest to the loose; from the strictly verbal method to the widest paraphrase; but in no case is violence done to the meaning of the original." In the later editions of his work, Davidson recedes from this position and agrees with the rationalist, who affirms that the meaning of an Old Testament passage is sometimes wrested in quotation by St. Paul. Immer (Hermeneutics) so asserts. That a New Testament writer quotes an Old Testament passage by way of accommodation does not disprove his inspiration. He may be divinely guided to do this, as well as to quote strictly. The passage which he cites, even if not taken in its first and strictest sense, is yet suited to teach the particular truth which he is inspired to convey. An apostle may adapt a text to his present purpose, as a preacher may, provided the text as so adapted aids him in imparting truth, not error. The same remark holds respecting verbal variation in quoting. That a New Testament writer quotes Moses ad sensum and not ad verbum does not prove that he is uninspired and fallible upon the subject which he is presenting.49 (supplement 2.1.13.)

Respecting the difficulties in Scripture that are still unsettled, it is to be noticed that there is no alleged error in doctrine, history, chronology, and physics that has been demonstrated to be such so irrefragably that it is absurd to attempt a reply. There is no list of conceded errors in Scripture. There are perplexities remaining, but while there is not an instance in which the controversy with the skeptic has resulted in establishing the fact of undoubted error in revelation, there are many instances in which it has resulted in demonstrating its truth and accuracy. The skeptical criticism to which the canon has been subjected for a period of nineteen centuries has strengthened, not weakened, the doctrine of plenary inspiration. The discoveries in Nineveh, Babylon, and Egypt, in particular, evince this.

The infallibility of Scripture is denied upon the ground that it contains a human element. The human is fallible and liable to error. If therefore the Bible has a human element in it, as is conceded, it cannot be free from all error. This is one of the principal arguments urged by those who assert the fallibility of Scripture.

This objection overlooks the fact that the human element in the Bible is so modified by the divine element with which it is blended as to differ from the merely ordinary human. The written word is indeed divine-human, like the incarnate Word. But the human element in Scripture, like the human nature in our Lord, is preserved from the defects of the common human and becomes the pure and ideal human. The human mind alone and by itself is fallible, but when inspired and moved by the Holy Spirit becomes infallible because it is no longer alone and by itself. The written word, in this respect, is analogous to the incarnate Word. The humanity of Christ, by reason of its assumption into personal union with the eternal Logos, while remaining really and truly human, is yet not the ordinary sinful humanity. It is perfectly sanctified humanity, free from sin. Similarly, when the Holy Spirit inspires a human mind, though this human mind is not freed from all sin, because inspiration is not sanctification, yet it is freed from all error on the points involved. It is no longer the fallibly human, but is infallible upon all subjects respecting which it is inspired to teach. The inspired human differs from the uninspired human, similarly as the human nature that is united with the second trinitarian person differs from the human nature that is found in an ordinary man. Christ's human soul thought and felt like a real man, but without sin. The divine-human, in this instance, is sinless. Isaiah's human mind when under inspiration thought and perceived like a real man, but without error. He was not without sin; for inspiration does not sanctify. But he was infallible; for inspiration enlightens without any mixture of untruth. (supplement 2.1.14.)

The "human element" in Scripture means that an inspired man in perceiving and conveying truth employs his own human mind, his own native language, the common figures of speech, and exhibits his own individual peculiarities, but without misconception and error upon the subject of which he treats because his human mind is actuated and guided by the divine mind. The doctrine, both ethical and evangelical, which the human mind under this superhuman influence teaches is infallible. The history which it relates is according to facts and unmixed with legend. The physics which it sets forth contains no pantheism or polytheism. The chronology which it presents has no immense and fabulous antiquity, like that of Egypt and India.

Those who contend that the Bible is fallible because it contains a human element commit the same error, in kind, with those who assert that Jesus Christ was sinful because he had a human nature in his complex person. Both alike overlook the fact that when the human is supernaturally brought into connection with the divine it is greatly modified and improved and obtains some characteristics that do not belong to it of and by itself alone. When the Logos would assume a human nature into union with himself, this nature was first prepared for the union by being perfectly sanctified by the Holy Spirit in the miraculous conception. And when the Holy Spirit selects a particular person—Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah, John, Paul—as his organ for communicating religious truth to mankind, he first makes him infallible, though he does not make him sinless. Consequently, the human element in the prophecy or the history or the dogma which this inspired person gives to the church is not a fallible element because it is blended with the divine element of inspiration and kept free from human error.

A second objection urged against the doctrine of plenary inspiration is that there is a conflict between the biblical physics and natural science. Upon this subject, the following is to be remarked:

1. The inspired writers were permitted to employ the astronomy and physics of the people and age to which they themselves belonged, because the true astronomy and physics would have been unintelligible. If the account of the miracle of Joshua had been related in the terms of the Copernican astronomy; if Joshua had said "earth stand still" instead of "sun stand still," it could not have been understood. The modern astronomer himself describes the sun as rising and setting.

2. If the inspired writers had distinctly and formally represented the popular physics of their day to be the absolute and scientific physics for all time (as they represent the gospel to be the absolute and final religion for all time), if they had endorsed and defended the Ptolemaic astronomy, this would have proved them to be fallible and uninspired. But this they never do. Except in a few places which we shall specify, the Bible does not commit itself to any system of physics. The purpose of the Scriptures, says Baronius, is "to teach man how to go to heaven, and not how the heavens go." The sacred writers employ the geocentric physics in their descriptions of natural phenomena, as Kepler and Newton do when they speak of sunrise and sunset, but they nowhere set forth this popular physics as revealed and infallible truth. Because the sacred writer (Josh. 10:12–14) describes the sun as standing still, it does not follow that he taught Ptolemaic astronomy. He had no particular astronomical system whatever in view. Kepler so understood him:

The only thing which Joshua prayed for was that the mountains might not intercept the sun from him. It had been very unreasonable at that time to think of astronomy, or of the errors of sight and sense; for if anyone had told him that the sun could not really move on the valley of Ajalon except only in reference to sense, would not Joshua have answered that his desire was that the day might be prolonged, so it were by any means whatever. (Kepler, On Rash Citations from Scripture; Stanley, Jewish Church, 1st series, 277)

Lord Bacon (Advancement of Learning, 2), alluding to "the school of Paracelsus and some others that have pretended to find the truth of all natural philosophy in Scripture," remarks that in so doing

they do not give honor to the Scriptures as they suppose, but much embase them. For to seek heaven and earth, in the word of God, whereof it is said "heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass," is to seek temporary things among eternal; and as to seek divinity in philosophy is to seek the living among the dead, so to seek philosophy in divinity is to seek the dead among the living; neither are the pots or lavers, whose place was in the outward part of the temple, to be sought in the holiest place of all, where the ark of the testimony was seated. The scope or purpose of the Spirit of God is not to express matters of nature in the Scriptures otherwise than in passage, and for application to man's capacity, and to matters moral or divine. (supplement 2.1.15.)

3. At the same time, physical science is to some extent taught by revelation and recorded by inspiration. It is erroneous to say that the Bible commits itself to no physics whatever. Certain truths and facts in regard to the material universe were revealed to some of the writers of the Bible, and these have infallibility. Most of these disclosures relating to physics are made in the beginning of the Scriptures. The Book of Genesis contains the principal of them. The Holy Spirit having revealed as much respecting the material world as seemed good to him, preparatory to his revelations respecting the spiritual world, is afterward silent. Christ himself, "by whom all things were made and without whom was not anything made that was made," makes no further disclosures than those which were granted to Moses.

The positive and distinct teachings of revelation in the opening of Genesis respecting the physical universe differ remarkably from the popular physics of the ancient world. Moses does not present a cosmogony like that of Assyria, Egypt, India, Greece, or Rome. His idea of the relation which matter sustains to God is wholly different from that of even as deep a thinker as Plato.

Among the peculiarities that distinguish the revealed physics are the following:

1. The doctrine of creation ex nihilo, in sharp contrast (a) to the eternity of matter in atheism, (b) to emanation from the deity in pantheism, and (c) to fanciful fabrications by a multitude of gods in polytheism. If the sacred writers had been left to themselves, their physics would have been tinctured with one or all of these. But there is nothing of these theories in the Bible. The doctrine of creation from nothing appears everywhere: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Gen. 1:1); "before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting you are God" (Ps. 90:2); "the Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old or ever the earth was. When there were no depths I was brought forth. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, was I brought forth: while as yet he had not made the earth, and the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens I was there, when he set a compass upon the face of the earth, when he gave the sea his decree, then I was by him as one brought up with him" (Prov. 8:23–30); "where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" (Job 38:4); "all things were made by him" (John 1:3); "God calls those things which be not, as though they were" (Rom. 4:17); "by him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible" (Col. 1:10). Mosheim, in a learned dissertation annexed to his translation of Cudworth (ed. Tegg 3.144), shows that none of the heathen philosophers taught that the world was created ex nihilo.

2. The absolute independence of God in relation to the universe: He is before all things and by him all things exist. This is in marked contrast to the common view in the ancient physics and in the skeptical schools in modern physics. In the physics of Plato and Aristotle, the deity is conditioned by the hylē, though a comparatively lofty and spiritual view of the deity is held. In the cruder physics of Lucretius, mind is wholly subject to matter. The deity is not a free and independent being, so far as the material universe is concerned. Material law rules everything, so that a supernatural act is impossible.

3. The absolute omnipotence of God in relation to the universe: Forces and laws of nature are under his entire control. They can be originated or altered or suspended by their Creator. This feature is also utterly antagonistic to the natural science of the ancient world (see Isa. 40:12, 15, 22; Ps. 104).

4. In the opening chapters of Genesis, the order of creation that is given is wholly different from that in the heathen cosmogonies: The Mosaic account begins with the origin of light. Had man been left to conjecture whether the principle of life was originated before that of light, he would have been in doubt which to place first in the order. Moses places it second. Even when the Mosaic account is adopted, there is a propensity to alter it. Coleridge (Table Talk for 30 April 1823), after remarking that the Zendavesta must have been copied in parts from the writings of Moses, says that "in the description of creation, the first chapter of Genesis is taken almost literally, except that the sun is created before the light, and then the herbs and the plants after the sun: which are precisely the two points they did not understand, and therefore altered as errors." A theorist having only the ordinary data would unquestionably have placed the sun in the heavens before he placed grass, herbs, and trees upon the earth. Moses would naturally have done the same if his information had been merely human. God revealed the fact to him as it actually was. And physical science now finds a geological period of warm-water oceans, dense mists, and high temperature extremely favorable to vegetable life and growth long before the sun was able to penetrate the thick and dark vapor with its rays. Again, a theorist might very naturally have placed the creation of marine life on the third day in connection with the gathering together of the waters and the formation of the seas and oceans. The element in which fishes and reptiles live would suggest their origination. But Moses places it on the fifth day in connection with the creation of air animals and man. The order and succession of creative acts as represented by Moses evinces its originality. It is not copied from human schemes, but often runs counter to them. But this difference and contrariety proves that the biblical account of the creation proceeded from a different source from that of Egyptian or Hindu or Greek and Roman cosmogony.

The Scriptures, then, as an inspired sum total, are to be referred to God as their author. They are not a national literature like that of Greece, Rome, or England. This view, ably presented by Ewald, makes the Bible merely the development of a national mind, in which case infallibility and authority could no more belong to it than to any other national literature. But the Bible was not produced by the Hebrew nation. It was the product of a select number chosen from time to time out of the nation and specially informed and inspired by God. The Old and New Testaments were composed by a college of prophets and apostles, not by the people of Israel. Inspiration belongs to an inspired circle of Hebrews, not to the Hebrews generally. Moses and Samuel and David and Isaiah and their inspired associates were enlightened by the Holy Spirit in order that they might impart to the people to which they belonged a knowledge that was otherwise inaccessible to that people and to all peoples. It is true that the Bible is tinged with Hebrew coloring. It is not a Latin or an English book. And this, because the inspired persons through whose instrumentality it was originated were Hebrews. But this does not prove that the truths and facts which it contains were derived merely from the operation of the common national mind.

The infallibility and authority which distinguish the Scriptures from all other books are due to divine authorship. But God employed various modes in this authorship: "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners (polymerōs kai polytropōs) spoke in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken unto us by his Son" (Heb. 1:1–2). Here, the prophets of the Old Testament and Christ, the subject of the revelation, are mentioned as the media through whom the divine mind was communicated. To these must be added the apostles of the New Testament.

The "divers manners" in which God made the communications now included in the Bible are the following:

1. By a theophany or personal appearance of God: (a) God appears in a form and directly speaks words to an individual in his waking and ordinary condition (Gen. 18:1–17; Exod. 3:4; 19:20); (b) God appears in a form and directly speaks to an individual in a dream (Gen. 28:12); (c) God appears in a form and directly speaks to an individual in an ecstatic vision (Ezek. 8:1); it is the second person of the Trinity who appears in these theophanies and speaks words to an individual; it is in this reference that he is called the Word (John 1:1), "image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15), and the "express image of the Father's person" (Heb. 1:3) (cf. Edwards, Work of Redemption 1.1; Owen, Holy Spirit in Prayer, 2; Martensen, Dogmatics §125).

2. Without any theophany or personal appearance of God: (a) by the high priest with Urim and Thummim (Exod. 28:30; 1 Sam. 28:6); (b) by the prophets under an afflatus (2 Kings 21:10; Rom. 1:2; 1 Pet. 1:11–12; 2 Pet. 1:21; 1 Cor. 2:13); and (c) by the apostles under an afflatus (1 Cor. 2:13; Gal. 1:12; Eph. 3:3; 1 Thess. 2:13).

3. By the incarnation: Christ's communications of truth, in their manner, were like the direct utterances of God in the theophanies of the Old Testament and not like those indirect communications which were made through the prophets and apostles. The Jehovah in the theophany was the same trinitarian person who is in the incarnation. The theophany was the harbinger of the incarnation. God in the form of angel, bush, or dove prepared for God in a human form. Christ differed from the prophets and apostles in that he did not speak under an afflatus but from the divine nature itself. The eternal Word is the infinite fullness of all knowledge: "That was the true Light" (John 1:9); "God gives not the Spirit by measure unto him" (3:34). As Christ wrought miracles not as an agent but as deity itself, so he spoke truth from himself and not as an inspired man receiving it from God.

SUPPLEMENTS

2.1.1 (see p. 86). Under the general form of inspiration must be placed that of Bezalel. His inventive skill and knowledge is attributed to God as its source: "I have filled him with the spirit of God to devise cunning works" (Exod. 31:3–4). But more than such knowledge, coming through the natural and acquired qualities of the mind, is involved in the particular directions which Moses received in the mount respecting the general form of the tabernacle and its furniture: "Look that you make them after their pattern which was showed you in the mount" (25:40). This direction is referred to again in Exod. 26:30; 27:8; Num. 8:4; Acts 7:44; Heb. 8:5. This ocular vision of the form and figure of the tabernacle and its utensils would fall under the head of special revelation, like the visions of Ezekiel and St. John.

2.1.2 (see p. 91). Plenary inspiration is opposed to partial inspiration. It means that all the divisions of Scripture—history, chronology, geography, and physics, as well as doctrine—were composed under the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit. The inspiration is full (plenus). Partial inspiration limits the operation of the Holy Spirit to the doctrinal part of the Bible, leaving the other parts to the possibility of error. Verbal inspiration may be associated with either view or dissociated from either. He who asserts plenary inspiration may affirm that the language is inspired or deny that it is; and so may he who asserts partial inspiration. The assertion or denial depends upon the view taken of the nature of language and its relation to thought. He who regards the relation as natural and necessary and holds that thoughts inevitably suggest words will hold that inspired thought is expressed in inspired language. He who regards the relation as arbitrary and artificial will hold that only the thought is inspired. The elder theologians universally, like Turretin and Quenstedt, held both plenary and verbal inspiration. And those who adopt the dynamic theory of language should, logically, hold both.

2.1.3 (see p. 92). Augustine teaches the inerrancy of Scripture in explicit terms: "It seems to me that most disastrous consequences must follow upon our believing that anything false is found in the sacred books; that is to say, that the men by whom the Scriptures have been given to us and committed to writing did put down in these books anything false. It is one question whether it may be at any time the duty of a good man to deceive; but it is another question whether it can have been the duty of a writer of Holy Scripture to deceive—nay, it is no question at all. For if you once admit into such a high sanctuary of authority one false statement as officially made, there will not be left a single sentence of those books which, if appearing to anyone difficult in practice or hard to believe, may not by the same fatal rule be explained away, as a statement in which, intentionally and under a sense of duty the author declared what was not true" (Letter 28.3 to Jerome, A.D. 394). "I have learned to yield such respect and honor only to the canonical books of Scripture; of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error. And if in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the manuscript is faulty or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said or I myself have failed to understand it. As to all other writings, in reading them, however great the superiority of the authors to myself in sanctity and learning, I do not accept their teaching as true on the mere ground of the opinion being held by them; but only because they have succeeded in convincing my judgment of its truth either by means of these canonical writings themselves or by arguments addressed to my reason" (Letter 82.3 to Jerome, A.D. 405). "The Manicheans maintain that the greater part of the New Testament, by which their wicked error is confuted in the most explicit terms, is not worthy of credit because they cannot pervert its language so as to support their opinions. Yet they lay the blame of the alleged mistake not upon the apostles who originally wrote the words, but upon some unknown corrupters of the manuscripts. Forasmuch, however, as they have never succeeded in proving this by earlier manuscripts or by appealing to the original language from which the Latin translations have been made, they retire from the debate vanquished by truth which is well known to all" (Letter 82.6). "If you recall to memory the opinion of our Ambrose and Cyprian on the point in question, you will find that I have had some in whose footsteps I have followed in what I have maintained. At the same time, as I said already, it is to the canonical Scriptures alone that I am bound to yield such implicit subjection as to follow their teaching without admitting the slightest suspicion that in them any mistake or any statement intended to mislead would find a place" (Letter 82.24).

2.1.4 (see p. 98). Two general answers have been given to the question respecting the origin of the four gospels. First, the oldest and most universal is that they had an apostolic origin, being composed by the four authors whose names they bear, who derived their information, two of them immediately and two of them mediately, from personal intercourse with Jesus Christ during his ministry upon earth. Two of them, Matthew and John, belonged to that company of twelve apostles who were specially called and supernaturally endowed by Christ to be the founders of the Christian church (Matt. 10:1–16; Eph. 2:20); and two of them, Mark and Luke, were secretaries under the superintendence of Peter and Paul, who also belonged to the apostolic college. That Paul was one of the Twelve is proved by Rom. 1:1; 1 Cor. 1:1; 9:1; 15:3; Gal. 1:1; and elsewhere. According to this traditional view, each of the four gospels has an individual origin like secular writings generally. As Plato was the author of the Phaedo and Thucydides of the History of the Peloponnesian War, so Matthew was the author of the first gospel, Peter-Mark of the second, Paul-Luke of the third, and John of the fourth. The second and latest answer is that the four gospels had an ecclesiastical origin. They sprang from oral traditions concerning Christ that were current in the first Christian brotherhood and were gradually collected and combined by persons whose names are unknown. This view has been invented by the rationalistic and pseudocritical schools in opposition to the historical and catholic and has done more than anything else to destroy confidence in the inspiration and infallibility of the life of Jesus Christ as recorded by the four evangelists. The unproven assumptions and innumerable hypotheses which have characterized the rationalistic schools of biblical criticism in Germany since the time of Semler are due to the substitution of the ecclesiastical origin of the gospels for the apostolic. So long as the life of Christ is referred to four known and authorized persons, who from Justin Martyr down are quoted by all the fathers as the inspired writers of the gospels, there is no room for fancy and conjecture respecting its origin. The testimony of the whole patristic literature can be cited to substantiate this view. But the moment it is surrendered and the gospels are ascribed to unknown and unauthorized persons who glean from the legends of the church, the way is opened for capricious conjectures and assumptions for which no proof can be furnished from the original manuscripts of the gospels or from the writings of the primitive fathers and the history of the first centuries of the Christian church and which have to be accepted upon the mere assertion and assurance of their inventors. Of late years, and particularly at the present moment, the rationalistic theory has worked itself considerably into the church and is adopted by some otherwise evangelical scholars. There is, indeed, a difference in spirit and intention between the rationalistic and the "evangelical" critics who adopt the theory of a legendary origin of the gospels—between Baur and Strauss, and Bleek and Weiss—but the fatal error of deriving the life of Christ from unauthorized, uninspired, and unknown sources cleaves to both alike. And the actual influence of the evangelical critic of this class is more unsettling upon the belief of the church than that of the rationalist and skeptic because error in a believer has more influence within the church than error in an unbeliever has. There will be no improvement in this evangelical class of exegetes until there is a return to the apostolic origin of the gospels. We present the following objections to the ecclesiastical origin of the gospels.

It was not the view adopted by the ancient church, which was nearest in time to the composition of the gospels. In classical philology, the consensus of the earliest ages weighs more than the hypothesis of a late critic or school respecting the authorship of the Iliad and Aeneid and the Greek and Latin literature generally. Philologists of all ages have accepted these works as the productions of the individual authors whose names have from the beginning been associated with them and not of unknown collectors and editors, because of historical traditions that are as ancient as those which ascribe the gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. An attempt to set aside the traditional testimony and to substitute for it the unproven conjecture of a modern philologist—that the Platonic writings are not the work of the individual Plato but of a circle of unknown editors of oral traditions about the teachings of Socrates—would meet with no credit. The answer would be that the ancient opinion is far more probable than the modern because coming from centuries that had better facilities than the nineteenth for determining the authorship of poems and histories composed two thousand years ago.

The ancient church, with a unanimity even greater, perhaps, than upon any of the purely dogmatic questions that arose among them, believed that the gospels had an apostolic origin, not an ecclesiastical; that they were narratives of the life of Christ prepared by those persons who "companied together all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out, beginning from the baptism of John unto that same day that he was taken up" and who were "ordained to be witnesses of his resurrection" (Acts 1:21–22). The details of the proof of this cannot be given here. It was first collected and combined by Eusebius and since the Reformation has often and again been collected and restated by a multitude of learned scholars like Lardner and Michaelis. The apostolic fathers Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen, Eusebius, Jerome, and Augustine represent the opinion of the ancient church, and they uniformly ascribe the four gospels to the four biographers whose names then as now were connected with them in the church generally. These fathers knew nothing of a canonical and commonly accepted life of Christ composed by unknown persons out of ecclesiastical legends. The apocryphal gospels, which were constructed in this way, they carefully distinguished from the canonical and rejected as not authoritative for the church. Some of the fathers, like Origen and Jerome, were trained philologists, and others, like Irenaeus and Augustine, were men of strong and clear minds and competent to weigh testimony; and none of them adopts such a theory as the one in question. If there had been such editors and authors they would have been contemporary with some of these fathers and would have been both mentioned and combated in their writings.

The testimony of Irenaeus, whose Against Heresies was written A.D. 182–88, to the apostolic authorship of the gospels is as follows: "The Lord of all gave to his apostles the power of the gospel, through whom we have known the truth, that is the doctrine of the Son of God; to whom also did the Lord declare, 'He that hears you hears me, and he that despises you despises me and him that sent me' " (preface). "We have learned from none others the plan of our salvation than from those through whom the gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public and at a later period, by the will of God, handed down in the Scriptures to be the pillar and ground of our faith. For after our Lord rose from the dead the apostles were invested with power from on high when the Holy Spirit came down upon them, were filled with his gifts, and had perfect knowledge. Matthew also issued a written gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome and laying the foundations of the church. After their decease, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the gospel preached by him. Afterward, John, the disciple of the Lord who also had leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia" (Against Heresies 3.1). The writer of this evidently knew nothing of a gradual origin of the gospels from ecclesiastical traditions and by unknown authors. And his view, declared within a century from the death of the last of the apostles, is without an exception that of all the Christian fathers and of the patristic church.

Says Thompson, "The quotations of Justin Martyr from the gospels are about 110 from Matthew, 14 from Mark, 57 from Luke, and 29 from John—in all, more than 200. They are of every class: exact verbal quotation, verbal quotation with some variation, and allusion with little or no verbal agreement. The predominant mode is somewhat inexact, as though the quotations were from memory" ("Introduction to the Gospels" in Speaker's Commentary; see §§4–15, 32, 39, 43, 46, 52–57 for a thorough refutation of the legendary origin of the gospels).

Neither do the skeptical and heretical writers of the first four centuries take any different view of the origin of the gospels. They, too, refer them to individual authors and to the same that the church referred them. Gnostics like Basilides, Valentinus, and Marcion and skeptics like Lucian, Celsus, and Porphyry agree with the Christian fathers in ascribing them to the four evangelists. The two brief quotations from John's Gospel (1:9; 2:4) contained in a fragment from Basilides (A.D. 110–20) found in the lately discovered treatise of Hippolytus have done as much as any one thing to refute the conjecture of Baur and his school that the gospels were the gradual production of two or three centuries, instead of being the immediate product of the apostolic college. Strenuous attempts have been made to invalidate this consensus of all classes of writers of the first four centuries by modern theorists, among whom the author of Supernatural Religion is as ingenious as any. The garbled treatment to which he subjects the early patristic literature, to serve the end he has in view, has been conclusively exposed by the late Bishop of Durham. That this attempt is a desperate effort on the part of this class of critics, because the testimony of the ancient church is wholly against it, is evinced by the great number of their hypotheses, the wearisome ingenuity of their conjecturing, their continual correction and contradiction of each other, and their transiency. There is no consensus among them and no permanence. They are born and die one after another. The traditional view of the origin of the gospels, on the contrary, is one and the same, harmonious and unchanging. From Eusebius down to the latest apologist there is a single strong current of opinion which is not diminished by any of the new facts arising from time to time but is increased by them.

The gospels do not wear the appearance of having been composed of legendary materials, put together by a number of collectors and editors. They read like the productions of individual authors. Each gospel has its own marked and striking characteristics, indicative of an individual mind. These have been abundantly analyzed and described by experts of all classes. A body of collectors and editors, especially if their work ran through two or three centuries, could not have so fused their materials and blended their mental peculiarities as to make such a single and homogeneous impression.

The gospels are represented by their authors as remembered by themselves, not as collected and received from others. The matter is described as anamnēsis: "His disciples remembered that Jesus had said this unto them" (John 2:22); "the Holy Spirit shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you" (14:26; cf. 12:16; 15:20; 16:4; Luke 24:6; Acts 11:16). This is not the gathering up of traditions current among the Christian brotherhood, but the careful narration of what the writers had themselves seen and heard during their three years of daily intercourse with their divine Lord, who had called and separated them from all other men to lay the foundations of his church by composing for it the inspired writings which must be its foundation and by overseeing its first organization. The Apostle Peter tersely states the case: "We have not followed cunningly devised myths, when we made known unto you the power and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty" (2 Pet. 1:16). St. Paul represents his knowledge of Jesus Christ as independent even of the other apostles and of course of the Christian brotherhood. He claims to be "an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ" (Gal. 1:1); distinctly says: "The gospel which was preached by me is not after man, for I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it but by the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Gal. 1:11–12); declares that immediately after his conversion he did not go "up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before him, but went into Arabia and returned again to Damascus" and that three years after he "went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, but other of the apostles saw he none, save James the Lord's brother" and that "fourteen years after he went up again to Jerusalem by revelation and communicated unto them which were of reputation that gospel which he had preached among the Gentiles" and that in the "conference" which he had with the other apostles they "added nothing" to his knowledge of Jesus Christ or his gospel (1:17; 2:16). And, last, he boldly puts the question, challenging all denials, "Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?" (1 Cor. 9:1). When, therefore, St. Paul speaks of a tradition which he "received" (15:3), he does not mean an ecclesiastical or even an apostolic tradition, but that body of knowledge concerning Christ and Christianity which was supernaturally "delivered" to him and "received" by him in those "visions and revelations of the Lord" to which he alludes in 2 Cor. 12:1 and which he has recorded for the church in the Gospel according to Luke and his epistles.

This "recollection" by the twelve apostles of what Christ did and said during his public ministry did not include all things, for the account would have been too voluminous for the use of the church (John 21:25). It included only (a) the events that were cardinal points in the Redeemer's life and career, namely, his conception, birth, baptism, temptation, crucifixion, etc.; (b) those miracles that were connected with these events and with the more remarkable of his discourses; and (c) the most important of his discourses. Luke 1:1 calls a gospel narrative a "digest" (diēgēsis), and this term well describes them all, as does the term Memorabilia employed by Justin Martyr. In selecting, digesting, and arranging the materials, the four evangelists who acted for the Twelve were under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit who had been promised to the apostles collectively by their divine Lord "to teach them all things and bring all things to their remembrance whatsoever he had said unto them" (John 14:26). This Spirit does not make facsimiles. Hence, one evangelist selects some discourses and miracles which another omits and arranges them differently. Miracles and parables are grouped together because of didactic resemblance (Luke 9:12–13; Matt. 13:3–4). The synoptists dwell upon Christ's existence in time, not his preexistence in eternity. John reverses this. The synoptists speak of Christ as having come and to come again at the end of the world. John does not enlarge upon these points, though mentioning them, but upon his divine nature as the Logos and as this is manifested in the profound discourses of his last days. The synoptists are full upon the Galilean ministry and John upon the Judean. The synoptists particularly describe the miraculous conception and birth of Christ from a virgin. John, though clearly affirming the incarnation of the Logos, omits the details which had been given to the church by the other evangelists some forty years previously and expends the main force of his inspiration upon that infinite fullness of being and knowledge which fitted Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life for fallen men.

It is important, in this connection, to remember that the phrase twelve apostles is employed technically in the New Testament to denote the apostolic college. In two instances, the "Twelve" are respectively thirteen and eleven. In Rev. 21:14 it is said that the foundations of the New Jerusalem had "in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb." It is not supposable that the name of St. Paul, who was second to no apostle in founding the Christian church, was omitted. Here the apostolic college is meant, which contained thirteen persons called and set apart by Christ. Again, in 1 Cor. 15:5 St. Paul calls eleven apostles the Twelve (cf. Matt. 28:16). If the Twelve may be thirteen or eleven, they may also be four. Any part of the college acting officially for the body may be denominated the Twelve. The four gospels, composed by or under the superintendence of the four to whom they have been ascribed from the very first, are thus the gospels of the Twelve and have the authority of the whole circle.

The origin of the gospels is not to be explained by the church, but the origin of the church by the gospels. The preaching of the apostles made the first Christian brotherhood; they could not, therefore, have obtained the matter of their preaching from the brotherhood. The twelve apostles on the day of Pentecost began to proclaim what they knew concerning Jesus Christ and his mediatorial work. This knowledge they did not derive from traditions that were current among the Jews and still less in the Christian church, for as yet there was none, but from their own memory, supernaturally strengthened and guided by the Holy Spirit, of what they had themselves seen and heard during the public ministry of their Lord and master. This body of knowledge was the same as that which makes the contents of the four gospels. Possibly it remained in an oral form for a time, but from the nature of the case it must soon have been committed to writing. The apostles well knew that their own lives were liable to be cut short by the persecutions and martyrdom which their Lord had foretold; that an accurate account of his ministry and teachings depended upon them as his only inspired and authorized agents; and that they had been positively commanded to give this account to the world. They began to give it orally by public preaching and private instruction of their converts and disciples and ended by putting it into a written form. This is the natural method of authorship generally. An extemporaneous preacher, if he deems his thoughts to be important and valuable, always desires to reduce them, as soon as possible, to a form that will preserve them permanently. It is in the highest degree improbable that those twelve divinely inspired and authorized apostles, upon whose accurate account of Jesus of Nazareth the founding, progress, and perpetuity of the Christian religion and the eternal salvation of vast multitudes of human beings absolutely depended, would have left that account to be prepared at haphazard by their converts, who not only had no inspiration or authority for the work but who had not "companied" with Christ in the days of his flesh and could not therefore draw from their own recollections and who as imperfectly sanctified Christians were full of ignorance and liable to misconception both of Christ and Christianity. What kind of a life of Christ would have been produced among a brotherhood like that to which St. Paul addresses his two epistles to the Corinthians?

According to the pseudocritical theory, all this is reversed. This assumes that the twelve apostles composed no careful biography of their divine Lord; made no attempt to put it into a fixed form that precluded the introduction of legendary matter; continued while they lived to tell the story of the cross in a loose oral way, in company with a multitude of other preachers from among their converts and disciples, who must inevitably have mixed fancy with truth in their narrations; and, dying, left the whole subsequent preparation of the life of Christ to unknown persons who were to make it up gradually in the lapse of perhaps a century or more out of the accretion of truth and fiction which is sure to gather around a central figure. Such a dereliction of duty and such a piece of unwisdom as this on the part of such a divinely called, inspired, and miraculously endowed company as the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ is incredible.

The narrative of the life of Christ required inspiration in order to its preparation, and inspiration was confined to the apostolic college. The ministry of Christ extended over three years and a half. It was crowded with action and suffering, with discourses and miracles. To reproduce these, each in its environment, with sufficient fullness and accuracy from memory would be difficult even for exceptional mnemonic power directly after their occurrence and still more after ten or twenty years. The last discourses of Christ, recorded by John, occurred more than fifty years previous to the date which is commonly accepted for his gospel. If during all this time they had existed only in the oral discourse of the apostle and his memory had not been helped by written memoranda, how could he have reported them with such fullness after the lapse of a half century without the aid of that Spirit who had been promised to the apostles for such a purpose? And what would have been the fate of those mysterious and fathomless utterances of the God-man in that upper chamber and down the slope to Gethsemane if their preservation had been left to the random repetition and recital of the Christian fraternities from A.D. 83 to A.D. 80 or 90?

There is, furthermore, a kind of information in the gospels which the apostles must have obtained from Christ by word of mouth before his ascension or else by revelation after it, because it was not witnessed by them. Baxter (Dying Thoughts) refers to it: "When the disciples awaked from sleep on the Mount of Transfiguration, they saw Christ, Moses, and Elijah in converse. Did they hear what they said, or did Christ afterward tell them? The latter is most probable. Doubtless, as Moses tells us how God made the world, which none could tell him but by God's telling them first, so the apostles have written many things of Christ which they neither saw nor heard but from Christ who told them by word, or inspiration. How else knew they what Satan said and did to him in his temptations in the wilderness and on the pinnacle of the temple? How knew they what his prayer was in his agony? And so in this instance also. Christ's own testimony to them, either immediately on the Mount or subsequently, was needed in order that they might know that the conversation with Moses and Elijah related to Christ's 'decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.' "

And not only the memory but the judgment of the biographers of Jesus Christ required supernatural influence and direction. The selection from the great abundance of materials in that crowded and infinite life, so that each and all of the doctrines of the Christian religion should get its basis and illustration in that life, demanded an illumination from above. That very variety and diversity in the choice and arrangement, which sometimes makes it difficult to harmonize the four narratives, is really one of the signs that a higher mind than that of any of the evangelists was seeing the end from the beginning and swaying them by its afflatus.

The apostles were inspired both as biographers of Christ and as teachers of Christianity. Not only the narrative of the life of incarnate God upon earth but the authentic and complete statement of his doctrine was entrusted to them exclusively. No authorship can be compared with this in importance. The gospels are an infallible biography, and the epistles are an infallible theology. The epistles of St. Paul are declared to be contradictory to the gospels by rationalistic theologians, who contend that true Christianity must be sought in the latter only. But the writings of the apostle to the Gentiles, which have contributed as much as the gospels themselves to the most universal form of Christianity, both practical and theoretical, are only the full systematic statement of the teachings of Christ himself. Those "visions" and "abundance of revelations" from Christ which St. Paul asserts that he received are what gave him the analytical knowledge of the cardinal truths of Christianity contained in his epistles and his apostolic authority in the church universal. Without them, Saul of Tarsus of the year 30 could no more have become Paul the apostle of the year 50 than Confucius in twenty years could have become John Calvin by natural evolution.

The relation of the New Testament epistles to the four gospels is stated by Owen with his usual discrimination (Justification by Faith, 7): "What the Lord Christ revealed afterward by his Spirit unto the apostles was no less immediately from himself than was the truth which he spoke unto them with his own mouth in the days of his flesh. The epistles of the apostles are no less Christ's sermons than that which he delivered on the mount. The things written in the epistles proceed from the same wisdom, the same grace, the same love, with the things which he spoke with his own mouth in the days of his flesh and are of the same divine veracity, authority, and efficacy. The revelation which he made to the apostles by his Spirit is no less divine and immediately from himself than what he spoke unto them on the earth.

"The writings of the evangelists do not contain the whole of all the instructions which the Lord Christ gave unto his disciples personally on the earth. 'For he was seen of them after his resurrection forty days and spoke with them of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God' (Acts 1:3). And yet nothing hereof is recorded in their writings, except only some few occasional speeches. Nor had he given before unto them a clear and distinct understanding of those things which were delivered concerning his death and resurrection in the Old Testament, as is plainly declared in Luke 24:25–27. For it was not necessary for them in that state wherein they were. Wherefore, as to the extent of divine revelations objectively, those which he granted by his Spirit unto his apostles after his ascension were beyond those which he personally taught them, so far as they are recorded in the writings of the evangelists. For he told them plainly not long before his death that he had many things to say unto them which 'then they could not bear' (John 16:12). And for the knowledge of those things he refers them to the coming of the Spirit to make revelation of them from himself: 'When he the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth; for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak; and he will show you things to come. He shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine and show it unto you' (16:13–14). And on this account he had told them before that it was expedient for them that he should go away, that the Holy Spirit might come unto them, whom he would send from the Father (16:7). Hereunto he referred the full and clear manifestation of the mysteries of the gospel.

"The writings of the evangelists are full unto their proper ends and purposes. These were to record the genealogy, conception, birth, acts, miracles, and teachings of our Savior, so far as to evince him to be the true, only promised Messiah. So he testifies who wrote the last of them: 'Many other signs truly did Jesus which are not written in this book; but these are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God' (20:30–31). Unto this end everything is recorded by them that is needful unto the engenerating and establishing of faith. Upon this confirmation all things declared in the Old Testament concerning him, all that was taught in types and sacrifices, became the object of faith in that sense wherein they were interpreted in the accomplishment. It is therefore no wonder if some things, and those of the highest importance, should be declared more fully in other writings of the New Testament than they are in those of the evangelists."

That this inspiration of the apostolic college, which fitted them to join the teachings of their Lord and master and produce a body of doctrine intended to constitute an integral and necessary part of the Christian religion, was confined to them and was not shared by the first Christian brotherhood any more than by the church today, our limits compel us to be content with a brief proof; and the burden of proof is upon him who widens the circle beyond this. To the twelve apostles alone does Christ promise the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of revelation and inspiration (John 14:26; 16:13). Them only does he command "not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father" (Acts 1:4). To them alone does he say, "I will send unto you from the Father the Spirit of truth; he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you; he shall testify of me, and you also shall bear witness because you have been with me from the beginning" (John 14:26; 15:26–27). Such promises as these have no kind of connection with the alleged unknown collectors and editors of legends concerning Christ that were accumulating in the early church during two or three centuries after his death. They apply solely to the apostolic college and to no other persons. No such promise or command was given to the "seventy" disciples who were sent out to preach the gospel and who were endowed with miraculous power. Stephen and Barnabas were "full of the Holy Spirit," but there is no evidence that they were authorized or inspired to prepare writings that were to make a part of the New Testament revelation. The twelve apostles alone, together with the prophets of the Old Testament, constituted the foundation of the Christian church, Christ their Lord being "the chief cornerstone" (Eph. 2:20). Only the names of the "twelve apostles of the Lamb" were cut into the jasper foundations of the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:14). To the twelve apostles alone did the head of the church say, "You are they which have continued with me in my temptations. And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father has appointed unto me; that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (Luke 22:28–30).

The apostolic writings, consequently, stand in a wholly different relation to the Christian church from all others, secular or religious. The church grew out of them and rests upon them. This cannot be said of any or all of the immense body of Christian literature which has sprung from them. It has been asserted that "the gospel may exist without the Bible." It may exist temporarily without the printed volume, as when a missionary, prior to reducing the heathen language to writing preaches the gospel orally; but this supposes that the written Bible is in existence and that from it the missionary has derived it. It is said, also, that the first Christian brotherhood had not the New Testament in a written form. Supposing this assertion can be proved, it certainly had the New Testament in an oral form from the lips of the apostles, and their oral account of Christ and his teaching was the same thing with their written record.

The composition of the gospels would naturally have been prior to that of the epistles because they were more needed in founding and extending the Christian church among the nations. The common assumption of the rationalistic critics that the epistles were early and the gospels late, dating even into the second century, is contrary to probability as well as to patristic testimony. From the nature of the case the narrative parts of the New Testament would have been required in evangelistic work sooner than the doctrinal. The first Christian brotherhood would have needed the synoptist account of the life of Christ more than it would St. Paul's abstruse and logical enunciation of the Christian system in his Epistle to the Romans. But the date of this latter is very generally acknowledged to be about A.D. 58. The Tübingen school, with the caprice characteristic of conjectural criticism, while asserting the spuriousness of Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, concede the genuineness of Romans, excepting the last two chapters, and also of the epistles to the Corinthians. But if within twenty-five years after the crucifixion the church required such a written statement of the doctrine of predestination as St. Paul gives in Rom. 8:28–11:36 and of the resurrection in 1 Cor. 15:12–58, it would surely require within the same period such a written narrative of Christ's birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension as the synoptists give in their gospels. If oral instruction upon predestination and the resurrection body ceased to be sufficient for the spread of Christianity, and a written statement upon these subjects became necessary, much more would this have been the case with all that historical matter connected with the life of Christ which has always been regarded in all missionary work as of prime importance. When a modern missionary prepares for the founding of a Christian church in a heathen tribe, he does not first translate the Pauline epistles into their language, but the gospels of the evangelists.

We have already referred to another reason for the probability that the first three gospels had an earlier origin than the Pauline epistles, namely, the importance of their being composed before the death of the apostles should make it impossible. So long as the Twelve were alive and actively at work in the fullness of their powers, a written record of the acts and discourses of Christ might temporarily be dispensed with. The personal presence and teaching of those whom the Savior had chosen and inspired to be the organs of his religion made a manuscript account less necessary. Moreover, for the first twenty-five years after the death of Christ the circle of believers was comparatively small, and the limits of the church confined. Oral instruction from the apostles and their assistants might perhaps suffice. But when the circle was enlarged and the apostles were departing from earth, the necessity for the written gospel became urgent and imperative.

The apostles themselves would naturally provide for this emergency in good season before the close of their career and while they were in possession of their vigor. Even if they had felt themselves to be at liberty to do so, they would not have devolved the important work of laying the literary foundation of the Christian religion and church upon well-meaning but unqualified members of the brotherhood. The manner in which Luke 1:1–4 speaks of "many" who had attempted a biography of Christ from the data furnished by "eyewitnesses and ministers of the word" but who were not members of the apostolic college, shows that it was an independent and unauthorized, though well-intentioned procedure. Had it been satisfactory in all respects, why should Luke have prepared his gospel, not from these same data but from the "perfect understanding of all things from the very first," which he says he had, and why should not these "many" narrations have acquired canonical authority and been received by the church as such?

Eusebius so understood Luke's remark respecting the "many who had taken in hand" the writing of the life of Christ: "Luke, in the beginning of his narrative premises the cause which led him to write, namely, that many others had rashly undertaken to compose a narrative of matters which he had already completely ascertained. In order to free us from their uncertain suppositions, he delivered in his own gospel the certain account of these things which he himself had fully received from his intimacy with Paul and also his intercourse with the other apostles" (Ecclesiastical History 3.24).

For these reasons it is both natural and probable that the apostolic college, by the instrumentality of a part of their number, prepared that threefold synoptic account of the life of our Lord which for nearly twenty centuries has been ascribed to Matthew, Peter-Mark, and Paul-Luke. These three were virtually a committee of the Twelve to perform that important service which the head of the church had solemnly committed to them alone. The historical data furnished by all classes of writers of the first three centuries justify the belief that the epistles of the New Testament were composed between A.D. 55 and A.D. 70. We have given the reasons for believing that the Synoptic Gospels were prior to the epistles, speaking generally. Matthew's Gospel, especially if written first in Aramean, probably had a much earlier date than that of the Epistle to the Romans, namely, A.D. 58. Eusebius carries it back to A.D. 41.

After the first three gospels had made the church familiar with the biography of its divine founder in its principal features, a fourth supplementary gospel was added by that one of the Twelve who, by natural gifts and intimate relationship to his master, was best qualified to portray those preexistent and eternal characteristics which were not so fully presented by the synoptists and to supply an account of the Judean ministry and other particulars omitted by them. This was composed near the close of the first century, after the destruction of Jerusalem and the overthrow of the Jewish economy and temple service.

Respecting the early origin of the gospels, Ewald contends for it in part, but as the work of unknown editors not of the apostolic college. "It is," he says (History of Israel 6.143), "according to the results of my inquiries, pure and simple prejudice which leads many modern scholars to the conclusion that the evangelical literature generally did not take rise until quite late. On the contrary, all closer inquiries prove that it began quite early and was developed down to the destruction of Jerusalem in the most various forms; but was then, certainly, continued for a considerable time after that event." Ewald imagines the following "documents to have been worked up into the present Synoptic Gospels":

1. the earliest gospel

2. the collected sayings (ta logia) of Papias

3. the same work reedited

4. Mark's Gospel in its first shape

5. Mark's Gospel reedited with the use of #1 and #2

6. the book of higher history

7. the present Gospel of Matthew

8. a sixth work

9. a seventh work

10. an eighth work

11. Gospel of Luke

12. Mark's Gospel in its final shape

It is evident that such a long series of compositions and recompositions, of editing and reediting of materials, must have been a process requiring far more time than between A.D. 40 and A.D. 70, and that in saying that "the evangelical literature began quite early" Ewald means that the first ecclesiastical materials so began. But the process of collecting and combining them "continued," he says, "for a considerable time after the destruction of Jerusalem." Let anyone seriously try to find any evidence in the Christian fathers of the first three centuries and in the general history of the patristic church for the existence of most of the twelve documents Ewald here speaks of and for such an origin for the four gospels, and he will know how much value to ascribe to the scheme.

2.1.5 (see p. 99). The fact that inspiration is distinct from sanctification, as is also the power to work miracles, is of the first importance, and many of the objections to the divinity of the Old Testament revelation arise from overlooking it. Graves (Pentateuch 3.2) thus remarks upon it: "Let me warn my readers against adopting a preconception very injurious with unthinking minds, namely, that all the individuals whom God used as instruments for the deliverance of his people are brought to our notice in Scripture as worthy of divine favor and fit models for our imitation in the entire tenor of their lives. They generally, indeed, possessed the important and praiseworthy qualities of zeal and intrepidity in defense of their national religion and constitution and were active and effective instruments in restoring the worship of Jehovah and thus in the main forwarding the interests of virtue and religion. Hence, God frequently assisted their efforts with miraculous aid or is said to have raised them up or been with them as judges or kings of Israel. But we must by no means conceive that this implies that the divine approbation attended all their conduct. The excesses of Samson, the rash vow of Jephthah, the ephod of Gideon which proved a snare unto him and all his house, involving them in the guilt of idolatry; the easy indulgence of Eli to his profligate sons; the manner in which the sons of Samuel himself abused their pious father's authority; the crimes even of David and Solomon: all these facts supply abundant proofs that as in the people, so in their rulers, there was a mixture of weakness and unsteadiness, an immaturity of intellect, and dullness of sentiment as to morality and religion, which, though controlled and overruled by providence, so as to prevent them from defeating the great objects of the divine dispensations which these individuals were otherwise qualified to promote, yet should always prevent us from considering them as held up by Scripture, as in every instance of their conduct favored of God and to be imitated by man. In general, indeed, this fact is expressly noted in the Scripture itself, and an immediate punishment declared to be inflicted for their offenses.

"It is said to be utterly incredible that persons raised up, aided, inspired, endowed with miraculous power at times, directed and assisted by God, should have been guilty of such crimes as David, such idolatries as Solomon, such weaknesses as Samson, such apostasies and cruelties as the Jews. To this it may be answered that it is perfectly credible that they should be raised up for a particular purpose; aided in effecting a particular object; inspired with a certain degree of knowledge; miraculously assisted at particular periods and in a special manner; and yet, that beyond this their natural character, their external temptations, their acquired habits, may have produced all the irregularities and crimes which gave so much offense. To ask why God did not prevent this is to ask why he did not exercise a greater degree of supernatural control than the purposes of providence required. On this subject I transcribe the observations of Butler (Analogy 2.3), which appear to me decisive. Having illustrated by a variety of examples that the system of nature is liable to objections a priori analogous to those advanced against the scheme of revelation; and that as the former are admitted to be inconclusive objections to natural religion, the latter are equally so with regard to revelation, he proceeds: 'By applying these general observations to a particular objection, it will be more distinctly seen how they are applicable to others of the like kind; and indeed to almost all objections against Christianity, as distinguished from objections against its evidence. It appears from Scripture that as it was not unusual in the apostolic age for persons upon their conversion to Christianity to be endued with miraculous gifts, so some of those persons exercised these gifts in a strangely irregular and disorderly manner; and this is made an objection against their being really miraculous. Now the foregoing observations quite remove this objection, how considerable soever it may appear at first sight. For consider a person endued with any of these gifts; for instance, that of tongues: it is to be supposed that he had the same power over this miraculous gift that he would have had over it had it been the effect of habit, of study, and use, as it ordinarily is; or the same power over it that he had over any other natural endowment. Consequently, he would use it in the same manner he did any other; either regularly and upon proper occasions only, or irregularly and upon improper ones, according to his sense of decency and his prudence. Where, then, is the objection? Why, if this miraculous power was indeed given to the world to propagate Christianity and attest the truth of it, we might, it seems, have expected that another sort of persons should have been chosen to be invested with it; or that these should at the same time have been endued with prudence; or that they should have been continually restrained and directed in the exercise of it, that is, that God should have miraculously interposed, if at all, in a different manner or higher degree. But from the observations made above, it is undeniably evident that we are not judges in what degrees and manners it were to have been expected he should miraculously interpose, upon the supposition of his doing it in some degree and manner. Nor in the natural course of providence are superior gifts of memory, eloquence, knowledge, and other talents of great influence conferred only on persons of prudence and decency, or such as are disposed to make the properest use of them.' Such are the observations of Butler; and they seem to show most clearly the unreasonableness of disbelieving the reality of divine interpositions in the Jewish scheme, merely from the crimes and idolatries of the nation at large or of some of the most remarkable persons employed in these interpositions."

In addition to the examples given on pp. 98–99 of inspiration without sanctification, the case of the "old prophet" mentioned in 1 Kings 13:11 is another instance: "He lied to the man of God" and yet "the word of the Lord came unto him" (v. 20), and he foretold the truth respecting the death of "the man of God."

2.1.6 (see p. 99). It is an error to represent the church as prior, either in the order of time or of nature, to the Scriptures. Though the gospels, for example, were not put into writing before the church at Pentecost was established, yet they were put into preaching before this. The preaching of the gospel on the day of Pentecost applied by the Spirit made the Christian church. The gospels in the memory and oral discourse of the apostles were the very same divine revelation that was subsequently written down by them. The oral truth is identical with the written truth. The Ten Commandments spoken by God were the same Ten Commandments that were cut by him in the tables of stone. The Mosaic narrative respecting the patriarchs was not written until the fifteenth century B.C., but the facts, both miraculous and natural and the truths relating to God and the "seed of the woman" recorded by Moses exerted their influence from Adam down, making the course of events what it was in the line of Seth and constructing the antediluvian and patriarchal churches long before the time of Moses. If revelation had not thus preceded, partly in an oral and perhaps partly in a written form, there would have been no patriarchal church. If Adam, Seth, and Noah had had no inspired teaching, but only the ethnic theology and mythological doctrine of God which Renan and others attribute to them, instead of the spiritual monotheism which the Pentateuch ascribes to them, the history of these patriarchs would have been like that of the mythological heroes generally. There would have been no "sons of God," like Seth and Enoch and their descendants, walking with God in reverence and humility, and no antediluvian church free from idolatry and worshiping a spiritual Jehovah. Moses put into an orderly form a body of truth that had been gradually revealed from heaven centuries before and had been preserved in the memory of the patriarchs and perhaps also in some written documents and added to it a body of truth partly supernaturally revealed to him and partly the result of his own observation and connected with his own mission and history.

Modern rationalism reverses the places of cause and effect when composing its own "history of Israel." Ewald, for example, represents the messianic idea and consciousness in the Israelites as producing the Old and New Testament Scriptures; whereas it was these Scriptures that produced this idea and consciousness. For if this race had been like the other contemporaneous races, destitute of a supernatural revelation through inspired prophets, it would no more have had a messianic idea and consciousness than they had. The Bible made the Hebrews a peculiar people with a peculiar idea and consciousness of redemption; and not the Hebrews the Bible a peculiar book with its peculiar doctrines of a Savior and salvation.

A similar misplacement of cause and effect is seen also in the rationalistic argument for the natural improvement of humanity by reason of its innate resources. The influence of Christianity for two thousand years in changing the moral and religious condition of the world is ignored, and the great process of Christian civilization during this time is ascribed to the workings of the human reason and will. Divine causation is thus transmuted into human causation, and human nature struts in borrowed plumes. The moral and spiritual products of the gospel are attributed to ethnic religion and the evolution of man's religious sentiment. But none of the natural religions of the globe and still less the meager religion of a deist like Hume could have originated the England and United States of today. Why did not Greece and Rome produce modern Christian civilization?

2.1.7 (see p. 99). The ethics of the Old Testament is not vitiated by such deeds as the slaying of Agag by Samuel (2 Kings 10:30) and of the Canaanites by Israel, if the circumstances of the cases are considered. Such acts as these would be obligatory and right at the present time and in all time under the same circumstances. Should almighty God command a particular person in the United States in the nineteenth century to slay a particular person, he would be morally bound to do so. If the fact of a divine command is certainly established, this constitutes an obligation; because God is the Creator from nothing of every man and has the right to dispose of the life and being of every one of his creatures as he pleases, on the principle recognized by the common law, that absolute ownership entitles to the use of the thing owned. It is on this same ground that the destruction of mankind by the deluge and Lisbon earthquakes is explained and justified. When so commanded by God, the father and mother of a false prophet are to thrust through the very son whom they have begotten (Zech. 13:3).

2.1.8 (see p. 100). Revelation may be without error so far as it professes to state truth, and yet it may not profess to state all the truth belonging to the subject. The disclosure of the future Messiah to Adam and Even in the first promise was inerrant, but the time when he would appear was not revealed to them to the degree it was to Daniel. Similarly, the fact of the second advent of Christ was infallibly revealed to the apostles, but the time when it was to occur was concealed from them (Mark 13:32). If they had gone beyond the teaching of the Holy Spirit that there is to be a second advent of the Redeemer and attempted by the action of their own mind to fix the date of it, as premillenarians do, they would have made a fallible statement. Some of the Thessalonian church did this, and St. Paul in the second epistle to this church by inspiration informs them that the second advent will not occur until after a certain apostasy; but when this will occur was not revealed to him, and he did not give a date for it. At the same time the apostles, in their ignorance of the exact date of Christ's second advent, together with their infallible knowledge that it would occur, represent it as an event that will come unexpectedly and suddenly whenever it does come and exhort believers to be prepared for it. This explains Paul's "the Lord is at hand" (Phil. 4:5) and "yet a little while and he that shall come will come and will not tarry" (Heb. 10:37); James's "the coming of the Lord draws nigh" (James 5:8); and Peter's "the end of all things is at hand" (1 Pet. 4:7).

2.1.9 (see p. 102). The homogeneity of thought and language is evinced by the fact that the vocal sound is the product of physical organs which are started into action and directed in their motion by the soul itself. Even the inarticulate tones of an animal are suited to the inward feeling by the particular play of muscles and organs of sound. The feeling of pleasure could not, so long as nature is herself, twist these muscles and organs into the emission of the sharp scream of physical agony, any more than it could light up the eye with the glare and flash of rage. Now, if this is true in the low sphere of animal existence, it is still more so in that of intellectual and moral existence. When full of earnest thought and feeling, the mind uses the body at will, and the latter naturally and spontaneously subserves the former. As thought becomes more and more earnest, and feeling more and more glowing, the body bends and yields with increasing pliancy, down to its most minute fibers and most delicate tissues, to the working of the engaged mind; the organs of speech become one with the soul and are swayed and wielded by it. The word is as it were put into the mouth by the vehement and excited spirit. And the language inevitably follows the cast of the thought. The movements of the mouth, the positions of the vocal organs and tension of the vocal chords, in the utterance of such words as shock, smite, writhe, slake, and quench are produced by the energy and character of the conceptions which these words convey, just as the prolonged relaxation of the organs and muscles in the pronunciation of soothe, breathe, dream, calm, and the like results necessarily from the nature of the thought of which they are not the mere arbitrary unmeaning signs, like the algebraic symbols plus and minus, but the spontaneous significant embodiment. Even when the word is not only not pronounced, but not even whispered, it is sought to be expressed by silent movements of the lips: "Hannah spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard: therefore Eli thought she had been drunken" (1 Sam. 1:13).

Carpenter (Physiology §542) describes the physiological connection between the conception and the word, as follows: "In the production of vocal sounds that nice adjustment of the muscles of the larynx which is requisite to the giving forth of determinate tones is ordinarily directed by the auditory sense: being learned in the first instance under the guidance of sounds actually produced; but being subsequently effected voluntarily in accordance with the mental conception (a sort of inward sensation) of the tone to be uttered, which conception cannot be formed unless the sense of hearing has previously brought similar tones to the mind. Hence it is that persons who are deaf are also mute. They may have no malformation of the organs of speech; but they are incapable of uttering distinct vocal sounds or musical tones, because they have not the guiding conception or recalled sensation of the nature of these."

It is objected that children have to learn to speak and that consequently thought does not prompt language. The objection overlooks the difference between learning one's mother tongue and a foreign language. The latter is learned artificially by a dictionary and every word is taught separately by itself, but the former is learned naturally without such helps. As the child learns to think, he learns to talk. The latter is as spontaneous as the former. He is taught to spell every word, but not to utter every word. Children grow into speaking their native language as they grow into thinking. Technical terms, it is true, have to be taught. But even in this case the child often has an untechnical word for the thing which is suggested by his idea of it.

2.1.10 (see p. 104). That inspiration affects the language as well as the thought is proved by what is said in Scripture concerning the "utterance" of revealed truth. This utterance is represented to be a special gift of the Holy Spirit: "I thank my God always on your behalf that you are enriched by him in all utterance (logō) and in all knowledge" (1 Cor. 1:4–5); "you abound in utterance (logō) and knowledge" (2 Cor. 8:7); "praying for me, that utterance (logos) may be given unto me" (Eph. 6:19); "praying that God would open unto us a door of utterance (logou)" (Col. 4:3). A free, fluent, and precise use of language is meant when St. Paul prays that he may "open his mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel." It will be observed that in these passages the term logos denotes the expression of thought, while in other places it denotes thought itself or the faculty of thought, showing that reason and "discourse of reason" are two modes or phases of the same thing.

Owen speaks thus of inward or mental prayer: "In prayer, by meditation the things and matter of prayer are to be formed in the mind into that sense and those sentences which may be expressed outwardly and vocally. So of Hannah, when she prayed in her heart 'out of the abundance of her meditation' as she said (1 Sam. 1:13), it is said that 'her lips moved, though her voice was not heard.' She not only inwardly framed the sense of her supplications into petitions, but tacitly expressed them to herself. And the obligation of any person unto prescribed forms is destructive of prayer by inward meditation; for it takes away the liberty and prevents the ability of framing petitions in the mind according to the sense which the party praying has of them" (Holy Spirit in Prayer, chap. 8).

In his treatise "Concerning the Teacher," Augustine discusses at considerable length the connection between thought and language, maintaining that it is natural not arbitrary, vital not mechanical. One of his remarks is that "we think the words themselves and thus speak internally and mentally." This will be evident if we watch the mental action both in remembering and in reflecting. When we recall and mentally repeat a passage of the Lord's Prayer, the words of the passage are merely thought or conceived of. They are not uttered either aloud or in a whisper. The language in this instance is entirely internal and disconnected from sound and the movements of the vocal organs. But the same is true in the instance of original thinking, when there is no recalling to memory. In reflecting upon a subject the mind inwardly phrases its thoughts as it goes along, without either whispering or speaking the words in which they are phrased. The thinking itself is real and clear only in proportion as this mental expression and linguistic formation of the thought takes place. If this is not done, there is no true thinking, but only a vague and mystical mental action which does not reach the truth of the subject and does not explain it in the least. Says Augustine: "When my capacities of expression prove inferior to my inner apprehensions, I grieve over the inability which my tongue has betrayed in answering to my heart. This arises from the circumstance that the intellectual apprehension diffuses itself through the mind with something like a rapid flash, whereas the utterance is slow and occupies time, so that while the latter is moving on, the intellectual apprehension has already withdrawn itself within its secret abodes. Yet in consequence of its having stamped certain impressions of itself upon the memory, these prints endure with the brief pauses of the syllables; and as the outcome of these same impressions, we form vocal signs which get the name of a certain language, either Latin, Greek, or Hebrew, or some other. And these vocal signs may themselves be the objects of thought merely, or they may also be actually uttered by the voice. On the other hand, the mental impressions themselves are neither Latin nor Greek nor Hebrew nor peculiar to any race whatsoever, but are made effective in the mind just as looks are in the body. For anger is designated by one word in Latin, by another in Greek, and by different terms in other languages, according to their several diversities. But the look of the angry man is neither peculiarly Latin nor peculiarly Greek. Thus it is that when a person says iratus sum, he is not understood by every nation, but only by the Latins; whereas, if the mood of his mind when it is kindling to wrath comes forth upon the face and affects the look, all who have the individual within their view understand that he is angry" (Catechizing the Unlearned, chap. 3).

Augustine here notices that the vocal signs, that is, the words, may be merely objects of thought and not actually spoken; that is, they may be conceived in the mind and not articulated. This is so. If one will observe the process, he will discover that before he utters a particular word he has a notion of the sound which he means to utter and forms it mentally. He phrases his thought inwardly, and this conceived sound is suggested and prompted by the thought behind it, of which it is the symbol and with which it is connatural. We think the word before we speak it out audibly. Hence the following advice is sound: "When we write in a foreign language, we should not think in English; if we do, our writings will be but translations at best. If one is to write in French, one must use oneself to think in French; and even then, for a great while, our Anglicisms will get uppermost and betray us in writing, as our native accent does in speaking when we are among them" (Lockier, Spence's Anecdotes).

Plato (Theatetus 190) describes thinking as inward speaking: "Socrates: Do you mean by thinking the same which I mean? Theatetus: What is that? Socrates: I mean the conversation which the soul holds with herself in considering anything. The soul when thinking appears to me to be just talking; asking questions of herself and answering them, affirming and denying. And when she has arrived at a decision, either gradually or by a sudden impulse, and has at last agreed and does not doubt, this is called her opinion. I say, then, that to form an opinion is to speak, and opinion is a word spoken, I mean to oneself and in silence, not aloud or to another."

2.1.11 (see p. 104). The conjectural critics make misstatements to support their alleged contradictions of Scripture. Harper (Hebraica 5.27–29) asserts that Gen. 2:5–7 "distinctly states that when the first man was created, there was no plant or shrub in existence." It states directly the contrary: "God created every plant of the field before it was in the earth and every herb of the field before it grew, and there was not a man to till the ground." That is to say, when the vegetable kingdom was created man was not in being. Harper asserts again that Gen. 2:7–8 teaches that "after man came vegetation, which man was to maintain." This can be true only upon the assumption that the "planting of a garden eastward in Eden" was the same thing as the creation of the vegetable kingdom: "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground. And the Lord God planted a garden, and there he put the man he had formed." The Bible here teaches that the planting of the garden was subsequent to the creation of man, but not that the fiat of the third day (1:11), by which the vegetable kingdom was originated, was subsequent to this. Such interpretation of Scripture as this is either dense ignorance or willful deceit.

2.1.12 (see p. 105). Genuine and truthful accounts from two or more eyewitnesses of an event must have a certain amount of variation, because no two spectators see or can see identically the same things in identically the same way. For example, two spectators of the passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites would not have exactly the same consciousness in relation to the total scene. This would make them two machines, like two stereopticons, giving identically the same pictures of the passage. Eyewitnesses are not stereopticons. One spectator sees more of one part of a scene and less of another part; and the converse. A truthful and accurate report of what each has seen consequently shows this difference and variation. But this is not a conflict or contradiction between the two accounts. This fact is clearly stated by Torrey in an article on inspiration in Bibliotheca sacra (1858): "Inspiration secured the sufficiently exact report of the facts observed. We say sufficiently exact; for, from the nature of the case, facts are relative to the observer. No two witnesses can possibly look at them from the same point of view. No two reports from different sources can possibly be exactly the same. We cannot demand in the case of sacred facts a different kind of exactness from that which belongs to the true report of all historical facts. Variation, to a certain extent, is here the test of truth. Inspiration, therefore, cannot consist in such a miraculous infusion of light as would lead each historian to report facts differently seen and differently related by different witnesses precisely alike. Each can draw up his own report only from one point of view, and minor differences are unavoidable."

2.1.13 (see p. 109). When an inspired person intentionally adapts a passage from the Old Testament as the best way of expressing the inspired thought which he is commissioned to utter, this is not the same thing as an error in quotation. A misquotation is not consciously intended, but is the result of ignorance or carelessness; but an adaptation supposes a clear understanding of the whole passage in the Old Testament and a deliberate alteration of it to meet the case in hand. Take, for illustration, our Lord's quotation of Ps. 40:10 in John 13:18: "He that eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me." He purposely omits the words in whom I trusted, not because he did not know they made a part of the Old Testament passage, but because had he verbally cited the whole of it would have expressed an untruth. He had not put his trust in Judas, for he "knew what is in man" and therefore did not "commit himself" to man, even his best friends (2:23–24). Another illustration is the quotation of Ps. 16:10 by Peter and Paul respectively. The former quotes it: "You will not leave my soul in hell, neither will you suffer your Holy One to see corruption" (Acts 2:27). The latter quotes it: "You will not suffer your Holy One to see corruption" (13:35). This is not misquotation on Paul's part. He omits a clause of the original but does not alter its meaning as he understood it; because he evidently understood that "to leave the soul in hell" was the same thing as "to suffer the Holy One to see corruption"; "hell," in his view, meaning the grave, and "soul" signifying a "dead body" (as in Num. 6:6; Lev. 5:2; 19:28; 21:1, 11; 22:4; Num. 18:11, 13; Hag. 2:13). Again, such quotations from the Old Testament (Exod. 12:46) as John 19:36 ("a bone of him shall not be broken") are not a mistaken citation for a purpose that was not intended by the Holy Spirit, the original inspirer. The slaying of the paschal lamb was a type of Christ the Lamb of God and not an ordinary historical event that had no typical meaning. When, therefore, God commanded Moses, saying, "Neither shall you break a bone thereof," he had in view both the present reference and the future. Both references were in the mind of the Holy Spirit, under whose inspiration both Moses and John wrote. The paschal lamb being a type of the Lamb of God was a prophecy of him as well as an emblem. All Scripture types or symbols are prophetic and are consequently both history and prophecy and may be cited as either. They have a double reference: one to the present and the other to the future. Moses in Exod. 12:46 gave the historical reference; John in John 19:36 gave the prophetic. Common historical events are not typical of the future and therefore have but one meaning or reference. But some of the historical events of the Old Testament dispensation, such as the exodus from Egypt (Matt. 2:15), the killing of the paschal lamb (1 Cor. 5:7; John 1:2), the lifting up of the brazen serpent (3:14), the Nazirite vow in the instances of Samson and Samuel (Matt. 2:23), the miracle of Jonah (Matt. 12:40), and other such passages, were types as well as history and therefore are cited in the New Testament in proof of the truth of the claim of Jesus Christ to be the Messiah thus typified. This explanation supposes that the old and new dispensations are one organic whole and that the former prepares for the latter and is prophetic of it.

2.1.14 (see p. 109). The divine and the human element in Scripture are erroneously supposed, by those who deny the inerrancy of the latter, to be merely in juxtaposition instead of blending and fusion. Mere juxtaposition would leave the human factor in its ordinary fallible condition, unaffected by the divine. But the mind of the prophet or apostle is represented as theopneustos (divinely inspired; 2 Tim. 3:16). This inbreathing of the human mind by the Holy Spirit lifts it above its common fallible condition and frees it from the liability to error which attaches to the uninspired human. An inspired human mind is in an extraordinary state by reason of the divine afflatus which sweeps it along (pheromenoi; 2 Pet. 1:21). If the relation of the two factors were merely that of juxtaposition, the Scriptures would be a mixture of the infallible with the fallible, as the rationalist asserts they are. But when the two are blended so as to fill the human with the divine, the product has in it no mixture of error. Both elements are alike inerrant; the divine originally in and of itself, the human derivatively because illumined by the divine. To suppose that the human side of the Bible contains error is to suppose the mind of the prophet or apostle to have been left in its common uninspired state when he contributed to its production. The attempt of rationalistic criticism to inject error into revelation by means of its human side can succeed only by assuming that the inspired human is the ordinary human and that the prophet or apostle writes like any common human author. This is merely the contiguity of the divine and human, not the interpenetration and inspiration of the human by the divine. On this theory the Bible is the product of the divine as infallible and of the human as fallible; in which case the errancy of the latter nullifies the inerrancy of the former. If the inerrant truth, which comes directly from the Holy Spirit, on passing through the fallible mind of the prophet or apostle becomes vitiated by the passage and is converted into error, the result is worthless. But if, while the Holy Spirit reveals the truth, he at the same time illumines and informs the human mind which he is employing as his human organ for communicating it to human beings and preserves it from error, thus making it the inspired-human in distinction from the common-human, then the product will be completely inerrant.

2.1.15 (see p. 111). The argument in proof of a conflict between revelation and science commonly closes with a reference to the persecution of Galileo and his "yet it does move." Whewell has narrated the facts of the case with carefulness and accuracy. He establishes the following particulars:

1. The heliocentric theory was known to the ancients. It was ascribed to Pythagoras and also to Philolaus, one of his disciples. Archimedes says that is was held by his contemporary Aristarchus. Aristotle recognized the existence of the doctrine by arguing against it. Cicero appears to make Mercury and Venus revolve about the sun. Seneca says that it deserves considering whether the earth be at rest or in motion. The Hindus had their heliocentric theorists. Aryabatta (1322 B.C.) is said to have advocated the doctrine of the earth's revolution on its axis—an opinion rejected by subsequent Hindu philosophers.

2. Copernicus (A.D. 1507) was the first to reduce the theory, held hitherto in a vague way, to a scientific form. The preface to his epoch-making treatise On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres was addressed to the pope. His views met no resistance from the church. He delayed their publication because he feared the opposition of the established school of astronomers, not of divines. The latter he seemed to consider a less formidable danger. The doctrine of the earth's motion around the sun when it was promulgated by Copernicus soon after 1500 excited no alarm among the theologians of his own time. Indeed it was received with favor by the most intelligent ecclesiastics, and lectures in support of the heliocentric doctrine were delivered in the ecclesiastical colleges.

3. The Copernican theory had both its advocates and its opponents for two centuries after its publication, but both classes were mathematicians and astronomers, not ecclesiastics as such. It was adopted by Leonardo da Vinci (1510), Giordano Bruno (1591), Kepler (1600), Galileo (1630), Leibnitz (1670), Newton (1680), and subsequently by the British and continental mathematicians generally. It was more or less opposed, or else doubted, even down to the close of the seventeenth century. Lord Bacon never gave full assent to it. His contemporary Gilbert was also in doubt concerning parts of it. Milton was not a mathematician, but reflects the opinions of his time, and he was undecided. So also was John Howe.

4. The martyrdom of Giordano Bruno and the persecution of Galileo arose not from their astronomical but their theological opinions. Bruno published a bitter satire on religion and the papal government, a work having no connection with the Copernican theory, and for this he was condemned to the flames. He had previously published his treatise De universo, in which he adopts the views of his master, Copernicus, and had been unmolested. Galileo's persecution arose from several causes:

a. The difference in the degree of toleration accorded to Copernicus and Galileo, respectively, was due to the controversies that had arisen out of the Reformation, which made the Romish church more jealous of innovations in received opinions than previously. Moreover, the discussion of religious doctrines was in the time of Galileo less freely tolerated in Italy than in other countries.

b. Galileo's own behavior appears to have provoked the interference of the ecclesiastical authorities. When arguments against the fixity of the sun and the motion of the earth were adduced from expressions in Scripture, he could not be satisfied without asserting that his opinions were conformable to Scripture as well as philosophy and was very eager in his attempts to obtain from the ecclesiastical authorities a declaration to this effect. The authorities were averse to granting this, particularly since the literal phraseology of Scripture favored the Ptolemaic theory. When compelled by Galileo's urgency to express an opinion, they decided against him and advised him to confine himself to the mathematical reasons for his system and to abstain from meddling with Scripture. Galileo's zeal soon led him again to bring the question under the notice of the Pope, and the result was a declaration of the Inquisition that the doctrine of the earth's motion appeared to be contrary to the Scriptures. Galileo was then prohibited from teaching and defending this doctrine in any manner and promised obedience to this injunction. His subsequent violation of his promise, together with his impatient and passionate temper, brought about his imprisonment. Had he maintained the Copernican theory on purely scientific grounds, as the church had enjoined upon him and as had commonly been done by its advocates, and not sought the authority of the church in its support and so had not fallen into collision with it when it refused its support, there is no reason for believing that Galileo would have met with any more persecution than his great predecessors Copernicus and Kepler. (For the full account of the subject, see Whewell's Inductive Sciences 5.1–3.)

2 Authenticity of Scripture

The authenticity of a book is its genuineness. A written composition is authentic if it is the product of the person to whom it is attributed. The Apostles' Creed lacks authenticity because it was not composed by the apostles to whom it is attributed; the Epistle to the Romans is authentic because it can be proved to be the composition of St. Paul.

The credibility of a book is distinguishable from its authenticity. Gulliver's Travels is authentic, being the genuine product of Swift, but its contents are fictitious. In the case of human products, there may be authenticity without credibility. But in the case of a divine product, the fact of authenticity establishes the fact of credibility. If it be proved that God is the author of the Bible, the Bible must be credible. Hence in reference to the Scriptures, the two topics of authenticity and credibility are inseparable and must be discussed in connection with each other.

In establishing the authenticity of the Scriptures, the natural method is first to prove the authenticity of the New Testament and then to employ the New Testament in demonstrating that of the Old.

The first evidence that the writings of the New Testament are genuine is found in the language. It is Hellenistic Greek, which was the dialect in use at the time when the books of the New Testament purport to have been written; and it is this dialect modified both by the Hebrew cast of thought and by Hebrew idioms. This accords with the personal traits and peculiarities of the evangelists and apostles. Were the New Testament written in the classical Greek of Plato, this would be sufficient to throw doubt upon its authenticity.

The second proof of the genuineness of the New Testament writings is found in the testimony of the ecclesiastical writers of the first three centuries, from Ignatius to Origen. Eusebius collected this testimony as early as 325. It is given in his History (3.25; 7.25) and in his Proof of the Gospel. A thorough investigation of this argument was made by Lardner in his Credibility of the Gospel History. The introductions of Michaelis, Güricke, Bleek, Reuss, and others present the subject in a condensed form and with reference to modern attacks.

A third argument is found in the testimony of heretical writers of the first three centuries. The gnostic theorists in particular rejected some of the fundamental doctrines of the New Testament, while they conceded the genuineness of the writings in which they were contained. This was the case with Marcion, who altered the Gospel of St. Luke to make it agree with his view. The epistles of Paul were also subjected to attack and alteration, particularly with regard to the doctrine of atonement. In these instances, the authenticity was conceded, but the authority and credibility disputed.

A fourth argument for the genuineness of the New Testament is found in the testimony of pagan skeptics of the first three centuries. Celsus, Porphyry, and Lucian do not dispute the authenticity of the New Testament, but its credibility and authority.

A fifth argument is found in the early versions of the New Testament. The Peshitta Syriac translation was made about A.D. 175, and the Old Latin (Itala) about the same time. The two Egyptian versions were made about A.D. 250; and the Ethiopic about A.D. 350. It is incredible that these translations should have been made, if the belief had not been universal in the church in the years 200 and 300 that the books of the New Testament were the genuine writings of the evangelists and apostles. The first translations of Dante's Divine Comedy were not made until four or five hundred years after its composition, but these versions will always constitute a strong proof of the genuineness of that poem.

A sixth argument is found in the doubts that were expressed by some portions of the church respecting some parts of the New Testament. The so-called Antilegomena (James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2–3 John, Hebrews, and Revelation) were critically examined in reference to their authenticity and were finally accepted by the whole church. This shows that there was more or less of a critical spirit in the primitive church, which became satisfied by investigation. As the incredulity of Thomas resulted in the strengthening of the evidence of Christ's resurrection, so the doubts of a portion of the primitive church resulted in establishing the authenticity of the Antilegomena.

The authenticity of the Old Testament, unlike that of the New, obtains little support from the testimony of those who lived near the time of its origin. Its greater antiquity prevents this. The proof is of a more indirect and general nature, the strongest part of it being the testimony of Christ and his apostles as given in the New Testament. We shall therefore consider it under the heads of credibility and canonicity. (supplement 2.2.1.)

2.2.1 (see above). It should be noticed that in having the explicit testimony of Christ to its genuineness and credibility, the Old Testament is superior to the New. He nowhere directly says of the New Testament, "Search the Scriptures, for in them you have eternal life." It is only indirectly and by implication that he said this, in commissioning and inspiring the twelve apostles to compose it. This is an equivalent for the comparative lack of historical testimony in the case of the Old Testament.

3 Credibility of Scripture

Credibility of the New Testament

The proofs of the credibility of the New Testament are the following.

First, the excellence of the doctrines taught in it. The ethics of the New Testament is greatly superior to that of Greece and Rome in elevation and spirituality. Had the early Christians possessed gunpowder, the steam engine, and the telegraph, while no others had them, their superiority in science would be undisputed. They possessed a doctrine of morals as much superior to that of paganism as modern inventions are to ancient. The moral character produced by New Testament Christianity is higher than that produced by other religions. The Vedas, the Koran, and the still better writings of Plato and Aristotle do not transform human nature as do the Scriptures. Among the doctrines of Christianity is that of endless suffering for sin. If the apostles testified falsely and the New Testament is merely their fiction, they were liable according to their own statement to eternal perdition. At the same time, great temporal suffering was the consequence of teaching the gospel. If they were deceivers, they suffered for their deception in this life and were to suffer eternally in the next. A falsehood under such circumstances is improbable; for there was nothing to gain by it, either here or hereafter. (supplement 2.3.1.)

Second, the character of Jesus Christ is an argument for the credibility of the New Testament. He is implicated in these writings in such a manner that if they are false he is an impostor. Whatever be the kind of the falsehood, it cleaves to him. If the writings were forged designedly, he was an accomplice. If they are erroneous by reason of ignorance and superstition, he shares in this ignorance and superstition. But he claims all knowledge upon the subjects discussed in the New Testament. In this lies the absurdity of Renan's portraiture of Christ. According to Renan, Christ was self-deluded and superstitious and yet the ideal man.

Third, the effects of the New Testament in the history of the world are an argument for its credibility. Christendom proves the truth of Christianity. That the best part of human history rests upon a falsehood is incredible. The rule "by their fruits you shall know them" applies here. As grapes cannot be gathered from a thorn bush, so the philosophy, the poetry, the science, the art, the morality, and the civilization of the Christian in distinction from the heathen world could not have sprung from imposture and delusion. The Koran has not produced such effects in human history, nor have the Vedas. The Koran did not make its way by its intrinsic moral force, but by the sword. If it had been left like the New Testament to its own unassisted qualities, it would not have made converts beyond the family of Mohammed. The spread of Mormonism is an illustration. There is no sword to force it into sway, and therefore it remains a small local sect in Utah. Christianity, though greatly helped, does not depend upon earthly victory at critical points in its history. Had Charles Martel been defeated by the Saracens at Poitiers, this would not have annihilated the Christian religion any more than the ten persecutions did.

Fourth, the miracles of the New Testament prove the credibility of its doctrines. This supposes that the truthfulness of the miracle has previously been established. If it be conceded that Jesus Christ really did raise Lazarus from the dead by his own power, he must have had creative power. This evinces him to have been a divine being; and if divine, of course, a being of absolute truth. If it be conceded that the apostles of Christ did really perform miracles by the power that Jesus Christ imparted to them, then they must have been in communication with him, and his credibility attaches to them as his agents and instruments. For it is incredible that miraculous power should originally belong to an evil being, though it may be delegated to him. The intuitive judgment is expressed in John 9:16, 33; 10:21: "Can a devil open the eyes of the blind? How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? If this man were not of God, he could do nothing." A miracle, therefore, if an actual historical fact, is a proof of the divine origin of the truths attested by it. (supplement 2.3.2.)

The historical reality of a miracle is proved in the same manner that any historical event is proved, namely, by human testimony. Testimony is another man's memory. We trust our own memory as we trust our own senses, because memory is a remembered sensation or consciousness. If therefore another person is honest and possesses as good senses as ourselves, there is no more reason for disbelieving his remembered sensations than for disbelieving our own. We prove that miracles were wrought by Christ and his apostles by the testimony or remembered experience of honest men, not of inspired men. This is to be carefully noticed. The resurrection of Lazarus is established by the same kind of evidence as that by which the assassination of Julius Caesar is proved, namely, that of capable and truthful eyewitnesses. Inspiration is not brought in to strengthen the testimony in one case any more than in the other. It is the common human testimony, such as is accepted in a court of law, that is relied upon to establish the historical reality of a miracle. Those Jews who saw Lazarus come forth from the tomb and those Jews who afterward saw him alive were none of them inspired men at the time when the miracle was performed. A few of them were afterward inspired, but this inspiration added nothing to their honesty or to their capacity as witnesses, for inspiration is not sanctification.

The argument from miracles is therefore no argument in a circle. We do not prove that certain miracles were performed because certain inspired men saw them, and then proceed to prove that these men were inspired because they wrought miracles. But we prove that certain miracles were performed because certain truthful men saw them, and then proceed to prove that some of the truthful men were also inspired men. And among the proofs of their inspiration is the fact that they were empowered by God to work miracles in attestation of their inspiration but not of their honesty.

That they were honest witnesses is all that the apostles claim for themselves when they give their testimony to miracles. They say nothing in this connection about their inspiration. St. Peter affirms: "We have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty" (2 Pet. 1:16). St. Paul does the same: "I delivered unto you how that Christ died for our sins and that he was buried and that he rose again the third day and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the Twelve; after that he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; after that he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also" (1 Cor. 15:3–8). Inspiration is not requisite in order to honesty. The "five hundred brethren" who saw Christ after his resurrection are to be regarded as capable and upright witnesses unless the contrary can be proved. Their veracity alone is sufficient to prove the fact that he who was crucified on Mount Calvary before thousands of spectators was alive again upon the earth.

And here it is important to observe that the number of eyewitnesses to the gospel miracles is not to be estimated by the number of Christ's personal friends and disciples. The Jewish people generally, of that generation, were spectators of those miraculous events that accompanied the public life of Jesus Christ in Palestine and virtually acknowledged that they were. The apostles in the very beginning of their preaching and ever afterward boldly assert that the Jews themselves saw these miraculous events. Peter, on the day of Pentecost, addressing the "men of Israel," describes Jesus of Nazareth as "a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God did by him among you, as you yourselves know" (Acts 2:22). This appeal to the whole mass of the Jewish population of that day for the truth of Christ's miracles was not contradicted by the Jews, as it unquestionably would have been had these miracles been the invention of a few followers of Christ. Such a bold and unblushing summoning of a whole nation as witnesses of what had never happened among them would have been immediately repelled with scorn, and its falsehood exposed; and such a contradiction and exposure of the narratives of the first preachers of Christianity by the Jews generally, on the very spot where the miracles were asserted to have taken place, would have been a fatal obstacle to their spread among other peoples. The Jews had every motive to flatly contradict the assertion of St. Peter that Christ's miracles had been wrought among the Jewish people and that the Jewish people knew that they had. But they did not contradict it. The gospel narratives continued to be repeated among the Jews and were believed more and more widely because no one of that generation denied that the events had occurred. It was reserved for a later generation to do this. Silence gives consent. The Jewish people of that generation, by making no objection to the testimony of the apostles, commit themselves to it. They involuntarily fall into the number of eyewitnesses for the gospel miracles. (supplement 2.3.3.)

The force of an indirect national testimony is very great, in some respects even greater than the direct testimony of an individual. The following remarks of Channing (Evidences of Christianity) respecting the testimony of a printed book compared with that of its author will apply here:

A book may be a better witness than its author. Suppose that a man claiming to be an eyewitness should relate to me the events of the three memorable days of July, in which the last revolution of France was achieved; suppose, next, that a book, a history of that revolution, published and received as true in France, should be sent to me from that country. Which is the best evidence of the facts? I say, the last. A single witness may deceive; but that a writer should publish in France the history of a revolution that never occurred there or which differed from the true one is in the highest degree improbable; and that such a history should obtain currency, that it should not instantly be branded as a lie, is utterly impossible. A history received by a people as true, not only gives us the testimony of the writer, but the testimony of the nation among whom it obtains credit. It is a concentration of thousands of voices, of many thousands of witnesses. I say, then, that the writings of the first teachers of Christianity, received as they were by the multitudes of Christians in their own times and in those that immediately followed, are the testimony of that multitude, as well as of the writers. Thousands nearest to the events join in bearing testimony to the Christian miracles.

While however the testimony for a miracle is the same in kind with that for any common historical event, it is stronger in degree. The world believes that Julius Caesar was assassinated by Brutus in the capitol on the testimony of those who saw the deed as recorded by contemporary and succeeding historians. The credibility of this event is not disputed. But it would be possible to dispute it. Had there been any strong motive for so doing, such as obtains with some men in the instance of the Christian religion, it would have been disputed. The evidence for the assassination of Julius Caesar is historical, not mathematical. It is assailable. And yet it goes into history and is universally accepted as a fact of history.

The evidence for the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ is yet stronger by reason of what may be denominated a monumental testimony added to the personal. Besides the testimony of those who saw these events and the record of it in the writings of the New Testament and the few references to the death of Christ by others like Josephus and Tacitus, there is the fact of an institution like the Christian church with its sacraments and worship, which greatly strengthens the testimony of the personal witnesses. If the assassination of Julius Caesar had been commemorated down to the present time by a society formed in his honor and bearing his name, the proof of his assassination would have been strengthened just so much more as this is fitted to strengthen testimony.

Now comparing the facts connected with Christianity with the facts of secular history, we see that the former have a superiority over the latter in respect to this kind of evidence. No event in secular history is so much supported by monumental evidence as is the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. It is literally the center of human history. Everything groups around it. The epoch anno domini from which everything is dated, Sunday with its public worship, the church organization, the sacrament of the supper, the feasts and fasts of Christendom—all imply the actual historical existence of Jesus Christ as he is described in the gospels and generally the truth of the New Testament.

It is here that one of the differences between Christianity and infidelity is apparent. Infidelity does not embody itself in institutions and therefore has no monumental evidence. No great organization is founded upon its principles; and it is not incorporated into the structure of human society. It not only builds no churches, but it builds no hospitals. Doing nothing toward the religious welfare of man, it does nothing even for his physical well-being. It is not found in heathenism. It lives only in the heart of Christendom; upon which it feeds as the cankerworm does upon the vegetation which it destroys.

The miracles of the New Testament being thus supported, first, by a human testimony as strong at least as that by which the best established facts of secular history are supported and, second, by an additional evidence from institutions and monuments that become a proof of the credibility of the doctrines of Christianity. These doctrines were promulgated in connection with these miracles, so that if it be true that no one but God could have wrought the miracles, no one but God could have promulgated the doctrines.

Theories Opposing New Testament Credibility

The principal theories antagonistic to the credibility of the New Testament are the following.

First, the four gospels are the productions of impostors who designedly attempted to deceive. Celsus took this position. He conceded the authenticity of the gospels but denied their credibility. They were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but with the intention to palm off miracles as real events. Reimarus, author of the Wolfenbüttel Fragments, adopted this view.

Generally speaking, this form of infidelity has not prevailed among learned skeptics. It is current mostly among the uneducated opponents of Christianity. It is the infidelity of the masses, so far as the masses have been infidel. It is true that this view appears somewhat among the English deists and French atheists of the eighteenth century. But these cannot be classed with the erudite skeptics of the nineteenth century. This is evinced by the estimate which the skepticism of this age puts upon them. Baur would not think of referring to the Philosophical Dictionary of Voltaire as authority for his own positions. Strauss would not strengthen his statements by such biblical criticism as that of Toland and Collins. This species of attack, which charges downright imposture upon the founder of Christianity and forgery and deception upon his apostles may therefore be disregarded in the general estimate of skepticism. It does not influence the educated unbeliever. It works among the illiterate. The chorus in Burns's "Jolly Beggars" gives voice to it:

A fig for those by law protected!

Liberty's a glorious feast!

Courts for cowards were erected,

Churches built to please the priest.

A second and more plausible theory antagonistic to the credibility of the New Testament is the so-called mythical theory. This does not charge intentional deception and downright imposture upon Christ and his apostles, but would account for the narratives and teachings of the gospels by the unconscious and gradual self-deception of superstitious and enthusiastic men. The biography of Christ as related by the four evangelists, according to this theory, resembles that of a Roman Catholic saint as related in the Acts of the Saints. A devout monk dies, and one hundred years after his death the traditions respecting him are recorded by some enthusiastic admirer. Some striking events in his life are magnified into wonders. Some uncommon acts of piety and devotion are exaggerated into miracles. The biographer is not a cool and calculating deceiver, but he is self-deceived. He accepts the mass of historical matter that has floated down to him and in common with his fellow monks and religionists gives it a blind credence. In this way a legend is related as actual history. There is a kernel of truth and fact in it. There was such a monk, and some of the events related actually occurred. But there is also much that is not historical and must be thrown out by the critic.

A myth differs from a legend, as a nation differs from a community. It is a national legend. This unconscious process of exaggeration which goes on in a monastery and a community of monks goes on upon a large scale in a nation and through a whole people or race. The early history of Rome illustrates this. The narratives respecting the founding of Rome, the early accounts of Romulus and Numa, the descriptions of the battles and combats between Romans and Sabines, Horatii and Curiatii, were the slow formation of ages and periods when the imagination was active and traditions were not scrutinized. There is a basis of truth, but all is not veritable history. What is true of Rome is true of Greece, of Egypt, of India. Each has its mythical age.

The same is true of Christianity according to the theory which we are considering. At its first beginning, there was an individual named Jesus Christ, of marked traits and of remarkable life. But the admiration and affection of adherents gradually exaggerated these traits and life into the supernatural, the miraculous, and finally the divine. While no deliberate and intentional deception is to be charged either upon the principal personage or his adherents any more than in the instance of the Roman myth or the medieval legend, a full historical credibility can no more be conceded to the one than to the others.

The objections to the mythical theory of the origin of Christianity are the following.

First, the character, claims, and teachings of Jesus Christ as represented in the New Testament contradict the national feeling of the Jews at the time of the advent and ever since. But it is of the nature of a myth to be in entire harmony with the spirit of the people among whom it arises. The national legends of early Rome do not offend and affront the Roman pride but favor it. The mythical stories connected with King Arthur and the knights of the Roundtable harmonize with the temper and spirit of the early Britons. The myth always aggrandizes the nation itself and the heroes of the nation because it is a spontaneous outgrowth of the national imagination.

But the character, claims, and doctrines of Jesus Christ were an utter offense to the feeling of the people among whom he was born and by whom he was crucified. He was the farthest possible from a national hero or a popular idol. The Jewish imagination, if employed in the construction of exaggerated accounts of a Jewish Messiah, would not have selected Jesus the Nazarene. The Jewish Messiah, according to the common national feeling at the time, would not have been the son of a Nazarene ("shall Christ come out of Galilee?" John 7:41, 52; 1:46) nor would he have been born in a stable.

It is therefore impossible to account for the character and teachings of Christ by the theory of mythical development. He could not have been the merely natural outgrowth of Judaism, as Judaism was in the beginning of the first century, any more than Shakespeare could have been the outgrowth of the Pictish period in English history. The utter contrariety between the New Testament and the carnal Judaism, between the spirit of Christ and that of the unspiritual people of whom he was born, is fatal to the mythical theory.

If it be said that the biography of Christ in the gospels is not a national product but that of a few individuals of a nation and therefore this answer does not apply to the case, the reply is that these few individuals were Jews and thoroughly imbued with the views and traditions of their people and of the time in which they lived. They were expecting a temporal prince in the Jewish Messiah, and it required three years of personal instruction by Christ and finally the inspiration at Pentecost to disabuse them of their error. If therefore this biography was the work of their own imagination, either in part or wholly, it would inevitably have had the national characteristics. An earthly reign and an earthly splendor would have been attributed to their hero. Neither can the person of Christ be explained as the natural product of human development generally. Says Neander (Life of Christ, 4), "the image of perfection presented in Jesus of Nazareth stands in manifold contradiction to the tendencies of humanity in that period; no one of them, no combination of them, could account for it." Says Channing (Evidences of Christianity):

Christianity was not the growth of any of the circumstances, principles, or feelings of the age in which it appeared. In truth, one of the great distinctions of the gospel is that it did not grow. The conception which filled the mind of Jesus of a religion more spiritual, generous, comprehensive, and unworldly than Judaism and destined to take its place was not of gradual formation. We detect no signs of it and no efforts to realize it before his time; nor is there an appearance of its having been gradually matured by Jesus himself. Christianity was delivered from the first in its full proportions, in a style of singular freedom and boldness, and without a mark of painful elaboration. This suddenness with which this religion broke forth, this maturity of the system at the very moment of its birth, this absence of gradual development, seems to me a strong mark of its divine original. (supplement 2.3.4.)

Second, the mythical period in the history of a people is in the beginning, not at the close of its career. No myths were originated respecting Roman demigods and heroes in the days of the empire. When a people have reached their culminating point and begin to decline, the national imagination is not active in producing exaggerated accounts of either men or events. This period is the day of criticism and skepticism, when the myths that were produced in the childhood of the nation are sifted, doubted, and rejected.

What now was the case with Judea at the time of the advent? The nation was drawing near its downfall. It was virtually a part of the Roman Empire, though the scepter had not formally and actually departed from Judah. Everything was effete. The morning freshness of the early faith was entirely dried up. The Jewish people, excepting a small minority represented by Simeon and Anna who were "waiting for the consolation of Israel," were either hypocritical formalists like the Pharisees or skeptical disbelievers like the Sadducees. More than this, they were under the iron heel of that powerful despotism which had subjugated the world, and all national hope and aspiration was dead within them. This consequently was no time for the play of that innocent and unquestioning fancy by which the myth and the ballad are invented. To suppose that a body of legendary narrative and teaching could spring up in such surroundings as these would be like supposing that the most delicate forms of poetry—those of Keats and Tennyson, for example—could have originated in a community of miners or day laborers. When Shakespeare makes Hector quote Aristotle, it is an anachronism that may be pardoned because there is no anachronism in the human nature which he depicts. But when men are represented by the theorist as inventing the most fanciful and childlike forms of literature in the wearied and skeptical old age of a nation; when the time of the Caesars is selected as the period for the upspringing of a series of myths and legends, this is an anachronism that admits no excuse or justification. Arnold speaks in amazement of Strauss's "idea of men's writing mythic history between the time of Livy and Tacitus, and of St. Paul mistaking such for realities!" (Stanley, Life of Arnold 2.51).

Third, the mythical theory supposes superstition and a propensity to believe in the wondrous and superhuman. But the Jews were never at any time specially liable to this charge. Their rigorous monotheism was unfavorable to legends and fictions respecting the deity and his operations. The Jews at the time of the advent were, on the whole, disinclined to believe in the miraculous. This is proved by the fact that they endeavored to explain away the reality of Christ's miracles by attributing them to sorcery and a league with Satan: "This fellow does not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils" (Matt. 12:24). The account of the man born blind whose sight Christ restored betrays great unwillingness to believe that this miracle had actually been performed: "Is this your son that was born blind; how then does he now see? What did he unto you? How opened he your eyes?" All that portion of the Jewish people who were Sadducean in their opinions, certainly, were not inclined to superstition but to skepticism: "Though Christ had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him" (John 12:37).

Fourth, the myth is polytheistic, not monotheistic. It describes the adventures and actions of a multitude of divinities among themselves. A single deity affords no play for the imagination. As Guizot remarks (Meditations, 1st series, 192), "the God of the Bible has no biography, neither has he any personal adventures." The Babylonian and Assyrian legends respecting the creation, fall, and deluge differ wholly from the biblical narratives of which they are the corruption by the introduction of many gods. They also differ in being sensual (see the narrative of the amours of Venus and Nimrod in Sayce-Smith's Genesis, chap. 14).

This fact must be considered in settling the important question respecting the use of earlier materials by an inspired writer. When it is acknowledged that Moses used ancient traditions and documents in composing the first part of Genesis, the vital question is whether he used sacred or secular traditions, ecclesiastical or national; whether he employed documents derived from the line of Seth and the antediluvian church—the "sons of God" as they are denominated in Gen. 6:2—or whether he worked over those which have come down in the annals of Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt. In the former case, the document is an integral part of the primitive revelation to Adam and the patriarchal church. It is monotheistic and free from error. In the latter case, the document is a part of ethnic religion and is vitiated like all ethnic religion by polytheistic and pantheistic fables.

If it be said that the national legend is sanctified and freed from its false and corrupting elements before it is incorporated by the inspired writer into his work, the reply, in the first place, is that little or nothing would be left in this case. The pantheism, polytheism, and sensuality are so thoroughly wrought into the fabric of the myth that they could be extirpated only by the annihilation of the whole thing. But, second, the antagonism between infinite holiness and human impurity is too great to permit such borrowing on the part of God. In the Old Testament, the chosen people are forbidden under the severest penalties to make any use whatever of the religious rites and ceremonies of the idolaters around them. Is it probable that the Holy Spirit would have contradicted his own teachings and employed the idolatrous myths of Babylon and Nineveh in constructing revealed religion? When the Israelites had made a golden calf and had attempted to introduce an idolatrous cultus, Moses was commanded not merely to break the idol in pieces, but to pulverize it and, mingling it with water, compel the people to drink it down (Exodus. 32:20). This vehement and abhorrent temper of the Bible toward idolatry in all its forms is utterly inconsistent with the supposition that the Holy Spirit would permit his inspired organs to depend, in the least, upon the fables of an idolatrous mythology for their instruction. The sanctification of polytheistic myths for the service of monotheism and their adoption into revelation would be like the alleged consecration of heathen statues of Jupiter and Apollo by the Romish church and their conversion into statues of St. Peter and St. Paul.

Limitations of New Testament Evidence for Credibility

But while there is this amount and kind of evidence for the credibility of the New Testament, it must be noticed that it can produce only a historical faith. It cannot produce saving faith—that higher species of confidence which accompanies salvation. The scriptural applies here: "The natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14). In accordance with this statement, Westminster Confession 1.5, after asserting that "we may be moved to a high and reverent esteem of Scripture, by the testimony of the church, the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, and the scope of the whole," adds that "our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts." Similarly, Calvin (1.8.13) remarks that "the Scriptures will be effectual to produce the saving knowledge of God only where the certainty of it shall be founded on the internal persuasion of the Holy Spirit. Those persons betray great folly who wish it to be demonstrated to infidels that the Scriptures is the word of God, which cannot be known without faith."

The reasons for this are the following.

First, Christianity is moral and historical truth, not axiomatic and mathematical. Consequently, it demands the assent of faith, in distinction from assent to a self-evident proposition. Its founder said, "Repent and believe the gospel" (Mark 1:15). This command implies that Christianity can be disbelieved. Axiomatic or self-evident truth cannot be disbelieved, and neither can it be believed. Geometry is not a matter of faith. It is improper to say that we believe that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts or that two and two make four. We perceive these truths, but do not believe them. They do not rest upon testimony and are not accepted on account of testimony, like historical truth.

The assent of faith is therefore different from the assent of intuitive perception. We do not intuitively perceive that Christ rose from the dead or that the Logos was born of a virgin, any more than we do that Alfred the Great was king of England. Intuitive knowledge is direct perception either by the senses or by the reason. There is no possibility of doubting a sensuous impression or a mathematical intuition. Each is self-evident. But for moral and historical truth, there is not the certainty of self-evidence but of probability, more or less. Consequently, in history and in morals there are degrees of certainty, but not in mathematics. In moral and historical truth there is a sufficient reason for believing the truth or the fact, though not such a reason as renders disbelief impossible. We may therefore doubt or disbelieve in regard to religious truth, because, while it is credible by reason of testimony and other kinds of evidence, it is not self-evident like an axiom or a physical sensation. Faith is reasonable, in case there are more reasons for believing than for disbelieving. It is not necessary that there should be such evidence as overwhelms all objections and renders them absurd, in order to evince the rationality of faith. The preponderance of evidence justifies the act of faith and condemns that of unbelief. A criminal is sentenced to death in a court of justice not by reason of an absolute demonstration that admits no possibility of the contrary but by reason of a preponderance of testimony which conceivably might be erroneous. (supplement 2.3.5.)

Second, the belief of Christian truth is voluntary; the perception of mathematical truth is involuntary. A man "yields" to the evidence for moral and historical truth, which implies the possibility of resisting it. His will, that is, his inclination, coincides with his understanding in the act of faith. But a man assents to geometrical axioms without any concurrence of his will. This is the act of the understanding alone. He does not yield to evidence but is compelled by it. "Moral truths," says Ullmann (Sinlessness of Christ, 50), "do not force themselves upon our mind with the indubitable certainty of sensible objects or with the incontrovertible evidence of mathematical demonstration. Their reception into the mind is to some extent an act of self-determination." Faith therefore has a voluntary element in it. The doctrine of divine existence, for example, is not assented to passively and necessarily from the mere mechanic structure of the intellect as the axioms of geometry are, but actively and freely. Axioms are not matters of proof; divine existence is. The individual believes in the existence of God partly because he inclines to believe it and not because it is absolutely impossible to resist the evidence for it and to sophisticate himself into the disbelief of it. He yields to the proof presented for the doctrine. "A man's creed," says Byron (Life 4.225), "does not depend upon himself; who can say, 'I will believe this, that, or the other?' " But this depends upon the amount of evidence in the case. A man cannot say that he will believe Gulliver's travels, because there is not sufficient probability in them and testimony for them. But he can say that he will believe Caesar's Commentaries, because there is sufficient probability and testimony to warrant this decision. At the same time, there is not such a degree of evidence for the truth of Caesar's Commentaries as to render disbelief impossible. (supplement 2.3.6.)

Third, faith being an act of the understanding and will in synthesis carries the whole man with it. Scientific assent being an act of the understanding alone carries only a part of the man—the head not the heart. Faith consequently affects the character, but axiomatic intuition does not.

Fourth, the belief of Christian truth is an object of command; assent to self-evident truth is not. This follows from the fact that faith is voluntary. A command is addressed to the will. "Believe in Christ" is consistent language. "Believe Euclid" is absurd.

Sixth, the belief of Christian truth is rewardable, perception of mathematical truth is not. The former is a virtue, the latter is not.

For these reasons it is impossible to produce by the historical and moral arguments for the truth of Christianity such a conviction as is absolutely invincible to the objections of the skeptic and, what are still stronger, the doubts of a worldly and unspiritual mind. The human heart and will has such a part in the act of belief in the gospel that any opposing bias in it is fatal to absolute mental certainty.

Saving faith is far more certain than historical faith. It is a mental certainty that is produced by the Holy Spirit. He originates an immediate consciousness of the truth of the gospel; and wherever there is immediate consciousness, doubt is impossible. Saving faith implies a personal feeling of the truth in the heart; historical faith is destitute of feeling. This makes the former far more certain than the latter and less assailable by counterarguments. When an inward sense and experience of the truth of the gospel is produced by the divine Spirit in a human soul, as great a mental certainty exists in this instance as in those of sensuous impressions and axiomatic intuitions. A dying believer who is immediately conscious of the love of God in Christ Jesus is as certain in regard to this great fact as he is that fire pains the flesh or that two and two make four. When St. Paul said, "I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:38–39), he was as sure of this as he was of his own existence. And this, because of his immediate consciousness of the redeeming love of God. (supplement 2.3.7.)

Credibility of the Old Testament

The credibility of the Old Testament is proved by the New Testament. Christ and his apostles refer to it as divine revelation: "Search the Scriptures" (John 5:39); "beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. All things written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the psalms must be fulfilled concerning me" (Luke 24:27, 44); "the gospel of God was promised afore by his prophets in the holy Scriptures" (Rom. 1:2); "all Scripture is given by inspiration" (2 Tim. 3:16); "holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit" (1 Pet. 1:10–12; 2 Pet. 1:20–21).

By the term Scriptures is meant that collection of writings known as the sacred books of the Jewish people. They are referred to by Christ and his apostles as the source of information respecting religion generally and all matters pertaining to human salvation. It is clear that they received them as authoritative and a final arbiter upon such subjects. But this implies the credibility of the Old Testament, if Christ and his apostles were not deceived in their opinion and judgment. That the reference of Christ, when he speaks of "the Scriptures," is to a well-known collection of inspired writings is proved by Matt. 5:17: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not come to destroy but to fulfill." Our Lord here affirms that his mission will realize all that is promised in the Old Testament revelation. This revelation he denotes by the common Jewish designation: the Law and the Prophets, that is, the Pentateuch and Prophetico-Historical books. There is the same reference to a collection of writings in John 7:19, 22–23: "Did not Moses give you the law? Moses gave unto you circumcision. A man receives circumcision on the Sabbath day, that the law of Moses should not be broken." Here, the ceremonial law is more particularly meant, and this law is not taught in one book or part of a book of the Pentateuch but runs through Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. In Luke 2:22 Mary was purified "according to the law of Moses." Moses is represented by Christ as "giving" law in these books. In like manner, in Acts 15:21 the word Moses denotes a collection of sacred writings: "Moses of old time has in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day." The Jewish congregations at the time of the advent had the Pentateuch read to them by a reader, as both Jewish and Christian congregations now do, believing that it had the inspired authority of Moses. In the walk to Emmaus with two of his disciples, Christ "beginning at Moses and all the prophets, expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:27). He recapitulated and explained all the messianic promises in the Old Testament, beginning with the "seed of the woman" in Genesis and ending with the "messenger of the covenant" in Malachi. In Mark 12:26 Christ refers to the miracle of the burning bush as an actual fact and denominates the Book of Exodus in which the account of it is contained "the book of Moses." In Matt. 22:32 Christ quotes Jehovah's words to Moses from the burning bush—making a second reference to this miracle. If it is objected that Christ only accommodated himself to the ancient Jewish opinion that Moses was the author of the Book of Exodus without believing or endorsing it, the reply is that Christ is arguing to prove to the Sadducees that the resurrection of the body is a fact. Now unless Jehovah actually spoke to Moses those words and Moses recorded them without error, so that Christ is correct in calling Exodus "the book of Moses," his argument fails. If Jehovah did not speak the words, Christ did not prove his point. If Jehovah did speak them but Moses did not record them, he did not prove it; because he refers to Moses as his authority. And if Jehovah did speak the words, but Moses did not record them infallibly, Christ's argument though having some validity would not be marked by infallibility. There may have been some error in the narrative. That Christ refers to a well-known collection is also proved by his quotation from the Old Testament in Matt. 23:35: "Upon you shall come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias" (Barachias is wanting in Luke 11:51 and in אc). Here our Lord mentions an event in Genesis and in 2 Chron. 24:21–22—the first and almost last book of the canon. Between these two events, he speaks of a series of righteous men whose blood was spilled in martyrdom. Who can doubt that he had in mind the entire Old Testament, which contains the account of these martyred servants of Jehovah. The reference to the murder of Zacharias proves that Chronicles belonged to the canon in Christ's opinion. To say that Christ accommodates himself to the popular view without adopting it himself contradicts the connection of thought. Christ is denouncing the judgment of God upon the Pharisees. This would be an idle threat if there were no such series of martyrs and no true account of them in the Old Testament Scriptures. In Matt. 12:39 Christ cites the miracle of Jonah as one which he believed and his hearers also. But Jonah is comparatively a secondary book in the canon, and the miracle therein recorded more difficult to believe than most. According to Luke 4:17–21 Christ read and commented on Isa. 61, which shows that he did not regard the later prophecies of Isaiah as spurious.

That the writings now received by the Christian church as the Old Testament canon were the same as those to which Christ and his apostles refer is proved by the following arguments.

They are the same which were translated into Greek by the Septuagint in 285 B.C. For two centuries preceding the advent, they had been received among the Greek-speaking Jews as the inspired volume. As a collection, they were called "the Scriptures." It is objected that in the Septuagint version the apocryphal books are found. But they did not belong to it originally. That they constituted no part of the work of the Septuagint is proved by the fact that Philo and Josephus do not mention them, though Sirach, one of the best of the apocryphal authors, wrote about 237 B.C.; that Christ and his apostles never quote from them, though they quote from the Septuagint version of the Old Testament; that some of the manuscripts of the Septuagint version do not contain the Apocrypha; and that the Palestinian Jews never regarded the Apocrypha as canonical. The explanation of their presence in some of the manuscripts of the Septuagint is that the Egyptian or Alexandrian Jews had a higher estimate of the Apocrypha than the Palestine Jews had and appended them to the Old Testament canon, as at a later date some other apocryphal writings were appended to manuscripts of the New Testament, and obtained some currency in the patristic church. The Sinaitic manuscript, for example, contains the Epistle of Barnabas and the Pastor of Hermas; and the Alexandrine contains the first Epistle of Clement of Rome and the apocryphal psalms attributed to Solomon. Such noncanonical compositions were occasionally copied into the manuscripts of the New Testament by those who highly esteemed them and in this manner gradually acquired some authority. By being appended to the canonical Old Testament, the authority of the Apocrypha increased until finally it was declared to be canonical and inspired by the Council of Trent. The patristic church, however, was not agreed concerning the Apocrypha and never adopted it in general council. Jerome (Prologus Galeatus) asserts that Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus do not belong to the canon. Melito, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzus, Athanasius, Amphilochius, and Epiphanius give lists that do not include the Apocrypha. Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus placed it on an equality with the canonical books. The North African fathers took this view in the Council of Hippo (393) and the third Council of Carthage (397). These small local councils included the Apocrypha "among the canonical Scriptures." That the Apocrypha is canonical and inspired is a Romish, not a patristic decision. The Reformers rejected the Romish opinion and denied the inspiration and canonicity of the Apocrypha.

They are the same writings which Philo and Josephus recognize as the Jewish Scriptures. Philo, in the first century, cites from most of them. Josephus (Against Apion 1.8) states that the Jews have "twenty-two books which are justly believed to be divine." It is not certain from the passage, which is somewhat obscure, whether Josephus included Chronicles, Ezra, Esther, and Nehemiah, though the probability is that he did. That these are contained in the Septuagint version would favor this.

The Targums go to show that the books received by the Christian church as the Old Testament canon are the same as those received by the Jews. That of Onkelos is a Aramaic translation of the Pentateuch. Onkelos wrote about the time of the advent; others say in the second century. The Targum of Jonathan contains in Aramaic Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Minor Prophets.

The Samaritan Pentateuch supports the genuineness of the Old Testament Pentateuch. The Samaritans received it from the ten tribes in all probability, and the ten tribes must have had it at the time of their separation from Judah in 975 B.C. for they would not subsequently have taken it from Judah.

The great care with which their sacred books were preserved by the Jews makes it highly probable that the books now received as the inspired canon of the Old Testament are the same as those received by Ezra and Nehemiah. The Pentateuch by the command of Moses was deposited with the sacred things of the tabernacle, and provision was made for its public reading from time to time (Deut. 31:9–13). Josephus in his autobiography says that Titus gave him leave to take from the "ruins of his country" what he wished. He asked for the liberty of his own family and the "holy books" of his people, which were granted to him. (supplement 2.3.8.)

The language evinces the genuineness of the received Old Testament canon. All the varieties of Hebrew, from the early forms in Genesis and Job to the later in the Aramaic of Ezra and Nehemiah, are found in it.

The discoveries in the antiquities of Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt support the genuineness of the Old Testament.

The agreement in doctrine between the Old Testament and the New supports the genuineness of the former. The same general system of justice and mercy, law and gospel, sin and redemption, runs through both: "It is mere assertion that fatherhood, filiation, and brotherhood are unrevealed in the Old covenant; the truth is that they are revealed, but in a limited and mediate typical manner. It is an equally vague assertion to affirm that the God of the New Testament is not an indignant God, full of majesty and power, and that Christians ceased in every sense to be servants" (Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine §63).

The relation of the earlier and later revelations to each other is well stated in the remark of Augustine that "the New Testament is latent in the Old, and the Old Testament is patent in the New." The correctness of this is seen by considering the implications of the New Testament. Take as one example out of a multitude the words of Christ in Matt. 10:15: "Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city." This affirmation of Christ implies (a) the historical credibility of Genesis; (b) the truth of the miracles connected with the lives of Abraham and Lot and thus of the supernaturalism of the Pentateuch generally; (c) the responsibility and guilt of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah and thus of all the primeval populations; (d) the fact of a day of final doom, when they shall be judged according to the deeds done in the body; and (e) the omniscience and divine authority of Jesus Christ, whereby he is entitled to make such an affirmation.

SUPPLEMENTS

2.3.1 (see p. 127). "The apostles," says Grotius (Christian Religion 2.5), "affirmed that they were eyewitnesses of the resurrection of Christ, in that they saw him alive after his death and burial. They also appealed to five hundred witnesses who saw Jesus after he was risen from the dead. It is not usual for those who speak untruths to appeal to so many witnesses. Nor is it possible that so many men should agree to bear a false testimony. Furthermore, nobody has a bad design for nothing. The apostles and first Christians could not hope for any honor from saying what was not true, because all the honors were in the power of the heathen and Jews, by whom they were reproached and contemptuously treated; nor for riches, because, on the contrary, the Christian profession was often attended with the loss of property, if they had any; and, if it had been otherwise, yet the gospel could not have been preached by them but with the neglect of temporal good. Nor could any other advantages of this life move them to speak a falsity, since the preaching of the gospel exposed them to hardship, to hunger and thirst, to stripes and imprisonment. Fame among themselves only was not so great that for the sake thereof men of upright intentions, whose lives and tenets were free from pride and ambition, should undergo such evils. Nor had they any ground to hope that their religion, which was so repugnant to human nature, which is wholly bent upon its own interests and to the civil authority which everywhere governed, could make any progress but from a divine promise. Furthermore, they could not expect that fame of any kind would be lasting, because (God on purpose concealing his intention from them) they expected that the end of the whole world was just at hand, as is plain from their own writings and those of the Christians that came after them. It remains, therefore, that they must be said to have uttered a falsity for the sake of defending their religion, which, if we consider aright, cannot be said of them; for either they believed from their heart that their religion was true or they did not believe it. If they had not believed it to have been the best, they never would have chosen it from all other religions, which were more safe and honorable. Nay, though they believed it to be true, they would not have made a public profession of it unless they had believed such a profession necessary; especially when they could easily foresee, and they quickly learned it by experience, that such a profession would be attended with the death of a vast number; and they would have been guilty of the highest wickedness to have given such occasion without a just reason. If they believed their religion to be true, nay, the best of all, and ought to be professed by all men, and this, too, after the death of their master, it was impossible that this belief should continue if their master's promise concerning his resurrection had failed. The failure of Christ to rise from the dead would have been sufficient to any man in his senses to have overthrown the belief in him which he had previously entertained. Again, all religion, particularly the Christian, forbids lying and false witness, especially in divine matters; they could not therefore be moved to tell a lie out of love to religion, especially such a religion. To all which may be added, that they were men who led such a life as was not blamed by their adversaries and who had no objection made against them but only their simplicity, the nature of which is the most distant that can be from forging a lie. And there was none of them who did not undergo even the most grievous things for testifying to the resurrection of Jesus. Many of them endured the most torturing death for this testimony. Now to suppose it possible that any man in his wits could undergo such things for an opinion he had entertained in his mind, and also for an opinion which is known to be a falsehood; that not only one man, but very many, should be willing to endure such hardships for an untruth, is a thing plainly incredible. What has been said of these first twelve apostles may also be said of Paul, who openly declared that he saw Christ reigning in heaven. He had the best learning of the Jews and great prospect of honor if he had trod the paths of his fathers. But, on the contrary, he thought it his duty, for this profession, to expose himself to the hatred of his relations and to undergo difficult and dangerous voyages all over the world and at last to suffer an ignominious death." Says Stillingfleet (Letter to a Deist): "If the Christian religion had been a mere design of the apostles to make themselves heads of a new sect, what had this been but to have set the cunning of twelve or thirteen men, of no weight or reputation, against the wisdom and power of the whole world? If their aim were only at reputation, they might have thought of thousands of ways more probable and more advantageous than this. Consider the case of St. Paul. Is it reasonable to believe that when he was in favor with the Sanhedrin and was likely to advance himself by his opposition to Christianity and had a fair prospect of ease and honor together, he should quit all this to join such an inconsiderable and hated company as the Christians were, only to be one of the heads of a very small number of men and to purchase it at so dear a rate as the loss of his friends and interest and running on continual troubles and persecutions to the hazard of his life? It is hardly possible to suppose that a man who is self-deceived and means honestly would do this. But it is impossible to suppose that a man in his senses, knowing and believing all this to be a cheat, should own and embrace it, to so great disadvantage to himself, when he could not make himself so considerable by it as he might have been without it. Men must love cheating the world at a strange rate that will let go fair hopes of preferment and ease and lead a life of perpetual trouble and expose themselves to the utmost hazard only for the sake of deluding others."

2.3.2 (see p. 128). A miracle may be performed by an evil being and for an evil purpose, but only as he is permitted and enabled to do so by God. In this case the miracle is a trial of faith. Our Lord so teaches: "There shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect" (Matt. 24:24). St. Paul says that the coming of Antichrist will be "with all power and signs and lying wonders" (2 Thess. 2:9). In such cases as these the nature of the doctrine taught in connection with the miracle must be considered. When the accompanying doctrine is contrary to that which has been previously verified by miracles, it is an evidence that the miracle is that of Satan, not of God. Such, perhaps, were some of the miracles of the Egyptian magicians. The directions which God gave by Moses to the Israelites for their conduct in such instances illustrate this: "If there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams and give you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spoke unto you, Let us go after other gods, which you have not known, and let us serve them, you shall not hearken unto the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God proves you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. And that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death; because he has spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God which brought you out of the land of Egypt" (Deut. 13:1–5). When miracles have already been wrought to prove the doctrines of monotheism, then either real or pretended miracles that are subsequently wrought to prove the contradictory doctrines of polytheism are not to be believed. For it is not supposable that God would himself employ his miraculous power, first to establish certain truths and then to overthrow them, first to give authority to Moses and then to the Egyptian priests. This is self-contradiction. But it is not self-contradiction when God first demonstrates the truth of his own revelations to Moses by the wonderful miracles of the exodus and the desert and then permits and empowers Satan and his agents to work some wonders, not in order to prove their truthfulness, but to strengthen by trial the faith of his people. Such a trial of faith Stillingfleet compares to "a father that has used great care to make his son understand true coin, and who may afterward suffer false to be laid before him, to try whether he will be cheated or not." Even supposing, as this comparison does, that the satanic miracles are spurious, they are genuine for the spectator. "It is plain," continues Stillingfleet, "that, after the true doctrine is confirmed by divine miracles, God may give the devil or false prophets power to work, if not real miracles, yet such as men cannot judge by the things themselves whether they be real or not; and this God may do for the trial of men's faith, whether they will forsake the true doctrine confirmed by greater miracles, for the sake of such doctrines which are contrary thereto, and are confirmed by false prophets by signs and wonders" (Origines sacrae 2.10).

Belief in the reality of a miracle is not necessarily accompanied with faith in the author of it. There is no infallible connection between miracles and faith. They do not operate mechanically. The Pharisees saw with their own eyes our Lord's miracles, as his disciples did, and had no more doubt than they had that they were genuine, but they did not, like them, believe that he was the Messiah and Savior of mankind: "Though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him" (John 12:37). The dislike of the doctrine associated with the miracle and the consequent unwillingness to believe it, while yet the reality of the miracle is not denied, shows that miracle and doctrine are reciprocally related and cannot be torn apart. For this reason the performance of a miracle was sometimes conditioned by Christ upon faith in him: "Believe you that I am able to do this?" (Matt. 9:28; Mark 9:23; and elsewhere); "he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief" (Matt. 13:58).

Consequently, a miracle in and of itself merely is not the sole test of a genuine revelation from God. The nature and contents of the revelation must also be considered in connection with it. The chief use and necessity of a miracle is to establish the truth of a new religion; in other words, of revealed religion. No miracles are wrought to prove the doctrines of natural religion. These are written in the human constitution and are as old as the human conscience. No supernatural proof has been given of this class of truths. But whenever, under the old economy or the new, God introduced new doctrines by inspiring prophets and apostles to communicate them, he corroborated them by miracles. When God commanded Moses to reveal to the Hebrews the new religion of the Old Covenant and the theocracy and to conduct them from Egypt to Canaan and give them the levitical institute, he assisted the faith of both Moses himself and the Israelites by a great series of wonderful miracles. And, subsequently, whenever in the history of Israel Jehovah introduced a new prophecy or a new movement connected with the progress of the messianic kingdom, the miracle often came in to strengthen faith. When Jesus Christ appeared and taught the New Covenant, the final from of revelation, this new revelation was associated with and corroborated by that stupendous series of miracles which began with the miraculous conception and ended with the ascension. Speaking generally, miracles accompany the truths of revealed religion because this is something new, uncommon, and not issuing from the mind of man, and miracles do not accompany natural religion, because this is something old, common, and issuing from the human constitution. The words of Moses to Jehovah and the answer of Jehovah to him are the key to miracles: "Moses answered and said, They will not believe me nor hearken to my voice; for they will say, The Lord has not appeared unto you. And the Lord said unto him, What is that in your hand? And he said, A rod. And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it. And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth your hand and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand, That they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared unto you" (Exod. 4:1–5). The personal appearance of almighty God "talking with Moses" and giving him a long series of instructions and directions was something wholly new, not provided for in the ordinary course of nature and wholly distinct from all the natural religions that were upon the earth. This made it necessary to accompany it with supernatural acts, some of them immediately from God himself and some of them mediately from Moses that demonstrated to the observers that God had verily broken through the veil of eternity and had come down into time and upon earth and was "speaking with Moses face to face as a man speaks unto his friend" (33:11).

2.3.3 (see p. 129). The people of Egypt in the time of Moses, like the Jews in the time of Christ, were also involuntary witnesses to the truth of the Mosaic miracles. The attempt of the magicians to imitate the plagues wrought by the hand of Moses was a testimony that the latter had wrought something wonderful. The failure to imitate all of them, while imitating some, was a testimony to the superhuman nature of the Mosaic acts. And, last, the fact that the Egyptian people were not persuaded into a disbelief of the Mosaic miracles by the jugglery and counterfeited miracles of the magicians testifies to the reality of the former. The proof of this latter fact is given by St. Paul, who repeats and thereby endorses a tradition reported in the Aramaic paraphrase, to the effect that the futile attempts of Jannes and Jambres to imitate Moses were well understood by the Egyptian people: "Their folly was manifest unto all men" (2 Tim. 3:8).

2.3.4 (see p. 133). The originality of Christ is described by Ullmann (Sinlessness of Jesus 4.1–2): "As a teacher, Jesus was fully as eminent as the unparalleled greatness and dignity of his person would have led us to expect. His teaching was not like that of one who had worked out and carefully put together a system of thought in his own mind and then brings it before others to be considered and weighed. He taught as one who was in authority, with the certain consciousness that he was in possession of the truth, and with the full conviction that he could meet with no contradiction; all of which must be regarded as boundless and intolerable presumption and arrogance, did there not underlie it a direct and infallible intuition of that which is eternally true, and if he had not a perfect right to say of himself, 'We speak that which we do know and testify that we have seen.' The exaltedness of his spirit manifested itself also in the inimitable form of his discourses. Here there is not a trace of anything which had been gained by study, and yet all is in the purest sense and in the highest degree perfect. Exuberant fullness and unfathomable depth of meaning are combined with perfect simplicity and intelligibleness of form; strength and loveliness, a world-comprehensive breadth and intuitional directness, the most exalted ideality and the most lively imagery, are united and blended in a way which has never been equaled. He is at once the profoundest and the most popular teacher the world has ever seen."

2.3.5 (see p. 136). "Doubting," says Butler (Analogy 2.6), "necessarily implies some degree of evidence for that of which we doubt. For no person would be in doubt concerning the truth of a number of facts which should accidentally come into his thoughts and of which he had no evidence at all. And though, in the case of an even chance and where consequently we were in doubt, we should in common language say that we had no evidence at all for either side, yet that situation of things which renders it an even chance, and no more, that such an event will happen, renders this case equivalent to those in which there is such evidence on both sides of a question as leaves the mind in doubt concerning the truth. In all these cases, there is indeed no more evidence on the one side than on the other, yet there is much more evidence for either side than for the truth of a number of facts which come into one's thoughts at random. And thus in all these cases doubt as much presupposes evidence, lower degrees of evidence, as belief presupposes higher, and certainly higher still. Anyone who will a little attend to the nature of evidence will easily carry this observation on and see that between no evidence at all, and that degree of it which affords ground of doubt, there are as many intermediate degrees as there are between that degree which is the ground of doubt and that which is the ground of demonstration. And though we have not faculties to distinguish these degrees of evidence with any sort of exactness, yet in proportion as they are discerned they ought to influence our practice. For it is as real an imperfection in the moral character not to be influenced in practice by a lower degree of evidence when discerned, as it is in the understanding not to discern it. And as in all subjects which men consider, they discern the lower as well as the higher degrees of evidence, proportionably to their capacity of understanding, so in practical subjects they are influenced in practice by the lower as well as the higher degrees of it proportionably to their fairness and honesty. And as in proportion to defects in the understanding men are inapt to see lower degrees of evidence and are in danger of overlooking evidence when it is not glaring and are easily imposed upon in such cases, so in proportion to the corruption of the heart, they seem capable of satisfying themselves with having no regard in practice to evidence acknowledged to be real, even if it be not overwhelming. From these things it must follow that doubting concerning religion implies such a degree of evidence for it as, joined with the consideration of its importance, unquestionably lays men under the obligations before mentioned to have a dutiful regard to it in all their behavior. If then it is certain that doubting implies a degree of evidence for that of which we doubt, it follows that this degree of evidence as really lays us under obligations as demonstrative evidence does." Locke (Understanding 4.15) presents a similar view of probability: "Probability is likeliness to be true; the very notation of the word signifying such a proposition for which there be arguments or proofs to make it to be received for true. The entertainment which the mind gives this sort of propositions is called belief, assent, or opinion; which is the receiving any proposition for true upon proofs that are found to persuade us to receive it as true without absolutely certain knowledge that it is so. And herein lies the difference between probability and certainty, belief and knowledge; that in the instance of certainty and knowledge there is self-evident intuition, while in the instance of probability and belief there is not. The grounds of probability are two: (1) conformity with our own knowledge, observation, and experience, and (2) the testimony of others vouching their own observation and experience. Probability, consequently, is wanting in that intuitive and mathematical certainty which accompanies an axiom or any self-evident proposition and which admits no degrees of evidence. Probable propositions, consequently, are capable of a great variety of degrees of proof; from that which is so slight as to be almost equivalent to no proof at all, to that which is so strong as to be almost equivalent to demonstration."

There is nothing obligatory or of the nature of duty in assent to intuitive truth; but there is in assent to probable truth. We never say that a person is bound to assent that the whole is equal to the sum of the parts; but we do say that he is bound to yield assent to a proposition for which the evidence for is greater than the evidence against. A jury is always charged by the judge to give the verdict in favor of the party whose proof is the stronger. They have no moral right to decide contrary to the preponderance of testimony and the probability of truth founded upon it. Respecting the force of probable evidence, the remark of Anselm is true: "We should not reject the smallest reason, if it be not opposed by a greater. Any reason, however small, if not overbalanced by a greater, has the force of necessity" (Cur deus 1.10). The assent of intuitive perception depends upon something intrinsic to the thing perceived: that of belief upon something extraneous to it. A person assents to the proposition that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles from what he perceives to be the nature of a triangle and what is necessarily implied in it; but he assents to the proposition that the second person of the Trinity became incarnate, not from the intrinsic nature of this person and its corollaries, but from the testimony of God in revelation. There is nothing in the nature of the second trinitarian person, any more than in that of the first and third, that necessarily implies his incarnation.

2.3.6 (see p. 137). There is a certain amount of evidence that makes for theism and a certain amount that makes for atheism. If a person is inclined to theism because of his reverence and love for a personal God, this will concur with the probative force of the argument for the being of God and increase its effect. If he is disinclined or averse to it because of his nonreverence and dislike of a personal God, this will concur with the probative force of the argument against divine existence and strengthen it. In this way a man's inclination or disinclination toward a doctrine constitutes a voluntary element in his belief or disbelief of it. Bias for or against a doctrine presupposes that the doctrine is known and affects the judgment respecting the arguments and testimony for it, either favorably or unfavorably.

Paley (sermon on John 7:17) shows the influence of the vicious bias of the will upon the judgment of the understanding concerning the truth of Christianity, in the following manner. His general position is that "virtue produces belief, and vice unbelief." Remarking upon the latter part of the proposition, he says: "A great many persons before they proceed upon an act of known transgression expressly raise the question in their own mind whether religion be true or not, in order to get at the object of their desire; for the real matter to be determined is whether they shall have their desire gratified. In order to get at the vicious pleasure in some cases, or in other cases the worldly gain upon which they have set their hearts, they choose to decide and do in fact decide with themselves that the truths of religion are not so certain as to be a reason for them to give up the pleasure which lies before them or the advantage which is now in their power to compass and may never be again. This conclusion does actually take place and must almost necessarily take place in the minds of men of bad morals. And now remark the effect which it has upon their thoughts and belief afterward. When they come at another time to reflect upon religion, they reflect upon it as something which they had before adjudged to be unfounded and too uncertain to be acted upon or to be depended upon; and reflections accompanied with this adverse and unfavorable impression naturally lead to infidelity. Herein, therefore, is seen the fallacious operation of sin: first in the unfair circumstances under which men form their opinions and conclusions concerning religion; and, second, in the effect which conclusions and doubts so formed have upon their judgment afterward. First, what is the situation of the mind in which they decide concerning religion? And what may be expected from such a situation? Some magnified and alluring pleasure has stirred their desires and passions. It cannot be enjoyed without sin. Here is religion denouncing and forbidding it one side, there is opportunity drawing and pulling on the other. With this drag and bias upon their thoughts, they pronounce and decide concerning the most important of all subjects and of all questions. If they should decide for the truth and reality of religion, they must sit down disappointed of a gratification upon which they had set their hearts and of using an opportunity which may never come again. Nevertheless they must decide one way or the other. And this process, namely, a similar deliberation and a similar conclusion, is renewed and repeated as often as occasions of sin offer. The effect, at length, is a settled persuasion against religion; for what is it in persons who proceed in this manner that rests and dwells upon their memories? What is it which gives to their judgment its turn and bias? It is these occasional decisions often repeated; which decisions have the same power and influence over the man's after-opinion as if they had been made ever so impartially or ever so correctly, whereas in fact they are made under circumstances which exclude, almost, the possibility of their being made with fairness and with sufficient inquiry. Men decide under the power and influence of sinful temptation; but, having decided, the decision is afterward remembered by them and grows into a settled and habitual opinion, as much as if they had proceeded in it without any bias or prejudice whatever.

"But not only do vicious and sinful men expressly raise the question to themselves, when they desire to gratify their desires, whether religion be true or not, there is also a tacit and unconscious rejection of religion which has the same effect. Whenever a man deliberately ventures upon an action which he knows that religion prohibits, he tacitly rejects religion. There may not pass in this thoughts every step which we have described nor may he come consciously to the conclusion; but he acts upon the conclusion, he practically adopts it. And the doing so will alienate his mind from religion as surely, almost, as if he had formally argued himself into an opinion of its untruth. The effect of sin is necessarily and highly and in all cases adverse to the production and existence of religious faith. Real difficulties are doubled and trebled when they fall in with vicious propensities, and imaginary difficulties are readily started. Vice is wonderfully acute in discovering reasons on its own side. This may be said of all kinds of vice; but I think it more particularly holds good of what are called licentious vices; for sins of debauchery have a tendency which other species of sin have not so directly to unsettle and weaken the powers of the understanding as well as to render the heart thoroughly corrupt. In a mind so wholly depraved, the impression of any argument relating to a moral or religious subject is faint and slight and transitory. To a vitiated palate, no meat has its right taste; with a debauched mind no reasoning has its proper influence."

2.3.7 (see p. 137). There is a false and true subjectivity. The former is not corroborated by the object; the latter is. When the "Christian consciousness" is appealed to as the ultimate authority, separate and apart from divine revelation, this is an instance of spurious subjectivity. Those who would substitute ecclesiastical tradition and the voice of the church as the ultimate authority, instead of the Scriptures, as well as those who would substitute Christian consciousness for them, commit the same error in common. The Romanist and the mystic are really upon one and the same ground and are equally exposed to that corruption of Christianity to which every human mind is liable which does not place the Scriptures above both the church and the Christian consciousness, whenever the question concerns an ultimate and infallible source of religious knowledge. Consciousness cannot be an absolute and final norm for consciousness; subjectivity cannot preserve subjectivity from error. It is the object of consciousness by which the process of consciousness is to be judged and determined. As that subjective process of faith and feeling which is seen in the Christian experience or consciousness owes its very existence to the objective written revelation, so it must be kept free from deviation and error by the same. To leave the process to test itself and protect itself from corruption is dangerous. An individual Christian who should trust to the feelings of even a regenerate heart and the inward light of even a renewed mind, without continually comparing this subjective feeling and knowledge with the written word, would be the victim of a deteriorating and, in the end, an irrational and fanatical experience. A genuine Christian subjectivity is the simple perception and acknowledgment of the truth as it actually reads in the Scriptures. For illustration, the truth that "the Word was God" may be accepted and believed in the Arian sense that "God" is here used in the secondary signification instead of the primary. This is not the natural meaning of the term, taking the context into consideration, and has not been the common interpretation. This is not supporting and corroborating the person's belief and experience by the real and true object, but by a false modification of it. Multitudes in the present generation are putting false interpretations upon Scripture and adopting a false view of God and man, of sin and salvation, and then appeal to their personal experience under the name of "Christian consciousness" in corroboration of their views. Neither the Scriptures nor the creeds derived from them are the final authority for this class, but the feeling of the hour.

2.3.8 (see p. 140). Josephus (Against Apion 1.8) testifies to the fixedness of the Old Testament writings, so far as the Jews themselves were concerned: "During so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add anything to them or take anything from them or to make any change in them. It is natural to all Jews from their very birth to esteem those books to contain divine doctrines. It is not so with the writings of the Greeks, who take their histories to be written agreeably to the inclinations of their writers and who sometimes write histories without having been in the places or near them in time."

4 Canonicity of Scripture

The canonicity of a book means its right to a place in the collection of inspired writings; and this depends upon the fact that it was composed by an inspired man or under his direction. Canonicity therefore is very closely connected with authenticity or genuineness, and some would merge the two in one. If a book can be proved to be the genuine product of an evangelist or apostle, its canonicity is established. To determine whether a writing is canonical is to determine whether it originated in the very restricted circle of inspired men or in the very wide circle of ordinary men. In answering this question, some assistance is derivable from the nature and contents of the book. Absurdities and contradictions, sentiments contradicting the general tenor of revelation, and such like characteristics would prove that a writing is not the product of inspiration and therefore not canonical. Thus the subject of canonicity is also connected with that of credibility. At the same time, the question "who is the author of the book?" is different from the question "is the book credible?" The former is the question when the subject of canonicity is under consideration. (supplement 2.4.1.)

The inquiry respecting the authorship of a writing is mainly historical. To answer it requires the testimony of competent witnesses; and the most competent witnesses are those who lived nearest to the time of the alleged origin and authorship. An eyewitness is the best of all; and the next best witness is one who personally heard the testimony of an eyewitness and so onward. Consequently, the primitive church was better situated and qualified than the modern church to testify respecting the authorship of the Gospel of Luke or the Epistle to the Hebrews. More documentary evidence and more personal testimony was accessible in the year 150 than in the year 1880. An Alexandrine scholiast had more data for determining which of the Platonic dialogues are spurious than any English or German philologist of the nineteenth century. The generation of Americans who lived at the close of the eighteenth century had the best advantages of any for settling the question whether Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Independence.

The canonicity of a New Testament book is not settled by the authority of the primitive church, but by its testimony. This mistake is frequently made. Coleridge (Table Talk for 31 March 1832) says that "we receive the books ascribed to John and Paul as their books on the judgment of men for whom no miraculous discernment is pretended. Shall we give less credence to John and Paul themselves?" The modern church does not receive John's Gospel and Paul's epistles as canonical on the "judgment" or decision of the primitive church respecting their contents, but on their testimony respecting their authorship. Testimony respecting canonicity is like testimony respecting miracles. The modern church does not rest its belief in the miracles of our Lord on the authority of the first Christians, but on their witness and attestation. The authority of the first Christians is no higher than that of any other Christians, but their testimony is.

Neither is the question of canonicity to be answered by the witness of the Holy Spirit in the consciousness of the believer. The teaching of the Holy Spirit, while indispensable to a saving apprehension of biblical truth, is not available at this point. The Holy Spirit teaches in regard to the credibility, but not in regard to the canonicity of Scripture. The divine Spirit does not inform any man or class of men who composed the Book of Chronicles or of Joshua. This would be a revelation. God leaves the question respecting the authorship of particular books of Scripture to be settled chiefly by historical testimony and, from the nature of the case, by the testimony of the earlier generations rather than of the later. The testimony to canonicity is in this respect like the testimony to miracles. It is not inspired and infallible, yet it is credible and trustworthy. We go to the very first Christians of all for the testimony to miracles; and we must go to the earlier Christians for the testimony to canonicity. And as the proof of miracles does not depend upon the inward teaching of the Holy Spirit, neither does the proof of canonicity. Says Dorner (Christian Doctrine 1.96), "The testimony of the Holy Spirit gives us no immediate information upon the historic origin of a book, upon its source in an inspired author. It gives us no divine certainty as to the manner and method in which certain writings have arisen in history, so that it will not do to found the certainty of the truth and divinity of Scripture upon the experience of the divinity of the form of Holy Writ." With this Westminster Confession 1.5 agrees in mentioning as the first of the grounds of a historical faith in the Scriptures "the testimony of the church" and making no mention at all of the inward teaching of the Spirit in this connection. (supplement 2.4.2.)

The history of the Old Testament canon is obscure, owing to its very great antiquity. Were it a modern product, as some assert, there would be more historical data.

That the books of Moses were collected and arranged before Samaria was taken and the ten tribes carried away by the Assyrians under Shalmaneser (724 B.C.) is evident from the fact that the Samaritans must have obtained the Pentateuch from the ten tribes and not from Judah. It is an ancient and widely current tradition that Ezra made a complete collection of the books of the Old Testament, excepting those few which were written after his time. Another tradition, mentioned in 2 Maccabees 2:13, attributes this work to Nehemiah. There is no good reason for doubting that upon the return from the Babylonian captivity in 536 B.C. the revision and collection of the Old Testament canon occurred. The same divine guidance that brought about, in such an extraordinary manner, the return of the Jews from their long captivity in the heart of Asia and the restoration of the temple under Ezra and Nehemiah would naturally have led to their re-collecting and reediting those sacred writings upon which the future prosperity of the chosen people and the accomplishment of its mission in the world absolutely depended. The Jewish church and state without the Old Testament canon would have been a mere empty shell. In this redaction of the Old Testament canon, the ancient and previously acknowledged writings of Moses and the earlier prophets were of course accepted and to these were now added the later writings up to the time of Ezra. The division was threefold: Law, Prophets, and Hagiographa. It is the same that Christ refers to in Luke 24:44 under the names of law, prophets, and psalms. By "psalms" is meant the whole third part or the Hagiographa. Josephus mentions this threefold division in Against Apion 1.8. According to him the Law contains the "five books of Moses": Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; the Prophets comprise "thirteen books": Joshua, Judges with Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah with Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, the twelve Minor Prophets, Job, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther; the Hagiographa includes "four books of Hymns to God": Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Solomon's Song. In all there are twenty-two books, equaling the number of the Hebrew alphabet. The Jews, following the Talmud, now make the Hagiographa to consist of eleven books: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, and Chronicles.

Prideaux (Connection 1.5) is of the opinion that Malachi was written after the time of Ezra. He argues also that the genealogy of the sons of Zerubbabel in 1 Chron. 3:19–24, being carried down to the time of Alexander the Great in 330 B.C., shows that this part of Chronicles was composed subsequently to Ezra. "It is most likely," he says, "that the two books of Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Malachi were added to the canon in the time of Simon the Just (300 B.C.) and that it was not until then that the Jewish canon of the Old Testament was fully completed. And indeed these last books seem very much to want the exactness and skill of Ezra in their publication, they falling far short of the correctness which is in the other parts of the Hebrew Scriptures." Rawlinson, on the contrary (Bible Commentary on 1 Chron. 3:19–24), regards Prideaux as in error in reckoning thirty years to a generation. He himself reckons only twenty, and attributes Chronicles to Ezra, who died about 435 B.C. "The style of Chronicles is like that of Ezra," says Rawlinson. Movers makes the date of Chronicles 400 B.C. Ewald assigns it to the time of Alexander the Great in 336–323 B.C.

More is known respecting the manner of collecting the New Testament canon, though no particular action in defining and authorizing it can be mentioned until after it has become universally received in the church.

The four gospels were from the first distinguished from the apocryphal. Justin Martyr (163) speaks of "memoirs" of Christ as the work of the evangelists. Irenaeus (202) cites passages from all four of the canonical gospels (Against Heresies 2.22–24 and elsewhere). Clement of Alexandria (220) and Tertullian (220) do the same. Tatian (175) and Ammonius (200) arrange harmonies of the four gospels. Theodoret (457) found two hundred copies of Tatian's harmony in the Syrian churches, which he took away from them, because of some heresies it contained. Neander supposes that Tatian mixed some things with the canonical gospels from the apocryphal. Origen (250) writes a commentary on Matthew and John. These facts prove the general acceptance of four and only four gospels as canonical prior to A.D. 250. Yet there was no action of the church in a general council to this effect.

The epistles began to be collected very early. Ignatius (To the Philadelphians 5) speaks of the gospels and the "apostolic writings." The epistles were sent from church to church, either in the original or in transcript. In Col. 4:16 Paul bids the Colossians to send the letter he had written to them to the Laodiceans and to obtain his letter to the Laodiceans and read it themselves. This custom would naturally lead to the multiplication of copies and the collection by different churches of the whole series of epistles as fast as they were written.

The Vatican and Sinaitic manuscripts belong to the middle of the fourth century (A.D. 325–50). The former contains all the gospels and all the epistles excepting Philemon, Titus, 1–2 Timothy, Hebrews, and the Apocalypse. The latter contains all the gospels, all the epistles, and the Apocalypse. The Muratorian canon (A.D. 150) is much older than these oldest uncials and mentions as accepted and canonical the four gospels, Acts, thirteen epistles of Paul, two and perhaps three epistles of John, Jude, and Revelation. And it is possible that 1 Peter is mentioned (provided tantum is an error for unam). It mentions Hebrews, perhaps, under the title "Epistle to the Alexandrians." It omits 2 Peter and James.

The New Testament canon was thus collected and adopted by the custom and usage of the churches, not by conciliar action. The formation of a creed was similar; for the Apostles' Creed was not the work of the apostolic college. The first conciliar action respecting the canon was by the Council of Laodicea in 360. This adopted the whole New Testament, excepting Revelation. It was a small council and of little influence. The councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) established similar catalogues. But there was little call for this conciliar action, because the practice and usage of the church had already anticipated it.

SUPPLEMENTS

2.4.1 (see p. 146). In the instances in which a sacred book has no author mentioned, like the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is claimed to be apostolic, that is, composed under the superintendence of one of the Twelve. Respecting Hebrews, Calvin remarks: "I include it without controversy among the apostolic epistles. As to the question 'who composed it?' we need not trouble ourselves" ("Hebrews" in Speaker's Commentary, 3). Calvin here means that it is of no consequence who was the amanuensis, provided an inspired apostle superintended him. Bleek (Introduction to the New Testament 2.115) remarks that it was "within the circle of Paul's friends and fellow laborers that those early writers who did not admit Paul to be the author looked for the authorship, their choice lying between Luke, Clemens Romanus, and Barnabas, to whom in modern times have been added Sylvanus and Apollos." The oriental church, from the first, ascribed this epistle to St. Paul. The churches of Jerusalem, Palestine, Syria, Asia, and Alexandria concurred in this opinion. The Council of Nicea received it as a genuine work of St. Paul. "Doubts existed in the Western church," says Wordsworth, "concerning the Pauline origin of the Epistle to the Hebrews, yet we have little evidence of distinct assertions that it was not written by the apostle. The doubts of the West were dispersed in the fourth century and did not appear again until they were revived by one or two persons in the sixteenth." Wordsworth, in his introduction to the Epistle to the Hebrews, gives a full account of the opinions that have prevailed respecting the authorship.

Respecting the anonymous books of the Old Testament, their inspiration depends upon their having been composed within the circle of the inspired prophets, the "holy men of God who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." And the principal voucher for this is Ezra, who revised and settled the Old Testament canon on the return from the exile: "That one final author and collector edited the books of Judges, Ruth, Samuel, and Kings, as a whole, is to be concluded from many signs." Ezra stands in reference to the final form of the Old Testament, as a whole, very much as Moses does in reference to the Pentateuch. He was an inspired prophet who examined the questions of authorship and inspiration and whose judgment was accepted by the Jewish church first and by the Christian afterward as final and authoritative.

2.4.2 (see p. 147). Belief in the canonicity of a sacred book being the result of historical evidence comes under the head of historical faith, not of saving faith. This explains the phraseology of some of the Reformed creeds. Belgic Confession 5 declares: "We receive all these books, and these only, as holy and canonical, for the regulation, foundation, and confirmation of our faith; believing, without any doubt, all things contained in them, not so much because the church receives and approves them as such, but more especially because the Holy Spirit witnesses in our hearts that they are from God, whereof they carry the evidence in themselves." Gallican Confession 4 says: "We know these books to be canonical, and the sure rule of our faith, not so much by the common accord and consent of the church as by the testimony and inward illumination of the Holy Spirit, which enables us to distinguish them from other ecclesiastical books, upon which, however useful, we cannot found any articles of faith." In these statements two forms and grades of belief of divine revelation are mentioned, one weaker and one stronger. The first results from "the common accord and consent of the church"; the second from "the inward illumination of the Holy Spirit." The former is "not so much" as the latter; but it is something valid and of probative force, so far as it extends. Saving faith itself depends upon it in some measure, because it presupposes historical faith. The Holy Spirit does not work saving faith in an infidel. The infidelity must first be removed. The historical evidence and belief prepare the way for that illumination and teaching of the Spirit by which saving faith is produced. Locke (Understanding 4.16.10) states the rule for the value of historical testimony as follows: "Any testimony, the farther off it is from the alleged fact, the less force and proof it has. A credible man vouching his knowledge of it is a good proof; but if another equally credible do witness it from his report, the testimony is weaker; and a third that attests the hearsay of a hearsay is yet less considerable; so that in traditional truths each remove weakens the force of the proof."

Channing (Evidences of Christianity, 202) answers the inquiry how we determine the genuineness of books in general, as follows: "It is not necessary that we should ourselves be eyewitnesses of the composition of a book. The ascription of a book to an individual during his life by those who are interested in him and who have the best means of knowing the truth removes all doubt as to its author. When the question arises whether an ancient book was written by the individual whose name it bears, we must inquire into the opinion of his contemporaries or of those who succeeded his contemporaries so nearly as to have intimate communication with them. On this testimony we ascribe many ancient books to their authors with the firmest faith. There are many books of which no notice can be found for several ages after the time of their reputed authors. Still, the fact that as soon as they are named they are ascribed, undoubtingly and by general consent, to certain authors is esteemed a sufficient reason for regarding them as their productions, unless some opposite proof can be adduced."

Historical faith is the contrary of skepticism. It is merely belief in the authenticity and canonicity of Scripture and results from historical testimony and external evidence in distinction from inward and experimental. A person may believe in the genuineness and apostolic origin of the four gospels without the saving faith in their teachings which is effected by regeneration. Yet this historical faith precedes and is necessary in order to saving faith. A person who is skeptical, asserting that the life of Christ is not the product of the apostles but of forgers and unknown persons, cannot receive Christ and his doctrines into his heart with saving faith. The divine Spirit regenerates only those who stand upon the Christian position, not the infidel, in respect to the historical credibility of the gospels. Tested by this, that class of biblical critics who are infidel respecting historical Christianity and historical Judaism cannot be the subjects of regeneration nor have a spiritual comprehension of the Christian religion. What sympathy had Spinoza and Strauss with St. Paul and St. Augustine? The schools of infidel and rationalistic criticism destroy all saving faith in Christendom because they destroy all historical faith. In making men unbelieving or doubtful respecting the genuineness and historical credibility of the several books of Scripture, they preclude that inward agency of the Holy Spirit by which regeneration and saving faith are produced, because this is never exerted in the mind of a skeptic as such. As matter of fact, vital religion invariably dies out under such influence as that of Strauss, Kuenen, Wellhausen, and their followers. Materialism and atheism prevail extensively in those countries where this species of biblical criticism occupies the professor's chair and pulpit.

Part 3

Theology (Doctrine of God)

1 Nature and Definition of God

God's Spirituality

The words of our Lord to the Samaritan woman, "God is a Spirit" (John 4:24), although spoken for a practical purpose, are also a scientific definition. The original (pneuma ho theos) by its emphatic collocation of pneuma2 and omission of the article implies that God is spirit in the highest sense. He is not a spirit, but spirit itself, absolutely. The employment of the article in the English version is objectionable, because it places the deity in a class with other spiritual beings. But this is not the thought of Christ, who asserts that "no one knows the Father but the Son" (Matt. 11:27), thus claiming for himself a knowledge of the deity as the absolute and unconditioned spirit, who is not cognizable by the finite mind in the manner and degree that finite spirit is. Man knows the nature of finite spirit through his own self-consciousness, but he knows that of the infinite spirit only analogically. Hence some of the characteristics of divine nature cannot be known by a finite intelligence. For example, how God can be independent of the limitations of time and have an eternal mode of consciousness that is without succession, including all events simultaneously in one omniscient intuition, is inscrutable to man because he himself has no such consciousness. The same is true of the omnipresence of God. How he can be all at every point in universal space baffles human comprehension, though it has some light thrown upon it by the fact that the human soul is all at every point in the body.

The divine being is of an essence whose spirituality transcends that of all other spirits—human, angelic, or archangelic—even as his immortality transcends that of man or angel. God alone is said to have immortality (1 Tim. 6:16), because his immortality is a parte ante as well as a parte post. His immortality is eternity.5 And in the same manner, when the spirituality of God is compared with that of his rational creatures, it might be said that he alone has spirituality.

The transcendent nature of divine spirituality is seen in the fact of its being formless and unembodied: "No man has seen God at any time" (John 1:18); "you saw no similitude" (Deut. 4:12). The infinite spirit cannot be so included in a form as not to exist outside of it. The finite spirit can be and in all its grades is both embodied and limited by the body:

That each, who seems a separate whole,

Should move his rounds, and, fusing all

The skirts of self again, should fall

Reemerging in the general soul,

Is faith as vague as all unsweet:

Eternal form shall still divide

The eternal soul from all beside;

And I shall know him when we meet.

—Tennyson

The seeming exception to this, in the instance of man between death and the resurrection, is not really such. The disembodiment of the spirit is only temporary. The completeness of the person requires the resurrection and reunion of the bodily form.

Hence in order to have communication with his embodied creature, man, the Supreme Being assumes a form; first in the theophanies of the Old Testament and last in the incarnation of the New. In his own original essence he is formless and hence could not have any intercourse with a creature like man, who is conditioned in his perception by the limitations of finite form. For this reason, "the Word became flesh and dwelled among us full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). Uniting with a human soul and body, "the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has expounded (exēgēsato) him" (1:18). In Phil. 2:6 the trinitarian personality of the Logos is denominated a "form of God" (morphē theou). This does not mean a visible corporeal embodiment, for it describes the Logos before his incarnation. A distinction or mode of divine essence is intended by it. This begotten or filial form of God is purely spiritual and incorporeal and hence is compelled to assume a corporeal form—namely, "the form (morphē) of a servant" (explained by schēma; v. 8)—in order to have society with man. Some have supposed that the incarnation is necessitated not only by man's sin, but by the needs of the angelic world, in order that there may be intercourse between God and the angels. That there is a provision for this latter and that God manifested himself to the holy and happy angels prior to and irrespective of the incarnation of the Word is clear from the biblical representations concerning such an intercourse (cf. Ps. 104:4; 103:20; 1 Kings 22:19; 2 Chron. 18:18; Isa. 6:5; Luke 15:10; Heb. 1:7; 2:5). But the embodiment of God the Son in a perishable human form involves humiliation and suffering for the special purpose of atonement and redemption, and hence it cannot have reference to the needs of the sinless angelic world. Moreover, there would be no reason for the adoption of man's nature and form in order to a manifestation of God to the angels.

While the spiritual essence of God is incorporeal and formless, it is at the same time the most real substance of all. Mere body or form does not add to the reality of an essence, because the form itself derives its characteristics and its reality from the informing spirit: "The things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" (Heb. 11:3). Visibles were not made of visibles, but of invisibles. The phenomenon, consequently, is less real than the noumenon; the visible than the invisible. God's incorporeal and formless being is so intensely and eminently real that all formed and corporeal being, in comparison, is unreal: "All nations before him are as nothing and less than nothing and vanity" (Isa. 40:17); "my age is as nothing before you" (Ps. 39:5); "before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth and the world, you are God" (90:2). "The more unbodied," says Smith (Nature of God, 123), "anything is, the more unbounded also is it in its effective power: body and matter being the most sluggish, inert, and unwieldly thing that may be, having no power from itself nor over itself; and therefore the purest mind must needs also be the most almighty life and spirit." (supplement 3.1.1.)

The transcendent reality of the divine essence appears also in the fact that it is a necessary essence. The objective reality cannot even in thought, still less in fact, be separated from the subjective idea, as it can be in the instance of contingent and created substance. We can conceive of the nonexistence of the created and contingent being of whom we have an idea, but not of the uncreated and necessary being of whom we have an idea. A being that might be a nonentity does not correspond to our idea of a necessary being. A necessary being, consequently, has more being than a contingent being has. He is further from nonentity. God, therefore, is more real than any of his creatures, be they material or immaterial. The infinite spirit is more real than the finite spirit; and the finite spirit is more real than the body it inhabits because it can exist without it.

While, however, there is this transcendence in the spirituality of God, there is also a resemblance between the infinite and the finite spirit. The invisible, immortal, and intelligent mind of man is like in kind to the divine nature, though infinitely below it in the degree of excellence. What the Arians erroneously asserted respecting the nature of the Son would be true of the nature of man and angels, namely, that it is homoiousios with God, but not homoousios. Man's spiritual nature resembles that of the deity, but is not identical with it.

If the difference between God and man is exaggerated, then the infinite and finite are so separated from one another that religion becomes impossible. God is practically reduced to a nonentity, by being placed wholly outside the sphere of human apprehension. He is so different from his rational creatures that no analogies can be found between them and nothing can be positively and absolutely affirmed concerning him. From this extreme and error spring deism and agnosticism in theory and Epicureanism in practice. Deism asserts divine existence, but with the fewest attributes possible. Bolingbroke denied that any of the moral attributes may be affirmed of God. Only power and adaptive intelligence as seen in physical nature belong to the Supreme Being. This is making the difference between the infinite and finite so great that the religious feelings of adoration, love, faith, and penitence are impossible. Hobbes taught agnosticism, maintaining that God is so totally different from man that he is not only incomprehensible but inconceivable and not an object of thought. Cudworth, in opposition, maintained that God is conceivable but not comprehensible or, in modern phrase, is apprehensible but not comprehensible. Although God is an inscrutable mystery, he is yet an object of thought. Says Conybeare (On Scripture Mysteries):

By mysterious doctrines, we mean those concerning which our ideas are inadequate or indeterminate. This supposes that of mysterious doctrines we have some ideas, though partial and incomplete. Indeed, when we can frame no ideas, we can strictly speaking give no assent. For what is assent, but a perception that the extremes, the subject and predicate of a proposition, do agree or disagree? But when we have no manner of ideas of these extremes, we can have no such perception. And as no combination of terms actually without significance can make a real proposition, so no combination of terms to us perfectly unintelligible can, with respect to us, be accounted a proposition. We maintain, therefore, that we have some ideas even of mysterious doctrines. There is a vast difference between unintelligible and incomprehensible. That is unintelligible concerning which we can frame no ideas; and that is only incomprehensible concerning which our ideas are imperfect.

On the other hand, if the resemblance between the infinite and finite spirit is so exaggerated as to obliterate the distinction between the two, then materialistic theories in philosophy and literalizing theories in theology arise. All the errors of gnosticism, pantheism, and anthropomorphism are the consequence. Gnosticism and pantheism attribute evolution and development to the divine essence and thus subject it to the conditions and limitations of finite growth and succession. Upon this theory, an immutable consciousness that is omniscient, simultaneous, and successionless, in other words, absolutely complete and perfect, cannot belong to the Supreme Being. God's consciousness, according to the pantheist, is mutable, fractional, and increasing like that of man and angel. But this is anthropomorphism; God's mental processes are converted into those of man. Anthropomorphism sometimes exaggerates the resemblance between God and man so far as even to attribute sensuous organs and emotions to God.

It is one of the few benefits in connection with the many evils that have been wrought by modern pantheism that it has brought into view the absoluteness of the deity, his transcendent perfection of being. It is true that what pantheism gives with one hand, it takes back again with the other. In identifying man and the universe with God, it obliterates the distinction between the finite and infinite and thus abolishes the transcendent perfection of the deity which it had so emphatically asserted. But setting aside this self-contradiction, which is characteristic of all error, and considering simply the energy with which a pantheist like Hegel, for example, insists upon the unconditioned nature of the absolute spirit, we perceive that even fatal error may have an element of truth in it.

Two predicates are of fundamental importance in determining the idea of God as a spirit: (1) substantiality: God is an essence or substance and (2) personality: God is a self-conscious being. Predicates are distinguishable from attributes as the base is from the superstructure. It is because God is a substance and a person that he can possess and exert attributes.

God's Substantiality

In the first place, the idea of God as a spirit implies that of substance or essence, because that which has no substance of any kind is a nonentity: "God is a certain substance; for whatever is not a substance is nothing at all. Therefore, to be something is to be a substance" (Augustine on Ps. 68). God is ens: real actual being. He is not a mere idea or construction of the mind, like a mathematical point or line. A mathematical point is not an entity; it has no substantial being; it exists only subjectively; it is merely a mental construction. The same is true of space and time. These are not two substances. They are not objective entities or beings. Neither are they, as Clarke affirmed in his a priori argument for divine existence, the properties of a substance or being, because properties are of the nature of the substance and have the same kind of objective reality with it. Space and time cannot be classed with either material or spiritual substance. And there are only these two kinds. A substance possesses properties. But space has only one property, namely, extension. This is not sufficient to constitute it a material substance; and it is sufficient to show that it is not spiritual substance, because this is unextended. Time, again, has no one of the properties of matter and thus is still further off from material substance than space is. And it certainly has none of the properties of mind. (supplement 3.1.2.)

Plato (Sophist 247–48) defines substance or objective being as "that which possesses any sort of power to affect another or to be affected by another" or "that which has the power of doing or suffering in relation to some other existing thing." Hence he says that "the definition of being or substance is simply power." Now, whether substance be defined as entity having properties or as entity having power, God is a substance. He has attributes which he manifests in his works of creation and providence; and he has power which he exerts in the universe of matter and mind. He makes an impression upon the human soul, as really as matter and its forces do upon the human body: "I remembered God and was troubled" (Ps. 77:3). Terror in the soul because of God is as vivid a form of consciousness as any physical sensation; and if the objective existence of matter is proved by external sensation, the objective existence of God is proved by internal consciousness. Man is not terrified by a nonentity. The Scriptures justify the application of the idea of substance to God by denominating him "I am" (Exod. 3:14) and "he who is" (Rev. 1:4) and by attributing to him "Godhead" (theotēs; Col. 2:9) and a "nature" (physis; Gal. 4:8; 2 Pet. 1:4). God, therefore, as the infinite and eternal spirit, is a real being and not a mere idea of the human intellect. John of Damascus affirms that "entity is attributed to God in Scripture in a higher sense (kyriōteron) than it is to any creature" (Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine §62). It is as proper to speak of the substance of God as of the substance of matter. (supplement 3.1.3.)

The two substances, matter and mind, are wholly diverse and have nothing in common except that each is the base of certain properties and the ground of certain phenomena. These properties and phenomena being different in kind prove that material substance and spiritual substance differ specifically and absolutely. Matter cannot think, and mind cannot be burned. Spiritual substance is known by its qualities and effects. In this respect it is like material substance, which is cognizable only by its properties and effects. Neither matter nor mind can be known apart from and back of its properties. That these are two substances and that each has its own peculiarity is a common belief of man which appears in the better pagan philosophy:

No origin of souls can be discovered in matter; for there is nothing mixed or compounded in souls; or anything that seems to be born or made from matter (ex terra). There is nothing of the nature of water or air or fire in them. For in such material elements, there is nothing that has the power of remembering, of perceiving, of thinking; nothing that retains the past, foresees the future, and comprehends the present. These characteristics of the soul are divine, and it is impossible to perceive how man could have obtained them, except from God. (Cicero, Tusculan Questions 1.27–28)

Cicero cites this doctrine as Aristotle's and mentions with it Aristotle's opinion that since mind as distinguished from matter has these divine qualities, it must be eternal (ob eamque rem, aeternum sit necesse est) (cf. More, On Immortality 1.3).

Spiritual substance in the instance of the infinite being is not connected with a body or a form in which it dwells. God as spirit is "without body, parts, or passions" (Westminster Confession 2.1). He does not occupy space. But spiritual substance in the instance of finite being is embodied. Both man and angel have form and are related to space. Yet it must be noticed that, even in the case of man, mind is independent of matter. The soul may exist consciously in separation from the body. It does so exist between death and the resurrection: "The spirit returns to God who gave it" (Eccles. 12:7). In dreams, there is consciousness without the use of the senses. In this case, the mind is the sole efficient. St. Paul's vision of the third heavens was independent of the body because he could not determine whether he was embodied or disembodied (2 Cor. 12:2–3). (supplement 3.1.4.)

The truth that God is a substance or essence is important, first, in contradiction to that form of pantheism which defines him as the "absolute idea." An idea is not a being. It is not an objective entity but a notion of the human mind. If God has no reality other than that of an idea, he is not real in the sense of a being or an essence that can affect other beings or essences. The theorist of this class would relieve the difficulty by saying that the absolute idea gets essentiality or reality by "positing" itself in the world or the finite. But this is to say that the finite or the world is the true essence of God and that apart from the world God is not an entity. Second, the truth that God is a substance is important in contradiction to the view that makes him to be the mere order of the universe or "a power that makes for righteousness." This, too, is not a substance. Third, the truth that God possesses essential being is important in reference to that hyperspirituality which transforms him into a mere influence or energy, a stream of tendency pervading the universe, having no constitutional being, and no foundation for natural and moral attributes. The primitive church was troubled with this false spiritualism in the gnostic speculations, which led Tertullian to contend that God possesses "body." This vehement North African father, laboring with the inadequate Punic Latin to convey his thought, was probably contending for the truth and intended no materialism; although Augustine (On the Soul 2.9) thought him to be obnoxious to this charge. Interpreted by what he says elsewhere, we think that Tertullian only meant to assert that God, though a spirit, is a substance or essence and employed the word corpus to designate this. For he expressly declares that God "has not diversity of parts; he is altogether uniform." But a substance which is uncompounded and without parts is not a material substance. It is not a body in the strict sense of the term, but an unextended and imponderable substance. Respecting the spirituality of God, Tertullian (Against Praxeas 16) affirms that "God holds the universe in his hand, like a nest. His throne is heaven, and his footstool is earth. In him is all space (locus), and he is not in space; and he is the extreme limit of the universe." In Concerning the Soul 7 Tertullian asserts a "corporeality of the soul," which is other than the bodily corporeality because it is found when the body is separated from the soul. The instances of Dives and Lazarus are cited. These were disembodied souls, and yet they were capable of suffering and enjoyment. Hence, says Tertullian, they could not be without corporality in the sense of substantiality: "An incorporeal thing cannot suffer, not having the means by which it could suffer; or, if it should have such a means, it would be a body. For insofar as every corporeal thing is susceptible to suffering, insofar is that which is capable of suffering also corporeal."24 Polanus (Syntagma 5.32) so understands Tertullian: "In Tertullian the word body generally signifies a substance truly subsisting, whether visible or invisible. Hence, he said that God also is a body. Nevertheless, it is preferable to avoid an improper use of words such as this." Lactantius (Concerning the Wrath of God 2) combats those who "deny that God has any figure and suppose that he is not moved by any feeling." By "figure" Lactantius means the definiteness of personality. (supplement 3.1.5.)

The pseudospirituality of the gnostics led to these statements of Tertullian and Lactantius. Respecting them, Bentley (Free Thinking, 10) makes the following remark:

With a few of the fathers, the matter stands thus: They believed the attributes of God, his infinite power, wisdom, justice, and goodness, in the same extent that we do; but his essence, no more than we can now, they could not discover. The Scriptures, they saw, called him spiritus (spirit), and the human soul anima (breath); both of which, in their primitive sense, mean aerial matter; and all the words that the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, of old, or any tongue now or hereafter can supply, to denote the substance of God or soul, must either be thus metaphysical or else merely negative, as "incorporeal" or "immaterial." What wonder, then, if, in those early times, some fathers believed that divine substance was matter or body; especially while the notion of "body" was undefined and unfixed and was as extensive as "thing." Was this such a shame in a few fathers; while the Stoics maintained qualities and passions, virtues and vices, arts and sciences, nay syllogisms and solecisms, to be "bodies"?

Voltaire (Morals of Nations) founds upon these statements of Tertullian and Lactantius the assertion that "the greater part of the fathers of the church, Platonists as they were, considered the soul to be corporeal." Hallam (Literature of Europe 3.94) has the same misconception and asserts that "the fathers, with the exception, perhaps the single one, of Augustine, taught the corporeity of the thinking substance."

Westminster Confession 2.1 defines God to be "a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions." These qualifying clauses define, so far as is possible, the idea of spiritual substance. The invisibility of spirit, as previously remarked, would not of itself differentiate it from matter and material nature. The force of gravity, the chemical forces, electricity, magnetism, and the like are as invisible as God himself or the soul of man. Heat, according to the recent theory, is the invisible motion of invisible molecules. There is an invisible ground of the visible and tangible. Back of the world of ponderable physics, which we apprehend by the five senses, is an unseen world which is natural still, not moral; physical still, not spiritual. Whoever saw, or ever will see, that principle of life of which outward and material nature is but the embodiment or manifestation? When we have stripped the visible world of its visibility and ponderability and have resolved it unto unseen forces and laws, we have not reached any higher sphere than that of nature and matter. He who worships the life of nature or adores the force of gravity; nay, he who has no higher emotions than those of the pantheistic religionist, which are called forth by the beauty and splendor of visible nature or the cloudy and mystic awfulness of invisible nature is as really an idolater as is the most debased pagan who bows down before a visible and material idol. But when this definition of God was made, the invisible side of the material world was not the subject of natural science so much as it has been since. The "material" meant the visible and ponderable. Consequently, the term invisible referred more particularly to the immaterial and spiritual.

In Scripture this characteristic of invisibility is sometimes attributed to God in a relative sense. It denotes that God, even when he has assumed a form, as in a theophany, may be an object too dazzling and resplendent for the creature's eye to look upon. Jehovah says to Moses, "You cannot see my face; for there shall no man see me and live; you shall see my back parts" (Exod. 33:20). The incarnate Son is denominated "the brightness (apaugasma, the reflected splendor) of God's glory" (Heb. 1:3) upon which man can look; but in the instance of the transfiguration, the vision was too resplendent for mortal man to behold. In this sense, God is invisible as the incandescent orb of the sun is invisible to the naked eye. It is impossible to fix the gaze upon it without being blinded by excess of light.

In saying that God, as a pure spirit, is "without body, parts or passions," a definite conception is conveyed by which spirit and matter are sharply distinguished. Matter may have bodily form, be divisible, and capable of passions, that is, of being wrought upon by other pieces of ponderable matter. None of these characteristics can belong to God or to any spirit whatever: "Take, therefore, good heed unto yourselves (for you saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spoke unto you in Horeb, out of the center of the fire) lest you corrupt yourselves and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female" (Deut. 4:15–16). Idolatry conceives of the deity as a form, and the Hebrews were warned against the error.

It is difficult for man, in his present condition, to think of substance and yet not think of figure or parts. Augustine (Confessions 7.1) describes his own perplexity when renouncing Manicheism in the following manner:

Though not under the form of the human body, yet was I constrained to conceive of you as being in space, either infused into the world or diffused infinitely outside of it. Because, whatsoever I conceived of as deprived of this space seemed to me nothing, yea, altogether nothing, not even a void; as if a body were taken out of its place and the place should remain empty of any body at all, yet would it remain a void place, as it were a spacious nothing.

In Confessions 5.14 he says, "Could I once have conceived of a spiritual substance, all the strongholds of the Manicheans would have been beaten down and cast utterly out of mind. But I could not."

But that it is possible to think of unextended substance is proved by the fact that we think of the human soul as without figure and parts, and yet as a real entity. In truth, it is easier to think of the reality and continued existence of the soul after death, than of the body. The body as to its visible substance is dissolved into dust and blown to the four winds and taken up into other forms of matter. But the soul being indissoluble and indivisible has a subsistence of its own apart from and independent of the body. It is easier to realize and believe in the present actual existence of the spiritual part of Alexander the Great than of the material part of him. That the soul of Alexander the Great is this instant existing and existing consciously is not so difficult to believe, as it is to believe that his body is still existing. It is easier to answer the question "where is the soul of a man who died a thousand years ago?" than to answer the question "where is the body of a man who died a thousand years ago?": "The dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it" (Eccles. 12:7).

Nothing is more natural and common than to speak of our intellectual "nature" or "being," meaning thereby our immortal substance. In this case, "substance" denotes that entity which stands under agencies and phenomena as their supporting and efficient ground. We cannot conceive of the soul as only a series of exercises. There must be an agent in order to agency; a substantial being in order to exercises. To ask us to think away the substance of the soul and then to conceive of its exercises is like asking us to think away the earth around a hole and then to conceive of the hole. The thoughts of the mind are distinguishable from the mind. "This perceiving, active being," says Berkeley (Principles of Knowledge, beginning), "is what I call mind, spirit, soul, or myself. By which words I do not denote anyone of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them."

Hume (Understanding 4.6) denied the reality of spiritual substance, contending that there is nothing but a series of sensuous "impressions" and remembered "ideas" of them. Mill copies Hume in rejecting the notion of a substance as the foundation of consciousness and the agencies of the human soul and defining the soul to be "a permanent possibility of thought and feeling; a thread of consciousness" (Examination of Hamilton, 254–55). American theologian Emmons was understood to hold that the soul is a series of exercises. Dwight seems to have had him in view in his attack upon this theory (Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 241). Mill's definition of mind would not be accepted by the materialist, if applied to matter. The physicist would not grant that gunpowder is only "the permanent possibility of explosion." The term possibility does not denote entity; but the chemist affirms that gunpowder is entity (cf. Locke, On Substance).

That the idea of unextended spiritual substance is a rational idea is proved by the fact that the human intellect naturally adopts it. Plato and Aristotle argued in defense of it in opposition to the atheistic schools of their time, who contended that there is nothing objectively existent but matter or extended substance. The later Platonists also, like Plotinus and Simplicius, affirmed the validity of the idea. Plotinus maintained that "one and the selfsame numerical thing may be, all of it, entirely everywhere"; that "the deity is not part of it here and part of it there"; that "God being not in space is yet present to everything that is in space"; that "God is all of him indivisibly present to whatsoever he is present." Pythagoras and Plutarch took the same ground.

These philosophers endeavored to prove that there is another species of substance than that which has figure in space and is divisible into parts. This is spiritual substance, the eternal essence of God, and the immortal essence of angel and man. Says Cudworth (Intellectual System 5.3):

There are two kinds of substances in nature: the first, extension or magnitude, really existing without the mind, which is a thing that has no self-unity at all in it, but is infinite alterity and divisibility, as it were mere outside and outwardness, it having nothing within nor any other action belonging to it, but only locally to move when it is moved. The second, life and mind, or the self-active cogitative nature, an inside being, whose action is not local motion, but an internal energy, within the substance or essence of the thinker himself or in the inside of him.

Material substance is moved ab extra; spiritual substance is moved ab intra, that is, is self-moved. This is perhaps the most important point in the distinction between mind and matter. Mind moves voluntarily; matter is moved mechanically. That mind is a substance, though unextended and incorporeal, was strongly maintained by Plato and Aristotle:

The Peripatetics, though they expressly held the soul to be asōmatos or incorporeal, yet still spoke of a nous hylikos, a material mind or intellect. This, to modern ears, may possibly sound somewhat harshly. Yet if we translate the words by "natural capacity" and consider them as only denoting that original and native power of intellection which being prior to all human knowledge is yet necessary to its reception, there seems nothing then to remain that can give offense. (Harris, Hermes 3.1)

Spinoza has done more than any other modern philosopher to annihilate the distinction between incorporeal and corporeal substance or between mind and matter, by attributing to his one infinite substance two heterogeneous and incompatible modes or properties: thought and extension. Spinozism (Ethics 2.2) teaches (1) there is only one substance and this substance is God; (2) this substance thinks: "Thinking is an attribute of God, or God is a thinking thing"; and (3) this substance is extended: "Extension is an attribute of God, or God is an extended thing."34 But these two modes of Spinoza's one substance exclude each other. If one and the same substance is extended in space and is also a thinking substance, it follows that matter thinks. To say that matter thinks is materialism, in the same way that to say that matter is God is atheism. This theory is revived in the recent attempt to explain thought by the molecular motion in the brain.

Plato (Sophist 246) describes the conflict going on in his day respecting the definition of substance (ousia):

Some of them are dragging down all things from heaven and from the unseen to earth and seem determined to grasp in their hands rocks and oaks; of these they lay hold and are obstinate in maintaining that only the things which can be touched and handled have being or essence, because they define being and body as one, and if anyone says that what is not a body exists, they altogether despise him and will hear of nothing but body. And that is the reason why their opponents cautiously defend themselves from above, out of an unseen world, mightily contending that true essence consists of certain intelligible and incorporeal ideas; the bodies of the materialists which are maintained by them to be the very truth, they break up into little bits by their arguments and affirm them to be generation and not essence. O Theatetus, there is an endless war which is always raging between these two armies on this ground.

The quantity of unextended and invisible substance is greater than of extended and visible substance: (1) God is unextended substance, and his immensity is vaster than that of the whole finite universe; and (2) the unextended and invisible part of the finite universe is larger in amount than the ponderable, extended, and visible part of it, namely, (a) the spirits of men and angels, (b) invisible atoms or molecules, (c) the invisible forces of nature. These constitute a sum total of existence that is greater and more important than the whole visibility that clothes them. The unseen universe is vaster than the seen. A man's soul is greater than his body. The invisible force of gravity is greater than all its visible effects. The invisible force of cohesion is the cause of all the visibility and ponderability of matter. Without it, there would be no extended and ponderable substance, for the atoms or molecules apart from its attraction would be infinitely separated and scattered.

In defining God to be "a most pure spirit without passions," it must be remembered that the term passion is used etymologically. It is derived from patior (to suffer). Passion implies passivity. It is the effect of an impression from without. The effervescence of an alkali under an acid illustrates the meaning of the term. One substance in nature works upon another by virtue of a correlation and correspondence that is fixed. The one in reference to the other is passive and helpless. Ascending higher, passion in sentient existence, as in man or brute, arises from the impression upon a physical nature of the physical object that is correlated to it. Passion in man or brute is the working of mere appetite. In this sense, St. Paul speaks of the motions or passions (pathēmata) of sins which are in the members (Rom. 7:5; Gal. 5:24). Locke (Essay 2.21.4) distinguishes between "active and passive power": "From body, we have no idea of the beginning of motion. A body at rest affords us no idea of active power to move; and when it is set in motion itself, that motion is rather a passion than an action: for when the ball obeys the stroke of the billiard stick, it is not any action of the ball, but bare passion. "Passion" in the Westminster definition is the same as Locke's "passive power."

God has no passions. He stands in no passive and organic relations to that which is not himself. He cannot be wrought upon and impressed by the universe of matter and mind which he has created from nothing. Creatures are passively correlated to each other and are made to be affected by other creatures; but the Creator is self-subsistent and independent of creation, so that he is not passively correlated to anything external to himself. God, says Aquinas, has absolute, not merely relative existence, like a creature: "The essence of relation is to be situated with respect to another. If therefore relation is the divine essence itself, it follows that the essence of divine essence is to be situated with respect to another. But this is incompatible with the perfection of the divine essence, which is completely absolute and subsists through itself" (Summa 1.18). Men and angels are put into a certain relation to the world which they inhabit, and there is action and reaction between them and the external universe. This does not apply to God. He is not operated upon and moved from the outside, but all his activity is self-determined. All the movement in divine essence is internal and ab intra. Even when God is complacent toward a creature's holiness and displacent toward a creature's sin, this is not the same as a passive impression upon a sensuous organism, from an outward sensible object, eliciting temporarily a sensation that previously was unfelt. Sin and holiness are not substances; and God's love and wrath are self-moved and unceasing energies of divine nature. He is voluntarily and eternally complacent toward good and displacent toward evil.

The forces of nature do not make an impression upon divine essence. There is no organic action and reaction between the created universe of mind and matter and the eternal being of God. "In God," says Newton (Scholium at the end of the Principia), "all things are contained and move, but without mutual passion. God is not acted upon by the motions of bodies; and they suffer no resistance from the omnipresence of God." Passions are liable to be excessive. Not being self-determined, but determined ab extra, their intensity depends upon what is outward. God has no passionate or exorbitant emotions. The doctrine that God has passions would imply that there is an organic unity between him and the universe, with action and reaction. But two such different beings as God and material nature, or God and man, cannot constitute one organic system of existence. In an organism, one part is as old as another and as necessary as another. Organs are contemporaneous, having the same common nature and origin and developing simultaneously. This cannot be true of the infinite and finite spirit and still less of the infinite spirit and matter (see Presbyterian Review, Oct. 1880:769–70). (supplement 3.1.6.)

It is important to remember this signification of the term passion and the intention in employing it. Sometimes it has been understood to be synonymous with feeling or emotion, and the erroneous and demoralizing inference has been drawn that divine nature is destitute of feeling altogether. "God," says Spinoza (Ethics 5.17–19), "is free from all passions; he is not affected with joy and sadness or with love and hatred. No one can hate God; and he who loves God cannot endeavor to cause God to love him, because God can neither love nor hate." Spinoza assumes that love and hatred involve alternations of happiness and misery in the being who has such emotions. Consequently, God cannot have either love or hatred. Similarly, Hartmann (Christianity in Crisis, 41) remarks that "the love of God is an anthropopathic conception of entirely the same order with the personalness of God. It stands and falls with this and is just as unnecessary to the religious consciousness from a pantheistic standpoint as these." Such a statement reduces the Supreme Being to mere intelligence and to the lowest form of intelligence; that, namely, which is disconnected with moral characteristics. It denudes God of those emotional qualities that necessarily enter into personality and are requisite in order to love, worship, and obedience upon the part of the creature. But the error could not logically stop here. The intelligence of the deity could not long survive his moral feeling. If he is conceived to have the power of perceiving sin, for example, but no power of feeling displeasure toward it, such a weak and inefficient perception would be unworthy of notice and would soon be theoretically as well as practically denied. A theory that begins with affirming absolute indifference in God and denying that he either loves the good or hates the evil must end ultimately in rejecting all moral attributes and reducing him to blind force. It could not even concede happiness to the deity, because this is a species of feeling. Says Howe (Redeemer's Tears):

When expressions that import anger or grief are used concerning God himself, we must sever in our conception everything of imperfection and ascribe everything of real perfection. We are not to think that such expressions signify nothing, that they have no meaning, or that nothing at all is to be attributed to him under them. Nor are we, again, to think that they signify the same thing with what we find in ourselves and are wont to express by these names. In divine nature, there may be real and yet most serene complacency and displacency, namely, such as are unaccompanied with the least commotion and import nothing of imperfection, but perfection rather, as it is a perfection to apprehend things suitably to what in themselves they are.

The Scriptures attribute feeling to God and nearly all forms of feeling common to man. That all of these are not intended to be understood as belonging to divine nature is plain, because some of them are as incompatible with the idea of an infinite and perfect being as are the material instruments of hands and feet attributed to him in Scripture. Such an emotion as fear, for example, which God is represented as experiencing (Gen. 3:22–23; Exod. 13:17; Deut. 32:27), must be regarded as metaphorical. The same is true of jealousy (Deut. 32:21) and of grieving and repenting (Gen. 6:6–7; Ps. 95:10; Jer. 15:6).

The criterion for determining which form of feeling is literally and which is metaphorically attributable to God is divine blessedness. God cannot be the subject of any emotion that is intrinsically and necessarily an unhappy one. If he literally feared his foes or were literally jealous of a rival, he would so far forth be miserable. Literal fear and literal jealousy cannot therefore be attributed to him. Tried by this test, it will be found that there are only two fundamental forms of feeling that are literally attributable to divine essence: love (agapē) and wrath (orgē). Hatred is a phase of displeasure or wrath. These two emotions are real and essential in God; the one wakened by righteousness and the other by sin. The existence of the one necessitates that of the other; so that if there be no love of righteousness, there is no anger at sin, and, conversely, if there be no anger at sin, there is no love of righteousness. "He who loves the good," says Lactantius (Concerning Wrath 5), "by this very fact hates the evil; and he who does not hate the evil does not love the good; because the love of goodness issues directly out of the hatred of evil, and the hatred of evil issues directly out of the love of goodness. No one can love life without abhorring death; and no one can have an appetency for light without an antipathy to darkness." The necessary coexistence of these opposite feelings toward moral contraries like righteousness and sin is continually taught in Scripture: "All they that hate me love death" (Prov. 8:36); "you that love the Lord, hate evil" (Ps. 97:10).

Complacency toward righteousness and displacency toward sin are not contraries, but opposites or antitheses. They are the action of one and the same moral attribute, namely, holiness, toward the two contraries right and wrong. Consequently, they are homogeneous feelings. Divine wrath is divine holiness in one phase or mode of it; and divine love is the same divine holiness in another phase or mode of it. One involves and supposes the other. But in the instance of contrary feelings, such, for example, as pleasure and pain or contrary qualities like righteousness and sin, there is heterogeneity. Pain and pleasure are not two modes or phases of the same thing; and neither are righteousness and sin. These are not opposite antitheses which involve and imply each other. Each exists alone without the other. The one excludes the other instead of supposing the other. The relation of opposites or antitheses is that of polarity. Moral love and moral wrath are like the two poles, north and south, of the same magnet or the two manifestations, positive and negative, of the same electricity. Boreal magnetism is as really magnetism as austral; and positive electricity is as really electricity as negative. So, also, moral wrath is as truly holiness as moral love. "He who leaves you," says Augustine, "whither goes or flees he, but from you pleased, to you displeased." Accordingly, the two feelings of love of holiness and hatred of evil coexist in the character of God, the most perfect of beings, and in that of angels and redeemed men. Human character is worthless, in proportion as abhorrence of sin is lacking in it. It is related of Charles II that "he felt no gratitude for benefits and no resentment for wrongs. He did not love anyone and hated no one." He was indifferent toward right and wrong, and "the only feeling he had was contempt" (Green, History of the English People, 9).

These emotions of love and wrath are compatible with divine blessedness. To love righteousness is confessedly blessedness itself. To be displeased with and hate wickedness, at first sight, would seem to introduce commotion and unhappiness into the divine mind. But this is because it is confounded with the passion of anger and hatred in the depraved human heart. This is an unlawful feeling; a man has no right to hate his fellow or to be angry with him with this species of wrath. He is forbidden by the moral law to exercise such an emotion. It is the illegitimateness of the feeling that makes it a wretched one. But any emotion that is permitted and still more that is commanded by the moral law cannot cause mental distress. To suppose this is to suppose that morality and misery are inseparably connected and that to feel rightly and righteously is to be miserable.

There is a kind of wrath in the human soul that resembles the wrath of God and constitutes its true analog. It is the wrath of the human conscience, which is wholly different from that of the human heart. This kind of anger is commanded in the injunction "be angry and sin not" (Eph. 4:26). Were this species of moral displacency more often considered, and divine anger illustrated by it, there would be less of the common and unthinking opposition to the doctrine of divine wrath.

That this species of moral displeasure is compatible with blessedness is plain from an examination of the nature of happiness. Aristotle (Ethics 10.4) defines happiness or pleasurable emotion to be "the coincidence and harmony between a feeling and its correlative object." Bishop Butler gives the same definition, substantially, in his remark that "pleasure arises from a faculty's having its proper object." When the feeling of hunger, for illustration, is met by food, two things are brought into contact that are intended for each other, and the consequence is a pleasurable sensation. If the feeling of hunger were met by an innutritious fluid like water, there would be no coincidence and agreement between them, and the result would be dissatisfaction and some degree of pain.

Now when the emotion of anger in a most pure spirit like God comes into contact with moral evil, there is harmony between the feeling and its object. It is a righteous feeling spent upon a wicked thing. When God hates what is hateful and is angry at that which merits wrath, the true nature and fitness of things is observed, and he feels in himself that inward satisfaction which is the substance of happiness. Anger and hatred are associated in our minds with unhappiness, because we behold their exercise only in a sinful sphere and in an illegitimate manner. In an apostate world, the proper and fitting coincidence between emotions and their objects has been disturbed and destroyed by sin. A sinner hates the holiness which he ought to love and loves the sin which he ought to hate. The anger in his heart is selfish and passionate, not legitimate and calm. The love in his heart is illicit; and hence in Scripture it is denominated "lust" or "concupiscence" (epithymia). In a sinful world, the true relations and correlations are reversed. Love and hatred are expended upon exactly the wrong objects. But when these feelings are contemplated within the sphere of the holy and the eternal; when they are beheld in God, a most pure spirit, without body, parts, or passions, and exercised only upon their appropriate and deserving objects; when the wrath falls only upon the sin and uncleanness of hell and burns up nothing but filth in its pure celestial flame; then the emotion is not merely right and legitimate, but it is beautiful with an august beauty and no source of pain either to the divine mind or to any minds in sympathy with it.

It is here and thus that we can explain the blessedness of God in connection with his omniscience and omnipresence. We know that sin and the punishment of sin are ever before him. The feeling of wrath against the wickedness of man and devils is constantly in the divine essence. Yet God is supremely and constantly blessed. He can be so only because there is a just and proper harmony between the wrath and the object upon which it falls; only because he hates that which is hateful and condemns what is damnable. Hence he is called "God over all, blessed forever." Divine blessedness is not destroyed by the sin of his creatures or by his own holy displeasure against it. And here, also, is seen the compatibility of some everlasting sin and misery with divine perfection. If the feeling of wrath against moral evil is right and rational, there is no impropriety in its exercise by the Supreme Being, and its exercise by him is the substance of hell. If the feeling is proper for a single instant, it is so forever.

While therefore God as a most pure spirit has no passions, he has feelings and emotions. He is not passively wrought upon by the objective universe, so that he experiences physical impressions and organic appetites, as the creature does, but he is self-moved in all his feelings. God's moral love and wrath relate to the character and actions of free moral agents. He does not either love or hate inorganic matter. He has no physical appetite or antipathy. The emotions of love and wrath go forth not toward the substance of free agents, but toward the agency only. God does not hate the soul of a sinner, but only his sin; and he does not love with holy complacence the substance of the human mind, but its activity.

God's Personality

Personality is the second fundamental predicate of spirit. God is a personal being. Personality is marked by two characteristics: (a) self-consciousness and (b) self-determination.

Self-consciousness is, first, the power which a rational spirit has of making itself its own object and, second, of knowing that it has done so. All consciousness implies a duality of subject and object: a subject to know and an object to be known. If there be a subject but no object, consciousness is impossible. And if there be an object but no subject, there can be no consciousness. Mere singleness is fatal to consciousness. I cannot be conscious of a thing unless there is a thing to be conscious of. Take away all objects of thought, and I cannot think.

Consciousness is very different from self-consciousness, and the two must be carefully discriminated. In consciousness, the object is another substance than the subject; but in self-consciousness the object is the same substance as the subject. When I am conscious of a tree, the object is a different entity from my mind; but when I am conscious of myself, the object is the same entity with my mind. In consciousness, the duality required is in two things. In self-consciousness, the duality required is in one thing. (supplement 3.1.7.)

An animal has consciousness in the sense of sentiency, but not self-consciousness. It is impressed by external objects that are no part of its own substance, but it is never impressed by itself. It never duplicates its own unity and contemplates itself. It is aware of heat and cold, of pleasure and pain, but it is never aware of the subject which experiences these sensations. It cannot refer any of its experiences back to itself as the person that experiences them. An animal is not a person and cannot have the consciousness of a person; that is to say, it cannot have self-consciousness. Says Christlieb (Modern Doubt, 153):

Why is it that the gorilla with a throat similar to that of man can only howl or whine, and that man with a throat like the ape's can speak and sing? The answer is that the beast cannot form an objective notion of his sensations and feelings and therefore cannot reproduce them in language; it cannot distinguish between a personal ego and the momentary sensation. It is the power to do this and not his organs of voice (for even the deaf and mute make a language for themselves) which gives man the faculty of speech.

Man has both consciousness and self-consciousness. He has that inferior species, in which he only feels, but does not place his feeling in relation to himself as the ego. In the first place, he has the sensuous consciousness of the animal and the blind agencies of physical appetite. This is mere sentiency, differing from that of the animal only in the fact that it is capable of being scrutinized and converted into self-consciousness. In the second place, there are the spontaneous workings of thought and feeling continually going on, which constitute a consciousness but not necessarily a self-consciousness. The man thinks, but does not think of what he thinks. He feels, but does not scrutinize his feeling. His feeling is said to be "unconscious" in the sense of unreflecting or not self-conscious. It is one of the effects of conviction by the Holy Spirit to convert consciousness into self-consciousness. Conviction of sin is the consciousness of self as the guilty author of sin. It is forcing the man to say, "I know that I have thus felt and thus thought and thus acted." The truth and Spirit of God bring sinners to self-knowledge and self-consciousness from out of a state of mere consciousness.

Self-consciousness is higher than consciousness. It is the highest and most perfect form of consciousness. It is the species that characterizes the Supreme Being. God does not like man have consciousness separate from self-consciousness. In the first place, he has no sentiency. He is not impressed and wrought upon by an external object, as creatures are, by virtue of a correlation between himself and it. He is without body, parts, or passions. In the second place, there are no blind and unreflecting mental processes in God. He never comes to self-consciousness out of mere consciousness as man does; but he is perpetually self-contemplating, self-knowing, and self-communing. God is cognizant of the universe of matter which he created ex nihilo and which consequently is no part of his own essence. But this cognition comes not through the medium of the senses and is not an imperfect kind of knowledge like the sentiency of an animal or the passive consciousness of the unreflecting man. Divine consciousness of the universe, as an object, is always related to and accompanied with divine self-consciousness, which is immutable and eternal. In God, consciousness and self-consciousness are inseparable, but not in man. Man may be conscious, yet not self-conscious. God cannot be. Man passes from consciousness to self-consciousness and back again. God does not. Consequently, God's self-consciousness is more perfect and of a higher grade than that of man or angel.

Self-consciousness is more mysterious and inexplicable than mere consciousness. It has been the problem of the philosophic mind in all ages. The pantheist asserts that the doctrine of the dualism of mind and matter renders cognition impossible, but that the doctrine of monism explains cognition. He maintains that if it can be shown that all consciousness is in reality self-consciousness, because all substance is one substance, then the problem of cognition is made clear. But in fact it is made darker. For mere sameness of substance does not account for cognition. One stone is identical in substance with another, but this does not go to prove that one stone knows or can know another stone. There is no reason, consequently, for asserting that mind cannot know matter unless mind and matter are the same substance. In order to be conscious of a material object, it is not necessary to be a material subject. The only case in which it is necessary for the subject and object to be identical in substance is that of self-consciousness. In this instance, the object known must be one in substance with the subject knowing. The identity of subject and object is true only in reference to the knowledge which the individual person has of himself. The instant he passes to the knowledge of any other object than his own soul he has another form of consciousness than self-consciousness. When I cognize a tree, I am conscious, but not self-conscious. When I know God, I am conscious, not self-conscious. The substance or object known in each of these instances is not my substance, but that of another being, and my consciousness is not self-consciousness. I can indeed pass from consciousness to self-consciousness, by referring the consciousness of the tree to the self as the subject of it. But this is a second act additional to the first act of mere consciousness. (supplement 3.1.8.)

The truth is that it is more difficult to explain self-consciousness than consciousness; to conceive how the subject can know itself than how it can know something that is not itself. The act of simple consciousness, which is common to both man and brute, is comparatively plain and explicable. When we look at an object other than ourselves, when we behold a tree or the sky, for example, the act of cognition is easier to comprehend than is the act of self-knowledge. For there is something outside of us, in front of us, and another thing than we are, at which we look and which we behold. But in this act of self-inspection, there is no second thing, external and extant to us, which we contemplate. That which is seen is one and the same thing with that which sees. The act of cognition, which in all other instances requires the existence of two totally different entities—an entity that is known and an entity that knows—in this instance, is performed with only one entity. It is the individual soul that perceives, and it is this identical individual soul that is perceived. It is the individual man that knows, and it is this very same man that is known. The eyeball looks at the eyeball. This latter act of cognition is much more mysterious than the former, so that nothing is gained by contending that all consciousness is really self-consciousness (cf. Augustine, On the Trinity 14.6).

We have said that all consciousness implies a duality of subject and object. Self-consciousness, consequently, requires these. And the peculiarity and mystery is that it obtains them both in one being or substance. The human spirit in the act of self-cognition furnishes both the subject that perceives and the object that is perceived. The soul duplicates its own unity, as it were, and sets itself to look at itself. It is this power which the rational spirit possesses of making itself its own object, that constitutes it a personal being. Take away from man this capacity of setting himself off over against himself and of steadily eyeing himself, and whatever other capacities he might be endowed with, he would not be a person. Even if he should think and feel and act, he could not say, "I know that I think; I know that I feel; I know that I am acting."

God as personal is self-conscious. Consequently, he must make himself his own object of contemplation. Here the doctrine of the Trinity, the deep and dark mystery of Christianity, pours a flood of light upon the mystery of divine self-consciousness. The pillar of cloud becomes the pillar of fire. The three distinctions in the one essence personalize it. God is personal because he is three persons: Father, Son, and Spirit.

Self-consciousness is (1) the power which a rational spirit or mind has of making itself its own object and (2) of knowing that it has done so. If the first step is taken and not the second, there is consciousness but not self-consciousness, because the subject would not, in this case, know that the object is the self. And the second step cannot be taken if the first has not been. These two acts of a rational spirit or mind involve three distinctions in it or modes of it. The whole mind as a subject contemplates the very same whole mind as an object. Here are two distinctions or modes of one mind. And the very same whole mind also perceives that the contemplating subject and the contemplated object are one and the same essence or being. Here are three modes of one mind, each distinct from the others, yet all three going to make up the one self-conscious spirit. Unless there were these two acts and the three resulting distinctions, there would be no self-knowledge. Mere singleness, a mere subject without an object, is incompatible with self-consciousness. And mere duality would yield only consciousness, not self-consciousness. Consciousness is dual; self-consciousness is trinal.

Revelation represents God as "blessed forever." This blessedness is independent of the universe which once did not exist and which he created from nothing. God, therefore, must find all the conditions of blessedness within himself alone. He is "blessed forever" in his own self-contemplation and self-communion. He does not need the universe in order that he may have an object which he can know, which he can love, and over which he can rejoice: "The Father knows the Son" from all eternity (Matt. 11:27), "loves the Son" from all eternity (John 3:35), and "glorifies the Son" from all eternity (17:5). Prior to creation, the eternal Wisdom "was by him as one brought up with him and was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him" (Prov. 8:30); the eternal Word "was in the beginning with God" (John 1:2); and "the only begotten Son" (or God only begotten, as the uncials read) was eternally "in the bosom of the Father" (1:18). Here is society within the essence and wholly independent of the created universe, and self-knowledge, self-communion, and blessedness resulting therefrom. But this is impossible to an essence destitute of these internal personal distinctions. Not the singular unit of the deist, but the plural unity of the trinitarian explains this. A subject without an object could not know (what is there to be known?), could not love (what is there to be loved?), and could not rejoice (what is there to rejoice over?). And the object cannot be the created universe. The infinite and eternal object of God's infinite and eternal knowledge, love, and joy cannot be his creation because this is neither eternal nor infinite. There was a time when the universe was not; and if God's self-consciousness and blessedness depend upon the universe, there was a time when he was neither self-conscious nor blessed. The objective God for the subjective God, therefore, must be very God of very God, begotten not made, the eternal Son of the eternal Father.

At this point, the radical difference between the Christian Trinity and that of the later pantheism appears. The later pantheism (not the earlier of Spinoza) constructs a kind of Trinity, but it is dependent upon the universe. God distinguishes himself from the world and thereby finds the object required for the subject. This is the view of Hegel: "As God is eternal personality, so he eternally produces his other self, namely, nature, in order to self-consciousness" (Michelet, History of Philosophy 2.647). This conditions the infinite by the finite. God makes use of the world in order to personality. To know himself as ego, he must know the universe as the non-ego. Without the world, therefore, he could not be self-conscious. There would be nothing from which to distinguish himself, and without such an act of distinction and contrast he would be impersonal. God is thus dependent upon the world for his personality. But by his idea, he cannot be dependent upon anything that is not himself. Consequently, God and the world must ultimately be one and the same substance. God's personality is God's becoming conscious of himself in man and in nature. These latter are a phase or mode of the infinite. The universe, consequently, must be coeval with God, because he cannot have any self-consciousness without it. Says Hartmann (Christianity in Crisis, 42), "A contrast in God of self-consciousness and world consciousness, of I and not I, of subject and object, is not conceivable. Rather, its self-consciousness is one with its intuitive world consciousness. The absolute can have no other self-consciousness than its intuitive world consciousness" (see Kurtz, Sacred History, 23).

But this is not the way in which the self-consciousness of the Godhead is mediated and brought about according to divine revelation. In the Christian scheme of the Trinity, the media to self-consciousness are all within the divine essence and are wholly separate from and independent of the finite universe of mind and matter. Divine nature has all the requisites to personality in its own trinal constitution. God makes use of his own eternal and primary essence and not of the secondary substance of the world as the object from which to distinguish himself and thereby be self-knowing and self-communing. God distinguishes himself from himself, not from something that is not himself. This latter would yield consciousness merely, not self-consciousness. God the Father distinguishes himself from God the Son and in this way knows himself: "No man knows the Son but the Father; neither knows any man the Father save the Son" (Matt. 11:27). Divine self-contemplation is the beholding and loving of one divine person by another divine person, and not God's beholding of the universe and loving and communing with it: "The Father loves the Son and shows him all things that himself does" (John 5:20); "the first love of God the Father to the Son is that which we call ad intra, where the divine persons are objects of each other's actings. The Father knows the Son, and the Son knows the Father; the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father; and so consequently of the Holy Spirit, the medium of all these actings" (Owen, Sacramental Discourse, 22).

The self-consciousness of God has an analog in the self-consciousness of man, in that the latter also is brought about without the aid of any other substance or object than the mind itself. In the instance of the finite spirit of man, we have seen that in the act of self-consciousness no use is made of the external world or of the non-ego. The human spirit in this act of self-contemplation duplicates its own unity and finds an object for itself as a subject in its own substance and not, as in the act of mere consciousness, in the substance of the external world. If this is possible and necessary in reference to man and finite personality, it is still more so in reference to God and infinite personality. The Supreme Being cannot be dependent upon another essence than his own for the conditions of self-consciousness. He is self-sufficient in this central respect, as in all others, and finds in his own nature all that is requisite to self-knowledge, as well as to self-communion and blessedness. Were it not so, God would be dependent upon his creation, and the blasphemous language which Byron puts into the mouth of Lucifer would be true:

He is great,

But, in his greatness, is no happier than

We in our conflict.…

… Let him

Sit on his vast and solitary throne,

Creating worlds, to make eternity

Less burthensome to his immense existence

And unparticipated solitude.

Let him crowd orb on orb: he is alone.…

Could he but crush himself, 'twere the best boon

He ever granted; but let him reign on,

And multiply himself in misery!

… He, so wretched in his height,

So restless in his wretchedness, must still

Create, and recreate.

—Cain 1.1

The biblical doctrine of three distinctions in one essence, each of which possesses the whole undivided essence, shows how God's self-consciousness is independent of the universe. God makes himself his own object. The first act, in the natural order, is the distinguishing of himself from himself. This yields the first and second distinctions or persons. The eternal Father beholds himself in the eternal Son, his alter ego or other self. The subject contemplating is different and distinct as to form (morphē; Phil. 2:6; see p. 103 n. 38) but not as to essence (ousia) from the object contemplated. God the Father is not the same person (morphē tou theou) as God the Son, though he is the same substance or being (ousia tou theou). But this is not the whole of the trinitarian process. There must be a second act, namely, the perception that the subject-ego and object-ego, arrived at in the first act, are one and the same essence, that the Father and the Son are not two beings but one. This second act of perception supposes a percipient; and the percipient is a third distinction or mode of divine essence, the Holy Spirit, who is different as to form (morphē) from the first and second because he recognizes both their distinctness of person and their unity and identity of nature. The circle of divine self-consciousness is now complete. By the two acts of perception and the three resulting distinctions, the eternal being has made himself his own object and has perceived that he has done so. And there is real trinality in the unity. For the subject-ego is not the object-ego; the first form of God is not the second form of God. And the third distinction who reunites these two in the perception of their identity of essence is neither the subject-ego nor the object-ego; the third form of God is not the first or the second form and yet is consubstantial with them both. The third distinction does not, like the first, posit an object, but only perceives the act of positing. There is, consequently, no second object that requires to be reunited in the unity of essence. Hence the two acts and the three resulting distinctions are sufficient to complete the circle of self-consciousness.

Thus divine personality, in the light thrown upon it by the revealed doctrine of the Trinity, is seen to be wholly independent of the finite. God does not struggle out into self-consciousness by the help of the external universe. Before that universe was created and in the solitude of his own eternity and self-sufficiency, he had within his own essence all the conditions of self-consciousness. And after the worlds were called into being, divine personality remained the same immutable self-knowledge, unaffected by anything in his handiwork:

Oh Light Eternal, sole in thyself that dwellest,

Sole knowest thyself, and known unto thyself,

And knowing, lovest and smilest on thyself!

—Dante, Paradise 33.125

This analysis shows that self-consciousness is trinal, while mere consciousness is only dual. The former implies three distinctions; the latter only two. When I am conscious of a tree, there is a subject (my mind) and an object (the tree). This is all there is in the process of consciousness. But when I am conscious of myself, there is a subject (my mind as a contemplating mind), an object (my mind as a contemplated mind), and still another subject (my mind as perceiving that these two prior distinctions are one and the same mind). In this trinal process of self-consciousness, there is much more than in the dual process of simple consciousness.

The earlier pantheism of Spinoza differs from the later of Hegel in combating the doctrine of divine personality altogether and in any form whatsoever. Hegel, as has been previously noticed, would obtain a kind of personality for the infinite through the medium of the world, but Spinoza maintains that the infinite, from the very idea of it, cannot be personal. If it should become so, it would cease to be infinite. He condensed his view in the dictum: "All limitation is negation." A person in order to be such must distinguish himself from something that is not himself. If God is personal, he must therefore be able to say that he is not the world. In personally defining himself, he sets limits to himself; and if he sets limits, he is not unlimited; and if not unlimited, not infinite. If God and the universe, says Spinoza, are two different substances and exclude each other in the way the theist maintains, then God is not the all and therefore not the infinite. God plus the universe would be greater than God minus the universe. (supplement 3.1.9.)

This reasoning proceeds upon a false idea and definition of the infinite. It confounds the infinite with the all. The two are wholly diverse. In the first place, the infinite is the perfect. Consequently, it excludes all modes of existence that are imperfect; but the all includes these. Second, infinite qualities of necessity exclude finite qualities; but the all does not. One and the same being cannot be both infinite and finite. But the fact that a being is not finite and in this sense limited does not make him finite. This is the obvious fallacy in the pantheistic position that if God can distinguish himself as other than the world, and as not the world, he is not infinite. A limitation of this kind is necessary in order that he may be the infinite. To say that a being is not finite, to "determine" him by this "negative" (using Spinoza's dictum), is the very way to say that he is infinite. An infinite power cannot be a finite power; an infinite knowledge cannot be a finite knowledge. A physical force able to lift one hundred pounds cannot be a force able to lift only fifty pounds, any more than one hundred can be only fifty. The infinite, therefore, does not, like the all, comprise all varieties of being, possible and actual, limited and unlimited, good and evil, perfect and imperfect, matter and mind. The infinite can create the finite, but cannot be the finite. Third, the infinite is simple; the all is complex. Everything in the former is homogeneous. The contents of the latter are heterogeneous. Fourth, the infinite is without parts and indivisible; the all is made up of parts and is divisible.

The all, consequently, is pseudoinfinite, and to assert that it is greater than the simple infinite is the same error that is committed in mathematics when it is asserted that an infinite number plus a vast finite number is greater than the simple infinite. Mathematical infinity is neither increased nor diminished by the addition or subtraction of millions of units. In like manner, it is no increase of infinite and absolute perfection to add a certain amount of finite imperfection to it. God's essence, for example, is eternal, immutable, and necessary; the substance of the finite universe is temporal, mutable, and contingent. The former must be and cannot be conceived of as nonexistent; the latter may or may not be. Now, to add such an inferior and secondary species of being to the absolutely perfect and eternal essence of God and regard it as increasing his eternity and immensity or to subtract it and assert that it diminishes his eternity and immensity is irrational. God's power again is infinite. This omnipotence would not be made more mighty by endowing it with that infinitely less degree of power which resides in a man or an angel. The same is true of infinite knowledge. God's omniscience would not be made greater by the addition of a narrow finite intelligence. To add contingent being to necessary being does not make the latter any more necessary. To add imperfect being to perfect being does not make the latter any more perfect. "God," says Müller (Sin 1.14), "is a universe in himself, whether the world exist or not." (supplement 3.1.10.)

The error of confounding the infinite with the all has been committed by writers who are far from pantheism in their intention. The phraseology of Edwards is sometimes open to objection in that he appears to combine God with the universe in one system of being, thereby making him a part of the all and obliterating the distinction between infinite and finite existence. "If the deity," he says (Nature of Virtue), "is to be looked upon as within that system of beings which properly terminates our benevolence or belonging to that whole, certainly he is to be regarded as the head of the system and the chief part of it; if it be proper to call him a part who is infinitely more than all the rest, and in comparison of whom and without whom all the rest are nothing, either as to beauty or existence." This qualification of his remark shows that Edwards had doubts whether it is proper to speak of one universal system of being, what he elsewhere calls "being in general," of which God is a part. In another place (End in Creation), he speaks still more unguardedly when he says that "the first being, the eternal and infinite being, is in effect being in general and comprehends universal existence." This, if found in Spinoza, would mean that God is the all. A similar confounding of God with the all is found in Edwards (Will 1.3), who remarks that "there is a great absurdity in supposing that there should be no God or in denying being in general." Here, "God" and "being in general" are convertible terms. Andrew Fuller (Calvinism and Socinianism, letter 7) says that "God must be allowed to form the far greater proportion, if I may so speak, of the whole system of being." He probably borrowed this from Edwards. This is the same error that appears in Greek pantheism, which regarded to hen as to pan.

Dorner (Christian Doctrine 1.319) falls into the same error: "We have previously regarded God as the infinite original being or essence—indeed as the original all of being. God is originally the totality of being, and therefore a universality attaches to him, inasmuch as somehow all being must originally be included in him." Cudworth (Intellectual System 4.17) finds the doctrine that God is all in the Orphic poetry, but would interpret it in an allowable sense, referring to such texts as "God is all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28) and "in him we have our being" (Acts 17:28). But he thinks that the Stoics and some others held the doctrine in a "gross" pantheistic sense, there being "Spinozism before Spinoza." Hamilton and Mansel confound the infinite with the all and employ this spurious idea in proving the position that the personal infinite involves limitation and self-contradiction. If God distinguishes himself from the universe, then God minus the universe is less than God plus the universe. Hamilton, in his letter to Calderwood, explicitly defines the infinite as to hen kai pan. He also confounds the infinite with the indefinite or unlimited (see his list of antinomies in Bowen's Hamilton, 522).

The personality of the essence or Godhead must be distinguished from that of a person in the essence or Godhead. The existence of three divine persons in the divine essence results in the self-consciousness of the essence. This general self-consciousness of the triune Godhead must not be confounded with the particular individual consciousness of the Father as Father, of the Son as Son, of the Spirit as Spirit. The personality of the Trinity is not the same as that of one of its persons. The personality of a trinitarian person consists in the fatherhood or the sonship or the procession, as the case may be. But the personality of the Trinity consists not in any one of these individual peculiarities, but in the result of all three. The three hypostatic consciousnesses make one self-consciousness, as the three persons constitute one essence. (supplement 3.1.11.)

The personality of one of the persons, the Greek trinitarians denominated idiotēs (individuality), that peculiarity which distinguishes him from the others. The personality of the Son is his sonship; of the Father his paternity; of the Spirit his procession. In this reference, it is preferable to speak of the personality of the essence rather than of the person of the essence, because the essence is not one person but three persons. The personality of the divine essence or of God in the abstract is his self-consciousness, which, as we have seen, results from the subsistence of three persons in the essence and the corresponding trinal consciousness. From this point of view, it is less liable to misconception to say that God is personal, than to say that God is a person. The latter statement, unless explained, conflicts with the statement that God is three persons; the former does not.

Divine essence cannot be at once three persons and one person, if "person" is employed in one signification; but it can be at once three persons and one personal being. Divine essence, by reason of the three distinctions in it, is self-contemplative, self-cognitive, and self-communing. If there were only a single subject, this would be impossible. Consequently, that personal characteristic by which the trinitarian persons differ from each other cannot be the personal characteristic of the essence or the entire Godhead. The fatherhood of the first person is not the fatherhood of the Trinity. The sonship of the second person is not the sonship of the Trinity. The procession of the third person is not the procession of the Trinity. If, however, the distinction is marked between a single trinitarian person, such as the Father or the Son or the Spirit, and a triune person such as the Godhead, it would not be self-contradictory to say that God is three persons and one person because the term person is employed in two senses. In one instance it denotes the hypostatic personality, in the other the tripersonality; in one case it denotes a consciousness that is single, in the other a consciousness that is trinal; in one case the consciousness is simple, in the other complex.

SUPPLEMENTS

3.1.1 (see p. 155). Osiander maintained that "man was created in the image of God because he was formed after the similitude of the future Messiah in order that he might resemble him whom the Father had already decreed to clothe with flesh. Whence he concluded that if Adam had never fallen, Christ would nevertheless have become man." Calvin (2.12.4–6) opposes this as follows: "The notion that Christ would have become man, even though the human race had needed no redemption, is a vague speculation. I grant, indeed, that at the original creation Christ was exalted as head over angels and men; for which reason Paul calls him 'the firstborn of every creature'; but since the whole Scriptures proclaim that he was clothed with flesh in order to become a Redeemer, it is excessive temerity to imagine another cause for it. The end for which Christ was promised from the beginning is sufficiently known; it was to restore a fallen world. Therefore under the law his image was exhibited in sacrifices to inspire the faithful with a hope that God would be propitious to them, after he should be reconciled by the expiation of their sins. The prophets proclaimed and foretold him as the future reconciler of God and men. When Christ himself appeared in the world, he declared the design of his advent to be to appease God and restore us from death to life. The apostles testified the same. If anyone object that it is not evinced by these testimonies that the same Christ who has redeemed men from condemnation could not have testified his love to them by assuming their nature if they had remained in a state of integrity, we briefly reply that since the Spirit declares these two things—Christ's becoming our Redeemer and his participation of our nature—to have been connected by the eternal decree of God, it is not right to make any further inquiry. For he who feels a desire to know something more, not being content with the immutable appointment of God, shows himself not to be contented with this Christ, who has been given to us as the price of our redemption. I admit that Adam bore the divine image because he was united to God; yet I contend that the similitude of God is to be sought only in those characteristics of excellence with which God distinguished Adam above the other creatures. And that Christ was even then the image of God is universally allowed; and therefore whatever excellence was impressed on Adam proceeded from the circumstance that he approached to the glory of his maker by means of his only begotten Son. But this Son was a common head to angels as well as men; so that the same dignity which was conferred on man belonged to angels also. But if God designed his glory to be represented in angels as well as in men and to be equally conspicuous in the angelic as in the human nature, it would follow from Osiander's view that angels were inferior to men; because they certainly were not made in the image of Christ."

3.1.2 (see p. 157). Newton, in the Scholium generale at the end of the Principia, says that God, "by his universal existence, both in time and space, is the Creator of time and space" ("Principia" in Penny Cyclopaedia). There are two objections to this: (1) It makes time and space to be substances or entities; for whatever is created by God is a substance or entity, either material or mental. God does not create nonentities. (2) In making God to exist in space, it makes him to be matter, for this is the only space-filling substance; and in making him to exist in time, it makes his consciousness to be a consecutive series undergoing continual change, in which case it is not the simultaneous, all-comprehending, and immutable consciousness of an eternal being.

That space and time are neither entities nor substances, nor properties of entity or substance, is proved by the fact that whether we add them to or subtract them from an object, be it matter or mind, the body or the soul, makes no difference with the object itself. They are not given as properties in a chemical analysis of matter. A piece of gold, when subjected to analysis, will yield all of its constituent properties without any reference to the questions where it is or when it is—that is, to space and time. The only question for the chemist is what it is. Space and time are wholly foreign to it considered as a substance or entity. They are merely the mental forms under which material substance is contemplated by a finite understanding; and there is no more reason for asserting their objective reality than that of the categories of Aristotle and Kant, quantity, quality, relation, etc. These latter are confessedly only subjective in their nature, the manner in which the human mind thinks of objects. They are not substantial properties of objects. The propensity to regard space as an entity is seen in Newton's remark in this same Scholium that "any particle of space always is." A particle is an atom or molecule; and space has no atoms.

Locke (King, Life of Locke, 66) in his Journal denies the substantiality of space: "Imaginary space seems to me to be no more anything than an imaginary world. For space or extension, separated in our thoughts from matter or body, seems to have no more real existence than number has without anything to be numbered; and one may as well say the number of the sea-sand does really exist and is something, the world being annihilated, as that the space or extension of the sea does exist or is anything, after such annihilation." Also, in his "Miscellaneous Papers" (Life, 336, 339), he argues to the same effect: "If it be possible to suppose nothing or, in our thoughts, to remove all manner of beings from any place, then this imaginary space is just nothing and signifies no more but a bare possibility that body may exist where now there is none. Besides this, there seems to me this great and essential difference between space and body, that body is divisible into separable parts, but space is not. If one take a piece of matter of an inch square and divide it into two, the parts will be separated if set at further distance one from another; and yet nobody, I think, will say that the parts of space are or can be removed to a further distance one from another."

3.1.3 (see p. 158). The distinction in substance and kind between matter and mind was made by Plato and Aristotle, who represent the best Greek philosophy; by Cicero, who represents the best Roman; by Plotinus and Proclus, who represent the later Platonism; by the Christian fathers; by the Schoolmen; by the great discoverers in modern physics: Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Linnaeus; and by the leading modern philosophers: Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, Locke, and Kant. The distinction has also gone into the literatures of the world and been recognized by the creative minds: by Homer and Aeschylus, by Virgil, by Dante and Cervantes, by Pascal, by Shakespeare and Milton. The denial of the distinction is confined to the pantheistic and materialistic schools, to which physical science is not indebted for any of its leading discoveries and to which literature in its higher forms is not at all indebted.

If this distinction is valid, all substance in the created universe is either matter or mind; and if it is the one it cannot be or become the other. A chasm lies between the two realms that cannot be filled up. The limits between them are impassable. There is no transmutation of matter into mind or of mind into matter, no evolution of one into the other. The dualism of theism, not the monism of pantheism, is the truth. The Darwinian physics is monistic in asserting the transmutation of matter into mind, of brute into man, of animal life into moral and spiritual. An examination of the phenomena of animal life evinces that it is a part of the realm of matter, not of mind. The distinctive characteristic that differences the mental, moral, and spiritual world from the material, physical, and nonmoral; the human from the animal soul, is reason. "Brutes," says Aristotle (Ethics 7.3), "have no universal conceptions, but only an instinct of particulars and memory." In the Epinomis attributed to Plato, the animal is distinguished from man by its ignorance of number: "The animal does not know two and three, even and odd, and is entirely ignorant of number." By reason is not meant any and all intelligence, but a particular species of it. Animal life is intelligent in a certain way, because even in its very lowest forms there is selection of means to an end, and this implies a kind of knowledge. We never think of vegetable life as intelligent in any manner whatever, but the action of instinct in the animal world manifests both perception and volition. The volitions by which "infusoria avoid each other as well as obstacles in their way" and by which "animalcules move by undulations, leaps, oscillations, or successive gyrations"; the intelligence by which the ichneumon fly deposits its eggs on the species of caterpillar that furnishes the appropriate food for its young and by which the young grubs themselves "gnaw the inside of the caterpillar, carefully avoiding all the vital parts," in order to preserve their food as long as possible—such intelligence as this, though remarkable, is not reason or intuitive power. And neither is that still more wonderful instinct by which the bee constructs its hexagonal cells and the ant builds its galleries and corridors; nor is that wisdom by which the hawk flies (Job 39:26) and by which he plunges with the unerring velocity of a cannonball from his height in the clouds to the depths where he grasps his prey; nor is that foresight by which the migrations of birds are directed; nor is the still higher intelligence of the dog, horse, and "half-reasoning elephant"—nothing of all this merely adaptive skill and foresight in the tribes of earth, air, and water reaches into the sphere of intuitive perception in mathematics, esthetics, ethics, and religion. Though it is the highest grade of instinct, yet it is no grade at all of reason; as the power of the architect, however great of its own kind, cannot be or become the power to create life. "A magnificent temple," says Gibbon (chap. 40), "is a laudable monument of national taste and religion, and the enthusiast who entered the dome of St. Sophia might be tempted to suppose that it was the residence or even the workmanship of the deity. Yet how dull is the artifice, how insignificant the labor, if it be compared with the formation of the vilest insect that crawls upon the surface of the temple!" As one of the senses cannot do the work of another; as the sense of smell, however acute, cannot possibly see objects or hear sounds, so the intelligence of the animal, however keen in its own sphere, cannot possibly enlighten it with the knowledge of things above that sphere. The whole range of cognition in mathematics, esthetics, ethics, and religion is absolutely beyond its ken. No education whatever can give to an animal the power of intuitively perceiving axiomatic and necessary truth, because education is gradual, but intuition is instantaneous. If the truth of the axiom that the whole equals the sum of the parts is not perceived immediately it cannot be perceived at all. No amount of teaching and argument in support of it will produce the intuition. The attempt to introduce an intuition into the mind gradually is like the attempt to exhibit a mathematical point by making a dot with a pen. The attempt is suicidal, because the mathematical intuition of the point excludes all dimension in space. The animal, consequently, though having an intelligence that is superior to that of man within a certain sphere (for what man can move to a distant unseen point like the bee on a "beeline" or the wild goose in his annual migration), must ever be an irrational, nonintuitive creature. It is not so with mental and rational life in man. The most degraded savage, conceivably and actually, may become by the development of his created capacity even a Newton or Milton, because the kind of his intelligence is like theirs. He is not barred out of the higher regions of knowledge by the structure and constitution of his mind. The most imbruted tribes of men may become the most civilized and enlightened, the most moral and religious, as is seen in the modern Englishman compared with his progenitors; but no tribe of apes, no breed of dogs, can be lifted by training and education above their animal and material range and plane. To the instinctive, irrational intelligence of the brute, the Creator has said: "Thus far shall you go and no further."

Reason, strictly defined, with Kant, as distinct from understanding, is the power of intuitively perceiving the ideas and truths of mathematics, esthetics, ethics, and religion and distinguishes animal intelligence from human. The most sagacious dog does not perceive that the whole is equal to the sum of the parts, that there is beauty in the object which strikes his eye, that his anger or deception are wrong and damnable before the moral law, that God is his Creator and that he is obligated to him. Neither can he be taught these truths. He can be taught a great variety of actions and tricks that stretch his animal intelligence to the utmost; but no action or trick that involves the perception of any of these higher ideas. He cannot be trained to perceive the truth of an axiom, the beauty of a form, the guilt of a feeling or act, the infinity and glory of God. How do we know this? it may be objected. Because there is no manifestation of such knowledge as there is of that other kind of intelligence which we have noticed. The only conclusive evidence of the existence of a power is its actual operation. The burden of proof, consequently, is upon him who affirms that instinctive intelligence is potentially rational intelligence and by a natural evolution may be transmuted into it. He is bound to furnish the instances and examples.

By reason, then, of the absence of rational intuitive perception, the animal belongs only to the world of living organic matter, not of mind or spirit. His animal soul is not spiritual like mind, but nonspiritual like matter; is not moral like mind, but nonmoral like matter; is not immortal like mind, but mortal like matter. The intelligence with which he is endowed is related only to the world of sense and has no connection with the immaterial world of spirit. It is given to him by his maker only to subserve the purposes of a brief, transitory existence here upon earth. The "be all and the end all" of the animal is "here, on this bank and shoal of time."

Having thus located the animal within the world of matter and excluded him from that of spirit, we proceed to consider more particularly the nature of animal life. Life in all its forms is an invisible power or principle. No man has seen or can see it. Be it vegetable or animal, it is a power and principle that cannot be detected by the naked or the armed eye. The vitality that builds up the individual plant or animal eludes all observation. Yet it is an objective entity and not a mere conception or figment of the mind, like a mathematical point or line, because, unlike these latter, it produces effects that are both visible and tangible. This evinces its objectivity and proves that it belongs to the world of real substance. But if animal life is of the nature of matter, there must be a mode or form of matter that is invisible, intangible, and imponderable. In common phraseology, however, matter and mind are differenced as the visible and invisible, the tangible and intangible, the ponderable and imponderable. Matter is popularly defined as extension in the three geometrical dimensions, and this is supposed to exhaust the subject. But there is another form of matter which the mind must recognize. This is its unextended and invisible mode or form. The ultimate of matter, on either the dynamic or atomic theory of it, is without extension and invisible. If we adopt Kant's theory that extended and visible matter is the resultant of two invisible forces that meet in equilibrium and evince their balancing counteraction by a visible product that fills space with a certain degree of intensity and impenetrability; or if we adopt the theory that visible matter is composed of invisible atoms—in either case we assume an invisible mode of matter. Neither these primordial forces nor these primordial atoms are extended, visible, or ponderable. And yet they are assumed to be entities. Their advocates will not concede that they are mere fictions of the imagination or mere notions of the mind, like the square root of two. These unextended, invisible forces or molecules are claimed to be as objectively real as the visible matter of which they are the underlying substance and ground.

The same reasoning applies to the invisible form of matter in the inorganic world as well as in the organic. The forces of attraction and repulsion, of cohesion, of gravitation and chemical affinity, are not, like space and time in the Kantian theory, mere forms of the understanding without objective existence, but real powers and entities. They are substance or being of some kind, because they are able to produce effects, which absolute nonentity cannot do. They constitute a part—and a most important part—of the material universe. Without them there would be no extended and visible matter whatever. But they are themselves unseen; they are inorganic matter in its invisible mode or form. They are the mē phainomena of Heb. 11:3, which were created ex nihilo in that "beginning" spoken of in Gen. 1:1, when the chaotic matter of the universe was created of which they are the constitutive and regulative forces. Once they were not; now they are. This places them among entities. But if nonextension and invisibility may be a characteristic of inorganic and dead matter, it surely may be of organic and living matter. If we can believe with Kant that the ultimate form of matter in the rock is an invisible, we certainly can that the ultimate form of matter in the vegetable and animal is; that that unseen vitality which is the substans of the visible tree or lion is a real somewhat and makes a constituent part of the material universe of God, the Creator of "all things, visible and invisible" (Col. 1:16).

The answer, then, to the question "what is animal life?" is that it is an invisible material principle that is able to vitalize, organize, and assimilate inorganic and lifeless matter and thereby build up a living animal. Having reference only to the distinction between matter and mind, animal life is matter, not mind, and in this respect is no higher in kind than the inorganic forces of gravity and chemical affinity below it. Like them, it is an invisible form of matter. It no more belongs to the mental, moral, and spiritual world than they do. It is no more rational, moral, spiritual, immortal, free, and responsible than they are. But considered within its own sphere of the material and physical and compared with other varieties of matter, animal life is higher than vegetable life, and vegetable life is higher than gravity and chemical affinity. Though animal and vegetable life and the inorganic forces are all alike physical, material, and nonmoral, yet they cannot be evolved from one another. Animal life is not produced by a natural process from vegetable life and still less from the inorganic mechanical forces. A distinct and definite fiat of the Creator is requisite to its origination, as well as in order to that of the vegetable and the nonvital forces. Such fiats are indicated in Gen. 1:3, 11, 20, 24: "God said, Let there be light; let the earth bring forth grass; let the waters bring forth the moving creature that has life; let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind."

This view of animal life and the animal soul, as different in kind from rational life and the rational soul, is supported by Scripture. The vitalizing and organizing principle in the animal is denominated a "soul of life" or a "living soul" Gen. (1:20–21, 24). When God created it he addressed the "waters" and the "earth" and made both body and soul together and simultaneously. He did not "breathe" the animal soul, as a distinct and separate thing, into the animal body which it vivified and inhabited, nor did he create it after "his own image and likeness." But when he created the "soul of life" or rational soul in the first man, he addressed himself, not the waters or the earth, and inbreathed it into a distinct and separate body previously made of "the dust of the ground" and described it as made after his own image and likeness. This difference in the manner of the creation infers the higher grade of being. Again, Scripture describes death in the instance of man as the separation of the soul from the body, the continued existence of the former and the dissolution of the latter. The animal is never represented as "giving up the ghost," nor is the animal soul described as leaving the body, as being "gathered to its fathers" and continuing to exist in happiness or misery. The death of the animal is the physical destruction of the total creature—body and soul: "The spirit of the beast goes downward to the earth" (Eccles. 3:21); "the beasts perish" (Ps. 49:12, 20).

According to this view the entire animal world and animal life, in all its varieties, is of the earth, earthy. It is matter, not mind; physical, not spiritual. It has no immortality, no everlasting permanency. The animal soul, although it may exhibit a striking kind of intelligence that allies it with man in some degree, yet is destitute of man's distinguishing characteristic of reason and rational intuition. Having no moral ideas and sustaining no moral relations, it dies with the body which is has vitalized, organized, and used, in accordance with the design of the Creator, within that narrow and transitory sphere of existence in this world, to which alone it belongs.

The instinctive intelligence of the animal is incapable of passing beyond a certain point. It cannot be trained or educated to pass it. Up to that point it may be very acute and sagacious, even exceeding that of man upon the same subject. The instinct of the beaver is an illustration. If the current is weak, the beavers build their dam straight across; if strong, they build it convexly. This supposes an intelligence or knowledge on the part of the beaver upon this point; but not upon cognate points. The beaver knows that the current is weak or strong, as the case may be; otherwise he would not build in two ways. And he knows that building in one way in one case will not do in the other. But he does not know the properties of the arch, in which figure he builds his dam in a strong current, and cannot make the conclusions of the mathematician concerning it. His knowledge has a limit beyond which he cannot go, any more than if he were a piece of inorganic matter. Now, how does he come to have this degree of intelligence? He must get it, not from the unintelligent molecules of dead matter and of living protoplasm, but from the intelligent being who made him. The Creator's instruction explains that form of intelligence called "instinct": "Does the hawk fly by your wisdom?" asks Jehovah of Job (39:26). The implied answer is, "No; by my wisdom." The whole of the thirty-ninth chapter of Job attributes all the instinctive intelligence of animals and birds to God as the author and cause of it. This lower form of intelligence, like the higher form in man, is an illumination of the animal by the Creator. This is taught by Paley (Natural Theology, 18), who thus explains the design which the animal shows in his instinctive action: "When a male and female sparrow come together, they do not meet to confer upon the expediency of perpetuating their species. As an abstract proposition, they care not whether the species be perpetuated or not; they follow their sensations; and all those consequences follow which the most solicitous care of futurity, which the most anxious concern for the sparrow world, could have produced. But how do these consequences ensue? The sensations and the physical constitution upon which they depend are as manifestly directed to the purpose which we see fulfilled by them, and the train of intermediate effects as manifestly laid and planned with a view to that purpose—that is to say, design is as completely evinced by the phenomena as it would be even if we suppose the operations to begin and be carried on from what some will allow to be alone properly called instincts, that is, from desires directed to a future end and having no accomplishment or gratification distinct from the attainment of that end. Now, be it so that those actions of animals which we refer to instinct are not performed with any view to their consequences, but that they are attended in the animal with a present gratification alone; what does all this prove but that the prospection, which must be somewhere, is not in the animal, but in the Creator?"

3.1.4 (see p. 159). Augustine holds that angels have bodies: "The question arises whether angels have bodies adapted to their duties and their swift motions from place to place or whether they are only spirits. For, if we say that they have bodies, we are met by the passage, 'He makes his angels spirits'; and if we say that they have not bodies, a still greater difficulty meets us in explaining how, if they are without bodily form, it is written that they appeared to the bodily senses of men, accepted offers of hospitality, permitted their feet to be washed, and used the meat and drink that was provided for them. For it seems to involve us in less difficulty if we suppose that the angels are called 'spirits in the same manner as men are called 'souls'; for example, in the statement that so many souls (not meaning that they had not bodies also) went down with Jacob into Egypt, than if we suppose that without bodily form all these things were done by angels. Again, a certain definite height is mentioned in the Apocalypse as the stature of an angel, in dimensions which can apply only to bodies, showing that that which appeared to the eyes of men is not to be explained as an illusion, but as resulting from the power which we have spoken of as easily excited by spiritual bodies. But whether angels have bodies and whether anyone be able to show how without bodies they could do all these things, it is nevertheless certain that in that city of the holy in which those of our race who have been redeemed by Christ shall be united forever with thousands of angels, voices proceeding from organs of speech shall give expression to the thoughts of minds in which nothing is hidden; for in that divine fellowship it will not be possible for any thought in one to remain concealed from another, but that shall be complete harmony and oneness of heart in the praise of God, and this shall find utterance not only from the spirit, but through the spiritual body as its instrument. This, at least, is what I believe" (Letter 95.8 to Paulinus and Therasia, A.D. 408).

3.1.5 (see p. 160). Fichte supposed that theism can be maintained and yet the essentiality of God be denied. He denied that God is spiritual substance and asserted that he is only "the moral order of the universe." "It is an error," he says (Smith, Fichte 1.104), "to say that it is doubtful whether there is a God. It is not doubtful, but the most certain of all certainties, nay, the foundation of all certainties, the one absolutely valid objective truth, that there is a moral order in the world; that to every rational being is assigned his particular place in that order, and the work he has to do; that his destiny, insofar as it is not occasioned by his own conduct, is the result of this plan; that in no other way can even a hair fall from his head nor a sparrow fall to the ground about him; that every true and good action prospers, and every bad action fails; and that all things must work together for good to those who truly love goodness. On the other hand, no one who reflects for a moment and honestly avows the result of his reflection can remain in doubt that the conception of God as a particular substance is impossible and contradictory; and it is right to say this candidly and to silence the babbling of the schools, in order that the true religion of cheerful virtue may be established in its room."

An analysis of this extract yields the following definition of God: God is not a substantial being, but the assignment of a place and work to every rational being, the plan of every man's work, and the process whereby all things work for good. He is not a spiritual essence or entity, but an arrangement, a plan, and a process. Fichte believed that he was defending the doctrine of divine existence in a statement that annihilates his existence, if by existence he meant real objective being. The moral order is no more a substance having objective existence than the moral law is. No one would think of denominating the latter a being or essence having qualities and attributes.

3.1.6 (see p. 165). The doctrine that God and the universe constitute an organic unity accords with the monism of pantheism, but not with the dualism of theism. If God is infinite and the universe finite, as theism affirms, the latter is immanent in and dependent on the former, but not organically one with it. Yet this last is affirmed sometimes by writers who repudiate pantheism. Caird (Philosophy of Religion, 241, 243, 251) asserts that a "true solution of the higher problems of religion is impossible if we start from dualistic suppositions. A true solution can be reached only by apprehending the divine and the human, the infinite and the finite, as the moments or members of an organic whole in which both exist at once in their distinction and their unity. The true infinite is not the mere negation of the finite, but that which is the organic unity of the infinite and finite." There are the following objections to this view:

1. The infinite excludes the finite because, so far as finite elements and qualities are conceived as belonging to an infinite essence, it is not infinite, as water is not water so far as fire is supposed to be a component in it. The true infinite is, therefore, the negation or the exclusion of the finite.

2. An organic unity constituted of both the infinite and finite would be an infinite-finite, not the simple infinite, as when, for illustration, the Logos unites with an individual human nature he is no longer simply divine, but divine-human.

3. An organic unity composed of God and the universe would make them one sum and system of being. The deity would become a part of a general system. But God is not a part of anything. The universe is a creation from nothing by his omnipotence and is of a different substance from divine essence. It cannot, therefore, be put into a sum total along with God and constitute one common mass of being with him. Once the universe was not. But God always was. The universe is contingent being; God is necessary being. To combine under the notion of an organic whole such totally different objects as God and the world, temporal being and eternal being, contingent being and necessary being, contradicts the nature of each. But this is attempted. "We are required to show," says Caird, "first, that finite spirit presupposes or is intelligible only in the light of, the idea of, the infinite Spirit; and, second, that the infinite Spirit contains in the very idea of its nature organic relations to the finite." Here the difference in kind between the infinite and finite is overlooked. It is true that man supposes God and is inexplicable without him. But the converse is not true. God does not suppose man, and man's existence does not explain that of God. It is true that we cannot think of man independently of God; but we can and must think of God independently of man: "Before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God." The infinite cannot, therefore, be brought into the same class of being with the finite. But it is so brought when it is made a part of one and the same system. Nature may be an organic unity. Man as a species may be an organic unity. But God and nature together cannot be an organic unity; and neither can God and universal man be such.

4. In a true organism the parts are equally necessary and coeval. All of the organs of an organism have the same contemporaneous origin in the original germ and develop simultaneously. This, of course, cannot be true of the infinite mind and the finite mind and still less of the infinite mind and matter.

We have taken notice of the error of making God a part of "being in general" (pp. 176–77). The doctrine that God and the universe are an organic unity is essentially the same thing. The duality in essence and the difference in kind between God and the universe, affirmed from the beginning by theistic philosophers, precludes it. God is from eternity; the finite universe, both of mind and matter, began in time by a creative fiat of God. The latter is immanent in, but not emanent from, the former (Acts 17:28). The "immanence of God in the universe" is often asserted. But, strictly speaking, the universe is immanent in God, rather than God in the universe. The greater contains the less, not the less the greater (cf. what is said respecting divine omnipresence on pp. 277–78). Whenever, therefore, divine immanence is mentioned it should be guarded by divine transcendence. There is no such existence of God in his universe as precludes his existence out of and beyond it. Otherwise God is only the soul of the universe. Man "lives and moves and has his being in God," says St. Paul; but he does not say that "God lives and moves and has his being in man."

The inscription on the temple of Sais, in Egypt, contains the error of making God and the universe one system of being or the all: "I am all that was and is and shall be." Rothe, as cited by Müller (Sin 1.11), contends that "all right speculative knowledge must start from one primary datum and from this develop by strict logic a system of thought consecutively evolved. This system must be an exact counterpart or image of the universe; using this word in the widest sense as including God." Müller, in criticizing Rothe's general position, remarks that "we have no right to put God and the world together in our conception of the universe, for then the world must be regarded as the complement of God, and this contradicts the idea of the absolute. God is a universe in himself, whether the world exists or not" (Sin 1.14n). It is by such a remark as this that Müller evinces his consistent theism and that he was not influenced by the monism of Schelling and Hegel, as were theologians like Rothe, Martensen, and Dorner.

3.1.7 (see p. 169). Hamilton (ed. Bowen, 127) defines consciousness by "I know that I know." This is self-consciousness, not simple consciousness. The latter is expressed by "I know." In self-consciousness the person is conscious that he is conscious. In consciousness he is merely conscious. Consciousness is the sentiency or feeling in the inner or outer sense which occurs in the waking moments of every man without his taking cognizance of it by reflection upon it. A man may see without reflecting that he sees; think without thinking of his thinking; feel without scrutinizing his feeling; in other words, may be conscious without being self-conscious. Again, in mere consciousness the object is other than the ego and external to it, but in self-consciousness the object is the ego in one of its modifications or subjective states. To illustrate: A man is conscious of a mountain; he receives various impressions and sensations from it. Up to this point he is conscious of an object other than ego, namely, of the mountain. Thus far he is not conscious of himself as the ego that is modified by the mountain, but only of the mountain. If now he takes the second step and makes this consciousness itself, these sensations and impressions themselves, the object of cognition, he passes to self-consciousness. He becomes conscious of his consciousness, that is, he becomes self-conscious. For the object now is not the mountain, as in the former case, but himself as affected by the mountain. He is now examining and cognizing the ego in one of its states and not the non-ego, or mountain, and is getting a knowledge of himself rather than of the mountain. He obtained all the knowledge of the mountain that is possible to him by his previous sensation or consciousness of it, but obtained no knowledge of himself in the process because he did not contemplate himself as affected by the mountain. But afterward he ceases to obtain any more knowledge of the mountain and gets a knowledge of himself by examining and becoming self-conscious of his inward experience. In this way it appears that consciousness is the knowledge of the non-ego as an object and that self-consciousness is the knowledge of the ego as an object. There is therefore the same difference between consciousness and self-consciousness as between knowledge and self-knowledge.

Hamilton (ed. Bowen, 131) defines consciousness to be "the recognition by the thinking subject of its own acts or affections." This also is self-consciousness, not consciousness. It is cognizing something subjective and internal, namely, the mind's own action and state, not cognizing something objective and external. As Hamilton denominates it, it is recognition or cognizing again a second time. The mind first knows the object consciously and then again knows this knowledge or consciousness by reflecting upon it and thereby becomes self-conscious.

This analysis, whereby the difference between consciousness and self-consciousness is apparent, shows the error in Berkeley's theory of consciousness. He asserts that the sensation and the accompanying idea in the mind constitute the object of consciousness and the only object there is. In this way there is nothing externally and really objective. But the truth is that neither the inward sensation nor the inward idea is the object of the consciousness, but is the consciousness itself. For illustration, I am conscious of the sensation of heat. Heat is my sensation or consciousness. If now, according to Berkeley, this sensation is itself the object of my sensation or consciousness, then I have a sensation of a sensation or a consciousness of a consciousness. This is making a sensation both its own object and its own subject, both the thing perceived and the percipient. It is no answer to the question "why am I conscious?" and "of what am I conscious?" to say, "I am conscious because of my consciousness"and "of my consciousness because of my sensation and of my sensation." The true answer is that I am conscious of an external object that is not myself or any modification of myself, like a sensation, which causes my consciousness or sensation. Instead of saying, as Berkeley does, that sensations and ideas are the object of consciousness, we must say that sensations and ideas are consciousness.

Berkeley's reasoning would apply better, but not fully, to self-consciousness in distinction from consciousness. In this case the subject does constitute the object. In self-consciousness the object is not a different substance from the subject, but is identical with it. The external reality of the object in this instance, in the sense of its being a different and another substance from the ego, must be denied. But even in this instance the consciousness of the self is not the self. It is the soul, the ego, and not the self-consciousness that is the real object of the self-consciousness.

I am conscious of the sensation of heat from a hot coal. This sensation is not the hot coal; that is to say, is not the object of the sensation. It is true that the sensation includes all that I know about the coal, but this does not prove that this is all there is of the coal. My sensation is the measure of my knowledge of the object, but not of the whole reality and nature of the object. If it were, then it would follow that nothing exists but what I know of and as I know it. The presence of a sensation infers the reality of an external object as the cause of it; otherwise, there is an effect without a cause. But the absence of a sensation does not infer the unreality or nonentity of an external object. When I cease to be conscious of a landscape, the landscape does not cease to exist. My sensation of its ceases, but the external object does not. This is proved by the fact that I can recover and renew my sensation of the landscape by going to it and beholding it once more.

3.1.8 (see p. 171). Schelling's explanation of all cognition by an assumed identity of substance between the knowing subject and the known object, of which a clear statement is given by Coleridge in his Biographia literaria (chap. 12), gets no support from the fact that in self-consciousness the subject and object are identical in substance. For this is not because the object, in order to be known, must be identical in substance with the knowing subject, that is, because mind cannot know anything but mind, or matter anything but matter, but because in order to know self the self must, of course, be posited as the object to be known. The monistic assumption that if mind and matter are heterogeneous the former cannot cognize the latter and that therefore the fundamental distinction between them must be given up converts all consciousness into self-consciousness.

This is expressly said by the advocates of this theory: "The apparent contradiction that the existence of things without us, which from its nature cannot be immediately certain, should be received as blindly and as independently of all grounds as the existence of our own being, the transcendental philosopher can solve only on the supposition that the former is unconsciously involved in the latter; that it is not only coherent but identical and one and the same thing with our own immediate self-consciousness. To demonstrate this identity is the office and object of his philosophy" (Coleridge, Works 3.340). But when a person is conscious of a tree or the sky, he knows as certainly as he knows anything that this is not being conscious of himself. The self must, of course, be the object, if the cognition is to be self-cognition. But when the cognition is to be the cognition of the not-self, when consciousness and not self-consciousness is to occur, identity of substance between the knowing subject and the known object is excluded from the very nature of the case.

3.1.9 (see p. 175). It is an error in Spinoza to say that in order to self-consciousness a person "must distinguish himself from something that is not himself," that is, from the world. This would be the consciousness of another object than self, which, of course, would not be the consciousness of self. The non-ego would be cognized, but the ego would still be uncognized. The person would indeed know negatively that he is not the world, but would not know positively what he himself is. What the ego is cannot be told until the cognition settles upon the ego, and the instant this is done the non-ego or the world is no longer the object contemplated. So that the very reverse of Spinoza's proposition is the truth. A person must cease distinguishing himself from and cognizing the world and begin to distinguish himself from and cognize himself in order to the very first step in personal self-knowledge. He must by an act of reflection duplicate himself and obtain an object for the contemplating subject by making himself and not the world the object. So long as he takes the world for the object he cannot take himself for it. And until he does this he has no self-knowledge, though he has knowledge. He knows the world, but not himself. He has consciousness, but not self-consciousness.

3.1.10 (see p. 176). The indefinite. It may be greater or less. Unlimited space, conceivably, may be added to or subtracted from. The infinite, on the contrary, is the definite and fixed; it is incapable of either increase or diminution. A divine attribute like omnipotence cannot be conceived of as being more or less of power. Indefiniteness in quantity is excluded by its strict infinity. Says Cudworth (Intellectual System 3.131): "There appears no sufficient ground for this positive infinity of space, we being certain of no more than this, that be the world or any figurative body never so great, it is not impossible but that it might be still greater and greater without end. Which indefinite increasableness of body and space seems to be mistaken for a positive infinity thereof. Whereas for this very reason, because it can never be so great but that more magnitude may still be added to it, therefore it can never be positively infinite." Descartes makes a similar statement and confines the term infinite to God (Principles of Philosophy 1.26–27): "To those who demand whether the half of an infinite line is also infinite and whether an infinite number is even or odd and the like, we answer that in reference to such things as these, in which we discover no limits, we will not therefore affirm that they are strictly infinite, but regard them simply as indefinite. Thus, because we cannot imagine extension so great that we cannot still conceive greater, we will say that the magnitude of possible things is indefinite, and because a body cannot be divided into parts so small that each of these may not be conceived as again divided into others still smaller, let us regard quantity as divisible into parts whose number is indefinite; and as we cannot imagine so many stars that it would seem impossible for God to create more, let us suppose that their number is indefinite, and so in other instances. We will therefore call all such things indefinite rather than infinite, with the view of reserving to God alone the appellation of infinite; in the first place, not only because we discover in him no limits on any side, but also because we positively perceive that he admits none; and in the second place, because we do not in the same way positively perceive that things like space and bodies are in every part unlimited, but merely negatively admit that their limits cannot be discovered by us." Cudworth (Intellectual System 2.536) also defines the infinite as the perfect and confines the term to God: "Infinity is nothing else but perfection. For infinite understanding and knowledge is nothing else but perfect knowledge, that which has no defect or mixture of ignorance with it. So in like manner infinite power is nothing else but perfect power, that which has no defect or mixture of impotency in it; a power of producing and doing all whatsoever is possible, that is, whatsoever is conceivable. Infinite power can do whatsoever infinite understanding can conceive and nothing else; conception being the measure of power and its extent, and whatsoever is in itself inconceivable being therefore impossible. Last, infinity of duration or eternity is really nothing else but perfection, as including necessary existence and immutability in it; so that it is not only contradictious to such a being to cease to be or exist but also to have had a newness or beginning of being or to have any flux or change therein, by dying to the present and acquiring something new to itself which was not before. Notwithstanding which, this being comprehends the differences of past, present, and future or the successive priority and posteriority of all temporary things. And because infinity is perfection, therefore can nothing which includes anything of imperfection in the very idea and essence of it be truly and properly infinite, such as number, corporeal magnitude, and successive duration. All which can only counterfeit and imitate infinity in their having more and more added to them indefinitely, whereby notwithstanding they never reach it or overtake it. There is nothing truly infinite, neither in knowledge nor in power nor in duration, but only one absolutely perfect being or the holy Trinity." Howe (Oracles 2.9) takes the same view, though rejecting a certain use of the term indefinite: "It has been a question much agitated among philosophers whether the created universe have any created limits at all or not. It has been agitated by some with a very ill design. With a mixture of fraud and folly, in discussing the question whether the created universe were infinite or not, they have told us they would not say it was infinite, but it was indefinite. When the terms are distinguished or infinite and indefinite, I would fain know what they mean by the latter. If by indefinite they mean that which has in itself no certain limits, then they plainly say that the created universe is infinite, because it has no fixed and certain limits. But if they mean by it only that it has no known limits to us, that anyone readily acknowledges; and so it is best to say it is finite, if they mean only so. Infinity is the proper predicate or attribute of deity alone. To say that the universe is infinite is to say that it is not a creation; and this would be taking away all the foundations of religion by confounding God and the creature. If the creature were infinite, there could be no subject of religion. And there can be no place for religion if there were no subject of it, any more than if there were no object of it."

3.1.11 (see p. 177). Coleridge commits the error of finding the personality of the Godhead or Trinity in one of the persons alone and not in the union of the three persons and thus of confounding the personality of the Trinity with the hypostatic personality. "I cannot," he says (Works 5.269), "meditate too deeply or too devotionally on the personeity of God and his personality in the Word." "O most unhappy mistranslation of hypostasis by person! The Word is properly the only person" (Works 5.406). It is difficult to determine what Coleridge means by "personeity" in distinction from "personality," as he says little upon the point (cf. Works 5.410). But it seems to be what he elsewhere denominates the "thesis," which looks like the Sabellian and the Pythagorean ground for the Trinity. In this case the personality evolves from the personeity and appears in the Son or Logos. This is not the Nicene doctrine, as Coleridge indirectly acknowledges by his partial disagreement with writers like Waterland and Bull. "It would be no easy matter," he says, "to find a tolerably competent individual who more venerates the writings of Waterland than I do. But still, in how many pages do I not see reason to regret that the total idea of the 4 = 3 = 1 of the adorable tetractys, eternally manifested in the triad, Father, Son, and Spirit, was never in its cloudless unity present to him. Hence both he and Bishop Bull too often treat it as a peculiarity of positive religion, which is to be cleared of all contradiction to reason, and then, thus negatively qualified, to be actually received by an act of mere will" (Works 5.404). "It cannot be denied that in changing the formula of the tetractys into the trias by merging the prothesis in the thesis, the identity in the Ipseity, the Christian fathers subjected their exposition to many inconveniences" (Works 5.416). For further criticism of this feature in Coleridge's trinitarianism, see Shedd, Literary Essays, 320–21.

2 Innate Idea and Knowledge of God

Evidence from Scripture for an Innate Knowledge of God

The term being when applied to God refers to his nature and constitution: quid sit—in opposition to materialistic and pantheistic conceptions of him. The term existence when applied to God refers to the question whether there is any such being: quod sit—in opposition to atheism. We analyze and define God's being; we demonstrate his existence.

The Scriptures contain no formal or syllogistic argument for divine existence. The opening sentence: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," supposes that the reader has the idea of God in his mind and recognizes its validity. The only form of atheism combated in the Bible is practical atheism. The "fool" says there is no God (Ps. 14:1). In Eph. 2:12 the atheoi en tō kosmō are the same as the xenoi tōn diathēkōn. Westminster Larger Catechism 105 mentions forty-six sins as varieties of atheism, such as "ignorance of God, forgetfulness, disbelief, carnality, lukewarmness," etc. Milton (Samson Agonistes 296) describes practical atheism:

For of such doctrine, never was there school

But the heart of the fool,

And no man therein doctor, but himself.

The reason why the Scriptures make no provision against speculative atheism by syllogistic reasoning is that syllogistic reasoning starts from a premise that is more obvious and certain than the conclusion drawn from it, and they do not concede that any premise necessary to be laid down in order to draw the conclusion that there is a Supreme Being is more intuitively certain than the conclusion itself. To prove is "to confirm what is uncertain from what is certain." "An argument is something clearer than the proposition to be maintained," says Charnock. But the judgment "there is a God" is as universal, natural, and intuitive as the judgment "there is a cause." The latter judgment has been combated (by Hume, for example), as well as the former. And the principal motive for combating the latter is the invalidation of the former. Men deny the reality of a cause, only for the purpose of disproving the reality of a first cause.

Another reason for the absence of a syllogistic argument for divine existence in Scripture is suggested by Stillingfleet (Origines sacrae 3.1). He remarks that in the early ages of the world, the being of God was more universally acknowledged by reason of the proximity in time to the beginning of the world and to such events as the flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Hence Moses found little atheism to contend with. Furthermore, the miracles connected with Moses's own mission rendered arguments for divine existence unnecessary. Under Sinai, God proved his existence by his miraculous presence to the senses.

The evidence relied upon in the Scriptures for divine existence is derived from the immediate and universal consciousness of the human soul, as this is awakened and developed by the works of creation and providence. St. Paul has given the fullest account of the subject of any inspired writer in Rom. 1:19–20 compared with Acts 17:24–28; 14:16–17. The positions which he lays down are the following.

First, the pagan possesses a knowledge of God as invisible (ta aorata autou), eternal (aidios dynamis), omnipotent (aidios dynamis), supreme (theiotēs; i.e., sovereignty not Godhead, which would require theotēs10 as in Col. 2:9), holy in revealing wrath (orgē) against sin, one (there being only one almighty, supreme, and eternal being), and benevolent (Acts 17:25; 14:16; Rom. 2:4). Only the more general unanalyzed idea of God is attributed to the pagan, because there are degrees of knowledge and his is the lowest. The unity, invisibility, omnipotence, eternity, retributive justice, and benevolence of the divine being are represented by St. Paul as knowable by man as man and as actually known by him in greater or less degree.

Second, the pagan, though having an imperfect, yet has a valid and trustworthy knowledge of God. It is denominated alētheian (Rom. 1:18). It is sufficient to constitute a foundation for responsibility and the imputation of sin. Idolatry is charged against the pagan as guilt, because in practicing it he is acting against his better knowledge (1:20). Sensuality is guilt for the same reason (1:32). Unthankfulness is guilt (1:21). Failure to worship the true God is guilt (1:21). Accordingly, Westminster Confession 1.1 affirms that "the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave man inexcusable." Sin is chargeable upon the heathen because they have not lived up to the light of nature. Any man is guilty who knows more than he performs. The divine estimate of human duty and the divine requirement proceed upon the created capacities of the human soul, not upon the use that man makes of them. Because the pagan was originally endowed with the idea of one God, supreme, almighty, and holy, he is said by St. Paul to know God and is consequently obligated to love and serve him so far as he knows him. The fact that the pagan's sin has vitiated this original idea does not release him from this obligation or prove that he is destitute of the idea, any more than the vice of man in Christendom and the moral ignorance that ensues from it release him from obligation.

The foundation for these statements of St. Paul is the fact that the idea of God is natural to the human mind, like the ideas of space and time and the mathematical ideas of a point, a line, a circle, etc. These latter ideas are always assumed as more or less present and valid in human intelligence. The degree of their development in consciousness varies in different races and civilizations; but, in some degree, they are universal ideas. An "innate" idea is one that results from the constitution of the mind. It is not a fixed quantity in human consciousness, but varies with the mental development.

The idea of God is rational in its source. It is a product of the reason, not of the sense. In this respect, it is like the mathematical ideas. It is an intuition of the mind, not a deduction or conclusion from an impression upon the senses by an external object. St. Paul describes the nature of the perception by the participle nooumena, which denotes the direct and immediate intuition of reason. The invisible attributes of God, which are not objects of the senses and are not cognizable by them, are clearly seen by the mind (nous), says St. Paul. The reason is stimulated to act by the notices of the senses; but when thus stimulated, it perceives by its own operation truths and facts which the senses themselves never perceive. The earth and sky make the same sensible impression upon the organs of a brute that they do upon those of a man; but the brute never discerns the "invisible things" of God; the "eternal power and godhood."

There must always be something innate and subjective, in order that the objective may be efficient. The objects of sense themselves would make no conscious impression if there were not five senses in man upon which to impress themselves. They make no conscious impression upon a rock. In like manner, the order, design, and unity of external nature would not suggest the idea of a Supreme Being if that idea were not subjective to man: "Unless education and culture were preceded by an innate consciousness of God, as an operative predisposition, there would be nothing for education and culture to work upon" (Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine §7).

Turretin (3.2.5) asserts that even speculative atheism is only apparent and seeming, because there is in man "an innate knowledge of God and consciousness of divinity (sensus divinitatis) which can no more be wanting in him, than a rational intellect; and which he can no more get rid of than he can get rid of himself." Calvin (1.3 argues "that the human mind is naturally endowed with the knowledge of God" (cf. the beginning of Charnock's Discourse 1). Pearson (On the Creed, art. 1) remarks that "we shall always find all nations of the world more prone to idolatry than to atheism and readier to multiply than to deny the deity." Socrates (Republic 2.378) would not have the mythological narratives concerning the gods made known to the young, because of their tendency to destroy the natural belief in the deity: "Neither if we mean our future guardians of the state to regard the habit of quarreling as dishonorable, should anything be said of the wars in heaven and of the plots and fightings of the gods against one another, which are quite untrue." The second book of the Republic (especially 2.379–83) enunciates very clearly the view of Socrates concerning the divine nature and shows that he regarded the knowledge of God as natural to man. St. Paul indicates the subjective and innate quality of the idea of God by employing the verbs apokalyptō and phaneroō16 respecting it. These imply that the source of the perception is internal, not external. It is a revelation in the human consciousness and through the constitutional structure of the human intellect. Such verbs as these are never employed to describe the outward impressions of the senses.

Arguments from Pagan Philosophers for an Innate Knowledge of God

The teaching of St. Paul respecting the innate idea is confirmed by that of the pagan philosophers themselves. Cudworth has discussed the heathen theology represented by Greece and Rome with immense learning and great candor. He proves by abundant quotations (1) that many of the pagan philosophers were "theists," that is, monotheists, and acknowledged one supreme God; and (2) that the multiplicity of gods, of which they speak, does not denote many eternal and self-existent deities, but only inferior divinities produced by the Supreme Being and subject to him: the word gods being employed by them somewhat as it is in Scripture to signify angels, princes and magistrates (Intellectual System 1.370ff., 417ff.).

Greek and Roman monotheism is well expressed in the following remark of Cicero (On the Laws 1.8): "There is no animal excepting man that has any notion of God: and among men there is no tribe so uncivilized and savage (fera) which, even if it does not know what kind of a god (qualem deum) it ought to have, does not know that it ought to have one." Thirlwall (History, 22) says that "Socrates acknowledged one Supreme Being as the framer and preserver of the universe; used the singular and plural number indiscriminately concerning the object of his adoration; and when he endeavored to reclaim one of his friends who had scoffed at sacrifices and divinations, it was, according to Xenophon, by an argument drawn exclusively from the works of one Creator."

The natural monotheism of the pagan is proved by the names given to the Supreme Being. The term for God is identical in languages of the same family. Says Müller (Science of Language, 2d series, 10):

Zeus, the most sacred name in Greek mythology, is the same word as Dyaus in Sanskrit, Jovis or Ju in Jupiter in Latin, Tiw in Anglo-Saxon, preserved in Tiwsdaeg, Tuesday, the day of the Eddic god Tyr, and Zio in Old High German. This word was framed once and once only; it was not borrowed by the Greeks from the Hindus nor by the Romans and Germans from the Greeks. It must have existed before the ancestors of those primeval races became separate in language and religion; before they left their common pastures to migrate to the right hand and to the left.

Says DeVere (Studies in English, 10), "the term for God is identical in all the Indo-European languages—the Indic Iranic, Celtic, Hellenic, Italic, Teutonic, and Sclavonic." Grimm and Curtius (Greek Etymology §269) give this etymology of Zeus. When the name for the Supreme Being is different, because the language is of another family, the same attribute or characteristic of superiority and supremacy over inferior divinities is indicated by it. The same deity whom the Greeks and Romans called Zeus or Jupiter, the Babylonians denominated Belus and Bel, the Egyptians Ammon, the Persians Mithras, the North American Indian the Great Spirit (see Studies and Reviews 1849).

This natural monotheism is proved by the title in the singular number given to the supreme divinity. Solon (Herodotus 1.32) denominates him ho theos and to theion. Sophocles speaks of ho megas theos. Plato often denominates him ho theos. Other titles are ho dēmiourgos, ho hēgēōn, ho prōtos theos, ho prōtos nous, ho hypatos kreiontōn25 (Homer), and hē pronoia (Plutarch). Horace (Odes 1.12) describes the supreme deity as the universal Father, to whom there is nothing "alike or second." "The name of one supreme God," says Calvin (1.10, "has been universally known and celebrated. For those who used to worship a multitude of deities, whenever they spoke according to the genuine sense of nature, used simply the name of God in the singular number, as though they were contented with one God."

The early Christian apologists universally maintained the position that the human mind is naturally and by creation monotheistic. Tertullian (Apology 17) says:

God proves himself to be God and the one only God by the fact that he is known to all nations. The consciousness of God is the original dowry of the soul; the same in Egypt, in Syria, and in Pontus. For the God of the Jews is the one whom the souls of men call their God. The Christians worship one God, the one whom you pagans naturally know; at whose lightnings and thunders you tremble, at whose benefits you rejoice. We prove divine existence by the witness of the soul itself, which, although confined in the prison of the body, although enervated by lusts and passions, although made the servant of false goods, yet when it recovers itself as from a surfeit or a slumber and is in its proper sober condition, calls God by this name (deus, not Jupiter, Apollo, etc.) because it is the proper name of the true God. "Great God," "Good God," and "God grant" are words in every mouth. Finally, in pronouncing these words, it looks not to the Roman capital, but to heaven; for it knows the dwelling place of the true God, because from him and from thence it descended.

Clement of Alexandria, by numerous quotations from pagan writers, proves that there is much monotheism in them; which he denominates "Greek plagiarism from the Hebrews" (Stromata 5.14). Lactantius (Institutions 1.5) quotes the Orphic poets Hesiod, Virgil, and Ovid in proof that the heathen poets knew the unity of God. He then cites Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, and Seneca to show that the pagan philosophers had the doctrine. Augustine (City of God 4.24–31; 7.6; 8.1–12) takes the same view of pagan theology. "Varro," says Augustine, "while reprobating the popular belief in many divinities, thought that worship should be confined to one God; although he calls this one God the soul of the world." Varro states that the Romans for more than 170 years worshiped without images. Minucius Felix (Octavius 18) argues in a manner like that of Tertullian: "I hear the common people, when they stretch out their hands to heaven, call on no other than God and say 'God is great' and 'God is true' and 'If God should grant it.' Is that the natural speech of the common person or the prayer of a confessing Christian? And those who would have Jupiter at the head are mistaken in name but agree concerning the one authority." Eusebius (Preparation for the Gospel 11.13) quotes from the Timaeus to prove that Plato agrees with Moses in teaching the unity of God. In the Preparation for the Gospel 11.1 Eusebius maintains that "the philosophy of Plato agrees with that of the Hebrews in those matters which are most necessary." Modern authorities agree with the Christian apologist. "Among all nations," says Kant (Pure Reason, 363), "through the darkest polytheism, glimmer some faint sparks of monotheism, to which these idolaters have been led, not from reflection and profound thought, but by the study and natural progress of the human understanding."

That monotheism prevailed somewhat in Abraham's time in races other than the Hebrew and in countries other than Palestine is evident from the following biblical data. Hagar the Egyptian "called the name of the Lord that spoke unto her, You, God, see me" (Gen. 16:13). Jehovah appears to Abimelech, the Philistine king, and Abimelech said, "Lord, will you slay also a righteous nation?" (20:3–8). Pharaoh, the Egyptian, speaks of Joseph as "a man in whom the spirit of God is" (41:38). Jethro, the priest of Midian, gives to Moses his son-in-law the counsel of a God-fearing man (Exod. 18:9–12, 19–23). Balaam, in Mesopotamia, enunciates the doctrine of one God the sovereign ruler of all (Num. 24:16). Ruth, a Moabitess, speaks of God the Lord (Ruth 1:16–17). It is true that in some instances, as in those of Hagar and Ruth, this knowledge of God might have been received from those with whom they associated, but after subtracting these, it is still evident that considerable monotheism was current, particularly among the races descending from Shem.

The Persian religion contains many monotheistic elements. Cudworth (Intellectual System 1.471) remarks that upon the authority of Eubulus, cited by Porphyry, "we may conclude that notwithstanding the sun was generally worshiped by the Persians as a god, yet Zoroaster and the ancient Magi, who were best initiated in the Mithraic mysteries, asserted another deity superior to the sun, for the true Mithras, such as was pantōn poiētēs kai patēr, the maker and father of all things or of the whole world, whereof the sun is a part." Similarly, Prideaux (Connection 1.4) says that Zoroaster reformed the Magian religion by introducing a principle superior to the two Magian principles of good and evil, namely, "one supreme God who created both light and darkness." Prideaux thinks that Zoroaster obtained the suggestion from Isa. 45:5–7. Herodotus (1.131) asserts that the Persians have no images of the gods, no temples, no altars, and consider the use of them a sign of folly (cf. Rawlinson, Herodotus 1.5). A writer in the October 1869 Princeton Review affirms that the countrymen of Cyrus and Darius were not polytheists and did not worship fire or any other idol, but one almighty God. The Persian monotheism was undoubtedly owing in part to biblical influences. The captivity of Judah and the residence of the Jews at Babylon must have brought the Hebrew religion into contact with those of Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia. Jewish communities also flourished at several great centers in central Asia subsequent to the captivity (see Merivale, Roman History, 54). But while this element of tradition is conceded, it does not explain the entire fact. The natural monotheism of the human mind remains a great and underlying factor in the problem. (supplement 3.2.1.)

According to John 1:4 there is a natural apprehension of God; and according to 1:5 there is a sinful misapprehension of him. The Logos was "the light of men," and "the darkness comprehended not" this light. The first statement relates to the innate idea of God given by creation; the second, to the innate idea as vitiated by sin. (supplement 3.2.2.)

The vitiation of an idea is not the eradication of it. If the idea of God were absolutely extinct in the human spirit, religion would be impossible. But man in all the varieties of his condition has a religion of some kind in which a superior being is recognized. Hence, St. Paul does not except any portion of the human family from his description of human nature as furnished with religious ideas. His statement is sweeping and universal that "when men knew God they glorified him not as God" and therefore are without excuse.

Arguments against an Innate Knowledge of God

It has been objected to this that some tribes of men have been discovered destitute of the idea of God. But when the alleged fact has been investigated, it has been found that a very low grade of knowledge has been mistaken for blank ignorance. In some instances, the statement is that of an ignorant witness and is contradicted by an intelligent one. Ben Ali, Livingstone's guide, told Livingstone that the Makondi "had no idea of a deity; that they knew nothing of a deity or a future state; had no religion except a belief in medicine; and prayed to their mothers when in distress or dying." But Livingstone, on going among the Makondi, found them saying that "in digging for gum-copal, none may be found on one day, but God (Mungu) may give it to us the next." "This showed me," he says, "that the consciousness of God's existence was present to their minds" (Livingstone's Last Journals, 38). Respecting the African races generally, Macdonald (Africana 1.67) remarks: "We should say that their religion and its worship is practically polytheism. Beyond their polytheism, their language contains a few expressions that remind us of pantheism and a great many that speak of monotheism." Says Quatrefages (Human Species, 35), "the result of my investigations is exactly the opposite to that to which Lubbock and St. Hilaire have arrived. Obliged in the course of my investigation to review all human races, I have sought atheism in the lowest as well as the highest. I have nowhere met it except in individuals or in more or less limited schools, such as those which existed in Europe in the last century or which may still be seen at the present day."

The existence of an idea in the mental constitution and its development in consciousness must be distinguished from each other. The idea of God is not so fully developed in one man or nation as it is in another. No two men even in a Christian land are exactly alike in this respect. But their mental constitution is the same. One man has a more impressive sense of divine justice than another; another has a deeper consciousness of divine mercy; another of divine wisdom. The idea of God has immense contents, and the varieties of its unfolding are innumerable. Apostasy from God and sin hinder the evolution of the innate idea. They also confuse and corrupt its development in consciousness, so that a deeply immoral individual or nation will exhibit less of a true knowledge of the deity than a comparatively moral individual or nation. The difference in the amount of moral intelligence shown in the history of the human family, consequently, is not due to any original difference in the structure of the human spirit or in the constitutional provision which the Creator has made for a knowledge of himself, but to the greater or less degree of human depravity. In proportion as a people are hostile to the innate idea of God and do not "like to retain" it in consciousness, they are given over to a reprobate mind, and the idea either slumbers or is mutilated and altered. The "truth of God," that is, the true view and conception of God, is "changed into a lie," that is, into polytheism or pantheism or atheism (Rom. 1:25, 28).

The imbruted condition of the idolatrous world does not disprove the existence of the innate idea of the deity. A fundamental idea in the human constitution may be greatly undeveloped or vitiated and still be a reality. No one will deny that the ideas of space and time belong as truly to the rational understanding of a Hottentot as they did to that of Plato. But it would not follow that because the Hottentot has not elicited the ideas of space and time by reflection upon their nature and bearings, they are extinct within his mind. The axioms of geometry are as much intuitive truths for the Eskimo as they were for Newton; but if they should be stated to the Eskimo in words, his first look might be that of blank vacancy. In truth, it requires a longer time and more effort to bring the savage man to consciousness respecting geometrical truth, than it does to bring him to consciousness respecting the idea of God. The missionary, contrary to the view of those who assert that civilization must precede evangelization, finds that he can elicit the ideas of God, soul, sin, and guilt sooner and easier than he can the ideas of mathematics and philosophy.

Socrates, in the Platonic dialogue entitled Meno, takes a slave boy who is utterly unacquainted with geometry and by putting questions to him in his wonderful obstetric method develops out of the boy's rational intelligence the geometrical proposition and demonstration that the square of the diagonal contains twice the space of the square of the side. If the proposition had been stated to the boy in this form at first, he would have stared in utter ignorance. But being led along step by step, he comes out into the conclusion with as clear a perception as that of Socrates himself (cf. Cicero, Tusculan Questions 1.24). To affirm by reason of the undeveloped condition of the geometrical ideas in this slave's mind that he was destitute of them would be as erroneous as it is to deny the existence of the idea of the deity in every human soul because of the dormant state in which it is sometimes found. Reason is more spontaneously active in some minds than in others; but reason is alike the possession of every man. Pascal at the age of twelve discovered alone by himself and without any mathematical instruction the axioms and definitions of geometry and actually worked out its theorems as far as the thirty-second proposition of Euclid.

The doctrine of an innate idea and knowledge of God does not conflict with that of human depravity and cannot be adduced in proof of the position that there is some natural holiness in man. Natural religion or the light of nature is not of the nature of virtue or holiness. This for two reasons. First, a rational being may know that there is one God and that he ought to be obeyed and glorified and yet render no obedience or worship. The lost angels are an example: "You believe that there is one God; you do well, the devils also believe and tremble" (James 2:19). This natural knowledge of God is in the understanding only—not in the will and affections. It is consequently not an element in the moral character; but only a characteristic of the rational constitution.

Second, the idea of God is not man's product, but that of God. St. Paul employs the phrase theos ephanerose respecting it. The Creator is the author and cause of this knowledge in the creature. Whatever worth or merit, therefore, there may be in this mental possession is due to God not to man. Some theologians have attempted to overthrow the doctrine of depravity and establish that of natural virtue and merit upon the ground of the lofty ideas of God, freedom, and immortality in the human spirit.32 Were these ideas self-originated, did man, being at first a tabula rasa, come by them through a laborious reasoning of his own, there would be some ground for the view. But the idea of God is a gift of God, as truly as any other gift proceeding from the divine hand: "That which may be known of God." All the religious knowledge which the human spirit possesses by virtue of its constitution is a manifestation or revelation, for God has "showed" it unto man. That mode of human consciousness by which man is immediately and intuitively aware of his maker is as really the product of God, as is the breath in the nostrils. "Our God-consciousness is always, if genuine, also caused by God,"34 says Twesten. All egotism, therefore, all merit in view of the lofty ideas in human nature, is excluded by the doctrine of creation and providence, as much as it is by the doctrine of justification by grace. A man might as rationally claim that his faculty for perceiving geometrical truths is due to himself and is of the nature of virtue and rewardable, as to claim that his intuitive idea of God is a product of his agency for which he deserves the rewards of the future life.

The assertion that the idea of the deity is the product of education and not innate is disproved by the following considerations. (1) The savage races have no education in this reference, but they have the idea. (2) If theism could be taught by priests and interested parties, then atheism could be taught by skeptics. But it has been found impossible to educate any considerable portion of the human family into disbelief of divine existence. Atheism is sporadic, never general, or even local. (3) The terror before God which man feels as a transgressor is a strong motive for him to banish the idea from his mind, if it could be done; and it could be done, if its existence depended merely upon instruction. Cease to instruct, and it would cease to exist.

The more profoundly and carefully the forms of human consciousness are investigated, the stronger becomes the evidence for divine existence. Atheism is refuted by an accurate and exhaustive psychology. This is apparent from an examination of both consciousness and self-consciousness. In the first place, proof of divine existence is found in man's God-consciousness, considered as a universal and abiding form of human consciousness. Consciousness implies a real object that is correlative to it. There cannot be a universal and abiding consciousness of a nonentity. Sensuous consciousness proves the existence of a sensuous object, namely, matter. The shadow implies the substance. The same is true of that particular mode of human consciousness denominated the God-consciousness. If there were no God, this form of consciousness would be inexplicable, except upon the supposition of a mental mockery or hallucination. There would be consciousness without an object of consciousness. But it is too universal and constant to be accounted for by imagination and self-delusion. Consciousness is always upon the side of theism, never upon that of atheism. Multitudes of men have been conscious that there is a God; but not a single individual was ever conscious that there is not a God. Says La Bruyère (Les caractères, chap. 16), "I feel that there is a God, and I do not feel that there is not."

In the second place, proof of divine existence is found in man's self-consciousness. This, also, like man's God-consciousness, logically implies God's objective existence. The reality of man as a finite ego involves that of an infinite ego. When I speak the word I, I certainly distinguish between my own substance and that of the material world around me and thereby imply that there is such a world. It would be absurd to distinguish myself from mere nonentity. Now, as in the sense-consciousness the existence of the outer world is necessarily implied, so in the self-consciousness the existence of God is implied. The consciousness of diversity and of alterity, in both cases, supposes the equal reality of the subject that cognizes and the object cognized. If the human spirit, by immediate self-consciousness, knows that it is a distinct individual self and is not God, this proves not only that it has the idea of God, but that this idea has objective validity; precisely as when the human spirit is immediately conscious that it is another thing than the external world, this proves not only that it possesses the idea of the external world, but that this idea has objective validity.

Self-consciousness, therefore, leads inevitably to the belief in the being of God. If I am conscious of myself as a self, it follows that I must be conscious of God as another self. The evolution of the self-consciousness runs parallel and keeps even pace with the evolution of the God-consciousness. If the former is narrow and meager, the latter will be so likewise. If self-consciousness and self-knowledge are deep and comprehensive, the consciousness and knowledge of God will agree with them. "When I shall know myself, I shall know you," says Bernard. "If I knew myself better, I should know God better" might be truly said by every human being, from Plato down to the most degraded fetish worshiper. Just as soon as any man can intelligently say, "I am," he can and logically must say, "God is." Just as soon as he can intelligently say, "I am evil," he can and logically must say, "God is holy." The antithesis and contrast is felt immediately in both cases; and an antithetic contrast implies two antithetic and contrasted objects. The logical implication of the consciousness of a sinful self is the consciousness of a holy God. He who knows darkness knows light, and he who has the idea of wrong necessarily has the idea of right. The imbruted pagan who is cited to disprove the view we are upholding has as little knowledge of himself as he has of the deity. His self-consciousness is as slightly developed as his God-consciousness. If a low grade of a particular form of human consciousness may be instanced to prove the nonentity of the object correlated to it, then the low form and often the temporary absence of self-consciousness in the savage would prove that he is not an ego. Compare Calvin's remarks (1.1) upon "the connection between a knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves."

It follows, therefore, that man has the same kind of evidence for divine existence, that he has for his own personal existence: that of immediate consciousness. But this is the most convincing and invincible species of evidence. We have a stronger proof that we ourselves exist than that the world of matter around us exists, of the existence of the ego than of the non-ego. A man's own existence is the most certain of all things. Berkeley denied that matter is a real entity, but not that his own mind is such. Locke, who was by no means inclined to undervalue the force of arguments derived from matter and sensuous impressions, nevertheless places the evidences of self-consciousness at the highest point in the scale: "The real existence of other things without us can be evidenced to us only by our senses; but our own existence is known to us by a certainty yet higher than our senses can give us of the existence of other things; and this is internal perception or self-consciousness or intuition" (Locke, Descartes' Proof of the Being of God in Life and Letters, 316). In like manner, Smith (Immortality, 6) contends that

we know a thousand times more distinctly what our souls are, than what our bodies are. For the former we know by an immediate converse with ourselves and a distinct sense of their operations; whereas all our knowledge of the body is little better than merely historical, which we gather up by scraps and piecemeal from doubtful and uncertain experiments which we make of them. But the notions which we have of a mind, that is, of something that thinks, apprehends, reasons, and discourses, are so clear and distinct from all those notions which we can fasten upon a body, that we can easily conceive that if all body-being in the world were destroyed, we might then as well subsist as we do now.

Why then, it will be asked, has divine existence been disputed and denied? Men, it is objected, do not dispute or deny their own self-existence. To this we reply that they do. The reality of an absolutely personal existence for the human spirit not only can be disputed and denied, but has been. Pantheism concedes only a phenomenal and transient reality to the individual ego. The individual man, it is asserted, exists only relatively and apparently, not absolutely and metaphysically. He has no substantial being different from that of the infinite, but is only a modification of the eternal substance. His experiences, his thoughts and feelings, hopes and fears, in other words, his self-consciousness, is phenomenal and from the philosophic point of view an illusion. It lasts only seventy years. The individual is not immortal; he is absorbed in the infinite substance of which he is only one out of millions of modes. Now this is really a denial of self-consciousness, and it has been maintained by a dialectics even more acute and a ratiocination even more concatenated than any that has been employed by atheism in the effort to disprove divine existence. Spinoza and Hegel have defended this theory, with an energy of abstraction and a concentration of mental power unequaled in the annals of human error. That the denial of a true and real self-consciousness for man has been comparatively an esoteric doctrine and has not had so much currency as the atheistic doctrine arises from the fact that man has not so strong a motive for disputing his own existence as he has for disputing that of the deity. Men are not so afraid of themselves as they are of their maker and judge—although if they were fully aware of the solemn implications of a personal and responsible existence, they would find little to choose between denying their own existence and that of God.

Monotheism as the Original Form of Man's Innate Knowledge of God

Monotheism was the original form of religion; pantheism and polytheism were subsequent forms. This is proved by the Bible and the earliest secular records. According to Genesis, man was created a monotheist. His first estate was his best estate. He lapsed from a higher to a lower grade of both character and knowledge. Cicero (Tusculan Questions 1.12.26) remarks that "man who was closer to his divine origin and ancestry perhaps was better able to discern the truth." The statements of the early poets and philosophers respecting a golden age express the belief that the primitive condition of man was a high, not a low one. The earlier Greek poetry is more monotheistic than the later. There is less polytheism in the Homeric theology than in that of Greece at the time of St. Paul. The number of inferior deities is greater in the last age of mythology than in its first period. Müller (Literature of Greece 2.1–3) affirms that

the Homeric poems, though belonging to the first period of Greek poetry, do not, nevertheless exhibit the first form of the Greek religion. The conception of the gods as expressed in the Homeric poems suits a time when war was the occupation of the people, and the age was that of heroes. Prior to this, the nation had been pastoral, and the religion then was that earlier form which was founded upon the same ideas as the chief religions of the East. It was a nature worship that placed one deity, as the highest of all, at the head of the entire system, namely, the God of heaven and of light; for this is the meaning of Zeus in Greek and of Diu in Sanskrit.

Prideaux (Connection 1.3) derives idolatry from a corruption of the doctrine of a mediator, which is contained in the religion of Noah and Abraham. The nations regarded the sun, moon, and stars as the habitations of intelligences who were secondary divinities or mediator gods. This was the first stage in the process. As the planets were visible only in the night, they invented images to represent them. This produced image worship: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, etc. This was the second and final stage in the process. The religion of the Vedas, puerile as it is in many respects, is superior to the popular religion of India at the present time, showing that there has been a lapse from a higher and better knowledge. The earlier Varuna-Vedic literature is more spiritual and truthful than the later Indra-Vedic (see Cook, Origins of Religion, essay 1). Rawlinson (Egypt, 10) maintains that the "primary doctrine of the esoteric religion of Egypt undoubtedly was the real essential unity of the divine nature. The gods of the popular mythology were understood, in the esoteric religion, to be either personified attributes of the deity or parts of nature which he had created considered as informed and inspired by him."

The first step in the corruption of the primitive monotheism is pantheism. Here the unity of God is still retained, but the difference in essence between him and the universe is denied. The fact that the idea of divine unity is preserved proves that this idea is natural to the human mind. The second step in the decline from the primitive monotheism is polytheism. Here, the unity or the one substance of pantheism is subdivided, and the subdivisions are personified, showing an endeavor to regain the personality of God which has been lost in pantheism. Pantheism is too abstract and destitute of elements that appeal to man's feelings to be a popular religion. It is the idolatry or false worship of the philosopher, while polytheism is that of the common mind. (For an account of the modification of monotheism outside of revelation, see Guizot, Meditations, 1st series, 7.)

It is an error to represent, as Schelling does in his Philosophy of Mythology, the various mythological systems as the normal and necessary action of the human mind working its way up from a lower to a higher form of the religious consciousness. This makes idolatry to be a regular and legitimate step, ordained by the Creator himself, in the progress of the human race toward a perfect religion. St. Paul takes the contrary view. According to him, the human mind is monotheistic by creation and in its structure, and pantheism and polytheism are a progress downward, not upward. Idolatry is sin. But according to Schelling, idolatry is innocent, because it is a necessary movement of the human intellect. The theory taught by Hume in his History of Religion that polytheism was the primitive religion and that monotheism is the result of human progress is part of that general theory of man which holds that he was created low down the scale of existence, perhaps descended from the animal tribes and through vast ages of time slowly struggles upward of and by himself.

The relics of monotheism found outside of the pale of revelation, in the various countries and civilizations, are traceable to two sources: (1) to the monotheistic structure of the human mind, in the way that has been described; this is the subjective and fundamental requisite; and (2) to the influence of the primitive revelation from God made in the line of Seth, fragments of which have floated down among the races of mankind. Both of these sources and causes of monotheism should be recognized. If only the first is acknowledged, justice is not done to traditional records and data. If only the second is acknowledged and all monotheism in human history is referred to a special revelation in early times, justice is not done to the constitution of the human mind. It conflicts, moreover, with St. Paul's representations in Rom. 1.

Inadequacy of Natural Religion

After this examination of the monotheistic structure of the human spirit, considered as the foundation of natural religion, it is important to observe that natural religion is insufficient for human needs. The position of the deist, that the teachings of the human reason concerning the being and attributes of God are adequate and that revealed religion is superfluous, is untenable because there is nothing redemptive in them. Natural religion manifests the justice of God, but not his mercy. The orgē tou theou is revealed in the common human consciousness, but not the agapē tou theou. The God-consciousness includes divine holiness, but not divine compassion. Natural religion inspires fear, but not hope and trust. The monotheistic idea of the deity contains only such moral attributes as justice, veracity, and immaculate purity. In St. Paul's analysis, mention is made of omnipotence, sovereignty, unity, and retributive displeasure; but no mention is made of the attribute of mercy. Divine benevolence is indeed displayed to the pagan in the rain from heaven and the fruitful seasons (Acts 14:7); but providential benevolence is not pardoning mercy. The lost man and even the lost angel experiences the benevolence of God. He makes his sun to shine alike upon the evil and the good. Natural religion, consequently, is not an adequate religion for man unless it can be proved that he does not need the mercy of God.

The utmost that human reason can say respecting the exercise of divine mercy is that it is a possibility. There is no self-contradiction in the proposition that God may show mercy to the guilty. Says Witsius (Apostles' Creed, diss. 25), "if one carefully consider the all sufficiency of divine perfections, according to that idea of the Supreme Being which is impressed by nature upon our minds, we will possibly conclude, or at least conjecture, that it is not altogether beyond the range of possibility that a just and holy God may be reconciled to a sinner."

But it may be objected that inasmuch as the attribute of mercy necessarily belongs to divine nature, a careful analysis of the innate idea of God would yield this attribute to the heathen mind, and in this way the heathen might come to the knowledge that God shows mercy and so find a redemptive element in natural religion This objection overlooks the distinction between the existence of an attribute and its exercise. Some divine attributes are attributes of nature only, and some are attributes of both nature and will. In the former case, an attribute not only necessarily exists in divine essence, but it must necessarily be exercised. Truth or veracity is an example. God of necessity possesses this quality, and he must of necessity manifest it at all times. Its exercise does not depend upon his sovereign will and pleasure. He may be truthful or not, as he pleases. The same is true of divine justice. But the attribute of mercy is not an attribute of nature only, it is also an attribute of will. Though mercy is an eternal and necessary quality of the divine nature and is logically contained in the idea of God as a being possessing all perfections, yet the exercise of it is optional, not necessary. Because God is a merciful being, it does not follow that he must show mercy to every object without exception, without any choice or will of his own. He says, "I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy" (Rom. 9:15). The exercise of this attribute depends upon divine good pleasure. It might have existed as an immanent and eternal attribute in God and yet not have been extended to a single man. Because God has not shown mercy to Satan and his angels, it does not follow that he is destitute of the attribute. To deny the freeness of mercy is to annihilate mercy. If mercy is a matter of debt and God is obliged to show mercy, as he is obliged to be truthful and just, then mercy is no more mercy and grace is no more grace (11:16). God's mercy, in this respect, is like God's omnipotence. God necessarily has the power to create, but is under no necessity of exerting this power. If he had never created anything at all, he would still have been an omnipotent being. And so, too, if he had never pardoned a single sinner, he would still have been a merciful being in his own nature.

Now it is because the exercise of mercy, unlike that of truth and justice, is optional with God that the heathen cannot be certain that mercy will be exercised toward him. In thinking of the subject of sin, his own reason perceives intuitively that God must of necessity punish transgression; and it perceives with equal intuitiveness that there is no corresponding necessity that he should pardon it. He can say with emphasis, "God must be just"; but he cannot say, "God must be merciful." Mercy is an attribute whose exercise is sovereign and optional, and therefore man cannot determine by any a priori method whether it will be extended to him. He knows nothing upon this point, until he hears the assurance from the lips of God himself. When God opens the heavens and speaks to the human creature saying, "I will forgive your iniquity," then, and not till then, does he know the fact (Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, sermon 18). Hence the religion of mercy and redemption is historical and promissory in its nature. It contains a testimony respecting God's actual decision and purpose concerning the exercise of compassion. It is a record authenticated and certified of what God has decided and covenanted to do in a given case and not a deduction from an a priori principle of what he must do of necessity. Natural religion, on the other hand, is neither historical nor promissory. It is not a historical narrative like the Old and New Testament; and it contains no promise or covenant made by God with man. Natural religion is not a series of facts and events, but of truths only.

Consequently, natural religion (or the religion of justice) can be constructed in an a priori manner out of the ideas and laws of human intelligence; but the gospel (or the religion of mercy and redemption) can be constructed only out of a special revelation from God. Conscience can give the heathen a punitive, but not a pardoning deity. Man's natural monotheism does not include a knowledge of divine mercy, but only of divine holiness and displeasure at sin. It is sufficient for man as created and sinless; but not for man as apostate and sinful. It is because the heathen is a "stranger from the covenants of promise" that he "has no hope" (Eph. 2:12). (supplement 3.2.3.)

SUPPLEMENTS

3.2.1 (see p. 191). That the human race began with monotheism and that the earlier forms of the ethnic religions were higher and more spiritual than the later is maintained by Curtius (Greece 2.2): "The Pelasgi, like their equals among the branches of the Aryan family, the Persians and Germans, worshiped the supreme God without images or temples; spiritual edification, also, was provided for them by their natural high altars, the lofty mountain tops. Their supreme God was adored by them even without a name; for Zeus (Deus) merely means the heavens, the ether, the luminous abode of the Invisible; and when they wished to imply a nearer relation between him and mankind they called him, as the author of all things living, Father-Zeus, Dipatyros (Jupiter). This pure and chaste worship of the godlike Pelasgi is not only preserved as a pious tradition of antiquity, but in Greece, where it abounded with images and temples, there flamed as of old on the mountains the altars of him who dwells not in temples made with hands. It is the element of primitive simplicity which has always preserved itself longest and safest in the religions of antiquity. Thus through all the centuries of Greek history the Arcadian Zeus, formless, unapproachable, dwelled in sacred light over the oak tops of the Lycaean mountain; and the boundaries of his domain were marked by every shadow within them growing pale. Long, too, the people retained a pious dread of representing the divine being under a fixed name or by symbols recognizable by the senses. For, besides the altar of the 'Unknown,' whom Paul acknowledged as the living God, there stood here and there in the towns altars to the 'pure,' the 'great,' the 'merciful' gods; and by far the greater number of the names of the Greek gods are originally mere epithets of the unknown deity."

The opinion upon such a subject as the primitive intellectual and moral condition of mankind of a historian like Curtius, whose life has been devoted to the study of the ancient literatures, philosophies, and religions, is far more trustworthy than that of mere physicists like Darwin and Lubbock, whose knowledge in these provinces is comparatively scanty. It is noteworthy, in this connection, that there is no mention in Genesis of formal idolatry until after the deluge.

3.2.2 (see p. 191). Stillingfleet (Origenes, Unfinished Book 1.1) observes that when the common consent of mankind concerning divine existence is denied, it should be noticed (1) "that we must distinguish the more brutish and savage peoples from the more intelligent and rational; because it is possible for mankind, by a neglect of all kind of instruction, to degenerate almost to the nature of brutes. But surely such are not fit to be brought in for the instances of what naturally belongs to mankind"; and (2) "that we must not judge by the light information of mere strangers and persons who land upon savage islands with vicious and bad designs." Stillingfleet mentions that atheists in his day contended that there was no knowledge of God nor religion among the inhabitants of South Africa, Japan, New Guinea, West Indies, Brazil, and North America and cites authorities to disprove this.

3.2.3 (see p. 199). Owen (On Forgiveness in Works 14.129–33) marks the difference between natural and revealed religion, with respect to the attributes of justice and mercy, as follows: "The things that belong to God are of two sorts. (1) Natural and necessary; such as his benevolence, holiness, righteousness, omnipotence, eternity, and the like. These are spoken of in Rom. 1:19 as to gnōston tou theou. There are two ways, the apostle declares, whereby this class of attributes may be known; first, by the common conceptions which men have of God and, second, by the teachings of the works of God. (2) The second sort are the free acts of God's will and power; or his free eternal purpose of mercy, with the temporal dispensations that flow from it. Of this sort is the forgiveness of sin. This is not a property of the nature of God, but an act of his will and a work of his grace. Although it has its rise and spring in the infinite goodness of God's nature, yet it is not exercised but by an absolute free and sovereign act of his will. Hence there is nothing of God of this kind that can be known except by special revelation. For, first, there is no inbred notion in the heart of man of the acts of God's will. Forgiveness is not revealed by the light of nature. Flesh and blood, that is, human nature, does not declare it: 'No man has seen God at any time,' that is, as a God of mercy and pardon such as the Son reveals him (John 1:8). Adam had an intimate knowledge of those natural and necessary attributes of God mentioned by St. Paul. It was implanted in his heart as necessary to that natural worship which by the law of his creation he was to render. But when he had sinned, it is evident from the narrative that he had not the least apprehension that there was forgiveness with God. Such a thought would have laid a foundation of some further treaty with God about his condition. But he had no further intention but of fleeing and hiding himself (Gen. 3:10) and so showing that he was utterly ignorant of any such thing as pardoning mercy. Such are all the first or purely natural conceptions of sinners, namely, that it is 'the judgment of God' that sin is to be punished with death (Rom. 1:32). Second, the consideration of the works of God's creation will not help a man to the knowledge that there is forgiveness with God. The apostle tells us that God's works reveal the 'eternal power and Godhood' or the essential properties of his nature, but no more; not the purposes of his grace nor any of the free acts of his will; not pardon and forgiveness. Third, the works of God's providence do not reveal the forgiveness of sin. God has indeed given proof in the works of his providence that he is a kind and benevolent being 'in that he did good and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness' (Acts 14:15–17), but yet these things did not discover pardon and forgiveness. For God still suffered men to go on in their own ways and patiently endured their sinful ignorance of him and disregard of his law. St. Paul, at Athens, by arguments drawn from the works and acts of God proved his being and benevolent character (17:23–27). But of the discovery of pardon and forgiveness in God by these ways and means he speaks not; yea, he plainly shows that this was not done by them. For after saying that men sinned under and against these benevolent dealings of God's providence, he adds, 'But now,' that is, by the word of the gospel, God 'commands all men everywhere to repent.' The revelation of mercy and forgiveness, he thus teaches, belongs to revealed religion, not to natural. Last, the law of God makes no discovery of the forgiveness of sin. God implanted the moral law in the heart of man by creation; but there was not annexed unto this law or revealed with it the least intimation of pardon to be obtained if transgression should ensue. And the moral law written in the human conscience, together with the idea of God, make the substance of natural religion."

3 Arguments for the Divine Existence

Uses of Syllogistic Arguments for the Divine Existence

Although the evidence for divine existence that is most relied upon in Scripture and that is common to all men is that of immediate consciousness, yet certain syllogistic arguments have been constructed that have the following uses. First, they assist the development of the idea of God and contain a scientific analysis of man's natural consciousness of the deity. These arguments all derive their force from the innate idea and the constitutional structure of man. Hence some theologians deny that they are proofs properly so called and disparage them. Says Rosenkranz (Encyclopaedie, 6), "there are already in geometry, a hundred demonstrations of the Pythagorean proposition, all of which do what they promise. There are also numberless proofs of the being of God, none of which perform what they promise. God is not a right-angled triangle, and for his existence neither many nor convincing proofs can be discovered. There is only one argument for God's existence, and that he furnishes himself." Hamann remarks that if he who denies divine existence is a fool, he who would demonstrate it is a still greater one. Hagenbach (Encyclopaedie, 291) says that the seeking after proofs of divine existence is proof enough. The human mind does not irrepressibly and perpetually search for the evidence that a nonentity exists. Second, these arguments reply to the counterarguments of materialism and atheism. Of them, the principal are ontological, cosmological, teleological, moral, and historical.

Ontological Argument: Statement of the Position

The ontological argument for divine existence has fallen into disrepute for the last century or more. It is now very commonly regarded as involving a sophism. Kant declares it to be sophistic, as also he declares all the a posteriori arguments to be. Historians of philosophy like Überweg analyze it not only to give an account of it, but to refute it. In the current treatises in apologetics, it is rare to find an appeal to it as a conclusive demonstration.

This is a different view from that entertained in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and by the most powerful reasoners among the fathers and Schoolmen. While, owing to the subtlety and geometrical nicety of the form of the argument, its cogency was not always acknowledged, and there was some dispute concerning its logical force, yet on the whole both the philosophers and theologians of those centuries regarded it as a valid argument and fit to be employed in the defense of theism. English theologians made much use of it; especially those who were deeply versed in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Cudworth, Stillingfleet, Howe, Bates, John Smith, and Henry More depend greatly upon it in their contest with the atheism of Hobbes and others. Descartes restated it in a modified form and considered it to be a demonstration; and Descartes is the father of all modern philosophy that is founded in consciousness. (supplement 3.3.1.)

The germ of the argument is found in the remark of Augustine (On the Trinity 7.4) that "God is more truly thought than he is described and exists more truly than he is thought." This is one of those pregnant propositions, so characteristic of the Latin father, which compress a theory into a nutshell. The meaning of it is that while man's idea of God is truer to the reality than his description of him is, yet his idea is less true and credible than the reality itself. God's existence is more real than even our conception of him is for our own mind; and our conception, confessedly, is a reality in our consciousness. The subjective idea of God, instead of being more real than God, is less real. The "thing," in this instance, has more existence than the "thought" of it has. This is exactly contrary to the postulate that underlies all the reasoning against the ontological argument, namely, that in no case is the object so real as the idea of it and that therefore the existence of no object whatever can be inferred from the mere idea. Every subjective conception, it is contended, more certainly is than its objective correspondent. Consequently, no mere thought of any kind can demonstrate the existence of a thing.

This position, we may remark in passing, that the objective can never be so certainly real as the subjective is fatal not only to the ontological argument for divine existence, but to the argument for all existence. It conducts to idealism immediately. If, for example, from the subjective sensation we cannot infer the objective existence of matter, the certainty of the material world is gone. The sensation is the only reality, and the "thing" is at best only a contingency. Possibly it exists, but there is no absolute certainty that it does. The assertion that because we have the mere idea of God there is no certainty of a correspondent being is essentially the same as the assertion that because we have the mere sensation of matter there is no certainty of a correspondent substance. If the subjective cannot prove the objective in the former case, it cannot in the latter.

The acute and powerful intellect of Anselm was the first to construct the ontological argument in a syllogistic form. And it will appear, we think, that its first form is its best. All the subsequent modifications have weakened rather than strengthened it. The metaphysical intuition that saw the heart of the doctrine of the atonement saw also the heart of the doctrine of divine existence.

The argument is derived, as the etymology (tou ontos logos) denotes, from the idea of absolute and perfect in distinction from relative and imperfect being. It runs as follows. The human mind possesses the idea of an absolutely perfect being, that is, of a being than whom a more perfect cannot be conceived. But such perfection as this implies necessary existence; and necessary existence implies actual existence, because if a thing must be, of course it is. If the absolutely perfect being of whom we have the idea does not exist of necessity, we can conceive of a being who does so exist, and he would be more perfect than the former. For a contingent being who may or may not exist is not the most perfect conceivable, is not the absolutely perfect. In having, therefore, as the human mind unquestionably has, the idea of an absolutely perfect in distinction from a relatively perfect being, it has the idea of a being who exists of necessity; as in having the idea of a triangle, the mind has the idea of a figure with three sides. Necessity of being, therefore, belongs to perfection of being. (supplement 3.3.2.)

The strength of Anselm's argument lies in two facts: (1) that necessity of existence is an attribute of being and a perfection in it and (2) that necessity of existence is an attribute and perfection that belongs only to absolute and infinite being, not to relative and finite being.

It is clear, in the first place, that necessity of existence is an attribute. It can be affirmed of one being and denied of another. God has this characteristic quality, and angels and men have it not. Both necessity and contingency are attributes of being. And necessity is a higher characteristic than contingency of existence. That which must be is superior to that which may or may not be. That which cannot without logical contradiction be conceived not to be is more perfect than that which can be so conceived. Hence there are grades of being. One species of being may be nearer to nonentity than another. The infinite and absolutely perfect is at an infinite remove from nonexistence; the finite and relatively perfect is at only a finite distance from nonentity. We can conceive of the annihilation of the finite; but the annihilation of the infinite is an absurdity. Remarks Howe (Vanity of Man as Mortal):

It is truly said of all created things, that their non esse is more than their esse; that is, they have more no-being than being. It is only some limited portion of being that they have; but there is an infinitude of being which they have not. And so coming infinitely nearer to nothingness than to fullness of being, they may well enough wear the name of "nothing": "All nations before him are as nothing, and they are counted to him less than nothing" (Isa. 40:17). Wherefore the first and fountain-being justly appropriates to himself the name I Am, yea tells us, he is and there is none besides him; thereby leaving no other name than that of "nothing" unto creatures.

And, in the second place, necessity of existence is an attribute and perfection that is unique and solitary. It cannot be ascribed to a finite created thing, any more than eternity of existence or immensity of existence or immutability of existence can be. The idea of the absolutely perfect differs from that of the relatively perfect or the imperfect in implying necessity and excluding contingency. The two ideas are totally diverse in this particular, so that the analysis of the one will give a result wholly different from that of the other. Because the idea of a stone or a man or of any finite thing will not yield real entity or existence as the logical outcome, it does not follow that the idea of the infinite God will not. (supplement 3.3.3.)

Ontological Argument: Examination of Objections

The nature of the ontological argument will be seen still more clearly by examining the objections that have been urged against it and also the modifications of it since the time of Anselm.

A contemporary of Anselm, the monk Gaunilo, in his tract entitled Liber pro insipiente; or, Plea for the Fool, raised the objection which has been repeated over and over again: the idea of an object does not involve its existence. We have the idea of a tree, but it does not follow that there is an actual tree. We have the idea of a winged lion, but it does not follow that such a creature actually exists.

The reply is that the ideas compared are not analogous in respect to the vital point of necessary existence, but are wholly diverse. One idea is that of perfect and necessary being, the other that of imperfect and contingent being. What is true of the latter idea is untrue of the former and vice versa. The idea of a tree implies contingency, that it may or may not exist; that of the absolutely perfect being implies necessity, that he must exist. From the idea of the tree we cannot prove actual objective reality, because of the element of contingency; but we can from the idea of God, because of the element of necessity. If the idea of a thing implies that it may or may not exist, it does not follow from the idea that the thing does exist. But if the idea of a thing implies that it must exist, it does follow from the idea that the thing does exist. This objection, therefore, to the ontological argument breaks down because the analogy brought in to support it is a spurious one. It is an example of the Aristotelian metabasis eis allo genos. Analogical reasoning is valid between things of the same species, but invalid if carried across into another species. Gaunilo, arguing against Anselm, urged that the idea of the "lost island" does not imply that there is such a thing. Anselm replies that if Gaunilo will show that the idea of the "lost island" implies its necessary existence, he will find the island for him and will guarantee that it shall never be a "lost island" again.5

Gaunilo's objection overlooks the difference in kind between infinite necessary and perfect being, between finite contingent and imperfect being, between primary and secondary substance, between uncreated and created being, or between God and the universe. We are so accustomed in the case of finite beings and things to abstract necessity of existence from them that we unthinkingly transfer this to God. Because we can logically conceive of the nonexistence of the finite, we suppose that we can of the infinite. But the two species of being differ toto genere. Respecting all finite beings or things, nothing more can be inferred from their nature and idea than possibility and perhaps probability of existence. Necessity and certainty of existence cannot be inferred. But respecting infinite being, mere possibility and probability of existence are excluded by the very nature and idea of it. Possibility and contingency of existence are directly contradictory to the idea of perfect and infinite substance. In this instance, we cannot, as we can in the other, conceptually separate necessity of existence from substance. Infinite being, ex vi termini, is necessary being. (supplement 3.3.4.)

Necessity, as a logical term, denotes so firm a connection between the subject and predicate that it is impossible that they should be separated. If therefore substance and necessity of existence cannot be separated from each other, even in thought or logical conception, in the instance of "the most perfect being conceivable" it follows that the denial that such a being exists is not only moral but logical "folly." The atheist is guilty not only of sin, but of unreason. For it is a contradiction to suppose that the most perfect being conceivable, that is, a necessarily existing being, was nonexistent a million years ago, because this would make him a contingent and imperfect being. It is equally contradictory, for the same reason, to suppose that the most perfect being conceivable will cease to exist at some future time. But there is no contradiction in supposing that the angel Gabriel had no existence a million years ago or that he will have none a million years hence, because he is not the most perfect being conceivable. And there is no contradiction in supposing that the entire material universe was a nonentity a million years ago, unless it can be shown that it is the most perfect being conceivable.

The impossibility of separating necessity of being from absolute and perfect being may be illustrated by the necessary connection between extension and matter. The idea of extension is inseparable from that of matter. To ask me to think of matter without extension is absurd. In like manner, to ask me to think of absolute perfection of being without necessity of being is absurd—as absurd as to ask me to think of absolute perfection of being without eternity of being or infinity of being. The being is not absolutely perfect if it may be nonexistent, just as a substance is not material if it is unextended. To conceive of the most perfect being conceivable as a contingent being or a nonexistent being is impossible. Says Anselm (Proslogion 22), "That which begins from nonexistence and can be conceived of as nonexisting and which unless it subsist through something else must return to nonexistence does not exist in the highest and absolute sense."

Kant commits the same error with Gaunilo in employing a spurious analogy. Objecting to the ontological argument, he remarks (Pure Reason, 365 ) that "it is indeed necessary that a triangle have three angles if it exist, but there is nothing in the idea of a triangle that necessitates its existence." Very true; and therefore the example is not pertinent. The idea of a triangle lacks the very element and attribute contained in the idea of the most perfect being conceivable, upon which the whole force of the ontological argument depends—namely, necessity of existence. The predicate if it exist connected with the subject a triangle implies contingency. Kant's objection is in fact even weaker than that of Gaunilo. To attempt to invalidate the ontological argument by employing the idea of a purely mental construction like the idea of a triangle is even more illegitimate than to employ the idea of a real, though nonabsolute and contingent object like a tree or a man. The idea of a triangle, like that of a mathematical point or line, is purely imaginary. There is no objective substance in any mathematical figure whatever. Angles, lines, surfaces, and points are not things. The idea of a triangle does not imply that it is being of any kind, still less that it is necessary being. A triangle is not an entity. It cannot be brought under the category of substance; consequently it is a nonentity. It is a purely ideal construction to which there is and can be no objective correspondent. It cannot be said to objectively exist either contingently or necessarily. Kant's analogy, consequently, is even more spurious than that of Gaunilo; for a tree or a man, though not having necessarily real existence, yet has contingently real existence.

Kant endeavors to prove that the ontological argument is a synthetic, not an analytical judgment; that the conclusion is not deduced from the premise, but imported into it. There is no better expositor of Kant than Kuno Fischer, and he gives the following account of Kant's refutation, as he regards it, of the ontological argument:

Kant affirms that the propositions asserting existence are synthetic judgments; in other words, that existence is no logical attribute which we can find by analyzing a concept. This position completely destroys all ontology; for it removes the possibility of concluding from the concept of a thing its existence. If existence belongs to the attributes of a concept, the ontological proof is quite valid. If it be a logical attribute, it follows immediately from the concept by mere dissection, and the ontological proof is an analytical judgment—an immediate syllogism of the understanding. If existence be a logical attribute, it must stand in the same relation to the concept that other logical attributes do. The content of the concept must be diminished if I subtract existence, increased if I add it. The concept of a triangle, for example, is not changed whether I merely represent it to myself or whether it exist without me. The attributes which make a triangle to be such are entirely the same in both cases. It is the same with any other concept: that of the deity.

We place the finger upon the last assertion in this extract and deny that what is said of the concept of the triangle is true of the concept of the deity—assuming it to be conceded that the deity is the equivalent of Anselm's "most perfect being conceivable." For if from the concept of the deity or the absolutely perfect being that the attribute of existence be subtracted, that the concept is changed. It is no longer the concept of the most perfect being conceivable. The concept of an existing being is, certainly, not the same as the concept of an imaginary being. Take the characteristic of actual existence out of the concept of the deity, and it becomes the concept of an unreal or imaginary being; and an unreal or imaginary being is not the most perfect being conceivable. The content of the concept is changed in respect to both quantity and quality. It loses the attribute of objective existence, which diminishes the quantity of the content. And the same loss injures the quality; for imaginary being is nonentity, instead of perfect being. If one should say, "I have the conception of a triangle, but it does not include trilaterality," the contradiction is plain. Or should he assert that the attribute of trilaterality can be subtracted from the concept of a triangle without altering the content, the error is patent. But it is the same contradiction to affirm that the idea of God as a perfect being does not include real objective being or that this characteristic can be subtracted from it without diminishing its contents. The rejecter of the ontological argument affirms such propositions as the following: have the idea of the most perfect being conceivable; but it is the idea of a nonentity; in other words, it is only an idea. I have the idea of the most perfect being conceivable; but it is the idea of an imaginary being; that is, it is merely a figment of my mind." This contradiction is well described by a French writer (Franck, "Anselme" in Dictionnaire):

He who rejects the belief of divine existence conceives, nevertheless, of a being to whom a superior cannot be conceived. Only he affirms that this being does not exist. But by this affirmation he contradicts himself, inasmuch as that being to whom he attributes all these perfections, yet to whom he at the same time denies existence, is found to be inferior to another being, who, to all his other perfections, joins that of existence. He is thus forced by his very conception of the most perfect being to admit that such a being exists, inasmuch as existence makes a necessary part of that perfection which he conceives of.

It is overlooked by Kant and Fischer and by all who reason upon this line of analogy that the idea of God or the absolutely perfect is unique and solitary. God is not only unus but unicus. There is no parallel to him. No true analog can be found: "To whom then will you liken God? or what likeness will you compare unto him?" (Isa. 40:18). To employ analogical reasoning in a case where all analogies fail was the error of Gaunilo and has been repeated from his day to this.

A second objection to the argument of Anselm is that it amounts only to this: "If there be an absolutely perfect being, he is a necessarily existent being. One idea implies the other idea. It is only a matter of subjective notions and not of objective existence. The absolutely perfect being may not exist at all; but if he exist, he exists necessarily." Überweg (History of Philosophy 1.384) employs this objection.

This objection, likewise, is self-contradictory, as is shown by the analysis of the proposition "if the absolutely perfect exist, he exists necessarily." There is inconsistency between the protasis and apodosis. The word if in the former denotes contingency, and the word necessarily in the latter excludes contingency. The absolutely perfect being is described in the protasis as one respecting whose existence it is proper to use a hypothetical term and in the apodosis as one respecting whose existence it is improper to use it. This conditional proposition implies that the most perfect being conceivable is both contingent and necessary.

Coleridge (Works 4.408 ) urges this objection, in the following terms:

The Cartesian syllogism ought to stand thus: The idea of God comprises the idea of all attributes that belong to perfection. But the idea of existence is such; therefore the idea of his existence is included in the idea of God. Now, existence is no idea, but a fact; and though we had an idea of existence, still the proof of a correspondence to a reality would be wanting; that is, the very point would be wanting which it was the purpose of the demonstration to supply. The idea of the fact is not the fact itself.

This objection holds against the Cartesian form of the argument, but not against the Anselmic. The idea of "existence," it is true, is one to which there may be no corresponding reality or fact. But the idea of "necessary existence" is not. "Existence" is ambiguous and may mean contingent existence as well as necessary; in which case, the idea does not logically involve the reality or fact. But "necessary existence" has only one meaning and logically involves a corresponding fact or reality. To say that a necessary being has no existence or may have none is, of course, a contradiction in terms. And to say that the idea of necessary existence does not imply the idea of actual existence is equally contradictory. But in reasoning analytically from an idea, the reasoner is entitled to all that the idea contains.

Coleridge, like Kant and others, brings the idea of the infinite and finite, the uncreated and created, God and the universe, under one and the same category and contends that what is true of one idea is of the other. As the idea of a tree, in Coleridgephrase, is "the mere supposition of a logical subject, necessarily presumed in order to the conceivableness of the qualities, properties, or attributes" of the tree, so is the idea of God. The idea in both instances is a mere hypothesis, to which there may be no corresponding fact or reality. It is only "a mere ens logicum, the result of the thinker's own unity of consciousness and no less contained in the conception of a plant or of a chimera, than in the idea of the Supreme Being" (Works 4.409). This implies that the idea of a plant or a chimera is a true analog to that of the most perfect being conceivable.

A third objection to Anselm's argument is that made by Leibnitz, namely, that the argument supposes the possibility of the existence of the most perfect being. This he thinks needs first to be demonstrated. And yet he adds that "any and every being should be regarded as possible until its impossibility is proved." Leibnitz remarks that he "stands midway between those who think Anselm's argument to be a sophism and those who think it to be a demonstration" and that if the possibility of the existence of the most perfect being were demonstrated he should regard Anselm's argument as "geometrically a priori" (De la démonstration cartésienne, 177 ).

The reply to this halfway objection of Leibnitz is that there is no greater necessity of proving that the most perfect being is possible than of proving that any being whatever is possible. That being of some kind is possible is indisputable. That something exists is self-evident. To assert that there is nothing is absurd. The premise with which Clarke begins his construction of the a priori argument—namely, "something exists"—is axiomatic and must be granted by atheist and theist alike. The idea of "being" is certainly one that implies an objective correspondent. If I say, "I have the idea of being, but it is only an idea, there really is no being," I perceive the absurdity immediately. Says Coleridge (Works 2.464), "The very words there is nothing or there was a time when there was nothing are self-contradictory. There is that within us which repels the proposition with as full and instantaneous a light as if it bore evidence against it in the right of its own eternity." But if the mind does not perceive any necessity of proving the possibility of being in the abstract, even of relative and contingent being, still less does it perceive a necessity of demonstrating the possibility of the most perfect being conceivable. On the contrary, there is more need of proving the possibility of a contingent than of a necessary being. That which may or may not exist is less likely to exist than that which must exist and cannot be conceived of as nonexistent.

A fourth objection to the ontological argument is that it makes existence an attribute of a being, when in fact it is being itself. The subject is converted into its own predicate. To assert that a being possesses being is tautology. This is a valid objection against one form of Descartes's statement of the ontological argument, but not against Anselm's. Descartes shortened the argument by deriving actual being directly from the idea of absolute perfection of being, instead of first deriving, as Anselm did, necessity of being from absolute perfection of being and then deriving actuality from necessity. The spread of Cartesianism gave currency to this form of the argument; and it is this form of it which most commonly appears in modern speculation. English divines of the seventeenth century very generally employ this mode. In Kant's polemic the argument is stated in the Cartesian manner, not in the Anselmic. The following is an example: "Having formed an a priori conception of a thing, the content of which was made to embrace existence, we believed ourselves safe in concluding that reality belongs to the object of the conception merely because existence has been cogitated in the conception" (Pure Reason, 463) If in this extract "necessity of existence" be substituted for "existence," the "illusion" which Kant charges upon the a priori reasoner disappears.

Necessity of existence, as we have before remarked, is a true predicate, like eternity of existence and immensity of existence, and all the other attributes that describe absolute being and differentiate it from relative and finite being. And from this predicate, the objective actual existence of that to which it belongs can be inferred. In omitting it and attempting to make a predicate out of "existence" instead of "necessity of existence," Descartes lost an indispensable term of the syllogism, jumped directly from the premise to the conclusion, and exposed the argument to a valid objection.

But while Descartes's form of the argument is vicious reasoning, it suggests a profound truth. It directs attention to the difference in kind between primary and secondary being and to the important fact already alluded to that existence cannot even conceptually be separated from substance in the instance of the absolute and perfect, as it can in that of the relative and imperfect. The finite may exist only in thought and imagination; the infinite cannot. There may be no imperfect and contingent being; there must be perfect and necessary being. The universe may be nonexistent, but God cannot—and this, because absolute perfection of being excludes unreality of every kind. Consequently, it excludes imaginary being, which is no being at all. And it excludes contingent and temporary being, because these are relative and imperfect grades. None of these are "the most perfect being conceivable." The absolute being, therefore, is the only strictly real. All else, in comparison, is a shadow. Existence cannot be abstracted from substance of this kind without changing its grade. To attribute nonexistence to the infinite is to convert it into the finite. But existence can be abstracted conceptually from secondary and contingent substance without changing the species. In fact, it is substance of a secondary species for the very reason that it can be conceived of as nonexistent.

Descartes not only adopted Anselm's ontological argument with a modification, but added another feature to it. His addition is the following. We have the idea of the most perfect being. It does not come through the senses, because such a being is not sensible. It is not a fiction or fancy of the mind; this we know from our own consciousness. It is therefore, an innate idea and must have been inlaid in our constitution by the most perfect being himself. This is an a posteriori addition to the ontological argument. It is of the same nature with the cosmological argument. From the effect, the cause is inferred. The idea is a product which has God for its author. But to mix the a priori with the a posteriori argument is not to improve either.

Locke (King, Life of Locke, 315–16) objects to Descartes's argument that it does not demonstrate anything more than the existence of the eternal matter of atheism. In this, he implies that eternity of being belongs to the idea of matter. But this is an error, because eternal being supposes necessary being, and necessary being supposes absolute perfection of being. But matter is not the most perfect being conceivable. Consequently, it is contingent, not necessary being: "Reason can annihilate matter in thought, always and without self-contradiction" (Kant, Pure Reason, 379).

Stillingfleet (Origines sacrae 3.1) stated the ontological argument as follows. The perfectly clear perception of the mind is the strongest evidence we can have of the truth of anything. This postulate he borrowed from Descartes. We have a perfectly clear perception that necessary existence belongs to the essence of God; and if necessary existence belongs to God's essence, it follows that actual existence does. This clearness of the perception, it is to be noticed, shows that the idea of God is an idea of the reason, not of the imagination. It is accompanied with the conviction that it is a true idea and not a mere invention of the fancy, like the idea of a winged horse, for example.

Samuel Clarke stated the ontological argument as follows: It is certain that something has existed from all eternity. Absolute nonentity is inconceivable. Whatever has eternally existed is self-existence, and whatever is self-existent is necessarily existent, and whatever is necessarily existent cannot be conceived as nonexistent. The material world cannot be the "something" that has eternally existed, because we can conceive of its nonentity. Therefore the "something" which has eternally existed is God. Furthermore, infinite space and time cannot be conceived of as nonexistent; yet they are not substances or beings of themselves. They must therefore be properties of some substance or being. God is this substance or being.

Clarke's construction of the ontological argument is inferior to that of Anselm, for two reasons. (1) The "something" which eternally exists may be confounded with the pantheistic ground of all things, the "substance" of Spinoza. An eternal "something" does not necessarily suggest intelligence and morality in the "something"; Anselm's "most perfect being conceivable" does. (2) Space and time are not properties of any substance whatever. They are not properties of material substance nor of finite spiritual substance nor of infinite spiritual substance. They are not properties of matter nor of the human spirit nor of the angelic spirit, nor of God.

Edwards (Will 2.3) shows a hesitation concerning the ontological argument similar to that of Leibnitz. He asserts that if man had "sufficient strength and extent of mind," he would "intuitively see the absurdity of supposing God not to be"; but adds that "we have not this strength and extent of mind to know this certainty, in this intuitive, independent manner." This is saying that the human mind is not strong enough to perceive an absurdity. Yet Edwards adds that "he will not affirm that there is in the nature of things no foundation for the knowledge of the being of God, without any evidence of it from his works" and that he thinks that "there is a great absurdity in the nature of things simply considered in supposing that there should be no God or in denying being in general." But, certainly, the human mind has sufficient "strength and extent" to perceive what is "absurd in the nature of things."

The ontological argument has the endorsement of inspiration. Hebrew Jehovah in Exod. 3:14 denotes necessity of existence: "This term, as applied to God, intimates that to be is his peculiar characteristic; that he is, in a sense in which no other being is; that he is self-existent and cannot but be. In the opinion that in this lies the significance of the name, the ancient Jews and most scholars of eminence have concurred." To give a name in both the Hebrew and the Greek intuition is to describe the inmost and real nature of the thing. Plato, in Cratylus 390, represents Socrates as saying that "the right imposition of names is no easy matter and belongs not to any and everybody, but to him only who has an insight into the nature of things." The nomenclature given by the unfallen man to the objects of nature (Gen. 2:19–20) implies a deep knowledge of nature. And when the deity chooses before all others the name I Am or Jehovah for himself, the reference is to his absoluteness and perfection of being. The ethnic names in distinction from the revealed name of deity imply attributes, not essence. Teutonic God indicates that the deity is good. The Greek and Latin world employed terms (theos and deus) that lay emphasis upon that attribute whereby he orders and governs the universe. But Moses, divinely taught upon this point, chose a term which does not refer to any particular attribute, but to the very being and essence of God, and teaches that the deity must be and cannot be conceived of as nonexistent. He was not bidden to explain or justify the name, but only to announce it. This shows that the idea of a necessarily existent being is one which the human mind readily accepts. (supplement 3.3.5.)

The sweeping assertion is sometimes made that no idea whatever implies an external object corresponding to it. There is certainly one idea that does. It is that of being itself. If I say, "I have the idea of being, but it is only an idea: there is really no being," I perceive the absurdity immediately. It is the same as saying, "There is nothing." The postulate in Clarke's argument: "Something exists" must be granted by the atheist as well as by the theist. But if this be true of the idea of being, it is still more so of the idea of necessary being. If the general idea of being implies objective being corresponding to it, the special idea of necessary being certainly does.

The ontological argument is of uncommon importance in an age tending to materialism and to physical science. For it turns the human intellect in upon itself and thereby contributes to convince it of the reality of mind as a different substance from matter. The recent neglect of a priori methods and overvaluation of a posteriori is one of the reasons why matter has so much more reality for many men than mind. If an object is not looked at, it gradually ceases to be regarded as an object at all. When theorists cease to contemplate mental and moral phenomena, they cease to believe that there are any. The gaze of the physicist is intent upon the physical solely. Consequently, the metaphysical or spiritual becomes a nonentity. Out of sight, it is out of mind and out of existence for him. Analyzing and observing matter alone, he converts everything into matter. The brain is the soul, and molecular motion is thought. What he needs is to cultivate metaphysical in connection with physical studies, a priori in connection with a posteriori methods, to look at mind as well as matter. In this way he gets a consciousness of mind, in distinction from the consciousness of matter.

Consciousness is consciousness, however it be obtained. If it be the result of a purely mental process, it is as truly consciousness as if it resulted from a purely sensuous process. When I am conscious of the agencies of my soul by introspection, this mode or form of consciousness is as real and trustworthy as when I am conscious of the agencies of my body by sensation. It is of no consequence how consciousness arises, provided it does arise. Those a priori methods, consequently, which dispense with sensation and sensuous observation and depend upon purely intellectual and spiritual operations, are best adapted to convince of the reality of an invisible and immaterial substance like the human soul. Some men tell us that they want a philosophy of common things. The soul of man is a very common thing; and if the physicist would spend as many hours in observing the phenomena of his soul as he does in observing the phenomena of an oyster, he would have as much consciousness of his soul as he has of the oyster. We acquire consciousness of an object by busying the mind about it. And if, after sufficient effort, the materialist should fail to obtain any consciousness of his mind, in distinction from his body, he would indeed have to conclude that he has none.

Cosmological Argument

The cosmological argument is derived from the existence of the universe (kosmou logos). It is implied in Heb. 3:4: "Every house is built by some man, but he who built all things is God." Its force depends upon the axiom that an effect supposes a cause. Aquinas (Summa 1.1.3) states the argument as follows: (1) Motion in the universe implies a Prime Mover who is not moved; and this is God. This form of the argument is valuable in reference to the mechanical physics, which resolves all existence into the movements of molecules or atoms. These atoms must either be self-moved or moved by a Prime Mover other than the atoms. (2) Effects, generally, imply an efficient. (3) That which is contingent, which might not be and once was not, implies that which is necessary or that which always was and must be.

Kant (Pure Reason, 374) objects that the concept of causality cannot be pressed beyond the domain of sensuous existence, and therefore the first cause given by the cosmological argument would not be intelligent. But the world of finite mind is a part of the universe. The existence of the rational universe implies that of a rational first cause. Clarke (Answer to Letter 7) makes the objection that the argument from causality will not prove the eternity, infinity, immensity, and unity of God. The temporal phenomena of nature prove that there has been from the beginning of the phenomena a being of power and wisdom sufficient to produce them. But that this being has existed from eternity and will exist to eternity cannot be proved from these temporal phenomena. It is necessary, therefore, says Clarke, to fall back upon the necessity of the existence of God that is given in the rational idea of him. The same reasoning applies to the infinity of God. The universe is not known as infinite or even as unlimited, because it is not completely known. We are, therefore, arguing from only a finite effect, which would yield only a finite cause. (supplement 3.3.6.)

Clarke's objection overlooks the fact that every finite object implies original nonexistence and therefore creative power in the cause. Hence the quantity of being in the effect is not the measure of the quantity of being in the cause. A grain of sand, even an infinitesimal atom of matter, if it be granted that it is not eternal but came into being from nonentity, would prove infinite power, equally with the immensity of the universe, because finite power cannot create ex nihilo. The absolute origination of the least amount of finite being requires omnipotence, equally with the greatest amount. The other objection of Clarke, namely, that the temporal phenomena of nature would prove only a temporal author of them, falls to the ground when it is considered that it is inconceivable that the cause and the effect should begin to exist simultaneously. The cause must be older than the effect, from the nature of the case. Creation from nothing, in this case too, as in the previous one, implies that the cause of the phenomena in time must be prior to time. In John 1:1 it is said that the Logos was already in being "in the beginning" of time; which proves that he existed in eternity. In like manner, God as the efficient cause of events in time must have existed before time in order to be capable of such action at the very beginning of time. (supplement 3.3.7.)

Hume objects to the cosmological argument that it is a petitio principii. Cause and effect, he says, are relative terms, so that one implies the other. But whether the phenomenon is an effect is the very question. Hume denies that it is, asserting that it is only a consequent that follows an antecedent. There is no necessary connection between the two related phenomena. It is only the habit of seeing one succeed the other that leads to the expectation that they will invariably do so. Hume requires proof that any event is an effect proper; for if this be granted, it follows of course that there is a cause. Father and son are relative terms. In constructing an argument to prove that Napoleon Bonaparte had a father, it would not be allowable to begin by assuming that Napoleon Bonaparte was a son. This objection of Hume is the same as that of the ancient Pyrrhonist, as stated by Diogenes Laertius: "Causation, the Pyrrhonists take away thus: A cause is only so in relation to an effect. But what is relative is merely conceived and does not exist. Therefore, cause is a mere conception" (Mackintosh, History of Ethical Philosophy, n. 2).

The reply to this is the following: (a) Hume's view of the connection of one event with another, as being merely that of antecedent and consequent, is founded upon sensation merely, not upon the action of reason. A brute's eye sees that one event precedes another, and this is all that the brute sees and knows. And, according to Hume's theory, this is all that the man should see and know. But the fact is that the man knows much more than this. In his consciousness there are additional elements that form no part of the animal's consciousness. A man not only sensuously sees that the one event precedes another, but rationally perceives that the one invariably and necessarily precedes the other. These two characteristics of invariability and necessity in the sequence are not given by the sense, but they are by the reason. The animal does not perceive them. The real question, consequently, between Hume and his opponents is whether animal sensation or human reason shall decide the case. A man's mind, unlike the brute's eye, perceives not merely the sequence but the manner of the sequence. (b) All phenomena, without exception, either precede or succeed each other, and therefore, according to Hume's theory, all phenomena ought to be either causes or effects. But we do not so regard them. The light of day invariably succeeds the darkness of the night, but we do not deem the former to be the effect of the latter. It is only of a particular class of antecedents and consequents that we assert that one is the cause and the other is the effect. The mark of this class is not merely ocular antecedence, but efficient and necessary antecedence. (c) In mere succession, the antecedent and consequent may change places. The day may be either the antecedent or the consequent of the night. But in causation, the places of cause and effect cannot be so reversed. The cause must always be prior to the effect. (d) If the certainty of the connection between one event and another is the effect of custom and not an intuitive perception, this certainty should increase in proportion to the number of instances. A man should be more certain that the explosion of gunpowder is the effect of its ignition in the hundredth instance in which he witnesses it, than in the tenth instance. But he is not.

Teleological Argument

The teleological argument is derived from a particular characteristic of the world, namely, the marks of design and adaptation to an end (telos) which appear in it. It is stated in Ps. 94:9: "He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? and he that formed the eye, shall he not see?" The evident adaptedness of the eye for vision proves an intelligent designer of the eye. This form of the argument for divine existence is the most popularly effective of any. It is an ancient argument. Cicero (Tusculan Questions 1.23) states it in an eloquent manner, borrowing from Socrates and Plato. Xenophon presents it in the Memorabilia. Galen (On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Human Body 5.5) employs it in opposition to Asclepiades. The Bridgewater Treatises contain it in the fullest form. Paley's statement of it is marked by his usual lucidity and force.

The teleological argument, like the cosmological, must not be confined to the material world, but extended to the intellectual, as in Ps. 94:10: "He that teaches man knowledge, shall not he know?" The marks of design in the constitution of the human soul infer an infinite designing mind who created it. The human will is intended for volition, not for perception. The human imagination is made for picturing, not for reasoning. The human understanding is designed for perception, not for volition.

Chemistry furnishes some fine materials for this argument. Elementary substances cannot be combined in any proportion at pleasure. The ratio in every instance is predetermined; the amounts are weighed out by the author of nature with a nicety which no art can attain. For example, 23 ounces of sodium will exactly unite with 35.5 ounces of chlorine to make table salt. But if 23.5 ounces of sodium are put together with 35.5 ounces of chlorine, nature will put the extra half ounce of sodium on one side, and the remainder will unite (Cooke, Religion in Chemistry, 288). Crystallography, also, affords examples of symmetrical arrangement of particles, in which geometrical proportions are invariable. The crystal is a petrified geometry.

An objection similar to that urged against the cosmological argument has been made to the teleological. There is adaptation, it is said, but not design, as there is sequence but not causality. Certain things are adapted to certain uses, but not made for certain uses. The eye is adapted to vision, but has no designing author. When it is asked how this striking adaptation is to be accounted for apart from design, the answer is either by the operation of law or by chance. To the latter explanation, there is a fatal objection in the mathematical doctrine of probabilities. The chance of matter's acting in this manner is not one in millions. Natural adaptation, upon this theory, would be as infrequent a phenomenon as a miracle. And yet adaptation to an end is one of the most common facts in nature, occurring in innumerable instances. The other explanation, by law, is equivalent to the acknowledgment of a designing author, or else it is mere tautology. A law implies a lawgiver because it merely denotes an invariable course of action or a universal fact in nature. The law of gravitation is only a name for a general fact, namely, that matter attracts inversely as the square of the distance. The law is merely the rule of action in the case. To say, therefore, that the law of gravitation is the cause of gravitation is to say that the fact itself is the cause of the fact, that a general fact produces particular facts. There is nothing causative in the law, any more than there is in the fact or facts which are its equivalent. Consequently, a law requires to be accounted for, as much as do the phenomena under it; and this carries the mind back to a creative author of law. (supplement 3.3.8.)

Bacon objects to the inquiry for final causes as leading to unfounded explanations and conjectures, thus hindering the progress of science. But Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood in endeavoring to find out the design and use of the multitude of valves in the veins. And, generally, the search after the purpose in nature has been the stimulus in physical science. That some of the conjectures regarding final causes should prove to be erroneous is unavoidable to a finite intelligence. Aristotle (Metaphysics 1.2) contends that if the end or final cause cannot be found, science is impossible. There would be endless progression in inquiry, with no terminus or goal. Scientific investigation would have no result.

Moral Argument

The moral argument is stated in two modes: (1) Conscience testifies to the fact of obedience or disobedience of a moral law. This implies a lawgiver. This is God. Calvin, Melanchthon, and Turretin employ this mode. (2) We observe an inequality between the happiness of good and bad men here upon earth. This requires an adjustment hereafter. This implies a righteous arbiter and judge.

Historical Argument

The historical argument is derived from the historical fact that all the nations have had the belief that there is a Supreme Being. Aristotle employs it (Metaphysics 11.8); Cicero (On the Laws 1.8) and Grotius (Christian Religion 1.12) also.

SUPPLEMENTS

3.3.1 (see p. 202). Grotius makes use of Anselm's and Descartes's ontological argument: "God exists necessarily or is self-existent. Now that which is necessary or self-existent cannot be considered as of any common kind or species of being, but as actually existing and therefore a single being. For if you imagine many gods, you will see that necessary existence belongs to none of them; nor can there be any reason why two gods should rather be believed than three or ten than five" (Christian Religion 1.3). Stillingfleet (Origines 3.1) maintains that necessity of being is implied in perfection of being: "We have a clear perception that necessity of existence does belong to the nature of God. In all other beings nothing else can be implied in the nature of them beyond bare possibility of existence. But in our conception of a being absolutely perfect, bare possibility or contingency of existence is directly contradictory to the idea of him. For how can we conceive that being to be absolutely perfect who may be a nonentity? We attribute bare possibility of existence to all beings except the absolutely perfect, because we cannot attribute necessity of existence to them, since this is not implied in the idea of them and in their nature. They depend upon some other being for existence, upon whose will and power it rests whether they shall come into being. Now all these reasons which make us attribute bare possibility of existence to all beings who are not absolutely perfect are taken away when we conceive of a being absolutely perfect, and therefore we must conclude that necessity of existence does immutably belong to the nature and idea of God and is not merely a mode only of our conception; because if we take away necessity of existence from God, we lose the notion of a being absolutely perfect. But if necessary existence belongs to the nature of God, actual existence follows as a necessary condition; for it is a contradiction for a being to exist necessarily and yet it be questionable whether he does exist or not."

3.3.2 (see p. 203). "Perfect" is a better term than "absolute" to denote God. The latter may be employed by the pantheist and is very extensively, but the former excludes pantheism. For a being who is perfect must have such predicates as personality and such attributes as holiness and justice, benevolence, and mercy—all of which are denied by Spinoza. Furthermore, a being may be absolute in some respects but not in others; but he cannot be perfect without being complete in perfection, without having all conceivable perfections. The subtle insight of Anselm is apparent in his selection of the term perfect wherewith to define the infinite being, instead of absolute, which is the favorite term of all the pantheistic schools.

The definition of God as the perfect, necessary, and infinite being furnishes the answer to the question whether good and evil are such because God so wills or whether he so wills because they are such. Is God relative to these, or are they to him? The latter, of course, if he is the infinite and they are the finite, if he is the eternal and they the temporal, if he is the necessary and they the contingent. Evil is temporal in its nature, for, though it never ends, it begins. It was not from all eternity. Nor is it marked by necessity. It need not have been. Good also is temporal in its nature apart from God. Aside from him it exists only in created and finite spirits, and these are not from eternity. Nor is good in man or angel a necessary quality. The predicates of infinity, necessity, eternity, and perfection which are applicable to God but not to good apart from God make him the primary object and the latter the secondary, in considering the question of relativity and dependence. If God wills the right because right already is apart from God and has a nature separate from him which moves him to will it, then he is not primary, but secondary; he is dependent, and not it. And the same is true if he is displeased with evil because evil exists from eternity independently of his government and control. The truth in the case is stated in Hooker's position (Polity 1.1) that "the being of God is a kind of law to his working; for that perfection which God is gives perfection to what he does." Divine reason is one with divine will immutably and necessarily, so that God is not guided and controlled, as all creatures are, by a reason that is above and outside of himself, but by his own holy and perfect nature. Similarly, Milton (Samson Agonistes 307–14) describes the relation of God to the laws which he has laid down for his creatures:

Yet more there be who doubt his ways not just,

As to his own edicts found contradicting,

These give the reins to wandering thought,

Regardless of his glory's diminution;

Till, by their own perplexities involved,

They ravel more, still less resolved,

But never find self-satisfying solution.

As if they would confine the Interminable,

And tie him to his own prescript

Who made our laws to bind us, not himself;

And hath full right to exempt

Whom so it pleases him by choice

From national obstruction, without taint

Of sin, or legal debt;

For with his own laws he can best dispense.

3.3.3 (see p. 203). The ontological argument is the most rigorously conclusive and mathematical of any, because it requires only the idea of God to construct it. The a posteriori arguments require both the idea of God and of the created universe. In this respect the ontological argument corresponds better with the absolute independence of God. God's existence does not depend upon that of the universe. He exists before it and without it. Similarly, the ontological proof of God's existence does not depend upon the existence of a universe by which to prove it. The proof is found in the very idea of God apart from the idea of anything else. If the a posteriori argument should fail or be impossible of construction because of the nonexistence of a created effect from which to infer a first cause, the a priori argument still remains and holds good. In this respect the ontological argument is strictly geometrical in its force. A theorem in geometry is demonstrated out of its own terms and logical implications.

3.3.4 (see p. 204). In his reply to the argument of Anselm in the Proslogion, Gaunilo wholly overlooks the characteristic of "necessity of existence," which belongs to Anselm's idea of the most perfect being. He even compares the idea of "a being than whom a greater cannot be conceived" with the idea of "a false being, having no existence," as if the two were analogous ideas, having common characteristics! "May I not," he says, "in the same manner be said to have in my intelligence false things of any kind which can have in themselves no existence whatever; since should anyone speak of these things I could understand whatever he might say? (On Behalf of the Fool 2). Anselm notices Gaunilo's misstatement of the argument, in substituting "a being greater than all things else that exist" for "a being greater than all things else that can be conceived": "In order to prove that the being in question exists in reality, it does not amount to the same thing whether we speak of a being greater than all that exists or of a being the greatest that can be conceived. For it is not so evident that that which can be conceived not to be is not greater than all things which exist, as it is that it is not the greatest thing conceivable" (Against Guanilo 5). A contingent being might be greater than all other existing contingent beings, but not greater than all conceivable beings; for among these would be a necessary being.

The idea of God is unique and without a true analog, not only in differing from the idea of every contingent object or being in that it is the idea of a necessary being, but also in that it is the idea of a present being. It is not given by the memory as the idea of something that existed in the past, but by the mental constitution as the idea of something that exists here and now. When, for illustration, we remember a past experience, say of physical pain, we remember it as past. It has no present existence. But when we "remember God and are troubled" (Ps. 77:3), this is not the recalling of something in the past which no longer exists, but the recognition of something that is now. The idea of a past physical pain is the idea of something once actual, but which is so no longer. The idea of the past pain does not imply the present existence of the pain. But the idea of God implies the present existence of God. For the idea of God is not the idea of an object that existed at a particular moment in our past experience, but which exists no longer, as was the case with the physical pain, but of an object that exists simultaneously with the idea itself. In the case of physical pain or of any remembered object of consciousness, the actual presence of the object is not requisite in order to account for it. But in case of the idea of God, the actual presence of the object is requisite. In this latter instance, the mind does not go back into the past for the matter of the idea, as it does in the instance of all remembered contingent objects, but finds the matter of it in the present instant. The mind is conscious, not that God was, but that God is. This shows that the relation of the idea of God to God as its correspondent object is wholly different from the relation of the idea of a remembered contingent object to its correspondent object. In the former instance the idea implies the object as present; in the latter it does not. But what is present is existent.

3.3.5 (see p. 211). Spinoza (Theologico-Political Treatise, chap. 13) thus defines the name Jehovah: "Jehovah is the only word found in Scripture with the meaning of the absolute essence of God, without reference to created things. The Jews maintain, for this reason, that this is, strictly speaking, the only name of God; that the rest of the words used are merely titles; and in truth the other names of God, whether they be substantives or adjectives, are merely attributive and belong to him insofar as he is conceived of in relation to created things or manifested through them. Thus El or Eloah signifies powerful, as is well known, and only applies to God in respect to his supremacy, as when we call Paul an apostle; the faculties of his power are set forth in an accompanying adjective, as El, great, awful, just, merciful, etc., or else all are understood at once by the use of El in the plural number with a singular signification—an expression frequently adopted in Scripture."

3.3.6 (see p. 213). The finite rational implies the infinite rational. This is maintained by scientific physiologists. "There is," says Carpenter (Physiology §116), "no part of man's physical nature which does not speak of the divine being. The very perception of finite existence, whether in time or space, leads to the idea of the infinite. The perception of dependent existence leads to the idea of the self-existent. The perception of change in the external world leads to the idea of an absolute power as its source. The perception of the order and constancy underlying all these diversities which the surface of nature presents leads to the idea of the unity of that power. The recognition of intelligent will as the source of the power we ourselves exert leads to the idea of a like will as operating in the universe. And our own capacity for reasoning, which we know not to have been obtained by our individual exertions, is a direct testimony to the intelligence of the being who implanted it. Also, we are led from the existence of our moral feelings to the conception of the existence of attributes the same in kind, however exalted in degree, in the divine being. The sense of truth implies its actual existence in a being who is its source and center. The perception of right, in like manner, leads us to the absolute lawgiver who implanted it in our constitution. The aspirations of man's moral nature after holiness and purity meet their appropriate object only in the divine ideal. The sentiment of beauty soars into the region of the unseen, where the imagination contemplates such beauty as no artistic representation can embody. By thus combining, so far as our capacity will admit, the ideas which we derive from our own consciousness, we are led to conceive of the divine being as absolute, unchangeable, self-existent; infinite in duration, illimitable in space, the highest ideal of truth, right, and beauty; the all-powerful source of the agency we see in the phenomena of nature, the all-wise designer of its wondrous plan, and the all-just disposer of events in the moral world. And in proportion to the elevation of our own spiritual nature and more particularly as we succeed in raising ourselves toward that ideal of perfection which has been graciously presented to us in the 'well-beloved Son of God' are the relations of the divine nature to our own felt to be more intimate. It is from the consciousness of our relation to God as his children that all those ideas and sentiments arise which are designated as religious and which constitute that most exalted portion of our nature, of whose endless existence we have the fullest assurance, both in the depths of our own consciousness and in the promises of revelation." It is striking to compare this reasoning of Carpenter with that of Darwin and Haeckel upon such subjects. There are, certainly, conflicting scientists; and also what St. Paul denominates "oppositions of science falsely so called" (1 Tim. 6:20).

3.3.7 (see p. 213). In the creation of entity from nonentity the cause must necessarily exist prior to the effect; but not in the emanation of entity from entity. "It is agreeable to reason," says Leighton (Theological Lectures, 11), "and for aught we know it is absolutely necessary, that in all external productions (opera ad extra) by a free agent the cause should be, even in time, prior to the effect; that is, that there must have been some point of time wherein the being producing did, but the thing produced did not, exist. As to the eternal generation which we believe, it is within God himself (opus ad intra), nor does it constitute anything external to him or different from his nature and essence. The external production (opus ad extra) of a created being of a nature vastly different from the agent that is supposed to originate it and who acts freely in its origination implies in its formal conception, as the schools express it, a translation from nonentity into being; whence it seems necessarily to follow that there must have been some point of time wherein that created being did not exist."

3.3.8 (see p. 216). The etymology of "nature" implies that it is not self-caused, but is originated by something other than itself. Nascor signifies to be born. "The very name of nature," says Milton (Christian Doctrine, beginning), "implies that it must owe its birth to some prior agent." "A law of nature," says Dymond (Essay 1.2), "is a very imposing phrase; and it might be supposed from the language of some persons that nature is an independent legislator who had passed laws for the government of mankind. Nature is nothing self-originating and self-sustaining; yet some men imagine that a 'law of nature' possesses proper and independent authority and set it up without reference to the will of God and even in opposition to it. A law of any kind possesses no intrinsic authority; the authority rests only in the legislator and is derived from him to the law he lays down. As nature makes no laws, a law of nature involves no obligation but that which is imposed by the divine will." To this it may be also added that as nature makes no laws the energy with which natural laws operate does not come from the laws, but from their author.

4 Trinity in Unity

Preliminary Considerations

It has been remarked in the investigation of divine nature that the doctrine of the Trinity, though not discoverable by human reason, is susceptible of a rational defense when revealed. This should not be lost sight of, notwithstanding the warning of the keen Dr. South (sermon 43) that "as he that denies this fundamental article of the Christian religion may lose his soul, so he that much strives to understand it may lose his wits."

It is a noticeable fact that the earlier forms of trinitarianism are among the most metaphysical and speculative of any in dogmatic history. The controversy with the Arian and the Semiarian brought out a statement and defense of the truth, not only upon scriptural but ontological grounds. Such a powerful dialectician as Athanasius, while thoroughly and intensely scriptural, while starting from the text of Scripture and subjecting it to a rigorous exegesis, did not hesitate to pursue the Arian and Semiarian dialectics to its subtlest fallacy in its most recondite recesses. If anyone doubts this, let him read the four Orations of Athanasius and his defense of the Nicene Creed. In some sections of Christendom, it has been contended that the doctrine of the Trinity should be received without any attempt at all to establish its rationality and intrinsic necessity. In this case, the tenets of eternal generation and procession have been regarded as going beyond the scriptural data and, if not positively rejected, have been thought to hinder rather than assist faith in three divine persons and one God. But the history of opinions shows that such sections of the church have not proved to be the strongest defenders of the scriptural statement or the most successful in keeping clear of the Sabellian, Arian, or even Socinian departure from it. Those churches which have followed Scripture most implicitly and have most feared human speculation are the very churches which have inserted into their creeds the most highly analytic statement that has yet been made of the doctrine of the Trinity. Nicene trinitarianism is incorporated into nearly all the creeds of modern Christendom; and this specifies, particularly, the tenets of eternal generation and procession with their corollaries. The English church, to whose great divines Hooker, Bull, Pearson, and Waterland scientific trinitarianism owes a very lucid and careful statement, has added the Athanasian Creed to the Nicene Creed. The Presbyterian churches, distinguished for the closeness of their adherence to the simple Scripture, yet call upon their membership to confess that "in the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Spirit eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son" (Westminster Confession 2.3).

In discussing the subject of the personality of God (pp. 171–72), we have seen that this involves three distinctions in the infinite essence. God cannot be self-contemplating, self-cognitive, and self-communing, unless he is trinal in his constitution. The subject must know itself as an object and also perceive that it does. This implies, not three distinct substances, but three distinct modes of one substance. Consequently, divine unity must be a kind of unity that is compatible with a kind of plurality. The unity of the infinite being is triunity or Trinity. God is a plural unit.

The attempt, therefore, of the deist and the Socinian to construct the doctrine of divine unity is a failure because it fails to construct the doctrine of divine personality. Deism, with Socinianism and Islam, while asserting that God is personal, denies that he is three persons in one essence. It contends, by implication, that God can be self-knowing as a single subject merely without an object, without the distinctions involved in the subject contemplating, the object contemplated, and the perception of the identity of both. The controversy, consequently, is as much between the deist and the psychologist as it is between him and the theologian. It is as much a question whether his theory of personality and self-consciousness is correct as whether his interpretation of Scripture is. For the dispute involves the necessary conditions of personality. If a true psychology does not require trinality in a spiritual essence in order to its own self-contemplation, self-knowledge, and self-communion, then the deist is correct; but if it does, then he is in error. "That view of divine nature," says Smith (Faith and Philosophy, 191), "which makes it inconsistent with the incarnation and Trinity is philosophically imperfect, as well as scripturally incorrect."

Divine Unity and Trinality: An Overview

In speaking of divine unity, therefore, a peculiar kind of unity is intended, namely, a unity that is trinal. And when divine trinality is spoken of, a peculiar kind of trinality is intended, namely, a trinality that constitutes only one essence or being. As a unity which excludes trinality is not meant, so a trinality which excludes unity is not meant: "When I say 'one,' the number of the Trinity does not disturb me, which does not multiply the essence nor change it nor divide it. Again, when I say 'three,' the concept of the unity does not censure me, which does not confuse those three entities or those three beings nor reduce them into singularity" (Bernard, On Consideration 5.8).

Consequently, in reference to God, we may not discuss mere and simple unity, nor mere and simple trinality; but we must discuss unity in trinality and trinality in unity (see Athanasius, Against the Arians 4.13–14). We may not think of a monad which originally and in the order of nature is not trinal, but becomes so. The instant there is a monad there is a triad. Neither may we think of a triad which originally and in the order of nature is not a monad, but becomes so. The instant there is a triad, there is a monad:

I praise you, O Monad, I praise you O Triad

A monad you are, being a triad; a triad you are, being a monad

—Synesius

The Christian Trinity is not that of Sabellius and Pythagoras, namely, an original untrinal monad that subsequently, either in time or in the order of nature, becomes a triad: whereby four elementary and constituent factors are introduced into the problem, namely, one essence and three additional persons. God is not one and three, but one in three. There is no primary monad, as such, and without trinality, to which the three distinctions are adjuncts. There are only three constituent factors in the problem. For the essence has no existence outside of and apart from the three persons, so as to constitute a fourth factor in addition to these three. The monad, that is, the essence, never exists in and by itself untrinalized, as in the Sabellian theory and in the Pythagorean scheme of the tetractys, adopted by Coleridge (Works 5.18–19, 404). It exists only as in the persons, only as trinalized. The essence, consequently, is not prior either in the order of nature or of time, to the persons, nor subsequent to them, but simultaneous with them. Hence, the essence is not one constituent factor by itself apart from the persons, any more than the persons are three constituent factors by themselves apart from the essence. The one essence is simultaneously three persons, and the three persons are one essence. The Trinity is not a composition of one essence with three persons. It is not an essence without distinctions united with three distinctions, so as to make a complex. The Trinity is simple and incomplex. "If," says Twesten (Dogmatik 2.229), "we distinguish between the clearness of light and the different degrees of clearness, we do not imply that light is composed of clearness and degrees of clearness." Neither is God composed of one untrinal essence and three persons.

It follows, consequently, that we cannot discuss divine unity by itself, exclusive of trinality, as the deist and the Socinian endeavor to do. Trinality belongs as necessarily and intrinsically to divine unity as eternity does to divine essence. "If," says Athanasius (Orations 1.17), "there was not a blessed Trinity from eternity, but only a unity existed first, which at length became and grew to be a Trinity, it follows that the holy Trinity must have been at one time imperfect and at another time entire; imperfect until the Son came to be created, as the Arians maintain, and then entire afterward."

The necessary connection between divine unity and divine trinality is like that between divine essence and divine attributes. God's essence is not prior to and separate from his attributes. He is never an essence without attributes. The essence and its attributes are simultaneous and inseparable. God cannot be conceived of as developing from an essence without attributes into an essence with attributes. He is not essence and attributes, but essence in attributes. The whole essence is in each attribute; and the whole essence is also in each trinitarian person. As we cannot logically conceive of and discuss divine essence apart from divine attributes, so we cannot logically conceive of and discuss divine unity apart from divine trinality.

The unity of God is unique. It is the only unity of the kind. An individual man is one; and any individual creature or thing is one. But there are others like it, each of which is likewise numerically one. God is not merely one, but the only one; not merely unus, but unicus. He is not one of a species or one in contrast with another of the same kind. God is one God and the only God. The notion of the unique must be associated with that of unity in the instance of the Supreme Being.

God is not a unit, but a unity. A unit, like a stone or a stick, is marked by mere singleness. It admits no interior distinctions and is incapable of that inherent trinality which is necessary to self-knowledge and self-consciousness. Mere singleness is incompatible with society, and therefore incompatible with divine communion and blessedness. God is blessed only as he is self-knowing and self-communing. A subject without an object could not experience either love or joy. Love and joy are social. They imply more than a single person.

The scriptural doctrine of divine plenitude favors distinctions in divine essence. Fullness of being implies variety of existence. A finite unit has no plurality or manifoldness. It is destitute of modes of subsistence. Meagerness and barrenness mark a unit; opulence and fruitfulness mark a unity. This plērōma or plenitude of divine essence is spoken of in the following: "filled with all the fullness of God" (Eph. 3:19) and "the fullness of the Godhead" (Col. 1:19; 2:9). Ambrose (Concerning Faith 5.1) marks the distinction as follows: "Singularity pertains to the person, unity pertains to the nature." Says Twesten (Dogmatics 2.228), "so far as plurality lies in the idea of the Trinity, it is not contradictory to the unity belonging to divine essence, but only to that solitariness which cannot be harmonized with the living plenitude and blessedness which are ascribed to God in revelation and which God possesses in himself and independently of the finite." Owen (Doctrine of the Trinity Vindicated) remarks that "it may be true that in one essence there can be but one person, when the essence is finite and limited, but not when the essence is infinite." The following from Lessing (Education of the Human Race §73) is remarkable, as coming from one who would not be supposed to have devoted much study to metaphysical trinitarianism:

What if this doctrine should bring us to see that God cannot possibly be one in the sense in which finite things are one; that his unity must be a transcendental unity that does not exclude a kind of plurality (Mehrheit)? Must not God have, at least, an absolutely perfect idea (Vorstellung) of himself; that is, an idea in which is contained all that is in himself? But would all that is in himself be contained in this idea if it included merely the notion or bare possibility of his necessary and actual existence, as well as of his attributes? Possibility might exhaust the nature of his attributes, but does it that of his necessary and actual existence? It seems to me that it would not. Consequently, God must either have no perfect idea or image of himself or else this perfect idea is as necessarily actual as he himself is. The image or representation of myself in a mirror, it is true, is nothing but an empty and unreal image of me, because it has in it only so much of me as is reflected by the rays of light falling upon the mirror. But if this image contained all—all without exception—which I myself contain, would it then be a mere empty and unreal representation; or not rather a true duplication of myself? If, now, I affirm a similar self-duplication in God, I get perhaps as near to the truth as the imperfection of human language permits. And it is unquestionable that those who would make this idea which God has of himself level to the popular apprehension could not express it more appropriately and clearly than by denominating it a Son whom God generates from eternity.

The argument for the truth and reality of the Trinity from the characteristics of the Christian experience is conclusive. There must be trinality in divine unity in order to the exercise of the peculiar affections in the Christian consciousness. The Christian experience as portrayed in the New Testament and as expressed in St. Paul's case, for example, is both impossible and inexplicable without the three persons in the one God. St. Paul is continually alluding, in his hopes and joys, to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Abstract the Father, Son, and Spirit and leave merely a bare untrinal substance as the object of love, hope, and worship, and St. Paul's religious experience cannot be accounted for. If, from the common Christian consciousness, those elements should be eliminated which result from the intuition of the divine being as Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, little would remain. Let anyone think away all of his religious experience that relates to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and retain only what relates to divine essence as a monad and untrinalized, and he will perceive how very much of his best religious experience grows out of trinitarianism and cannot grow out of Unitarianism. Men cannot and do not love, pray to, and adore a mere abstract infinite nature. They love, address, and worship certain persons in that nature. Upon this point, Frank (System of Christian Certainty §33) remarks as follows:

God is the unity, the one being, who is the originating author and agent in the Christian experience. But this unity has trinality in relation to this experience. God in judgment causes the sense of sin and guilt; God in atonement expiates sin and guilt; God in regeneration and conversion removes sin and guilt. Here are three modes or forms of God. Yet it is one absolute personal God to whom the Christian owes all this. In such way and to this extent, the Christian is assured, by means of redemption and the objects of faith implied in it, of God as the triune God.

Although trinal, divine essence is simple, not compound. In this respect, the unity of the finite spirit resembles that of the infinite. The spirit of man is not composed of two substances. It is homogeneous. It is all spirit. A material unity is complex, being composed of a variety of elementary substances. Hence, there are varieties of matter, but not of spirit. By reason of its incomplexity and simplicity, divine essence is indivisible. Not being made up, as matter is, of diverse parts or properties, it cannot be divided or analyzed into them: "The nature of the Trinity is denominated simple, because it has not anything which it can lose and because it is not one thing and its contents another, as a cup and the liquor, or a body and its color, or the air and the light and heat of it" (Augustine, City of God 11.10).

The doctrine of divine unity, in opposition to polytheism, is taught in the Scriptures: "The Lord our God is one Lord" (Deut. 6:4); "the Lord is God, and there is none else" (1 Kings 8:60); "beside me there is no God" (Isa. 44:6); "the Lord our God is one Lord" (Mark 12:29); "I and my Father are one (hen)" (John 10:30); "there is none other God but one" (1 Cor. 8:4); "one Lord, one God and Father of all" (Eph. 4:6); "God is one" (Gal. 3:20). No sin is more severely prohibited and threatened than the worship of idols.

The rational proofs of divine unity are the following: (1) Unity is implied in the idea of God as the most perfect being. Each of his infinite perfections excludes a second of the kind. There cannot be two eternal beings, two omnipotent, two supreme, two self-existent, etc. "Hence," says Aquinas (Summa 1.11.3), "the ancient philosophers, as if compelled by the truth, in postulating an infinite principle (principium), postulated only one such principle." Turretin (3.3.7) cites Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Epictetus, and Seneca as teaching the unity of the Supreme Being: the Father of men and of the gods. (2) The unity and harmony apparent in the created universe demonstrate divine unity. There would be two conflicting plans had there been two creating architects.

Scriptural Evidence for the Doctrine of the Trinity

The doctrine of the Trinity is one of revelation, not of natural religion, and therefore the first work to be done respecting it is to deduce it from the language of Scripture. It is not directly formulated as an affirmative proposition in any single text if 1 John 5:7 is spurious. But it is indirectly formulated in some texts and taught part by part in many others. To collect, collate, and combine these is to construct the dogma biblically.

There are two general classes of trinitarian texts: (1) those which mention all of the three persons of the Godhead and (2) those which teach the deity of one or another of the persons singly.

Texts of the first class are the following. The account of the baptism of Christ in Matt. 3:16–17 mentions three persons. A person speaks from heaven, saying: "This is my beloved Son." The person who is spoken of in this address is the "beloved Son" and another than the person speaking. The "Spirit of God" who descended like a dove, alighting upon the Son, is still a third person, differing from the other two. The person who speaks is not seen. The person spoken of is seen and stands in the waters of Jordan. A third person is also seen, but in the form of a dove descending from heaven. It was a saying current in the days of the Arian controversy: "Go to the Jordan, O Arian, and you will see the Trinity." The term spirit in this instance does not denote some property or influence of God, because to descend from heaven in a personal form and to take a personal attitude is never attributed in Scripture or anywhere else to an impersonal influence or attribute.

The formula that Christ gave his apostles for administering baptism to believers mentions the three persons of the Trinity and thereby indirectly formulates the doctrine: "Teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19). The three are here represented as equal in dignity and authority. Whatever be the significance of baptism, no discrimination is made between the relation which the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit sustain to it. But that baptism is the recognition of the divinity of the person in whose name it is administered is self-evident. Paul asks in amazement if the Corinthians were baptized in the name of Paul (1 Cor. 1:13). When it is said that the Israelites "were all baptized unto Moses (eis ton mōysēn)" (1 Cor. 10:2), the meaning is not that they were baptized unto the name (eis to onoma) of Moses, but with reference to (eis) the Mosaic doctrines and ritual, as persons were said to be baptized "unto John's baptism" (Acts 19:3) in confirmation of their belief in John the Baptist's mission and preaching.

The apostolic benediction mentions all three persons: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all" (2 Cor. 13:14). Here, the apostle expresses the desire that favor to the guilty through Christ as the mediator, from God the Father's love, may be made effectual by the Holy Spirit. Each person performs an office peculiar to himself. Three persons are mentioned in Eph. 4:4–6: "There is one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all"; and in 1 Pet. 1:2: "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ."

There are, also, passages in which three persons are spoken of, who are distinguished from each other by certain acts which each performs and which could not be performed by a creature: "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which proceeds from the Father, he shall testify of me" (John 15:26); "and I will pray (erōtēsō) the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of truth" (14:16). In the first of these, mention is made of the Comforter who is sent, of the Son who sends him, and of the Father from whom he proceeds. In the second, the same persons are mentioned, but the Father sends the Comforter. This is explained by the identity of essence in each person, whereby, in Scripture the same act is sometimes referred to more than one person: "There are diversities of gifts (charismata), but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations (energēmatōn), but it is the same God who works all in all" (1 Cor. 12:4–6). Here, the gifts, administrations, and operations are such as could not proceed from a creature; and the three persons mentioned stand in the same relation to one another and to the gifts, administrations, and operations: "For through him, we both have access, by one Spirit, to the Father" (Eph. 2:18); "praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Jude 20–21); "grace be unto you from him that is and was and is to come and from the seven spirits that are before his throne and from Jesus Christ" (Rev. 1:4–5). The "seven spirits" are the Holy Spirit designated by the Jewish sacred number, denoting infinite perfection.

The passages of the second general class, in which only a single trinitarian person is spoken of, will be presented under the heads of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

That the doctrine of the Trinity was taught in the Old Testament was generally maintained by the fathers, Schoolmen, and divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The language of Quenstedt expresses the common view of these authorities: "As the mystery of the holy Trinity is proposed with sufficient clearness in the books of the Old Testament, so likewise from them alone the divinity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit and thus the whole mystery of the Trinity can be demonstrated against any opponents who concede the inspiration of the Old Testament" (Hase, Hutterus, 168). Calixtus questioned this position in 1645 and was answered by Calovius (for the exegesis of the fathers upon this point, see Irenaeus 4.10.11; Augustine, City of God 16.6; Confessions 13.5; Speaker's Commentary on Gen. 1:26 and Isa. 32:1–2). Augustine contended that man was made in the image of the triune God, the God of revelation—not in that of the God of natural religion or the untriune deity of the nations. Consequently, it was to be expected that a trinitarian analog can be found in his mental constitution, which he attempted to point out. All acknowledge that divine unity has its correspondent in that of the human mind. But Augustine and the fathers generally go further than this. This, in their view, is not the whole of the divine image. When God says, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," they understood these words to have been spoken by the Trinity and of the Trinity, by and of the true God of revelation: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God. How far Moses comprehended the full meaning of the divine teaching in these words is one thing. Who it really was that taught is another. The Apostle Peter asserts that the Old Testament inspiration was a trinitarian inspiration, when he says that "the prophets who prophesied of the grace that should come, searched what the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ" (1 Pet. 1:10–11). (supplement 3.4.1.)

The doctrine of the Trinity is revealed in the Old Testament in the same degree that the other truths of Christianity are: not with the clearness and fullness of the New Testament, yet really and plainly. God is trinal in the Old Testament; but with more vagueness than in the New. In the old economy only the general doctrine of three persons in the essence is taught. In the new dispensation, the characteristic differences between the three are specified. The New Testament formula of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, together with the other data connected with this, yields the peculiarities of generation and spiration, of filiation and procession, constituting a further development of the truth found germinally in the earlier revelation. Says Delitzsch (Old Testament History of Redemption, 178):

The trinitarian conception of God is not a product of philosophical speculation, but the reflex, not only of the New Testament, but also even of the Old Testament facts of revelation. God and the Spirit of God are already distinguished upon the first page of the Holy Scriptures, and between both, the angel of God stands as the mediator of the covenant according to Gen. 16 and as the leader of Israel according to Exod. 14:19. The angel of his presence according to Isa. 63:9 is the Savior of his people. (supplement 3.4.2.)

The passages in the Old Testament that imply the doctrine of the Trinity are those in which God speaks in the plural number. Even if no weight be attached to the pluralis excellentiae in the name Elohim, yet when God himself employs the plural number in speaking of himself and his agency, it evidently supports the doctrine of personal distinctions in the essence: "God said, Let us make man after our image" (Gen. 1:26); "God said, Behold the man is become as one of us" (3:22); "the Lord said, Let us go down and there confound their language" (11:7); "whom shall I send and who will go for us?" (Isa. 6:8). The exegete would shrink from substituting "me" for "us" in these passages; as he would from substituting "I" for "we" and "my" for "our" in the sentence "we will come unto him and made our abode with him" (John 14:23). And yet it would be proper to do so, if there really is only a single person in the Supreme Being. "We might have supposed," says Augustine (City of God 16.6), "that the words uttered at the creation of man, 'Let us,' not Let me, 'make man,' were addressed to the angels, had he not added, 'in our image'; but as we cannot believe that man was made in the image of the angels or that the image of God is the same as that of angels, it is better to refer this expression to the plurality of the Trinity." This remark of Augustine contradicts the explanation of Philo and Maimonides, who say that God addressed the angels, associating them with himself. Justin Martyr (Trypho 62) finds the Trinity in this passage (cf. the introduction to Augustine's On the Trinity in Nicene Library 3.5).

Of less logical value in themselves, yet having a demonstrative force in connection with other proofs, are the trisagion in Isa. 6:3 ("holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts") and the threefold address in Num. 6:24–26 ("the Lord bless you, and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you"). Says Kurtz (Sacred History §46):

This formula of benediction already contains the whole mystery of divine Trinity and of the redemption which was to be accomplished by it, in an undeveloped form or like a germ. It was designed to aid in connecting with the religious knowledge of the people a certain view, to be afterward rendered more distinct, of the personality of the one God unfolded in three persons and operating in a threefold manner in the work of human salvation.

Still more important than either of the two preceding classes of texts are those in which God is expressly distinguished from God as subject and object. The theophanies of the Old Testament, like the incarnation of the Son, are trinitarian in their implication and bearing. The narrative relating to Jehovah and Hagar in Gen. 16:7–13 is an example. Here, the person who is styled the "angel (mal˒āk) of the Lord" in verses 7, 9, and 10–11 is addressed in verse 13 as almighty God (˒ēl): "You, God, see me." God is thus a person who sends ("of the Lord") and a person who is sent ("angel"). The theophany of Jehovah to Abraham described in 18:1–19 is another example. Here, one of the "three men" spoken of in verse 2 is denominated Lord (˒ădōnāy) in verse 3 and Jehovah in verse 13 and is described by Abraham as the "judge of all the earth" in verse 25, before whom he himself is but "dust and ashes" (v. 27). In verse 14 this Jehovah-Angel distinguishes himself from "the Lord" (yhwh) by asking, "Is any thing too hard for the Lord?" This could not be exchanged for: "Is anything too hard for me?" The "men" in 18:22 are only two of the three. These two went toward Sodom, leaving Abraham standing before the third, who is called Jehovah. In 19:1 these two angels come to Sodom. The theophany of Jehovah to Lot in Gen. 19 is another example of the trinitarian distinctions. In verse 1 "two angels" (lit., "the two angels"; see 18:22) are sent by "Jehovah" (v. 13) to destroy Sodom. In verse 18 one of these angels is addressed as "Lord" (˒ădōnāy). The Masoretes have the note qadeš (holy) to signify that "Lord" is employed in the divine sense, not the "profane" or human, as in 19:2 ("my lords"). The context favors the Masorete view, because Lot's words to the Lord (19:18–22) and the Lord's words to Lot imply the deity of the angel: "I will overthrow the city." It is uncertain whether the Jehovah who "went his way as soon as he had left communing with Abraham" (18:33) joins "the two angels" that "came to Sodom at even" (19:1) or whether one of these "two angels" is Jehovah himself. One or the other supposition must be made The interchange of the singular and plural in the narrative is striking: "It came to pass when they had brought them forth abroad that he said, Escape for your life. And Lot said unto them, Oh not so my Lord: behold now your servant has found grace in your sight. And he said unto him, See, I have accepted you; I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken" (18:17–21). The theophany of Jehovah to Moses in Exod. 3 is another instance of the subjective and the objective God. The person described in verse 2 as "the angel of the Lord" is denominated God (˒ĕlōhîm) in verse 4 and "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" in verse 6.

Passages in the Old Testament speak of three persons in the Supreme Being: "The Lord God and his Spirit have sent me " (Isa. 48:16). In Hag. 2:4–5, 7 three persons are mentioned: "The Lord of hosts," his "Spirit," and the "Desire of all nations." If ḥemdat (v. 7) is rendered ta eklekta (Septuagint), still two divine persons are mentioned. This would prove distinctions in divine unity. Three persons bring Israel out of Egypt: God, the "angel" of God (Exod. 3:2, 4; 23:20; 32:34), and the "Spirit" of God (Isa. 63:7–14).

Those passages in the Old Testament which ascribe divine names and works to the Messiah and divine operations to the Holy Spirit establish the doctrine of the Trinity by implication. These will be mentioned under the topics of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Edersheim (Life of Jesus, app. 9), by quotations from the Targums, Talmuds, and older Midrashim, shows that 456 passages in the Old Testament (75 from the Pentateuch, 243 from the Prophets, and 138 from the Hagiographa) are applied by the rabbis to the Messiah. Among them are 2 Sam. 7:14 ("I will be his father and he shall be my son") and Ps. 2:7 ("you are my son, this day have I begotten you"; cf. Heb. 1:5–6).

The Jews learned from the Old Testament that the Holy Spirit is a person. When John the Baptist tells the Pharisees and Sadducees that one would soon appear among them who would baptize them with the Holy Spirit (Matt. 3:7–11), he did not explain who the Holy Spirit is. He spoke of an agent known to them. So also in the instance of Christ's promise to his disciples that he would send them the Comforter, the Holy Spirit (John 14:26; 15:13–14). But this presupposed knowledge must have been a common and current knowledge, derived from the Old Testament representations of God.

Augustine (Confessions 13.5) finds the Trinity in Gen. 1:1–2. The "beginning" he understands to be an agent, as in Rev. 3:14. In principio means "by the Beginning," that is, by means of him who causes to begin or originates: "You, O Father, did create heaven and earth in him who is the Beginning of our wisdom, which is your Wisdom, of yourself, equal unto you and coeternal, that is, your Son." Dorner (Christian Doctrine 1.346) quotes Deut. 32:39 in comparison with Exod. 3:14: The same being who says "I am I" also says "I am he."

Proper Use of Trinitarian Terminology

The technical term Trinity is not found in Scripture; and neither is the term unity. The earliest use of the word is in Theophilus of Antioch (died 181 or 188), who remarks that "the three days which were before the luminaries are types of the Trinity" (To Autolycus 2.15). The term triad is employed by Plotinus (died 270) and Proclus (died 485). Tertullian (died 220) employs the term trinitas. Origen (died 250) uses trias twice. Rufinus, in translating Origen, employs trinitas. In the fourth century triunitas appears. The Schoolmen discuss the triplicitas of divine nature in connection with the simplicitas (Baumgarten-Crusius, History of Doctrine 2.120). The word Trinity is the abbreviation of triunity.

God is trinal (trinum), not triple (triplex) (cf. Augustine, On the Trinity 6.7). That which is triple is complex; it is composed of three different substances. That which is trinal is incomplex; it denotes one simple substance, having a threefold modification: "We may speak of the trinal, but not of the triple deity" (Hollaz in Hase's Hutterus, 172). German Dreieinigkeit is more accurate than Dreifaltigkeit; and English triunity than threefoldness or triplicity. Dreieinheit comes still nearer to trinitas than does Dreieinigkeit. This latter leans toward tritheism in denoting a unity of will and affection, rather than of nature. Dreiheit denotes trinality only.

The term person does not denote an attribute of the essence, but a mode of the essence, that is, a particular form of its existence, according to the term used by St. Paul in Phil. 2:6. It is proper to speak of a trinitarian mode, but not of a trinitarian attribute. A trinitarian person is sometimes defined as a "relation" of the essence: "It ought to be said that relations exist in God really" (Aquinas, Summa 1.28.1). By a "relation," here, is not meant an external relation of God to the finite universe, as when the essence is contemplated in relation to space and time and the attributes of immensity and eternity are the result; but an internal relation of divine essence toward itself. It is the essence in a certain mode (e.g., the Father) as related to this same essence in a certain other mode (e.g., the Son).

The clue to the right construction of the doctrine of the Trinity lies in the accurate distinction and definition of essence and person. The doctrine is logically consistent because it affirms that God is one in another sense than he is three and that he is three in another sense than he is one. If it affirmed unity in the same respect that it affirms trinality, the doctrine would be self-contradictory. Says Conybeare (On Miracles):

To assert that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct infinite beings, and yet but one being, is an express contradiction. To assert that they are three distinct beings, of which two are inferior and yet each is God, is either to use the term God equivocally in this case or else is an express contradiction. But to assert that there is but one divine nature or essence, that this undivided essence is common to three persons, that by person when applied to God we do not mean the same as when applied to man but only somewhat analogous to it, that we have no adequate idea of what is meant by the word person when applied to God and use it only because distinct personal attributes and actions are ascribed to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Scripture, is no contradiction. We do not assert that one is three, and three are one; but only that what are three in one respect may be one only in another. We do not assert that three beings are one being, that three persons are one person, or that three intelligent beings are one intelligent being (as the word person signifies when applied to men); but only, that in the same undivided nature, there are three differences analogous to personal differences among men; and though we cannot precisely determine what those differences are, we have no more reason to conclude them impossible than a blind man has to conclude the impossibility of colors because he cannot see them.

Athanasius (Against the Arians 4.10) states the matter thus:

We assert the unity of the Godhead as expressly and strenuously as the distinction and diversity of the persons. We believe the Father and the Son to be two, perfectly distinct from one another in their relative and personal characters; but withal we believe these two to be one God, one infinite essence or nature, the Son or Word begotten of the Father, united with him and inseparable from him in essence. And that illustration which we have so often made use of before, serves very well to explain our meaning, though by no means to explain the thing itself. Fire and light are truly distinct. The one is a body differently modified from the other, as is evident from their acting differently upon us. And yet they are one as to substance and general properties. For light is the issue of fire and cannot subsist separate from it. (supplement 3.4.3.)

God Is One in Respect to Essence

The first proposition in the formulated statement of the doctrine of the Trinity is that God is one in respect to essence, denoted by the Greek terms ousia, physis, and to on; the Latin terms essentia, substantia, natura, ens, and res; and the English terms essence, substance, nature, and being. The Schoolmen and elder Protestant divines preferred the term essence to substance because the latter logically implies accidents or unessential properties, a distinction inapplicable to divine nature. Augustine (On the Trinity 5.2) asserts that accidents are not predicable of it. Another objection to the term substance is that in the Latin church substantia translated hypostasis as well as ousia37 and thus became ambiguous. The phraseology of the Nicene Creed contributed to this ambiguity. This creed condemns those who assert that the Son is ex heteras hypostaseōs ē ousias. The question is whether the two are synonymous. Petavius maintains the affirmative and asserts that the two terms were not discriminated technically until the Council of Alexandria in 362. According to him, the Nicene Creed condemns only one heresy, that of the Arians. Bull, on the other hand, maintains that the Nicene Council employed ousia to denote the essence and hypostasis40 the person and that the creed condemns two heresies: that of the Arians, who denied that the Son is from either the Father's essence or the Father's person, and that of the Semiarians, who denied that he is from the Father's essence but conceded that he is from the Father's person. The Semiarians did not directly say, as the Arians did, that the Son was a creation ex nihilo, but affirmed that he was derived from the Father's person in a peculiar manner, so as to resemble him in essence, but not to be identical. He was homoiousios but not homoousios. Athanasius employs both terms interchangeably: "hypostasis43 is substance (ousia) and means nothing but simply being."

In the Latin church, substantia was employed to translate hypostasis and together with essentia to translate ousia: "That which must be understood of persons, according to our usage, is to be understood of substances, according to the Greek usage: for they say three substances (hypostaseis), one essence, in the same way as we say three persons, one essence or substance (essentiam vel substantiam)" (Augustine, On the Trinity 7.4); "as from sapere comes sapientia, so from esse51 comes essentia; a new word indeed, which the old Latin writers did not use, but which is naturalized in our day, that our language may not want an equivalent for Greek ousia" (City of God 12.2). The same double use of substantia to denote either the person or the essence appears in the following statement of Anselm (Monologium, preface): "When I said that the most distinguished Trinity can be said to be 'three substances,' I have followed the Greeks, who confess 'three substances in one essence,' by the same faith with which we confess three persons in one substance. For they signify in God through the word substance what we signify through the word person." Calvin (1.13.5) remarks upon this ambiguity as follows: "When the Latins would translate the word homoousios, they called it consubstantial, signifying the substance of the Father and the Son to be one, thus using substance for essence. Whence also Jerome, writing to Damasus, pronounces it to be sacrilege to say that there are three substances in God; yet, that there are three substances in God, you will find asserted in Hilary more than a hundred times." (supplement 3.4.4.)

Essence is derived from esse (to be) and denotes energetic being. (Augustine, On the Trinity 5.2). Substance is from substare and denotes the latent potentiality of being. Reinhard defines thus: "Divine substance is that nature in which inheres the infinite power of acting; essence is the complex of all infinite perfections." Similarly, Anselm (Monologium 16) defines the term essence: "Therefore, this is supreme justice, supreme wisdom, supreme truth, supreme goodness, supreme blessedness, supreme eternity, power, and unity. This is none other than the supremely being, the supremely living, and so on." The term essence describes God as a sum total of infinite perfections; the term substance describes him as the underlying ground of infinite activities. The first is, comparatively, an active word; the last, a passive. The first is comparatively a spiritual; the last, a material term. We speak of a material substance rather than of a material essence.

The term substance, in and of itself, is impersonal. It signifies bare and mere being. Whether it is self-conscious being must be determined by other considerations. Hence the doctrine of an infinite substance without that of three distinctions in it yields only the deity of pantheism. Infinite substance must be trinalized and exist as personal subsistences in order to personality. Trinitarianism is the surest support of the doctrine of divine self-consciousness. Says Nitzsch (Christian Doctrine §81):

So long as theism merely distinguishes God from the world and does not distinguish God from God, it is constantly exposed to a relapse and transition into pantheism or some other denial of the absolute being. It is the doctrine of the Trinity alone that affords a perfect protection against atheism, polytheism, pantheism, and dualism. For the absolute distinction between divine essence and the world is more securely and firmly maintained by those who worship the Trinity, than by those who do not. It is precisely those systems of monotheism which have in the highest degree excluded the doctrine of the Trinity and have prided themselves on this very account, the Jewish and Muslim, for example, that have led to the grossest pantheism, on account of their barrenness and vacuity.

Spiritual substance, both infinite and finite, requires to be personalized. In the instance of the infinite essence of God, this is done by the opera ad intra, the eternal generation and spiration. Without these eternal acts and processes, there would be only an impersonal monad, the substantia una of Spinoza. That immanent and necessary activity within divine essence whereby the Father fathers the Son, and the Father and the Son spirate the Spirit, makes it to be self-contemplating, self-knowing, and self-communing. Destitute of this activity and these distinctions, the essence would be destitute of personality. In the instance of the finite nature or substance of man, this is personalized by temporal generation. The original unity, the one common nature in Adam, is divided and made to become millions of individual persons by this division and distribution. The original human nature, though having personal properties such as immortality, rationality, and voluntariness is nevertheless impersonal viewed as mere substance in Adam. Only as it is formed into distinct individuals by propagation is it personalized. In saying that the human nature in Adam is impersonal, the term is used comparatively. It is rational, spiritual, and voluntary substance—human nature, not brute nature or inorganic nature. It is capable of personality and thus is potentially personal; but it is not strictly and actually personal until by temporal generation it has become individual men.

It is an incommunicable characteristic of divine essence that it can subsist wholly and indivisibly in more persons than one. This distinguishes divine nature from the human. The latter can exist in more persons than one, but not as an indivisible whole. It is divided into thousands and millions of individual persons, no one of whom has the whole undivided substance. A trinitarian person is the entire divine nature subsisting in a particular manner, namely, as Father or as Son or as Holy Spirit. A human person is a fractional part of the entire human nature subsisting in a particular manner, namely, as Peter or as James or as John.

God Is Three in Respect to Persons

The second proposition in the formulated statement of the doctrine of the Trinity is that God is three in respect to persons. This side of the doctrine is the most difficult to apprehend because analogies from the finite are difficult to find and, if found, are exceedingly recondite and abstruse. The human mind quite readily grasps the notion of substance and attributes. But the doctrine of "subsistences" in the substance, of "distinctions" in the essence, brings to view a species of existence so anomalous and singular that little aid can be derived from analogy. The distinction between the subject-ego and object-ego in human self-consciousness is probably the closest analog, but this itself is exceedingly difficult of comprehension and is inadequate to fully explain divine self-consciousness.

The difficulty in apprehending the idea of a personal subsistence is evinced by the inadequacy and ambiguity of the terms employed to denote it. The Greek trinitarians denominated a divine person hypostasis, to hypokeimenon, or prosōpon. The first is found in Heb. 1:3: "the exact image of his person" (charaktēr tēs hypostaseōs autou). The last is found in Luke 12:56: "face of the sky" (prosōpon tou ouranou). It was the term for the mask worn by an actor. The Sabellians employed it to denote a secondary and assumed phase of the supreme one in the economic Trinity which they asserted. It was never a favorite term with the Catholic trinitarians, but whenever used by them denoted a primary and eternal mode of the essence. The Latin trinitarians employed the word persona. Sometimes substantia was employed. The ambiguity caused by the use of this latter word for person might have been avoided had they coined, as the Schoolmen did, the term subsistantia. The English terms are hypostasis, subsistence, distinction, person, relation, and mode.

St. Paul (Phil. 2:6) defines a trinitarian person to be "a form of God." The rendering "the form of God" (Authorized Version and Revised Version) is inaccurate, as morphē is anarthrous. There are three forms of God. The whole divine essence (ousia) subsisting (hyparchōn, not ōn) in the paternal form (morphē) is the first person, in the filial form is the second person, in the spirated or spirit form is the third person. The one undivided essence subsists in these three forms simultaneously and eternally and has no existence other than this trinal one. One of these original and eternal forms of God, namely, the Son, took "a form of a servant," still retaining his original divine form; and this form of a servant was "a likeness of men"; and this likeness of men involved a "fashion" or bodily form (schēma) of a man. According to this representation of the apostle, a trinitarian person is an invisible form or mode of divine essence. It is not a material and bodily form, because it required to be incarnated in order to this. The Son of God while subsisting only as a particular eternal form of divine essence was as incorporeal and invisible as the other forms—the Father and the Spirit.

The simultaneous existence of one and the same divine essence in three forms is possible because it is spiritual substance. In the instance of matter, three simultaneous forms necessarily imply three different things or substances. One and the same piece of clay cannot have three forms simultaneously. It can have them only successively. In order that there may be three different forms of clay simultaneously, there must be three different pieces of clay. But in the instance of mind or immaterial substance, three simultaneous forms or modes do not necessarily imply three different minds or substances. One and the same entire mind may remember, understand, and will simultaneously. Memory, understanding, and will are three simultaneous forms or modes of one and the same mind or spirit. In self-consciousness, also, one and the same mind may be subject, object, and subject-percipient simultaneously.

As previously remarked (p. 221), divine essence has no existence out of and apart from divine persons or forms. We are not to conceive of it as existing first in the order either of nature or of time, without trinality, and of three personal distinctions or forms being added to it. Neither are we to conceive of it as being transformed from an untrinalized to a trinalized state. From eternity, divine essence subsists in a trinal manner. The instant that it is one essence, it is three persons. To conceive of it as a mere monad, marked by singleness, is erroneous.

Again, when it is said that there are three persons in one essence, it is not meant that the essence is a fourth thing, within which the three persons exist. This is precluded by the antithetic statement that the one essence is all in each of the three persons. Neither may we think of a trinitarian person as a part of divine essence existing in a peculiar mode. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each and simultaneously the whole divine essence; so that while there are three persons, there is but one essence. The reason of this is that eternal generation and spiration do not create new essences, but only modify an existing one. When the Father generates the Son, he causes the whole of his infinite and eternal essence to be the essence of the Son. He does not cause a new and different essence from his own to be the Son's essence. And the same is true, mutatis mutandis, of the spiration of the Spirit by the Father and Son. This is imperfectly illustrated in the process of human self-consciousness. In self-contemplation, the subject-ego posits as the object-ego the one whole and undivided human spirit. In so doing, it does not create a second spirit but only modifies the existing spirit. The substance of the object-ego is numerically and identically the same as that of the subject-ego. The first ego, in the act of self-beholding, may in a certain sense be said to communicate to or make common with the second ego, the entire substance of the human spirit. One and the same human spirit now "subsists" in these two modes or distinctions. There are now two distinctions in one human mind.72

An eternal essence can be communicated or made common to two divine persons without being created, even as an eternal attribute can be communicated without being created. Our Lord affirms that "as the Father has life in himself, so has he given to the Son to have life in himself" (John 5:26). The attribute of self-existence is here represented as "given" or communicated, not as created. The Father makes self-existing life a common quality between himself and his beloved Son in order "that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father" (5:23).

Accordingly, all trinitarian creeds are careful to affirm that divine essence is communicated in its entirety and that there is no division of it by the eternal generation and procession. A trinitarian person is not a fractional part of the essence. Augsburg Confession 1.1 says that "the churches use the name of person in that signification in which the fathers have used it to signify, not a part or quality in another, but that which properly subsists by itself." "A divine person," says Fisher (Westminster Catechism, 6), "is a complete, intelligent, and individual subsistence in the one undivided essence of God, which is neither a part of any other subsistence nor sustained by any other subsistence, and is distinguished from other subsistences by an incommunicable property." A brief and convenient definition of a divine person is that of Hooker: "The persons of the Trinity are not three particular substances, to whom one general nature is common, but three that subsist by one substance, which itself is particular; yet they all three have it, and their several ways of having it are that which makes their personal distinction" (Polity 5.56). Says Owen (Trinity Vindicated 10.504), "a divine person is nothing but divine essence, upon the account of an especial property, subsisting in an especial manner. In the person of the Father, there is divine essence and being, with its property of fathering the Son, subsisting in an especial manner as the Father." The elder Protestant theologians and creeds defined a divine person to be a mode of subsistence marked by a certain peculiar characteristic: modus subsistendi, tropos hyparxeōs. Divine essence with the characteristic which Scripture denominates generating is the Father; the same numerical essence with the characteristic called filiation is the Son; the same numerical essence with the characteristic called procession is the Spirit. This peculiarity, which is called technically the hypostatic character, constitutes the personality of a trinitarian person—that which distinguishes him from the others. And this personality of a trinitarian person must not be confounded with that of the essence. The paternity of the Father or the sonship of the Son is not the same thing as the personality of the Godhead. The hypostatic character is incommunicable. The Father cannot have filiation. The Son cannot have generation. And neither of them can have procession. Divine persons cannot exchange their modes of subsistence. The first person cannot be or become the third, nor the second the first. The most enigmatic part of the doctrine of the Trinity is in the hypostatic character. What is this paternity of the Father? and this filiation of the Son? and this being spirated or procession of the Spirit? Since revelation has given only the terms Father, Son, and Spirit with the involved ideas of paternity, filiation, and procession the human intellect can go no further toward a metaphysical explanation than these terms and ideas will yield materials. And this is not far.

A divine person differs from a human person in the following respects. The substance of a human person is not the identical and numerical substance of another human person. Two human persons have the same kind of substance because they are constituted of fractional parts of one specific human substance or nature; but they do not have the same substance identically and numerically. That part of human nature which, by temporal generation, has been separated from the common nature and formed into the individual James is not the same identical and numerical thing as that other part of human nature which, by temporal generation, has been formed into the individual John. But the substance of one divine person is the substance of the others, both numerically and identically. In this instance, there is no division of substance. The whole undivided divine nature is in each divine person simultaneously and eternally. The modifying of divine nature by eternal generation and spiration does not divide the nature, as temporal generation does, but leaves it whole and entire, so that the substance of the begotten Son and the spirated Spirit is numerically and identically that of the unbegotten and unspirated Father. One human person exists externally to another and separate from him; but one divine person exists in another and inseparably from him: "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father do: for what things soever he does, these also does the Son likewise" (John 5:19). One human person can exist without another; but one divine person cannot.

Revelation clearly teaches that these personal characteristics are so marked and peculiar that the three divine persons are objective to each other. God the Father and God the Son are so distinct from each other that some actions which can be ascribed to the one cannot be ascribed to the other. The Father "sends" the Son; this act of sending the Son cannot be attributed to the Son. The Father "loves" the Son; this act of loving the Son cannot be ascribed to the Son. An examination of the Scriptures gives the following series of twelve actions and relations of the three trinitarian persons, which prove that they are objective to one another, that one may do or experience something that is personal to himself and is not personal to the others. One divine person …

loves another (John 3:35)

dwells in another (John 14:10–11)

suffers from another (Zech. 13:7)

knows another (Matt. 11:27)

addresses another (Heb. 1:8)

is the way to another (John 14:6)

speaks of another (Luke 3:22)

glorifies another (John 17:5)

confers with another (Gen. 1:26; 11:7)

plans with another (Isa. 9:6)

sends another (Gen. 16:7; John 14:26)

rewards another (Phil. 2:5–11; Heb. 2:9)

Here are twelve different actions and relations which demonstrate that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not one and the same person.

Such inspired representations involve more than official distinctions, as when one and the same person is a father, a citizen, and a magistrate. They imply that there are three in the Godhead, who are so objective to each other that each can say "I" and may be addressed as "you." The words of Christ in John 17:5 teach this: "Now, O Father, glorify me with your own self, with the glory which I had with you before the world was." "The difference," says Turretin (3.27.8), "between one divine person and another is greater than the difference between the person and the essence. For the essence may be predicated of each and all the persons, but the personal characteristic cannot be predicated of any person except the one to whom it belongs. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God; but the Father is not the Son, or the Son the Father." A trinitarian person is not so comprehensive as the Godhead, because he does not possess the personal characteristics belonging to the other two persons. He is the essence with one personal peculiarity, while the Godhead is the essence with three personal peculiarities. A trinitarian person includes all that is in the unity, but not all that is in the trinality of God; all that is in the essence, but not all that is in the three modes of the essence.

The trinitarian persons are not so real as to constitute three essences or beings. This is the error of tritheism. If "real," which is derived from res, be taken in its etymological signification, then the distinction is to be called modal, not real. A trinitarian person is a mode of a thing (res) and not another separate thing. To guard against the tritheistic inference from the etymological meaning of "real," the Catholic trinitarian affirms that there are not three different entities or things, but only one entity or thing in three modes of subsistence: "A person is said to differ from the essence not really, that is to say essentially, as one thing differs from another. Rather, a person differs from the essence modally, as a mode differs from a thing" (Turretin 3.27.3). (supplement 3.4.5.)

But here, again, it is necessary to guard against the error of Sabellianism, which may result from a false inference from the term mode. A mode, in the strict use of the term, is only a form of some part of a substance or "thing." Diamond, for illustration, is one mode of carbon; charcoal is another mode. Here is a substance in two modes. But the particles that constitute the bit of charcoal are not the particles that constitute the bit of diamond. Using the term in this sense, it would be an error to say that a divine person is a mode of the essence. For a mode, in this case, contains only a fraction of the common substance. The whole substance of all the carbon in the universe is not in any one piece of charcoal or of diamond, but only a portion of it. But the whole divine essence is in each trinitarian person or "mode" of the essence.

Whether, consequently, the distinctions in the Godhead shall be called "real" or "modal" depends upon the error that is to be excluded by the term. As against Sabellianism, the distinctions are real and essential, that is, in and of the essence and not merely economic and official. For Sabellianism regards essence and person as identical and concedes no difference between them. "Sabellius," says Athanasius (Orations 4.9, 25), "maintained that the Father and Son are one person; are personally one, appellatively two; are one essence with two names to it (to hen diōnymon). This made it impossible that either of them should be a person at all, unless the Father could be his own Son, and the Son his own Father. Had the Father and Son not been two persons, the Son would not have said, 'I and the Father are one,' but 'am one.' " "The declaration of the Son's unity with the Father, the Jews mistook, as Sabellius did afterward, for a declaration of his being the Father, the person of the Father himself" (Orations 4.17). Similarly Augustine (On the Trinity 5.9) remarks that the Sabellians must read the text thus: "I and my Father is one" instead of "are one." According to the Sabellian scheme, divine essence is unipersonal, single not trinal. There is only one divine essence and only one divine person. This essence-person viewed in a certain reference and acting in a certain economic manner is the Father, in another is the Son, in another is the Spirit. The quasi persons of Father, Son, and Spirit are only the single untrinal monad discharging three functions. The Sabellian Trinity is economic, that is, one of offices, as one and the same human person may be a citizen, a magistrate, and a parent. It is not an intrinsic and immanent Trinity, but one of manifestation only. It is not grounded in the divine constitution, but is assumed for the purposes of creation, redemption, and sanctification. God is not trinal per se, but only with reference to the creation. Originally, divine essence is untrinal and becomes trinal through its offices and functions. "Sabellius's Trinity," says Neander (1.598), "is transitory. When the purposes of its formation are accomplished, the triad is resolved again into the monad."

In opposition to this, the Scriptures teach that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three persons independently and irrespective of creation, redemption, and sanctification. If God had never created the universe, but had existed alone from all eternity, he would be triune. And the three persons are so real and distinct from each other that each possesses a hypostatic or trinitarian consciousness different from that of the others. The second person is conscious that he is the Son and not the Father, when he says, "O Father, glorify me" (John 17:5). The first person is conscious that he is the Father and not the Son, when he says, "You are my Son, this day have I begotten you" (Heb. 1:5). The third person is conscious that he is the Spirit and neither the Father nor the Son, when he says, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them" (Acts 13:2). These three hypostatic consciousnesses constitute the one self-consciousness of divine essence. By reason of and as the result of these three forms of consciousness, divine essence is self-contemplative, self-cognitive, and self-communing. Though there are three forms of consciousness, there are not three essences or three understandings or three wills in the Godhead because a consciousness is not an essence or an understanding or a will. There is only one essence, having one understanding and one will. But this unity of essence, understanding, and will has three different forms of consciousness: paternal, filial, and spiritual because it has three different forms of subsistence, namely, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. If it had only one form of subsistence, as in the Sabellian scheme, it would have only one form of consciousness. It would exist only as a single subject and would have only a corresponding consciousness. But this would not be a full and true self-consciousness because this requires the three distinctions of subject, object, and percipient-subject, which are not given in the Sabellian triad.

It must be noticed that divine self-consciousness is not a fourth consciousness additional to the three hypostatic consciousnesses, but is the resultant of these three. The three hypostatic consciousnesses are the one divine self-consciousness, and the one divine self-consciousness is the three hypostatic consciousnesses. The three hypostatic consciousnesses in their combination and unity constitute the one self-consciousness. The essence in being trinally conscious as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is self-conscious. As the one divine essence is the same thing with the three persons, and not a fourth different thing by itself, so the one divine self-consciousness is the same thing with the three hypostatic consciousnesses and not a fourth different thing by itself. In this way, it is evident that the three hypostatic consciousnesses are consistent with a single self-consciousness, as the three hypostases themselves are consistent with a single essence. There are three persons but only one essence, and three hypostatic consciousnesses but only one self-consciousness.

Accordingly, having respect to the Sabellian heresy, the Catholic trinitarian affirms that the distinctions in the Trinity are essential, not modal. They are in and of the essence, in such a manner as to trinalize it. When, however, the heresy is at the other extreme and tritheism maintains that the distinctions are "real" in the sense of constituting three separate things (res) or entities, the Catholic trinitarian denies this and affirms that a trinitarian person is not a second separate thing, but a "mode" of one and the same thing. But as a mode, it is the whole thing, not a fraction of it.

The word God sometimes denotes the Trinity, the entire Godhead, as in John 4:24 (pneuma ho theos) and 1 Cor. 15:28 (hina ē ho theos ta panta en pasin) The reference in these passages is not to one person in particular, but to the Supreme Being as conceived of in revelation, that is, as the triune God. In such texts, the term God "is not to be considered hypostatikōs, as peculiarly expressive of any one person, but as ousiōdōs, comprehending the whole deity" (Owen, Communion with the Trinity 1.2). There is the same use of the word God for the Trinity in the line "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." The line following, "Praise Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," explains who "God" is. The article is employed with theos in John 4:24 to denote the true God in distinction from a falsely conceived God, who is supposed to be local and to be worshiped at a particular point. Sometimes the term God denotes "deity," the abstract divine nature or essence, without reference either to the Trinity or to any particular person, as in John 1:1: "The Word was deity" (theos ēn ho logos). St. John does not, here, say that the Logos was the Godhead or the Trinity, but that he was divine. Hence, theos83 is anarthrous (1) to denote divine nature in the abstract (cf. anarthrous pneuma85 in John 4:24) and (2) in order not to confound the person of the Logos with that of the Father, who in the preceding clause is designated by theon with the article. When the Father or Son or Spirit is denominated theos, the word is used in the sense of deity, not of Trinity. (For a careful examination as to whether God denotes in Scripture the Trinity, the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit, see Augustine, On the Trinity 2–3.)

Characteristics of Trinitarian Persons: Internal and External

There are two classes of characteristics by which the trinitarian persons are discriminated: (1) internal or notae internae and (2) external or notae externae.

The internal characteristics are those acts or activities of the Supreme Being which are within the essence and are confined to it. They are denominated opera ad intra, because they are not emanent or transitive acts that go out of and beyond divine essence and produce external results—such as the creation of a new substance from nothing, like that of the finite universe: "The internal works or actions of God are those which the persons perform and exercise one toward another" (Ursinus, Christian Religion Q. 25). The Nicene use of the term act applied to the generation of the Son denotes a constitutional and necessary agency and a consequent emanation of the essence, similarly "as the sun is supposed to act in generating rays, fountains to act in generating streams, mind to act in generating thoughts, trees to act in generating branches, bodies to act in generating effluvia" (Waterland, Second Defence). The term activity is preferable to act to designate the eternal generation and spiration, because the latter more naturally denotes something that comes to an end, while the former denotes something continuous and unceasing.

This immanent and constitutional activity belongs to divine essence, because it is spirit. Spirit, by its very nature, and especially the infinite and eternal Spirit, is active. Matter is dead; but mind is living. Spirit is energetic and self-moving; but matter is inert and moved. Hence God is frequently called in Scripture the living God (Jer. 4:2; Job 19:25; John 6:57). God swears by himself as the living one (Num. 14:21; Isa. 49:18; Jer. 22:24; Ezek. 5:11). Previous to creation and entirely irrespective of it, the deity is active in himself. God must not be conceived of, as in the pantheistic systems of India and Germany, as inert and slumbering prior to the work of creation, but from everlasting to everlasting he is inherently and intrinsically energic. There is nothing dead and immobile in the Godhead. Neither is there anything latent and requiring to be developed, as there is in the imperfect spirit of man. In the Scholastic phrase, God is absolutely pure act, without any potentiality. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8). He is without variableness or parallax (James 1:17). And this is true of the immanent and constitutional activity of the divine essence in generation and spiration. These opera ad intra are an eternal and unceasing energizing and trinalizing of the essence, in and by those two acts whereby the Father communicates the essence with the Son, and the Father and Son communicate it with the Spirit.

This constitutional and inherent activity of the divine essence has for its resultant the trinitarian distinctions. Divine nature energizes internally from eternity to eternity in two distinct manners and thereby is simultaneously and eternally three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—God unbegotten, begotten, and proceeding. Westminster Confession 2.3 defines this internal activity in the terms of the Athanasian Creed: "In the unity of the Godhead, there are three persons of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Spirit eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son." This marks off the persons. He who fathers is a different person from him who is born. He who proceeds is different from those from whom the procession issues.

According to this statement, there are two internal marks or characteristics by which divine persons are distinguished from one another—generation and spiration or filiation and procession—according to the point of view that is adopted. Generation and spiration are subjective and active in signification. They denote the acts of a divine person or persons as related to another divine person. Filiation and procession are objective and passive in signification. They denote the results of the acts, that is, the eternal processes consequent upon them. The first person subjectively and actively generates the second person, and eternal filiation is objectively and passively the result or process ensuing from it. The first and second persons subjectively and actively spirate the third person, and eternal procession is objectively and passively the result. That internal energizing, or opus ad intra, which Scripture denominates "fathering," modifies divine essence in a particular manner, and this resulting mode of the essence is denominated the Son of God. That other internal energizing, or opus ad intra, which is called "spiration," modifies divine essence in still another manner, and this resulting mode of the essence is denominated the Holy Spirit. The theological term spiration comes from the biblical term Spirit, appropriated to the third person. It is applied to him technically, with reference to the manner in which he has the essence: Spirit, because he is spirated. He is no more spiritual in substance than the Father or Son. But the essence is communicated to him by spiration or outbreathing (pneuma93 = spiritus = breath).

The following particulars are to be carefully noticed. First, these internal acts or activities of generation and spiration, in divine essence, are not creative acts. They originate nothing external to God and other than God. They do not make a new essence, but only modify an existing one. When the Father generates the Son, he does not call another substance into existence from nonentity, as he does when he makes the universe. This is marked in the Nicene Creed by the clause begotten, not made.

Second, these internal activities are not temporal and transient, but eternal and unceasing. They have neither beginning nor ending nor cessation. Neither of them is before the other in time. All are eternal and therefore simultaneous. The first person is not the eternal Father before the second person is the eternal Son. An eternal Father cannot exist before an eternal Son; if so, there would be a time when he is not the eternal Father. A divine person who has no son is not a father: hama patēr, hama huios (Athanasius). "In this Trinity nothing is before or after, nothing greater or lesser, but all three persons are coeternal with themselves and coequal"95 (Athanasian Creed 24). On account of the eternity and immutability of divine paternity and sonship, Athanasius (Orations 1.21) argues that these are the truest and most proper paternity and sonship; of which human paternity and sonship are only finite and imperfect copies. For these relations, in the case of God, are necessarily and immutably distinct from each other; while in the case of man, they are not. A human person may be both a father and a son at the same time; but a divine person cannot be. A human person may be a son and not a father and subsequently may become a father. But in the case of a divine person, no such change as this is possible. If a trinitarian person is a father, he is so eternally and immutably. If he is a son, he is so eternally and immutably. God the Father is never other than a father, and God the Son is never other than a son.

Again, the three trinitarian persons, unlike three human persons, suppose each other and cannot be conceived of as subsisting independently and separately from each other. Three human persons exist side by side, separately and independently, so that if one or two of them are subtracted, the remaining person or persons are the same as before the subtraction. The personality of each is unaffected by that of the others. But in the instance of the three trinitarian persons, each is what he is in reference to the others, and if one be subtracted, the others disappear also. Abstract God the Father, and there is no God the Son left; abstract God the Son, and there is no God the Father left. And the same is true of God the Spirit.

Third, they are necessary activities. It is as necessary, that is, it is as fixed in the nature and constitution of the Godhead, that from all eternity the Father should generate the Son, as that he should be omnipresent or omnipotent. "What madness," says Athanasius (Orations 3.63), "is it to represent the Supreme Being as considering and consulting with himself, whether he shall provide and furnish himself with his own reason and intelligence. The Son of God is no mere voluntary or arbitrary effect of God's power, but the necessary issue of his nature and the Son of his substance." Says Hooker (5.54), "Whatsoever Christ has common unto him with his heavenly Father, the same of necessity must be given him, but naturally and eternally given, not bestowed by way of benevolence and favor." The same is true of the spiration of the Spirit by the Father and Son. This, also, is a necessary and constitutional activity of divine essence. It is optional with God to energize externally, but not internally. The opera ad extra in creation and providence depend upon sovereign will. God might or might not create the universe, may or may not uphold it. But we cannot say that he may or may not be triune. That immanent and eternal activity which trinalizes the essence and results in the three trinitarian persons, being grounded in the very nature and constitution of the Supreme Being, must be. And yet this necessity is not that of external compulsion. It is like that of divine existence. It is not optional with God to exist. He must be. Yet he is not compelled to exist by external necessity. He exists willingly. And such is the necessity of the eternal generation of the Son and spiration of the Spirit. The Father, says Turretin (3.29.22), generates the Son "not by the freedom of indifference, but of spontaneity."97

The difference between the relation of generation and spiration to the essence and to the persons, respectively, is important. The generation and spiration are out of or from (ek) the essence by (dia) the persons. The Son, though generated by the Father, issues from the essence. He is a form or mode of the essence, not a form or mode of the Father. The first person generates the second person not out of his own personal characteristic of paternity, but out of the essence itself. In generation, the first person does not communicate his hypostatic character, namely, his fatherhood, to the Son, but the whole undivided essence. The Son is theos ek theou, the essence in the filial form or mode emanating from the essence in the paternal form or mode.

Again, the Spirit, though spirated by the Father and Son, yet proceeds not from the Father and Son as persons but from divine essence. His procession is from one, namely, the essence; while his spiration is by two, namely, two persons. The Father and Son are not two essences and therefore do not spirate the Spirit from two essences. Yet they are two persons, and as two persons having one numerical essence spirate from it the third form or mode of the essence—the Holy Spirit: their two personal acts of spiration concurring in one single procession of the Spirit. There are two spirations, because the Father and Son are two persons; but there is only one resulting procession (see Turretin 3.31.6). According to the Greek view of the procession of the Spirit, there is only one act of spiration, that of the Father; so that there is one spiration and one procession.

The biblical proof of these internal activities of divine essence is found …

1. In those passages which denominate the first person the Father, the second person the Son, and the third person the Spirit (Ps. 2:7; Matt. 3:17; 28:19; John 1:14; Acts 13:33; Rom. 1:4; Heb. 1:8; 1 John 5:20). The terms father and son suppose generation, are correlative, and must be taken in the same sense. If father and son are literal, so is generation. If generation is metaphorical, so are father and son. Whoever affirms that the second person of the Trinity is literally and really the son of the first person must, if he would not contradict himself, also affirm that the second person is literally and really begotten by the first. There is literally a communication of divine essence in the generation and filiation.

2. In those passages which denominate the Son "only" begotten, "own" son, and "dear" son (John 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9; Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:6; Rom. 8:3, 32; Col. 1:13; Matt. 3:17; Eph. 1:6; 2 Pet. 1:17). The second person in his original trinitarian status is denominated huios; in his estate of humiliation as mediator, he is sometimes called pais. This latter term means "servant" and is never used of the unincarnate Word. In Acts 3:13 and Matt. 12:18 the phrase pais mou denotes the same as "my servant" in Isa. 42:1. The Septuagint renders ˓ebed by pais105 (see Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine §13; Bengel on Matt. 12:18).

3. In those passages which technically denominate the third person the Spirit and those which speak of his procession. "Spirit" in the technical trinitarian use signifies that the third person is spirated or outbreathed by the Father and Son. Hebrew r̂aḥ and Greek pneuma107 denote a breath or breathing (Gen. 1:2; Num. 27:18; Ps. 51:11; Isa. 63:11; Hos. 9:7; Matt. 3:16; Luke 1:35; John 1:32–33; 3:5–6; Acts 2:4). Christ "breathed on his disciples and said unto them, Receive the Holy Spirit" (John 20:22). This spiration of the Spirit in time was symbolical of the eternal spiration in the Godhead. The third person is also described as "proceeding" from the Father (15:26). Though in this text it is not said that he proceeds from the Son also, yet there are texts that imply this. He is called the "Spirit of the Son" (Gal. 4:6), the "Spirit of Christ" (Rom. 8:9), and the "Spirit of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:19). The genitive in these passages denotes the source. It is noteworthy that in the New Testament the third person is nowhere denominated the "Spirit of the Father." Furthermore, the Holy Spirit is "received from" Christ (John 16:14–15), is "sent by" Christ (15:26), and is "sent in the name of" Christ (16:26). The "mission" and "reception" of the third person from the second person and in his name favors the Latin doctrine of his spiration by and procession from him. (supplement 3.4.6.)

Some trinitarians have attempted to hold the doctrine of the Trinity while denying eternal generation, spiration, and procession. They concede that there are three eternal persons in the Godhead, denominated in Scripture Father, Son, and Spirit, but contend that to go beyond this and affirm such acts in the Godhead as generation and spiration is to go beyond the record. They reject, or at least doubt, this feature in Nicene trinitarianism.

But this is inconsistent. These trinal names Father, Son, and Spirit, given to God in Scripture, force upon the theologian the ideas of paternity, filiation, spiration, and procession. He cannot reflect upon the implication of these names without forming these ideas and finding himself necessitated to concede their literal validity and objective reality. He cannot say with Scripture that the first person is the Father and then deny or doubt that he "fathers." He cannot say that the second person is the Son and then deny or doubt that he is "begotten." He cannot say that the third person is the Spirit and then deny or doubt that he "proceeds" by "spiration" (Spirit because spirated) from the Father and Son. Whoever accepts the nouns Father, Son, and Spirit as conveying absolute truth must accept also the corresponding adjectives and predicates—beget and begotten, spirate and proceed—as conveying absolute truth.

Recapitulating, then, we have the following internal marks (notae internae) or personal peculiarities by which to distinguish the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit from each other. (1) The Father generates the Son and spirates the Spirit. Generation and spiration are the eternal acts, the opera ad intra, that characterize the first person. The first person is distinguished by two acts and no process. (2) The Son is generated by the Father and together with him spirates the Spirit. Filiation is an internal process and spiration an internal act that characterize the second person. The second person is distinguished by one act and one process. (3) The Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son. Procession is the internal process that marks the third person. There is no internal act of the Holy Spirit; but his external activity, especially in redemption, is more marked than that of the first and second persons. The third person is distinguished by a process and no act.

Respecting the meaning of the terms generation and spiration, filiation and procession, little can be said, because inspiration has given but few data. The Catholic trinitarianism defines generation and spiration as those eternal acts in the Godhead by which one person communicates the essence to or rather with another. The term communicate must be taken etymologically. By generation, the Father makes the eternal essence common (koinōnein) to himself and the Son. The Son does not first exist, and the essence is then communicated to him. "The Father," says Turretin (3.29.21), "does not generate the Son either as previously existing, for in this case there would be no need of generation; nor as not yet existing, for in this case the Son would not be eternal; but as coexisting, because he is from eternity in the Godhead." "When the Son says, 'As the Father has life in himself, so has he given to the Son to have life in himself,' the meaning is not that the Father gave life to the Son already existing without life, but that he so sired him, apart from time, that the life which the Father gave to the Son by fathering him is coeternal with the life of the Father who gave it" (Augustine, On the Trinity 15.26.47). The same statement and reasoning apply to the act of spiration. By spiration, the Father and Son make the eternal essence common to themselves and the Spirit. They are not two persons that exist prior to the third, but eternally coexist with him. The coexistence, in both generation and spiration, follows from the fact that it is one and the same numerical essence which is communicated and constitutes the substance of each person; and this essence cannot be any older in one person than in another. (supplement 3.4.7.)

The results of these two eternal, constitutional, and necessary activities of generation and spiration in the divine essence are two distinct and personal emanations of the essence. There is no creation of a new essence, but a modification of an existing one; and this modification is a kind of issue or efflux. God the Son is the offspring of God the Father: "very God of very God" (ek tēs ousias). God the Spirit "proceeds" from the Father and the Son. The common statements in the patristic trinitarianism respecting this emanation of the essence are the following: The Son is from the Father, not as an effect from a cause; not as an inferior from a superior; not as created finite substance from uncreated infinite substance; but as intelligence is from intellect, the river from the spring, the ray from the sun. These illustrations were employed by the early trinitarians to denote the sameness of essence between the first and second persons and the emanation of the latter from the former. This internal emanation was taught as early as Theophilus: "The word being God, and being naturally produced from God (ek theou pephykōs)" (To Autolycus 22). Paraeus (Body of Christian Doctrine, 25) says: "The Son is begotten, the Spirit proceeds or emanates from the Father." The term emanates113 is explanatory of both begotten and proceeds115 in this proposition because Paraeus held to the procession of the Spirit from both Father and Son. Paraeus in his notes on the Athanasian Creed 7 says that "procession or emanation is the ineffable communication of the divine essence, by which the third person of the Trinity receives from the Father and the Son the same entire essence which the Father and the Son have." Quenstedt enunciates the Catholic view in the following manner: "Eternal generation is not by derivation, as in the instance of human generation; nor by transfusion; nor by any action that begins and ends. It is by an unceasing emanation, to which there is nothing similar in the nature of things" (Hase, Hutterus, 174). Similarly, Turretin (3.31.1) describes the procession of the Spirit as an "emanation from the Father and the Son, distinct from the generation of the Son." Bull defines as follows: "The Father is the foundation (principum) of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and each are propagated by him through an interior, not an external, production. And so it is that not only are they from the Father, but are in him, and the Father is in them. In the holy triad one person cannot be separated from the other, as three human persons are divided from one another" (Defense 4.4.9).

The term emanation is inapplicable to an opus ad extra, like creation, but not to the opera ad intra. When God creates the universe of matter and mind, he makes a new substance from nothing. The universe is not an efflux or emanation of the divine essence. But when the Father generates the Son, this is an eternal emanation and outflow of divine essence. An emanation is of the same substance with that from which the emanation issues; a creation is a new and different substance from that of the Creator.

The phrase communication of essence is preferable to derivation of essence, though the latter is sometimes employed by orthodox trinitarians. The term derivation is better suited to human than to divine generation because it denotes division and distribution of a substance. When divine nature is communicated, it is communicated or "made common" as a whole undivided essence. In eternal generation, the entire divine nature is caused to be the nature of the second person. But when finite human nature is derived, it is only a portion of human nature that is derived. In human generation, an abscised part of human substance is separated from the common mass and is made to become a distinct and separate human individual. Hence, it cannot be said that the whole human nature is in each human person, as it can be that the whole divine nature is in each divine person. Human derivation is the transmission of a separate fraction; eternal generation is the communication of an undivided whole: "The generation of the Son of God is not like that of a man, which requires a separation and division of substance" (Athanasius, Orations 1.14).

It has already been noticed that it is the characteristic of divine essence that it can subsist indivisibly and totally in more persons than one. These adjectives are important. For the human nature can also subsist in more persons than one, but not indivisibly and totally. An individual man, a human person, is only a part and a very small part of the whole human nature or species. But the first, second, or third person of the Godhead is the entire divine nature, in a particular mode of subsistence. All of the divine substance is in each divine person, but not all of the human substance is in each human person.

The whole of divine essence subsisting in a certain mode constitutes God the Father or God the Son or God the Holy Spirit; a part of the human substance or specific nature separated from the remainder of it by human generation constitutes the individual Peter, James, or John. A divine person is denominated a subsistence in the essence; a human person is denominated an individual of (not in) the species. The preposition of denotes division and separation of substance; the preposition in excludes this. Says Ursinus (Christian Religion Q. 25):

In persons created, he that fathers and generates does not communicate his whole substance to him that is begotten, for then he would cease himself to be a man; but only a part, which being allotted and severed out of the substance of him that fathers is conveyed or derived unto him that is begotten and so is made to be the substance of another individual or person, distinct from the substance of the individual who sired. But in uncreated trinitarian persons, he that fathers or spirates communicates his whole essence to him that is begotten or proceeds; yet so, that he who communicates does retain the same essence and that entire. The reason of this difference between a divine and a human person is that the substance of man is finite and divisible; but that of God is infinite and indivisible. And, therefore, divine essence, being the same numerically and whole or entire, may be both communicated and retained simultaneously.

The great mystery of the Trinity is that one and the very same substance can subsist as an undivided whole in three persons simultaneously. That a substance can be divided up and distributed, so as to constitute a million or a billion individuals, as in the instance of the human nature or species, is comparatively easy to comprehend. But that a substance without any division or distribution can at the same instant constitute three distinct persons baffles the human understanding. In the sphere of matter, this would not only be incomprehensible, but absurd. A pint of water could not possibly be contained in three different pint cups at one and the same instant. But spirit is not subject to the conditions of matter; and as the whole human soul may all of it be in every part and every point of the body at one and the same instant, so divine essence may all of it be in each of the three divine persons simultaneously. It is no contradiction, taking the nature of unextended spiritual substance into view, to say that the one numerical divine essence is indivisibly and wholly present at a million points of space at the same time without making it a million essences. If so, it is no contradiction to say that the one numerical divine essence subsists indivisibly and wholly in three modes or persons at the same instant without making it three essences. If the plurality of points at which divine omnipresence is found does not multiply the essence in the first case, the trinality of the persons in which divine existence is found does not multiply the essence in the second case.

It is here that the error of a specific instead of a numerical unity of divine essence is apparent. In the case of specific unity or the unity of a race, the one substance or nature is divided and distributed. The individuals are fractional parts of it. If the three persons of the Godhead constitute a divine species or a specific unity, as the millions of human persons constitute a human species, then no single trinitarian person possesses the whole divine nature any more than any single human person possesses the whole human nature. For to possess a property of the human nature, like rationality or immortality (the whole of which property may be in each human person), is not to possess the whole substance of the human nature. If, then, the trinal unity is a specific or race unity, no one of the three divine persons is whole deity, any more than a single human person is whole humanity.

The clause ek tēs ousias and the epithet homoousios120 might, of themselves, suggest a specific unity. The preposition ek may be partitive in its signification, and so may the adjective homos122 and Latin con in "consubstantial." But if God the Son is "out of" or "from" the divine nature in the same partitive manner that the individual Socrates is "out of" or "from" the human nature and is "consubstantial" with the divine Father in the same way that a human son is consubstantial with a human father by having a portion only of the same nature with him, then the whole divine essence is not in God the Son. And if so, no one of the divine attributes—and still less all of them—can be in God the Son. For a divine attribute cannot belong to a fraction of the essence. Consequently, the Nicene trinitarians uniformly explain and guard the statement that the Son of God is "of" the essence and is "consubstantial" with the Father by saying that the eternal generation differs from the human, by communicating the entire essence, and that each divine person possesses the one divine nature numerically and totally, not specifically and fractionally.124 (supplement 3.4.8.)

The Nicene trinitarians endeavored to illustrate the simultaneous existence of the undivided and total nature in each of the three persons by the figure of circumincession (perichōrēsis, circulatio). There is a continual inbeing and indwelling of one person in another. This is taught in John 14:10–11; 17:21, 23: "Believe not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? Believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me. I pray that they all may be one, as you Father are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us." This, the Nicene writers described metaphorically as an unceasing circulation of the essence, whereby there is an eternal intercommunion and interaction of being in the Godhead, so that each person coinheres in the others and the others in each:

Each is in each, and all are in each, and each is in all, and all are one. (Augustine, On the Trinity 6.10)

The community of nature between the Son and the Father is like that between brightness and light, between the stream and the fountain. The Son is in the substance of the Father, as having his subsistence communicated to him out of that substance; and again, the Father is in the Son, as communicating his substance to the Son, as the nature of the solar substance is in the rays, as intelligence is in the rational soul, and as the very substance of the fountain is in the waters of the river. The brightness of the sun is coeval with its substance or body. It is not a flame kindled or borrowed from it, but the offspring and issue of its substance or body. The sunbeams cannot be separated from that great fund of light. They cannot be supposed to subsist, after their communication with the planet itself is cut off. And yet the sun and the brightness that flows from it are not one and the same thing. (Athanasius, Orations 3.3–4)

In the Trinity there is an altogether special and perfect perichōrēsis, since the persons mutually contain one another. Thus, wherever there is one of the persons, there the remaining two are to be found, that is, they all are everywhere. (Bull, Defensio 4.4.14)

The terms first, second, and third applied to the persons are terms of order and relationship only. They imply no priority of nature, substance, existence, or excellence. Hence, the Son is sometimes named before the Father (2 Cor. 13:14; Gal. 1:1) and sometimes the Spirit before the Son (Rev. 1:4–5). The term father does not denote a higher grade of being, but exactly the same grade that the term son does. A human son is as truly man, as a human father. He is constituted of human nature as fully and entirely as his father is. Augustine (Sermon 140.5) remarks that "if the Son were not equal to the Father, he would not be the son of God." The substance or constitutional nature determines the grade of being. A person having a human nature is ipso facto human; whether he comes by it by the act of creation, as Adam and Eve did, or by propagation, as Cain and Abel did. So a person who possesses the divine nature is ipso facto divine, whether possessing it by paternity or filiation or procession. Christ asserts that "as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son to have life in himself" (John 5:26). But "life in himself" is self-existence. As the Father has self-existence, so he has given to the Son to have self-existence. The difference in the manner in which self-existence is possessed by the Father and Son makes no difference with the fact. The Son has self-existence by communication of that essence of which self-existence is an attribute. The Father has self-existence without communication of it, because he has the essence without communication of it.

While there is this absolute equality among divine persons in respect to the grade of being to which they belong, and all are alike infinite and uncreated in nature and essence, there is at the same time a kind of subordination among them. It is trinitarian or filial subordination, that is, subordination in respect to order and relationship. As a relation, sonship is subordinate to fatherhood. In the order, a father whether divine or human is the first, and a son is the second. Hence the phrases filial subordination and trinitarian subordination are common in trinitarian writers. The fourth section of Bull's Defence of the Nicene Faith is devoted to the proof of the subordination of the Son to the Father in respect to his personal peculiarity of sonship, the second and third sections having been devoted to the proof of his consubstantiality and coeternity with the Father in respect to his essence.

The trinitarian subordination of person, not of essence, must not be confounded with the Arian and Semiarian subordination, which is a subordination of essence as well as of person. Neither must it be confounded with the theanthropic or mediatorial subordination. This latter involves condescension and humiliation; but the trinitarian subordination does not. It is no humiliation or condescension for a son to be the son of his father. That the second trinitarian person is God the Son and not God the Father does not imply that his essence is inferior to that of the Father and that he is of a lower grade of being, but only that his sonship is subordinate to the Father's paternity. The Son of God is an eternal not a temporal son; and an eternal son must have an eternal nature in order to be eternal. In the theanthropic or mediatorial sonship, there is a humbling, though no degrading of the eternal Son, because of the assumption into union with the divine nature of an inferior human nature. But in the Arian or Semiarian subordination, there is not only humiliation, but degradation. The Son of God, upon this theory, is of a lower grade of being than the Father because he is of a different essence or nature.

The following résumé, condensed from the Dogmatics of Twesten (2.42), presents the subject of the notae internae in a clear light:

The internal characteristics include the order according to which the Father is immutably the first, the Son immutably the second, the Spirit immutably the third person of the Trinity, and the ground or foundation of this order in certain constitutional and necessary acts in the divine essence. Since God is pure life and act (actus purissimus) and since by virtue of his absolute independence and spontaneity there is nothing in him inert or lifeless, nothing given independent of his act and nothing outwardly necessary; those characteristics whereby divine persons are distinguished from each other must rest upon divine energizing, namely, upon two eternally immanent acts, generation and spiration. These acts are internal, because they have nothing but divine essence itself for an object. They terminate upon the divine essence as modifying it, not upon the universe as creating it. And they are personal acts, because it is not divine essence as common to the three persons, but as it subsists modified in particular persons, that is the subject or agent in the case. Hence it follows that these acts of generation and spiration are not to be regarded as the common action of all three persons, but as the particular action of one or more distinct persons—that of generation being the act of the first person and that of spiration the act of the first and second.

But if the Father is unbegotten, does it not follow that he alone is the absolute being? and is not this Arianism? Not so. For one and the same numerical essence subsists whole and undivided in him who is generated as well as in him who generates, in him who is spirated as well as in those two who spirate. There can therefore be no inequality of essence caused by these acts of generation and spiration. There may be and there is an inequality in the several modes in which one and the same eternal essence subsists by virtue of these acts. The essence in the begotten mode or form of the Son is second and subordinate to the essence in the unbegotten mode or form of the Father. But this inequality of mode or form does not relate to time, for the essence in the Son is as old as the essence in the Father; nor to nature or constitutional being, for this is the same thing in both. It relates only to the personal characteristics of paternity, filiation, and procession. Hence the Athanasian Symbol can assert that "in the Trinity nothing is before or after, nothing greater or lesser , but all three persons are coeternal with themselves and coequal," and yet an inequality of relationship may be granted, if by this is meant merely that the Father is the generative source of the Son and that the Father and Son are the spirative source of the Spirit; or, in other terms, that the Son's person is grounded in that of the Father and that the Spirit's person is grounded in those of the Father and Son, while yet the one eternal essence itself, which is identical in each, has no source and no ground.

The external characteristics, notae externae, of the three persons are transitive acts: opera ad extra. They are activities and effects by which the Trinity is manifested outwardly. They are the following: (1) creation, preservation, and government of the universe; (2) redemption; and (3) inspiration, regeneration, and sanctification. The first belongs officially and eminently to the Father; the second to the Son; the third to the Holy Spirit. The Father creates, yet by and through the Son (Ps. 33:6; Prov. 3:19; 30:4; John 5:17; Acts 4:24, 27). The Son redeems, yet commissioned by the Father (Rom. 3:24; 5:11; Gal. 3:13; Rev. 5:9). The Spirit inspires and sanctifies, yet as sent by the Father and Son: he inspires the prophets (2 Sam. 23:2, 19; 2 Pet. 1:21) and sanctifies the elect (1 Pet. 1:2).

These works are occasionally attributed to another person. The Son creates (Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:3; Isa. 44:24). The name Savior is given to the Father (1 Tim. 1:1; Jude 25). The Father sanctifies (John 17:17). Commonly, the Father raises Christ from the dead (Acts 13:30). But Christ "has power to take his life again" (John 10:18) and rises from the dead (Rom. 14:9; Acts 10:41; 1 Cor. 15:4). The Father "judges without respect of persons" (1 Pet. 1:17); and yet "all judgment is given to the Son" (John 5:22; Matt. 25:31). This is explained by the unity of the essence. In every external operation of a person, the whole essence operates, because the whole essence is in each person. The operation, consequently, while peculiar to a person, is at the same time essential, that is, is wrought by that one divine essence which is also and alike in the other persons. An official personal act cannot, therefore, be the exclusive act of a person in the sense that the others have no participation in it: "There is no such division in the external operations of God that anyone of them should be the act of one person without the concurrence of the others" (Owen, Holy Spirit 2.3). At the same time, an act like creation, for example, which is common to all the persons of the Trinity by virtue of a common participation in the essence, yet stands in a nearer relation to the essence as subsisting in the Father than it does to the essence as subsisting in the Son or the Spirit. The same reasoning applies to redemption and the second person, to sanctification and the third person. Power, wisdom, and love are attributes common to the divine essence and to each of the persons; but both Scripture and theology appropriate power in a special way to the Father, wisdom to the Son or Logos, and love to the Holy Spirit—because each of these attributes stands in a closer relation to the particular person to whom it is ascribed than to the others. (supplement 3.4.9.)

The internal activities, on the other hand, unlike the external, are attributed to one person exclusively of the other two or else to two persons exclusively of the other one. Generation is the act of the Father only; the Son and Spirit having no share in it. Spiration is the act of the Father and Son; the Spirit having no participation in it. Filiation belongs to the Son alone. Procession belongs to the Spirit alone. According to the Greek, in distinction from the Latin doctrine of the third person, spiration is exclusively the Father's opus ad intra. The same remark respecting exclusiveness is true of the incarnation. It is the second person exclusively, not the first or the third who unites with human nature.

Deity of God the Father

The deity of God the Father is undisputed, and hence there is less need of presenting the proof of it. Divine names, attributes, works, and adorableness are ascribed to him.

The term father denotes an immanent and eternal relation of the first trinitarian person. God in himself and irrespective of any reference to the created universe is a father: the Father of the Son. Were God primarily the Father because of his relation to men and angels and not because of his relation to the second person in the Godhead, his fatherhood would begin in time and might consequently end in time. If there was once a time when God was not the Father of the Son, there may be a time when he will cease to be so. "It is the greatest impiety," says Cyril of Jerusalem (Catecheses 11.8), "to say that after deliberation held in time God became a Father. For God was not at first without a Son and afterward in time became a Father."

The hypostatic or trinitarian paternity of God the Father as related to the Son must not be confounded with the providential paternity of God the Trinity as related to the creation. Only one of the divine persons is the trinitarian Father; but the three persons in one essence constitute the providential and universal Father. The triune God is generally the Father of men and angels by creation and specially of the elect by redemption. Hence, the term father applied to God has two significations. It may denote divine essence in all three modes or in only one mode. The first clause in the Lord's prayer is an example of the former. When men say, "Our Father who is in heaven," they do not address the first person of the Godhead to the exclusion of the second and third. They address, not the untriune God of deism and natural religion, but the God of revelation, who is triune and as such the providential Father of all men and the redemptive Father of believers. If a man deliberately and consciously intends in his supplication to exclude from his worship the Son and the Holy Spirit, his petition is not acceptable: "He that honors not the Son honors not the Father" (John 5:23). A man may not have the three persons distinctly and formally in his mind when he utters this petition, and in this case he does not intentionally exclude any trinitarian person or persons; but the petition, nevertheless, ascends to the divine three, not to a single person exclusively; and the answer returns to him from the triune God, not from any solitary person exclusively. Says Witsius (Lord's Prayer, diss. 7):

It is a doctrine firmly maintained by all orthodox divines, that the Father cannot be invoked in a proper manner, without at the same time invoking the Son and Holy Spirit, because they are one in nature and in honor. Nor can it, I think, be denied that, laying out of view the distinction of persons and looking only at what is common to all three persons in the Godhead, God may be denominated our Father. Yet I cheerfully concur with those interpreters who maintain that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is particularly addressed in the first petition.

Says Augustine (On the Trinity 5.2), "That which is written, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord,' ought not to be understood as if the Son were excepted or the Holy Spirit were excepted. This one Lord our God, we rightly call, also, our Father." (supplement 3.4.10.)

The term father denotes the Trinity in John 4:21, 23–24: "The hour comes when you shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father. The true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth." Here the term father is synonymous with "God" who "is a Spirit," the true object of worship. But Christ, in mentioning the object of worship, had in his mind the God of revelation, not of deism—trinal as he is in Scripture, not single as he is in natural religion—the very same God in whose trinal name and being he commanded all men to believe and be baptized. Christ's idea of God as the universal Father was trinitarian, not deistic. In intuition and theology, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God and the heavenly Father of angels and men:

The appellation father, descriptive of the connection between God and his creatures, is true of every one of the divine persons and of the three divine persons, one God. The relation to the creatures is as true of the Son and Holy Spirit as of the Father in respect to divine nature; for all these persons are respectively, and in union, the Father of the universe; the Father in creation, in government, and in protection. The Son as Messiah is foretold in his protecting kindness and mercy as "a Father to the fatherless" (Ps. 68:5–6; Isa. 9:6). (Kidd, Eternal Sonship, chap. 13)

A believer in the Trinity, in using the first petition of the Lord's prayer, may have the first person particularly in his mind and may address him; but this does not make his prayer antitrinitarian. He addresses that person as the representative of the Trinity. And the same is true whenever he particularly addresses the Son or the Spirit. If he addresses God the Son, God the Son implies God the Father. Each divine person supposes and suggests the others. Each represents the others. Consequently, to pray to any one of the divine three is by implication and virtually to pray to all three. No man can honor the Son without honoring the Father also. Says Christ, "He that has seen me has seen the Father also" (John 14:9). In like manner, he that prays to the Son prays to the Father also. Says Turretin (3.25.27):

The mind of the worshiper will not be distracted by the consideration that there are three divine persons, if he remembers that the whole divine essence is in each of the persons, so that if he worships one he worships all. With Gregory of Nazianzus, he may say: "I cannot think of the one Supreme Being without being encompassed with the glory of the three persons; and I cannot discern the three persons without recurring to the unity of the essence."

The hypostatic or trinitarian paternity of God, in distinction from the providential, is mentioned in John 17:5: "Now, O Father, glorify me with your own self." Here, Christ addresses the Father alone, the first person of the Godhead exclusively. He did not address the Trinity, for he did not address himself or the Holy Spirit. Respecting this trinitarian fatherhood, the Son says "my Father," not "our Father" (14:27; 15:1, 8; and other passages).

The baptismal formula and the doxologies indisputably prove that paternity is an immanent and eternal relation of God. The rite that initiates into the kingdom of God would not be administered in three names denoting only certain temporal and assumed attitudes of the Supreme Being. Neither would a divine blessing be invoked through three titles signifying only these. Baptism and invocation are acts of worship, and worship relates to the essential and eternal being of God.

The hypostatic or trinitarian character of the first person is that he possesses the essence "originally," in the sense that it is not communicated to him by one of the other persons. Augustine (On the Trinity 2.1) thus speaks of the "original" or unbegotten possession of the essence by the Father: "We call the Son, God of God; but the Father, God only, not of God. Whence it is plain that the Son has another of whom he is and to whom he is Son; but the Father has not a Son of whom he is, but only to whom he is Father. For every son is what he is, of his father, and is son to his father; but no father is what he is, of his son, but is father to his son." A common term applied to God in the patristic age to denote this peculiarity was "unbegotten": "Next to God, we worship and love the Word, who is from the unbegotten and ineffable God"; "we have the unbegotten and ineffable God"; "we have dedicated ourselves to the unbegotten and impassible God"; "he is the firstborn of the unbegotten God" (Justin Martyr, Apology 1.25, 53; 2.12–13); "there are also some dissertations concerning the unbegotten God" (Rufinus, Preface to the Clementine Recognitions). In the writings of Athanasius, the Father is denominated agennētos (ingenerate or unbegotten) and the Son gennētos132 (generate or begotten). (supplement 3.4.11.)

The phrase unbegotten God implies and suggests the phrase begotten God. This denotes no more than the phrase God the Son, the latter containing the substantive, the former the adjective. Clement of Alexandria (Miscellaneous Writings 5.12) remarks that "John the apostle says no man has seen God at any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him." Irenaeus (Against Heresies 4.20.11) quotes this text in the same form: "The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him." This patristic employment of the phrase begotten God strongly supports the reading monogenēs theos in John 1:18, which has the support of א, B, C, L, Peshitta, Coptic, and Ethiopic and respecting which Tischendorf (8th ed.) says, "Without a doubt carries the weight of the testimonies." Westcott and Hort adopt this reading.

In the controversy between the English trinitarians and Arians, conducted by Waterland and Samuel Clarke in the beginning of the eighteenth century, a distinction made by the former between "necessary existence" and "self-existence" is liable to misconception and requires notice. The Father, says Waterland, is both necessarily existent and self-existent; the Son is necessarily existent, but not self-existent. In this use of terms, which is uncommon, the term self-existent was employed not with reference to the essence, as is usually the case, but to the person only. In this sense, self-existence denotes what the Nicene trinitarians meant by "unbegotten" or "ingenerate." The Father is self-existent in Waterland's sense because divine essence is not communicated to or with him; he has it of himself. The Son is not self-existent in Waterland's sense because divine essence is communicated; he has it not from himself but from the Father. But the Son is necessarily existent, says Waterland, because he possesses an essence that is necessarily existent. The fact that the essence is communicated by eternal generation does not make it any the less an infinite, eternal, and unchangeable essence. In brief, according to Waterland, the Son is necessarily existent because the divine essence is his essence; but he is not self-existent, because his personal characteristic of filiation, his peculiar "self," is not from himself but from another person.

If no distinction be made between necessary existence and self-existence, as is the case in the Nicene statements, Waterland would attribute both necessary existence and self-existence to the Son. He would concede self-existence in the sense in which it is attributed to the Son in John 5:26: "As the Father has life in himself, so has he given to the Son to have life in himself." Here, "life in himself" denotes the self-existence of divine essence, which is also necessary existence. The Father has this uncommunicated. The Son has it communicated or "given" from the Father, by eternal generation.

The Father was sometimes denominated pēgē tēs theotētos or rhiza pasēs theotētos. This phraseology is used with qualification by accurate trinitarians. Some orthodox writers employ the phrase fons trinitatis137 to denote the hypostatic character of the Father, which is better than fons deitatis. Says Howe (Trinity, lect. 14):

If we do suppose the Son and the Holy Spirit to be from the Father by a necessity of nature, an eternal necessity of nature, and not by a dependence upon his will, they will not be creatures, because nothing is creature but what depends upon the will and pleasure of the Creator. And if they be not creatures, what are they then? Then, they must be God, and yet both of them from the Father, too; for all that do assert the Trinity do acknowledge the Father to be fons trinitatis, the fountain of the Trinity: and if from this fountain the Son be in one way, and the Holy Spirit be in another way, both from the Father; that is, the Son from the Father immediately, and the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, and this not by choice, but by an eternal necessity of nature, here is this doctrine as easily conceivable as any that I know of whatsoever, that lies not within the compass of our manifest demonstration.

Turretin (3.30.1) says that the Father is fons deitatis "if the mode of subsisting is in view."140 Owen (Saints' Communion, 3) remarks that "the Father is the fountain of the deity." Hooker (Polity 5.54) quotes Augustine as saying that "the Father is the source of the Godhead." In these cases, deitas is loosely put for trinitas. Strictly speaking, however, deity denotes the divine essence; and the first person is not the Father of the essence. But Trinity denotes the essence personalized by trinalizing. In this reference, the first person is the father and fountain. "We teach," says Calvin (1.13.23, 25), "according to the Scriptures, that there is essentially but one God; and therefore that the essence of both the Son and the Spirit is unbegotten. But since the Father is first in order and has himself begotten his Wisdom, therefore … he is justly esteemed the original and fountain of the whole divinity."

Deity of God the Son

The deity of God the Son was the subject of one of the greatest controversies in the patristic church. But the work that was done then in investigating the Scriptures did not require to be repeated. Christendom since the Nicene age, as well as before, has believed in the divine nature of the Son of God.

The denomination Son given to the second trinitarian person denotes an immanent and eternal relation of the essence, not a temporally assumed one. This is proved …

1. By the antithetic term father applied to the first person. Both terms must be taken in the same signification. If one person is eternal, so is the other; if one denotes a temporal relation, so does the other. Arius contended that God was not always a Father and that the Son was not always a Son. The Nicene trinitarians maintained the contrary (cf. Socrates, History 1.6; Athanasius, Against the Arians 1.5, 9; Gangauf, Augustine's Doctrine of the Trinity, 311–12).

2. By the epithets eternal, own (idios), and only begotten, which qualify the sonship of the second person and discriminate it from that of angels and men.

3. By the use of the term in the baptismal formula and the benedictions.

The deity of the Son of God is abundantly proved in Scripture. The general impression made by the New Testament favors the deity of Christ. If the evangelists and apostles intended to teach to the world the doctrine that Christ is only a man or an exalted angel, they have certainly employed phraseology that is ill suited to convey such a truth. Says John Quincy Adams (Diary 7.229):

No argument that I have ever heard can satisfy my judgment that the doctrine of the divinity of Christ is not countenanced by the New Testament. As little can I say, that it is clearly revealed. It is often obscurely intimated; sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly asserted; but left on the whole in a debatable state, never to be either demonstrated or refuted until another revelation shall clear it up.

This is the testimony of a Unitarian of learning and judgment. The criticism, however, occurs to a reader that if a doctrine is "sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly asserted" in the New Testament, it should be accepted by a believer in revelation, however great the difficulties connected with it.

By "deity" more is meant than "divinity," as this latter term is employed by different classes of antitrinitarians. The Arians and Semiarians taught the divinity of the Son in the sense of a similarity of nature between him and the Father. This resemblance is greater and closer than that of any other being, man or angel, but is not identity of essence. Socinus and the Polish Unitarians also taught the divinity of Christ in the sense of similarity of essence, but in a lower degree than the Arians and Semiarians held the tenet. Socinus says: "We say that we grant that Christ is the natural son of God." Smalcius affirms: "We do not deny that the son is a person, and a divine one at that"144 (Turretin 3.28.1). By the phrase natural Son of God, Socinus meant a miraculous generation of Jesus Christ in time by the Holy Spirit, but not an eternal and necessary generation out of the divine essence.

The crucial term is "coessential" or "consubstantial" (homoousios). Neither the Semiarian nor the Arian nor the Socinian would concede that the essence of the Son is the very identical essence of the Father. It is like it, but it is not it. The Son has divinity but not deity—the term divinity being used in the loose sense as when writers speak of the "divinity in man" to mean his resemblance to God. No one would speak of the "deity in man" unless he were a pantheist.

The deity of the Son is proved by the application of the name God to him: "Your throne, O God (˒ĕlōhîm) is forever and ever" (Ps. 45:6, 8). This is quoted and thus reaffirmed in Heb. 1:8–9: "Unto the Son, he says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever"; "a child is born unto us, and his name shall be called the mighty God (˒ēl gibbôr)" (Isa. 9:6). In Jer. 23:5–6 the "branch" of David is called "the Lord (yhwh) our righteousness." The same is said of Messiah in Jer. 33:15–17. Here, Jerusalem = the church = Christ (1 Cor. 12:12; Gal. 3:16) (Speaker's Commentary on Jer. 33:16). In Isa. 7:14 Messiah is called "God with us," and the prophecy here recorded is said in Matt. 1:23 to be fulfilled in the birth of Jesus Christ. In Mal. 3:1 the messenger (angellon in the Septuagint) about to come to his own temple (naon heautou150 in the Septuagint) is called Lord (˒adôn); and Mark 1:2 and Luke 1:76 teach that this is Jesus Christ. The day of the coming of this messenger is called the "great and dreadful day of the Lord (yhwh)" in Mal. 4:5.

In the New Testament, there are passages in which what is said in the Old Testament concerning Jehovah is applied to Jesus Christ (cf. Num. 14:2; 21:5–6; Ps. 95:9; 1 Cor. 10:9). Here the tempting of Jehovah is the tempting of Christ. The Textus Receptus, Itala, Peshitta, Vulgate, D, E, and F read christon in 1 Cor. 10:9; Lachmann, Tischendorf, Hort, א, B, and C read kyrion; the Alexandrine codex reads theon. In Heb. 1:10–11, what is attributed to Jehovah in Ps. 102:26 is attributed to Christ. In John 12:40–41, it is asserted that the language of Isa. 6:9–10 concerning Jehovah refers to Jesus Christ. Comparing Isa. 45:23 with Rom. 14:10–11 (Textus Receptus) shows that the judgment seat of God is the judgment seat of Christ (Lachmann, Tischendorf, Hort, Peshitta, Vulgate, א, A, B, C, and D read theou in Rom. 14:10). Joel 2:32 compared with Rom. 10:13 proves that the name Jehovah is the name of Christ. In Eph. 4:8–9 Christ gives the gifts that in Ps. 68:18 are given by Jehovah.

John 1:1 contains absolute proof of the deity of the Son of God: theos ēn ho logos. The omission of the article with theos158 converts the word into the abstract, denoting the species "deity" (cf. anarthrous pneuma in 4:24: pneuma ho theos). The use of ēn161 implies uncreated being in distinction from created, which in verse 3 is denoted by egeneto. The distinct personal existence of the Logos is also denoted by pros ton theon, which is quite different from syn tō theō. The former preposition with the accusative implies coexistence, along with another. The latter preposition with the dative blends in one substance, so as to exclude distinct individuality. In the phrase houtos estin ho alēthinos theos165 (1 John 5:20), houtos most naturally refers to iēsou christō. "Eternal life" is never appropriated to the Father by St. John, but is very often to the Son (cf. John 1:4; 11:25; 14:6; 1 John 1:2; 5:11–12). Christ is called theos in Rom. 9:5. The conversion of the passage into a doxology, by punctuation, by some modern editors of the text, in opposition to the almost universal understanding of the ancient, medieval, and modern church, is a striking instance of an attempt to bring Scripture into harmony with the Arian view of Christ's person. Christ is clearly the antecedent—no other person having been spoken of in several verses preceding; ho ōn is a relative clause, not beginning a new proposition but continuing one that has been commenced; and the words to kata sarka, referring to the human nature of Christ, require an antithesis referring to divine nature, as in Rom. 1:3 (see Shedd on Rom. 9:5). Christ is called theos in Titus 2:13: "Looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ" (Revised Version). That theou and sōtēros173 denote one and the same person is proved by these facts: (a) Epiphaneian is never applied to the Father, and Christ's "appearing" is the thing hoped for; (b) the next clause speaks of the great God and Savior as "giving himself"; and (c) megalou175 would seem uncalled for if applied to the Father since no one disputed the propriety of this epithet in reference to the first person (Usteri, Lehre, 325). The exclamation of Thomas in John 20:28, ho kyrios mou kai ho theos mou, proves the deity of Christ. It was addressed to Christ: eipen autō. The use of the article ho178 instead of the interjection ō shows that it is not an exclamation of surprise: "The church of God, which he has purchased with his own blood" (Acts 20:28). The reading theou is found in B, א, Peshitta, and Vulgate and adopted by Textus Receptus, Mill, Knapp, Scholz, Alford, and Hort; the reading kyriou is found in A, C, and D and adopted by Griesbach, Wettstein, Lachmann, and Tischendorf. In 1 Tim. 3:16, "God was manifest in the flesh," the reading theos is supported by D3, K, L, most minuscules, Textus Receptus, Mill, and Scholz; the reading hos is supported by א, A, C´, Coptic, Sahidic, Gothic, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Alford, and Hort and refers to Christ indisputably; and there are such predicates attributed to him as belong to no creature. Philippians 2:6 proves Christ's divinity. Christ could not be in a form of God without the nature of God; the form of a servant implies the nature of a servant. And he was in a form of God previous to being in the form of a servant. It was no robbery of honor (harpagmon) for Christ to claim equality with God. The proposed rendering "to be held on upon" would require harpagma. The plural "gods" is sometimes applied to creatures: to angels and magistrates; but the singular "God" never is. The application of the singular to Christ proves his deity. (supplement 3.4.12.)

Divine attributes are ascribed to the Son of God:

1. Eternity (Prov. 8:22–23): The personal Wisdom (ḥokmâ) "was set up from everlasting." That this is not a personified attribute is proved (a) by the length of the description and the large number of details (personification is brief and does not go into particulars) and (b) by the ascription of personal actions and a personal utterance of them: "I was by him; I was daily his delight; when he prepared the heavens, I was there; my delights were with the sons of men; now therefore hearken unto me, O you children; blessed is the man that hears me." A personification occurs, generally, in the middle of a narrative. But this occurs in the middle of maxims and didactic utterances. "In this passage," says Nitzsch, "we have an unmistakable germ of the ontological self-distinction of the Godhead." "From Bethlehem Ephrathah shall come forth he whose goings forth have been from old " (Mic. 5:2; cf. Matt. 2:6). In Isa. 9:6 the Messiah is called the "everlasting Father." The "Son of God" has "neither beginning of days nor end of life" (Heb. 7:3). In Rev. 1:8 and 22:13 the Son of Man says of himself, "I am Alpha and Omega." In John 8:58 Christ says of himself, "Before Abraham was I am"—where the use of eimi is in contrast with genesthai189 (cf. the contrast between ēn and egeneto191 in John 1:1, 3). In 17:7 Christ affirms his existence with the Father "before the world was."

2. Immensity and omnipresence: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I among them" (Matt. 18:20); "I am with you always" (28:20); "the Son of Man who is in heaven" (John 3:13) and on earth simultaneously. Socinus explains ho ōn by "was."193

3. Omnipotence: "I am the Almighty" (Rev. 1:8); "whatsoever things the Father does, these also does the Son likewise" (John 5:19). The Son "upholds all things by the word of his power" (Heb. 1:3). "All power is given unto me in heaven and on earth" (Matt. 18:18). This latter text refers to the mediatorial commission, it is true; but it must be remembered that a mere creature could not take such a commission, if it were offered to him. In interpreting those passages in which omnipotence and divine exaltation (Phil. 2:9) are said to be "given" to the incarnate Son, it must be recollected that it requires an infinite nature to receive and wield such infinite gifts. A created nature would be crushed by them, as Tarpeia was by the shields of the Sabine soldiers. They are communicable only to an infinite person.

4. Omniscience is ascribed to the Son: "Lord, you know all things" (John 21:17); "we are sure that you know all things" (16:30); "Jesus knew what was in man" (2:24–25); "when you were under the fig tree, I saw you" (1:49); "I am he who searches the reins and hearts" (Rev. 2:23). Compare 1 Kings 8:29: "You only know the hearts of all the children of men." In Mark 13:32 Christ is said to be ignorant of the day of judgment. This is explained, by many, by a reference to his human nature. He was ignorant in respect to his humanity. But there is another explanation which refers it to the total theanthropic person. An official ignorance is meant. Augustine so explains: "Christ as the mediator was not authorized, at that time, to give information respecting the time of the final judgment, and this is called 'ignorance' upon his part; as a ditch is sometimes called 'blind' because it is hidden from the eyes of men and not because it is really so." Macknight interprets in the same way. This use of "know" for "making known" is frequent in Scripture: "Now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your only son from me" (Gen. 22:12). In 1 Cor. 2:2 St. Paul says, "I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ." To "know" means to "make known" in Matt. 11:27: "No one knows the Son but the Father, neither knows anyone the Father but the Son and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him." Compare John 1:18: "The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him." A particular trinitarian person is officially the one to reveal another, and in this reference the others do not officially reveal and so are officially "ignorant." Paul (Gal. 1:16) says that "it pleased God the Father to reveal his Son in him." This explanation of the "ignorance" spoken of in Mark 13:32 as official agrees better than the other with other statements of Scripture. When it is said that "the Father only" knows the time of the day of judgment, this must be harmonized with the truth that the Holy Spirit is omniscient and "searches the deep things of God" (1 Cor. 2:10). The Holy Spirit is not ignorant of the time of the day of judgment, but like the incarnate Son he is not commissioned to reveal the time. Again, it is not supposable that Christ now seated on the mediatorial throne is ignorant, even in respect to his human nature, of the time of the day of judgment, though he is not authorized to officially make it known to his church (see p. 622).

5. Immutability: "The heavens shall perish, but you remain" (Heb. 1:11–12). The immutability of Jehovah in Ps. 102:26 is here ascribed to the Son. "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Heb. 13:8).

6. Divine plenitude, that is, divine essence and attributes is attributed to Christ in Col. 2:9: "In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily."

7. Self-existence or "life in himself" is attributed to the incarnate Son (John 5:26). That this is "given" or "communicated" to the Son by the Father does not imply inequality of being. Self-existing life is ipso facto divine. The mode in which it is possessed does not change the nature of the possession. In communicating divine essence to the Son, the Father communicates all its properties.

Divine works are attributed to the Son of God:

1. Creation: "When he prepared the heavens, I was there" (Prov. 8:27); "all things were made by him" (John 1:3); "by him were all things created, visible and invisible" (Col. 1:16–17); "by whom he made the worlds" (Heb. 1:2); "you, Lord, in the beginning have laid the foundation of the earth" (1:10).

2. Preservation: "Upholding all things by the word of his power" (Heb. 1:3); "by him all things consist" (Col. 1:17); "my Father works hitherto, and I work" (John 5:17).

3. Miracles performed by Christ in person or through his apostles, especially the resurrection of the dead: "As the Father raises up the dead, so the Son quickens whom he will" (John 5:21); "I will raise him up at the last day" (6:40). Christ appeals to these miracles in proof of his divinity: "The works that I do bear witness of me" (5:36).

Socinus asserted that the creation ascribed to Christ is the secondary spiritual creation. This is not so because (a) John 1:3 speaks absolutely, without any qualification, which would have been necessary, if a particular kind of creation were intended; (b) the universal creation without exception (oude hen) is expressly mentioned; (c) it is not exclusively the spiritual creation, namely, the church, because (v. 10) that part of the world who "knew him not" was created by him; and (d) Paul (Col. 1:16) extends the creation by Christ to all creatures, visible and invisible—to angels as well as men—and speaks of the second spiritual creation afterward (v. 18). Socinus also asserted that Christ's agency in creation is instrumental (di' autou, John 1:3). The reply is (a) that there cannot be instrumental agency in such a work as creation ex nihilo; an instrument must have materials to work upon, but there are none in creation; (b) the same preposition (di' autou) is applied to God: "And through him are all things" (Rom. 11:36); "an apostle not of men, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father" (Gal. 1:1); (c) the creation is not only di' autou (Col. 1:16) but eis auton (1:16); Christ is the final end as well as first cause; and (d) the creation is not only di' autou but en autō200 (1:17). The universe has its supporting ground in Christ (en autō synestēke), as man is said to live in God (Acts 17:28). When creation is peculiarly ascribed to the Father, the Son is not excluded, any more than when redemption is peculiarly ascribed to the Son, the Father is excluded.

It is asserted that Christ's power to work miracles was official, like that of the apostles and prophets. This is an error, because (a) miraculous power emanated from him as from the original source: "Believe you that I am able to do this?" (Luke 6:19; 8:46; Matt. 9:28); (b) the apostles affirm that they do not work miracles in their own name, but in the name of Christ: "Jesus Christ makes you whole" (Acts 9:34); "his name, through faith in his name has made this man strong" (3:16); "by the name of Jesus Christ does this man stand here before you whole" (4:10). Compare Matt. 14:33 ("they worshiped him") with Acts 14:15 ("why do you these things?"). When Christ (John 11:41) thanks the Father for hearing his prayer, it is to be noticed that it is a prayer in his office of mediator and that he offers it in order that the people may have a proof of his divine mission (v. 42). It was not that he felt himself unable to work the miracle and needed to be empowered for the act; but he wished that the spectators, "the people which stood by," should know that he and the Father were one and the same being in all acts and words. If the spectators had seen Lazarus raised from the dead with no allusion to the eternal Father and no uplifting of the filial eye, they would have been apt to separate Christ from the Father, as a kind of separate and independent God. Respecting this prayer, Christ says, "I know that you hear me always," implying that his prayer is not like that of a mere man, which may or may not be heard, according as God shall see best. (c) The work of salvation in its several parts is ascribed to Christ:

redemption (Acts 20:28)

election (John 13:18)

effectual calling (John 10:16; Matt. 9:13)

sanctification (Eph. 5:26)

mission of the Spirit (John 16:7, 14; 15:26)

defense against enemies (John 10:10)

gift of eternal life (John 10:28)

resurrection of the body (John 5:21)

final judgment (John 5:22; Acts 17:31)

Christ is called the Lord of the church (Eph. 4:5) and the husband of the church (5:25), which latter is the title given to Jehovah in reference to Israel (Isa. 54:5).

Religious worship in its various acts is rendered to the Son of God, namely:

faith: "believe also in me" (John 14:1)

hope: "blessed are all they that put their trust in him (the Son)" (Ps. 2:12); but "cursed is the man that trusts in man" (Jer. 17:5)

adoration: "let all the angels of God worship him" (Heb. 1:6); "kiss the Son" (Ps. 2:12); "the Father has given all judgment to the Son, that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father" (John 5:23); "at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow" (Phil. 2:9–10)

invocation of blessing: (a) grace, mercy, and peace are implored from Christ, not less than from the Father; believers are described as those "who call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 1:2; Acts 9:14); Stephen calls upon Christ to receive his spirit at death (7:59); (b) glory and honor are invoked for Christ in connection with the Father "who sits upon the throne" (Rev. 5:13); (c) doxology to Christ (1 Pet. 4:11; 2 Tim. 4:18; Rev. 1:6; 2 Pet. 3:18). Says Athanasius (Orations 3.12): " 'May God and his angel Gabriel, or Michael, grant you' would be a new and extraordinary sort of prayer. But 'God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ grant you' is perfectly agreeable to Scripture."

The deity of the Son is proved by his trinitarian position and relations:

1. By the equality of the Son with the Father: "Saying that God was his Father, he made himself equal with God" (John 5:17–18). Christ proved this equality to the Jews by asserting his self-existence or "life in himself" (5:26) and equality in honor: "All men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father" (5:23). When Christ says (5:19) that "the Son can do nothing of himself (aph' heautou)," he means that he cannot work in isolation or separation from the Father, as if he were another being. Hence, he adds, "What things soever the Father does, these also does the Son likewise." The same truth is taught in 8:28: "I do nothing of myself, but as my Father has taught me, I speak these things." When Christ said (14:28), "My Father is greater than I," he was comparing his then existing state of humiliation with the glorious state of the Father. If the disciples understood this, they would rejoice "because I said I go unto the Father," since it would be a return to "the glory which Christ had with the Father, before the world was" (17:5) (see Luthardt on John 14:28).

2. By the unity of the Son with the Father: "I and my Father are one (hen) being" (John 10:30). The Jews understood this to be a claim to unity of essence and to be "blasphemy, because you being a man make yourself God" (v. 33). Christ reiterates and proves his claim by reference to the use of the word gods (not God) applied to the prophets and magistrates of the old economy (Ps. 82:6; Exod. 21:6; 22:8–9, 28: ˒ĕlōhîm). It is an argument from the less to the greater. If magistrates may be called gods, then the commissioned Messiah may be called the Son of God—and the Son of God he had previously asserted to be one with the Father (John 10:30). This, the Jews regarded as "making himself God" (v. 33). The Jews understood the "Son of God" to be God, as is proved by Matt. 26:63–65.

The deity of the Son is proved by the office of mediator that he discharges:

1. A mediator must be the equal of either of the two parties between whom he mediates: "a daysman who can lay his hand upon both" (Job 9:3); "a mediator is not of one" (Gal. 3:20).

2. He must be a prophet who can inwardly enlighten and not merely teach by words externally, a king who can protect his kingdom, and a priest who can make atonement to justice for his people. These functions cannot be discharged by a finite being.

The deity of the Son is proved by the fact that he is revealed and manifested. This implies that primarily he is the unrevealed deity: "To reveal his Son in me" (Gal. 1:15–16); "the Son of God was manifested" (1 John 3:8). A created being is never said to be revealed or manifested. When it is said "that God has made that same Jesus whom you have crucified both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:36), the reference is not to his essential but his economic or official dominion as the God-man and Messiah. When Christ is called (Rev. 3:14) "the beginning (archē) of the creation of God," it is in the active sense of the word archē, as in Rev. 1:1, 8, where Textus Receptus, Vulgate, Coptic, and א have archē kai to telos. He causes the creature to begin. He is the "beginning" in the sense of origin or source. It corresponds to the Alpha in 1:8. Origen employs the term in an active signification in his treatise Concerning First Principles. The archē210 of Plato and Aristotle is the term for the cause of the origin or genesis of anything. Plato (Phaedo) quotes Anaxagoras as teaching that nous is hē archē tēs kinēseō. Aristotle (Ethics 3.1) says that a man is blamed or praised for that hou hē archē en autō esti. In Ethics 3.1 the same idea is conveyed by the two phrases: hou hē archē exōthen and hopot' an hē aitia en tois ektos.

The deity of the Son is proved by the fact that he is eternally generated, not created in time. This is established by those texts which teach the unique and solitary nature of his sonship. The Son is monogenēs: "The only begotten of the Father" (John 1:14); "the only begotten Son" or "only begotten God" (uncials) (1:18; 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9). The Son is prōtotokos: "When he brings the first begotten into the world" (Heb. 1:6). The Son is prōtotokos pasēs ktiseōs: "begotten before all creation" (Col. 1:15). The context shows that the genitive, here, is not partitive, but is governed by prōtos in composition: "for by him were all things created" (1:16). Compare prōtos mou ēn (John 1:30). This is the exegesis of Tertullian (Concerning the Trinity), Ambrose (Concerning the Faith 1.4), Athanasius (Against the Arians 2.63), Eusebius (Demonstration of the Gospel 5), and Chrysostom. Had St. Paul wished to say that the Son is a part of creation, he would have written prototokos ek pasēs ktiseōs (cf. ek tōn nekrōn; Col. 1:18). The Son is agapētos: "This is my beloved Son" (Matt. 3:17; 17:5). The Son is idios: "He said that God is his own Father (patera idion)" (John 5:18). God "sent his own Son (ton heautou huion)" (Rom. 8:3, 32).

That the generation of the Son of God is in eternity and not a temporal emanation is proved by Mic. 5:2. The "goings forth" or "issuing" (môṣEā˒) of the ruler of Israel who is to be born in Bethlehem are "from everlasting." The Hebrew denotes an emanation, as in Ps. 65:8: "The outgoings of the morning" are the beams of sunrise (cf. Hos. 6:3). That he is Son in the sense of a divine person is proved by the fact that the angels are not called sons in this sense: "Unto which of the angels said he at any time, You are my Son, this day have I begotten you! And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son" (Heb. 1:5). It is also proved by the fact that he is to have the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession (Ps. 2:8), that he is to overthrow the sinful kings of earth (2:9), and that the kings of the earth are commanded to worship him (2:12).

The passage "you are my son, this day have I begotten you" (2:7) teaches the eternal generation of the second trinitarian person. That it relates to the Messiah is proved by Acts 4:25–26; 13:33; Heb. 1:5. The earlier rabbis referred this text to the Messiah; the later rabbis, in order to invalidate the doctrine of the deity of Christ, have many of them referred it to David. Mohammed, in the Koran, alters it to "you are my prophet, I have educated you." Respecting the meaning of "begotten" in this passage, there are three explanations: (a) The fathering is the eternal generation. The words this day denote the universal present, the everlasting now, which is put for eternity. This view is taken by Origen, Athanasius, Basil, Augustine, elder Lutherans, and Turretin. (b) The fathering is the miraculous conception or the incarnation of the eternal Son. The words this day are equivalent to "when he brings in the first begotten into the world" (Heb. 1:6). This view is held by Chrysostom, Theodoret, Kuinöel, and Hoffmann. (c) The fathering is the resurrection and exaltation of Christ. This view is taken by Hilary, Ambrose, Calvin, and Grotius. But this explanation rests upon a misapprehension of St. Paul in Acts 13:32–35. The apostle does not quote (v. 33) the passage in the second psalm, "you are my son" etc., in order to prove the resurrection of Christ, but his incarnation, or the fulfillment of the messianic promise made to the fathers (v. 32). The "raising up" (Revised Version; not "again" as in Authorized Version) of Jesus spoken of in verse 33 is the bringing of the Messiah into the world for his mediatorial work (cf. Rom. 9:17: "For this same purpose have I raised you up"). This incarnation of the Son, St. Paul says, was promised in "the second psalm." He then proceeds (Acts 13:34) to prove the fulfillment of the promise that the Messiah should be raised from the dead by quoting from Isa. 55:3 and from Ps. 16:10: "And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, he said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David; and in another psalm, You will not suffer your Holy One to see corruption." The choice, therefore, lies between the first and second explanations; and the deity of the son is proved by Ps. 2:7 in either case. It is directly taught by the first explanation and impliedly by the second because the incarnation of the Son supposes his prior unincarnate existence and position.

Augustine (On the Trinity 2.1) classifies the texts referring to the Son in the following manner: (1) Texts teaching the unity and equality of substance between the Father and Son, such as "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30); "who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God" (Phil. 2:6); (2) texts teaching the inferiority of the Son on account of his having taken the form of a servant, such as "my Father is greater than I" (John 14:28); "the Father has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man" (5:27); (3) texts teaching neither equality nor inferiority, but only that the Son is of the Father, such as "for as the Father has life in himself, so has he given to the Son to have life in himself" (5:19) and "the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father do" (5:20).

Deity of God the Holy Spirit

Before proceeding to prove the deity of God the Holy Spirit, it is necessary to notice the technical use of "Spirit" and of "Holy" in this connection. The third person in the Godhead is denominated the Spirit with reference to his person, not his essence. He is no more spiritual as to his substance than is the Father or the Son. He is denominated the Spirit because of the mode in which the essence is communicated to him, namely, by spiration: "Spirit, because spirated." "The Father is spirit and the Son is spirit, but the Holy Spirit is emphatically the Spirit. Not that he is spirit in any higher or any different sense of the word spirit, but upon other accounts, the name of Spirit is emphatically and more peculiarly attributed to him" (Waterland, Second Defence Q. 2). Neither is he denominated the "Holy" Spirit because holiness is any more peculiar to him than to the first and second persons; but because he is the author of holiness in creatures. The epithet holy also relates to the person, not the essence.

Socinians deny the distinct personality of the Holy Spirit; they concede eternity because they regard the Spirit as the influence or effluence of the eternal God. That the Holy Spirit is a person is certain …

1. Because he speaks of himself in the first person: "I have sent them" (Acts 10:19); "separate for me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them" (13:2).

2. Because personal acts are attributed to him: (a) teaching (John 14:26), (b) witnessing (15:26; Rom. 8:16), (c) revealing future events (1 Tim. 4:1), (d) searching the depths of God (1 Cor. 2:10), (e) setting apart and sending persons for the ministry (Isa. 61:1; Acts 13:2; 20:28), (f) creating (Gen. 1:2), (g) the miraculous conception (Luke 1:35), and (h) bestowing of ordinary and extraordinary gifts (1 Cor. 12:11).

3. Because he is described as personally distinct from the Father and Son, being sent by them (John 14:16; 15:26; 16:7): This separate and personal distinctness is marked by the use of the masculine pronoun with the neuter article and noun: hotan elthē ekeinos to pneuma tēs alētheias (16:13); believers are sealed tō pneumati hos estin arrabōn (Eph. 1:13).

4. Because he cooperates with equal power and authority with the Father and the Son in conferring and sealing blessings to the church: This is proved by the baptismal formula (Matt. 28:19), the apostolic benediction (2 Cor. 13:14), and the witnessing respecting redemption in Christ (1 John 5:7: "there are three that bear record—the Spirit, the water, and the blood—and these three agree in one").

5. Because he appears in theophanies: in the form of a dove (Matt. 3:16) and in the form of a tongue of flame (Acts 2:3–4).

6. Because sin is committed against the Holy Spirit: "They rebelled and vexed his Holy Spirit" (Isa. 63:10); the unpardonable sin (Matt. 12:31–32); Ananias and Sapphira lied against the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:3).

7. Because the Spirit is distinguished from the gifts of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:4, 8, 11) and from the energy (dynamis) of the Spirit (Luke 4:14; 1:35).

That the Holy Spirit is a divine person is clear …

1. Because the divine name is given to him: In Isa. 6:9 Jehovah speaks, and in Acts 28:25 the Holy Spirit is said to speak the same words. In 2 Sam. 23:2–3 "the Spirit of the Lord spoke; and he is called the God of Israel." The lie of Ananias against the Holy Spirit was a lie against God (Acts 5:3). The believer's body is the temple of God because the Holy Spirit dwells in it (1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19). The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is the indwelling of God: "We know that we dwell in God and God dwells in us, because he has given us of his Spirit" (1 John 4:13).

2. Because divine attributes are ascribed to him: (a) eternity (Gen. 1:2); (b) omnipresence: "Whither shall I flee from your Spirit?" (Ps. 139:7–8); "the Holy Spirit dwells in you" (1 Cor. 3:16); (c) omniscience: "The Spirit searches the deep things of God" (1 Cor. 2:10); "he shall guide you unto all truth and show you things to come" (John 16:13); "holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit" (2 Pet. 1:21); (d) omnipotence: "The power of the Highest" is the power of the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35); "he shall quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit which dwells in you" (Rom. 8:11).

3. Because divine works are attributed to him: (a) creation (Gen. 1:2; Ps. 33:6), (b) preservation and government (Ps. 104:30), (c) miracles (Matt. 12:28; 1 Cor. 12:4; Luke 1:35), (d) the unction and mission of the Messiah (Isa. 61:1), (e) remission of sin and regeneration (1 Cor. 6:11; John 3:5), (f) government of the church (Acts 13:2; 15:28; 20:28), (g) prediction of future events (John 16:13; Acts 11:28), (h) charismata (1 Cor. 12:7–11), (i) illumination (Eph. 1:17–18), (j) sanctification (2 Thess. 2:13; 1 Pet. 1:2), and (k) resurrection of the dead (Rom. 8:11).

4. Because divine worship is rendered to him: in the baptismal formula (Matt. 28:19) and in the apostolic benediction (2 Cor. 13:14; Rev. 1:4). In this last passage, the "seven spirits" are the Holy Spirit, who is so called because of the variety of his gifts, because it is the perfect number in the Jewish idea, and because of an allusion to the seven churches addressed. "Glorify God in your body, which is God's" (1 Cor. 6:20), but it is the Holy Spirit who dwells in the body as his temple (v. 19); "Lord, you are God, who by the mouth of your servant David have said, Why do the heathen rage?" (Acts 4:24–25). But David spoke by the Holy Spirit, so that this act of worship on the part of the disciples terminated on the Holy Spirit.

The reason why less is said in Scripture respecting the adoration and worship of the third person than of the others is that in the economy of redemption it is the office of the Spirit to awaken feelings of worship, and naturally, therefore, he appears more as the author than the object of worship. But a person who by an internal operation can awaken feelings of worship is ipso facto God.

The deity of the Holy Spirit is proved by the nature of his spiration and procession. It is marked by the same characteristics with those of the generation of the Son. It is eternal, never beginning and never ending. It is necessary, not dependent upon the optional will of either the first or second persons. And it is an emanation out of the one eternal essence, not the creation of a new substance from nothing. The procession of the Holy Spirit is not that temporal and external afflatus which terminates upon creatures in inspiration, regeneration, and sanctification; but that eternal and internal spiration whereby a subsistence in the divine essence results.

How procession differs from generation it is impossible to explain: "That there is a difference between generation and procession, we have taught, but what is the manner of the difference, we do not at all pretend to teach" (John of Damascus, Concerning the Orthodox Faith 4.10); "there is a difference between generation and procession, but I do not know how to distinguish them, because both are ineffable" (Augustine, Against Maximin 19). Some of the Schoolmen attempted to explain the difference by saying that the generation of the Son is by the mode of the understanding and intellect, and hence the Son is called Wisdom and Word; but the procession of the Spirit is by the mode of the will and affections, and hence the Spirit is called Love. Turretin (3.21.3) distinguishes the difference by the following particulars: (1) in respect to the source: generation is from the Father alone; procession is from the Father and Son; (2) in respect to the effects: generation not only results in a hypostatic personality but in resemblance; the Son is the image of the Father, but the Spirit is not the image of the Father and Son; an image is a representation of one, not of two persons; generation is accompanied with the power to communicate the essence, procession is not; (3) in respect to the order of relationship: filiation is second and procession is third; in the order of nature, not of time, spiration is after generation; the Father and Son spirate the Spirit, not as two different essences, in each of whom resides a spirative energy—which would result in two processions—but as two personal subsistences of one essence, who concur in one resulting procession; there are two spirations, but only one procession (Turretin 3.31.6).

The Latin church objected to the Greek insertion of monou in article 7 of the Athanasian Creed: apo tou (monou) patros; and the Greek church blamed the Latin for adding filioque to the Nicene Creed at the Council of Toledo in 589. At the Council of Florence in 1439 a compromise was made, whereby it was decided that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father by (per) the Son. But the Greeks receded from this and stood upon their first position. The use of per implies instrumental agency, which is inaccurate.

Says Turretin (3.31.5):

Although the Greeks ought not to be regarded as heretics for their opinion, neither ought the schism between the West and East to have arisen upon this ground, yet the opinion of the Latins is more in accordance with Scriptures, and there is more reason for retaining it than for rejecting it: Because (1) the Spirit is sent not less by the Son than by the Father (John 16:7); but he could not be sent by the Son, unless he proceeded from him; (2) the Spirit is called the Spirit of the Son, not less than of the Father (Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:9; Phil. 1:19); (3) whatever the Spirit has, he has not less from the Son than from the Father (John 16:13–15); and as the Son is said to be from the Father because he does not speak of himself, but from the Father, from whom he has all things, so the Spirit ought to be said to proceed from the Son, because he hears and speaks from him; and (4) Christ breathed the Spirit upon his disciples (20:22), and this temporal spiration implies an eternal.

SUPPLEMENTS

3.4.1 (see p. 226). Rationalistic critics endeavor to empty the Old Testament of its doctrinal contents in order to establish their position that the religion of Israel is merely one of the ethnic religions which arise from the natural evolution of the religious sentiment in man. They deny that the germs of the Christian religion are found in the Jewish and eliminate as far as possible from the Old Testament the doctrines of the Trinity and incarnation, of apostasy and redemption. The historical criticism of the church from the beginning has contended, on the contrary, that all of the truths of the New Testament are contained in an inchoate form in the Old Testament. The doctrine of the Trinity is no exception. The consensus of ecclesiastical opinion is as great on this point as on any other. The fathers, the Schoolmen, and the Reformation divines are unanimous upon it. The common view is expressed in Belgic Confession 9: "The testimonies of Holy Scripture which teach us to believe the holy Trinity are written in many passages of the Old Testament, which do not so much need to be enumerated as to be selected with discretion. In Gen. 1:26 God says, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.' From this saying, 'Let us make man in our image,' it appears that there are more persons in the Godhead than one; and when he says, 'God created,' this shows the unity of the Godhead. It is true that it is not said, here, how many persons there are, but that which is obscure in the Old Testament is plain in the New." Both the elder Lutheran and Reformed divines, in their systems, cite texts from the Old Testament to prove the doctrine of the Trinity. The later Lutherans, many of whom have departed from the elder Lutheranism on some points, yet retain the historical opinion on this. For example, Dorner remarks that "the Old Testament, which in opposition to polytheism strongly maintains divine unity, yet shows traces of a plurality in God. The plural Elohim, Adonai, Shaddai show divine powers, potentialities, which are nevertheless referred to unity" (Christian Doctrine §19). Dorner, however, does not find so full a trinitarianism in the Old Testament as the elder Lutherans do: "If the living idea of God must be conceived as trinitarian, traces of the Trinity cannot be wanting in the Old Covenant. If traces of the Trinity are found in the heathen religions, especially those of India, how could they be wholly absent from the Hebrew religion? If Jehovah does not merely say, 'I am that I am' (Exod. 13:14), but also says, 'I am he' (Deut. 32:39), he contrasts himself with himself, and an internal distinction is thereby made in God. When he says in Isa. 43:25 'I blot out your transgressions for my own sake,' he represents himself to be his own end when he works. But there is wanting in such statements the third element; and although there is frequent mention in the Old Testament of the 'Spirit of God' and of the 'Holy Spirit' (Gen. 1:3; 6:3; Ps. 51:11–12), nevertheless that Spirit is only the Spirit of life given by God (104:29; Job 27:3; 34:14) or the immanent basis of all created life. The Spirit of God is only thought of as a gift or power, or he denotes divine essence as working and dwelling in the world (Isa. 32:15; Ezek. 36:27; Joel 2:28); or as the living basis of the theocracy, animating artists, poets, heroes, judges, kings, and prophets (Num. 11:17, 25; Deut. 34:9; Isa. 63:10). In the Old Testament the Spirit of God has not an immediate trinitarian relation; it does not occupy there the position of the third member of the Trinity. The distinctions in the Old Testament are not thought of so much ontologically as economically" (Christian Doctrine §28).

3.4.2 (see p. 227). Augustine (City of God 11.26) thus speaks of man as the image of the Trinity: "We recognize in ourselves the image of God, that is, of the supreme Trinity, an image which though it be not equal to God or rather though it be very far removed from him, being neither coeternal nor, to say all in a word, consubstantial with him, is yet nearer to him in nature than any other of his works and is destined to be yet restored that it may bear a still closer resemblance."

3.4.3 (see p. 230). "It is very true," says Stillingfleet (Trinity and Transubstantiation Compared), "that according to arithmetic three cannot be one nor one three; but we must distinguish between bare numeration and the things numbered. The repetition of three units certainly makes three distinct numbers; but it does not make three persons to be three natures. And, therefore, as to the things themselves, we must go from the bare numbers to consider their nature. Wherever there is a real distinction we may multiply the number, though the subject be but one. As, suppose we say, the soul has three faculties—understanding, will, and memory—we may, without the least absurdity, say these are three and one; and these three not confounded with each other, and yet there is but one soul."

3.4.4 (see p. 232). Owen (Person of Christ, preface) thus speaks of the confusion arising from the loose use of ousia and hypostasis: "The Grecians themselves could not for a long season agree among themselves whether ousia238 and hypostasis were of the same signification or no, both of them denoting essence and substance; or whether they differed in their signification, and if they did, wherein that difference lay. Athanasius at first affirmed them to be the same. Basil denied them so to be, or that they were used unto the same purpose (Letter 78). The like difference immediately fell out between the Grecians and Latins about hypostasis and persona. For the Latins rendered hypostasis by substantia, and persona by prosompon. Hereof Jerome complains, in his epistle to Damasus, that they required of him in the East to confess tres hypostases, and he would only acknowledge tres personas (Letter 71). And Augustine gives an account of the same difference in On the Trinity 5.8–9. Athanasius endeavored the composing of this difference and in a good measure effected it, as Gregory of Nazianzus affirms in his oration concerning his praise. It was done by him in a synod of Alexandria, in the first year of Julian's reign."

3.4.5 (see p. 238). The will of a trinitarian person is the will that belongs to the one divine essence, and the understanding of a trinitarian person is also that of the one divine essence. There are not three wills and three understandings in the Trinity, but one only. When the essence is modified by eternal generation or eternal spiration, both the divine will and the divine understanding which belong to the essence are modified along with it, and this modification has its own corresponding hypostatic consciousness. In this way the three modifications of the one essence, with its one will and one understanding, yield three consciousnesses that are so distinct from each other that the Father knows that he is not the Son, and the Son that he is not the Father, and the Spirit that he is neither the Father nor the Son. The varieties in these three consciousnesses do not spring from three essences or beings each having a will and understanding, but from one numerical being or essence having one will and understanding in three varieties of subsistence.

3.4.6 (see p. 245). It is true that the phrase Spirit of the Father is not found in the New Testament, but its equivalent is in Rom. 8:11: "If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you," etc. Here the Holy Spirit is denominated the Spirit of the Father, since it is the Father who is said to have raised up Christ. By virtue of the eternal communication of divine essence to the Son, his words in John 17:10, "all mine are yours, and yours are mine," may be applied to the essential relation between the Father and the Son; so that if the third person is the "Spirit of the Son," he is likewise the "Spirit of the Father." Furthermore, the fact that the spiration of the third person is the joint act of the Father and Son makes him to be the Spirit of both alike.

3.4.7 (see p. 246). One of the briefest and clearest defenses of the doctrine of eternal generation is contained in the treatise Eternal Sonship by the Scotch divine Kidd. In it he quotes the following from Monboddo, as illustrating how the Son may be from the Father and yet be equally eternal with him: "There is another mystery in the Christian religion which is as incomprehensible to those who are not philosophers as the doctrine of the Trinity is. I mean the eternal generation of the Son of God. The Son, or second person of the Trinity, is, according to church doctrine, eternal as well as the Father, from whom he is produced. Now to a man who is not a philosopher, it must appear inconceivable that one being should be produced by another, and yet be coexistent with him from all eternity. It is not therefore, I think, to be wondered that there should be such a heresy in the church as Arianism. Now the doctrine of Arius was that as the Son was produced or begotten, as it is expressed in Scripture, by the Father, he must have been in existence posterior to him; and then he must have existed in time and not from all eternity, as the Father existed; and accordingly Arius maintained that there was a time when he was not. His expression was ēn pote hote ouk ēn. But ancient learning will explain that one thing may proceed from another as its cause and yet be coeval with it. This may be explained by an example which every man who has learned the elements of geometry will readily understand. It is this: That every corollary of a proposition is a truth eternal as well as the proposition itself; and yet it is derived from the proposition as its cause and could not have existed if the proposition had not been an eternal truth. What has led Arius and his followers into the error of supposing that the Son, being produced by the Father, could not be coeternal with him, but must have existed in time, is what we observe of the production of things on this earth, where the product is always posterior to the cause producing it. But this is true only of material things, which have no permanent existence but are constantly changing, being never the same thing for two moments together. Yet there is one material thing which will illustrate this matter very much and make it intelligible even to those who are not versed in philosophical distinctions. The thing I mean is the sun, which produces rays that are coeval with the cause producing them; as we cannot suppose the sun to exist without rays. And this example, together with the other I have given from geometry, proves this general proposition, that whenever anything by the necessity of its own nature produces another thing, both the thing produced and the producer must be coexistent. So that if the latter is eternal, the former must be. Now this is the case with the generation of the Son of God; for as production is essential to the Supreme Being, and as the first production, according to the order of nature, must have been the principle of intelligence, or the eternal Word or Reason, who is the second person of the Trinity, it was necessary that this production should be coeval with the first person from whom it is derived and therefore coeternal with him. In this way, I think, the eternal generation is clearly explained, as it is shown that the first person of the Trinity himself cannot exist without producing the second" (Kidd, Eternal Sonship, 340).

3.4.8 (see p. 249). It may be asked why "a divine attribute cannot belong to a fraction of the divine essence," as well as a human attribute may belong to a fraction of the human nature? Rationality and immortality as properties and wisdom and power as attributes belong to every individual man, and he is only a part of the human species. The answer is that the infinitude of the attribute or property in one case and the finiteness in the other accounts for the difference. There may be a multitude of degrees of finite power, wisdom, rationality, and immortality, but there are no degrees of infinite power, wisdom, rationality, and immortality. In these latter instances there must therefore either be the whole or none of the attribute or quality. It is not so in the former instances. Division is possible, consequently, in the former case, but not in the latter. Infinite wisdom must be possessed as a whole or not at all. But finite wisdom is a part only of wisdom, and there may be an unlimited number of parts, each of which may belong to an unlimited number of individuals.

3.4.9 (see p. 253). The unity of divine essence in connection with the trinality and distinctness of the divine persons is carefully asserted by Christ whenever he speaks either of himself or of the Father and the Spirit. In respect to the Father and the Son he says, "All things that the Father has are mine" (John 16:15); "the Son can do nothing of himself (aph' heautou), but what he sees the Father do; for what things soever he does, these also does the Son likewise" (5:19); "I do nothing of myself (aph' emautou); but as the Father has taught me I speak these things" (8:28; 12:49; 14:10). In respect to the Spirit and the Son he says, "The Spirit of truth shall not speak of himself (aph' heautou), but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak; he shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you" (16:13–14). In these passages the doctrine is taught that while each person is so distinct from the others that he can speak of himself as doing acts that are peculiar to himself and not to the others, yet the distinctness is not so great as to make him another being who does the acts aph' heautou exclusively and apart from the others. There is a common ground of being, a common nature or essence which unifies the three.

3.4.10 (see p. 254). To the quotations from Witsius and Augustine asserting that the term father in the providential and universal sense is applicable to the Trinity may be added the following from Ursinus (Christian Religion Q. 20): "The name father, as also the name God, when it is opposed to all creatures, is taken essentially, not personally; but when it is put with another person of the Godhead it is taken personally." An example of the former is Luke 12:30: "Your Father knows that you have need of these things." The Father here is the same as "God who clothes the grass in the field" (12:28) and whose kingdom the disciples are commanded to seek (12:31). This is the Trinity. An example of the latter is Matt. 12:50: "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother." This is the first person in the Trinity. Pearson, also (On the Creed, art. 1), teaches that the Trinity is both the providential and redeeming Father: "As I am assured that there is an infinite and independent being which we call a God and that it is impossible there should be more infinities than one, so I assure myself that this one God is the Father of all things, especially of all men and angels, so far as the mere act of creation may be styled generation; and that he is further yet and in a more peculiar manner the Father of all those whom he regenerates by his Spirit, whom he adopts in his Son as heirs and coheirs with him in the heavens. But beyond and far above all this, besides his general offspring and peculiar people, I believe him to be the Father in a more eminent and transcendent manner of one singular and proper Son, his own, his beloved, his only begotten Son. Hence, the Father is to be considered both personally and essentially: personally as the first in the glorious Trinity with relation and opposition to the Son; essentially as comprehending the whole Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

3.4.11 (see p. 255). The fact that the first person does not issue from any person but is ingenerate and has the essence "originally" was cited by the ancient trinitarians in proof of the unity of God. Were there two divine persons that are "of none," there would be two Gods. They would not be two modes of one essence, but two essences. Pearson (On the Creed, 1) directs attention to this and gives quotations from the fathers, who use it in argument with the Arians. "That the Father is neither generated nor proceeds," he says, "is most true and so fit to be believed and also a most necessary truth and therefore to be acknowledged for the avoiding the multiplication and plurality of gods. For if there were more than one which were from none, it could not be denied but there were more gods than one. Wherefore, this origination in divine paternity has anciently been looked upon as the assertion of the unity; and therefore the Son and Holy Spirit have been believed to be but one God with the Father, because both are from the Father, who is one, and so the union of them. Says Fulgentius, 'In two ingenerate persons a diverse divinity is found; but in one generate from one ingenerate a natural unity is demonstrated.' Says the Sirmium Council: 'If anyone shall say that the Son is ingenerate and without emanation, and saying that there are two ingenerates and two without origination makes two gods, let him be anathema.' Says Novatian: 'If the Son had not been generate of the Father, there would be two persons neither of whom is from the other and both of whom are God unoriginate. This would be two Gods. The Son, like the Father, would not be God of God, but God beside God.' " Pearson also cites Basil, Athanasius, and Gregory of Nazianzus to the same effect.

3.4.12 (see p. 260). A close examination shows that the selection of prepositions in the gospels and epistles is carefully made in order to mark the reality of the trinitarian distinction in the divine essence. In John 16:28 egō para tou patros exēlthon denotes leaving a position by the Father's side. In 15:26 para signifies the same thing in reference to the Holy Spirit.

5 Divine Attributes

Divine Attributes: Methods of Classification

Divine attributes are modes either of the relation or of the operation of divine essence. They are, consequently, an analytical and closer description of the essence. "Every divine attribute," says Nitzsch (Christian Doctrine §67), "is a conception of the idea of God." The terms conception and idea are here employed as in the philosophy of Schelling. As the general and undefined idea is reduced to the form of the particular and definite conception, so the general divine essence is contemplated in the particular attribute. The attributes are not parts of the essence, of which this latter is composed. The whole essence is in each attribute, and the attribute in the essence. We must not conceive of the essence as existing by itself and prior to the attributes, and of the attributes as an addition to it. God is not essence and attributes, but in attributes. The attributes are essential qualities of God. Hence Augustine, the Schoolmen, Calvin, and Melanchthon say that "divine excellences are the very essence." Turretin (3.5.7) remarks that "God's attributes cannot differ really (realiter) from the essence or between themselves as one thing differs from another thing."

Divine attributes are of two classes, according as they denote a passive relation of the essence or an active operation of it. (1) The essence considered as passively related to itself is self-existent and simple, as passively related to duration is eternal, as passively related to space is immense, and as passively related to number is one. Self-existence, simplicity, eternity, immensity, and unity are not active operations of the divine essence, but inactive relationships of it. Eternity, immensity, unity, and simplicity, and the like are not modes of energizing but of existing. (2) The essence considered as in action yields attributes of a second class. When, for example, the divine essence is contemplated as simply energizing, this is omnipotence; as cognizing, this is omniscience; as adapting means to ends, this is wisdom; as energizing benevolently or kindly, this is goodness. These attributes are the divine essence, whole and entire, contemplated in a particular mode of external operation.

Divine attributes are objective and real and not merely man's subjective mode of conception. We cannot say that we conceive of God as omnipotent, omnipresent, wise, good, and just, but that in fact he is not so. These attributes are objectively real, because the entire divine essence is in them. The essence is not phenomenal and unreal; consequently, the attributes are not. In proportion as speculation has been engaged with the divine essence while neglecting or denying divine attributes, it has been pantheistic because it has occupied itself with a subject without predicates, a substance without properties. The monad of gnosticism and the absolute of pantheism are examples. These are mere mental abstractions, like the unknown quantity of algebra.

The difference between a divine attribute and a divine person is that the person is a mode of the existence of the essence; while the attribute is a mode either of the relation or of the external operation of the essence. The qualifying adjective external is important because the internal operation of the essence describes a trinitarian person. When the divine essence energizes ad intra, the operation is generation or spiration, and the essence so energizing is the Father or the Son; but when the divine essence energizes ad extra, the operation is omnipotence or omniscience or benevolence, etc. A trinitarian person is a mode of the essence; a divine attribute is a phase of the essence.

Several attributes may be grouped under a general term. Wisdom and omniscience fall under the head of understanding. They are cognitive attributes, involving perception only. Goodness and mercy fall under the head of will. They are voluntary attributes in the sense that their exercise is sovereign and optional. Such attributes, consequently, are phases of divine understanding and will. In Scripture, all the attributes are sometimes summed up under the term glory (doxa): "The heavens declare the glory of God" (Ps. 19:1). Sometimes, however, the context shows that a particular attribute is meant, as in Rom. 6:4, where Christ is said to be "raised by the glory of the Father." "Glory" here denotes divine omnipotence (cf. John 2:11).

The number and classification of divine attributes is attended with some difficulty and has led to considerable difference of opinion among theologians. Some reckon self-existence, immensity, simplicity, eternity, and the like among divine attributes; others do not. Nitzsch (Christian Doctrine §66) denies that infinity, eternity, and immutability are properly denominated attributes.

Divine attributes have been classified as incommunicable and communicable, natural and moral, immanent (or intransitive) and emanent (or transitive), positive and negative, absolute and relative, and active and passive.

The incommunicable attributes are those that belong to God exclusively, so that there is nothing resembling them in a created spirit. They admit no degrees, but are divine by their very nature. Such are self-existence, simplicity, infinity, eternity, immutability. The communicable attributes are those which are possessed in a finite degree, more or less, by men and angels. Such are wisdom, benevolence, holiness, justice, compassion, truth. It is with reference to these that man is said to be created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27) and to be made partaker by regeneration of a divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4) and is commanded to imitate God: "Be holy, for I am holy" (1 Pet. 1:16). That they cannot be in a creature in an infinite degree is proved by Matt. 19:17: "There is none good but one."

The natural attributes belong to the constitutional nature, as distinguished from the will of God. Such are self-existence, simplicity, infinity, eternity, immutability, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence. Wisdom is sometimes assigned to the natural and sometimes to the moral. The moral attributes are truth, goodness, holiness, justice, mercy, etc.

The immanent or intransitive attributes are those which do not go forth and operate outside of the divine essence, but remain internal. Such are immensity, eternity, simplicity, self-existence, etc. The emanent or transitive attributes issue forth and produce effects external to God. Such are omnipotence, benevolence, justice, etc.

The positive attributes are those which belong in a finite degree to the creature. The negative attributes are those from which all finite imperfection is negated or removed.

The absolute attributes express the relation of God to himself. Such are simplicity, self-existence, unity, eternity. The relative attributes express his relation to the world. Such are omnipotence, omniscience, etc.

The active attributes involve the idea of action: for example, omnipotence, justice, benevolence. The passive attributes involve the idea of rest: for example, self-existence, immensity, eternity, etc.

We adopt the classification of incommunicable and communicable attributes. Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 4 favors this arrangement by first mentioning three of the incommunicable attributes, followed by communicable attributes that are qualified by the former: "God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth."

Self-Existence (Aseity)

The self-existence of God (aseity) denotes that the ground of his being is in himself. In this reference, it is sometimes said that God is his own cause. But this is objectionable language. God is the uncaused being and in this respect differs from all other beings. The category of cause and effect is inapplicable to the existence of a necessary and eternal being.

Simplicity

The simplicity of God denotes that his being is uncompounded, incomplex, and indivisible: "a most pure spirit, without parts." Simplicity does not belong to angels and men. They are complex, being composed of soul and body: two substances, not one. They are not unembodied and mere spirit. The angels, like the redeemed after the resurrection, have a spiritual body, which does not mean a body made of spirit, but one adapted to a spiritual world. A spiritual body belongs to the world of extended form, not of unextended mind. The simplicity of the divine being is not contradictory to the Trinity of his essence, because Trinity does not denote three different essences, but one essence subsisting in three modes. The trinitarian distinctions no more conflict with the simplicity of the essence, than do the attributes. The essence is not divided into either hypostases or attributes. The whole essence is in each person and in each attribute. The theory of external emanation is incompatible with the simplicity of the divine essence. A substance which by efflux of particles can flow out into new forms, like rays from the sun, is compounded and complex. When it is said in Rom. 11:36 that "all things are of him (ex autou)," it is not meant that the universe is an effluent portion of the divine essence, but that it originates from him as its Creator. When it is said in Acts 17:28 that man is the offspring (genos) of God, it is not meant that man participates in the divine essence, but possesses a nature similar to that of God.

Infinity

The infinity of God is the divine essence viewed as having no bounds or limits. And since limitation implies imperfection, the infinity of God implies that he is perfect in every respect in which he is infinite. If knowledge in any being has bounds, it is imperfect knowledge; if holiness has degrees or limits in any rational spirit, it is imperfect holiness. Yet finite holiness is real excellence, and limited knowledge is real knowledge. The finiteness of holiness does not convert it into sin; neither does the limitedness of knowledge convert it into error or untruth. The imperfection or limitation of the finite relates not to quality, but to quantity. Infinity is a general term denoting a characteristic belonging to all the communicable attributes of God. His power, his knowledge, his veracity is infinite. It also characterizes the being of God as well as his attributes. His essence is infinite. In this respect, infinity is like eternity and immutability. These latter, like the former, pervade the essence and all the communicable attributes. Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 4 defines God to be a Spirit who is "infinite, eternal, and unchangeable" first in his essential "being" and then in his "wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." Divine infinity is taught in Job 11:7–9: "Can you by searching find out God? Can you find out the Almighty to perfection? It is as high as heaven, what can you do? deeper than hell, what can you know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth and broader than the sea."

Immensity and Omnipresence

The immensity (in mensum) of God is his essence as related to space. Divine essence is not measurable, because not included in any limits of place: "The heaven of heavens cannot contain you" (1 Kings 8:27; 2 Chron. 2:6; Jer. 23:24). God's immensity is spiritual, having no extension of substance.

By virtue of God's immensity, he is omnipresent. Immensity and omnipresence are thus inseparably connected and are best considered in reference to each other. Omnipresence has respect to the universe of created beings and things—to space as filled. Immensity has reference to this and to what is beyond—to space as void: the "beyond the blazing walls of the world" of Lucretius (Concerning Nature 1.74). God is said to be beyond the universe (extra mundum), not in the sense that there are spaces beyond the universe which he fills by extension of substance, but in the sense that the universe does not exhaust his immensity or is equal to it. "God's immensity," says Schleiermacher (Doctrine §53), "is almighty immensity which determines or conditions space itself, and all that exists in space."

The presence of mind is wholly different from that of matter. Spiritual substance is present, wherever it is present, as a complete whole at every point. The human soul, for example, is present as a unity and totality at every point of the body. It is not present as the body is, partitively, or by division of substance. God, also, as the infinite Spirit is present at every point of space as a totality. He is not present in the universe by division of substance, but as a unity, simple and undivided. This is taught in the dicta "the soul is all in every part" and "God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere." Omnipresence is taught in Ps. 139:7–8: "Whither shall I flee from your presence?" (Jer. 23:23–24; Isa. 66:1; Acts 17:24). (supplement 3.5.1.)

Divine omnipresence means the presence of all things to God, rather than God's presence to all things. They are in his presence, but he is not in their presence. When it is said, "Do not I fill heaven and earth, says the Lord" (Jer. 23:24), the language is tropical. If God were literally contained in the universe, the universe would be more immense than he is. "Nothing contains you, but you contain all things," says Anselm (Proslogion 19). (a) Omnipresence of God is not like the presence of a material body in a locality. This excludes the presence of another body; but God's presence does not exclude that of matter. "God," says Augustine (Concerning Diverse Questions 1.20), "is not at some particular place (alicubi). For what is at some particular place is contained in space; and what is contained in some space is body. And yet because God exists and is not in space, all things are in him. Yet not so in him, as if he himself were a place in which they are." (b) Divine omnipresence is not like the presence of a finite spirit embodied in a material form. The soul of man, though not standing in the same relation to space that matter does, is yet not everywhere present, but is confined to a certain place, namely, the circumference of the body: "Where is the soul located? As far as I am concerned, it is in the head and I can offer an explanation for my belief. But the place of the soul I shall explain another time. Certainly it is in you"10 (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.29.70). (c) The omnipresence of God is not by extension, multiplication, or division of essence. He is all in every place, similarly as the soul is all in every part of the body. The whole essence of God is here, is there, and everywhere.

God is said to be "in heaven," "in believers," "in hell," etc., because of a special manifestation of his glory or his grace or his retribution. In this reference, sinners are said to be "away" from God, and God from them. Some theologians have taught a "special presence of the divine essence with the substance of believers," upon the strength of John 14:23: "We will come unto him and make our abode with him." But this is unnecessary: "The essential presence of God is the same everywhere; the influxive declarative presence of God is special and otherwise in one place than another" (Bates, On Heaven).

Some Socinian and deistical writers deny God's omnipresence as to essence and assert only a presence by operation from a distance. Newton seems to refer to this in a scholium at the end of the Principia: "God is one and the same God always and everywhere. He is omnipresent, not by means of his energy (virtus) alone, but also by his substance; for energy cannot subsist without substance." The pagan acknowledged divine omnipresence. "Jove fills all things," says Aratus. Virgil remarks that "God goes throughout all the earth and the extent of the sea and the boundless heaven"13 (cf. Seneca, Concerning Benevolence 1.8).

Eternity

The eternity of God is his essence as related to duration. It is duration without beginning, without end, and without succession: "The eternal God" (Gen. 21:33); "the one that inhabits eternity" (Isa. 57:13); "from eternity to eternity, you are God" (Ps. 90:2); "the king eternal" (Ps. 102:26–28; Isa. 41:4; 1 Tim. 1:17); "the Lord of lords who only has immortality" (1 Tim. 6:16); "I am Alpha and Omega" (Rev. 1:8). The French version of the Scriptures renders Jehovah by l'Éternel.

Eternity is different from immortality or simple endlessness. The Schoolmen denominated the latter sempiternitas and aeviternitas. This is duration with succession and has a beginning, but no end. Eternity considered without beginning is described as a parte ante, without ending as a parte post. But the terms before and after in this description are tropical. They bring in the notion of time and succession, by which to explain; so that this definition is by quantity, not by quality. Locke's definition of eternity as "infinite time without beginning and ending" is inadequate, because it makes eternity to be a species of time. The omission of successionlessness in this definition is fatal to accuracy. Eternity with succession is like immensity with extension, and omniscience with contingency. Some have defined eternity as the "timeless," the "supratemporal," in order to distinguish it in kind from time. Says Schleiermacher (Doctrine §52), "We must negative from God, not only all limits of time, but time itself."

That clause in the definition of eternity which represents it as without sequences and succession defines it according to quality. The Schoolmen explain by saying that God, by reason of his eternity, has a simultaneous possession of his total duration. The creature comes into possession of his total duration gradually and piecemeal. The whole of divine knowledge and experience is ever before the divine being, so that there are not parts succeeding parts. The image that represents eternity is the ocean; that which represents time is the river. "The eternity of God's existence," says Edwards (Will 4.8), "is nothing else but his immediate, perfect, and invariable possession of the whole of his unlimited life, together and at once. It is equally improper to talk of months and years of divine existence and mile squares of deity." Says Aquinas (Summa 1.10.4), "Eternity is complete all at once, but in time there is 'before' and 'after.' Therefore, time and eternity are not the same thing." Says Boethius (On the Consolation of Philosophy 5.4), "Eternity is the measure of abiding existence, but time is the measure of movement." Says Hooker (Polity 5.69), "Only God has true immortality or eternity, that is to say, continuance wherein grows no difference by addition of hereafter unto now." Says Smith (Existence of God), "An infinitely comprehensive mind has a simultaneous possession of its own never-flitting life; and because it finds no succession in its own immutable understanding, therefore it cannot find anything to measure out its own duration. And therefore the Platonists were wont to attribute aiōn or eternity to God; not so much because he had neither beginning nor end of days, but because of his immutable and uniform nature" (cf. King, Origin of Evil 1.3; Locke, Understanding 2.14.10; Anselm, Proslogion 19).

In Scripture the eternity of God is denoted by the term today: "Today have I begotten you" (Ps. 2:7). The eternal generation of the second trinitarian person is here described by the present alone, to the exclusion of the past and the future. This is the particular element in time which is best fitted to express the nature of the successionless and the unchangeable. The instant is a point of time and has no sequences. Hence eternity has been defined as an "eternal now" or a "universal present." Kant regards time as a form of the understanding, that is, as the manner in which the finite mind thinks, by reason of its finiteness. Similarly, Berkeley (Principles of Knowledge §98) defines time to be the succession of thoughts in the human mind. If this definition be accepted, then there is no time for God, because there is no succession of thoughts in his mind. The form and manner of God's consciousness is totally different in respect to succession, from that of man's consciousness. He does not think sequaciously as man and angel do: "My thoughts are not as your thoughts" (Isa. 55:8).

The instantaneous vision and successionless unchanging consciousness of divine omniscience, in comparison with the gradual view and successive increasing knowledge of the creature, have been thus illustrated. A person stands at a street corner and sees a procession passing, whose component parts he does not know beforehand. He first sees white men, then black men, and, last, red men. When the last man has passed, he knows that the procession was composed of Europeans, Africans, and Indians. Now suppose that from a church tower he should see at one glance of the eye the whole procession. Suppose that he saw no one part of it before the other, but that the total view was instantaneous. His knowledge of the procession would be all comprehending and without succession. He would not come into the knowledge of the components of the procession, as he did in the former case, gradually and part by part. And yet the procession would have its own movement still and would be made up of parts that follow each other. Though the vision and knowledge of the procession, in this instance, is instantaneous, the procession itself is gradual. In like manner, the vast sequences of human history and the still vaster sequences of physical history appear all at once and without any consciousness of succession to the divine observer. This is implied in the assertion that God "declares the end from the beginning" (Isa. 46:10) and that "known unto God are all things from the beginning of the world" (Acts 15:18). Both extremes of that unlimited series which make up the history of the created universe, together with all the intermediates, are seen at once by the eternal Creator of the universe. Says Charnock (Eternity of God):

Though there be a succession and order of things as they exist, there is no succession in God in regard to his knowledge of them. God knows the things that shall be wrought and the order of them in their being brought upon the stage of the world; yet both the things and the order, he knows by one act. The death of Christ was to precede his resurrection in the order of time; there is a succession in this; both at once are known by God; yet the act of his knowledge is not exercised about Christ as dying and rising at the same moment; so that there is a succession in things, when there is no succession in God's knowledge of things.

Man knows a succession successively; God knows a succession instantaneously and simultaneously. God sees the end from the beginning, and hence for him there is no interval or sequence between the end and the beginning. Man sees the end from the end, not from the beginning, and hence there is an interval and sequence for him between the two. (supplement 3.5.2.)

Not only is God's act of knowledge eternal and successionless, but his act of power is so likewise. God creates all things from eternity by one act of power, as he knows all things from eternity by one act of knowledge and as he decrees all things from eternity by one act of will. As we must employ the singular, not the plural, when we speak of the eternal decree, so we must when we speak of the eternal causation. There is one eternal all-comprehending decree and one eternal all-creating cause. For God there is no series in his action any more than in his cognition or in his purpose. God's energy as the cause of the creation is one and successionless, like his decree; the creation itself, as the effect of this eternal cause, is a successive series. The cause is one; the effect is many. The cause is eternal; the effect is temporal. For divine consciousness, the creation of the world is not in the past and the destruction of the world is not in the future. God is not conscious of an interval of thousands of years between the act by which he created the heaven and the earth "in the beginning" (Gen. 1:1) and the act by which he created man on "the sixth day" (1:26), because, in this case, one would be older than the other and thus only one of them would be an eternal act. God's causative energizing in both instances was eternal and therefore simultaneous; but the effects of it were successive and temporal. It is impossible for the human mind to comprehend or even to conceive of this. But it is necessary to postulate it in order to maintain divine immutability and omniscience. Neither of these attributes can be established, if it be held that God's consciousness respecting his exertion of power is successive like that of man or angel. Should we define God's eternal causation as an endless succession of creative volitions, then God's consciousness of his future creative volitions is in the future, like that of man and angel. This is fatal to omniscience, when the consciousness relates to cognition; and fatal to immutability, when the consciousness relates to action. If the divine will, like the human, energized successively through the six days of creation, so that in divine consciousness the divine willing on the first day preceded the divine willing on the second, and the divine willing upon the third followed that upon the second, then God, like man and angel, is conscious that two days are longer than one, and three days longer than two; which is contrary to the statement that "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (2 Pet. 3:8) and to the affirmation that "a thousand years in his sight are but as yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the night" (Ps. 90:4). The volition by which God created "the heaven and the earth" (Gen. 1:1) is eternal, but the heaven and the earth are not eternal. If the matter of the earth was originated ex nihilo, say. twenty million years ago, this matter is now exactly twenty million years old. But divine volition that originated it is not exactly twenty million years old. The created effect can be measured by days and years, but the creative cause cannot be. (supplement 3.5.3.)

Eternity implies perfection and completeness; time implies imperfection and incompleteness. An eternal being and an eternal consciousness never improve and never deteriorate; a temporal being and consciousness is continually experiencing one or the other. A creature increases in knowledge in certain directions and loses knowledge in others. He acquires information and he forgets. The Creator has infinite knowledge at every instant and neither learns nor forgets:

The duration of everything must of necessity be agreeable to its nature; and, therefore, as that whose imperfect nature is ever flowing like a river and consists in continual motion and changes one after another, must needs have accordingly a successive and flowing duration, sliding perpetually from present into past and always posting on toward the future, expecting something of itself which is not yet in being, but to come; so must that whose perfect nature is essentially immutable and always the same and necessarily existent have a permanent duration, never losing anything of itself once present, as sliding away from it nor yet running forward to meet something of itself before, which is not yet in being. (Cudworth, Intellectual System 1.5)

It follows, therefore, that there is no evolution or development in an eternal essence and consciousness. Evolution is change, by the very definition. Development is a transition from one mode of existence and experience to another. If there be evolution in a consciousness, then the consciousness is mutable, successive, fractional, and incomplete; if there be no evolution in a consciousness and it is without succession, then the consciousness is immutable, simultaneous, omniscient, and complete.

This characteristic of an eternal being and consciousness is enunciated in the Scholastic dictum: "God is pure act without any potentiality." There is nothing potential or latent in the deity, as there always is in created and finite natures. "It is necessary for that which is first being to be in act and in no way to be in potency,"19 says Aquinas (Summa 1.3.1). One fatal error in the pantheistic conception of God is that it attributes potentiality to him. It maintains that God is capable of evolution and that he is endlessly passing through a process of development. This obliterates the distinction between the infinite and the finite by ascribing to the former a characteristic that belongs only to the latter. The infinite cannot be the perfect if the pantheistic postulate be true. For if the infinite being is passing from lower to higher modes of existence and of consciousness, as finite being is, absolute and immutable perfection cannot be attributed to him. Moreover, since evolution may be from the more perfect to the less perfect, as well as from the less perfect to the more perfect, it follows from the pantheistic theory that the infinite being may tend downward and become evil (see Shedd, Theological Essays, 134).

The all-comprehending and unchanging consciousness of God excludes memory. This can belong only to the finite mind. As there is nothing past in the consciousness of God, there can be no such act in him as that of recalling the past to mind. He neither remembers nor forgets in the literal sense because the whole of his knowledge is simultaneously and perpetually present. And this whole or sum total of omniscience includes all that which for the creature is included in past, present, and future time.

The term eternity is sometimes employed in a secondary signification to denote the future world in distinction from this, as when it is said that a deceased man has gone into eternity. In this case, eternity does not denote successionless existence, but the spiritual existence of the next life. Men and angels cannot have the unchanging eternal consciousness of God. Every finite mind must think, feel, and act in time. Time is the necessary form of the finite understanding. Time is one of the elements of difference between the infinite and the finite:

Immediate are the acts of God, more swift

Than time, or motion; but to human ears

Cannot without process of speech be told,

So told as earthly notion can receive.

—Milton

Augustine upon this point errs in attributing a successionless intuition to the beatific vision of the saints and angels. In the heaven of heavens, "the inhabitants," he says (Confessions 12.13), "know all at once, not in part, not darkly, not through a glass, but as a whole, in manifestation, face to face, not this thing now, and that thing anon, but all at once, without succession of times." God understands the finite form of cognition, though it is not the form of cognition for him. He knows that for the creature there is an interval between events, but this does not imply that for him there is an interval. He perfectly comprehends man's knowledge by sensation, but this does not prove that he himself has sensation. "He knows our frame and remembers that we are dust," but he has no such personal consciousness of frailty.

The idea of an existence and consciousness without sequences and succession is difficult even to entertain, much less to comprehend. There is nothing analogous to it in human consciousness, which is wholly successive. Hence the idea of divine eternity as without evolution and change is even more baffling to human intelligence than is the idea of triunity. The former is a greater mystery than the latter. The notions of paternity, filiation, and procession enable the human mind to seize the doctrine of the Trinity, but there are no corresponding points of contact in the doctrine of divine eternity. For this reason, some theologians define eternity as infinite time and deny that it is without succession. They assert that there are sequences and intervals in God's consciousness, as there are in that of men and angels. This was the opinion of Clericus. But greater difficulties follow from the denial than from the affirmation of a consciousness without succession in God. It is certain that God is omniscient and immutable; but he can be neither if his mind is subject to the same categories of time and space with the created mind, for both are associated. A creature of time is also a creature of space. A finite spirit cannot be omnipresent. It is embodied and therefore must exist in a locality. "The eternity of God," says Schleiermacher (Doctrine §§52, 54), "is to be conceived as omnipotent eternity, that is, as that which in God determines and conditions time itself, with all that is temporal. God is basileus tōn aiōnōn (1 Tim. 1:17)." Similarly, Augustine (Confessions 11.13) denominates God "the maker of time." Schleiermacher objects to the separation of the attribute of eternity from that of omnipotence, when it is defined as merely the relation of God to duration, in that it represents him as merely existing passively, whereas he is intrinsically active and energizing. The remark that there is nothing analogous in human consciousness to the successionless consciousness of the Supreme Being perhaps needs some qualification. Those who have been brought to the brink of the grace and then brought back speak of a seemingly instantaneous survey of their whole past life. The following from Frances Kemble Butler's Records of Later Life is striking. She is describing her experience during a fearful storm at sea:

As the vessel reeled under a tremendous shock, the conviction of our impending destruction became so intense in my mind, that my imagination suddenly presented to me the death vision, so to speak, of my whole existence. I should find it impossible adequately to describe the vividness with which my whole past life presented itself to my perception; not as a procession of events, filling up a succession of years, but as a whole—a total—suddenly held up to me as in a mirror, indescribably awful, combined with the simultaneous, acute, and almost despairing sense of loss, of waste, so to speak, by which it was accompanied. This instantaneous involuntary retrospect was followed by a keen and rapid survey of the religious belief in which I had been trained and which then seemed to me my only important concern.

In all this, however, there is really a succession and a series; only it is so exceedingly rapid as to seem simultaneous.

Immutability

The immutability of God is the unchangeableness of his essence, attributes, purposes, and consciousness. Immutability results from eternity, as omnipresence does from immensity. That which has no evolution and no succession is the same yesterday, today, and forever: "I am Jehovah, I change not" (Mal. 3:6); "the heavens shall perish, but you shall endure" (Ps. 102:26); "with whom is no variableness (parallagē), neither shadow of turning" (James 1:17). Immutability belongs to the divine essence; God can have no new attributes. It belongs also to the divine will; his decrees are unalterable. The Socinians Crellius and Vorstius deny this latter, asserting that God can will what he once nilled and nill what he once willed. This is contradicted by Scripture: "God is not a man that he should lie; nor the Son of Man that he should repent" (Num. 23:19); "my counsel shall stand" (Isa. 46:10); "the counsel of the Lord stands forever" (Ps. 33:11); "the Lord has sworn and will not repent" (110:4); "the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent" (1 Sam. 15:29); "whereby God, willing to show the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath" (Heb. 6:17). Immutability also characterizes the divine consciousness. Nothing new is added to it, and nothing old is subtracted from it. Infinite knowledge is a fixed quantity, and so is an infinite experience. God is immutable because (a) his being is from himself and not from another; (b) he cannot change for the better or for the worse; (c) all causes and reasons for change are wanting, namely, dependence upon another, error of mind, inconstancy of will and purpose. The act of creation ex nihilo made no change in God. It did not affect his own eternal essence; and his will and power to create were the same from eternity. Emanation ad extra would make a change in the essence. This is the outward effluence of substance and diminishes the mass from which it issues. Incarnation made no change in God. Divine essence was not transmuted into a human nature, but assumed a human nature into union with itself.

God is said to repent: "It repented the Lord that he had made man upon the earth" (Gen. 6:6); "God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them" (Jon. 3:10). This means no change in his attributes and character, but only in his manner of treating men: "Repentance in God is not a change of will, but a will to change." If God had treated the Ninevites after their repentance as he had threatened to treat them before their repentance, this would have proved him to be mutable. It would have showed him to be at one time displeased with impenitence and at another with penitence. Charnock (Immutability of God) remarks that

the unchangeableness of God, when considered in relation to the exercise of his attributes in the government of the world, consists not in always acting in the same manner, however cases and circumstances may alter; but in always doing what is right and in adapting his treatment of his intelligent creatures to the variation of their actions and characters. When the devils, now fallen, stood as glorious angels, they were the objects of God's love, necessarily; when they fell, they were the objects of God's hatred, because impure. The same reason which made him love them while they were pure made him hate them when they were criminal.

It is one thing for God to will a change in created things external to himself and another thing for him to change in his own nature and character. God can will a change in the affairs of men—such as the abrogation of the levitical priesthood and ceremonial—and yet his own will remain immutable, because he had from eternity willed and decreed the change. In like manner, promises and threatenings that are made conditionally and suppose a change in man imply no change in the essence or attributes of God: "If that nation against whom I have pronounced turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them" (Jer. 18:7–10). No change is made in God, as there is in the creature, by his knowledge. A creature increases his knowledge and experiences a change intellectually. But God's knowledge is a fixed quantity, because it is infinite. He knows everything from everlasting to everlasting and at each instant, and there is no more than everything. He knew before it came to pass that Christ would be crucified upon Calvary. When that event occurred, it made no change in his knowledge. He was no better informed than he was before. He was no more certain of the crucifixion after the event than he was before it, because he had decreed that it should take place. He could not have foreknown that it would take place, unless he had predetermined that it should. If God does not first decide that an event shall happen, he must wait and see whether it happens in order to any certain knowledge; and this would make a change in his knowledge.

Omniscience

God is an intelligent being, and knowledge is one of his communicable attributes: "God created man after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness" (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 10). Divine essence considered as cognizing gives the attribute of omniscience: "God is greater than our hearts and knows all things" (1 John 3:20); "Lord, you know all things" (John 21:17); "known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world" (Acts 15:18); "all things are naked and opened (tetrachēlismena) unto the eye of him with whom we have to do" (Heb. 4:13; Rom. 11:33; Matt. 6:32; 1 Kings 8:39; Ps. 139:1–16; Isa. 46:10; Ezek. 11:5).

Divine knowledge is (a) intuitive as opposed to demonstrative or discursive; it is not obtained by comparing one thing with another or deducing one truth from another; it is a direct vision; (b) simultaneous as opposed to successive; it is not received gradually into the mind and by parts; the perception is total and instantaneous; and (c) complete and certain as opposed to incomplete and uncertain. Divine knowledge excludes knowledge by the senses, gradual acquisition of knowledge, forgetting of knowledge, and recollection of knowledge.

God's omniscience from the creature's point of view is foreknowledge; but it is not foreknowledge from God's point of view. The infinite mind comprehends all things in one simultaneous intuition, and, consequently, there is for it no "before" or "after."Says Charnock (God's Knowledge), "God considers all things in his own simple knowledge as if they were now acted; and therefore some have chosen to call the knowledge of things to come, not prescience or foreknowledge, but knowledge; because God sees all things at one instant." Says Owen (Vindication of the Gospel, 5), "God knows all things as they are; and in that order wherein they stand. Things that are past, as to the order of the creatures, he knows as past; not by remembrance, however, as we do; but by the same act of knowledge wherewith he knew them from all eternity, even before they were." But this knowledge of everything simultaneously and at once is for the finite mind equivalent to knowing before the event. Foreknowledge, strictly taken, implies an interval between the knowledge and the event. Had the Ninevites not repented, Nineveh would have been destroyed in accordance with the prophecy of Jonah. Forty days would have elapsed between Jonah's foreknowledge of the event and the event itself. A series of occurrences and experiences would have intervened and become gradually known by Jonah. But this is not true of the divine mind. God is not conscious of an interval of several thousand years between his knowledge of Christ's crucifixion and the occurrence of the crucifixion. For God, Christ was crucified from eternity, and the event was known and real to him from all eternity. Omniscience excludes both foreknowledge and subsequent knowledge. In this reference, Augustine (Concerning Diverse Questions 2.2.2) says: "What is foreknowledge but the knowledge of the future. But what is future to God? For, if divine knowledge includes all things at one instant, all things are present to him, and there is nothing future; and his knowledge is knowledge and not foreknowledge." Says Charnock (God's Knowledge):

The knowledge of one thing is not, in God, before another; one act of knowledge does not father another. In regard of the objects themselves, one thing is before another; one year before another; one generation of men before another; one is the cause and the other is the effect; in the creature's mind there is such a succession, and God knows there will be such a succession; but there is no such order in God's knowledge; for he knows all those successions by one glance, without any succession of knowledge in himself.

God has a knowledge of all things that are possible, in distinction from things actual. He knows all that he can do. This is denominated "the knowledge of simple intelligence." It is knowledge that is confined to divine understanding and never causes an act of the will. The things that are possible and known as such are never made real. Charnock (God's Knowledge) explains it as the knowledge not only of the possible, but as speculative in distinction from practical knowledge: "God knows evil not with a practical knowledge, so as to be the author of it, but with a speculative knowledge so as to understand the sinfulness of it; or a knowledge simplicis intelligentiae, of simple intelligence, as he permits it, not positively wills it." God has a knowledge of what is conditionally possible, that is, of those events which have never come to pass, but which might have occurred under certain possible conditions. This is denominated "middle knowledge" or "conditioned knowledge."26 For example, God knows that if a certain person should live to middle life, he would become exceedingly vicious and wicked. He prevents this by an early death of the person. Biblical instances are Matt. 11:21–23 (the repentance of Tyre, Sidon, Sodom, and Gomorrah); 1 Sam. 23:5–14; Jer. 38:17–20. (supplement 3.5.4.)

The doctrine of middle knowledge has been employed to explain the imputation of Adam's first sin to his posterity. This sin is imputed because God foreknew that each one of the posterity would have committed it if he had been placed in Adam's circumstances. But upon this theory, any man might be charged with any sin whatsoever; for God knows that there is no sin which he would not commit, if strongly tempted and not kept by divine grace. Furthermore, upon this theory, sin is imputed, in the order of nature, before it is committed. Socinus denies that God has foreknowledge of man's free acts (Owen, Vindication of the Gospel, 5). Cicero (Concerning Divination) contends that prescience and free will are incompatible; and since free will is necessary to responsibility, this must be retained and foreknowledge given up. Augustine examines Cicero's views in City of God 5.9.

Wisdom is a particular aspect of divine knowledge: "God only wise" (1 Tim. 1:17). It is the intelligence of God as manifested in the adaptation of means to ends. Hebrew ḥākām and Greek sophos29 primarily signify skillful, expert. It is seen (1) in creation: "The heavens declare the glory of God" (Ps. 19:1–7); "O Lord, how manifold are your works; in wisdom have you made them all" (104:1–34); "who has laid the measures thereof?" (Job 38:5); (2) in providence: "The Lord brought the counsel of the heathen to naught" (Ps. 33:10–11); "all things work together for good" (Rom. 8:28); (3) in redemption: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!" (1 Cor. 2:7; Rom. 11:33); "the manifold (polypoikilos) wisdom of God" (Eph. 3:10). The wisdom of God is called "the foolishness of God" (1 Cor. 1:25) in order to exhibit its infinite superiority to human wisdom. The lowest degree of divine wisdom, so low as to be called folly in comparison with the highest degree, is wiser than men. Wisdom is represented as a trinitarian person in Prov. 8 and is the same as the Logos of John 1:1.

Wisdom implies a final end, to which all secondary ends are subordinate. This end is the glory of God: "To him are all things" (Rom. 11:36). Says Leighton, "As God could swear by no greater, he swears by himself; so as he could propose no greater end, he proposed himself." The glory of God means such a manifestation of divine perfections as leads creatures to worship and adore. Adoration is the highest act of a creature, and the revealed excellence of the Creator is the object that elicits it. The essential glory of God, that is, his glory as it exists per se, is not intended in this definition. This is the same, whether there be a creation or not, whether there be worship or not.

The happiness of the creature cannot be the final end of God's action. There would be no wisdom in this case, because the superior would be subordinated to the inferior. This would be folly, not wisdom. It would be a maladaptation of means to ends. The end would be made the means, and the means the end. The infinite would exist for the finite. Moreover, happiness from its very nature cannot be an ultimate end because to seek it is to fail of getting it: "He that finds his life shall lose it." To seek holiness as an ultimate end is to attain it. To seek holiness results in happiness, but not vice versa. Happiness is the effect, and holiness is the cause. Hence the command is "be holy"—not "be happy." Another proof that happiness is not an ultimate end like holiness is the fact that there are many kinds of happiness, but only one kind of holiness. Happiness depends upon the attainment of an object that is different from itself; and the objects are various: such as wealth, pleasure, fame in the lower eudemonism; and knowledge, culture, and virtue in the higher. But holiness does not depend upon securing an object different from itself. A man is happy only when he has obtained wealth or fame or culture or something that is other than happiness itself. But a man is holy, not by obtaining wealth, fame, culture, or something other than holiness, but by obtaining holiness itself. Consequently, holiness can be an ultimate end, but happiness cannot be. Yet, the moral perfection of the creature cannot be regarded as the final end of God's action, though this is a higher view than the preceding. The creature in any aspect cannot be regarded as the last end, any more than the first cause of all things. The finite will cannot be an ultimate end for the infinite will. The creature must say, "Not my will, but yours be done." Similarly, a finite nature or being cannot be an ultimate end for the infinite being. (supplement 3.5.5.)

Omnipotence

The power of God is the divine essence energizing and producing outward effects. It is divine activity ad extra. The immanent activity of the essence ad intra, as seen in the trinal distinctions and their intercommunion, does not come under the category of divine power. For this is necessary and constitutional activity. It is not optional with God to be triune. Eternal generation and spiration are not, like creation, providence, and redemption, acts of power in the sense that if God so please they need not be performed. Divine power is optional in its exercise. God need not have created anything. And after creation, he may annihilate. Only when he has bound himself by promise, as in the instance of faith in Christ, does his action cease to be optional. It cannot be said that God may keep his promises as he pleases.

Divine power is omnipotence: "Our God is in the heavens; he has done whatsoever he has pleased" (Ps. 115:3); "holy Lord God Almighty" (Rev. 4:8); "I am the almighty God" (Gen. 17:1). Omnipotence is called the "word" or "command" of God: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made. He commanded and it stood fast" (Ps. 33:6). This denotes the greatness of the power. Creation requires only God's fiat. Divine power is not to be measured merely by what God has actually effected. Omnipotence is manifested in the works of the actual creation, but it is not exhausted by them. God could create more than he has, if he pleased. He can do more than he has done, should it be his will. He could have raised up children to Abraham from the stones in the bed of Jordan; he could have sent in aid of the suffering Redeemer twelve legions of angels.

Divine power is limited only by the absurd and self-contradictory. God can do anything that does not imply a logical impossibility. A logical impossibility means that the predicate is contradictory to the subject; for example, a material spirit, a corporeal deity, a sensitive stone, an irrational man, a body without parts or extension, a square triangle. These are not objects of power, and therefore it is really no limitation of divine omnipotence to say that it cannot create them. They involve the absurdity that a thing can be and not be at the same time. A logical impossibility is, in truth, a nonentity; and to say that God cannot create a nonentity is not a limitation or denial of power. For power is the ability to create entity.

Again, God cannot do anything inconsistent with the perfection of divine nature. Under this category fall the instances mentioned in Heb. 6:18 ("it is impossible for God to lie"); 2 Tim. 2:13 ("he cannot deny himself"); and James 1:13 ("God cannot be tempted"). God cannot sin (a) because sin is imperfection, and it is contradictory to say that a necessarily perfect being may be imperfect; and (b) because he cannot be tempted to sin, and sinning without temptation or motive to sin is impossible. God cannot be tempted because temptation implies a desire for some good that is supposed to be greater than what is already possessed. But God cannot see anything more desirable than what he already has; and his understanding is infallible, so that he cannot mistake an apparent for a real good. All such cases, when analyzed, will be found to imply something contradictory to the idea and definition of God. If it could be supposed that God is capable to be tempted and to sin, it would prove that he is not infinite. God is not able to die, to see corruption (Acts 2:27), to become nonexistent. This would be finite weakness, not almighty power. Says Augustine (On the Creed 1.1), "God is omnipotent, and yet he cannot die, he cannot lie, he cannot deny himself. How is he omnipotent then? He is omnipotent for the very reason that he cannot do these things. For if he could die, he would not be omnipotent." Again he remarks (City of God 5.10) that "the power of God is not diminished when it is said that he cannot die, and cannot sin; for if he could do these things, his power would be less. A being is rightly called omnipotent from doing what he wills and not from suffering what he does not will." (supplement 3.5.6.)

A question arose among the Schoolmen in regard to divine omnipotence, and some of them asserted the absolute omnipotence of God in the sense that he could do whatever could be conceived of, either logically or illogically, whether good or evil, whether self-contradictory or not. They separated the natural from the moral attributes and asserted the possibility of a conflict between them. Their view of God implied that his natural attributes are more central and ultimate than his moral and ethical attributes, that might in the deity is more fundamental and absolute than right. But the moral attributes are as central and controlling in God as the natural, and it is impossible to conceive that in his most perfect being bare power can be divorced from wisdom and holiness and trample them under (Shedd, History of Doctrine 2.301–4).

The manifestations of divine power are seen (1) in creation: the peculiar characteristic of this exertion of power is that it originates ex nihilo. The miraculous is the same kind of exercise of omnipotence. The miracle is creative from nothing: "God calls those things which be not, as though they were" (Rom. 4:17; Isa. 44:24; Gen. 1:1). (2) In providence, by which what has been created is preserved, evolved, and controlled: "Upholding all things by the word of his power" (Heb. 1:3). The omnipotence of God exerted in the act of creation is denominated potentia absoluta. In this instance, there is no use made of anything that is in existence. It is the operation of the first cause alone. Divine omnipotence exerted in providence is called potentia ordinata. In this instance, there is use made of existing things. God in providence employs the constitution and laws of nature which he created for this very purpose. The first cause uses second causes previously originated ex nihilo. God causes the warmth of the atmosphere by the rays of the sun, and not by an exertion of absolute omnipotence. All evolution belongs to the province of God's potentia ordinata. (3) In redemption: "Christ is the power of God" (1 Cor. 1:24); the gospel is "the power of God" (Rom. 1:16); "Messiah is the arm of the Lord" (Isa. 53:1); Messiah is "the man of your right hand" (Ps. 80:17).

Holiness (Including Justice)

The holiness of God is the perfect rectitude of his will. The divine will is in absolute harmony with divine nature: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts" (Isa. 6:3; 57:15; Exod. 15:11; Ps. 89:35; 145:17; Amos 4:2; Rev. 4:8; 15:4). God's word is holy (Rom. 1:2). His promise is holy (Ps. 105:42). His Sabbath is holy (Isa. 58:13). His people are holy (62:12). His residence is holy (57:15). His angels are holy (Rev. 14:10).

Holiness in God cannot be defined in the same terms in which holiness in man or angel is defined, namely, as conformity to the moral law. The moral law supposes a superior being whose love and service are obligatory upon the inferior. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself" is no law for God. The moral law is the rule of conduct only for finite beings, who are subjects of divine government. The words you shall and you shall not are inapplicable to the infinite one. Holiness in God must, consequently, be defined as conformity to his own perfect nature. The only rule for divine will is divine reason; and divine reason prescribes everything that it is befitting an infinite being to do. God is not under law or above law—he is law. He is righteous by nature and of necessity. The trisagion teaches this truth. God is the source and author of law for all other beings.

Divine holiness is expressed (1) by law given to man and (2) by feelings in divine nature.

God's holiness is manifested (a) in the moral law; (b) in physical laws which appear in the course and constitution of nature, secure happiness to virtue, and connect misery with vice; (c) in mental laws: peace of conscience, upon obedience, is the most exquisite enjoyment; remorse of conscience, upon disobedience, is the most exquisite torture; (d) in positive laws: these spring not from the constitution of nature or of the human mind but are enactments by the arbitrary will of God. Such are the law of the Sabbath and the levitical law.

The moral law is the most important and clearest of the expressions of divine holiness. It is drawn out analytically in the Ten Commandments. These contain two divisions or tables, relating to man's duty to God, primarily, and to his fellowman, secondarily. The Sermon on the Mount is a revised edition of the Decalogue and constitutes the legal basis of the new covenant, as the Decalogue did of the old. Christ in the sermon interprets and spiritualizes the Ten Commandments. This progress in the revelation of the moral law explains the temporary allowance under the old economy of some evils that were prohibited and abolished under the new, such as slavery and polygamy. These were tolerated among the chosen people "because of the hardness of their hearts" (Matt. 19:8), that is, because the existing condition and circumstances of the people made their immediate abolition impossible. Toleration is not approval, but the very contrary. It implies that the thing endured is intrinsically wrong. No one tolerates what is intrinsically right. Slavery and polygamy were not legalized and sanctioned by the Decalogue, though they were permitted temporarily under the theocracy.

Holiness is expressed in divine feelings respecting right and wrong. The elder theologians describe it as an attribute of will in this reference. Turretin (3.14.1) says: "To the will of God pertain those attributes (virtues) which denote his perfection in disposition and action." They are comprised under justice and benevolence. God as delighting in purity is holy: "The righteous Lord loves righteousness" (Ps. 11:7); "the Lord loves righteousness" (35:5; 37:28; 99:4). God as abhorring evil is holy: "O do not this abominable thing which I hate" (Jer. 44:4; Heb. 1:13).

Holiness occupies a place second to none among the communicable attributes. Says Charnock:

If any, this attribute has an excellency above the other perfections of God. There are some attributes of God which we prefer because of our interest in them and the relation they bear to us: as we esteem his goodness before his power, and his mercy whereby he relieves us, before his justice whereby he punishes us; so there are some that God delights to honor because of their excellency. Where do you find any other attribute trebled in the praise of it? "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts."

Holiness is the quality which man is most particularly commanded to possess: "You shall be holy, for I am holy" (Lev. 19:2; cf. 1 Pet. 1:14–16). It is the attribute which God singles out to swear by: "Once have I sworn by my holiness, that I will not lie to David" (Ps. 89:35).

Holiness is a general term denoting that quality in God whereby he is right (rectus) in himself and in all his actions. This is implied in Hebrew ṣaddîq, which means straight, and Greek dikaios, which means exactly right (aequus). But right is determined in its manifestation by the character of the person toward whom it is manifested. What would be right toward an obedient creature would be wrong toward a disobedient one. This brings to view the attribute of justice as a mode of holiness. Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 7, after describing God as "most holy," adds "most just."

Justice is that phase of God's holiness which is seen in his treatment of the obedient and the disobedient subjects of his government. It is that attribute whereby he gives to everyone what is due him. The notion of debt or obligation necessarily enters into that of justice. Sin is indebtedness to law: "Forgive us our debts" (Matt. 6:12). Cicero (On Ends 5.23) defines justice as "that sentiment assigning to each one his due." The element of indebtedness, together with that of retribution and penalty, is eliminated from the attribute in the Socinian soteriology. Justice, in this theory, is employed in the loose and general sense of moral excellence. "There is," says Socinus (Theological Lectures, chap. 16), "no such justice in God as requires absolutely and inexorably that sin be punished. There is, indeed, a perpetual and constant justice in God, but this is nothing but his moral equity and rectitude, by virtue of which there is no depravity or iniquity in any of his works."

The attribute of justice is abundantly taught in Scripture: "All his ways are judgment, a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he" (Deut. 32:4); "I am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children" (Exod. 20:5); "the Lord God will by no means clear the guilty" (34:7; Job 8:3; 34:12; Ps. 145:17; Dan. 9:14; Matt. 10:28; Rom. 2:6–10).

Rectoral justice is God's rectitude as a ruler over both the good and the evil. It relates to legislation or the imposition of law. God, both in rewarding and punishing, lays down a just law. The reward and the penalty are exactly suited to the actions: "For he will not lay upon man more than right" (Job 34:23); "justice and judgment are the habitation of your throne" (Ps. 89:14). Distributive justice is God's rectitude in the execution of law both in reference to the good and the evil. It relates to the distribution of rewards and punishments: God "will render to every man according to his deeds" (Rom. 2:6); "the Father without respect of persons judges according to every man's work" (1 Pet. 1:17); "say to the righteous that it shall be well with him. Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him" (Isa. 3:10–11). Distributive justice is twofold: (a) remunerative justice and (b) retributive justice.

Remunerative justice is the distribution of rewards both to men and angels: "Verily there is a reward for the righteous" (Ps. 58:11); "you have kept with your servant David my father, that which you have promised him" (Deut. 7:9, 12–13; 2 Chron. 6:15); you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things" (Matt. 25:21, 34; Mic. 7:20; Rom. 2:7; Heb. 11:26; Jude 6).

Remunerative justice is the expression of divine love (agapē), as retributive justice is of divine wrath (orgē). It proceeds upon the ground of relative merit only. The creature cannot establish an absolute merit before the Creator. This is taught by our Lord in Luke 17:10: "When you shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants"; by St. Paul in 1 Cor. 4:7: "What have you that you did not receive; why do you glory as if you had not received it?"; and by God to Job in Job 41:11: "Who has prevented me that I should repay him? Whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine." Accordingly, Westminster Confession 7.1 affirms that "the distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which he has been pleased to express by way of covenant."

Absolute merit, as distinguished from relative merit, supposes an independent relation and agency between two parties, like that between man and man. One man does not create and uphold another man, while the one is serving and obeying the other. But this is the state of the case, when man serves and obeys God. Creation, preservation, and redemption all preclude that independent agency by which one party brings another under obligations to him and establishes an absolute merit or indebtedness. Consequently, the exercise of remunerative justice by God is pactional and gracious. It results from a previous covenant upon his part. The reward of a creature's obedience is in consequence of a divine promise. No primary and original obligation rests upon the Creator to recompense for services rendered by a creature whom he has made from nothing and continually upholds in existence. A soul that is created holy cannot demand from its maker at the instant of creation a reward for being holy upon the ground of an absolute indebtedness on the part of its maker. Because God has originated the powers and capacities of a creature from nothing, he is entitled to all the agency of these faculties without paying for it; as the artificer of a watch is entitled to all the motion of the watch, without coming under obligation to the watch. Even this comparison is inadequate; for the maker of the watch did not create the materials out of which it is made. But God creates the very substance itself out of which man's faculties of mind and body are made. All that strict justice would require on the part of God, in case a creature should continue in the holiness in which he is created, is that he should not cause him to suffer. That he should go further than this and positively reward him for being and continuing holy is gracious treatment. If the creature's holiness were self-originated and self-sustained, instead of concreated and sustained by God, then the merit would be absolute, and God would owe the reward by an original and uncovenanted obligation. Not only are the being and faculties by which the obedience is rendered created and upheld by God, but the disposition rightly to employ them is due to the Holy Spirit. David expresses this truth in 1 Chron. 29:14: "But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? For all things come of you, and of your own have we given you."

But though no primary and original obligation rests upon the Creator to reward a creature made from nothing and continually upheld and helped in the service which he renders, yet he can constitute a secondary and relative obligation. He can promise to reward the creature's service; and having bound himself to reward obedience, his own word establishes a species of claim. Obedient man or angel may plead the divine promise as the ground of reward. God desires to be reminded of his promise and is honored when the creature trusts in it implicitly. And "if we believe not, yet he abides faithful: he cannot deny himself" (2 Tim. 2:13). In the words of Witsius (Covenants 1.1.4), "God by his promise has made himself a debtor to men. Or, to speak in a manner more becoming God, he was pleased to make his performance of his promise a debt due to himself. To this purpose, Augustine (Sermon 16) speaks well: 'God became our debtor, not by receiving anything, but by promising what he pleased. For it was of his own bounty that he vouchsafed to make himself a debtor.' " The scriptural representations agree with this. In Rom. 6:23 the recompense of obedience is denominated a "gift" (charisma), while that of disobedience is called "wages" (opsōnia). Sin is the solitary action of the will unassisted by grace; but holiness is the action of the will wrought upon by God. Again, the reward of obedience is denominated an "inheritance": "To give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified" (Acts 20:32); "we have obtained an inheritance" (Eph. 1:11, 14); "the Father has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light" (Col. 1:2). But an inheritance is not the payment of a debt in the strict sense of the word. It results from the parental and filial relations and not from those of creditor and debtor. Yet, as an inheritance may be called the reward of filial obedience, so the blessedness of the future state may be and is called the reward of Christian obedience here upon earth.

Since God and redeemed man are two distinct agents, there is a personal quality in man's obedience whereby it is truly rewardable. When God rewards a believer for his severe struggle with a bosom-sin, he does not reward God's struggle, but man's. Though the struggle was started, helped, and made successful by the Holy Spirit, yet it was, after all, a human, not a divine conflict with sin. This is rewardable, and when God rewards it, he does not reward himself but his creature. Paul teaches this in saying, "I live." There is a personal and human quality in the holiness and the obedience. But that this may not be so exaggerated as to imply that the personal and the human has been independent and self-sustaining in the holiness and obedience and that God has thus been brought under the absolute obligation of a debtor to a creditor, he adds, "Yet not I, but Christ which lives in me." That the reward of obedience is gracious is still more true in the case of redeemed man. Here, there has been positive disobedience and ill desert. The gospel promise of reward, in this case, is made not only to a creature, but to a sinful creature.

The rewards for obedience are (1) natural: God so constitutes man and nature that virtue has happy consequences: (a) peace of conscience: "The answer of a good conscience" (1 Pet. 3:21) and (b) worldly prosperity: "Godliness has the promise of the life that now is" (1 Tim. 4:8); and (2) positive: these are the rewards bestowed in the future life, which far exceed the merely natural operations of conscience and earthly good. They consist principally in a special manifestation of divine love and approbation: "In your presence is fullness of joy" (Ps. 16:11; John 14:23; Matt. 25:34–40); "I shall be satisfied when I awake in your likeness" (Ps. 17:15).

Retributive justice (sometimes denominated punitive, vindicative, vindictive, avenging, or revenging; Westminster Larger Catechism 77) is that part of distributive justice which relates to the infliction of penalty. It is the expression of divine orgē. In a sinless world, there would be no place for its exercise, and it would be comparatively an unimportant aspect of the general attribute of justice. But in a sinful world, retribution must hold a prominent place; and hence in the Christian religion, which is a religion for a fallen race of beings, retributive justice comes continually into view. Hence when justice is spoken of without any qualifying word to show that some other aspect of the attribute is meant, punitive justice is intended. Passages of Scripture that present it are the following: "the judgment of God is that they which do such things are worthy of death" (Rom. 1:32); "who will visit tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that does evil" (2:8); "the Lord Jesus shall be revealed in flaming fire, taking vengeance (ekdikēsin) on them that know not God" (2 Thess. 1:8); "vengeance (dikē) suffers not to live" (Acts 28:4); "vengeance (ekdikēsis) is mine, I will repay, says the Lord" (Rom. 12:19).

Retributive justice is expressed in the commandment that is given with a penalty attached to it: "You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge; in the day that you eat, you shall surely die" (Gen. 2:17); "cursed is everyone that continues not in all things written in the law to do them" (Gal. 3:10); "the soul that sins, it shall die" (Ezek. 18:4; Deut. 27:26); "the wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23). The moral law expresses the mind and intention of the lawgiver. Retributive justice is also expressed in the actual infliction of the penalty threatened. Both are requisite. The former without the latter would evince want of veracity, want of power, or vacillation.

There is an important difference between remunerative and retributive merit or between the merit of holiness and the demerit of sin. While the former is relative, the latter is absolute. If a disobedient creature were disposed to do so, he could demand the recompense due to his transgression of the moral law, as something that is strictly due to him. Divine justice is originally and necessarily obliged to requite disobedience, but not to reward obedience. God does not covenant to punish sin, as he does to recompense holiness. The requital in the case of transgression is not pactional and by promise, but necessary. The reason of this is that sin has the creature for its ultimate and sole efficient. Unlike holiness, sin does not run back to God as its author. When obedience takes place, the infinite will works in the finite will, both to will and to do. But when disobedience takes place, the finite will works alone. In the act of sin, man is an original and unassisted, though not unsupported author. He performs an act that is analogous to the divine act of creation ex nihilo. It is true that the faculties of the creature by which sin is committed are created and upheld by the Creator. God sustains the being of man or angel in and during the very acting of sin. But the wrong agency is the creature's alone. God does not cooperate in the act of transgression, and hence its demerit is absolute and not relative.

At this point we notice the doctrine of divine concursus. A distinction has been made between an action and the viciousness of an action. The first is called the "material" part of the action, and the latter the "formal" part. God, it is said, concurs in the material, but not in the formal part of sin: "Every action is good by a physical goodness, as it is an act of the mind or hand, which have a natural goodness by creation; but every action is not morally good: the physical goodness of the action depends on God, the moral evil on the creature" (Charnock, On Holiness, 499). The objection to this distinction between a material and a formal part of sin is that the material part of it is not sinful. Sin is a compound of guilt and innocence, according to this analysis and definition. But sin is simple, not compound in its nature. It is evil and only evil. To define it as a composition of that which is good in itself with that which is evil is illogical. The following illustration from Charnock (On Holiness, 500) illustrates this:

Two judges are in joint commission for the trial of a malefactor, and both upon proof of his guilt condemn him. This action in both, considered as an action, is good; for it is adjudging a man to death whose crime deserves such a punishment. But this same act, which is but one joint act of both, may be morally good in one judge and morally evil in the other: morally good in him that condemns him out of an unbiased consideration of the demerit of the crime; and morally evil in the other who has not respect to this consideration, but is moved by some private animosity against the prisoner and a desire of revenge for some private injury he has received from him. The act in itself is the same materially in both; but in one it is an act of justice and in the other an act of murder, as it respects the principle and motive of it in the two judges.

Upon examining this case, it will be found that what is called the formal part of sin is in reality the essence of it; and what is called the material part of sin is no part of it at all. The sin in the instance of the sinful judge, as Charnock says, is in the principle and motive of his act of passing sentence. This principle and motive is the selfish disposition of the man, which is simply the inclination or self-determination of his will. This inclination, and this alone, is the viciousness and guilt in the case. Whether the judge actually passed the sentence verbally or not would make no difference with the fact of his selfishness and sin in the sight of God. This internal action of the will, seen in the self-moving inclination and disposition, is the wickedness of the man. To add to it the action of the physical faculty of the tongue in speaking the sentence is to add nothing that essentially belongs to the idea and definition of sin. To distinguish, therefore, this bodily and physical part of man's agency, in which God confessedly concurs, as evidence that God concurs in the act of sin itself is not to the purpose. The real question is whether God concurs and cooperates in that internal action of the will which is the real malignity and wickedness in the case supposed. "Did God work in the revengeful judge to will?" is the question. Did he concur in his malignant disposition? The answer to this question must be in the negative.

Retributive justice is an attribute whose exercise is necessary in case there be transgression of the moral law. God cannot lay down a law, affix a penalty, and threaten its infliction and proceed no further in case of disobedience. Divine veracity forbids this. He has solemnly declared that "he will by no means clear the guilty" (Exod. 34:7). If the penalty is not inflicted, it is not "impossible for God to lie" (Heb. 6:18); and it is untrue that "the Lord has sworn and will not repent" (Ps. 110:4). Hence, in every instance of transgression, the penalty of law must be inflicted either personally or vicariously, either upon the transgressor or upon his substitute. The remission of penalty under the divine administration is not absolute, but relative. It may be omitted in respect to the real criminal, but, if so, it must be inflicted upon someone in his place.

At this point, the possibility of the vicarious satisfaction of retributive justice requires a brief notice. The full discussion of the topic belongs to the doctrine of atonement (see p. 732). The exercise of justice, while necessary in respect to sin, is free and sovereign in respect to the sinner. Justice necessarily demands that sin be punished, but not necessarily in the person of the sinner. Justice may allow the substitution of one person for another, provided that in the substitution no injustice is done to the rights of any of the parties interested. This principle was expressed by the Schoolmen in the statement, "Impersonally, the penalty for every sin is necessarily inflicted, but not personally on every sinner." In the words of Turretin (3.19.4), "A twofold law arises concerning the infliction of penalty. The one is necessary and indispensable with respect to sin itself, but the other is free and positive with respect to the sinner."47

This agrees with the intuitive convictions of man:

The profound and awful idea of substitution meets us in the religion of the early Romans. When the gods of the community were angry and nobody could be laid hold of as definitely guilty, they might be appeased by one who voluntarily gave himself up (devovere se). Noxious chasms in the ground were closed, and battles half lost were converted into victories, when a brave citizen threw himself as an expiatory offering into the abyss or upon the foe.

—Mommsen, Rome 1.12

Mommsen adds that the compulsory substitution of the innocent for the guilty, human sacrifice by force, was not allowed in the early Roman commonwealth. There was, moreover, no formal provision for this substitution in the legislation of the Romans. This substitution was the action of popular impulse and of the voluntary decision of the individual. Some assert that the substitution of penalty is impossible and cite in proof the following passages: "In the day you eat thereof, you shall surely die" (Gen. 2:17); and "the soul that sins it shall die" (Ezek. 18:4, 20). In these passages, the verb, not the pronoun, is the emphatic word. They teach the same truth with Rom. 6:23: "The wages of sin is death." If in these texts the emphasis is to be laid upon the pronouns it and you, so as to make the divine declaration to be that every individual who transgresses shall himself suffer the penalty of transgression and that no other person shall suffer it vicariously for him, then the salvation of a sinner is impossible. For nothing could occur but the execution of penalty upon the actual transgressor. No exercise of mercy could take place in the universe of God. Such an interpretation admits no alternative, and every soul that sinned would die. But that this cannot be the explanation intended to be put upon these threatenings is proved by the fact that not every soul that has sinned does suffer the penalty threatened. The implied meaning of these texts, therefore, is that "in the day you eat thereof, you or your Redeemer shall die; the soul that sins, it or its Surety shall die." Sin must be punished personally or else vicariously. Says Edwards (God's Sovereignty):

It may be objected that God said, If you eat, you shall die; as though the same person that sinned must suffer; and, therefore, Why does not God's truth oblige him to that? I answer that the word then was not intended to be restrained to him that in his own person sinned. Adam probably understood that his posterity were included, whether they sinned in their own person or not. If they sinned in Adam, their surety, those words, "If you eat," meant, "If you eat in yourself or in your surety." And therefore, the latter words, "You shall die," do also fairly allow such a construction as, "You shall die, in yourself, or in your surety."

The demand of retributive justice is that sin be punished to the full measure and degree announced in the law: "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men" (Rom. 1:8). Divine displeasure expressed in punitive justice is not aimed against the person as such and distinct from his sin. "God," says Charnock (On Holiness, 473), "is not displeased with the nature of man as man, for that was derived from him; but with the nature of man as sinful, which is derived from the sinner himself. God hates only the sin, not the sinner; he desires only the destruction of the one, not the misery of the other." God loves the person as such. The immortal nature of man is precious in his sight. Divine justice has no angry spite against anyone's person. Consequently, if its claims can be satisfied by a suffering endured by another person, properly qualified, there is no feeling of animosity against the sinner's person to prevent the substitution. It is true that justice is not obliged to accept a substitute. It can insist, if it pleases, upon the infliction of the penalty upon the actual criminal. But neither is it obliged to refuse a substitute. Justice is not tied up by anything in its own nature to the infliction of the law's penalty upon the identical person of the sinner to the exclusion of any other person whatsoever. (supplement 3.5.7.)

In the sphere of human life, a refusal to admit a substitution of one person for another, in the only case in which substitution is allowable, namely, in commercial law, would look like malice and would require explanation. Should a creditor refuse to receive the complete vicarious payment of a debt from a friend of the debtor (though this would involve no difficulty for the debtor, who could of course take his friend's money and pay it in person, yet), it would evince a malignant and spiteful feeling of the creditor toward the person of the debtor. It would look as if, besides obtaining the full satisfaction of his claims he desired to injure him, or in some way to vex and worry him. But in the divine sphere, the suspicion of personal animosity, in case of a refusal to permit a vicarious satisfaction of justice, could not arise because of the absolute perfection of God: "As for God, his way is perfect" (Ps. 18:30). And had the Supreme Judge permitted no substitute for man the guilty, it would be necessary to assume that there were good reasons for the procedure. The reasons might be unknown and perhaps unknowable. But the reason certainly could not be that the eternal judge feels hatred toward the body and soul of a man, as that particular man. There is no malignant feeling in God toward the person of even the most wicked and devilish transgressor. God is not a respecter of persons in any sense. He has no prejudice for or grudge against anyone of his creatures; and if the complete satisfaction of justice can be secured by a vicarious endurance of penalty, he has no such ill will toward the sinner's person, in distinction from his sin, as would prevent him from accepting it, in case there were no reasons in his own mind why he should not. On the contrary, he loves the person, the immortal spirit, of the transgressor, as he has abundantly evinced in the gospel method of mercy. It is, however, to be carefully noticed in case there be substitution of penalty (1) that the substituted penalty must be a strict and full equivalent; justice is inexorable upon this point; here, the necessary nature of the attribute appears; and (2) that the person substituted be able to render complete satisfaction and be himself no debtor to law and justice.

The sovereignty and freedom of God in respect to justice, therefore, relates not to the abolition nor to the relaxation but to the substitution of punishment. It does not consist in any power to violate or waive legal claims. These must be maintained in any event. "Let justice fall from heaven" is an intuitive conviction. The exercise of the other attributes of God is regulated and conditioned by that of justice. God cannot exert omnipotence or benevolence or mercy unjustly. The question "shall not the judge of all the earth do right?" (Gen. 18:25) must be answered affirmatively. It follows, then, that the sovereignty of God in respect to retributive justice consists in his power and right to satisfy its claims in more than one way. He has a choice of methods. He may inflict the full amount of suffering due to sin either upon the sinner or upon a proper substitute. He may require the complete satisfaction of justice from the transgressor, or he may provide it for him vicariously. Divine justice may smite the guilty man, or it may smite the man who is God's "fellow" (Zech. 13:7). It is free to do either; but one or the other it must do. God is not obliged either to accept or to provide a substituted penalty, and in case he does either, it is grace and mercy toward the actual transgressor. These two particulars—of permitting substitution and providing the substitute—furnish the answer to the question "where is the mercy of God, in case justice is strictly satisfied by a vicarious person?" There is mercy in permitting another person to do for the sinner what the sinner is bound to do for himself, and still greater mercy in providing that person, and greater still in becoming that person.

The Socinian view of retributive justice denies its necessary nature. "There is no such justice in God," says Socinus, "as requires absolutely and inexorably that sin be punished and such as God himself cannot repudiate. There is indeed a perpetual and constant justice in God; but this is nothing but his moral equity and rectitude, by virtue of which there is no depravity or iniquity in any of his works" (Theological Lectures, chap. 16). This makes retributive justice to be an effect of the divine will and not an immanent and necessary attribute. Indeed, Socinus (Concerning Jesus Christ the Savior 1) expressly asserts that justice, in the popular (vulgaris) signification, as opposed to mercy, "is not a quality of God, but only an effect of his will." It would follow from this that the moral law together with its penalty is a positive statute, like the ceremonial law. And as God abrogated the latter, so he could abrogate the former by an act of arbitrary will. Accordingly, in respect to the necessity of the satisfaction of justice, Socinus remarks: "I do not believe that Christ made satisfaction for our sins to divine justice, on account of which (justice) we sinners deserve to be damned. Nor do I believe that it was necessary for him to make satisfaction."52 But if justice is an attribute at all of the Supreme Being it must be essential, like all the other attributes. It can no more be an effect of God's optional will than his omnipotence can be. An effect or product need not be at all, provided the efficient or producer so pleases.

The history of doctrine shows a difference of opinion in respect to the absolute or the relative necessity of retributive justice. The question was raised by some of the Schoolmen whether the satisfaction which Christ makes to divine justice for the sin of man is necessary per se or only because God so willed it. Schoolmen like Hales, Bonaventura, and Aquinas adopted the latter view, in opposition to Anselm's positions in his Why the God-Man? These theologians took an erroneous view of divine omnipotence, whereby this attribute is made superior to all others. "In contemplating the divine power as absolute," remarks Hales, "we conceive of a certain energy (virtus) in the deity that is abstracted from the rest of his nature and transcends all limitations; and with respect to this form, the divine power cannot have limits set to it (non est determinare)." But it is as impossible and inconceivable for divine power to act in isolation from all the other attributes, as it is for divine omniscience or for divine benevolence to do so. Benevolence cannot act without power; and neither can power, in so perfect a being as God, act without wisdom or justice. This theory ultimately resolves the deity into mere blind force.

Still, the motive, in some instances, was a good one. There was fear of limiting divine omnipotence. Twisse, the moderator of the Westminster Assembly, affirmed only the relative necessity of retributive justice in opposition to the powerful reasoning of Owen, who maintained its absolute nature. Magee (Atonement 1.191) adopts relative necessity. Respecting such instances, Turretin (3.19.9) remarks that although both parties are agreed as against the tenets and positions of Socinus, yet the doctrine of the absolute necessity of justice is much the most consonant with the nature of God and the language of Scripture and more efficacious for the refutation of Socinianism (ad haeresim illam pestilentissimam jugulandam). The Remonstrants asserted the relative necessity of retributive justice. In their Apologia they say that "to affirm that the avenging justice of God is so essential to his nature, that by virtue of it God is obliged and necessitated to punish sin, is very absurd and very unworthy of God" (see Witsius, Apostles' Creed, diss. 9).

No one of the divine attributes is supported by more or stronger evidences than retributive justice:

1. The testimony from Scripture is abundant. To the passages already cited may be added a great number of texts: "God will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children" (Exod. 34:7); "upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest" (Ps. 11:6); "it is better for you to enter into life halt or maimed than to be cast into hellfire" (Matt. 18:8); "suffering the vengeance of eternal fire" (Jude 7); "yea, I say unto you, fear him who has power to cast into hell" (Luke 12:5); "seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you" (2 Thess. 1:6); "a just recompense of reward" (Heb. 2:2).

2. The testimony from the human conscience and the consent of all nations alluded to in Rom. 2:14–15: "Their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts meanwhile accusing."

3. Sacrifice among pagan nations and the Jewish system of sacrifices teach retributive justice. The first is universal and implies that divine justice requires satisfaction by expiatory suffering. The second was an arrangement for eliciting the consciousness of guilt and preannouncing its pacification through the suffering Messiah: "In those sacrifices there is a remembrance of sins every year" (Heb. 10:3).

4. The remarkable provision made in the gospel for the vicarious satisfaction of retributive justice evinces the reality and importance of the attribute.

Retributive justice is retrospective in its primary aim. It looks back at what has been done in the past. Its first object is requital. A man is hung for murder, principally and before all other reasons, because he has transgressed the law forbidding murder. He is not punished primarily from a prospective aim, such as his own moral improvement or for the purpose of preventing him from committing another murder or for the purpose of deterring others from committing murder. It is true that moral improvement may be the consequence of the infliction of the penalty. But the consequence must not be confounded with the purpose: cum hoc, non ergo propter hoc. The criminal may come to see and confess that his crime deserves the punishment and in genuine unselfish penitence may take sides with the law and go into eternity relying upon that great atonement of Christ which satisfies retributive justice for his sin; but even this greatest benefit of all is not what is aimed at in man's punishment of the crime of murder. For even if there should be no such personal benefit as this attending the infliction of human penalty, the one sufficient reason for inflicting it still holds good, namely, the fact that the law has been violated and demands the punishment of the offender for this reason simply. Only upon this view of justice is the true dignity of man maintained. When he is punished because, as a rational and free being, he has responsibly violated the law, there is a recognition of him as a person endowed with free will. But if he is seized and made to suffer for the benefit of others, he is treated like a chattel or a thing that may be put to use. Says Kant (Practical Reason, 151):

The nature of ill desert and punishableness is always involved in the idea of voluntary transgression; and the idea of punishment excludes that of happiness in all its forms. For although he who inflicts penalty may, it is true, also have a benevolent purpose to produce by the punishment a beneficial effect upon the criminal, yet the punishment itself must be justified first of all as pure and simple requital and retribution, that is, as a kind of suffering that is demanded by the law, without any reference to its prospective beneficial consequences; so that even if no moral improvement and no personal advantage should accrue to the person from the punishment, he must acknowledge that righteousness has been done to him, and that his experience is exactly conformed to his conduct. In every punishment, as such, justice is the very first thing and constitutes the essence of it. A benevolent purpose, it is true, may be conjoined with punishment; but the criminal cannot claim this as his due, and he has no right to reckon upon it. All that he deserves is punishment; and this is all that he can expect from the law which he has violated.

The same view is taken of the retrospective aim of justice by Müller in his lucid discrimination between chastisement and punishment (Doctrine of Sin 1.244ff.). The opposite view—that punishment is prospective in its primary purpose and aims only at reformation—was maintained by the Greek sophists. Protagoras is represented by Plato as saying that "no one punishes the evildoer under the notion or for the reason that he has done wrong; only the unreasonable fury of a tyrant acts in that way" (Protagoras 324). Plato (Laws 10.904–5) holds that punishment is retributive. Cicero (On the Laws 1.14) contends that virtue has regard to justice, not to utility. Grotius defines penalty as "the evil of suffering inflicted on account of the evil of doing." Coke, Bacon, Selden, and Blackstone explain punishment by crime not by expediency. Kant, Herbert, Stahl, Hartenstein, Rothe, and Woolsey (Political Science 2.8) define punishment as requital. Beccaria and Bentham found punishment on utility and expedience ("Beccaria" in Penny Cyclopaedia). Paley notices the difference between human punishment and divine. In the former, there is a combination of the retributive with the protective and reformatory, but not in the latter (Moral Philosophy 6.9). (supplement 3.5.8.)

If the good of the public is the chief end of punishment, the criminal might be made to suffer more than his crime deserves. If he can be used like a thing, for the benefit of others, there is no limit to the degree in which he may be used. His personal desert and responsibility being left out of view, he may be made to suffer as much or as little as the public welfare prescribes. It was this theory of penalty that led to the multiplication of capital crimes. The prevention of forgery, it was claimed in England, required that the forger should be executed; and upon the principle that punishment is for the public protection and not for exact justice and strict retribution the forger was hanged. But a merely civil crime against property and not against human life does not merit the death penalty. Upon this theory, the number of capital offenses became very numerous, and the criminal code very bloody. So that, in the long run, nothing is kinder than exact justice. It prevents extremes in either direction: either that of indulgence or that of cruelty (Shedd, Endless Punishment, 118–40).

Commutative justice implies an exchange of values between two parties wherein each gives and receives in return. This species has no place in reference to God; for "who has first given to him, and it shall be recompensed to him again?" (Rom. 11:35).

Public or general justice is a distinction invented by Grotius for the purpose of meeting certain Socinian objections to the Anselmic doctrine of strict satisfaction. It is a relaxed form of justice by virtue of which God waives a full satisfaction of legal claims and accepts a partial satisfaction in lieu thereof. Analyzed to its ultimate elements, public justice is benevolence, not justice. Justice is the exact distribution of reward or of punishment. Anything therefore that is inexact is insofar unjust. Too much or too little suffering for a crime is not pure justice. Says the younger Edwards (Against Chauncy, chap. 4), "general or public justice is an improper use of the word justice; because to practice justice in this sense is no other than to act from public spirit or from love to the community; and with respect to the universe, it is the very same with general benevolence." Grotius agreed with Socinus and both of them agreed with Duns Scotus in making punitive justice optional, not necessary. Grotius held that punishment could be waived and not inflicted, if God so decided. It is not necessary that sin be punished with such a punishment as strictly and fully corresponds with the guilt. An inferior penalty may be inflicted or even no penalty at all if God so determine. What then was the difference between Grotius and Socinus? It was this. Socinus asserted that when God decides to waive legal claims, he need not do anything to guard against the evil consequences of so doing. He can release the sinner from all punishment and let the matter drop there. Grotius, on the other hand, though agreeing with his opponent that God can dispense with penalty altogether, yet maintained that he cannot do it with safety to the universe unless he gives some expression to his abhorrence of sin. This he does by the death of Christ. When God remits penalty by this method, he guards against the abuse of his benevolence, which abuse Socinus made no provision for in his system. According to Grotius, the substituted sufferings of Christ are not a strict equivalent for the penalty due to sin, but an accepted equivalent, as when a creditor agrees to take fifty cents for a dollar in the settlement of a commercial debt.

Grotius applies the principles of commercial justice to the doctrine of Christ's atonement. He employs an illustration from the Roman commercial law, as presented in the Pandects of Justinian. Commercial justice can be satisfied by word of mouth. If a creditor calls a debt paid, it is paid; and the release is denominated acceptilatio or acquittance by word of mouth. Commercial justice has no further demands to make when the creditor has said that the debt is paid. In like manner, if God will say that the moral law is satisfied by an inferior penalty, it is satisfied; and if he should say that it is satisfied with no penalty at all, it would be satisfied. There are no claims standing against the sinner because the claims being of a positive (not a necessary nature) and being constituted by the optional will of God can be abrogated by the same almighty will. Socinus (Concerning Jesus Christ the Savior 3.1) argues "that God is our creditor. Our sins are debts which we have contracted toward him. But a creditor can by an act of will surrender his claim, without making any legal provision for so doing." This abolishes the distinction between commercial and moral indebtedness and assumes that the claims of justice and government, like those of a pecuniary creditor, have no necessary quality, but are voidable by an act of will. A pecuniary creditor can abolish his claim by a volition, but a magistrate cannot so abolish a moral claim (Shedd, History of Doctrine 2.347–48).

Goodness (Including Benevolence and Mercy)

The goodness of God is the divine essence viewed as energizing benevolently and kindly toward the creature. It is an emanent or transitive attribute issuing forth from the divine nature and aiming to promote the welfare and happiness of the universe. It is not that attribute by which God is good, but by which he does good. As good in himself, God is holy; as showing goodness to others, he is good or kind. The Septuagint renders ṭôb by chrēstos: "Good (chrēstos) are you, O Lord, and you do good" (Ps. 119:68). In Rom. 5:7 holiness is designated by dikaios and kindness by agathos: "Scarcely for a righteous (dikaios) man will one die; yet peradventure for a good (agathos) man, some would even dare to die." In Luke 18:19 the reference is to benevolence, not to holiness: "None is good (agathos), save one, that is God."

Goodness is a special attribute with varieties under it. The first of these is benevolence. This is the affection which the Creator feels toward the sentient and conscious creature, as such. Benevolence cannot be shown to insentient existence, to rocks and mountains. It grows out of the fact that the creature is his workmanship. God is interested in everything which he has made. He cannot hate any of his own handiwork. The wrath of God is not excited by anything that took its origin from him. It falls only upon something that has been added to his own work. Sin is no part of creation, but a quality introduced into creation by the creature himself.

God's benevolent love toward his creatures, considered as creatures merely, is infinitely greater than any love of a creature toward a creature. No earthly father loves his child with a benevolence equal to that which the heavenly Father feels toward his created offspring: "The highest is kind (chrēstos) unto the unthankful and to the evil" (Luke 6:35); "your Father which is in heaven makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matt. 5:45). Disobedience and ingratitude deaden and destroy the benevolent feeling of man toward man, but not that of God toward his creatures. Sinful men—as well as renewed men—are the objects of God's providential care. Even Satan and the fallen angels are treated with all the benevolence which their enmity to God will admit. God feels no malevolence toward them.

The benevolent interest which God as a Creator takes in the sentient creature, as the product of his omnipotent power, is illustrated by the following from Aristotle:

The benefactor loves him whom he has benefited more than he who has been benefited loves the benefactor. The workman loves his own work more than the work loves the workman. All men feel greater love for what they have acquired with labor; as those who have earned their money love it more than those who have inherited it. Mothers are more fond of their children than fathers are, for the bringing them forth is painful. Parents have greater love for their children than children have for their parents.

—Ethics 9.7

Upon this principle, the benevolent affection of God toward his creatures is greater than that of creatures toward each other. God's compassionate love is more tender than that of an earthly father or mother: "When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up" (Ps. 27:10). Men are commanded to imitate divine benevolence as the highest form of this affection: "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you; that you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven. Be therefore perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5:44; cf. Plato, Republic 1.33; Montaigne, "Of the Affection of Fathers" in Essays 6.8).

God's benevolent interest in the sentient creature and his care for its welfare are proportioned and suited to the nature and circumstances of the creature. (a) It extends to the animals: "You open your hand and supply the desire of every living thing" (Ps. 145:16); "the young lions roar after their prey and seek their meat from God" (104:21; cf. the whole psalm); "who provides for the raven his food?" (Job 38:41); "behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, yet your heavenly Father feeds them" (Matt. 6:26); "you preserve man and beast" (Ps. 36:6). (b) It extends to man: "He left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven" (Acts 14:17). (c) It extends to sinful man: "He makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good" (Matt. 5:45); "he suffered all nations to walk in their own ways, nevertheless, filling their hearts with food and gladness" (Acts 14:17); "but you are a God slow to anger and of great kindness and forsook them not" (Neh. 9:17).

Divine benevolence varies in its degrees in accordance with the capacity of the object to receive it. The brute experiences all of it that he is capable of. As he is physical only, he can receive from his Creator only physical good. Man is both physical and mental and receives both physical and mental good. Sinful man is deprived of a full manifestation of divine benevolence only by reason of his sin. God manifests to the sinner all the benevolence that he is qualified to receive. He sends him physical and temporal good—rain from heaven and fruitful seasons—filling his heart with food and gladness, but he cannot bestow upon a sinful and hostile man his approving love and fill him with heavenly peace and joy. Divine benevolence, therefore, is infinite. It is not limited in its manifestation by anything in itself, but only by the capacity and characteristics of the creature.

The chief objections to the doctrine of divine benevolence are the following: (1) the permission of sin, (2) the existence of suffering here upon earth, and (3) the slow progress of redemption. Respecting the first, it is to be observed that the permission of sin has cost God more than it has man. No sacrifice and suffering on account of sin has been undergone by any man that is equal to that which has been endured by incarnate God. This shows that God is not acting selfishly in permitting sin. At the very time that he permits it, he knows that it will result in an infinite sacrifice on his part. Respecting the second, it is to be said that the suffering of both animals and man is often greatly exaggerated. The "struggle for existence" in the animal world is not so great as Darwin and others represent. The majority, certainly, survive. If they did not, the species would diminish and gradually become extinct. But the fact is that generally they are steadily increasing. And in the human world, there is no struggle at all for existence. Men do not feed upon one another. The amount of enjoyment in both the animal and the human world is greater than the amount of suffering: "The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord" (Ps. 35:5). "After all, it is a happy world," said Paley (Natural Theology, 26). Says King (Foreknowledge, 2):

It is manifest that though good be much mixed with evil in this life, yet there is much more good than evil in nature, and every animal provides for its own preservation by instinct or reason, which it would never do, if it did not think or feel its life, with all the evils annexed, to be much preferable to nonexistence. This is a proof of the wisdom, goodness, and power of God, who could thus temper a world infested with so many miseries, that nothing should continue in it which was not in some measure pleased with its existence and which would not endeavor by all possible means to preserve it.

Furthermore, it must be remembered that in the human world suffering is the effect of sin. Most of the suffering among mankind comes from poverty and disease; and these are due very greatly to the two vices of intemperance and sensuality. And finally, pain is not an absolute evil for man, unless it is hell pain. All suffering except that of eternal remorse and despair may be a means of good to him. Respecting the third objection, the success of redemption must be estimated at the end of the process, not at the beginning or in the middle of it. Thus estimated, the great majority of the human family are redeemed by Christ. (supplement 3.5.9.)

Mercy is a second variety of divine goodness. It is the benevolent compassion of God toward man as a sinner. This attribute, though logically implied in the idea of God as a being possessed of all conceivable perfections, is free and sovereign in its exercise. Consequently, it requires a special revelation in order to establish the fact that it will be exercised. As omnipotence is a necessary attribute of God and yet its exercise in the creation of the universe is not necessary but optional, so, though mercy is a necessary attribute, its exercise is not also necessary:

The goodness of the deity is infinite and circumscribed by no limits; but the exercise of his goodness may be limited by himself. God is necessarily good in his nature; but free in his communication of it. He is not necessarily communicative of his goodness, as the sun of its light, which chooses not its objects but enlightens all indifferently. This were to make God of no more understanding than the sun, which shines not where it pleases but where it must. He is an understanding agent and has a sovereign right to choose his own subjects. It would not be a supreme, if it were not a voluntary goodness.

—Charnock, Goodness of God

(supplement 3.5.10)

Accordingly, the fact that the attribute of mercy will be exercised toward sinful man is taught only in written revelation. Indeed, this constitutes the most important and principal part of the teaching of inspiration. In the very first communication made to the fallen pair, there was a promise on the part of God to show mercy in and by the "seed of the woman": the Son of Man, the incarnate God (Gen. 3:15). And in the yet more explicit revelation made to Moses on the mount, in connection with the giving of the law, "Jehovah passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful (raḥûm, tender, compassionate) and gracious (ḥannûn, showing kindness), long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin" (Exod. 34:6–7). To quote all the prooftexts for this attribute would be to quote the bulk of both the Old and the New Testament.

Grace is an aspect of mercy. It differs from mercy in that it has reference to sinful man as guilty, while mercy has respect to sinful man as miserable. The one refers to the culpability of sin, and the other to its wretchedness. The two terms, however, in common use are interchangeable. Grace, like mercy, is a variety of divine goodness.

Both mercy and grace are exercised in a general manner toward those who are not the objects of their special manifestation. All blessings bestowed upon the natural man are mercy, insofar as they succor his distress, and grace, so far as they are bestowed upon the undeserving: "He makes his sun to rise upon the evil" (Matt. 5:45); "the Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works" (Ps. 145:9); "the eyes of all wait upon you" (145:15–16).

This general manifestation of mercy and grace is in and by the works of creation and providence. It is also seen in one aspect of the work of redemption. Men who are not actually saved by divine mercy yet obtain some blessings from it. (a) The delay of punishment is one, namely, the pretermission (paresis) of sin, in distinction from its remission (aphesis) (Rom. 3:25). God's forbearance and long-suffering with a sinner who abuses this by persistence in sin is a phase of mercy. This is "through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." It is made possible by it. Without Christ's work, there would have been instantaneous punishment and no long-suffering. This is also taught in 1 Pet. 3:20: "The long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah." (b) The common influences of the Holy Spirit are another manifestation of mercy in its general form. (supplement 3.5.11.)

Special grace and mercy are exercised only in redemption and toward those whom God is pleased to fix upon: "According as he has chosen us in him, having predestined us unto the adoption of children to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he has made us accepted (echaritōsen) in the beloved" (Eph. 1:4–6); "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion" (Rom. 9:15).

Truth

The truth or veracity of God is that attribute of his nature by virtue of which he performs what he has said: "God is not a man that he should lie" (Num. 23:19). It is seen (1) in revelation: "The word of the Lord endures forever" (1 Pet. 1:25); "his truth endures to all generations" (Ps. 100:5); "one jot or tittle shall not pass from the law till all be fulfilled" (Matt. 5:18); (2) in redemption: "He is faithful that promised" (Heb. 10:23); "God willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath" (6:17); "God is faithful, by whom you were called" (1 Cor. 1:9); "he abides faithful; he cannot deny himself" (2 Tim. 2:13); and (3) in retribution: "So, I swore in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest" (Heb. 3:11; cf. 4:1–11).

SUPPLEMENTS

3.5.1 (see p. 278). Augustine (Letter 166) thus explains that peculiarity of spirit which consists in being present, not partitively, but as an entire whole, wherever it is present: "If matter be used as a term denoting everything which in any form has a distinct and separate existence of its own, whether it be called an essence or a substance or by another name, then the soul is 'material'. Again, if you choose to apply the epithet immaterial only to that nature which is supremely immutable and is everywhere present in its entirety, the soul is material, for it is not at all endowed with such qualities. But if matter be used to designate nothing but that which, whether at rest or in motion, has some length, breadth, and height, so that with a greater part of itself it occupies a greater part of space and with a smaller part a smaller space and is in every part of it less than the whole, then the soul is not material. For it pervades the whole body which it animates, not by a local distribution of parts, but by a certain vital influence, being at the same moment present in its entirety in all parts of the body and not less in smaller parts and greater in larger parts, but here with more energy and there with less energy, it is in its entirety present in the whole body and in every part of it. For even that which the mind perceives in only a part of the body is nevertheless not otherwise perceived than by the whole soul; for when any part of the living flesh is touched by a needle, although the place affected is not only not the whole body, but scarcely discernible on its surface, the contact does not escape the entire mind, and yet the contact is not felt over the whole body, but only at the one point where it takes place. How comes it, then, that what takes place in only a part of the body is immediately known to the whole mind, unless the whole mind is present at that part and at the same time not deserting all the other parts of the body in order to be present in its entirety at this one? For all the other parts of the body in which no such contact takes place are still living by the soul being present with them. And if a similar contact occur in the other parts and the contact occur in both parts simultaneously, it would in both cases alike be known at the same moment to the whole mind. Now, this presence of the mind in all parts of the body at the same moment would be impossible if it were distributed over these parts in the same way as we see matter distributed in space, occupying less space with a smaller portion of itself and greater space with a greater portion. For all things composed of matter are larger in larger places or smaller in smaller places, and no one of them is in its entirety present at any part of itself, but the dimensions of material substances are according to the dimensions of the space occupied."

3.5.2 (see p. 281). Platonist John Smith (Discourses, 126) defines time like Berkeley: "That which first fathers the notion of time in us is nothing else but that succession and multiplicity which we find in our own thoughts, which move from one thing to another, as the sun in the firmament is said to walk from one planetary house to another and to have his several stages to pass by. And therefore where there is no such vicissitude or variety, as there can be no sense of time, so there can be nothing of the thing."

3.5.3 (see p. 282). That the effect of the divine energizing in creation is temporal while the causative energizing itself is eternal must be postulated in order to divine immutability. We cannot say that the divine energizing produces its effect simultaneously with itself, because in this case the created universe would be eternal, as in Origen's doctrine of eternal creation. Assuming the correctness of Ussher's chronology, we cannot affirm that God's creative power in originating man from nothing was not exerted until 4004 B.C., and that up to this date he had been inactive in this respect and then acted. This would imply a change and passage in the divine essence from an inactive to an active state, like that of man and angel. Neither can we say that man existed prior to 4004 B.C. God's causative action cannot be successive, because the ideas of beginning and ending inhere in that of succession. The beginning is before the ending, and there is an interval between the two. But God "sees the end from the beginning," not from the end, without an interval between. The remark on p. 312 that the "divine thought, unlike a human thought, is not in any particular inferior to the thing" is perhaps the best explanation possible of the eternity of the cause and the temporality of the effect, in regard to creation ex nihilo. Although the effect (say the planet earth) is not actually existent, but held in suspense after the creative act until the point of time arrives when it is to be made real in space and time, yet divine knowledge of it, which is involved in the divine idea or thought of it, is complete and exhaustive. This absolutely perfect knowledge is equivalent to actual existence for God.

Divine purpose is like the human in that there may be an interval between the formation of it and the execution. A man decides today to commit murder, but he does not do the deed until tomorrow or a month later. The difference between the two is that execution of the purpose in the case of man may fail or be changed, but not in the case of God. The human purpose is uncertain, but the divine is absolutely certain, because all the causes and events in the interval of time between the formation and execution are not under the control of the human agent, while they are of the divine agent. Something therefore may occur in the former instance to defeat the purpose, but not in the latter. Man, also, alters his mind and retracts what he has once determined to do, but God does not. The language of Peter (1 Pet. 1:20), "who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times," may be applied to the creation of the world. The world was decreed from eternity before the foundation of the world, but was created in time.

3.5.4 (see p. 287). Owen (Saints' Perseverance, chap. 3) defines the knowledge of simple intelligence: "All things originally owe their futurition to a free act of the will of God. Their relation thereunto translates them out of the state of possibility and of being objects of God's absolute omnipotency and infinite simple intelligence or understanding, whereby he intuitively beholds all things that might be produced by the exertion of infinite power, into a state of futurition, making them objects of God's foreknowledge, or science of vision."

3.5.5 (see p. 288). It is objected that the selfish ethics which makes happiness man's ultimate end finds a support in the scriptural doctrine of a "recompense of reward" in the next life. This is erroneous, because the reward promised and looked for is divine approval and love. It is not any form of earthly and finite good. The Christian does not obey God because he desires or expects in return for his obedience wealth, health, earthly pleasure, fame, or any of that good which self-love desires, but simply and only the "well done, good and faithful servant." Without this divine approbation all other good would be worthless to him; and with it, all other good is nothing in comparison. The rewards of eternity are a payment in kind: "grace for grace." The reward of loving and serving God is more and more love and service; of holiness, is more and more holiness; etc. God himself is represented as the believer's reward: "The word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram; I am your shield and your exceeding great reward" (Gen. 15:1); "the Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup" (Ps. 16:5).

Anselm (Concerning Foreknowledge 13) observes that happiness depends upon the attainment of an object different from itself, but holiness does not because it is its own reward: "Indeed, the desire of righteousness is righteousness itself; but the desire of happiness is not happiness, because not all have happiness who have the desire for it."

3.5.6 (see p. 290). Anselm (Proslogion 7) takes the same view with Augustine respecting the meaning of power when ascribed to God: "To be able to lie, to make that which is true to be false, and the like, is not power but weakness. He that can do these things can do what is wrong and injurious to himself; and the greater his ability to do these things, the greater will be the power of evil and adversity over him, and the less will he be able to resist them. Whoever therefore has such ability has it not from his power but from his weakness."

3.5.7 (see p. 298). If the validity of the distinction between the agent and the agency, between the substance of the soul and its activity or self-determination, is not conceded, the view of Flacius is inevitable, namely, that sin is the substance of the soul.

3.5.8 (see p. 302). The justice of punishment really cannot be separated from its utility and expediency, as is done by those who assert the latter and deny the former. If judicial suffering is not just, it will not prove to be useful or expedient. There will be no reformation of the criminal or protection of society if the criminal does not first perceive and acknowledge that his act is guilt and ought to be punished as such. So long as he denies the criminality and ill desert of his act, he will say that his suffering is the unjust infliction of a tyrannical power. This will exasperate and harden him and lead him to commit the crime again, if he has the opportunity. No personal moral improvement will result from the infliction and no security to society against the repetition of the crime. In this way, it is evident that the expediency of penalty depends upon the justice of it. He who denies the latter must deny the former. If the infliction is not first of all just, it cannot be expedient and useful. It will fail of accomplishing the two things desired: the protection of the community from crime and the reformation of the criminal. Faber in his hymn combines the two:

There is a wideness in God's mercy

Like the wideness of the sea;

There is a kindness in his justice

Which is more than liberty.

The first two lines are often quoted, and the last two omitted.

3.5.9 (see p. 306). The suffering of animals decreases as we go down the scale. The following statement respecting this point is made in Kirby and Spence's Entomology (Letter 2): "It is well known that in proportion as we descend the scale of being the sensibility of objects diminishes. The tortoise walks about after losing its head; and the polypus, so far from being injured by the application of the knife, thereby acquires an extension of existence. Insensibility almost equally great may be found in the insect world. This, indeed, might be inferred a priori, since providence seems to have been more prodigal of insect life than of any order of creatures, animalcula perhaps alone excepted. Can it be believed that the beneficent Creator, whose tender mercies are over all his works, would expose these helpless beings to such innumerable enemies and injuries were they endued with the same irritability of nerve with the higher orders of animals? But this inference is reduced to a certainty when we attend to the facts which insects every day present to us, proving that the very converse of our great poet's conclusion must be regarded as nearer the truth:

The poor beetle that we tread upon,

In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great

As when a giant dies,

Not to mention the peculiar organization of insects which strongly favors the position we are taking, their sangfroid upon the loss of their limbs, even those that we account most necessary to life, proves that the pain they suffer cannot be very acute. A tipula will leave half of its legs in the hands of a boy who has endeavored to catch it and will fly here and there with as much agility and unconcern as if nothing had happened to it; and an insect impaled upon a pin will often devour its prey with as much avidity as when at liberty. We have seen the common cockchafer walk about with apparent indifference after some bird had nearly emptied its body of its viscera; a bumblebee will eat honey with greediness though deprived of its abdomen; and we have seen an ant which had been brought out of its nest by its comrades walk when deprived of its head. The head of a wasp will attempt to bite after it is separated from the body; and the abdomen under similar circumstances, if the finger is moved to it, will attempt to sting. These facts, out of hundreds that might be adduced, are sufficient to prove that insects do not experience the same acute sensations of pain with the higher orders of animals. Had a giant lost an arm or a leg, or were a sword or spear run through his body, he would feel no great inclination for running about, dancing, or eating."

The statement in the text is erroneous that "if the majority of a species did not survive the species would diminish and become extinct." The immense number of eggs which a single cod deposits or a single insect lays makes the destruction of vast numbers necessary in order to prevent such a multiplication of the species as would overrun the sea and the land. "Wasps," say Kirby and Spence (Entomology, Letter 11), "at the beginning of winter drag out of the cells all the grubs and unrelentingly destroy them. They have no stock of provisions; the young must linger on a short period, and at length die of hunger. A sudden death by their own hands is comparatively a merciful stroke. We do not mean to say that this train of reasoning actually passes through the mind of the wasps. It is more correct to regard it as having actuated the benevolent author of the instinct so singularly and wisely created in them. Were a nest of wasps to survive the winter, they would increase so rapidly that not only would all the bees, flies, and other insects on which they prey be extirpated, but man himself would find them a grievous pest. It is necessary, therefore, that the great mass should annually perish."

3.5.10 (see p. 307). The inexactness and freedom of mercy contrasted with the exactitude and necessity of justice explains St. Paul's declaration: "Where sin abounded grace did much more abound." Justice is rigorously exact. It cannot inflict any more than is due or any less. It is confined to strict limits. But mercy is inexact because boundless. It may give more than is due, though never less than is due. As Shakespeare says, "The quality of mercy is not strained," that is, confined to immutable bounds. In Christ's redeeming work, divine mercy is infinite upon infinite and exceeds all computation. Justice "abounds," but within its limits; mercy "superabounds" beyond all limits. Pascal (Thoughts, 163), remarks that "the justice of God must be immense as well as his compassion; yet is the justice of God toward the condemned less immense and less overwhelming to the thought than his grace toward the elect?" The exactness and rigor of justice as an attribute are thus expressed by Dorner (Christian Doctrine 1.291): "In one aspect, justice is logic and mathematics applied to the sphere of the will, and in this very fact lies the proof of its no mere subjective nature. Its demands contain a logical and mathematical necessity, that is, the necessity that the will as well as the understanding must act according to the logic of things and direct itself according to the measure placed upon everything."

3.5.11 (see p. 307). The relation of Christ's satisfaction to the nonelect is thus stated by Charnock: "The power of God is more manifest in his patience toward a multitude of sinners than it would be in creating millions of worlds out of nothing; for this is the exertion of a power over himself. The exercise of this patience is founded in the death of Christ. Without the consideration of this we can give no reason why divine patience should extend itself to us and not to the fallen angels. The threatening extends itself to us as well as to the fallen angels and must necessarily have sunk man, as well as those glorious creatures, had not Christ stepped in to our relief. Had not Christ interposed to satisfy the justice of God, man upon his sinning had been actually bound over to punishment as well as the fallen angels were upon theirs and been fettered in chains as strong as those spirits feel. The reason why man was not hurled into the same deplorable condition as they were is Christ's promise of taking our nature and not theirs. Had God designed Christ's taking their nature the same patience had been exercised toward them and the same offers would have been made to them as are made to us. In regard to these fruits of this patience Christ is said to buy the wickedest apostates: 'Denying the Lord that bought them' (1 Pet. 2:1). Such were bought by him as 'bring upon themselves just destruction, and whose damnation slumbers not' (2:3); he purchased the continuance of their lives and the stay of their execution that offers of grace might be made to them. This patience must be either upon the account of the law or the gospel, for there are no other rules whereby God governs the world. A fruit of the law it was not that spoke nothing but curses after disobedience; not a letter of mercy was written upon that, and therefore nothing of patience; death and wrath were denounced; no slowness of anger intimated. It must be, therefore, upon the account of the gospel and a fruit of the covenant of grace whereof Christ was the mediator" (God's Patience, 720).

6 The Divine Decrees

Preliminary Considerations

The consideration of the divine decrees naturally follows that of divine attributes because the decrees regulate the operation of the attributes. God's acts agree with God's determination. Hence Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 7 defines the decrees of God to be "his eternal purpose according to the counsel of his own will, whereby he has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass." God does not act until he has decided to act, and his decision is free and voluntary. Hence, the actions of God can no more be separated from the decrees of God than the actions of a man can be from his decisions.

The divine decree relates only to God's opera ad extra or transitive acts. It does not include those immanent activities which occur within the essence and result in the three trinitarian distinctions. All this part of divine activity is excluded from the divine decree because it is necessary and not optional. God the Father did not decree the eternal generation of the Son, nor did the Father and Son decree the spiration of the Holy Spirit. The triune God could no more decide after the counsel of his own will to be triune, than he could decide in the same manner to be omnipotent or omniscient. The divine decree, consequently, comprehends only those events that occur in time. God foreordains "whatsoever comes to pass" in space and time. That which comes to pass in the eternity of the uncreated essence forms no part of the contents of God's decree.

The divine decree is formed in eternity, but executed in time. There are sequences in the execution, but not in the formation of God's eternal purpose. In his own mind and consciousness, God's simultaneously because eternally decrees all that occurs in space and time; but the effects and results corresponding to the decree occur successively—not simultaneously. There were thirty-three years between the actual incarnation and the actual crucifixion, but not between the decree that the Logos should be incarnate and the decree that he should be crucified. In the divine decree, Christ was simultaneously because eternally incarnate and crucified: "The Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8). Hence divine decrees, in reference to God, are one single act only. The singular number is employed in Scripture when the divine mind and nature are considered: "All things work together for good to them who are called according to his purpose (prothesin)" (8:28); "according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ" (Eph. 3:11).

God's consciousness differs from that of his rational creatures in that there is no succession in it. This is one of the differentia between the infinite and the finite mind. For God there is no series of decrees each separated from the others by an interval of time. God is omniscient, possessing the whole of his plans and purposes simultaneously: "All things are naked and opened" to his view, in one intuition. God is immutable, and therefore there are no sequences and changes of experience in him. Consequently, the determinations of his will, as well as the thoughts of his understanding, are simultaneous, not successive. In the formation of the divine decree, there are no intervals; but only in the execution of it. Christ, the atoning lamb, "was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifested in these last times" (1 Pet. 1:20). The decree that Christ should die for sin was eternal; the actual death of Christ was in time. There was an interval of four thousand years between the creation of Adam and the birth of Christ; but there was no such interval between the decree to create Adam and the decree that Christ should be born in Bethlehem. Both decrees are simultaneous because both are eternal decisions of the divine will: "We speak of the divine decrees as many, because of the many objects which the decreeing act of God respects. The things decreed are many, but the act decreeing is but one only" (Fisher, On the Catechism Q. 7). The things decreed come to pass in time and in a successive series; but they constitute one great system which as one whole and a unity was comprehended in the one eternal purpose of God. Augustine (Confessions 12.15) says, "God wills not one thing now and another anon; but once and at once and always, he wills all things that he wills; not again and again, nor now this, now that; nor wills afterward what before he willed not, nor wills not before he willed; because such a will is mutable; and no mutable thing is eternal."

The divine decree is a divine idea or thought, and it is peculiar to a divine thought that it is equal to the thing produced by it. This earthly globe was decreed from eternity, but it did not actually exist from eternity. It was from eternity a divine thought, but not a historical thing. But this divine thought, unlike a human thought, is not in any particular inferior to the thing. Hence, though the thing is not yet actually created and is only an idea, yet God is not for this reason ignorant in respect to the thing, as man is in respect to a plan which he has not yet executed. A man knows more about his work after he has finished it, than he did before. But God knows no more about the planet earth when his decree to create it is executed, than he did prior to its execution. In the case of the finite mind, the thought is always unequal to the thing; but in the case of the infinite intelligence, the thought is always coequal with the thing: "Your eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect; and in your book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of them" (Ps. 139:16). God knew what would be created before it was actually created. This knowledge was perfect. The actual creation did not add anything to it. God knew the whole universe in his eternal decree before it was an actual universe in time, with the same perfect omniscience with which he knew it after the decree was executed in space and time:

Did not God know what would be created by him before it was created by him? Did he create he knew not what, and knew not beforehand what he should create? Was he ignorant before he acted, and in his acting, what his operation would tend to? or did he not know the nature of things and the ends of them till he had produced them and saw them in being? Creatures must be known by God before they were made and not known because they were made; he knew them to make them and did not make them to know them. By the same reason that he knew what creatures should be before they were, he knew still what creatures shall be before they are.

—Charnock, God's Knowledge, 276

(supplement 3.6.1)

The divine decree is the necessary condition of divine foreknowledge. If God does not first decide what shall come to pass, he cannot know what will come to pass. An event must be made certain before it can be known as a certain event. In order that a man may foreknow an act of his own will, he must first have decided to perform it. So long as he is undecided about a particular volition, he cannot foreknow this volition. Unless God had determined to create a world, he could not know that there would be one. For the world cannot create itself, and there is but one being who can create it. If therefore this being has not decided to create a world, there is no certainty that a world will come into existence; and if there is no certainty of a world, there can be no certain foreknowledge of a world. So long as anything remains undecreed, it is contingent and fortuitous. It may or may not happen. In this state of things, there cannot be knowledge of any kind. If a man had the power to cause an eclipse of the sun and had decided to do this, he could then foreknow that the event would occur. But if he lacks the power or, if having the power, he has not formed the purpose, he can have no knowledge of any kind respecting the imagined event. He has neither knowledge nor foreknowledge because there is nothing to be known. Blank ignorance is the mental condition (see Smith, Theology, 119n).

In respect to this point, the Socinian is more logical than the Arminian. Both agree that God does not decree those events which result from the action of the human will. Voluntary acts are not predetermined, but depend solely upon human will. Whether they shall occur rests ultimately upon man's decision, not upon God's. Hence human volitions are uncertainties for God, in the same way that an event which does not depend upon a man's decision is an uncertainty for him. The inference that the Socinian drew from this was that foreknowledge of such events as human volitions is impossible to God. God cannot foreknow a thing that may or may not be a thing, an event that may or may not be an event. The Arminian, shrinking from this limitation of divine omniscience, asserts that God can foreknow an uncertainty, that is, that he can have foreknowledge without foreordination. But in this case, there is in reality nothing to be foreknown; there is no object of foreknowledge. If the question be asked "what does God foreknow?" and the answer be that he foreknows that a particular volition will be a holy one, the reply is that so far as the divine decree is concerned the volition may prove to be a sinful one. In this case, God's foreknowledge is a conjecture only, not knowledge. It is like a man's guess. If, on the contrary, the answer be that God foreknows that the volition will be a sinful one, the reply is that it may prove to be a holy one. In this case, also, God's foreknowledge is only a conjecture. To know or to foreknow an uncertainty is a solecism. For in order to either knowledge or foreknowledge, there must be only one actual thing to be known or foreknown. But in the supposed case of contingency and uncertainty, there are two possible things, either of which may turn out to be an object of knowledge, but neither of which is the one certain and definite object required. There is, therefore, nothing knowable in the case. To know or foreknow an uncertainty is to know or foreknow a nonentity. If it be objected, that since God, as eternal, decrees all things simultaneously and consequently there is really no foreordination for him, it is still true that in the logical order an event must be a certainty before it can be known as such. Though there be no order of time and succession, yet in the order of nature, a physical event or a human volition must be decreed and certain for God that it may be cognized by him as an event or a volition.

The most important aspect of the divine decree is that it brings all things that come to pass in space and time into a plan. There can be no system of the universe, if there be no one divine purpose that systematizes it. Schemes in theology which reject the doctrine of the divine decree necessarily present a fractional and disconnected view of God, man, and nature.

Characteristics of the Divine Decree

The following characteristics mark the divine decree:

1. The divine decree is founded in wisdom. This is implied in saying that God's purpose is "according to the counsel (boulēn) of his will" (Eph. 1:11). There is nothing irrational or capricious in God's determination. There may be much in it that passes human comprehension and is inexplicable to the finite mind, because the divine decree covers infinite space and everlasting time; but it all springs out of infinite wisdom. The "counsel" of the divine mind does not mean any reception of knowledge ab extra, by observation or comparison or advisement with others; but it denotes God's wise insight and knowledge, in the light of which he forms his determination. It is possible, also, that there is a reference in the language to the intercommunion and correspondence of the three persons in the Godhead: "The counsel of the Lord stands forever" (Ps. 33:11); "with him is wisdom and strength; he has counsel and understanding" (Job 12:13); "the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand" (Prov. 19:21); "he has done all things well" (Mark 7:37); "God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good" (Gen. 1:31).

2. The divine decree is eternal: "Known unto God are all his works from the beginning" (Acts 15:18); "the kingdom was prepared from the foundation of the world" (Matt. 25:34); "he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world" (Eph. 1:4); "God has from the beginning chosen you to salvation" (2 Thess. 2:13; 2 Tim. 1:9; 1 Cor. 2:7); "the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8); Christ as a sacrifice "was foreordained before the foundation of the world" (1 Pet. 1:20). This characteristic has been defined in what has been said under attributes respecting the simultaneousness and successionlessness of the eternal, as distinguished from the gradations and sequences of the temporal.

3. The divine decree is universal. It includes "whatsoever comes to pass," be it physical or moral, good or evil: "He works all things after the counsel of his own will" (Eph. 1:10–11); "known unto God are all his works from the beginning" (Acts 15:18; Prov. 16:33; Dan. 4:34–35; Matt. 10:29–30; Acts 17:26; Job 14:5; Isa. 46:10): (a) The good actions of men: "Created unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them" (Eph. 2:10); (b) the wicked actions of men: "Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have crucified and slain" (Acts 2:23; 4:27–28; Ps. 76:10; Prov. 16:4); (c) so-called accidental events: "The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord" (Prov. 16:33; Gen. 45:8; 50:20); "a bone of him shall not be broken" (John 19:36; Ps. 34:20; Exod. 12:46; Num. 9:12); (d) the means as well as the end: "God has chosen you to salvation, through sanctification (en hagiasmō) of the Spirit" (2 Thess. 2:13); "he has chosen us that we should be holy" (Eph. 1:4; 1 Pet. 1:2); "elect through sanctification of the Spirit" (Acts 27:24, 31):

The same divine purpose which determines any event determines that event as produced by its causes, promoted by its means, depending on its conditions, and followed by its results. Things do not come to pass in a state of isolation; neither were they predetermined so to come to pass. In other words, God's purpose embraces the means along with the end, the cause along with the effect, the condition along with the result or issue suspended upon it; the order, relations, and dependences of all events, as no less essential to the divine plan than the events themselves. With reference to the salvation of the elect, the purpose of God is not only that they shall be saved, but that they shall believe, repent, and persevere in faith and holiness in order to salvation.

—Crawford, Fatherhood of God, 426

(e) the time of every man's death: "his days are determined" (Job 14:5); "the measure of my days" (Ps. 39:4); the Jews could not kill Christ "because his hour was not yet come" (John 7:30). It is objected that fifteen years were added to Hezekiah's life after the prophet had said, "Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live" (Isa. 38:1, 5). But this assertion of the prophet was not a statement of the divine decree, but of the nature of his disease, which was mortal had not God miraculously interposed.

4. The divine decree is immutable. There is no defect in God in knowledge, power, and veracity. His decree cannot therefore be changed because of a mistake of ignorance or of inability to carry out his decree or of unfaithfulness to his purpose: "He is in one mind, and who shall turn him?" (Job 23:13); "my counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure" (Isa. 46:10). The immutability of the divine decree is consistent with the liberty of man's will: "God ordains whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of the creature; nor is the liberty, or contingency, of second causes taken away, but rather established" (Westminster Confession 3.1). This is the doctrine of Christ. He asserts that his own crucifixion was a voluntary act of man and also decreed by God: "They have done unto Elijah whatsoever they pleased (hosa ēthelēsan): likewise shall the Son of Man suffer them" (Matt. 17:12); "the Son of Man goes as it was determined (hōrismenon), but woe unto that man by whom he is betrayed" (Luke 22:22). In Acts 2:23 it is said that Christ was "delivered by the determinate counsel of God" and "by wicked hands was crucified and slain."

Respecting the alleged contradiction between the divine decree and human freedom, the following particulars are to be noticed. (a) The inspired writers are not conscious of a contradiction, because they do not allude to any or make any attempt to harmonize the two things. If a self-contradiction does not press upon them, it must be because there is no real contradiction. Revelation presents that view of truth which is afforded from a higher point of view than that occupied by the finite mind. Revealed truth is truth as perceived by the infinite intelligence. If no contradiction is perceived by God in a given case, there really is none. The mind of Christ evidently saw no conflict between his assertion that he was to be crucified in accordance with the divine decree and his assertion that Judas was a free and guilty agent in fulfilling this decree. (b) There is no contradiction between the divine decree and human liberty, provided the difference between an infinite and a finite being is steadily kept in mind. There would be a contradiction if it were asserted that an event is both certain and uncertain for the same being. But to say that it is certain for one being and uncertain for another is no contradiction. The difference between the omniscience of an infinite being and the fractional knowledge of a finite being explains this. For the divine mind, there is, in reality, no future event because all events are simultaneous, owing to that peculiarity in the cognition of an eternal being whereby there is no succession in it. All events thus being present to him are of course all of them certain events. But for a finite mind, events come before it in a series. Hence there are future events for the finite mind; and all that is future is uncertain. Again, it would be self-contradictory to say that an act of the human will is free for man and necessitated for God. But this is not said by the predestinarian. He asserts that an act of human will is free for both the divine and the human mind, but certain for the former and uncertain for the latter. God as well as man knows that the human will is self-moved and not forced from without. But this knowledge is accompanied with an additional knowledge on the part of God that is wanting upon the part of man. God, while knowing that the human will is free in every act, knows the whole series of its free acts in one intuition. Man does not. This additional element in divine knowledge arises from that peculiarity in divine consciousness just alluded to. All events within the sphere of human freedom, as well as that of physical necessity, are simultaneous to God. Man's voluntary acts are not a series for the divine mind, but are all present at once and therefore are all of them certain to God. From the viewpoint of divine eternity and omniscience, there is no foreknowledge of human volitions. There is simply knowledge of all of them at once. (c) The alleged contradiction arises from assuming that there is only one way in which divine omnipotence can make an event certain. The predestinarian maintains that the certainty of all events has a relation to divine omnipotence as well as to divine omniscience. God not only knows all events, but he decrees them. He makes them certain by an exercise of power, but not by the same kind of power in every case. God makes some events certain by physical power; and some he makes certain by moral and spiritual power. Within the physical sphere, the divine decree makes certain by necessitating; within the moral sphere, the divine decree makes certain without necessitating. To decree is to bring within a plan. There is nothing in the idea of planning that necessarily implies compulsion. The operations of mind, as well as those of matter, may constitute parts of one great system without ceasing to be mental operations. God decrees phenomena in conformity with the nature and qualities which he has himself given to creatures and things. God's decrees do not unmake God's creation. He decrees that phenomena in the material world shall occur in accordance with material properties and laws, and phenomena in the moral world in accordance with moral faculties and properties. Within the sphere of matter, he decrees necessitated facts; within the sphere of mind, he decrees self-determined acts; and both alike are certain for God. Westminster Confession 3.1 affirms that "the liberty or contingency of second causes is not taken away, but rather established" by the divine decree. If God has decreed men's actions to be free actions, then it is impossible that they should be necessitated actions. His decree makes the thing certain in this case, as well as in every other. The question how God does this cannot be answered by man because the mode of divine agency is a mystery to him. The notion of a decree is not contradictory to that of free agency, unless decree is defined as compulsion and it be assumed that God executes all his decrees by physical means and methods. No one can demonstrate that it is beyond the power of God to make a voluntary act of man an absolutely certain event. If he could, he would disprove divine omnipotence: "God, the first cause, orders all things to come to pass according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, or freely and contingently" (Westminster Confession 5.2; Turretin 6.6.6). The self-determination of the human will is the action of a free second cause. It is therefore decreed self-determination. In the instance of holiness, the certainty of the self-determination is explicable by the fact that God works in man "to will and to do." In the instance of sin, the certainty of the self-determination is inexplicable, because we cannot say in this case that God works in man "to will and to do." (supplements 3.6.2 and 3.6.3.)

The divine decree is unconditional or absolute. This means that its execution does not depend upon anything that has not itself been decreed. The divine decree may require means or conditions in order to its execution, but these means or conditions are included in the decree. For illustration, God decreed the redemption of sinners through the death of Jesus Christ. If he had not also decreed the manner of that death the time of its occurrence and the particular persons who were to bring it about, but had left all these means of attaining the end he had proposed to an undecreed act of man that was uncertain for himself, then the success of his purpose of redemption would have depended upon other beings than himself and upon other wills than his own. Consequently, his decree of redemption included the means as well as the end, and Jesus Christ was "by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God taken and by wicked hands crucified and slain" (Acts 2:23). Again, God decrees the salvation of a particular sinner. One of the means or conditions of salvation is faith in Christ's atonement. This faith is decreed: "Elected unto sprinkling of the blood of Christ" (1 Pet. 1:1); "the faith of God's elect" (Titus 1:1); "faith is the gift of God" (Eph. 2:8). But if faith depends upon the undecreed action of the sinner's will, divine predestination to faith is dependent for success upon the sinner's uncertain action and is conditioned by it. The means to the decreed end, in this case, are left outside of the decree. The same remark applies to prayer as a means of obtaining a decreed end, like the forgiveness of sins. If the forgiveness of his sins has been decreed to a person, his prayer for forgiveness has also been decreed. (supplement 3.6.4.)

The reasons why the divine decree is independent of everything finite are the following: (a) It is eternal and therefore cannot depend upon anything in time; but everything finite is in time; (b) the decree depends upon God's good pleasure (eudokia) (Matt. 11:26; Eph. 1:5; Rom. 9:11); therefore it does not depend upon the creature's good pleasure; (c) the divine decree is immutable (Isa. 46:10; Rom. 9:11), but a decree conditioned upon the decision of the finite will must be mutable because the finite will is mutable; (d) a conditional decree is incompatible with divine foreknowledge; God cannot foreknow an event unless it is certain, and it cannot be certain if it ultimately depends upon finite will. (supplement 3.6.5.)

Efficacious and Permissive Decrees

The divine decrees are divided into efficacious and permissive (cf. Turretin 3.12.21–25).

The efficacious decree determines the event: (a) by physical and material causes; such events are the motions of the heavenly bodies and the phenomena of the material world generally: "He made a decree for the rain and a way for the lightning of the thunder" (Job 28:26); (b) by an immediate spiritual agency of God upon the finite will in the origin and continuance of holiness: "For it is God, who works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13); "faith is the gift of God" (Eph. 2:8); "if God peradventure will give them repentance" (2 Tim. 2:25); "created in Christ Jesus unto good works" (Eph. 2:10); "the new man is created in righteousness" (4:24).

The permissive decree relates only to moral evil. Sin is the sole and solitary object of this species of decree. It renders the event infallibly certain, but not by immediately acting upon and in the finite will, as in the case of the efficacious decree. God does not work in man or angel "to will and to do," when man or angel wills and acts antagonistically to him: "Who in times past suffered (eiase) all nations to walk in their own ways" (Acts 14:16); "the times of this ignorance God overlooked (hyperidōn)" (17:30); "he gave them their own desire" (Ps. 78:18); "he gave them their own request" (106:15) (Shedd, History of Doctrine 2.135–38). As sin constitutes only a small sphere in comparison with the whole universe, the scope of the permissive decree is very limited compared with that of the efficient decree. Sin is an endless evil, but fills only a corner of the universe. Hell (Hölle) is a hole or "pit." It is deep but not wide, bottomless but not boundless. (supplement 3.6.6.)

The permissive decree is a decree (a) not to hinder the sinful self-determination of the finite will and (b) to regulate and control the result of the sinful self-determination. "God's permissive will," says Howe (Decrees, lect. 1), "is his will to permit whatsoever he thinks fit to permit or not to hinder; while what he so wills or determines so to permit, he intends also to regulate and not to behold as an idle unconcerned spectator, but to dispose all those permissa unto wise and great ends of his own." It should be observed that in permitting sin, God permits what he forbids. The permissive decree is not indicative of what God approves and is pleasing to him. God decrees what he hates and abhors when he brings sin within the scope of his universal plan (Calvin 1.18.3–4). The "good pleasure" (eudokia) in accordance with which God permits sin must not be confounded with the pleasure or complacency (agapē) in accordance with which he promulgates the moral law forbidding sin. The term good pleasure has the meaning of pleasure in the phrase be pleased or please to do me this favor. What is asked for is a decision to do the favor. The performance of the favor may involve pain, not pleasure; it may require a sacrifice of pleasure on the part of the one who is to "be pleased" to do it. Again, when the permissive decree is denominated the divine will, the term Will is employed in the narrow sense of volition, not in the wide sense of inclination. The will of God, in this case, is only a particular decision in order to some ulterior end. This particular decision, considered in itself, may be contrary to the abiding inclination and desire of God as founded in his holy nature; as when a man by a volition decides to perform a particular act which in itself is unpleasant in order to attain an ulterior end that is agreeable. Again, in saying that sin is in accordance with the divine will, the term Will implies "control." As when we say of a physician, "the disease is wholly at his will." This does not mean that the physician takes pleasure in willing the disease, but that he can cure it.

This brings to notice the principal practical value of the doctrine that God decrees sin. It establishes divine sovereignty over the entire universe. By reason of his permissive decree, God has absolute control over moral evil, while yet he is not the author of it and forbids it. Unless he permitted sin, it could not come to pass. Should he decide to preserve the will of the holy angel or the holy man from lapsing, the man or the angel would persevere in holiness. Sin is preventable by almighty God, and therefore he is sovereign over sin and hell, as well as over holiness and heaven. This is the truth which God taught to Cyrus to contradict the Persian dualism: "I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things" (Isa. 45:7); "shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord has not done it?" (Amos 3:6); "I withheld you from sinning against me" (Gen. 20:6). To deny this truth logically leads to the doctrine of the independence of evil, and the doctrine of the independence of evil is dualism and irreconcilable with monotheism. Evil becomes like the hylē in the ancient physics, a limitation of the infinite being. The truth respecting the efficacious and the permissive decree is finely expressed in the verse of George Herbert:

We all acknowledge both thy power and love

To be exact, transcendent, and divine;

Who dost so strongly and so sweetly move,

While all things have their will—yet none but thine.

For either thy command, or thy permission

Lays hands on all; they are thy right and left.

The first puts on with speed and expedition;

The other curbs sin's stealing pace and theft.

Nothing escapes them both; all must appear,

And be disposed, and dressed, and tuned by thee,

Who sweetly temper'st all. If we could hear

Thy skill and art, what music it would be.

In purposing to permit sin, God purposes to overrule it for good: "Surely the wrath of man shall praise you; the remainder of wrath shall you restrain" (Ps. 76:10); "you thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good" (Gen. 45:8). This part of the doctrine of the permissive decree may be overlooked or denied, and an inadequate statement result. The Council of Trent asserted that sin arises from the "mere permission" of God. The Reformers were not satisfied with this phraseology, because they understood it to mean that in respect to the fall of angels and men, God is an idle spectator (deo otioso spectante) and that sin came into the universe because he cannot prevent it and has no control over it. This kind of permission is referred to in Westminster Confession 5.4: "The almighty power, wisdom, and goodness of God extends even to the sins of angels and men; and this not by a bare permission, but such as has joined with it a most wise and powerful bounding and otherwise ordering and governing of them, in a manifold dispensation, to his own holy ends; yet so that the sinfulness thereof proceeds only from the creature and not from God." Anselm (Why the God-Man? 1.15) illustrates this truth in the following manner:

If those things which are held together in the circuit of the heavens should desire to be elsewhere than under the heavens or to be further removed from the heavens, there is no place where they can be but under the heavens; nor can they fly from the heavens without also approaching them. For whence and whither and in what way they go, they still are under the heavens; and if they are at a greater distance from one part of them, they are only so much nearer to the opposite part. And so, though man or evil angel refuse to submit to the divine will and appointment, yet he cannot escape it; for if he wishes to fly from a will that commands, he falls into the power of a will that punishes. (supplement 3.6.7.)

Man may not permit sin because he is under a command that forbids him to commit it, either in himself or in others. But God is not thus obliged by the command of a superior to hinder the created will from self-determining to evil. He was bound by his own justice and equity to render it possible that man should not self-determine to evil; and he did this in creating man in holiness and with plenary power to continue holy. But he was not bound in justice and equity to make it infallibly certain that man would not self-determine to evil. He was obliged by his own perfection to give man so much spiritual power that he might stand if he would, but not obliged to give so much additional power as to prevent him from falling by his own decision. Mutable perfection in a creature was all that justice required. Immutable perfection was something more (cf. Charnock, Holiness of God, 496). We cannot infer that because it is the duty of a man to keep his fellowman from sinning, if he can, it is also the duty of God to keep man from sinning. A man is bound to exert every influence in his power to prevent the free will of his fellow creature from disobeying God, only because God has commanded him to do so, not because the fellowman is entitled to it. A criminal cannot demand upon the ground of justice that his fellowman keep him from the commission of crime; and still less can he make this demand upon God. The criminal cannot say to one who could have prevented him from the transgression, but did not: "You are to blame for this crime, because you did not prevent me from perpetrating it." Nonprevention of crime is not the authorship of crime. No free agent can demand as something due to him that another free agent exert an influence to prevent the wrong use of his own free agency. The only reason, therefore, why one is obligated to prevent another from sinning is the command of one who is superior to them both. God has made every man his "brother's keeper." And if God were man's fellow creature, he also would be his brother's keeper and would be obligated to prevent sin. In creating man holy and giving him plenary power to persevere in holiness, God has done all that equity requires in reference to the prevention of sin in a moral agent.

How the permissive decree can make the origin of sin a certainty is an inscrutable mystery. God is not the author of sin, and hence, if its origination is a certainty for him, it must be by a method that does not involve his causation. There are several attempts at explanation, but they are inadequate:

1. God exerts positive efficiency upon the finite will, as he does in the origination of holiness. He makes sin certain by causing it. But this contradicts the following texts: "Neither tempts he any man" (James 1:13); "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5); "God made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions" (Eccles. 7:29). It also contradicts the Christian consciousness. In the instance of holiness, the soul says, "Not unto me, but unto you be the glory"; but in the instance of sin, it says, "Not unto you, but unto me be the guilt and shame." "By the grace of God, I am what I am" in respect to holiness; "by the fault of free will, I am what I am" in respect to sin.

2. God places the creature in such circumstances as render his sinning certain. But the will of the creature is not subject to circumstances. It can resist them. Circumstances act only ab extra. The conversion of the will cannot be accounted for by circumstances, and neither can its apostasy.

3. God presents motives to the will. But a motive derives its motive power from the existing inclination or bias of the will. There is no certainty of action in view of a motive, unless the previous inclination of the will agrees with the motive; and the motive cannot produce this inclination or bias.

4. God decides not to bestow that special degree of grace which prevents apostasy. But this does not make apostasy certain, because holy Adam had power to stand with that degree of grace with which his Creator had already endowed him. It was, indeed, not certain that he would stand; but neither was it certain that he would fall, if reference be had only to the degree of grace given in creation. When God decides not to hinder a holy being from sinning, he is inactive in this reference; and inaction is not causative.

5. God causes the matter but not the form of sin. There is a difference between the act and the viciousness of the act. The act of casting stones when Achan was slain was the same act materially as when Stephen was martyred; but the formal element, namely, the intention, was totally different. God concurs with the act and causes it, but not with the intent or viciousness of the act. But the form or "viciousness" of the act is the whole of the sin; and God's concursus does not extend to this (cf. Charnock's Holiness of God on the divine concursus). Charnock regards it as a valid explanation of the permissive decree.

Fate, Certainty, Compulsion, and Necessity

The divine decree differs from the heathen fate. (a) Decree is the determination of a personal being; fate is merely the connection (nexus) of impersonal causes and effects. The divine decree includes causes, effects, and their nexus. (b) The divine decree has respect to the nature of beings and things, bringing about a physical event by physical means and a moral event by moral means; fate brings about all events in the same way. (c) The divine decree proceeds from a wise insight and knowledge. It adapts means to ends. Fate is fortuitous. It is only another word for chance, and there is no insight or foresight or adaptive intelligence in mere chance. (d) God, according to the heathen view, is subject to fate: tēn peprōmenēn moiran adynaton esti apophygein kai theō (Herodotus 1). Says Plato (Laws 5.741), "Even God is said not to be able to fight against necessity." But the divine decree is subject to God:

Necessity and chance

Approach not me, and what I will is fate.

—Milton (supplement 3.6.8)

To predestinate voluntary action is to make it certain. If it meant, as it is sometimes asserted, to force voluntary action, it would be a self-contradiction. To make certain is not the same as to compel or necessitate, because there are different ways of making certain, but only one way of necessitating. An event in the material world is made certain by physical force; this is compulsory. An event in the moral world is made certain by spiritual operation; this is voluntary and free. The lines of Pope express this:

binding nature fast in fate,

Left free the human will.

The distinction between compulsion and certainty is a real one, and if observed prevents the misrepresentation of the doctrine of predestination.

The following objection is made against certainty, namely, that it is equivalent to necessity:

If all future events are foreknown, they will occur in that order in which they are foreknown to come about. Now if they will occur in that order, the order of things is certain to God who foreknows them. And if the order of things is certain, the order of their causes is certain; indeed, nothing can occur which some efficient cause has not preceded. But if the order of causes is certain, by which everything happens that comes to pass, then all things that come to pass happen by fate. Now if that is so, then we are powerless.

There is something like this in Cicero's Concerning Fate 14. But it is not the opinion of Cicero, but of certain philosophers whose views he criticizes. He mentions two theories: (1) that all things happen by fate or necessity (he attributes this view to Democritus, Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Aristotle) and (2) that the voluntary movements of the human soul do not happen by fate or necessity. Cicero favors the latter theory (Concerning Fate 17–18). His view of the relation of human actions to the divine will was what would now be called the general providence of God. He did not maintain particular providence: "The gods are concerned with weighty matters and ignore what is inconsequential" (Concerning the Nature of the Gods 2.66). The fallacy in the above extract consists in assuming that a "certain and fixed order" is identical with fate. This depends upon how the order is fixed. If it is fixed in accordance with physical laws, it would be fate; but if fixed in accordance with the nature of mind and free will, it is not fate, but certainty only.

Certainty may or may not denote necessity. It denotes necessity when a physical event is spoken of, as when it is said that it is certain that a stone unsupported will fall to the ground. It does not denote necessity, when a mental or voluntary act is said to be certain: "If a man should be informed by prophecy that he would certainly kill a fellow creature the next day or year and that in perpetrating this act he would be actuated by malice, it would not enter his mind that he would not be guilty of any crime because the act was certain before it was committed. But if the terms were changed and he were informed that he would be necessitated to commit the act, it would enter his mind" (Princeton Repertory 1831: 159).

Predestination

Predestination is the divine decree or purpose (prothesis; Rom. 8:28) so far as it relates to moral agents, namely, angels and men. The world of matter and irrational existence is more properly the object of the divine decree than of divine predestination. God decreed rather than predestinated the existence of the material universe. Again a decree relates to a thing or fact; predestination to a person. Sin is decreed; the sinner is predestinated. In 1 Cor. 2:7, however, the gospel is described as predestinated: "The hidden wisdom which God foreordained (proōrisen) unto our glory." This is explained by the fact that the gospel relates eminently to persons, not to things.

Predestination is denoted in the New Testament by two words: proorizein and progignōskein. The former signifies "to circumscribe or limit beforehand." The word horizein26 is transferred in English horizon, which denotes the dividing line that separates the earth from the sky. Proorizein occurs in Acts 4:28: "To do whatsoever your hand and your counsel determined before (proōrise) to be done." Pilate and the Gentiles and the people of Israel were the agents under this predestination. This is predestination to sin. Examples of predestination to holiness are the following: "Whom he did foreknow (proegnō), he also did predestinate (proōrise) to be conformed to the image of his son" (Rom. 8:29); "whom he did predestinate (proōrisen), them he also called" (8:30); "having predestinated (proorisas) us unto the adoption of children" (Eph. 1:5); being predestinated (prooristhentes) according to the purpose of him who works all things after the counsel of his own will" (1:11); "the hidden wisdom which God ordained before (proōrisen) unto our glory" (1 Cor. 2:7).

The word progignōskein (to foreknow) occurs in several texts: "Whom he did foreknow (proegnō), he also did predestinate" (Rom. 8:29); "God has not cast away his people, whom he foreknew (proegnō) (11:2); Christ "verily was foreknown (proegnōsmenos) before the foundation of the world" (1 Pet. 1:20). The noun prognōsis occurs in two texts: "Delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God" (Acts 2:23); "elect according to the foreknowledge of God" (1 Pet. 1:2). The terms foreknow and predestinate denote two aspects of the same thing. Romans 11:2, might read, "God has not cast away his people whom he predestinated." When one is distinguished from the other, as in 8:29, to "foreknow" means to "choose" or "single out" for the purpose of predestinating. Foreknowledge, in this use of the word, is election. It is the first part of the total act of predestinating. The word know in this connection has the Hebraistic not the classical signification. To know in the Hebrew sense means to regard with favor, denoting not mere intellectual cognition, but some kind of interested feeling or affection toward the object (cf. Gen. 18:19; Ps. 1:6; 36:10; 144:3; Hos. 8:4; Amos 3:2; Nah. 1:7; Matt. 7:23; John 10:14; 1 Cor. 8:3; 16:18; 2 Tim. 2:19; 1 Thess. 5:12; Shedd on Rom. 7:15). Traces of this use of gignōskein are seen in the earlier Greek usage: gnōtos41 = gnōstos signifies a kinsman or a friend (Iliad 15.350; Aeschylus, Choephori 702). With this signification may be compared still another Hebraistic use of the word know, namely, "to make known": "Now I know that you fear God" (Gen. 22:12); "I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 2:2).

It is to be carefully observed that foreknowledge in the Hebraistic sense of election means a foreknowledge of the person simply, not of the actions of the person. "Whom he foreknew" (Rom. 8:29) does not mean "whose acts he foreknew," but "whose person he foreknew." It signifies that God fixes his eye upon a particular sinful man and selects him as an individual to be predestinated to holiness in effectual calling. This is proved by the remainder of the verse: "Whom he foreknew, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son." The holy actions of the elect are the effect, not the cause, of their being foreknown and predestinated. In 1 Pet. 1:2 believers are "elected unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Christ," that is, unto justification and sanctification. In 2 Tim. 1:9 "God has called us, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began"—and certainly, therefore, before any obedience, either partial or total, could be rendered to be the ground of the calling. In Rom. 11:2 St. Paul affirms that "God has not cast away his people whom he foreknew." It would be nonsense even to suppose that God has cast away a people whom he foreknew would keep his commandments. This, therefore, cannot be the sense of proegnō. The ground of predestination is God's foreknowledge; and this foreknowledge is not a foresight that a particular individual will believe and repent, but a simple prerecognition of him as a person to whom God in his sovereign mercy has determined to "give repentance" (2 Tim. 2:25) and faith, since "faith is the gift of God" (Eph. 2:8) and since "as many as were ordained to eternal life believed" (Acts 13:48). In making the choice, God acts "according to the good pleasure (eudokian) of his will" (Eph. 1:5) and not according to any good action of the creature, so "that the purpose of God according to election might stand not of works, but of him that calls" (Rom. 9:11).

Foreknowledge in the Hebraistic use of the word is prior in the order to predestination, because it means electing compassion and persons are referred to; but foreknowledge in the classical sense is subsequent in the order to decree, because it denotes cognition and events are referred to. God foreknows, that is, elects those persons whom he predestinates to life. God decrees the creation of the world and thereby foreknows with certainty the fact.

Predestination makes the number of the predestinated "so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished" (Westminster Confession 3.4); "the Lord knows them that are his" (2 Tim. 2:19); "I know whom I have chosen" (John 13:18); "I know you by name" (Exod. 33:17); "your names are written in heaven" (Luke 10:20); "before you came forth out of the womb, I sanctified you, and I ordained you a prophet unto the nations" (Jer. 1:5); "God separated me from my mother's womb and called me by his grace" (Gal. 1:15); "I know my sheep" (John 10:14). (supplement 3.6.9.)

Election

The decree of predestination is divided into the decrees of election and reprobation. God's decree of election respects angels: "I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels" (1 Tim. 5:21); "the angels which kept not their first estate" (Jude 6). It is not, in this case, a decree to deliver from sin but to preserve from sinning. Those whom God determined to keep from apostasy by bestowing upon them an additional degree of grace above what had been given them in creating them in holiness are the elect angels. Those whom he determined to leave to their own will and thus to decide the question of apostasy for themselves with that degree of grace with which they were endowed by creation are the nonelect or reprobate angels. A nonelect angel is one who is holy by creation and has ample power to remain holy, but is not kept by extraordinary grace from an act of sinful self-determination. The perseverance of the nonelect angel is left to himself; that of the elect angel is not: "The first object of the permissive will of God was to leave nonelect angels to their own liberty and the use of their free will, which was natural to them, not adding that supernatural grace which was necessary, not that they should not sin, but that they should infallibly not sin. They had a strength sufficient to avoid sin, but not sufficient infallibly to avoid sin; a grace sufficient to preserve them, but not sufficient to confirm them" (Charnock, Holiness of God)

Reprobation in the case of an unfallen angel does not suppose sin, but in the case of fallen man it does. A holy angel is nonelect or reprobate in respect to persevering grace, and the consequence is that he may or may not persevere in holiness. He may continue holy, or he may apostatize. The decision is left wholly to himself. This is not the case with the elect angel. He is kept from falling. A sinful man, on the other hand, is nonelect or reprobate in respect to regenerating grace. It is not bestowed upon him, and his voluntariness in sin continues.

Election in reference to the angels implies (a) mutable holiness: angelic holiness is not self-originated, hence not self-subsistent and unchangeable: "Behold he put no trust in his servants, and his angels he charged with folly" (Job 4:18); (b) the operation of the Holy Spirit upon the finite will in all grades of being, and this in different degrees of efficiency; and (c) that a part, only, of the angels were placed upon probation; the perseverance in holiness of the elect angels was secured to them by electing grace.

The fall of the angels is the very first beginning of sin and presents a difficulty not found in the subsequent fall of man, namely, a fall without an external tempter. This has been discussed in the profound treatise of Anselm, On the Fall of the Devil. So far as God is concerned, the clue to the fall of a holy angel is in his decree not to hinder the exercise of angelic self-determination to evil. This, however, does not fully account for the origin of angelic sin. When God placed some of the holy angels on probation and decided not to prevent their apostasy by extraordinary grace, they might, nevertheless, have continued in holiness, had they so willed. The origin of their sin is not, therefore, fully accounted for by the merely negative permission of God. A positive act of angelic self-determination is requisite; and how this is made certain by God is the difficulty. For it must be remembered that in permitting some of the angels to fall, God did not withdraw from them any power or grace which was bestowed in creation. Nothing that was given in creation was withdrawn from Satan until after he had transgressed. This remark is true also of holy Adam and his apostasy. How the fall of a holy will can be made a certainty by a merely permissive decree of God is inexplicable, as has already been observed. Neither temptation nor the circumstances in which the creature is placed make the event of apostasy infallibly certain. The will of the holy angel or man can resist both temptation and circumstances and is commanded by God to do so. Nothing but the spontaneity of will can produce the sin; and God does not work in the will to cause evil spontaneity. The certainty of sin by a permissive decree is an insoluble mystery for the finite mind. The certainty of holiness in the elect by an efficacious decree is easily explicable. God, in this case, works in the elect "to will and to do." The efficient decree realizes itself by positive action upon the creature; but the permissive decree does not realize itself in this manner. God is the efficient author of holiness, but not of sin. The conviction that God is not the author of sin is innate and irrepressible. Socrates gives expression to it in the Republic 2.377, but he does so somewhat from the viewpoint of dualism. While evil in his view does not originate in God and is punished by God, it is not, as in revelation, under the absolute control of God, in such sense that it could be prevented by him. (supplement 3.6.10.)

The power to prevent sin is implied in its permission. No one can be said to permit what he cannot prevent. Sin is preventable by the exercise of a greater degree of that same spiritual efficiency by which the will was inclined to holiness in creation. God did not please to exert this degree in the instance of the fallen angels and man, and thus sin was possible. God's power to prevent sin without forcing the will is illustrated by the Christian experience. The mind can be so illuminated and filled with a sense of divine things by the Holy Spirit as to deaden lust and temptation. Compare the temptability of such believers as Leighton and Baxter with that of an ordinary Christian. Afflictions sometimes cause the common temptations of life to lose almost all their force. Now, carry this mental illumination and this cooperation of the divine Spirit with the human spirit to an extraordinary degree, and it is easy to see how God can keep a soul already holy from falling, and yet the process be, and be felt to be, spontaneous and willing. Only the first cause can work internally and directly upon the finite will. Second causes cannot so operate. No man can incline another man; but God the Holy Spirit can incline any man to good, however wickedly inclined he may already be. This is a revealed truth, not a psychological one. It could not be discovered by the examination of the self-consciousness, for this does not give a report of a divine agent as distinct from the human. Hence the doctrine of spiritual operation in the soul is not found in natural religion. The "demon" of Socrates is the only thing resembling it; but this, probably, was only the personification of conscience. (supplement 3.6.11.)

The reason for the permission of sin was the manifestation of certain divine attributes which could not have been manifested otherwise. These attributes are mercy and compassion, with their cognates. The suffering of God incarnate and vicarious atonement, with all their manifestation of divine glory, would be impossible in a sinless universe. The "intent" was "that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God" (Eph. 3:10). The attributes of justice and holiness, also, though exhibited in natural religion, yet obtain a far more impressive display in the method of redemption. The glory of God, not the happiness of the creature, is the true theodicy of sin. As the mineral kingdom is for the vegetable, the vegetable for the animal, and the animal for man, so all are for God. The inferior grade of being in each instance justifies the subservience. This is not egotism or selfishness, because of the superior dignity in each case.

The position that sin is necessary to the best possible universe is objectionable, unless by the best possible universe be meant the universe best adapted to manifest divine attributes. If the happiness of the creature be the criterion of the best possible universe, then sin is not necessary to the best possible world. Sin brings misery, and the best possible world, looking at the happiness of the creature alone, would have no sin in it. Sin is very limited in comparison with holiness in the universe of God. The earth is a mote in astronomy. The number of the lost angels and men is small compared with the whole number of rational creatures. Sin is a speck upon the infinite azure of eternity. Hell is a corner of the universe; it is a hole or "pit," not an ocean. It is "bottomless," but not boundless. The dualistic and gnostic theory, which makes God and Satan or the demiurge nearly equal in sway, is not that of revelation. Because holiness and sin have thus far been so nearly balanced here on earth, it is not to be inferred that this will be the final proportion at the end of human history or that it is the same throughout the universe. That sin is the exception and not the rule in the rational universe is evinced by the fact that the angelic world was not created by species. Apostasy there is individual, not universal. The Scriptures denominate the good the heavenly "host" and allude to it as vast beyond computation; but no such description is given of the evil.

God's decree of election respects man: "You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you" (John 15:16); "God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise" (1 Cor. 1:27–28); "according as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world" (Eph. 1:4); "has not God chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith?" (James 2:5; Matt. 13:11; 20:23; 22:14; 24:22, 40; 25:34; Mark 4:11; Luke 10:20; 12:32; 17:34; John 6:37; Acts 13:48; Rom. 8:28–33; 9–11; Gal. 1:15; Eph. 1; 2 Thess. 2:13; 2 Tim. 1:9; Isa. 42:1; 45:4; 65:9, 22). Human election differs from angelic in that it is election to holiness from a state of sin, not to perseverance in a state of holiness. It supposes the fall of man. Men are chosen out of a state of sin: "They who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ" (Westminster Confession 3.6). Human election is both national and individual. National election relates to the means of grace, namely, the revealed word and the ministry of the word. Individual election relates to grace itself, namely, the bestowment of the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. National election is the outward call: "many are called" (Matt. 20:16). Individual election is the inward or effectual call: "few are chosen." This statement of our Lord that few are individually elected in comparison with the many who are nationally elected refers to the state of things at the time of his speaking. Christ was rejected by the majority of that generation to which he himself belonged, but this does not mean that he will prove to have been rejected by the majority of all the generations of mankind. (supplement 3.6.12.)

The following characteristics of the decree of election are to be noticed:

1. God's decree of election originates in compassion, not complacency; in pity for the sinner's soul, not delight in the sinner's character and conduct. Election does not spring out of the divine love (agapē) spoken of in John 14:23, but out of the divine goodness and kindness (chrēstotēs) spoken of in Rom. 11:22. God sees no holiness in either the elect or the nonelect and hence feels no complacent love toward either, yet compassion toward both. He has a benevolent and merciful feeling toward the fallen human spirit (a) because it is his own handiwork: "You will have a desire to the work of your hands" (Job 14:15); "should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand?" (Jon. 4:11); "as I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live" (Ezek. 33:11); "the Lord is full of compassion; slow to anger and of great mercy" (Ps. 145:8; 103:8; 86:15); "God delights in mercy" (Mic. 7:18); "the Lord passed by and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin" (Exod. 34:6); and (b) because of its capacity for holiness and worship toward the nonelect; this compassionate feeling exists in the divine mind, because they, like the elect, are the creatures of God and have the same capacities; but the expression of this compassion is restrained for reasons sufficient for God and unknown to the creature. It appears strange that God should feel benevolent compassion toward the souls of all men alike and yet not manifest saving compassion to all of them, that he should convert Paul and leave Judas in sin. Yet there is no contradiction or impossibility in it. We can conceive of the existence of pity, without its actual exercise in some instances. We can conceive that there may be some men whose persistence in sin and obstinate resistance of common grace God decides for reasons sufficient to him not to overcome by the internal operation of his Spirit, while yet his feeling toward them as his creatures is that of profound and infinite compassion. Why he does not overcome their self-will by the actual exercise of his compassion, as he does that of others equally or perhaps even more impenitent and obstinate, is unknown and perhaps unknowable. "Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in your sight" (Matt. 11:26) is all the reason that our Lord assigns.

2. God's decree of election is not chargeable with partiality, because this can obtain only when one party has a claim upon another. If God owed forgiveness and salvation to all mankind, it would be partiality should he save some and not others. Partiality is injustice. A parent is partial and unjust if he disregards the equal rights and claims of all his children. A debtor is partial and unjust if in the payment of his creditors he favors some at the expense of others. In these instances, one party has a claim upon the other. But it is impossible for God to show partiality in the bestowment of salvation from sin, because the sinner has no right or claim to it. Says Aquinas (Summa 2.63.1):

There is a twofold giving: the one a matter of justice, whereby a man is paid what is due to him. Here, it is possible to act partially and with respect of persons. There is a second kind of giving, which is a branch of mere bounty or liberality, by which something is bestowed that is not due. Such are the gifts of grace whereby sinners are received of God. In this case, respect of persons, or partiality, is absolutely out of the question, because anyone, without the least shadow of injustice, may give of his own as he will and to whom he will: according to Matt. 20:14–15, "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with my own?"

A man cannot be charged with unjust partiality in the bestowment of alms because giving alms is not paying a debt. He may give to one beggar and not to another, without any imputation upon his justice, because he owes nothing to either of them. In like manner, God may overcome the resisting will of one man and not of another, without being chargeable with unjust partiality, because he does not owe this mercy to either of them. This truth is taught in Rom. 9:14–15: "What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." Although feeling compassion toward all sinners in the universe because they are his creatures, God does not save all sinners in the universe. He does not redeem any of the fallen angels; and he does not redeem all of fallen mankind. He deals justly with both fallen angels and lost men; and justice cannot be charged with partiality: "Behold therefore the goodness (chrēstotēta) and severity (apotomian) of God; on them which fell, severity (strict justice); but toward you, goodness (mercy)" (Rom. 11:22). Under an economy of grace, there can be, from the nature of the case, no partiality. Only under an economy of justice and of legal claims is it possible. The charge of partiality might with as much reason be made against the gifts of providence as against the gifts of grace. Health, wealth, and high intellectual power are not due to men from God. They are given to some and denied to others; but God is not therefore partial in his providence. The assertion that God is bound, either in this life or the next, to tender a pardon of sin through Christ to every man not only has no support in Scripture, but is contrary to reason, for it transforms grace into debt and involves the absurdity that if the judge does not offer to pardon the criminal whom he has sentenced he does not treat him equitably.

3. The decree of election is immutable and the salvation of the elect is certain because God realizes his decree, in this instance, by direct efficiency. He purposes that a certain individual shall believe and persevere to the end and secures this result by an immediate operation upon him. The conversion of St. Paul is an example: "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance" (Rom. 11:22); "whom he predestinated them he glorified" (8:32). "Let us not imagine," says St. Augustine on Ps. 68, "that God puts down any man in his book, and then erases him: for if Pilate could say 'What I have written, I have written,' how can it be thought that the great God would write a person's name in the book of life and then blot it out again?" The elect are not saved in sin, but from sin. Sanctification is as much an effect of the purpose of election, as justification. Christians are "elect unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Christ" (1 Pet. 1:2). This accords with the previous statement that the divine decree is universal, including the means as well as the end. Says Milton,

Prediction, still,

In all things and all men, supposes means;

Without means used, what it predicts, revokes.

—Paradise Regained 3.364

They who are predestinated to life are predestinated to the means and conditions: "As many as were ordained to eternal life believed" (Acts 13:48); "he has chosen us in him that we should be holy" (Eph. 1:4); "we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has foreordained that we should walk in them" (2:10). Says Augustine (Concerning Rebuke 7.13), "those who are made the objects of divine grace are caused to hear the gospel, and when (it is) heard (they are caused) to believe it and are made to endure to the end in faith that works by love; and should they at any time go astray, they are recovered." Says Luther (Romans, preface), "God's decree of predestination is firm and certain; and the necessity resulting from it is in like manner immovable and cannot but take place. For we ourselves are so feeble, that if the matter were left in our hands, very few, or rather none, would be saved; but Satan would overcome us all." (supplement 3.6.13.)

4. The grace of God manifested in the purpose of election is irresistible—not in the sense that it cannot be opposed in any degree, but in the sense that it cannot be overcome. In the same sense, the power of God is irresistible; a man may resist omnipotence, but he cannot conquer it. The army of Napoleon at Austerlitz was irresistible, though fiercely attacked. God can exert such an agency upon the human spirit as to incline or make willing: "Your people shall be willing in the day of your power" (Ps. 110:3); "it is God who works in you to will and to do of his good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13). The doctrine of the internal operation of the Holy Spirit is the clue to this. The finite will cannot be made willing or inclined by (a) external force, (b) human instruction, or (c) human persuasion. But it can be, by the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit upon the human will as spirit. This divine agency is described in John 3:8. Because this action of the infinite spirit upon the finite spirit is in accordance with the voluntary nature of spirit, it is not compulsory. The creature is spontaneous and free in every act performed under the actuation of God, because God is the Creator of the will and never works in a manner contrary to its created qualities. God never undoes in one mode of his agency what he has done in another mode. Having made the human spirit voluntary and self-moving, he never influences it in a manner that destroys its voluntariness. "God," says Howe (Oracles 1.20), "knows how to govern his creatures according to their natures and changes the hearts of men according to that natural way wherein the human faculties are wont to work; a thing that all the power of the whole world could not do."

5. The decree of election is unconditional. It depends upon the sovereign pleasure of God, not upon the foreseen faith or works of the individual. Romans 9:11 asserts "that the purpose of God according to election does not stand of works, but of him that calls." Romans 9:11–12 teaches that the election of Jacob and rejection of Esau was not founded upon the works of either: "The children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, it was said, the elder shall serve the younger." First Pet. 1:2 asserts that believers are "elected unto obedience," consequently, not because of obedience. Second Tim. 1:9 affirms that "God has called us, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose." Romans 8:29 teaches that "whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son." If God foreknew these persons as conformed to the image of his Son, he would have no need to predestinate them to this conformity. Acts 13:48 declares that "as many as were ordained to eternal life, believed." This shows that faith is the result, not the reason of foreordination.

If it be objected that election does not "stand of works," but that it stands of faith, the reply is the following. (a) Faith is an inward work: "This is the work of God, that you believe" (John 6:29). Consequently, election not does rest upon faith as a foreseen inward work, any more than upon a foreseen outward work. (b) Faith is a gift of God to man (Eph. 1:8); therefore it cannot first be a gift of man to God, as the ground and reason of his electing act. (c) If election depends upon foreseen faith, God does not first choose man, but man first chooses God; which is contrary to John 15:16. (d) If election depends upon foreseen faith, there would be no reason for the objection in Rom. 9:19: "You will say then, Why does he yet find fault?" or for the exclamation "O the depth!" (11:33). If it be said that election depends upon the right use of common grace by the sinner, this would make "the purpose of God according to election" to stand partly of works and not solely "of him that calls." Faith in this case is partly "the gift of God" and partly the product of the sinful will. This is contrary to those Scriptures which represent God as the alone author of election, regeneration, faith, and repentance (Rom. 9:16; 8:7; John 1:12–13; 3:5; 6:44, 65).

Reprobation

Reprobation is the antithesis to election and necessarily follows from it. If God does not elect a person, he rejects him. If God decides not to convert a sinner into a saint, he decides to let him remain a sinner. If God decides not to work in a man to will and to do according to God's will, he decides to leave the man to will and to do according to his own will. If God purposes not to influence a particular human will to good, he purposes to allow that will to have its own way. When God effectually operates upon the human will, it is election. When God does not effectually operate upon the human will, it is reprobation. And he must do either the one or the other. The logical and necessary connection between election and reprobation is seen also by considering the two divine attributes concerned in each. Election is the expression of divine mercy, reprobation of divine justice. God must manifest one or the other of these two attributes toward a transgressor. St. Paul teaches this in Rom. 11:22: "Behold the goodness and severity of God (divine compassion and divine justice) on them which fell severity; but toward you goodness."

Consequently, whoever holds the doctrine of election must hold the antithetic doctrine of reprobation. A creed that contains the former logically contains the latter, even when it is not verbally expressed (e.g., Augsburg Confession 1.5; First Helvetic Confession 9; Heidelberg Catechism 54). Ursinus, who drew up the Heidelberg Catechism, discusses reprobation in his system of theology founded upon it. The Thirty-nine Articles mention election and not reprobation. The following Reformed creeds mention both doctrines:

Second Helvetic Confession 10.4: "And although God has known those who are his and mention is made somewhere of the small number of the elect, nevertheless we ought to hope the best for all people, nor fear that someone is numbered among the reprobate."

Second Helvetic Confession 10.6: "Others say, 'But if I am numbered among the reprobate.' "

French Confession 12: "We believe that God removes the elect from this condemnation, leaving the others" etc.

Belgic Confession 16: "We believe that God has shown himself as he is, that is, merciful and just. He is shown to be merciful in delivering and saving those who in his eternal counsel he has elected. He is shown to be just in leaving the others in their ruin and perdition in which they have involved themselves."

Scotch Confession 8: "And for this cause, ar we not affrayed to cal God our Father, not sa meikle because he hes created us, quhilk we have common with the reprobate."

Irish Articles: "By the same eternal counsel, God has predestinated some unto life and reprobated some unto death."

Lambeth Articles: "God from eternity has predestinated certain men unto life; certain men he has reprobated."

Dort Canons 1.15: "Holy Scripture testifies that not all persons are elect, but that certain persons are nonelect or bypassed in the eternal election of God. Evidently God, in his most free, just, blameless, and immutable good pleasure, determined to abandon them in the common misery, into which they cast themselves through their own fault."

Westminster Confession 3.3: "By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death."

Reprobation relates to regenerating grace, not to common grace. It is an error to suppose that the reprobate are entirely destitute of grace. All mankind enjoys common grace. There are no elect or reprobate in this reference. Every human being experiences some degree of the ordinary influences of the Spirit of God. St. Paul teaches that God strives with man universally. He convicts him of sin and urges him to repent of it and forsake it (Rom. 1:19–20; 2:3–4; Acts 17:24–31):

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness, so that they are without excuse. And think you, O man, that you shall escape the judgment of God? Or despise you the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance. God has made of one blood all nations of men and appointed the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him and find him: for in him we live and move and have our being.

The reprobate resist and nullify common grace; and so do the elect. The obstinate selfishness and enmity of the human heart defeats divine mercy as shown in the ordinary influences of the Holy Spirit, in both the elect and nonelect: "You stiff-necked, you do always resist the Holy Spirit" (Acts 7:51). The difference between the two cases is that in the instance of the elect God follows up the common grace which has been resisted with the regenerating grace which overcomes the resistance, while in the instance of the reprobate he does not. It is in respect to the bestowment of this higher degree of grace that St. Paul affirms that God "has mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardens." Says Bates (Eternal Judgment, 2):

It is from the perverseness of the will and the love of sin that men do not obey the gospel. For the Holy Spirit never withdraws his gracious assistance, till resisted, grieved, and quenched by them. It will be no excuse that divine grace is not conferred in the same eminent degree upon some as upon others that are converted; for the impenitent shall not be condemned for want of that singular powerful grace that was the privilege of the elect, but for receiving in vain that measure of common grace that they had. If he that received one talent had faithfully improved it, he had been rewarded with more; but upon the slothful and ungrateful neglect of his duty, he was justly deprived of it and cast into a dungeon of horror, the emblem of hell. (supplement 3.6.14.)

Reprobation comprises preterition and condemnation or damnation. It is defined in Westminster Confession 3.7 as a twofold purpose: (a) "to pass by" some men in the bestowment of regenerating grace and (b) "to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin." The first is preterition; the last is condemnation or damnation. Preterition must not be confounded with condemnation (this is done by Baier, Compendium 3.12.27). Much of the attack upon the general tenet of reprobation arises from overlooking this distinction. The following characteristics mark the difference between the two. (a) Preterition is a sovereign act; condemnation is a judicial act. God passes by or omits an individual in the bestowment of regenerating grace because of his sovereign good pleasure (eudokia). But he condemns this individual to punishment, not because of his sovereign good pleasure, but because this individual is a sinner. To say that God condemns a man to punishment because he pleases is erroneous; but to say that God omits to regenerate a man because he pleases is true. (b) The reason of condemnation is known; sin is the reason. The reason of preterition is unknown. It is not sin, because the elect are as sinful as the nonelect. (c) In preterition, God's action is permissive, inaction rather than action. In condemnation, God's action is efficient and positive. (supplement 3.6.15.)

The decree of preterition or omission is a branch of the permissive decree. As God decided to permit man to use his self-determining power and originate sin, so he decided to permit some men to continue to use their self-determining power and persevere in sin. Preterition is no more exposed to objection than is the decree to permit sin at first. "It is no blemish," says Howe (Decrees, lect. 3), "when things are thus and so connected in themselves naturally and morally, to let things in many instances stand just as in themselves they are." Preterition is "letting things stand" as they are. To omit or pretermit is to leave or let alone. The idea is found in Luke 17:34: "The one shall be taken, the other shall be left." God sometimes temporarily leaves one of his own children to his own self-will. This is a temporary reprobation. Such was the case of Hezekiah: "In the business of the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, God left him, to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart" (2 Chron. 32:31; cf. Ps. 81:12–13 and David's temporary reprobation in the matter of Uriah). Preterition in the bestowment of regenerating (not common) grace is plainly taught in Scripture (Isa. 6:9–10; Matt. 11:25–26; 13:11; 22:14; Luke 17:34; John 10:26; 12:39; Acts 1:16; 2 Thess. 2:11–12; 2 Tim. 2:20; 1 Pet. 2:8; Rom. 9:17–18, 21–22; Jude 4). Isaiah 6:9–10 is quoted more often in the New Testament than any other Old Testament text. It occurs four times in the gospels (in every instance in the discourse of our Lord), once in Acts, and once in Romans (Shedd on Rom. 9:18, 23, 33).

The decree of preterition may relate either to the outward means of grace or to inward regenerating grace. The former is national, the latter is individual preterition. In bestowing written revelation and the promise of a Redeemer upon the Jews under the old economy, God omitted or passed by all other nations: "The Lord your God has chosen you to be a special people unto himself: not because you were more in number, for you were the fewest" (Deut. 7:10). Until the appointed time had come, Christ himself forbade his disciples to preach the gospel indiscriminately to Jews and Gentiles (Matt. 10:5–6). After his resurrection, national preterition ceased (Mark 16:15; Luke 24:47). All nations are now elected to the outward means of salvation, namely, the Scriptures and the ministry of the word, so far as the command of God is concerned, though practically many are still reprobated, owing to the unfaithfulness of the Christian church. St. Paul teaches this when he asks and answers: "Have they not heard? Yes, verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words to the end of the world" (Rom. 10:18). The proclamation of the gospel is universal, not national.

There may be individual preterition in connection with national election. Some of the Jews were individually and inwardly reprobated, but all of them were nationally and outwardly elected: "Israel has not obtained that which he seeks for, but the election has obtained it, and the rest were blinded" (Rom. 9:27; 11:7); "many are called, but few chosen" (Matt. 10:16; Isa. 10:22–23). Some in Christendom will in the last day prove to have been passed by in the bestowment of regenerating grace: "All that hear the gospel and live in the visible church are not saved; but they only who are true members of the church invisible" (Westminster Shorter Catechism 61). Reprobated persons are striven with by the Holy Spirit and are convicted of sin, but they resist these strivings, and the Holy Spirit proceeds no further with them. In his sovereignty, he decides not to overcome their resistance of common grace. The nonelect are the subjects of common grace, to which they oppose a strenuous and successful determination of their own will. Every sinner is stronger than common grace, but not stronger than regenerating grace. The nonelect "may be and often are outwardly called by the ministry of the word and have some common operations of the Spirit, who for their willful neglect and contempt of the grace offered to them, being justly left in their unbelief, do never truly come to Jesus Christ" (Westminster Shorter Catechism 68). "Go and tell this people, Hear indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and convert and be healed" (Isa. 6:9–10). The resistance and abuse of common grace is followed by desertion of God, which negative desertion is, in this passage of the evangelical prophet, called, Hebraistically, a positive stupefying, hardening and deafening. (supplements 3.6.16 and 3.6.17.)

Preterition is not inconsistent with the doctrine of divine mercy. A man who has had common grace has been the subject of mercy to this degree. If he resists it, he cannot complain because God does not bestow upon him still greater mercy in the form of regenerating grace. A sinner who has quenched the convicting influence of the Holy Spirit cannot call God unmerciful because he does not afterward grant him the converting influence. A beggar who contemptuously rejects the five dollars offered by a benevolent man cannot charge stinginess upon him because after this rejection of the five dollars he does not give him ten. A sinner who has repulsed the mercy of God in common grace and demands that God grant a yet larger degree virtually says to the infinite one: "You have tried once to convert me from sin; now try again and try harder."

There may be individual election in connection with national preterition. Some men may be saved in unevangelized nations. That God has his elect among the heathen is taught in Calvinistic creeds. Westminster Confession 10.3, after saying that "elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who works when and where and how he pleases," adds "so also are all other elect persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word." This is not to be referred solely to idiots and insane persons, but also to such of the pagan world as God pleases to regenerate without the written word. The Second Helvetic Confession, one of the most important of the Reformed creeds, after saying that the ordinary mode of salvation is by the instrumentality of the written word, adds (1.7), "We grant, meanwhile, that God can illuminate people even without the external ministry, how and when he wishes, for it lies within his power to do so." Zanchi (Predestination, 1) says that "national reprobation does not imply that every individual person who lives in an unevangelized country, must therefore unavoidably perish forever: any more than that every individual who lives in a land called Christian is therefore in a state of salvation. There are no doubt elect persons among the former, as well as reprobate ones among the latter." Again (Predestination, 4), after remarking that many nations have never had the privilege of hearing the word preached, he says that "it is not indeed improbable that some individuals in these unenlightened countries may belong to the secret election of grace, and the habit of faith may be wrought in them." By the term habit (habitus), the elder divines meant an inward disposition of the heart and will. The "habit of faith" is the believing mind or disposition of soul. And this implies penitence for sin and the longing for deliverance from it. The habit of faith is the broken and contrite heart which expresses itself in the publican's prayer: "God be merciful to me a sinner." It is evident that the Holy Spirit by an immediate operation can, if he please, produce such a disposition and frame of mind in a pagan without employing as he commonly does the preaching of the written word. That there can be a disposition to believe in Christ before Christ is personally known is proved by the case of the blind man in John 9:36–38: "Jesus says unto him, Do you believe on the Son of God? He answered and said, Who is he Lord, that I might believe on him? And Jesus said unto him, You have both seen him, and it is he that talks with you. And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshiped him." The case of the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:27–28) is a similar instance of a penitent sense of sin and a desire for deliverance from it before the great deliverer himself is actually set before the mind. Calvin (4.16.19) remarks that "when the apostle makes hearing the source of faith, he describes only the ordinary economy and dispensation of the Lord, which he generally observes in the calling of his people, but does not prescribe a perpetual rule for him, precluding his employment of any other method, which he has certainly employed in the calling of many to whom he has given the true knowledge of himself in an internal manner, by the illumination of his spirit, without the intervention of any preaching." Calvin is speaking of infants in this connection; but the possibility of the regeneration of an infant without the written word proves the same possibility in the instance of an adult. In 3.17.4 he describes Cornelius as having been "illuminated and sanctified by the Spirit" prior to Peter's preaching to him. Augustine (Letter 102 to Deogratias) teaches that some are saved outside of the circle of special revelation: "Seeing that in the sacred Hebrew books some are mentioned, even from Abraham's time, not belonging to his natural posterity nor to the people of Israel, and not proselytes added to that people, who were nevertheless partakers of this holy mystery, why may we not believe that in other nations also, here and there, some names were found, although we do not read their names in these authoritative records?" In his Retractationes 2.31 Augustine remarks upon this passage that the salvation in such cases was not on the ground of personal virtue and merit, but by the grace of God in regenerating the heart and working true repentance for sin in it: "This I said, not meaning that anyone could be worthy through his own merit, but in the same sense as the apostle said, 'Not of works, but of him that calls'—a calling which he affirms to pertain to the purpose of God" (Nicene Fathers 1.418).

That the Holy Spirit saves some of the unevangelized heathen by the regeneration of the soul and the production of the penitent and believing habit or disposition is favored by Scripture; though from the nature of the case, the data are not numerous. The Bible teaches that the ordinary method of salvation is through the instrumentality of the word: "How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?" (Rom. 10:14). But it also teaches that the divine Spirit sometimes operates in an extraordinary manner and goes before the preacher of the word. The case of Cornelius, which is one of a class, warrants the belief that the Holy Spirit sometimes works in the individual heart and produces a sense of sin and a believing disposition, prior to the actual presentation of Christ, the object of faith. Cornelius, before Peter is sent to preach Christ to him, is described as "a just man" who "feared God" (Acts 10:22). This does not mean that he was a "virtuous pagan" who claimed to have lived up to the light he had and who upon this ground esteemed himself to be acceptable to God; but it means that he was a convicted sinner who was seriously inquiring the way of salvation from sin. This is evident from the facts that Peter preached to this "just man who feared God" the forgiveness of sin through Christ's blood and that this "just man" believed and was baptized (10:44–47). Again, it is said, "Many shall come from the east and the west and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out" (Matt. 8:11). The individually and spiritually elect from outside of Israel are here contrasted with the individually and spiritually reprobated from within Israel. Again, the universality of the gospel for the Gentiles as well as the Jews, taught in the promise to Abraham and in the prophesies of Isaiah, makes it probable that the divine Spirit does not invariably and without any exceptions wait for the tardy action of the unfaithful church in preaching the written word, before he exerts his omnipotent grace in regeneration. Peter supposes the exertion of prevenient grace when he says, "Whosoever among you fears God, to you is this word of salvation sent" (Acts 13:26). The phrase fears God here, as in 10:22, denotes a sense of sin and a predisposition of mind to receive the remission of sins produced by the Holy Spirit. The apostles seem to have found such a class of persons in their missionary tours among the unevangelized populations. The assertion of Christ (Matt. 13:17) that "many prophets and righteous men have desired to see" the Messiah, though referring primarily to the Old Testament prophets and righteous persons, may have a secondary reference to inquiring persons among the Gentiles and to Christ as the "desire of all nations."

Whether any of the heathen are saved outside of Christian missions depends, therefore, upon whether any of them are "regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit." The pagan cannot be saved by good works or human morality, any more than the nominal Christian can be. Pagan morality, like all human morality, is imperfect; and nothing but perfection can justify. Hence, Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 60 affirms that pagans "cannot be saved, be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature." The fathers of the English church also deny "that every man shall be saved by the law or sect which he professes, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that law and the light of nature" (Farrar, St. Paul 1.280). The utmost diligence and effort of a pagan fails perfectly to obey the law of God written on the heart; and only perfect obedience is free from condemnation. The most virtuous heathen has an accusing conscience at times and must acknowledge that he has come short of his duty (Rom. 2:15). Yet missionary annals furnish instances of a preparation of heart to welcome the Redeemer when he is offered. Pagans have been found with a serious and humble sense of sin and a desire for salvation from it. Baxter, in his Personal Narrative, says: "I am not so much inclined to pass a peremptory sentence of damnation upon all that never heard the gospel: having some more reason than I knew of before to think that God's dealing with such is unknown to us; and therefore the ungodly here among us Christians are in a far more worse case than they."

The decree of preterition supposes the free fall of man and his responsibility for the existence of sin (see Edwards, Decrees and Salvation §58). Man is already guilty and deserving perdition, and the reprobating decree of God simply leaves him where he already is by an act of his own self-determination. The infralapsarian or sublapsarian theory is the correct one: infra- or sub- being used logically not temporally. The sublapsarian order of the divine decrees is this: (1) the decree to create man in holiness and blessedness, (2) the decree to permit man to fall by the self-determination of his own will, (3) the decree to save a definite number out of this guilty aggregate, and (4) the decree to leave the remainder to their self-determination in sin and to the righteous punishment which sin deserves. Sublapsarianism is taught by the Synod of Dort (Decrees, art. 7) and Turretin (4.9.5). (supplement 3.6.18.)

The supralapsarian theory places, in the order of decrees, the decree of election and preterition before the fall instead of after it. It supposes that God begins by decreeing that a certain number of men shall be elected and reprobated. This decree is prior even to that of creation in the logical order. The supralapsarian order of decrees is as follows: (1) the decree to elect some to salvation and to leave some to perdition for divine glory, (2) the decree to create the men thus elected and reprobated, (3) the decree to permit them to fall, and (4) the decree to justify the elect and to condemn the nonelect. The objections to this view are the following: (a) The decree of election and preterition has reference to a nonentity. Man is contemplated as creatable, not as created. Consequently, the decree of election and preterition has no real object: "Man as creatable and fallible is not the object of predestination, but man as created and fallen is" (Turretin 4.9.5). Man is only ideally existent, an abstract conception; and therefore any divine determination concerning him is a determination concerning nonentity. But God's decrees of election and reprobation suppose some actually created beings from which to select and reject: "On whom (on) he will, he has mercy; and whom he will, he hardens" (Rom. 9:18). The first decree, in the order of nature, must therefore be a decree to create. God must bring man into being before he can decide what man shall do or experience. It is no reply to say that man is created in the divine idea, though not in reality, when the decree of predestination is made. It is equally true that he is fallen in the divine idea, when this decree is made. And the question is what is the logical order in the divine idea of the creation and the fall. (b) The Scriptures represent the elect and nonelect, respectively, as taken out of an existing aggregate of beings: "I have chosen you out of (ek) the world" (John 15:19). (c) The elect are chosen to justification and sanctification (Eph. 1:4–6; 1 Pet. 1:2). They must therefore have been already fallen and consequently created. God justifies "the ungodly" (Rom. 4:5) and sanctifies the unholy. (d) The supralapsarian reprobation is a divine act that cannot presuppose sin because it does not presuppose existence. But the Scriptures represent the nonelect as sinful creatures. In Jude 4 the men who were "of old ordained to this condemnation" are "ungodly men, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness." Accordingly, Westminster Confession 3.7 affirms that God passes by the nonelect and "ordains them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice."

The supralapsarian quotes Rom. 9:11 in proof of his assertion that election and preterition are prior to the creation of man: "The children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil," Jacob was chosen and Esau was left. This is an erroneous interpretation. Birth is not synonymous with creation. Parents are not the creators of their children. Man exists before he is born into the world. He exists in the womb; and he existed in Adam. Accordingly, in Rom. 9:10–12 it is said that "when Rebecca had conceived, it was said to her, The elder shall serve the younger." The election and preterition related to the embryonic existence. Jacob and Esau had real being in their mother, according to Ps. 139:15–16: "My substance was not hid from you, when I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in your book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of them." St. Paul (Gal. 1:15) says that he was "separated and called from his mother's womb." God says to Jeremiah (1:5), "Before you came out of the womb I sanctified you." In saying that they had not "done any good or evil" at the moment of their election and preterition, actual transgression after birth is meant. Original sin, or corruption of nature, characterized them both; otherwise, it would be absurd to speak of electing one of them to mercy and leaving the other to justice. Absolute innocence can neither be elected nor rejected, saved or lost. Ephesians 3:9–10 is explained by the supralapsarian to teach that creation is subsequent in the order to redemption. But the clause who created all things by Jesus Christ is parenthetical, not the principal clause. The clause hina gnōristhē depends on euangelisasthai64 and phōtisai in verses 8–9 (see Olshausen and Hodge in loco).

The decree of preterition does not necessitate perdition, though it makes it certain. (a) It has no effect at all, in the order of decrees, until after the free will of man has originated sin. The decree of preterition supposes the voluntary fall of man. It succeeds, in the order of nature, the decree to permit Adam's sin. Preterition, consequently, has to do only with a creature who is already guilty by his own act and justly "condemned already" (John 3:18). (b) It is a permissive not an efficient act on the part of God that is exerted in preterition. In respect to regeneration, God decides to do nothing in the case of a nonelect sinner. He leaves him severely alone. He permits him to have his already existing self-determination, his own voluntary inclination. This is not compulsion, but the farthest possible from it. Compulsion might with more color of reason be charged upon election, than upon preterition. For in this case, God works in the human will "to will."

The efficient and blameworthy cause of the perdition of the nonelect is not the decree of preterition, but the self-determined apostasy and sin of the nonelect. Mere permission is not causation: "Causality has no place where there is bare permission" (Quenstedt 2.2.2). The nonelect is not condemned and lost because God did not elect him, but because he "sinned and came short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23); "because of unbelief, they were broken off" (11:20).

The sentence of the last day will not be founded upon God's negative act of not saving, but upon the sinner's positive act of sinning. Christ will not say to the impenitent, "Depart, because I did not save you," but, "Depart, because you have sinned and have no sorrow for it." Should John Doe throw himself into the water and be drowned, while Richard Roe stood upon the bank and did nothing, the verdict would be that the act was suicide, not homicide: "Drowned, not because Richard Roe did not pull him out, but because John Doe threw himself in." It is true that Richard Roe, in this instance, would be guilty of a neglect of duty toward God in not saving the life of John Doe, but he would not be guilty of the murder of John Doe. Richard Roe's nonperformance of his duty toward God would not transfer the guilt of John Doe's act of self-murder to him. Were God under an obligation to save the sinner, the decree of preterition would be unjustifiable. It would be a neglect of duty. But salvation is grace, not debt; and therefore the decision not to bestow it is an act of justice without mercy: "On them that fell, severity" or exact justice is inflicted (Rom. 11:22).

While, then, election is the efficient cause of salvation, preterition is not the efficient cause of perdition. If I hold up a stone in my hand, my holding it up is the efficient cause of its not falling; but if I let it go, my letting it go is not the efficient cause of its falling. The efficient cause, in this case, is the force of gravity. Nonprevention is inaction, and inaction is not causation. On the side of election, the efficient cause of salvation is the Holy Spirit in regeneration; but on the side of reprobation, the efficient cause of perdition is the self-determination of the human will (see South, sermon on Deut. 29:4). Bunyan (Reprobation Asserted, 11) lays down the following propositions: (1) eternal reprobation makes no man a sinner, (2) the foreknowledge of God that the reprobate will perish makes no man a sinner, (3) God's infallible determining upon the damnation of him that perishes makes no man a sinner, and (4) God's patience and forbearance until the reprobate fits himself for eternal destruction makes no man a sinner.

The decree of preterition makes perdition certain, because the bondage of the sinner's will to evil prevents self-recovery. There are but two agents who can be conceived of as capable of converting the human will from sin to holiness, namely, the will itself and God. If owing to its own action the human will is unable to incline itself to holiness and God purposes not to incline it, everlasting sin follows, and this is everlasting perdition. The certainty of the perdition of the nonelect arises from his inability to recover himself from the consequences of his own free agency and the decision of God to leave him "to eat of the fruit of his own way and to be filled with his own devices" (Prov. 1:31). (supplement 3.6.19.)

The reason for preterition or not bestowing regenerating grace is secret and unknown to man. It supposes sin, but not a greater degree of sin than in the elect. This is taught in Rom. 9:11: "The children not having done any good or evil, in order that the purpose of God might stand, not of works, it was said, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." Election also supposes sin, but not a less degree of sin than in the nonelect. Saul of Tarsus was a violent and bitter enemy of the gospel, but was "a chosen vessel." This is the sovereignty of God in election and preterition, taught in 9:18: "He has mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will be hardens." The meaning of "harden" here is "not to soften." The meaning of "hate" in 9:11 is "not to love." This text is equivalent to Luke 17:34: "The one shall be taken, the other shall be left." The word emisēsa is employed Hebraistically, not classically. It does not denote the positive emotion of hatred against sin, because it is expressly said that in election and preterition reference is not had to holiness and sin. A man is not elected because he is holy or omitted because he is sinful. Hatred, here, denotes the withholding of regenerating mercy. It is the same Hebraistic use of the word hate with that of Christ in Luke 14:26 compared with Matt. 10:37. To hate father and mother is the same as to "love less," in comparison. Compare also the Hebraistic use of "hide" to denote "not to reveal" in 12:25. The popular signification of "reprobate" denotes an uncommonly wicked person. In this, it differs from the scriptural and theological signification, which denotes mere nonelection, with no reference to degrees of sin. A similar Hebrew idiom is seen in Ps. 141:4: "Incline not my heart to any evil thing." The psalmist calls the negative permission to incline himself a positive inclining by God. He asks God to keep him from his own inclination to evil. This idiom is found in the Turkish language. "To let fall" and "to cause to fall" are the same word. "I missed my steamer" in Turkish is literally "I caused my steamer to run away." In the oriental languages, the imperative form often expresses permission instead of command (Herrick in Bibliotheca sacra, Oct. 1885). (supplement 3.6.20.)

Again, preterition, while supposing existing sin and unbelief, does not rest upon foreseen perseverance in sin and unbelief. God did not omit Esau in the bestowment of regenerating grace, because he foreknew that he would continue to do wrong in the future. He was passed by, "not having done any evil," that is, without reference either to past or future transgressions. A reference to these would have been a reason for passing by Jacob as well as Esau. Perseverance in sin is the consequence of preterition, not the cause of it. God decides not to overcome the sinner's resistance and obstinacy, and the result is that he persists in his willful course. Hence, future perseverance in sin is not the reason why God does not bestow regenerating grace upon the nonelect.

The final end of both election and reprobation is divine glory in the manifestation of certain attributes. It is no more true that God creates any "merely to damn them," than that he creates them merely to save them. The ultimate end of all of God's acts is in himself: "For of him and through him and to him are all things" (Rom. 11:36). When God elects and saves a sinner, the attribute of mercy is glorified. When he leaves a sinner in sin and punishes him, the attribute of justice is glorified. Neither salvation nor damnation are ultimate ends, but means to an ultimate end, namely, the manifested glory of the triune God. To exhibit justice as well as to exhibit mercy is honorable to God: "The ministration of death was glorious. The ministration of condemnation is glory" (2 Cor. 3:7, 9). (supplement 3.6.21.)

Arminian and Calvinistic Systems Compared

The two great systems of theology that divide evangelical Christendom—Calvinism and Arminianism—are marked by their difference respecting the doctrines of election and preterition:

1. In the Calvinistic system, election precedes faith, and preterition precedes perseverance in unbelief. God elects a sinner to the bestowment of regenerating grace, and faith in Christ is the consequence. God passes by a sinner in the bestowment of regenerating grace (though he may bestow all the grades of grace below this), and endless unbelief is the consequence. God is thus the efficient cause and author of faith, but not of unbelief. The electing decree is efficacious and originates faith. The nonelecting decree is permissive and merely allows existing unbelief to continue. In the Arminian system, election is subsequent to faith, and preterition is subsequent to perseverance in unbelief. God elects an individual because his faith is foreseen, and God omits to bestow regenerating grace upon an individual because his persistence in sin and unbelief is foreseen. For the divine mind, the faith and the perseverance in unbelief have occurred, and the election and preterition follow after them as their consequence. Consequently, in the Arminian scheme, the reasons for election and preterition are not secret but known. Man's faith is the reason for election; man's perseverance in unbelief is the reason for preterition.

2. Arminian election and preterition are judicial, not sovereign acts of God. They are of the nature of reward and punishment. Because a man believes in Christ, he is elected—this is his reward. Because he persists in sin and unbelief, he is passed by—this is his punishment. Calvinistic election and preterition are sovereign, not judicial acts. A man is elected because of God's good pleasure (kata eudokian), not because of faith; and a man is passed by because of God's good pleasure, not because of persistence in sin.

3. Since Arminian election succeeds saving faith in the logical order, it must in the same order succeed death. Inasmuch as in the Arminian scheme the believer may at any time before death fall from faith, and therefore it cannot be determined until after death who has saving faith, it follows that a man cannot be elected until after he is dead. In the order of events, death is prior to election.

4. Arminian election and preterition are the election and preterition of qualities, namely, of faith and persevering unbelief. Calvinistic election and preterition are those of persons, namely, Peter, James, and Judas.

5. Arminian election is inconsistent with a part of the Arminian statement respecting inability. If God elects a sinner because he foresees that he will believe and repent, it follows that the sinner has power to believe and repent. If election is conditioned by the act of the human will in believing, this act must be within the sinner's ability. But in the seventeenth chapter of the Declaration of the Remonstrants, the following statement is found: "Man has not saving faith from himself, neither is he regenerated or converted by the force of his own free will; since in the state of sin he is not able of and by himself to think, will, or do any good thing—any good thing that is saving in its nature, particularly conversion and saving faith." If this were all that is said in the Arminian Articles respecting ability, it would be impossible to harmonize it with conditional election. Unconditional election alone is consistent with it. But in connection with this statement of inability, a view of grace is presented that modifies and really retracts this assertion of utter inability and is consistent with conditional election. Though it is said that man by apostasy "is not able of and by himself to think, will, or do any good thing that is saving in its nature," yet, it is also said that "the Holy Spirit confers, or at least is ready to confer, upon all and each to whom the word of faith is preached, as much grace as is sufficient for generating faith and carrying forward their conversion in its successive stages." Every man, therefore, that hears the gospel receives a degree of grace that is sufficient for regeneration, provided that he rightly uses it. If therefore he is not regenerated, it must be from the lack of his human efficiency in cooperation with the divine. The difference, consequently, between the believer and unbeliever, the elect and nonelect, is referable not wholly to God's electing grace, but partly to the right use made of grace by the man himself. Dependence upon regenerating grace in the Arminian scheme is partial, not total; and Arminian election depends partly upon the act of the human will and not wholly upon the will of God. (supplement 3.6.22.)

Objections to Election and Reprobation Answered

It is objected to the doctrine of preterition that God cannot be sincere in the universal offer of the gospel in Mark 16:15. The first reply is that sincerity depends upon the intrinsic nature of the thing desired, not upon the result of endeavors to attain it. A parent sincerely desires the reformation of a child, because his reformation is a good thing in itself. He may have little or no expectation of accomplishing it, but this does not weaken his longing or impair the sincerity of his efforts. A miser upon his deathbed desires wealth as a species of good as sincerely as ever, but he knows that he can no longer have it. In like manner, God, by reason of his inherent compassion, may sincerely desire the conversion of a sinner as the sinner's highest good, though he knows that it will never take place. The Arminian theory has no advantage over the Calvinistic at this point. God, says the Arminian, sincerely desires the sinner's repentance, although he foreknows infallibly that his desire will not be gratified by the action of the sinner. Second, the decree of God is not always expressive of his desire, but sometimes may be contrary to it. God decreed sin and yet prohibited it. A man's decision, which is his decree in a particular case, is frequently contrary to his natural inclination. He decides to suffer pain in the amputation of a limb, though he is utterly averse to pain. His natural spontaneous desire is to escape physical pain, but in this particular instance he decides not to escape it. If there are sufficient reasons for it, a man's particular decision may be not only no of his general desire, but directly contrary to it. The same is true of God. The natural spontaneous desire of God toward all men, the nonelect as well as the elect, is expressed in Ezek. 33:11; 18:32: "As I live, says the Lord, I have no pleasure (ḥāpēṣ) in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his evil way and live. I have no pleasure in the death of him that dies, says the Lord; wherefore turn yourselves and live." This divine desire is constitutional. It springs from the compassionate love of the Creator toward the soul of the creature and is founded in the essential benevolence of the divine nature. But this general and abiding desire is distinguishable from the realization or gratification of it by a particular decision in a particular instance. It is conceivable that God may sincerely desire that Judas Iscariot would believe on Christ and repent of sin, and yet for some sufficient reason decide not to overcome his opposition and incline him to the act of faith. God desires that there should be no physical pain in his creation. He takes no delight in physical distress. But in particular instances, he decides not to realize this desire by a special act of his own in preventing or removing pain. The purpose of God—in distinction from his desire—toward the nonelect is expressed in Exod. 9:16: "For this cause have I raised you up, for to show in you my power and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth"; and in Rom. 9:18: "Whom he will, he hardens." The purpose spoken of here was the decision of God not to interfere with the will of Pharaoh. God desired that Pharaoh would spontaneously and of his own accord let the people go: "Let my people go" (Exod. 9:1). But he decided not to overcome the unwillingness of Pharaoh to let the people go: "God hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not" (9:12). This "hardening" was the not softening of his already hard heart. God sent Moses to persuade Pharaoh. This indicated divine desire. But God at the same time informed Moses that his persuasion would fail (7:1–4). This indicated divine purpose not to conquer Pharaoh's obstinacy. Christ, in deep sincerity and in tears, said: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which kills the prophets and stones them that are sent unto you—how often would I have gathered your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not" (Luke 13:34; 19:41). He unquestionably desired that the inhabitants of Jerusalem would yield to that degree of common grace with which they had been blessed and would repent and believe on him; and he unquestionably could have exerted upon them that degree of uncommon grace, by which he is "the author and finisher of faith" (Heb. 12:2) and by which he demonstrates that "all power is given unto him in heaven and in earth" (Matt. 28:18). Yet he did not exert his power to overcome the obstinacy and resistance of the human will in this instance. Those inhabitants of Jerusalem over whom he had wept were passed by in the bestowment of regenerating grace, but not of common. (supplement 3.6.23.)

One class of scriptural texts teaches that the benevolent desire of God is that all should turn from sin. Another class teaches that for reasons unknown to man, but sufficient for God, God determines in some instances not to gratify his own desire. There is nothing self-contradictory in this; for it finds a parallel in human action. It is indeed strange to human view that an omnipotent being should, in even a single instance, forbear to bring about what he sincerely desires. But if there be a sufficient reason for it in the divine mind, there is nothing intrinsically contradictory in the procedure, and there is certainly nothing unjust to the sinner in it. Says Turretin (4.17.33):

God delights in the conversion and eternal life of the sinner, as a thing pleasing in itself and congruous with his own infinitely compassionate nature, rather than in his perdition; and therefore demands from man, as an act due from him, to turn if he would live. But although he does not will, in the sense of delighting in, the death of the sinner, he at the same time wills, in the sense of decreeing, the death of the sinner for the display of his justice. Even as an upright magistrate, though he does not delight in and desire the death of the criminal, yet determines to inflict the just penalty of the law.

God desires that the nonelect would turn of himself by the spontaneous action of his own will under the operation of common grace. He would rejoice in such a conversion. The entreaty "turn, why will you die?" springs out of this desire. That this entreaty of God fails in this case is owing to the sinner and therefore does not prove that God is insincere in his desire. Sincerity, we have seen, is independent of the result. If the failure of this entreaty were due to God's own action, then, indeed, insincerity might be charged. If God, at the time when he is entreating a man to turn, were at work to prevent him from turning, the entreaty would be hypocritical. But God, instead of hindering the sinner, is helping him with that degree of grace which is called common. The reason why divine entreaty thus accompanied with common grace is unsuccessful is the resistance of the sinner. Surely, the fact that God does not think proper to add a second degree of grace in order to overcome the sinner's resistance of the first degree of grace does not prove that God is insincere in his desire for the sinner's conversion under the first degree of grace. If a man offer a beggar a small sum and it is rejected, it would be absurd to say that because he does not now offer him a large sum, he was insincere in the first offer. A parent wills the payment of a son's debts, in the sense of desiring that his son would by industry and economy pay the debts which he has contracted; but he may not will the payment of these debts in the sense of deciding to pay them for him, the reason being that should he pay them he would do injustice to the other members of his family.

A certain class of objections to election and reprobation rests upon the assumption that God is not merciful unless he shows special mercy and not sincere unless he does all that he possibly can to save sinners. This is a fallacy. Sincerity in extending an invitation does not involve an obligation to give a disposition to accept it. God is merciful in bestowing the gifts of providence and of common grace, though he go no farther than this; and he is sincere in doing what he does in common grace, though he does not exert saving grace. Says Richard Baxter:

If God please to stop Jordan and dry up the Red Sea for the passage of the Israelites and to cause the sun to stand still for Joshua, must he do so for every man in the world or else be accounted unmerciful? Suppose a king knew his subjects to be so wicked that they have everyone a design to poison themselves with something that is enticing by its sweetness: the king not only makes a law strictly charging them all to forbear to touch that poison; but sends special messengers to entreat them and tell them the danger. If these men will not hear him but willfully poison themselves, is he therefore unmerciful? But suppose that he has three or four of his sons that are infected with the same wickedness, and he will not only command and entreat them, but he will lock them up or keep the poison from them or feed them by violence with better food, is he unmerciful unless he will do so by all the rest of his kingdom?

If common grace should prevail over the sinner's resistance, it would be saving grace. This is not the same as saying that the sinner by a right use of common grace makes it saving grace. In this latter case, there is a cooperation of the sinner with God in regeneration. The sinner by working concurrently with common grace renders it effectual. This is synergistic regeneration and involves conditional election. But if without any right concurrent working of the sinner's will common grace should overcome the sinner's resistance and do the whole work, the regeneration would be due to God alone. To overcome the sinful will is not the same as to assist it. (supplement 3.6.24.)

The difference between divine desire and divine purpose or decree is the same as between the revealed and the secret will of God, mentioned in Deut. 29:29. God's desire in reference to sin and salvation is expressed in all that he has revealed (a) in the moral law and (b) in the plan of redemption. Everything in the law and the gospel implies that God does not take pleasure in sin or in the death of the sinner. But there is nothing in the revealed will of God, as made known in the law and gospel, that indicates what he has decided to do toward actually converting particular persons from their sins. This decision is altogether different from his desire, and it is a secret with himself.

The phrase God's will is ambiguous. It may mean what he is pleased with, loves, and desires. An example of this is Heb. 13:20–21: "Now the God of peace make you perfect to do his will (thelēma), working in you that which is well pleasing (euareston) in his sight." Here, God's will is something which he desires and delights in. An example of the secret will is found in Rom. 9:19: "Who has resisted his will?" Here, God's will is his purpose or decree to "harden" (or not soften) and is designated by boulēma. What he wills, that is, decrees in this instance, is the sinner's remaining in sin, which certainly is not well pleasing in his sight. In the holy actions of elect men, the secret and the revealed will agree. God, in this case, decrees what he loves. In the sinful actions of nonelect men, the two wills do not agree. God, in this case, decrees what he hates.78 This distinction is sometimes designated by the terms legislative will and decretive will, sometimes by will of complacency (complacentiae) and will of good pleasure (beneplaciti), in which latter case, good pleasure must not be confounded with pleasure. The Schoolmen employ the terms voluntas signi (signified) and voluntas beneplaciti. The Greeks speak of the will euarestias81 and eudokias.

The universal offer of the gospel is consistent with the divine purpose of predestination because (1) Christ's atonement is a sufficient satisfaction for the sins of all men and (2) God sincerely desires that every man to whom the atonement is offered would trust in it. His sincerity is evinced by the fact that, in addition to his offer, he encourages and assists man to believe by the aids of his providence—such as the written and spoken word, parental teaching and example, favoring social influences, etc.—and by the operation of the common grace of the Holy Spirit. The fact that God does not in the case of the nonelect bestow special grace to overcome the resisting self-will that renders the gifts of providence and common grace ineffectual does not prove that he is insincere in his desire that man would believe under the influence of common grace any more than the fact that a benevolent man declines to double the amount of his gift, after the gift already offered has been spurned, proves that he did not sincerely desire that the person would take the sum first offered. (For a fuller statement upon this subject, see pp. 750–53.)

Decree of Election and the Decree of Redemption

The relation of the decree of election to that of redemption is important. The statement in Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 20 is as follows: "God, having elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace to deliver them by a Redeemer." According to this statement, the decree to provide redemption succeeds the decree of election. God first decides to save certain individuals from sin and death, and an atoning Redeemer is the means of carrying out this design. This order is favored by the fact that Scripture speaks of a covenant between the Father and Son respecting the redemption of men: "When you shall make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed" (Isa. 53:10); "I will give you the heathen for your inheritance" (Ps. 2:8). Christ stipulates to suffer, provided actual not merely possible salvation shall be the result. He volunteers to die not only for the purpose of removing legal obstacles to salvation, but also with the view of actually delivering an immense multitude of particular persons from condemnation. Who these persons are is determined by a previous election. Christ did not covenant with the Father merely to atone for human sin in the abstract. He covenants for more than this, because this of itself would not secure the salvation of a single individual, since the result would depend upon the hostile will of man. In this case, Christ would have died in vain and would receive no reward for his incarnation, humiliation, and crucifixion. The Arminian order reverses the Calvinistic in making the decree to provide redemption precede that of election: (1) the decree to appoint Christ as mediator, (2) the decree to make faith and perseverance on the part of man the condition of salvation, (3) the decree appointing the means to faith and perseverance, namely, the Scriptures, sacraments, and the influence of the Holy Spirit, and (4) the decree to elect those whom God foresaw would employ the means and to condemn those who would not. In this scheme the success of Christ's atonement depends partly upon the action of the human will and not wholly as in the Calvinistic scheme upon the divine will and efficiency.

The school of Saumur advanced a theory called hypothetic universalism, which begins with Arminianism and ends with Calvinism. (1) God decreed to provide a Redeemer for all men indiscriminately, without electing any to faith, but leaving wholly to man the act of faith in the provided Redeemer. In this way, God has a general will or purpose that all men shall be saved, but its success is conditioned upon the act of man. (2) Foreseeing that no man will believe upon the provided Redeemer, God then elects some in whom he works faith and secures perseverance (see Turretin 4.17). The first part of this theory is Arminian; the second part is Calvinistic.

The objections to this theory are the following:

1. The decree of redemption is made to depend upon human action. Its success is therefore uncertain. But a divine decree is an independent and infallibly successful act of God. This doctrine therefore conflicts with the idea of a divine decree.

2. This theory implies that one divine decree may fail and be replaced by another. The decree of redemption does not succeed in saving any of mankind, owing to their unbelief, and God supplements it with a successful decree of election.

3. The decree of redemption, in this theory, does not, as it professes, include all men indiscriminately. Large masses of mankind in heathenism have had no opportunity of deciding whether they will believe in Christ.

4. This theory implies that men are elected and saved after they have rejected Christ's atonement. But the Scriptures teaches that there is no salvation, but, on the contrary, eternal death, in case there has been a rejection of Christ (Heb. 6:4–6; 10:26).

Teaching and Preaching the Doctrines of Election and Reprobation

The doctrines of election and reprobation belong to the higher ranges of revealed truth. This is implied in 2 Pet. 3:15–16. Among the "things hard to be understood" are St. Paul's dogmatic teachings respecting the divine decrees. And those who are "unlearned" in the Christian system and "unstable" in the Christian experience "wrest" them out of their true import. They are truths for the well-indoctrinated and somewhat matured Christian. And this, because they combine and systematize all the other truths of the gospel. These doctrines are the outline and scheme under which the doctrines of grace and redemption are embraced. A man may trust in the atonement of Christ and yet not be able to state accurately the relation of his act of faith to God's sovereignty and universal dominion. He may drink in the sincere milk of the word, while yet the strong meat belongs not to him because he is unskillful in the word of righteousness, because he is a minor and not of full age, and because he has not his senses exercised, by reason of use, to discriminate between truth and error (Heb. 5:13–14).

Consequently, the doctrines of election and reprobation are not to be preached "out of season" or taught out of the logical order in the system. They are not to be preached to babes in Christ but to those who are of full age. They suppose some ripeness and maturity of the Christian experience. In teaching geometry, an instructor does not put a beginner upon proposition 47. He leads him up to it, through the axioms and the preparatory theorems. He tells him that proposition 47 is as certainly true as the axioms, and that he will see it to be so in the end. But he forbids him to perplex himself about it at first. Similarly, the beginner in religion, and still more the unregenerate man, is not to be instructed first of all in the doctrine of the divine decrees. This is to be reserved for a later period in his mental history. The statement upon this point in the seventeenth of the Thirty-nine Articles is excellent:

As the godly consideration of predestination and our election in Christ is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons and such as feel in themselves the workings of the Spirit of Christ, so for sinners and carnal persons lacking the Spirit of Christ to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's predestination is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the devil does thrust them either into desperation or into recklessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation.

Says Selden (Table Talk): "They that talk nothing but predestination and will not proceed in the way of heaven till they be satisfied in that point do as a man that would not come to London unless at his first step he might set his foot upon the top of Paul's." Says Bengel: "Man must not attempt to look at God behind the scenes." But in all discussion of the subject of predestination, it should never be forgotten that the Scriptures teach a large, not a narrow decree of election. God's elect are "a multitude which no man can number." Redemption by election includes the vast majority of mankind, if the whole history of man is considered.

The doctrine of election and irresistible grace is more encouraging to the preacher of the word than the opposite theory. It is more probable that an individual sinner will believe and repent, if faith and repentance depend wholly upon the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, than if they depend partly upon the energy of the sinner's will; and still more probable, if they depend wholly upon it. The Christian knows that if his faith and repentance had been left either partly or wholly to his own separate agency, he would not have believed and repented, because he was strongly inclined to sin, loved its pleasure, and disliked humbling confession of sin and steady struggle against it.

On the same principle, it is more probable that the world of sinful men will come to faith and repentance if this great event depends wholly upon God and not wholly or partly upon the lethargic, fickle, and hostile will of man. If the success of the Holy Spirit depends upon the assistance of the sinner, he may not succeed. But if his success depends wholly upon himself, he is certain to succeed. It is better to trust God for such an immense good as the salvation of the great mass of mankind than to trust mankind themselves either entirely or in part. The biographies of successful ministers and missionaries show that the longer they preach and the more successful their preaching, the less do they rely upon the will of the sinner for success: "Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Hosts" (Zech. 4:6):

We shall not walk in an even course, but still reeling and staggering, till faith be set wholly upon its own basis, the proper foundation of it; not set between two, upon one strong prop and another that is rotten; partly on God and partly on creature helps and encouragements or our own strength. That is the way to fall off. Our only safe and happy way is, in humble obedience, in God's own strength, to follow his appointments without standing and questioning the matter and to resign the conduct of all to his wisdom and love; to put the rudder of our life into his hand, to steer the course of it as seems him good, resting quietly on his word of promise for our safety. Lord, whither you will and which way you will, be my guide, and it suffices. (Leighton on 1 Pet. 3:19–21).

SUPPLEMENTS

3.6.1 (see p. 313). Owen (Saints' Perseverance, chap. 3) observes that the divine decree relates only to what may or may not be, not to what must be; to what depends upon the optional will of God, not to what depends upon his intrinsic being and nature: "God's purposes are not concerning anything that is in itself absolutely necessary. He does not purpose that he will be wise, holy, good, just."

3.6.2 (see p. 317). "It does not follow that though there is for God a certain order of all causes, there must therefore be nothing depending on the free exercise of our own wills; for our wills themselves are included in that order of causes which is certain to God and is embraced by his foreknowledge, for human wills are also causes of human actions; and he who foreknew all the causes of things would certainly among those causes not have been ignorant of our wills" (Augustine, City of God 5.9). Augustine here uses "foreknow" in the common classical signification of simply knowing beforehand and not in the uncommon Hebrew signification of "choosing," as in Rom. 8:29; 11:2. There is nothing in simply foreknowing or foreseeing that interferes with free agency, any more than the simple onlooking of a spectator interferes with the action of a thief or murderer. The difficulty arises when the reconciliation of free agency with foreknowledge, in the sense of foreordination or predestination, is attempted. In this latter instance God does not merely look on like a spectator, but he does something like an actor. And the problem is how to make his action consistent with the creature's action. The clue to the reconciliation is in the distinction between God's efficient and permissive action. But his does not clear up the mystery in the instance of the origination of sin by a holy being like unfallen Adam, though it does in the instance of the continuation of sin in a sinful being like fallen Adam.

3.6.3 (see p. 317). Schleiermacher directs attention to the fact that while God's decree makes all events certain, it does not make them so by the same kind of power. He says (Doctrine §80) that "it leads to Manicheism if sin is denied to have its ground in God in any sense whatever, and it leads to Pelagianism if this is asserted and no distinction is made in the manner of divine causality." Here he evidently has in mind the permissive decree as distinguished from the efficient decree.

3.6.4 (see p. 318). Augustine teaches as distinctly as Calvin that sinners are elected to faith, not because of faith: "God elected us in Christ before the foundation of the world, predestinating us to the adoption of children, not because we were going to be of ourselves holy and immaculate, but he elected and predestinated that we might be so" (Predestination 37). "The elect are not those who are elected because they have believed, but that they might believe. For the Lord himself explains this election when he says: 'You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.' If they had been elected because they first believed, they themselves would have first chosen him by believing in him, so that they should deserve to be elected" (Predestination 34). "Let us look into the words of the apostle and see whether God elected us before the foundation of the world because we were going to be holy or in order that we might be so. 'Blessed,' says he, 'be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ; even as he has chosen us in himself before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and unspotted.' Not, then, because we were to be so, but that we might be so" (Predestination 36).

3.6.5 (see p. 318). Charnock (Immutability of God, 222) thus remarks upon the relation of prayer to divine immutability: "Prayer does not desire any change in God, but is offered to God that he would confer those things which he has immutably willed and purposed to communicate; but he willed them not without prayer as the means of bestowing them. The light of the sun is ordered for our discovery of visible things; but withal it is required that we use our faculty of seeing. If a man shuts his eyes and complains that the sun is changed into darkness, it would be ridiculous; the sun is not changed, but we alter ourselves. Nor is God changed in his giving us the blessings he has promised, because he has promised in the way of a due address to him, and opening our souls to receive his influence, and to this his immutability is the greatest encouragement."

3.6.6 (see p. 319). In endeavoring to explain how God decrees sin, some theologians make divine concursus to be identically the same thing in relation to both holiness and sin, namely, that of internal and positive actuation or inclining of the human will. In both cases God works in the finite will "to will and to do." This destroys the distinction between the efficient and the permissive decree. Howe (Letter on God's Prescience, postscript) discusses this point in his answer to the criticism of Theophilus Gale, who charged him with denying the divine concursus altogether, because he refused to make "the concurrence of God to the sins of men" identical with that to the holiness of men. The substance of his answer is that there is both an "immediate" and a "determinative," that is, causative concourse of God to the will of man in good action, but only an "immediate," not "determinative" or causative concourse in evil action. In the first instance God both upholds and inwardly inclines or actuates the will of man; in the second instance he upholds but does not inwardly incline it: "Divine concourse or influence (for I here affect not the curiosity to distinguish these terms, as some do), which I deny not to be immediate to any actions, I only deny to be determinative as to those that are wicked. It is only God's determinative concurrence to all actions, even those that are most malignantly wicked, which is the thing I speak of; as what I cannot reconcile with the wisdom and sincerity of his councils and exhortations against such actions." Howe sums up his view in the following declarations: "(1) That God exercises a universal providence about all his creatures, both in sustaining and governing them. (2) That, more particularly, he exercises such a providence about man. (3) That this providence about man extends to all the actions of all men. (4) That it consists not alone in beholding the actions of men, as if he were only a mere spectator of them, but is positively active about them. (5) That this active providence of God about all the actions of men consists not merely in giving them the natural powers whereby they can work of themselves, but in a real influence upon those powers. (6) That this influence is, in reference to holy and spiritual actions (whereto, since the apostasy, the nature of man is become viciously disinclined), necessary to be efficaciously determinative, that is, such as shall overcome that disinclination and reduce those powers into act. (7) That the ordinary way for the communication of this determinative influence is by the inducements which God presents in his word, namely, the precepts, promises, and threatenings which are the moral instruments of his government. No doubt but he may extraordinarily actuate men by inward impulse, but he has left them destitute of any encouragement to expect his influences in the neglect of his ordinary methods. (8) That, in reference to all other actions which are not sinful, though there be not a sinful disinclination to them, yet because there may be a sluggishness and ineptitude to some purposes God intends to serve by them, this influence is always determinative thereunto. (9) That, in reference to sinful actions, by this influence God does not only sustain men who do them and continue to them their natural faculties and powers whereby they are done, but also, as the first mover, so far excite and actuate those powers as that they are apt and habile for any congenerous action to which they have a natural designation; and whereto they are not so sinfully disinclined. (10) That, if men do then employ them to the doing of any sinful action; by that same influence he does, as to him seems meet, limit, moderate, and, against the inclination and design of the sinful agent, overrule and dispose it to good. But now if, besides all this, they will also assert that God does by an efficacious influence move and determine men to wicked actions; this is that which I most resolvedly deny. That is, in this I shall differ with them; that I do not suppose God to have, by internal influence, as far a hand in the worst and wickedest actions as in the best. I assert more to be necessary to actions to which men are wickedly disinclined; but that less will suffice for their doing of actions to which they have inclination more than enough."

Neander (History 1.374) remarks that "the gnostics would not allow any distinction between permission and causation on the part of God. To mē kōlouon aition estin is their usual motto in opposing the doctrine of the church."

Milton (Paradise Lost 10.40–41) states the permissive decree as follows:

I told you then he should prevail, and speed

On his bad errand; man should be seduced,

And flattered out of all, believing lies

Against his Maker; no decree of mine

Concurring to necessitate his fall,

Or touch with lightest moment of impulse

His free will, to her own inclining left

In even scale.

Here the certainty of the fall is announced by God, but not the necessity in the sense of compulsion. There is no inward impulse and actuation of the will by God, when it inclines and falls from holiness to sin. This mode of internal and causative actuation is confined to the inclining of man's will to holiness, to "working in him to will that which is pleasing to God" and accompanies the efficient decree, not the permissive.

The permissive decree is executed in part by the withdrawal of restraints, as a punitive act of God which St. Paul speaks of in Rom. 1:24, 28. This is a punishment for sin previously committed: "When God 'gives up' the sinner to sin, he does not himself cause the sin. To withdraw a restraint is not the same as to impart an impulse. The two principal restraints of sin are the fear of punishment before its commission and remorse after it. These are an effect of the divine operation in the conscience; the revelation of divine orgē in human consciousness. When God 'gives over' an individual he ceases, temporarily, to awaken these feelings. The consequence is utter moral apathy and recklessness in sin" (Shedd on Rom. 1:24). The view of Augustine is expressed in the following extracts and is the same as Calvin's: "When you hear the Lord say, 'I the Lord have deceived that prophet' (Ezek. 14:9), and likewise what the apostle says, 'He has mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardens' (Rom. 9:18), believe that in the case of him whom he permits to be deceived and hardened his evil deeds have deserved the judgment. Nor should you take away from Pharaoh free will, because in several passages God says, 'I have hardened Pharaoh' or 'I have hardened or will harden Pharaoh's heart'; for it does not by any means follow that Pharaoh did not, on this account, harden his own heart" (Grace and Free Will 45). "From these statements of the inspired word (Ps. 105:25; Prov. 21:1; 1 Kings 12:15; 2 Chron. 21:16–17) and from similar passages, it is, I think, sufficiently clear that God works in the hearts of men to incline their wills whithersoever he wills, whether to good deeds according to his mercy or to evil after their own deserts; his own judgment being sometimes manifest, sometimes secret, but always righteous. This ought to be the fixed and immovable conviction of your heart, that there is no unrighteousness with God. Therefore, whenever you read in the Scriptures that men are led aside or that their hearts are blunted and hardened by God, never doubt that some ill deserts of their own have first occurred so that they shall justly suffer these things" (Grace and Free Will 43). "There are some sins which are also the punishment of sins" (Predestination of the Saints 19). The permission to sin, according to these extracts, is punitive. The sinner is left to his own will without restraint from God, as a punishment for his obstinacy in sin. When God, after striving with the sinner in common grace which is resisted and nullified, decides to desist from further striving with him, this is retribution. It is the manifestation of justice. The process is described in Rom. 1:21–24: The heathen "changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man. Wherefore God gave them up to uncleanness, through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves." Man's active commission of sin, St. Paul teaches, is punished by God's subsequent passive permission of it. It will be noticed that Augustine says that "God works (operari) in the hearts of men to incline their wills to evil deeds." To incline the will, strictly speaking, is to "work in it to will" (Phil. 2:13), is to originate an inclination or disposition in the voluntary faculty. Scripture everywhere asserts that God exerts such action whenever the human will wills holiness, but never when it wills sin. Respecting sin, it declares that God "suffered (eiase) all nations to walk in their own ways" (Acts 14:16); "the times of this ignorance God overlooked" (17:30); God "gave them their own desire" (Ps. 78:29); God "gave them their own request" (106:15). That Augustine did not intend to use the term incline in the strict sense of causation or inward actuation is proved by his caution: "Nor should you take away from Pharaoh free will, because in several passages God says, 'I have hardened Pharaoh's heart; for it does not by any means follow that Pharaoh did not on this account harden his own heart." The following extracts from Grace and Free Will 41 puts this beyond all doubt: "Was it not of their own will that the enemies of the children of Israel fought against the people of God, as led by Joshua the son of Nun? And yet the Scripture says, 'It was of the Lord to harden their hearts, that they should come against Israel in battle, that he might destroy them utterly' (Josh. 11:20). And was it not likewise of his own will that Shimei, the wicked son of Gera, cursed King David? And yet what says David, full of true and deep and pious wisdom? 'Let him alone, and let him curse, because the Lord has said unto him, Curse David' (2 Sam. 16:9–10). Now what prudent reader will fail to understand in what way the Lord bade this profane man to curse David? It was not by literal command that he bade him, in which case his obedience would be praiseworthy; but he inclined (inclinavit) the man's will, which had become debased by his own perverseness, to commit this sin. Therefore it is said, 'The Lord said unto him.' " The "inclining," here, in Augustine's use of the term, is not the origination by God of an evil inclination in Shimei's will, for this already existed, but the permitting it to continue and the using it to accomplish his own purposes. "See, then," concludes Augustine, "what proof we have here that God uses the hearts of even wicked men for the praise and assistance of the good. Thus did he make use of Judas when betraying Christ; thus did he make use of the Jews when they crucified Christ." To incline the will of a wicked man in this qualified use of the term is to permit instead of restraining and stopping its sinful inclining—as in Ps. 119:36: "Incline my heart unto your testimonies and not to covetousness"—and to "make use" of it for a wise and benevolent purpose. But the term is liable to be understood to denote more than merely permissive divine agency, and it would have prevented some misapprehension and misrepresentation of the doctrine of predestination if it had always been strictly confined to the efficient agency of God in the origin of holiness. The author of sin is necessarily a sinner, and he who inclines a will to sin, in the strict sense of "incline," is the author of sin. God is indisputably the author of holiness, when by regeneration he inclines the unregenerate to will holily. But Augustine invariably denies that God is the author of sin, while he invariably affirms that he is the author of holiness: "If anyone suffers some hurt through another's wickedness or error, the man indeed sins whose ignorance or injustice does the harm; but God, who by his just though hidden judgment permits it to be done, sins not" (City of God 21.13).

For a fuller account of the double predestination to both holiness and sin, see Shedd, Calvinism: Pure and Mixed, 88–95.

3.6.7 (see p. 321). Möhler in his Symbolics contends that the doctrine of the absolute dependence of man upon God, held by both Luther and Calvin, makes God the author of sin. Baur (Gegensatz, 145–46) replies as follows: "If man is absolutely dependent upon God, it seems, certainly, that with the same right and reason that all goodness is to be carried back to divine agency, all evil also has God for its efficient and working cause. Nevertheless the Reformers do not concede this inference, and as decidedly as they derive all goodness from God only, so decidedly do they also assert that man alone bears the guilt of evil. Often as Calvin speaks of the fall of man as a fall foreordained of God, he at the same time designates it as a fall self-incurred and culpable. 'The first man fell,' so reads the leading passage on this point (3.23.8–9), 'because the Lord had considered it expedient for it to occur; he conceals from us why he considered it so. Nevertheless, it is certain that he would not have considered it unless he saw that the glory of his name would deservedly be illustrated from it. Wherever you hear mention of the glory of God, here think of justice. For that which deserves praise must be just. Therefore man fell, God's providence so ordaining. Nevertheless, man fell through his own fault. The Lord had declared a bit earlier that all things which he had made were exceedingly good. From where, therefore, did man acquire that depravity that he might fall away from God? Lest it should be supposed that it arose from his creation, God had given his approval by his own brief pronouncement (elogio) of what he himself had originated. Therefore, man corrupted the pure nature, which he had received from the Lord, through his own wickedness. By his own ruin he drew his entire posterity into his destruction. Consequently, let us much rather contemplate the evident cause of the damnation of the human race in the corrupt nature, which is nearer to us, than looking to God's predestination, which is hidden and thoroughly incomprehensible. For even though man was created that the eternal providence of God should subject him to that calamity, nevertheless he derived the matter of it from himself, not from God. In no other way did he perish than by degenerating from the pure creation of God into corrupt and impure perversity.' Can it be said any more plainly than it is here by Calvin that man is fallen by his own fault alone?"

While, however, Baur accurately states the view of Luther and Calvin in correction of the misconception of Möhler, he follows it with an explanation which ascribes to them his own theory of the origin of sin as the necessary evolution of the divine idea, instead, as the Reformers held, of the origination of sin by an act of man's free will in Adam. In this, as in other instances, the remarkable power which this dogmatic historian possessed of perceiving and stating the contents of a theological system is vitiated by an obtuseness in expounding it which leads him to suppose that his own pantheistic explanation of it is what its author really meant. After the above-given analysis of Calvin's doctrine he thus proceeds: "Is not this view, however, a logical inconsistency, whereby what is affirmed on one side of the proposition is denied on the other? How can man have fallen by free will and culpably, if he fell only because God so willed and ordained? Does not the all-determining and ordaining agency of God necessarily exclude all freedom of will? So indeed it looks; but everything depends upon the view taken of the nature of the evil which man received into his nature by the fall. If the fall can be conceived of only as a deterioration of the originally pure and holy nature of man as created by God, then the fall, or the evil coming into this nature by the fall, is related to this nature only as the negative is to the positive. Hence we must distinguish a positive and a negative side of human nature; all that belongs to the positive side is the nature as it was created by God, but what is negative in the positive cannot be carried back, like the positive, to the same divine activity, since it is to be regarded as only the negation and limitation of the creative activity of God in respect to man. Accordingly, what can the Calvinistic proposition 'man fell, God so ordaining, but by his own fault' mean but merely this: Man, so far as he is created by God, is originally pure and good, but he has also a side of his being (Wesen) which is averse from God and finite, and therefore perverse and evil? As upon the one side he bears the image of God in himself, so on the other side he has a fallen nature, and for this very reason the fall is his own fault, since if he is to be man he cannot be conceived of without this negativity and finiteness of being which places him wholly in the antithesis (Gegensatz, point of indifference) between infinite and finite, perfect and imperfect, positive and negative, good and evil. He is therefore the original sin itself that is imputable to him, so far as this negativity and finiteness which is the source of all evil in him so belongs to the conception of his being that it cannot be separated from it; on which account the fall, at least ideally, must be eternally attributed to the nature of man. But since all that the fall potentially includes for human nature can be conceived only as something to be developed consequentially and additionally; inasmuch as the evil is ever only in the good and is antithetic to it as the negative is to the positive; therefore Calvin represents the fall not merely as an absolutely necessary consequence, but also as a contingent and arbitrary one. 'In his perfect condition,' says Calvin (1.15.8), 'man was endowed with free will, by which if he had so inclined he might have obtained eternal life. Adam could have stood if he would, since he fell merely by his own will; but because his will was flexible to either side and he was not endowed with constancy to persevere in holiness, therefore he fell so easily. He had, indeed, received the power to persevere in holiness if he chose to exert it; but he had not the will to use that power, for perseverance would have been the consequence of this will.' "

This explanation of Calvin's meaning in these extracts from the Institutes is as far as possible from the truth. Calvin teaches that human nature as created was positive only; Baur, that it was positive and negative together. Calvin teaches that it was good only; Baur, that it was good and evil together. Calvin teaches that God is unconditioned in the creative act; Baur, that there is "a negation and limitation of the creative activity of God." Calvin teaches that sin is an origination from nothing by the self-determination of the human will; Baur, that it is a development of the positive and negative sides of human nature. Calvin makes original sin to be culpable because it is the product of man; Baur destroys its culpability (while at the same time asserting it) by making it to be the man himself in the necessary evolution of his being. Baur asserts that evil belongs necessarily and eternally to the idea of man and that he cannot be conceived of as man without it; Calvin denies this. Baur holds that "the idea of human nature can be realized only through the medium of the fall and of sin"; Calvin holds that sin is not only not necessary to the ideal and perfect condition of human nature, but is the absolute ruin of it. Baur declares that man is culpable for sin because while "on one side of his being he bears the image of God, on the other side of it he has a fallen nature which is averse from God and is evil because it is finite"; Calvin would deny that man is culpable for sin, if sin were one of two sides of his being and if finiteness is intrinsically evil. In brief, the difference between Calvin's and Baur's theories of sin is as wide as between the theistic and pantheistic views of God, man, and the universe, from which each theory takes its start and in which each has its basis.

There are some passages both in Calvin and Augustine which on the face of them seem to teach that God's agency in relation to sin is efficient and not permissive. They are passages in which the term incline is used. Augustine (Grace and Free Will 41), after citing David's words to Abishai respecting Shimei, "Let him curse, for the Lord has bidden him" (2 Sam. 16:11), remarks: "It was not by a command that he bade him, in which case his obedience would be praiseworthy; but by his own just and secret judgment. He inclined (inclinavit) the man's will, which had become debased by his own perverseness, to commit this sin." That "incline" does not here mean inward actuation or "working in the will to will and to do" is evident from the following considerations: (1) Augustine denies that God commanded Shimei to curse David; for in this case, says he, "he would have deserved to be praised rather than punished, as we know he was afterward punished for this sin." But God works efficiently in the human will to do what he commands or to do duty. (2) Augustine, in the context, explains "incline" by "using the heart of a wicked man": "See what proof we have here that God uses the hearts of even wicked men for the praise and assistance of the good." (3) He describes Shimei's will, which God inclined, as a will already wickedly inclined: "He inclined the man's will, which had become debased by his own perverseness, to commit this sin." These explanations show that Augustine employs the term incline in the biblical and oriental sense of giving the will up to its own inclining. When David prays to God: "Incline not my heart to any evil thing, to practice wicked works with men that work iniquity" (Ps. 141:4) or "incline not my heart to covetousness" (119:36), he prays that God would not leave his heart or will to its willful propensity to sin. This is not a prayer that God would work inwardly upon his will to make it wicked and covetous. It was already so. As in the biblical and oriental idiom when God is said to harden when he does not soften (Rom. 9:18) and to blind when he does not enlighten (11:8, 10; John 12:40; Isa. 6:10), so he is said to incline when he does not disincline. In all these instances of inclining, hardening, and blinding, the existence and presence of sin is supposed in the person of whom they are predicated. As Augustine (Grace and Free Will 43) says: "Whenever you read in the Scriptures of truth that men are led aside or that their hearts are blunted and hardened by God, never doubt that some ill deserts of their own have first occurred, so that they justly suffer these things. Then you will not run against that proverb of Solomon: 'The foolishness of a man perverts his ways, yet he blames God in his heart' (Prov. 19:3)."

The phraseology of Calvin upon this subject is like that of Augustine. In 2.4.4 he remarks: "Moses expressly declared to the people of Israel that it was the Lord who had made the heart of their enemies obstinate (Deut. 2:30). The psalmist, reciting the same history, says: 'He turned their heart to hate his people' (Ps. 105:25). Now, it cannot be said that they stumbled (impegisse) because they were destitute of the counsel of God. For if they are 'made obstinate' and are 'turned,' they are designedly inclined (destinato flectuntur) to this very thing. Besides, whenever it has pleased God to punish the transgressions of his people, how has he accomplished his work by means of the reprobate? In such a manner that anyone may see that the power of acting (efficaciam agendi) proceeded from him and that they were the ministers of his will." Again, he says (1.18.2): "Nothing can be more explicit than God's frequent declarations that he blinds the minds of men, strikes them with giddiness, inebriates them with the spirit of slumber, fills them with infatuation, and hardens their hearts. These passages many persons refer to permission, as though, in abandoning the reprobate, God only permitted them to be blinded by Satan. But this solution is frivolous, since the Holy Spirit expressly declares that their blindness and infatuation are inflicted by the righteous judgment of God." That this phraseology is not intended to teach that God works in the human will "to will and to do" evil is evident for the following reason: Calvin teaches that the agency of God in relation to sin is different from that of man. He says (1.18.2): "Some elude the force of these expressions with a foolish cavil; that since Pharaoh himself is said to have hardened his own heart his own will is the cause of his obduracy; as if these two things did not agree well together, although in different modes (licet diversis modis), namely, that when man is made to act by God, he nevertheless is active himself (ubi agitur a deo, simul tamen agere)." The mode, according to Calvin, in which God acts when he "hardens" the human heart is …

1. By voluntary permission, not involuntary or "bare" permission. God decides to permit the sinful will to sin, though he could prevent it: "It is nugatory to substitute for the providence of God a bare permission; as though God were sitting in a watchtower awaiting fortuitous events, and so his decisions were dependent on the will of man" (1.18.1).

2. By positively withdrawing the restraints of conscience and the common influences of the Spirit, after they have been resisted and made ineffectual, as taught by St. Paul in Rom. 1:24, 28

3. By using the agency of Satan (described in John 13:2, 27): "I grant, indeed, that God often actuates (agere) the reprobate by the interposition of Satan; but in such a manner that Satan himself acts his part by the divine impulse and proceeds only so far as God appoints" (1.18.2). "According to one view of the subject, it is said: 'If the prophet be deceived when he has spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet' (Ezek. 14:9). But according to another, God is said himself to give men over to a reprobate mind (Rom. 1:28) and to the vilest lusts; because he is the principal author of his own righteous retribution, and Satan is only the dispenser of it" (1.18.1).

"The whole," says Calvin (1.18.1), "may be summed up thus: that as the will of God is said to be the cause of all things, his providence is established as the governor in all the counsels and works of man, so that it not only exerts its power in the elect, who are influenced by the Holy Spirit, but also compels the compliance of the reprobate." The term compel here, like the term necessitate, is employed in the sense of "making certain" (see also supplement 4.5.14).

Finally, while the inward actuation of the human will "to will and to do" right is invariably represented by Calvin as the agency of the Holy Spirit, there is nothing in his harshest and most unguarded teachings concerning God's predestination of the nonelect to sin that can be construed to mean that the Holy Spirit in the same manner, by inward actuation, works in the sinner "to will and to do" wrong. Calvin drew up the Gallican Confession of 1559. Article 8 says: "We believe that God not only created all things, but that he governs and directs them, disposing and ordaining by his sovereign will all that happens in the world; not that he is the author of evil or that the guilt of it can be imputed to him, seeing that his will is the sovereign and infallible rule of all right and justice; but he has wonderful means of so making use of devils and sinners that he can turn to good the evil which they do and of which they are guilty." Again, in his articles on predestination (Opera 9.713), he says: "Although the will of God is the first and highest cause of all things and God has the devil and all the wicked subject to his decree (arbitrio), yet he cannot be called the cause of sin nor the author of evil nor is he obnoxious to any blame. Although the devil and the reprobated are the servants and instruments of God and execute his secret judgments, yet God so operates in an incomprehensible manner in and by them that he contracts no corruption from their fault, because he uses their wickedness rightly and justly for a good end, although the mode and manner is often hidden from us. They act ignorantly and calumniously who say that God is the author of sin, if all things occur according to his will and ordination; because they do not distinguish between the manifested depravity of man and the secret decrees of God."

3.6.8 (see p. 323). "What I will is fate," says God, according to Milton; by which he means that what God wills is certain to occur. This statement does not imply that the action of the human will is necessitated because it is willed by God. For God wills this species of action as the action of mind not of matter, self-action, or self-motion and therefore it is free action. If he willed it as physical action ab extra, like the fall of a stone by the action of gravity which is extraneous to the stone, it would be involuntary and compulsory action. When God wills physical action in the material world, his "will is fate" in the sense of necessity, because he wills the action of impersonal and involuntary agents. But when he wills personal and voluntary action in the moral world, his "will is fate" in the sense of certainty, because he wills the action of self-determining agents. There is nothing in the idea of certainty that implies compulsion. It is certain that some men will steal tomorrow, but this does not make their theft involuntary and necessitated.

The pagan conception of fate, as something to which God is subject, is expressed by Aeschylus (Prometheus Bound 524–27):

Chorus: Who then is it that manages the helm of necessity?

Prometheus: The triform Fates and the unforgetful Furies.

Chorus: Is Jupiter less powerful than these?

Prometheus: Most certainly he cannot in any way escape his doom.

Cicero asserted human freedom, but denied divine foreknowledge as incompatible with it. Augustine (City of God 5.9) combats his view. Anselm (Why the God-Man? 2.18) makes a distinction between antecedent and subsequent necessity, which is valuable in explaining the self-motion and responsibility of the enslaved will: "There is an antecedent necessity which is the cause of a thing, and there is also a subsequent necessity arising from the thing itself. Thus when the heavens are said to revolve, it is an antecedent and efficient necessity, for they must revolve. But when I say that you speak of necessity because you are speaking, this is nothing but a subsequent and inoperative necessity. For I only mean that it is impossible for you to speak and not to speak at the same time and not that someone compels you to speak. This subsequent necessity pertains to everything, so that we say: Whatever has been necessarily has been. Whatever is must be. Whatever is to be of necessity will be. Wherever there is an antecedent necessity, there is also a subsequent one; but not vice versa. For we can say that the heaven revolves of necessity, because it revolves; but it is not likewise true that because you speak you do it of necessity." In the instance of subsequent necessity within the voluntary or moral sphere, the necessity is made by a foregoing free act of the will. Says Anselm (Why the God-Man? 2.5): "When one does a benefit from a necessity to which he is unwillingly subjected, less thanks are due to him or none at all. But when he freely places himself under the necessity of benefiting another and sustains that necessity without reluctance, then he certainly deserves greater thanks for the favor. For this should not be called necessity but grace, inasmuch as he undertook it not with any constraint, but freely. For what you promise today of your own accord that you will give tomorrow, you give tomorrow with the same willingness that you promised it, though it be 'necessary' for you to redeem your promise or make yourself a liar."

Applying this distinction to the fall of mankind in Adam: There was no antecedent necessity that this fall from holiness should occur. It was left to the self-determination of the human will whether it should occur. But having occurred, then there was a subsequent necessity of two kinds: (1) it was necessary that what is should be; and (2) it was necessary that sin having freely originated should continue to be, because of its enslaving effect upon the will that originated it.

Voluntary action, be it inclination or volition, is certain to occur, whether the certainty be ascribed to chance or to the divine decree. If it can be made certain by chance, this would not prove that it was necessitated in the sense of compelled. For the very object which the opponent of decrees has in view in asserting that voluntary actions are fortuitous is to evince thereby that they are free. If, again, a voluntary act can be made certain by leaving the will to itself and exerting no divine influence of any kind upon it, this would not prove that it was necessitated in the sense of compelled. This shows that certainty and necessity are not synonyms. In English usage the term necessity sometimes denotes compulsion and sometimes only certainty. Consider the two following propositions: It is certain and necessary that a stone will fall by gravitation; it is certain and necessary that man will incline and exert volitions. In the first of these propositions the certainty is also strict necessity, because it is brought about by a force of nature; in the last, the certainty is not strict necessity, because it is brought about by the self-motion of the human will.

3.6.9 (see p. 326). Augustine teaches that the number of the elect is definite and fixed: "I speak of those who are predestinated to the kingdom of God, whose number is so certain that a single one can neither be added to them nor taken from them. For that the number of elect is certain and neither to be increased nor diminished, it signified by John the Baptist when he says, 'Bring forth, therefore, fruits meet for repentance, and think not to say within yourselves we have Abraham to our father; for God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham.' This shows that those who do not produce the fruits of true repentance will be cast off and others put in their places, so that the complete number of the spiritual seed promised to Abraham should not be wanting. The certain number of the elect is yet more plainly declared in the Apocalypse: 'Hold fast that which you have, lest another take your crown' (Rev. 3:11). For if another is not to receive unless one has lost, the number is fixed" (Rebuke and Grace 39).

3.6.10 (see p. 327). Milton (Paradise Lost 3.129) assigns as the reason for the preterition of the fallen angels and the election of fallen man the fact that the fall of the former was a more willful act than that of the latter, because it occurred without external temptation:

The first sort by their own suggestion fell,

Self-tempted, self-depraved; man falls deceived

By the other first: man therefore shall find grace,

The others none.

But this is contrary to St. Paul's doctrine of election and preterition, according to which neither of the two is explicable by the fact of more or less sin in the parties, and the reason for the discrimination is wholly secret (Rom. 9:11–12). The difference in the treatment of individuals, both in regard to the gifts of providence and the gifts of grace, is like the difference in the world of material nature. If we ask, Why ten blades of grass rather than nine grow up in a particular spot, the answer is that it is the will of the Creator. But if we ask, Why the Creator so willed, the reply must be, as in the instance of election and preterition, that the reason is unknown.

Augustine (Rebuke and Grace 27) thus describes the elect and nonelect angels: "We believe that the God and Lord of all things, who created all things very good and foreknew that evil things would arise out of good and knew that it belonged to his omnipotent goodness even to educe good out of evil things rather than not to allow evil things to be at all, so ordained the life of angels and men that in it he might first of all show what their free will was capable of and then what the compassion of his grace and the righteousness of his justice was capable of. In brief, certain angels, of whom the chief is he who is called the devil, became by free will outcasts from the Lord God. Yet although they fled from his goodness wherein they had been blessed, they could not flee from his judgment by which they were made most wretched. Others, however, by the same free will stood fast in the truth and obtained the knowledge of that most certain truth that they should never fall." Augustine omits to mention the reason why the free will of these latter persevered in holiness, namely, the bestowment of a higher grade of grace than that given in creation to both classes of angels alike. The grace given by creation to all angels was sufficient to enable them all to persevere in holiness, but not to prevent their apostasy. But the grace given to those who did not fall was sufficient to "keep them from falling." This constituted them elect angels, the others being nonelect. Angelic election and nonelection have reference to perseverance or continuance in holiness; human election and nonelection, to perseverance or continuance in sin. A holy angel if kept in holiness is an elect angel; if not kept, but left to decide the event of apostasy for himself, is a nonelect angel. A sinful man if delivered from sin by regenerating grace is an elect man; if left in sin, is a nonelect man. Angelic election and nonelection relate to the perpetuity of holiness; human election and nonelection to the perpetuity of sin.

3.6.11 (see p. 328). The following is the view of Socrates concerning God and evil: "We must not listen to Homer or any other poet who is guilty of the folly of saying that 'at the threshold of Zeus lie two casks full of lots, one of good, the other of evil' (Iliad 24.527), and again, 'Zeus is the dispenser of good and evil to us.' And if anyone asserts that the violation of oaths and treaties of which Pandarus was the real author (Iliad 2.69) was brought about by Athena and Zeus, he shall not have our approval; neither will we allow our young men to hear the words of Aeschylus, when he says that 'God plants guilt among men when he desires utterly to destroy a house.' The poet may say that the wicked are miserable because they require to be punished and are benefited by receiving punishment from God; but that God, being good, is the author of evil to anyone is to be strenuously denied and not allowed to be sung or said in any well-ordered commonwealth by old or young. Such a fiction is suicidal, ruinous, impious. Let this then be one of the rules of recitation and invention—that God is not the author of evil, but of good only." The good and evil spoken of in the first two extracts from Homer are physical good and evil, but that spoken of in the third extract from Homer and in the extract from Aeschylus is moral good and evil. God may be the author of the first without dishonor to his nature, but not of the second.

3.6.12 (see p. 329). While revelation teaches that the majority of the human race are saved by Christ's redemption, it also teaches that the lost minority are a large multitude; but much less than those of the saved and infinitely less than the immense number of the holy and blessed in the whole universe of God. The fact of sin looks very differently when confined to the small sphere of earth from what it does when viewed from the immense range of the universe. Even if there had been no redemption of man and the whole family of mankind had been left like the fallen angels in their voluntary and self-originated ruin, the proportion of moral evil in the wide creation of God would still have been small. The kingdom of God is infinitely greater than that of Satan. Holy angels and redeemed men vastly outnumber lost angels and lost men. The human race has had an existence of only six or eight thousand years, but the "heavenly host" has existed ages upon ages. The supplication "your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" implies that heaven is the rule in the universe of God, and hell the exception. God "inhabits the praises of eternity" and of infinity. This means that praises have been ascending to him from the hosts of holy intelligences during a past eternity, compared with which the short duration of man's existence on earth is nothing. While, therefore, earth appears gloomy and dark because of apostasy, the illimitable universe looks bright and glorious because of obedience and holiness. This is often forgotten and explains the exaggerated statements of both infidels and Christians concerning the extent of moral evil, making the problem of sin more difficult of explanation with reference to the benevolence and power of God. For if sin had been permitted throughout all of God's dominions in the same proportion that it has been in the little province called earth, it would have required a greater faith in God's unsearchable wisdom than it does now. When, therefore, the theologian is depressed and tempted to "charge God foolishly" because of the reign of sin and death among the generations of men, let him look up and out into the immense universe of God and remember that through this vast range of being there is innocence and purity and the love and worship of God.

Leibnitz (Theodicy, 509 §1.19), who with Augustine assumed that the majority of mankind are lost, relieves this opinion by the observation that this is an insignificant number compared with that of the holy and happy in the remainder of the universe. In this way he makes out that the existing universe is the best possible, notwithstanding that there is so much sin and misery in this planet on which man is placed. Howe (Christian's Triumph) also says: "Consider how minute a part of the creation of God this globe of earth is, where death has reigned. For aught we know, death never reaches higher than this earth of ours; and therefore there are vast and ample regions, incomparably beyond the range of our thought, where no death ever comes. We are told (Eph. 1:20–21) that God has set the mediator in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and dominion; angels, authorities, and powers being made subject to him. Though we cannot form distinct thoughts what these dominions are, yet we cannot but suppose those inconceivably vast regions peopled with immortal inhabitants that live and reign in holy life and blessedness. Furthermore, death is to be confined and go no further. In the future state of things all death is to be gathered into death, and hell into hell (Rev. 20:14). It shall be contracted, gathered into itself. Whereas formerly it ranged to and fro uncontrolled, it now is confined to its own narrow circle and can get no new subjects and shall therefore give no further trouble or disturbance to the rest of God's universe."

Similarly, Baxter (Dying Thoughts) remarks that "God's infinite kingdom is not to be judged of by his jail or gibbets. And what though God give not to all men an overcoming measure of grace, nor to the best of men so much as they desire, yet the earth is but a spot or point of God's creation; not so much as an anthillock to a kingdom or perhaps to all the earth. And who is scandalized because the earth has a heap of ants in it, yea, or a nest of snakes that are not men? The vast, unmeasurable worlds of light which are above us are possessed by inhabitants suitable to their glory."

Such a broad and lofty view of holiness compared with sin as this should be introduced into eschatology and mitigate the dark subject of moral evil, not by the unscriptural doctrine of future redemption and the denial of endless punishment, but by the biblical teaching of the infinitude of holiness and blessedness and the finiteness of sin and misery.

If it is proper to attempt to compute the number of lost men, perhaps the statement is measurably correct that most of them belong to early manhood, middle age, and old age. All infants who die in infancy are saved by infant regeneration. This constitutes one-half of the human family. Of the other half, there is reason to hope that the majority of those who die in childhood and youth are regenerated. Original sin, in their case, has not been intensified by actual transgression to the degree that it is in early manhood, middle life, and old age. Consequently, the influence of religious instruction in the family, the Sabbath school, and the sanctuary is more effective in them than upon adults generally. The total population of school age in the United States is 22,447,392. Of these, 9,718,422 are Sabbath school scholars. The majority of conversions are between the ages of six and twenty years. This leaves adults from twenty to seventy years; and looking abroad over the world as it now appears, the millennium not being considered, there is melancholy reason to fear that the majority of these do not turn from sin to God. This part of mankind is more inclined and self-determined to this world, more absorbed in its business and pleasures, more sunk in hardened vice and besotted luxury, and less susceptible to the influence of divine truth. Few of them are in the Bible class, and a very large number of them never enter the sanctuary for religious instruction. The greater part of the lost, consequently, come from this class. Few of this class, to human view, have the broken and contrite spirit of the publican respecting their personal sinfulness, and any son of Adam who goes into the divine presence unable, because unwilling, to pray, "God be merciful to me, a sinner," is a lost spirit.

That more mankind are lost than are saved was, on the whole, the patristic and medieval opinion. The doctrine that baptism by the church is necessary to salvation, which prevailed universally in those periods, contributed to this. Augustine teaches that the elect are the minority of mankind: "St. Paul says, 'Not as the offense so also is the free gift. For if through the offense of one many be dead, much more the grace of God and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, has abounded unto many.' Not many more, that is, many more men, for there are not more persons justified than condemned; but it runs, much more has abounded; since, while Adam produced sinners from his one sin, Christ has by his grace procured free forgiveness even for the sins which men have of their own accord added by actual transgression to the original sin in which they were born" (Forgiveness and Baptism 1.14). "As many of the human race as are delivered by God's grace are delivered from the condemnation in which they are held bound by the sin in Adam. Hence, even if none should be delivered, no one can justly blame the judgment of God. That, therefore, in comparison with those that perish, few, but in their absolute number many, are delivered from this condemnation, is effected by grace (gratia), is effected gratuitously (gratis); and thanks must be given because it is effected so that no one may be lifted up as of his own deservings, but that every mouth may be stopped, and he that glories may glory in the Lord" (Rebuke and Grace 28). "It is a matter of fact that not all nor even a majority of mankind are saved" (Enchiridion 97).

3.6.13 (see p. 332). The following texts are sometimes erroneously explained to teach that election is mutable: "Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil" (John 6:70); the election meant here is not election to salvation; but to the apostolate. "He called unto him his disciples; and of them he chose twelve whom he also named apostles" (Luke 6:13). "Those whom you gave me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition: that the Scripture might be fulfilled" (John 17:12). The particles ei mē qualifying ho huios tēs apoleias94 are adversative, making two propositions, not exceptive, making only one. None of those whom the Father had given to Christ and whom Christ had kept were lost is the first proposition. But the son of perdition is lost that the Scripture might be fulfilled is the second. The son of perdition in the second proposition is not one of those whom Christ kept in the first proposition. Luke 4:27 (cf. 4:25–26) illustrates: "Many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed saving Naaman the Syrian." The particles ei mē qualifying neeman ho syrios96 are not exceptive here, as the word saving implies, but adversative. Naaman was not one of the lepers of Israel and so was not an exception, belonging to them. The true rendering, therefore, of John 17:12 is as follows: "Those whom you gave me I have kept, and none of them is lost; but the son of perdition that the Scripture might be fulfilled." This is Turretin's explanation (4.12.24).

3.6.14 (see p. 335). Bunyan (Reprobation Asserted, chap. 10) clearly states the difference between common grace and saving grace as follows: "There is a great difference between the grace of election and the grace in the general tenders of the gospel: a difference as to its timing, latituding, and working. (1) Touching its timing; it is before, yea, long before there was either tender of the grace in the general offer of the gospel to any or any need of such a tender. (2) Touching the latitude or extent; the tenders of grace in the gospel are common and universal to all, but the extension of that of election is special and peculiar to some. 'There is a remnant according to the election of grace.' (3) Touching the working of the grace of election, it differs from the working of grace in the general offers of the gospel in the following particulars: (a) The grace that is offered in the general tenders of the gospel calls for faith to lay hold upon and accept thereof; but the special grace of election works that faith which does lay hold thereof. (b) The grace that is offered in the general tenders of the gospel calls for faith as a condition to be performed by us, without which there is no life; but the special grace of election works faith in us without any such condition. (c) The grace that is offered in the general tenders of the gospel promotes happiness upon the condition of persevering in the faith; but the special grace of election causes this perseverance. (d) The grace offered in the general tenders of the gospel, when it sparkles most, leaves the greatest part of men behind it; but the special grace of election, when it shines least, does infallibly bring every soul therein concerned to everlasting life. (e) A man may overcome and put out all the light that is begotten in him by the general tenders of the gospel; but none shall overcome or make void or frustrate the grace of election. (f) The general tenders of the gospel, apart from the concurrence with them of the grace of election, are insufficient to save the elect himself as well as the nonelect."

3.6.15 (see p. 336). Augustine teaches preterition in the following places: "Faith, as well in its beginning as in its completion, is God's gift. But why it is not given to all ought not to disturb the believer who believes that from one all have gone into a condemnation which undoubtedly is most righteous; so that even if none were delivered therefrom there would be no just cause for finding fault with God. Whence it is plain that it is a great grace for many to be delivered, and that those who are not delivered should acknowledge what is due to themselves. But why God delivers one rather than another—his judgments are unsearchable, and his ways past finding out" (Predestination 16). "So far as concerns justice and mercy, it may be truly said to the guilty who is condemned and also concerning the guilty who is saved, 'Take what yours is, and go your way; I will give unto this one that which is not due. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with my own? Is your eye evil because I am good?' And if he shall say, 'Why not to me also?' he will hear, and with reason, 'Who are you, O man, that replies against God?' And although in the one case you see a most benignant benefactor and in the other a most righteous exactor, in neither case do you behold an unjust God. For although God would be righteous if he were to punish both, yet he who is saved has good ground for thankfulness, and he who is condemned has no ground for finding fault" (Perseverance 16). "I do not know the reason why one or another is more or less helped or not helped by that grace which restrains sinful self-will and changes it; this only I know, that God does this with perfect justice and for reasons which to himself are known as sufficient" (Letter 95.6 to Paulinus, A.D. 408).

Augustine teaches that preterition does not apply to baptized infants: "Persons, whether parents or others, who attempt to place those who have been baptized under idolatry and heathen worship are guilty of spiritual homicide. True, they do not actually kill the children's souls, but they go as far toward killing them as is in their power. The warning, 'Do not kill your little ones,' may with all propriety be addressed to them; for the apostle says, 'Quench not the Spirit'; not that he can be quenched, but that those who so act as if they wished to have him quenched are deservedly spoken of as quenchers of the Spirit. In this sense the words of Cyprian are to be understood respecting the 'lapsed' who in times of persecution had sacrificed to idols: 'And that nothing might be wanting to fill up the measure of their crime, their infant children lost, while yet in their infancy, that which they had received as soon as life began.' They lost it, he meant, so far as pertained to the guilt of those by whom they were compelled to incur the loss; that is to say, they lost it in the purpose and wish of those who perpetrated on them such a wrong. For had they actually in their own persons lost it, they must have remained under divine sentence of condemnation. But shall not these infants say when the judgment day has come: 'We have done nothing; we have not of our own accord hastened to participate in profane rites, forsaking the bread and the cup of our Lord; the apostasy of others caused our destruction.' Hence, in the just dispensation of judgment by God, those shall not be doomed to perish whose souls their parents did, so far as concerns their own guilt in the transaction, bring to ruin" (Letter 98.3 to Boniface, A.D. 408). "You must refer it to the hidden determination of God when you see in one and the same condition, such as all infants unquestionably have who derive their hereditary sin from Adam, that one is assisted so as to be baptized, and another is not assisted so that he dies in bondage" (Grace and Free Will 45).

3.6.16 (see p. 337). It is impossible to make sense of Rom. 11:7 without supposing two kinds of election and preterition, namely, national and individual, and two corresponding grades of grace, namely, common and special. St. Paul says that "Israel has not obtained that which he seeks for, but the election has obtained it, and the rest were blinded." The "rest" of whom? The rest of Israel, of course. Whom does he mean by "Israel"? All of the descendants of Abraham. These were all without exception nationally elected. They were all without exception "Israelites, to whom pertains the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the promises, whose are the fathers and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever" (9:4–5). This national election entitled the subjects of it to all the blessings of the theocracy on condition of observing the Mosaic ordinances and keeping the theocratic covenant, of which circumcision was the sign and seal. Ishmael as well as Isaac, Esau as well as Jacob, were sealed with the sign of circumcision and were entitled, together with their offspring, to the blessings of the theocracy, if faithful in this relation. By birth they all belonged to the chosen people and the national church. "By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come" (Heb. 11:20; Gen. 27:27, 39). But Ishmael and Esau and their descendants separated from the theocracy and renounced the messianic covenant and for this reason, though born of Abraham, failed to obtain the messianic salvation: "Was not Esau Jacob's brother? says the Lord; yet I loved Jacob and I hated Esau" (Mal. 1:2–3). Jacob I effectually called, and Esau I left to his own will. Ishmael, Esau, and their descendants together with a part of the descendants of Isaac and Jacob were the "rest that were blinded" (Rom. 11:7); who "were Jews outwardly, but not inwardly" (2:28–29); who "were of Israel, but were not Israel" (9:6); who "were the seed of Abraham, but were not children" (9:7); who were nationally but not individually and spiritually elected. If there is but one election, namely, the national and universal, there can be no discrimination like this, no "rest that were blinded." But in one case, according to the apostle, the election includes all of the descendants of Abraham; in the other, only a part of them. The entire Hebrew nation was outwardly called by the ministry of the law, moral and ceremonial. Many of them rejected this call and did not obtain salvation. A part of them were individually and effectually called and were saved.

Calvin (3.21.5–7) thus distinguishes between national and individual election: "Predestination we call the eternal decree of God by which he has determined in himself what he would have to become of every individual of mankind. For they are not all created with a similar destiny; but eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal damnation for others. Every man, therefore, being created for one or other of these ends, we say, he is predestinated either to life or to death. This, God has not only testified in particular persons, but has given a specimen of it in the whole posterity of Abraham, which should evidently show the future condition of every nation to depend upon his decision. 'When the Most High divided the nations, when he separated the sons of Adam, the Lord's portion was his people; Jacob was the lot of his inheritance' (Deut. 32:8–9). The separation is before the eyes of all; in the person of Abraham, as in the dry trunk of a tree, one people is peculiarly chosen to the rejection of others: no reason for this appears, except that Moses, to deprive their posterity of all occasion of glorying, teaches them that their exaltation is wholly from God's gratuitous love (7:7–8; 10:14–15). There is a second degree of election, still more restricted, or that in which divine grace was displayed in a more special manner, when of the same race of Abraham God rejected some and by nourishing others in the church proved that he retained them among his children. Ishmael at first obtained the same station as his brother Isaac, for the spiritual covenant was equally sealed in him by the symbol of circumcision. He is cut off; afterward Esau is and, last, an innumerable multitude, and almost all Israel are. In Isaac the seed was called; the same calling continued in Jacob. God exhibited a similar example in the rejection of Saul, which is celebrated by the psalmist: 'He refused the tabernacle of Joseph and chose not the tribe of Ephraim, but chose the tribe of Judah' (Ps. 78:67–68). I grant that it was by their own crime and guilt that Ishmael, Esau, and persons of similar character fell from adoption; because the condition annexed was that they should faithfully keep the covenant of God, which they perfidiously violated. Malachi thus aggravates the ingratitude of Israel, because though not only nationally elected out of the whole race of mankind, but also separated from a sacred family to be a peculiar people, they despised God, their most beneficent Father. 'Was not Esau Jacob's brother? says the Lord; yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau' (Mal. 1:2–3).

"Though it is sufficiently clear that God in his secret counsel freely chooses whom he will and rejects others, his gratuitous election is but half displayed till we come to particular individuals to whom God not only offers salvation, but assigns it in such a manner that the certainty of the effect is liable to no suspense or doubt. That the general election of a people is not invariably effectual and permanent, a reason readily presents itself, because when God covenants with them he does not also give them the spirit of regeneration to enable them to persevere in the covenant to the end; but the external call, without the internal efficacy of grace, which would be sufficient for their preservation, is a kind of medium between the rejection of all mankind and the election of the small number of believers."

3.6.17 (see p. 337). Calvin in his comment on Rom. 9:8 thus describes the difference between common and special grace: "Two things are to be considered in reference to the selection by God of the posterity of Abraham as a peculiar people. The first is that the promise of blessing through the Messiah has a relation to all who can trace their natural descent from him. It is offered to all without exception, and for this reason they are all denominated the heirs of the covenant made with Abraham and the children of promise. It was God's will that his covenant with Abraham should be sealed by the rite of circumcision with Ishmael and Esau, as well as with Isaac and Jacob, which shows that the former were not wholly excluded from him. Accordingly, all the lineal descendants of Abraham are denominated by St. Peter (Acts 3:25) the 'children of the covenant,' though they were unbelieving; and St. Paul, in this chapter (v. 4), says of unbelieving Jews: 'Whose are the covenants.' The second point to be considered is that this covenant, though thus offered, was rejected by great numbers of the lineal descendants of Abraham. Such Jews, though they are 'of Israel,' they are not the 'children of the promise.' When, therefore, the whole Jewish people are indiscriminately denominated the heritage and peculiar people of God, it is meant that they have been selected from other nations, the offer of salvation through the Messiah has been made to them and confirmed by the symbol of circumcision. But inasmuch as many reject this outward adoption and thus enjoy none of its benefits, there arises another difference with regard to the fulfillment of the promise. The general and national election of the people of Israel not resulting in faith and salvation is no hindrance that God should not choose from among them those whom he pleases to make the subjects of his special grace. This is a second election, which is confined to a part, only, of the nation."

3.6.18 (see p. 340). The preterition of a part of mankind in the bestowment of regenerating grace presupposes the fall, according to Calvin. This places him among the sublapsarians. The following extracts from his Institutes show this: "If anyone attack us with such an inquiry as this, 'Why God has from the beginning predestinated some men to death, who not yet being brought into existence could not yet deserve the sentence of death', we will reply by asking them in return, What they suppose God owes to man if he chooses to judge of him from his own nature. As we are all corrupted by sin, we must necessarily be odious to God and that not from tyrannical cruelty, but in the most equitable estimation of justice. If all whom the Lord predestinates to death are in their natural condition liable to the sentence of death, what injustice do they complain of receiving from him? Let all the sons of Adam come forward; let them all contend and dispute with their Creator, because by his eternal providence they were previously to their birth adjudged to endless misery. What murmur will they be able to raise against this vindication when God, on the other hand, shall call them to a review of themselves. If they have all been taken from a corrupt mass, it is no wonder that they are subject to condemnation. Let them not, therefore, accuse God of injustice if his eternal decree has destined them to death, to which they feel themselves, whatever be their desire or aversion, spontaneously led forward by their own nature. Hence appears the perverseness of their disposition to murmur, because they intentionally suppress the cause of condemnation which they are constrained to acknowledge in themselves, hoping to excuse themselves by charging it upon God. But though I ever so often admit God to be the author of it, which is perfectly correct, yet this does not abolish the guilt impressed upon their consciences and from time to time recurring to their view" (3.23.3). "They further object, 'Were they not by the decree of God antecedently predestinated to that corruption which is now stated as the cause of condemnation? When they perish in their corruption, therefore, they only suffer the punishment of that misery into which, in consequence of God's predestination, Adam fell and precipitated his posterity with him. Is not God unjust, therefore, in treating his creatures with such cruel mockery? I confess, indeed, that all the descendants of Adam fell by the divine will into that miserable condition in which they are now involved; and this is what I asserted from the beginning, that we must always return at last to the sovereign determination of God's will, the cause of which is hidden in himself. But it follows not, therefore, that God is liable to this reproach" (3.23.4). Calvin then gives two replies to the allegation that the fall of Adam, by being decreed by God, was necessitated by him. The first reply is that of St. Paul, "O man, who are you that replies against God?" "What stronger reason," says Calvin, "can be presented than when we are directed to consider who God is? How could any injustice be committed by him who is the judge of the world? If it is the peculiar property of the nature of God to do justice, then he naturally loves righteousness and hates iniquity. The apostle, therefore, has not resorted to sophistry, as if he were in danger of confutation, but has shown that the reason of divine justice is too high to be measured by a human standard or comprehended by the littleness of the human mind" (3.23.4). The second reply is that sin is decreed in such a manner as not to interfere with the free agency and responsibility of Adam and his posterity in the fall. Before proceeding to this important particular, Calvin first objects to that statement of the permissive decree which makes God a mere passive spectator of the fall without a positive act of will concerning it and asserts with Augustine that "the permission is not involuntary but voluntary" (1.18.3). "Here they recur to the distinction between will and permission and insist that God permits the destruction of the wicked, but does not will it. But what reason shall we assign for his permitting it, but because it is his will? It is not probable that man procured his own destruction by the mere permission without any appointment (ordinatione) of God; as though God had not determined what he would choose to be the condition of the principal of his creatures. I shall not hesitate, therefore, to confess plainly with Augustine 'that the will of God is the certainty (necessitatem) of things, and that what he has willed will certainly (necessario) come to pass; as those things are surely about to happen which he has foreseen' " (3.23.8). Having given what he regards as the true view of God's permission of sin by a voluntary decree to permit it, Calvin then affirms that the fall of Adam thus actively-permissively decreed was free and guilty: "Now, if either Pelagians or Manicheans or Anabaptists or Epicureans (for we are concerned with these four sects in this argument), in excuse for themselves and the impious, plead the certainty (necessitatem) with which they are bound by God's predestination, they allege nothing applicable to the case. For if predestination is no other than a dispensation of divine justice, mysterious, indeed, but liable to no blame, since it is certain that they were not unworthy of being predestinated to that fate, it is equally certain that the destination they incur by predestination is consistent with the strictest justice. Moreover, their perdition depends on divine predestination in such a manner that the cause and matter of it are found in themselves. For the first man fell because the Lord had determined it was so expedient. The reason of this determination is unknown to us. Man falls, therefore, according to the appointment of divine providence; but he falls by his own fault. The Lord had a little before pronounced 'everything that he had made' to be 'very good.' Whence, then, comes the depravity of man to revolt from his God? Lest it should be thought to come from creation, God had approved and commended what had proceeded from himself. By his own wickedness, therefore, Adam corrupted the nature he had received pure from the Lord, and by his fall he drew all his posterity with him into destruction. Wherefore let us rather contemplate the evident cause of condemnation, which is nearer to us in the corrupt nature of mankind, than search after a hidden and altogether incomprehensible one in the predestination of God" (3.23.8). Calvin quotes from Augustine to the same effect: "Wherefore there is the greatest propriety in the following observations of Augustine (Letter 106; Perseverance of the Saints 12): 'The whole mass of mankind having fallen into condemnation in the first man, the vessels that are formed from it to honor are not vessels of personal righteousness, but of divine mercy; and the formation of others to dishonor is to be attributed not to iniquity, but to the divine decree.' While God rewards those whom he rejects with deserved punishment and to those whom he calls freely gives undeserved grace, he is liable to no accusation, but may be compared to a creditor who has power to release one and enforce his demands on another. The Lord, therefore, may give grace to whom he will, because he is merciful, and yet not give it to all, because he is a just judge; may manifest his free grace by giving to some what they do not deserve, while by not giving to all he declares the demerits of all" (3.23.11).

Respecting the preterition of some by Christ in the days of his flesh, Calvin remarks as follows: "Christ testifies that he confined to his apostles the explanations of the parables in which he had addressed the multitude; 'because to you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given' (Matt. 13:11). What does the Lord mean, you will say, by teaching those by whom he takes care not to be understood? Consider whence the fault arises, and you will cease the inquiry; for whatever obscurity there is in the word, yet there is always light enough to convince the consciences of the wicked. It remains now to be seen why the Lord does that which it is evident he does. If it be replied that this is done because men have deserved it by their impiety, wickedness, and ingratitude, it will be a just and true observation; but as we have not yet discovered the reason of the diversity, why some persist in obduracy while others are inclined to obedience, the discussion of it will necessarily lead us to the same remark that Paul has quoted from Moses concerning Pharaoh: 'Even for this same purpose have I raised you up, that I might show my power in you and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth' (Rom. 9:17). That the reprobate obey not the word of God when made known to them is justly imputed to the wickedness and depravity of their hearts, provided it be at the same time stated that they are abandoned to this depravity because they have been raised up by a just but inscrutable judgment of God to display his glory in their condemnation. So when it is related of the sons of Eli that they listened not to his salutary admonitions 'because the Lord would slay them' (1 Sam. 2:25), it is not denied that their obstinacy proceeded from their own wickedness, but it is also plainly implied that though the Lord was able to soften their hearts, yet they were left in their obstinacy, because his immutable decree had predestinated them to destruction" (3.24.13–14). "Examples of reprobation present themselves every day. The same sermon is addressed to a hundred persons; twenty receive it with the obedience of faith; the others despise or ridicule or reject or condemn it. If it be replied that the difference proceeds from their wickedness and perverseness, this will afford no satisfaction, because the minds of the others would have been influenced by the same wickedness but for the correction of divine goodness. And thus we shall always be perplexed, unless we recur to Paul's question 'who makes you to differ?' in which he signifies that the excellence of some men beyond others is not from their own virtue, but solely from divine grace. Why, then, in bestowing grace upon some does he pass over others? Luke assigns a reason for the former, that they 'were ordained to eternal life' (Acts 13:48). What conclusion, then, shall be drawn respecting the latter, but that they are vessels of wrath to dishonor? Therefore let us not hesitate to say with Augustine (on Gen. 11:10), 'God could convert the will of the wicked because he is omnipotent. It is evident that he could. Why, then, does he not? Because he would not. Why he would not remains with himself.' For we ought not to aim at more wisdom than becomes us. That will be much better than adopting the evasion of Chrysostom that 'God draws those that are willing and who stretch out their hands for his aid' so that the difference may not appear to consist in the decree of God, but wholly in the will of man" (3.24.12–13).

The doctrine that the sin of man was decreed, but in such a manner as to leave the origination of sin to the free agency of man was also held by Descartes. In his Principles of Philosophy 1.40–41 he remarks as follows: "What we have already discovered of God gives us assurance that his power is so immense that we would sin in thinking ourselves capable of ever doing anything which he had not ordained beforehand, and yet we should soon be embarrassed in great difficulties if we undertook to harmonize the preordination of God with the freedom of our will and endeavored to comprehend both truths at once. But in place of this we shall be free from these embarrassments if we recollect that our mind is limited, while the power of God, by which he not only knew from all eternity what is or can be, but also willed and preordained it, is infinite. It thus happens that we possess sufficient intelligence to know clearly and distinctly that this power is in God, but not enough to comprehend how he leaves the free actions of men indeterminate; and, on the other hand, we have such consciousness of the liberty which exists in ourselves that there is nothing we more clearly or perfectly comprehend, so that the omnipotence of God ought not to keep us from believing it. For it would be absurd to doubt of that of which we are fully conscious and which we experience as existing in ourselves, merely because we do not comprehend another matter which from its very nature we know to be incomprehensible." This presents the subject in a practical and conclusive manner. The omnipotence of God requires a decree by which all things are ordained and come to pass, both good and evil, holiness and sin. For unless all events are under the control of his will he is not almighty. And the justice of God requires that, in the execution of the decree that sin shall come into the world, the free self-determination of man and his responsibility for sin shall be intact.

The doctrine of the permissive decree, as explained by Calvin, must be associated with the following statement of his, which has often been misconceived and misrepresented: "I inquire, again, how it came to pass that the fall of Adam, apart from any remedy (absque remedio), should involve so many nations with their infant children in eternal death, but because it was the will of God. It is an awe-exciting (horrible) decree I confess; but no one can deny that God foreknew the future final state of man before he created him and that he foreknew it because it was appointed by his own decree. This subject is judiciously discussed by Augustine. 'We most wholesomely confess, what we most rightly believe, that the God and Lord of all things, who created everything very good and foreknew that it was more suitable to his almighty goodness to bring good out of evil than not to suffer evil to exist, ordained the life of angels and men in such a manner as to exhibit in it, first, what free will was capable of doing and, afterward, what could be effected by the blessings of his grace and the sentence of his justice' " (3.23.7). These extracts show that both Augustine and Calvin assert the decreed origin of human sin only in connection with a free and responsible fall in Adam. All mankind, as a common mass and unity, sinned and fell in the first self-moved and uncompelled act of transgression. That act was permissively decreed, that is, foreordained in such a way as not to necessitate the act, but to leave it to the self-determination of Adam and his posterity in him. The election of some men from sin and the leaving of others in sin suppose this free but foreordained fall from the holiness in which Adam and his posterity were primarily created. If the facts and premises upon which both Augustine and Calvin reason are granted, there is no ground for charging the doctrine of predestination to sin with either compulsion or fatalism.

The biblical proof of a permissive decree that brings about the event without working efficiently in the human will "to will and to do" is abundant. Take the following as an example: God decrees that Magog shall invade Israel: "Son of Man, prophesy and say unto Gog, Thus says the Lord God, In that day when my people of Israel dwells safely, shall you not know it? And you shall come from your place out of the north parts, you and many people with you, all of them riding upon horses, a great company and a mighty army; and you shall come up against my people of Israel as a cloud to cover the land; it shall be in the latter days and I will bring you against my land that the heathen may know me, when I shall be sanctified in you, O Gog, before their eyes" (Ezek. 38:14–16). God also decrees that Gog shall fail in this invasion and that he will punish him for the attempt: "It shall come to pass at the same time, when Gog shall come up against the land of Israel, says the Lord God, that my fury shall come up in my face. For in my jealousy and in the fire of my wrath have I said, Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel. Therefore you Son of Man prophesy against Gog and say, Thus says the Lord God, Behold I am against you, O Gog, and I will turn you back and leave but the sixth part of you and will cause you to come up from the north parts and will bring you upon the mountains of Israel, and I will smite your bow out of your left hand and will cause your arrows to fall out of your right hand. And you shall fall upon the mountains of Israel, you and all your bands and the people that is with you; I will give you to the ravenous birds of every sort and to the beasts of the field to be devoured. You shall fall upon the open field; for I have spoken it, says the Lord God" (38:18–19; 39:1–5). It is impossible to suppose that the holy and just God positively inclined and inwardly changed the heart of Magog and his hosts from friendship toward himself and his people to enmity against them and then punished them for their hostility. And there is no need of so supposing. Gog and his hosts were a part of the human race which fell from holiness in Adam. They already had the carnal mind which is enmity against God. The permissive decree that they should invade Israel supposed this fallen condition. God decided not to counterwork against this evil heart, but to permit its free self-moved operation. An evil heart, if not restrained by divine grace, is infallibly certain to act wrongly. In determining not to hinder and prevent Gog from following his own evil free will, God made his invasion of Israel a certainty. At the same time this sure and certain agency of Gog was his own voluntary self-determination and deserving of the retribution which it received. This same reasoning applies to the case of Pharaoh and many others like it mentioned in Scripture. It will not apply, however, to the fall of man itself. The first origin of sin by the permissive decree presents a difficulty not found in the subsequent continuance of sin by it. The certainty that sin will continue to be, if God decides not to overcome it by regeneration and sanctification, is explicable; but the certainty that sin will come to be, if God decides not to originate it himself in the created will, but leaves the origination to the creature alone, is an insoluble problem, yet a revealed truth. It should be observed, however, that the first origin of sin in the fall of Adam has no connection with the doctrines of election and preterition. It is only the subsequent continuance of sin that is so connected. Some men are not elected to apostasy, and others passed by. The apostasy is universal, and there is no discrimination in this respect. But some men are elected to deliverance from apostasy, and some are not elected to deliverance and are left in sin (see Shedd, Calvinism: Pure and Mixed, 93).

3.6.19 (see p. 343). One of the best defenses of the doctrine of preterition is found in Charnock (Holiness of God, prop. 7): "That God withdraws his grace from men and gives them up sometimes to the fury of their lusts is as clear in Scripture as anything: 'The Lord has not given you a heart to perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear' (Deut. 29:4). Judas was delivered to Satan after the sop and put into his power for despising former admonitions. God often leaves the reins to the devil that he may use what efficacy he can in those that have offended the majesty of God; and he withholds further influences of grace or withdraws what before he had granted them. Thus he withheld that grace from the sons of Eli that might have made their father's pious admonitions effectual to them (1 Sam. 2:25): 'They hearkened not to the voice of their father, because the Lord would slay them.' He gave grace to Eli to reprove them and withheld that grace from them which might have enabled them, against their natural corruption and obstinacy, to receive that reproof. But the holiness of God is not blemished by withdrawing his grace from a sinful creature, whereby he falls into more sin (1) because the act of God in this is only negative. Thus God is said to 'harden' men, not by positive hardening or working anything in the creature, but by not working, not softening, leaving a man to the hardness of his own heart, whereby it is unavoidable by the depravation of man's nature and the fury of his passions, but that he should be further hardened and 'increase unto more ungodliness' (2 Tim. 2:19). As a man is said to give another his life when he does not take it away when it lay at his mercy, so God is said to 'harden' a man when he does not mollify him when it was in his power and inwardly quicken him with that grace whereby he might infallibly avoid any further provoking him. God is said to harden man when he removes not from them the incentives to sin, curbs not those principles which are ready to comply with those incentives, withdraws the common assistance of his grace, concurs not with counsels and admonitions to make them effectual, and flashes not in the convincing light which he darted upon them before. If hardness follows upon God's withholding his softening grace, it is not by a positive act of God, but from the natural hardness of man. If you put fire near to wax or rosin, both will melt; but when that fire is removed they return to their natural quality of hardness and brittleness; the positive act of the fire is to melt and soften, and the softness of the rosin is to be ascribed to that; but the hardness is from the rosin itself, wherein the fire has no influence but only a negative act by a removal of it: so when God hardens a man he only leaves him to that stony heart which he derived from Adam and brought with him into the world. (2) The whole positive cause of this hardness is from man's corruption. God infuses not any sin into his creatures, but forbears to infuse his grace and restrain their lusts, which upon the removal of his grace work impetuously. God only gives them up to that which he knows will work strongly in their hearts. And therefore the apostle wipes off from God any positive act in that uncleanness the heathen were given up to: 'Wherefore God gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts' (Rom. 1:24). God's giving them up was the logical cause; their own lusts were the true and natural cause. Their own lusts they were before they were given up to them and belonging to no one as their author but themselves after they were given up to them. (3) God is holy and righteous because he does not withdraw from man till man deserts him. To say that God withdrew that grace from Adam which he had afforded him in creation or anything that was due to him till he had abused the gifts of God and turned them to an end contrary to that of creation would be a reflection upon divine holiness. God was first deserted by man before man was deserted by God; and man does first contemn and abuse the common grace of God and those relics of natural light that 'enlighten every man that comes into the world' (John 1:9) before God leaves him to the hurry of his own passions. Ephraim was first joined to idols before God pronounced the fatal sentence: 'Let him alone' (Hos. 4:17). God discovers himself to man in the works of his hands; he has left in him prints of natural reason; he does attend him with the common motions of his Spirit and corrects him for his faults with gentle chastisements. He is near to all men in some kind of moral instructions; he puts, many times, providential bars in the way of their sinning; but when they will rush into it as the horse into the battle, when they will rebel against the light, God does often leave them to their own course and sentence him that is 'filthy to be filthy still' (Rev. 22:11), which is a righteous act of God as the rector and governor of the world. It is so far from being repugnant to the holiness and righteousness of God that it is rather a commendable act of his holiness and righteousness, as the rector of the world, not to let those gifts continue in the hands of a man who abuses them. Who will blame a father that, after all the good counsels he has given to his son to reclaim him, all the corrections he has inflicted on him for his irregular practices, leaves him to his own courses and withdraws those assistances which he scoffed at and turned a deaf ear to? Or who will blame the physician for deserting the patient who rejects his counsel, will not follow his prescriptions, but dashes his physic against the wall? No man will blame him, no man will say that he is the cause of the patient's death; but the true cause is the fury of the distemper and the obstinacy of the diseased person to which the physician left him. And who can justly blame God in a similar case, who never yet denied supplies of grace to any that sincerely sought it at his hands? What unholiness is it to deprive men of the assistances of common grace because of their sinful resistance of them and afterward to direct those sinful counsels and practices of theirs which he has justly given them up unto, to serve the ends of his own glory in his own plan and methods? (4) God is not under obligation to continue the bestowment of grace to any sinner whatever. It was at his liberty whether he would give renewing grace to Adam after his fall or to any of his posterity. He was at liberty either to withhold it or communicate it. But if the obligation were none just after the fall, there is none now since the multiplication of sin by man. But God is certainly less obliged to continue his grace after a repeated refusal and resistance and a peremptory abuse, than he was bound to proffer it after the first apostasy. God cannot be charged with unholiness in withdrawing his grace after we have received it, unless we can make it appear that his grace was a thing due to us, as we are his creatures and as he is the governor of the world. If there be an obligation on God as a governor, it would lie rather on the side of justice to leave man to the power of the devil whom he courted and the prevalency of those lusts he has so often caressed and to wrap up in a cloud all his common illuminations and leave him destitute of all the common workings of his Spirit."

3.6.20 (see p. 343). Turretin (11.2.22) defines the Hebraistic "hate" as loving in a less degree: "To hate (to misein) should be understood comparatively, as standing for a lesser or smaller degree of love." The hardening of a part of the Israelites is described as not softening them, in Deut. 29:4: "Yet the Lord has not given a heart to perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear, unto this day." This identical process is described in Isa. 6:10 by "make the heart of this people fat and make their eyes heavy and shut their eyes" and in 63:17 by "O Lord, why have you made us to err from your ways and hardened our heart from your fear?" And in John 12:40, Christ himself adopts the same phraseology and teaches the doctrine of preterition: "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, that they should not see with their eyes nor understand with their heart and be converted."

3.6.21 (see p. 344). A common objection to the doctrine that God's final end in all that he does is his own glory is that this is selfishness, and God is compared with man in proof. Should man do this, he would be actuated by egotism and self-love. But the argument from analogy between God and man cannot be carried beyond the communicable attributes. It stops at the incommunicable. We can argue from human justice to divine justice, from human benevolence to divine, etc., because man has these attributes by virtue of being made in the divine image. But neither man nor angel has the attributes of infinity, eternity, immensity, and omnipotence. These are incapable of degrees or of being bestowed upon a creature. There is no inferior degree of eternity or infinity, etc. These make no part of the divine image in which man was created. In such cases there must be the whole of the attribute or none of it. Consequently, to reason from analogy in regard to the incommunicable attributes of God is false reasoning, because there is no analogy.

Now, in the instance of the "glory of God," the reasoning relates to a subject of this latter class. Divine glory or excellence is an infinite, eternal, omnipotent, and omnipresent excellence. No creature can have such an excellence as this. The glory or excellence of man or angel is a finite, temporal, local, weak, and dependent excellence. The two differ in kind, not merely in degree, as in the case of the communicable attributes. Consequently, the two "glories" cannot be used in an argument from analogy. It does not follow that because the glory of a man, say Napoleon, does not permit him to make it the chief end of his action, the glory of God does not permit him to do so. There are properties in God's excellence that cannot possibly belong to manexcellence, so that what can be argued from the latter cannot be from the former, and the converse. If analogical reasoning should be pushed in reference to the subject of the worship of God, which has its ground in the glory of God, it would plainly be improper, because worship is incommunicable to the creature and is confined to the infinite. God demands that all his rational creatures adore and praise him. No man or angel has the right to make such a demand upon his fellow creatures.

3.6.22 (see p. 345). No logical intermediate between Calvinism and Arminianism is capable of combining both systems. It is impossible to say (a) that man is both totally and partially depraved; (b) that election is both unconditional and conditional; (c) that regenerating grace is both irresistible and resistible; (d) that redemption is both limited and unlimited; and (e) that perseverance is both certain and uncertain. Nor can there be a modification of one by the other. One or the other of the above-mentioned points must overcome the other. It is impossible to blend the two, which is requisite in order to a modification. This is not a gloomy view of Christian theology because (a) both systems hold in common the saving doctrines of the gospel (a sinner may be regenerated and sanctified under either) and (b) the influence of each upon the other is best when each is pure and simple. Medicines of opposite properties produce their good effect when they are unmixed with foreign ingredients. If the Calvinistic churches hold their ancestral Calvinism with frank sincerity and logical consistency and the Arminian churches hold their ancestral Arminianism in the same manner, they will have a better understanding with each other and do a greater work in extending the common gospel and destroying the common enemy, than they would by endeavoring to formulate a theology that should be neither Calvinistic nor Arminian. The endeavor of the Arminians in Holland in the seventeenth century to modify the Calvinistic Belgic Confession and of the Calvinists to suppress the Arminian Articles by the civil power resulted in one of the most bitter conflicts in church history and filled both parties with an unchristian spirit. Had there been no union of church and state at the time and had all denominations of Christians then stood upon an independent position, unrestrained by the civil authority, as is now the case very generally in Europe and America, neither of these two theological divisions would have interfered, by civil and military power, with the doctrine and practice of the other, and mutual respect would have characterized both. Whenever the endeavor is made to mix the immiscible and to fuse two types of theology that exclude each other, each party strives to outwit the other, and this produces jealousy and animosity. Mutual confidence is impossible. Hypocrisy and the pretense of being what one is not are liable to prevail. A Calvinist is a dishonest disorganizer if he poses as an Arminian, and so is an Arminian if he pretends to be a Calvinist. The recent attempt within the Northern Presbyterian Church in America to revise the Westminster standards, which was initiated by a very small minority of the whole body who were dissatisfied with Calvinism and who, under the claim of improving it by conforming it to popular opinion and the lax religious sentiment of the day, proposed changes that would utterly demolish it, was of the same general nature with that in Holland. But the rationalism and infidelity into which it developed under the leadership of the higher critics had nothing in common with the evangelical doctrines which were retained in their creed by Arminius and his followers.

3.6.23 (see p. 347). That the sincerity of God's desires that the sinner would repent and forsake sin is independent of the result is evinced by the temporary preterition of his own church: "My people would not hearken to my voice and Israel would none of me. So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust: and they walked in their own counsels. Oh that my people had hearkened unto me and Israel had walked in my ways! I should soon have subdued their enemies and turned my hand against their adversaries" (Ps. 81:11–14). In this instance God bestowed a certain degree of grace upon his chosen people. It was frustrated and unsuccessful. God might have increased the degree of grace and "made them willing in the day of his power." He did not immediately do this, though he did subsequently to a part of them who were the individually called in distinction from the nationally called. Does this prove that Jehovah was insincere when he said, with reference to those who resisted and frustrated the lower grade of his grace, "Oh that my people had hearkened unto me and Israel had walked in my ways?"

Howe (Redeemer's Tears) upon this text thus remarks: "We must take heed lest under the pretense that we cannot ascribe everything unto God that such expressions seem to import, we therefore ascribe nothing. We ascribe nothing if we do ascribe a real unwillingness that men should sin on and perish; and consequently a real willingness that they should turn to him and live, as so many plain texts assert. And therefore it is unavoidably imposed upon us to believe that God is truly unwilling of some things which he does not think fit to interpose his omnipotency to hinder and is truly willing of some things which he does not put forth his omnipotency to effect, that he makes this the ordinary course of his dispensation toward men, to govern them by laws and promises and threatenings, to work upon their minds, their hope, and their fear; affording them the ordinary assistances of supernatural light and influence, with which he requires them to comply and which, upon their refusing to do so, he may most righteously withhold and give them the victory to their own ruin; though oftentimes he does, from a sovereignty of grace, put forth that greater power upon others, equally negligent and obstinate, not to enforce, but effectually to incline their wills and gain a victory over them to their salvation."

The question arises whether, when God offers salvation to all men without exception but does not save all men without exception by overcoming their opposition, this is real compassion. It is real but not so high a degree of compassion as actual salvation. There are degrees of compassion. To offer the sinner a full pardon of all his sins on condition of faith and repentance (which condition the sinner must fulfill), instead of making no such offer, but immediately punishing him for them, is certainly a grade of mercy. Because God manifests a yet higher grade in the case of those whose opposition he overcomes, it does not follow that the lower grade is not mercy. Charnock (God's Patience, 733) argues that the patience of God in forebearing to inflict the penalty of sin immediately upon its commission is suggestive, even to the heathen, of mercy in remitting it, though not demonstrative of it. It is adopted to awaken hope, but cannot produce certainty. Only revelation does the latter: "The heathen could not but read in the benevolence of God, shown in his daily providences, favorable inclinations toward them; and though they could not be ignorant that they deserved the inflictions of justice, yet seeing themselves supported by God they might draw from thence the natural conclusion that God was placable." St. Paul teaches the same truth in saying that the benevolence of God in his common providence is fitted to produce penitence for sin and hope in his mercy: "The goodness of God in his forbearance and long-suffering leads you to repentance" (Rom. 2:4).

3.6.24 (see p. 348). Christ (Luke 10:13) declares that if the common grace granted to Chorazin and Bethsaida, which was ineffectual with them, had been granted to Tyre and Sidon, it would have been effectual with these. The miracles (dynameis) together with the ordinary influences of the Holy Spirit which produced no repentance in the former case, he says, would have produced it in the latter. According to this statement of our Lord, the very same amount of divine influence may succeed in overcoming a sinner's opposition in one instance and not in another. When it succeeds, it is effectual and irresistible grace; when it fails, it is ineffectual and resistible. This shows that grace is to be measured relatively by the result and not absolutely by a stiff rule which states arithmetically the amount of power exerted. All grace that fails, be it greater or less, is common; all that succeeds, be it greater or less, is special. In order to have effected repentance in the people of Chorazin, it would have been necessary to exert a higher degree of grace than was exerted upon them; while in order to effect repentance in the people of Tyre, no higher degree would have been requisite than that exerted upon Chorazin. But it is to be carefully noticed that the failure in the instance of Chorazin was owing wholly to the sinful resistance made to the grace; and the success affirmed in the instance of Tyre would be owing not to any assistance of the grace by the cooperation of the sinful will of Tyre, but wholly to the overcoming of Tyre's resistance by the grace exerted. The sinful will of the inhabitants of Tyre, in the supposed case, was a wholly resisting will like that of the inhabitants of Chorazin and hence could not synergize with the divine Spirit any more than theirs could, but the degree of resistance, according to our Lord's statement, was less.

7 Creation

In Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 8 it is said that "God executes his decrees in the works of creation and providence." The decree itself, we have seen, as immanent in the divine being, is formed in eternity and is one single act which simultaneously includes all that comes to pass in all space and time. But as emanent and transitive, it passes into execution by a gradual and endless succession of events and phenomena. The two general modes in which the divine decree is executed are creation and providence. It might at first sight seem as if redemption should constitute a third mode; but theologians have commonly included this under the head of providence, as the special manner in which God provides for the needs of men as sinners.

Creation Ex Nihilo

Creation, in the proper sense of origination ex nihilo, is the very first work that God does ad extra. Nothing precedes it, except that eternal activity in the divine essence which results in the trinitarian persons. These latter are not creations, but emanations. Hence creation is called "the beginning of God's way" (Prov. 8:22); and God is said to have created the heaven and earth "in the beginning" (Gen. 1:1). The doctrine of creation is taught in Gen. 1:1; Neh. 9:6; Job 26:3; Ps. 19:1; 104:30; 124:8; 146:6; John 1:3; Acts 17:24; Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 8:6; 2 Cor. 4:6; Col. 1:16; Heb. 3:4; 4:4; 11:3. The peculiar characteristic in creation, namely, the origination of entity from nonentity, is mentioned in the following: "The worlds were framed so that things which are seen were not made of things that do appear" (Heb. 11:3); "God commanded the light to shine out of darkness" (2 Cor. 4:6); and "by him were all things created, visible and invisible" (Col. 1:16).

Creation ex nihilo is peculiar to the Scriptures. It is not found even in the most rational and spiritual of the ancient cosmogonies. Even when an intelligent architect of the universe is affirmed, as in the systems of Plato and Aristotle, an eternal hylē, or chaotic matter, is postulated, out of which it is formed. Philo (On the World) takes the same view. In the Platonic writings, God is rather a demiurge than a Creator. Plutarch (Procreation of the Soul) describes Plato's view as follows: "The creation was not out of nothing, but out of matter wanting beauty and perfection, like the rude materials of a house lying first in a confused heap." Ranke (Universal History 1.22) marks the difference between the Mosaic and the Egyptian and Assyrian cosmogonies as …

an express counterstatement. With the Egyptians and Babylonians, everything is developed from the inherent powers of the sun, the stars, and the earth itself. Jehovah, on the other hand, appears as the Creator of heaven and earth; as both the originator and the orderer of the world. The conception of a chaos is not excluded, but this conception itself rested on the idea of a previous creation. (supplement 3.7.1.)

In Scripture, the term creation is sometimes employed in a secondary sense: "You send forth your spirit, they are created" (Ps. 104:30); "I create evil" (Isa. 45:7); "the Lord has created a new thing in the earth" (Jer. 31:22); "create in me a clean heart" (Ps. 51:10); "I create new heavens and a new earth" (Isa. 65:17; Rev. 21:1; and other passages). In these instances, divine agency operating by means of second causes is intended. Creatures are propagated under laws established by the Creator; sin is permitted and controlled by God employing the human will; an extraordinary event in history is brought about by divine providence; the regeneration and sanctification of the human soul is a secondary creation.

Under the head of creation, we have to do only with the primary and strict signification of the term, as denoting origination from nothing: de nihilo or ex nihilo. The poverty and inadequateness of human language is very apparent in respect to this idea. Words are more or less pictorial in their roots and elements. But the creation of entity from nonentity utterly forbids any picturing or imaging. For this reason, more or less of qualification or explanation must be employed, in all languages, in connection with the words that are used to denote this purely abstract and inexplicable conception.

The Hebrew word employed to denote the idea of creation is bārā˒. According to Gesenius (in voce) it signifies "(1) to cut, to carve; (2) to form, create, produce; Gen. 2:3 reads bārā˒ la˒ăśôt: which he created in making, that is, which he made in creating something new." Says Delitzsch (in Lange's Commentary on Gen. 1:1), "Bārā˒ in the Piel signifies to cut, hew, form; but in the Qal,5 it is employed to denote divine products, new and not previously existing in the sphere of nature and history (Exod. 34:10; Num. 16:30; and frequently in the prophets) or in the sphere of spirit (Ps. 51:10). In the Qal it never denotes human productions and is never used with the accusative of the material." In Exod. 5:16, ˓āśâ is used with the accusative of material: "Make brick." Dillmann (on Gen. 18:21) agrees with Delitzsch. Oehler (Theology of the Old Testament 1.169) takes the same view. Dorner (Christian Doctrine 2.23) endorses it. The patristic, medieval, and Reformation exegesis adopts this interpretation.

The clause ex nihilo is explanatory of the term creation and is necessary to define it and guard it from misuse. Unless it be employed, creation may be used to signify evolution or development, which is a wholly different conception. Ex nihilo denotes that a created thing is not produced out of existing matter of any kind whatever: " 'Out of' (ex) does not indicate matter but rather excludes it." Creation of entity from nonentity is expressed in Rom. 4:17: "God calls those things which be not, as though they were (ta mē onta hōs onta)." The same idea is suggested in 2 Cor. 4:6: "God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness." It is not meant that darkness is the material of which light is made, but the state or condition of things in which light is made to begin by a fiat. Hebrew 11:3, which says that "things which are seen were not made of things that do appear," teaches that there is an invisible cause for all visibles; and Col. 1:16, which says that "all things visible and invisible" were created (ektisthē) by the first begotten, teaches that God creates the invisible forces of matter, as well as the invisible spirits of angels and men. In the apocryphal 2 Maccabees 7:28 it is said that "God made the heaven and earth of things that are not (ex ouk ontōn)." Creation ex nihilo has its human analogies. The understanding originates thoughts from nothing; and the will originates volitions from nothing. Thoughts and volitions, however, are not entities or substances, and here the analogy fails. But they are ex nihilo. One thought is not made out of another thought; nor is a volition made out of another volition. Here the analogy holds good.

The maxim "nothing comes from nothing" is true in the sense that nothing comes from nothing (a) by finite power, (b) as the material out of which something is produced, and (c) by the mode of emanation, generation, or evolution, because this supposes existing matter. Lucretius (1.151) lays down the position that "nothing ever was brought forth from nothing by divine power."12 The reason that he gives why even by divine power (divinitus) nothing can be produced from nothing is that in this case there would be no need of a seed or egg and that, consequently, everything might be produced out of everything: men could be originated out of the sea, and fishes and birds out of the earth. Lucretius does not conceive of the seed or egg as created, but as eternal. His reasoning is valid against pseudoevolution or evolution defined as "the transmutation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous." Everything may be originated out of everything, upon this theory. The homogeneous vegetable may develop into the heterogeneous animal; the homogeneous animal into the heterogeneous man. And the process may be downward as well as upward, because either process is alike the transmutation of a homogeneous substance into a heterogeneous one. If it were possible by the operation of merely natural law to convert the inorganic mineral into the organic vegetable, it would be possible by the same method to convert the organic vegetable into the inorganic mineral. The rule would work in both ways. As plausible an argument might be constructed out of the deterioration and degradation of some of the human family to prove that man may be evolved downward into an anthropoid ape, as that which has been constructed to prove that he has been evolved upward from one.

Spinoza's definition of "substance" was intended to exclude the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. He defines substance as "that which exists of itself, that is, the conception of which does not require the conception of anything else" (Ethics 1.3). But the conception of a creature is the conception of a substance that requires another substance to account for it. A created substance, consequently, is precluded by Spinoza's definition of substance. There cannot be any such thing. Descartes had previously defined the absolute and primary substance as "that which so exists that it needs nothing else for its existence"; and Aquinas (1.29.2) so defines a trinitarian subsistence or person. But Descartes added a definition of created or secondary substance as "that which requires the concurrence (concursus) of God, for its existence." Spinoza in his early life made an abstract of Descartes's philosophy for the use of a pupil (Concerning the Principles of Rene Descartes' Philosophy). His editor, De Meyer, remarks that Spinoza must not be understood to agree with Descartes and mentions that he rejected Descartes's distinction between intellect and will, but says nothing about the distinction between primary and secondary substance (Bruder's Spinoza 1.89). Subsequently, when Spinoza published his own system, he rejected the distinction between primary and secondary substance and gave no definition of any substance but the "one and only substance," of which everything is a modification. By this begging the question15 or postulate of one substance only, he excludes created substance and lays the foundation of pantheism. This theory of the universe energetically rejects creation ex nihilo and maintains emanation. Fichte says that "the assumption of a creation is the fundamental error of all false metaphysics and philosophy." Hegel explains the universe of matter and spirit as an immanent process of God, a material efflux out from the absolute which is retracted again as immaterial spirit. Strauss expresses the same idea in the statement that "Trinity and creation are, speculatively considered, one and the same thing; only the former is the rational, and the latter the empirical aspect."Kant, on the contrary, asserts that "the proposition that God, as the universal first cause, is the cause of the existence of substance can never be given up without at the same time giving up the notion of God as the being of all beings and thereby giving up his all sufficiency, on which everything in theology depends" (Practical Reason, 279). (supplement 3.7.2.)

The maxim "nothing comes from nothing" is false in reference to the supernatural and omnipotent power of God. The Supreme Being can originate entity from nonentity. The following are the characteristics of creation from nothing:

1. Creation has a beginning. It is not the eternal emanation of an eternal substance or the eternal evolution of an eternal germ. This is taught in Gen. 1:1 by the clause in the beginning and in the phrase before the foundation of the world frequently employed to denote eternity. Origen held that God is eternally creating; otherwise he would have nothing to do and would be mutable in deciding to create (Schleiermacher, Dogmatics 1.197). The opera ad intra meet the first objection. The eternal generation and spiration are divine activities prior to the creation of the universe and independent of it. Boethius asserted that God is eternal and that the world is perpetual. Rothe (Ethics §40) affirms eternal creation. Defective trinitarian or positively antitrinitarian theories logically tend either to the dogma of an eternal creation or else of emanation in order that the deity may have an object for himself as a subject. True trinitarianism finds this object within the Godhead. God the Son is God the Father's object. If creation is eternal, the universe is as old as the Creator. It could be said of it, as the Nicenes said of the Son of God: ouk ēn pote hote ouk ēn.

2. Creation is optional, not necessary, for God. It proceeds from free will and is expressed by fiat: "He has stretched out the heavens by his discretion" (Jer. 10:2). Emanation is necessary and constitutional, like the generation of the Son and spiration of the Spirit.

3. Creation originates another new substance; but emanation and evolution produce only modifications of an old and existing substance.

The conception of creation from nothing is purely intellectual, like that of a mathematical point, line, or surface. These latter cannot be explained or even illustrated by sensuous images and are held as valid conceptions by a purely rational act of the mind unassisted by sensation. The atheistic mathematician who denies the being of God and creation ex nihilo, because he cannot image them, should upon the same principle deny the validity of the mathematical conceptions of a point, line, and surface. Owing to man's strong propensity to image his knowledge and explain conceptions by a sensuous method, he attempts to account for the universe by postulating an eternal substance of some ethereal kind, out of which it is made. Hence even Plato and Aristotle suppose a hylē, which is formed into the cosmos by the supreme architect. Müller (Literature of Greece, 87–88) asserts that the idea of creation from nothing is wanting in the Greek conception of the deity and is found in the Eastern nations. But the only Eastern people who had the idea were the Hebrews. The Persian cosmogony is dualistic; and the Indian is pantheistic. "It is," says Augustine (City of God 11.2), "a great and very rare thing for a man, after he has contemplated the whole creation, corporeal and incorporeal, and has discerned its mutability, to pass beyond it, and by the continued soaring of his mind to attain to this unchangeable substance of God, and, in that height of contemplation to learn from God himself that none but he made all that is not of the divine essence." Mosheim, in a note to Cudworth (3.140), proves by a survey of ancient philosophy and theology that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is found only in Scripture.

Creation Account in Genesis

The first verse of Genesis mentions the first of the opera ad extra of the triune God, namely, the creation of the present universe. The clause heaven and earth denotes all that is not God, namely, the worlds of matter and of finite mind or the sensible and intelligible worlds. "Heaven and earth" means the universe; as when one says of another: "He would move heaven and earth to accomplish his purpose." The sacred writer begins with an all-comprehending proposition: God created all finite beings and things. The same truth is taught in Col. 1:16: "By him were all things created, that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible." Here, the creation of the universe is referred to the second trinitarian person. A portion of the universe is spiritual in its substance and is denoted by "heaven"; and a portion is physical and is denoted by "earth." The spirits of angels and men constitute the spiritual part of the universe, and matter constitutes the physical part of it. From Job 38:7 it appears that the angels were created before the six days' work, and from Gen. 1:26 that men were created on the sixth day.

This is the old patristic interpretation of Gen. 1:1. Says Augustine (Confessions 12.7): "You created heaven and earth: things of two kinds; one near to you, the other near to nothing." By this latter, Augustine means the rarefied matter of chaos. Again (Confessions 12.7) he says, "You created heaven and earth; not out of yourself, for so they should have been equal to your only begotten Son, and thereby equal to you also." (supplement 3.7.3.)

The created universe of mind and matter, denominated "heaven and earth" in Gen. 1:1, is diverse from God, that is, is another substance. It is not God or a part of God, because God created it from nonentity. God and the universe are not one substance, but two substances: one primary and the other secondary, one necessary and the other contingent. God and the universe do not constitute one system of being, but two distinct and different systems; for a system implies that all the parts are of one nature and coequal in dignity and duration. Some theists, like Edwards, for example, under the phrase being in general, have unintentionally taught Spinozism. This phrase brings God and the universe into a single system and makes God a part of it. Whatever is really one system of being is a numerical unity and is of one and the same essence. The three trinitarian persons, for example, constitute one system of divine being, and they are numerically one substance. The universe is not infinite, but finite, and therefore cannot belong to the system of the infinite. The term infinite in the proper sense is applicable only to God. For that which is strictly infinite is also eternal and necessary. But neither eternity of being or necessity of being belongs to the "heaven and earth" that was created "in the beginning" of time. The universe is the finite, and God is the infinite (see Howe, Oracles 2.9). The universe is unlimited, in distinction from infinite. The unlimited is capable of increase, diminution, and division; the infinite is not. Space, time, and matter are unlimited; they can be added to, subtracted from, and divided. God is infinite and incapable of addition, subtraction, or division. The finite spirit is also unlimited, not infinite. It is capable of increase and diminution; not by addition and subtraction of substance, but by development of latent properties or suppression of them. "World" is sometimes put for "universe." In this case, "world" denotes all being that is not God. Coleridge's formula illustrates this: "World minus God = zero. God minus world = reality absolute. The world without God is nonentity. God without the world is, in and of himself, absolute being and infinite perfection" (Marsh, Remains, 162). The use of "world" as the antithesis of "God" and the equivalent of "universe" is more common in philosophy than in literature. In literature, "world" more generally denotes a part of the universe. Milton uses the term to denote the visible universe of matter:

How this world

Of heaven and earth conspicuous first began.

—Paradise Lost 7.62

In Gen. 1:2 Moses proceeds to speak of the first state and condition of the "earth," in distinction from the "heaven": "And the earth was without form and void." He describes the "earth" (excluding the "heaven") as a mass of chaotic matter which had been created ex nihilo in that "beginning" spoken of in the first verse. By the "earth" in the second verse is not meant merely the planet earth, but the whole material system connected with it, both solar and stellar. The ensuing description of God's work upon that part of the universe called "earth" shows that the sun, moon, and stars belong to it. Says Matthew Henry (on Gen. 1:2):

A chaos was the first matter. It is here called the "earth" (though the earth in the sense of the dry land was not made until the third day), because it did most resemble that which afterward was called earth, mere earth, an unwieldy mass. It is also called the "deep," both for its vastness and because the waters which were afterward separated from the earth were now mixed with it. This mighty bulk of matter was it, from which all bodies even the firmament and visible heavens were afterward produced by the power of the eternal word.

Between the single comprehensive act of the creation of the angels and of chaotic matter mentioned in Gen. 1:1 and the series of divine acts in the six days described in Gen. 1:3–31, an interval of time elapsed. This is the old patristic interpretation. The very common assertion that the church has altered its exegesis, under the compulsion of modern geology, is one of the errors of ignorance. The doctrine of an immense time prior to the six creative days was a common view among the fathers and Schoolmen. So also was the doctrine of the rarefied and chaotic nature of matter in its first form a patristic tenet. Kant's gaseous chaos filling the universe, adopted by La Place and Herschel, was taught, for substance, by Augustine, in the following positions taken in Confessions 12.8.1. God created a chaotic matter that was "next to nothing," that is, the most tenuous and imponderable form of matter. This chaotic matter was made from nothing "before all days," that is, in that prior period marked by the words in the beginning. This chaotic unformed matter was subsequently formed and arranged in the six days that are spoken of after Gen. 1:1.

Augustine's exegesis of Gen. 1 is substantially this: In the beginning, that is, in a time prior to the six days, God created ex nihilo the angelic world or "the heaven" and chaotic inorganic matter or "the earth." Then in the six days he formed (not created) chaotic inorganic matter into a cosmic system, solar, stellar, and planetary, and upon the planet earth created (not formed) the organic vegetable, animal, and human species. This was the interpretation generally accepted in the patristic and Middle Ages. Lombard (Sentences 2.12) adopts Augustine's views. David Kimchi, a learned rabbi of the twelfth century, respecting whom the Jews said, "No Kimchi, no understanding of the Scriptures," explained Gen. 1 in the following manner: "First of all, God created the 'heaven,' that is the highest heaven with the angels; then the 'earth,' the first appearance and condition of which are described in the second verse and out of which the other creatures are subsequently formed. And it is called without 'form and void,' in opposition to heaven; which was immediately carried to its full perfection and replenished with inhabitants" (Witsius, Apostles' Creed, diss. 8).

Respecting the length of the six creative days, speaking generally, for there was some difference of views, the patristic and medieval exegesis makes them to be long periods, not days of twenty-four hours. The latter interpretation has prevailed only in the modern church. Augustine teaches (On the Literal Meaning of Genesis 4.27) that the length of the six days is not to be determined by the length of our days. Our seven days, he says, resemble the seven days of the account in Genesis in being a series and in having the vicissitudes of morning and evening, but they are "quite unequal." In 4.1 he says that it is difficult to say what "day" means. In 5.1 he calls attention to the fact that the "six or seven days may be and are called one day" (Gen. 2:4). In 2.14 he calls the six days "God-divided days," in distinction from "sun-divided days" (see Lewis, "Genesis" in Lange's Commentary, 131). Gangauf (Augustine, 111n) cites numerous passages to the same effect. Anselm (Cur deus 1.18) remarks that there was a difference of opinion in his time as to whether the six days of Moses "are to be understood like days of ours" as a successive creation or whether "the whole creation took place at once." He says it is "the opinion of the majority" that man and angels were created at the same time, because we read: "He who lives forever created all things at once."

There is nothing in the use of the word day by Moses that requires it to be explained as invariably denoting a period of twenty-four hours; but much to forbid it. The following facts prove this: (1) day means daylight in distinction from darkness (Gen. 1:5, 16, 18); (2) day means daylight and darkness together (1:5); and (3) day means the six days together (2:4). The first day (1:5) could not have been measured by the revolution of the sun around the earth because this was not yet visible. The same variety in signification is seen in the Mosaic use of the word earth: (1) the entire material universe (Gen. 1:1); (2) the solar, stellar, and planetary system (1:2); (3) the dry land of the planet earth (1:10); or (4) the whole of the planet earth (1:15, 17). The Ten Commandments were called by the Jews the "ten words."The term word here denotes a truth or proposition, not a single word. Similarly, a period of time having its beginning and ending, its evening and morning, may naturally be called a "day." (supplement 3.7.4.)

The seven days of the human week are copies of the seven days of the divine week. The "sun-divided days" are images of the "God-divided days." This agrees with the biblical representation generally. The human is the copy of the divine, not the divine of the human. Human fatherhood and sonship are finite copies of the trinitarian fatherhood and sonship. Human justice, benevolence, holiness, mercy, etc., are imitations of corresponding divine qualities. The reason given for man's rest upon the seventh solar day is that God rested upon the seventh creative day (Exod. 20:11). But this does not prove that the divine rest was only twenty-four hours in duration any more than the fact that human sonship is a copy of the divine proves that the latter is sexual.

Harmony of the Biblical Creation Account with Physical Science

Respecting the harmony between physical science and revelation, it is to be observed in the first place that physical science is not infallible, so that an actual conflict between science and revelation would not necessarily be fatal to revelation. It might be fatal to science. In the seventeenth century the physics of Descartes had great authority, and much was made by the skeptics of that day of the fact that the Mosaic physics did not square with the Cartesian physics. Says Howe (Oracles 2.21), "Some are sick of the history of the creation, because they cannot reconcile the literal account thereof, in the beginning of Genesis, with the philosophy of their Descartes: as if his reputation were a thing more studiously to be preserved than that of Moses; though yet, more might be said than has been, to reconcile with natural principles even the whole history of the creation." The "vortices" of the Cartesian physics are today an exploded and rejected "science"; and the most skeptical physicist of this generation would not dream of alleging a conflict between science and religion because Moses does not agree with Descartes.

Again, in the second place, physical science is not one and invariable in its contents. There have been a multitude of scientific theories that cannot be reconciled with each other. The Ptolemaic and the Copernican astronomies are examples. For centuries the Ptolemaic system was undisputed; and the skeptic of those centuries endeavored to show that the Bible did not agree with it, and the believer of those centuries endeavored with equal strenuousness to show that it did (Herschel, Discourse §336). Christianity, on the other hand, has had substantial invariability. The differences between Christian believers, even upon the more recondite doctrines, are by no means so great as those between the ancient Greek and the modern Englishman upon the nature and laws of matter. The difference between the Augustinian and the Semipelagian or between the Calvinist and the Arminian is not at all equal to that between Ptolemy and Copernicus. The doctrines of the Trinity, incarnation, apostasy, the redemption have always constituted the essential substance of the Christian faith. But no such substantial invariability as this appears in the history of physical science. Even, therefore, if it could not be shown that revelation is in harmony with a science that confessedly is not infallible and actually is not invariable, it would not be a very serious matter for revelation. The error might be upon the side of science.

After this preliminary observation, we remark, in the first place, that the biblical physics does not conflict with the heliocentric Copernican theory. Nothing at all is said in the opening of Genesis respecting the motion of the earth in relation to the sun; and the phraseology in other parts of Scripture is popular and to be explained as it is when the modern astronomer himself speaks of the rising and setting of the sun. In the second place, the order of creation as given in Genesis is corroborated by the best settled results of modern physics. The whole field cannot of course be gone over. Let us test the matter by referring to geology, in respect to which science the conflict has been the most severe.

The now generally accepted facts in geology remarkably coincide with the series of events related in Genesis. The sequence of the creative periods is substantially the same in both. Physical science may be regarded as having established with considerable certainty the following positions: (1) The planet earth, at first, was a chaotic mass in a state of fusion and enveloped in a totally dark atmosphere of vapor. This agrees with the statement in Gen. 1:2: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep." (2) By the cooling caused by the radiation of heat, a crust was formed over the molten interior, and the atmospheric vapor was condensed into an ocean of water which covered the superficial crust. This primeval ocean is mentioned in Gen. 1:2: "The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." The creative work under these two heads is not a part of the six days' work. It occurred before the first day and belongs to the immense duration between "the beginning" and the six days' work. (3) The condensation of vapor did not make the earth's atmosphere clear and translucent immediately. But in course of time it so cleared it, that the light, which had been generated by the heat, could penetrate it with some obscurity. Light as a luminous haze could now be distinguished from darkness. This agrees with Gen. 1:3–4: God said, "Let there be light; and God divided the light from the darkness."

The appearance of light before the appearance of the sun is one of the strongest proofs that the author of this narrative was instructed upon his point. Such a fact as this must have been revealed to him. Previous to modern physical investigations, this apparent misplacement of light before the sun was regarded as singular by the believer and absurd by the skeptic. The fact, moreover, that the sun and moon did not appear until the fourth day and that the vegetable kingdom was created on the third day and was growing without sun visible in the sky greatly increased the difficulty. But the theory of the modern geologist removes the difficulty and corroborates with Moses. According to geology, there was a long period when the primeval oceans were tepid water, when the atmosphere was a gloaming and was as moist, warm, and germinating as that of the rainy season in the tropics:

Over all the face of the earth

Main oceans flowed, not idle, but, with warm

Prolific humor softening all her globe

Fermented the great mother to conceive,

Satiate with genial moisture.

—Milton

The consequence was that rank growth of succulent, fernlike vegetation, of which the coal beds are now the exponent.

As the inorganic process of radiation of heat and condensation of vapors went on, the earth's atmosphere became less and less vaporous and more and more luminous, until the space around the planet assumed the appearance of the empty, hollow arch of heaven. Previously, this space had been so much filled with vapor that no distinction between earth and sky was possible. This formation of the atmospheric welkin or dome is described in Gen. 1:6–8: "And God said, Let there be a firmament, and let it divide the waters which are under the firmament from the waters which are above the firmament. And God called the firmament heaven." A similar atmospheric process is continually occurring on a smaller scale in the clearing up of a storm or fog. It is described by Shelley in "The Cloud":

For after the rain, when with never a stain,

The pavilion of heaven is bare,

Prolific humor softening all her globe

The winds and the sunbeams with their convex gleams,

Build up the blue dome of the air.

By the contact of water with the lava beneath the earth's crust, steam and gases are generated, causing earthquakes and convulsions which lift the crust, forming the mountain ranges, elevating tablelands, lagoons, and ocean beds. This process having taken place, the planet is fitted to support the first and lowest form of organized matter, namely, the vegetable. Up to this point in the Mosaic account, there is no life of any kind in that part of the created universe designated by the term earth in Gen. 1:2. Everything is inorganic and lifeless, and the only forces in operation are mechanical and chemical. Now the plant as a living species, which could not be originated by any of the mechanical and chemical that had previously been in action, is created ex nihilo, and the vegetable kingdom is established on earth. Geology finds no evidences of vegetable life in igneous rocks and corroborates the teaching of Moses in Gen. 1:9–12: "And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called the Seas. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind." With this is to be compared 2 Pet. 3:5: "By the word of God, there were heavens from of old and an earth compacted (synestōsa) out of water (ex hydatos) and amid (or through) water (di' hydatos)" (Revised Version). This teaching of St. Peter seems to agree with the geological view that earth got its solid consistence "out of" and above the water, by means of the convulsions that lifted it up, and "amid" and under the water, by means of the deposit of rocky strata.

In saying "let the earth bring forth (dāšā˒) grass" (Gen. 1:11), it is not meant that the inorganic earth or mineral develops into the organic vegetable and thus that vegetable life is an evolution from the lifeless clod; because it is also said that God "created every plant of the field before it was in the earth and every herb of the field before it grew" (Gen. 2:5). The words let the earth bring forth mean that the earth furnishes the nonvital material elements that constitute the visible form of a plant, which are vitalized and assimilated by an invisible principle of vegetable life—which invisible principle was a creation ex nihilo. The creation of this is the creation of the species vegetable. This interpretation is evidently the true one, not only because it agrees with Gen. 2:5, but because the earth in verse 24 is said to bring forth animals also. If there be no intervening creative energy and the earth is the sole cause, then evolution produces out of the very same lifeless elements both vegetable and animal life. But even the evolutionist has not yet claimed that the animal comes directly from the mineral. The vegetable is the link between the two. The mineral first becomes a vegetable, and then the vegetable becomes an animal, according to the materialistic physics. Our Lord's words in Mark 4:28 explain the words let the earth bring forth grass: "The earth brings forth fruit of herself (automatē), first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." The earth today "brings forth fruit spontaneously of itself" only because of the seed planted in it. And on the third creative day, the earth "brought forth grass spontaneously" only because of the new vegetable species then created by God "before it was in the earth and before it grew" (Gen. 2:5).

The sun and moon now appear in the vault of heaven, that is, in the atmosphere entirely cleared of the primeval vapor. The seasons are now arranged, since the sun can exert its power, and the vegetable world in its higher as well as its lower forms is developed. This agrees with Gen. 1:14–19.

Animal life in the waters and in the air is then created (Gen. 1:20–23). It is acknowledged that marine life is the oldest of all animal life. The coral formations of the Florida reefs are the work of living creatures. Agassiz (Graham Lectures, 68) thinks that they are "hundreds of thousands of years old." This distinguished naturalist, in his Fossil Fishes, shows that of the vertebrate animals fishes alone existed at first; that amphibious animals came later; and that birds and mammals appeared still later, the lower orders first and the higher afterward. Haeckel (Creation 1.68) concedes that Agassiz has shown this. The fiat "let the waters bring forth" is to be explained like "let the earth bring forth." A specific animal principle is created ex nihilo, which builds up out of the vegetable and other elements now in the waters a particular form of fish or bird: "The causality of 'the swarming of the swarm' cannot lie in the water itself" ("Genesis" in Lange's Commentary, 171; Philo, Works 4.284).

Animal life on the land is then created: (a) irrational animals and (b) man (Gen. 1:24–31). Geology shows that man is latest in the series.

The six days of Gen. 1 are six creative periods, each having its evening and morning and each one of these marked by a particular manifestation of divine power: some more distinctly than others, but all really so marked. This is indicated in the Hebrew: "There was evening, and there was morning: one day." The first, second, and fourth days exhibit the Creator operating through those mechanical laws and chemical properties of matter, which he established "in the beginning" spoken of in Gen. 1:1. The effects in these three days are brought about by radiation of heat, condensation of vapor, chemical affinity and repulsion, attraction of cohesion, gravitation, etc. The third, fifth, and sixth days are periods during which life—vegetable, animal, and mental—is originated ex nihilo by creative energy. Neither of these forms of life can be accounted for by the operation of those laws and properties of matter which were employed on the first, second, and fourth days. The first, second, and fourth are inorganic days during which nothing vital is originated. The third, fifth, and sixth are organic days during which the vegetable, animal, and rational kingdoms are originated.

The Mosaic record mentions four and perhaps five creative fiats by which the living species in the organic world were originated ex nihilo. The first fiat creates the vegetable species (Gen. 1:11–12). The second creates the animal species in its lower forms, namely, fishes, reptiles, and birds (1:20–22). The third creates the animal in the higher forms of the quadruped (1:24–25). The fourth creates man (1:26–28). It is somewhat uncertain whether the bird is included under the same fiat with the fish and reptile because the Hebrew reads, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life, and let fowl fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven" (Revised Version). In this case, the "fowl" are not necessarily the product of the "waters." The Authorized rendering "and fowl that may fly" represents the "waters" as bringing forth the "fowl." St. Paul teaches the doctrine of distinct living species when he says, "All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one kind of flesh of man, another of fishes, and another of birds" (1 Cor. 15:39).

These several fiats establish and fix the limits that separate the vegetable from the animal kingdom and the several species in the animal kingdom from each other. The result of each fiat is distinct from that of the others. The fiat that created the vegetable did not create the fish. The fiat that created the quadruped did not create man. No mere evolution of that which was created by the first fiat will yield that which was created by the second; in other words, no one of these distinct species can be transmuted into another by merely natural causes. The supernatural power of God must intervene in order to account for an absolutely new species. God must say: "Fiat." The theory of evolution as presented either by Haeckel in its extreme form or by Darwin in its more moderate form unquestionably contradicts the Mosaic physics: "The divine word of power creates not merely a force in general; each new and distinct creative word introduces a new and distinct principle into the already existing sphere of nature—a principle which hitherto had not been present in it" (Lange's Commentary on Gen. 1:9–13). Agassiz (Graham Lectures, 13) comes to the same conclusion from considering the diversities of structure in the kingdom of animal life: "It must be mind acting among these material elements, making them subservient to its purpose, and not the elements themselves working out higher combinations of structure." (supplement 3.7.5.)

At the same time, the Mosaic physics does not needlessly multiply the miracle, but admits the evolution of varieties under a species. If but one fiat is intended in Gen. 1:11–12 and no subdivisions are implied under it, then all the innumerable varieties of plants in the vegetable kingdom have been evolved by propagation from one original vegetable principle. Vegetable protoplasm, in this case, has developed into the endless variety of plants. The mention, however, of "kinds" of grass, herb, and tree looks like subdivisions under the general fiat. So, likewise, if only a single fiat without subdivisions is mentioned in 1:20–21, it would not contradict the Mosaic physics to concede that reptiles have developed from fishes and even birds from reptiles. But the mention of "kinds" (1:21) appears rather to imply subdivisions under the general fiat. Again, if in 1:24–25 but a single fiat without subdivisions is intended by the sacred writer, then the species quadruped originated on the sixth day has developed, under the law of propagation and by the influences of environment, into the innumerable varieties that now fill the earth. The fact, however, that the quadruped is produced "after its kind" would seem to indicate particular creative acts under the general.

While there is this amount of indefiniteness and flexibility in the Mosaic account respecting the breadth of a species, there is the strictest definiteness and inflexibility respecting the fact. While, according to Moses, the vegetable may evolve from the vegetable and the animal from the animal, it would utterly contradict the Mosaic physics to concede that fishes, reptiles, and birds have evolved from the plant or vegetable; that quadrupeds have evolved from fish, reptile, and bird; that man has developed from irrational biped or quadruped. The products of two general fiats cannot be brought under a single one. The species man, originated by a distinct fiat on the sixth day, has developed under the law of propagation and by the influence of environment into the several varieties or races of men. This fiat is distinguished from all the others in that God addresses himself, not the earth or the waters. It is certain, also, that no subdivisions under it are implied, as in the case of the others, because man is not said to have been produced "after his kind."

This creation and fixedness of species is corroborated by the observations of the physicist. There are botanical and zoological provinces and groups on the globe. Each species has its own center and is propagated from it. Plants, fishes, reptiles, birds, and quadrupeds have their own habitat. The lion is not found in every zone nor the horse. Neither is the pine nor the palm. Man differs in this respect from all other species. He is found in all zones; and this because he has a higher grade of intelligence found in no other species by which he can supplement nature and counteract what is unfavorable or deadly in his environment. He can build a fire—a thing no other animal can do. He can sow and reap grain—which no other animal can do. He can make clothing to protect himself from cold, can build a house, can cook food.

Eternity of Matter vs. Creation Ex Nihilo

The first theory antagonistic to creation ex nihilo is that of the eternity of matter. One or the other doctrine must be adopted. Something is now and has been from eternity: "The very words there is nothing or there was a time when there was nothing are self-contradictory. There is that within us which repels the proposition with as full and instantaneous a light, as if it bore evidence against it in the light of its own eternity" (Coleridge, Friend in Works 2.464). If this "something" is not mind, then it is matter. The objections to the eternity of matter are the following:

1. The idea of matter does not imply absolute perfection. Matter is not the most perfect substance or being that we can conceive of. The idea of matter does not include all kinds of perfection. Rational intelligence is a quality of which matter is destitute. So, also, is free will.

2. The idea of matter does not imply necessary existence. This follows from its not being the absolutely perfect. Matter is contingent being. The supposition of the nonexistence of matter is not in conflict with the proposition that something is from eternity. We could still suppose the eternal existence of mind and account for the temporal existence of matter as its created product. But the converse is not supposable. For should we suppose the primary nonexistence of mind and its subsequent creation by matter, this would imply that the nonintelligent originates the intelligent, which is as difficult to believe as that nonentity originates entity.

3. The idea of matter does not imply eternal existence, because it does not imply perfection and necessity of existence. The three conceptions stand or fall together.

4. If matter is eternal it must be the first cause; but matter cannot be the first cause since this must be self-moving and perpetually moving. Matter is marked by the force of inertia. It must be moved ab extra; and its motion diminishes if not perpetuated ab extra. The burden of proof lies upon him who denies this. The Newtonian physics and mathematics are inseparable from one another, and both must stand until they are refuted by a materialistic physics and mathematics. If therefore there was a time when there was nothing but matter, there could be no beginning of motion because there is nothing self-moving; and if there be no beginning of motion there can be no causation. Matter cannot therefore originate anything. Locke (Understanding 4.10.10) argues that inert matter, having no self-motion, can no more produce motion than nonentity can produce entity. If, in reply, the materialist should postulate an eternal motion along with an eternal matter, Locke replies that even if his postulate should be conceded matter and material motion could no more produce mind and mental motion or thought and will than nothing could produce something. Incogitative being, he says, cannot originate cogitative being. Matter cannot create mind. Locke sums up the whole in the following sentence: "If we suppose nothing to be eternal, matter can never begin to be; if we suppose bare matter without motion to be eternal, motion can never begin to be; if we suppose only matter and motion to be eternal, thought can never begin to be." Says Henry More (Immortality 1.7): "If matter as matter had motion, that is, were self-moved, nothing would hold together; but flints, adamant, brass, iron, yea this whole earth would suddenly melt into a thinner substance than the subtle air, or rather, it would never have been condensed together to this consistency we find it."

That self-motion is the characteristic of mind and that its contrary (vis inertiae) is the characteristic of matter has been the historical opinion. Plato (Phaedo) maintains that intellect is the only cause, in the strict meaning of the word. Matter is only apparently a cause. A material cause has another cause back of it and so backward indefinitely. We get no real cause until we get to a mind which is self-moved. Here we have real beginning and a true cause. Plato approves of and defends the dictum of Anaxagoras that nous esti archē tēs kinēseōs. Berkeley has reproduced this view with great clearness and elegance. Cicero (Scipio's Dream) says: "That which is ever moving is eternal; that which communicates to another object a motion which it received elsewhere must necessarily cease to live, as soon as its motion is at an end. The being which is self-moving is the only being that is eternal, because it is never abandoned by its own properties, neither is this self-motion ever at an end."

Newton's first axiom in the beginning of his Principia is that "every body continues in its state of resting or of moving uniformly in a straight line, except insofar as it, being acted upon by forces, is compelled to change its state." All matter uniformly remains in status quo, either of motion or of rest, unless it is made to change its state by external causes. The entire structure of the historical physics is built upon this foundation. That the distance between motion and rest is as great as between existence and nonexistence has from the first been the dictum of all physics that has a support in mathematics: "Matter has no inherent power, either of beginning to move when at rest, or of arresting its progress when in motion. Its indifference to either state has been expressed by the term force of inertia (Turner, Chemistry, 1). The recent materialistic physics is anti-Newtonian in denying the vis inertiae and in postulating self-motion for matter. "Body and mind," says Haeckel (Creation 2.360), "can in fact never be considered as distinct. As Goethe has clearly expressed it: 'Matter never can exist and act without mind, and mind never without matter.' " The first part of Goethe's remark is true, but not the last part. Goethe was a Spinozist, and Spinoza asserted one substance with the contradictory properties of thought and extension. Says Maudsley (Physiology of Mind, 148), "We must get rid of the notion of matter as inert. Matter is not inert."

The hypothesis of the eternity of matter has been recently revived in that of molecular motion. This assumes that the ultimate atoms of matter have self-motion. A motive force is inherent in matter per se. The theorist postulates intrinsic motion along with his molecule. And he must, because he denies that there is any mental or intelligent source of motion. One molecule must impinge upon another molecule by its own motivity or not at all. The doctrine of self-motion is thus applied to atoms of matter. This is carried to its extreme in the so-called natural selection attributed to matter. Haeckel maintains that inorganic matter, by varying its molecular motion, becomes organic matter. Vegetable and animal life result from mechanical changes in dead matter, and these changes are "selected" and self-caused. Haeckel (Creation 1.18) quotes with approbation the following from Virchow: "Life is only a complicated kind of mechanics. A part of the sum total of matter emerges, from time to time, out of the usual course of its motions, into special chemico-organic combinations, and after having for a time continued therein, returns again to general modes of inorganic action." Here, both self-motion and choice are ascribed to inorganic matter. Certain molecules, by their own election, pass or "emerge" from one kind of motion into a different kind and then go back or "return" to the first kind. Darwin confines this theory to organic matter. Only living protoplasm can effect such changes by its own motivity. Natural selection, according to him, is restricted to the molecules of living matter. A primitive protoplasm being supposed, all the varieties of vegetable, animal, and rational life can then be accounted for by natural selection—that is, by protoplasmic molecules altering their own motion. Huxley goes further and contends that the organic sprang from the inorganic: "What are called second causes produce all the phenomena of the universe" (Man's Place in Nature, essay 2). (supplement 3.7.6.)

Upon the theory of Haeckel and Huxley, there is no need of an intelligent and personal mind in order to account for the phenomena of the universe. Self-motion and natural selection in the molecules of matter are sufficient to explain all. The difference in the direction and velocity with which molecules choose to move is the key. When molecules elect to move in one way, the product is a mineral—inorganic and lifeless. When they elect to move in another way, the product is a vegetable; in still another way is an animal; in still another way is a human soul. "The soul of man," says Haeckel (Creation 1.179, 237), "just like the soul of animals, is a purely mechanical activity, the sum of the molecular phenomena of motion in the particles of the brain. The will is the habit of molecular motion. The will is never free. It depends upon the material processes in the nervous system."

Lamarck, in his 1809 Zoological Philosophy, anticipated this theory in these terms:

All the phenomena of life depend upon mechanical, physical, and chemical causes which are inherent in the nature of matter itself. The simplest animals and the simplest plants, which stand at the lowest point on the scale of organization, have originated, and still do, by spontaneous generation. All animate natural bodies or organisms are subject to the same laws as inanimate natural bodies. The ideas and activities of the understanding are the motional phenomena of the central nervous system. The will is in truth never free. Reason is only a higher degree of the development and combination of judgments.

Lamarck's opinion that infusoria are vegetable and not animal was refuted by Ehrenberg and Spallanzani, the eminent microscopists (Kirby, On Animals, 80–81). Lamarck, however, extended the theory no further than Darwin does. He derived organized beings from the microscopically organic, not from the inorganic. In so doing, he is inconsistent with his theory that "all the phenomena of life depend upon the mechanical, physical, and chemical causes which are inherent in the nature of matter."

As we have before remarked, the materialistic physics is anti-Newtonian. If it be the truth, the physics of the Principia, of Copernicus and Kepler, is exploded. Matter has the properties of mind, namely, self-motion and self-direction. If the molecular force, in the words of Virchow, "emerges out of the usual course of its motion into special chemico-organic combinations and, after having for a time continued therein, returns again to the general modes of inorganic motion," this is a self-motion and self-direction as real as any act of the human will. And what is still more important than this antihistorical attitude, this physics has and can have no mathematics to support it. It is wholly disconnected from calculus. Yet it ought to have a mathematical basis, if it be indeed true that vital and voluntary forces are mechanical. Whatever is mechanical is subject to laws that can be expressed mathematically. But no vital or voluntary force can be formulated algebraically. The vital action of a plant or an animal, the volitions of the human will, the feelings of the human heart, the thoughts of the human intellect cannot like the fall of an apple or the rise of a fluid in a vacuum be expressed in mathematical terms. The absence of a mathematics for the materialistic physics demonstrates its spuriousness. (supplement 3.7.7.)

The first objection to this theory is that mechanical motion obeys an invariable law and is incompatible with such varieties of motion as the theory requires. All observation shows that a material force left to itself never varies in any particular. Gravity never alters its direction, sidewise or upward. It is forever downward. And it never alters the rate of its velocity. Matter is marked in its motion by fixed necessity and immutability. To attribute a power of selection and of variability to it is to introduce imagination into science. The materialistic physics is as fanciful as that of the Middle Ages, which explained phenomena by the action of fairies and spirits. What is the difference between saying that a molecule moves of itself and "selects" the velocity and direction of its own motion and saying that the molecules of a gas rise and float on a sylph of the air and those of a mineral fall and sink in a gnome of the mine. The machinery of the Haeckel-Huxley physics is as fanciful as that of Pope's Rape of the Lock.

Theorists of this school feel the difficulty and invent expedients for explaining how "selected" changes and varieties can occur within an immutable sphere like that of matter. Strauss, for example (Old and New Faith, 199), suggests that an adequate cause for such peculiar modes of motion among atoms "might exist in the conditions, the temperature, the atmospheric combinations of primeval times, so utterly different from ours." But these themselves are all material causes. "Atmospheric combinations" are combinations of molecules, and why the "primeval" combinations should be "so utterly different from ours" is one of the difficulties to be explained and cannot therefore be introduced to explain a difficulty.

Another objection to the theory that explains all phenomena by matter and mechanical motion is that material motion is not perpetual. It gradually and surely exhausts itself. If observation and experiment have settled anything in physics, it is that the perpetual motion of matter by reason of a force inherent in matter is impossible. Friction finally brings moving matter to a rest. It may require millions of years to do it, but it will certainly be done. The motion of the bodies in the solar system approaches as nearly as anything does to perpetual motion. But the planets, says Newton, are marked by certain "small irregularities which appear to come from the mutual action of the planets and comets and which will probably become greater and greater in the course of time, until at last the system will again require its author to put it in order" ("Solar System" in Penny Cyclopaedia; Whewell, Astronomy and Physics 2.7–12). It is true that these irregularities caused by planetary and cometary attraction are very slight, because the great attraction of the vast mass of the sun overmasters and nullifies to a great extent. Still there is a disturbing element after all. Lagrange and Poisson have mathematically demonstrated the great stability of the solar system, but not its endless immutability (Foreign Quarterly Review 3.138). (supplement 3.7.8.)

But this is not the whole difficulty. There is a positive resistance to the motion of the heavenly masses from the medium through which they pass. If this medium were as dense as atmospheric air, the motion would soon come to an end, unless reinforced ab extra. It is not atmospheric air, but the so-called ether. Says a writer in the Penny Cyclopaedia ("Solar System"):

It has become highly probable that an external cause does exist which must, unless there be a counteracting force of which we know nothing, in time cause the destruction of the solar system. If the planets move in any medium which resists these motions, however little, the consequence must be a gradual diminution of their mean distances from the sun, and a gradual increase of their velocities, ending in their absolutely falling into the sun.

The doctrine of the "correlation of forces" does not relieve the difficulty, in respect to perpetual motion. The forces of nature may be correlated to each other, that is, convertible into one another, and yet be diminishing in amount. That all material forces may be found, ultimately, to be but one material force, is not incredible. Physical investigations tend to this view. But this fact, even if established, would not prove that the sum total of this one material force is suffering no loss from millennium to millennium. Five forms of anything might be demonstrated to be but one and the same thing, but this would not prove anything respecting the quantity of being at any one time in this thing. This fact seems to be seen by the theorist, and an attempt is made to conceal it by calling the "correlation of forces," the "conservation of force," or energy. Conservation is a different conception from correlation and a stronger term. The "conservation of energy" may mean that in the transmutation of one force into another the whole of the primary form is conserved in the second form; or it may mean that only a part of it is conserved. Which of the two is the fact is the question in dispute.

The "correlation of forces" really amounts only to the analysis of force. Whether the sum total of material force in the universe be greater or smaller cannot be determined unless the analysis demonstrates that the quantity remains unchanged under all the different forms which material force assumes. The motion of a cannonball is preceded by a certain amount of heat from ignited gunpowder and is followed by a certain amount of heat in the iron plate which it strikes. But no experiment thus far made has demonstrated that the amount of heat is mathematically the same in the second instance that it was in the first, that the heat in the iron plate is exactly equal to the heat in the gunpowder. Heat is converted into motion, and motion reconverted into heat. Here is correlation of forces. One force is convertible into another. And here also is conservation of force. But how much conservation is the question. How much of the heat in the powder is conserved in the heat of the iron plate remains to be shown. Before we can say that there has been absolutely no loss of material force in these transmutations, it must be demonstrated mathematically. No experiment is nice or delicate enough to establish it. At this point calculus should come in, as it always has in the historical physics at points when sensible experiments fail. But, as yet, there is no mathematics for the new physics. A German investigator, Clausius, claims to have proved mathematically that motion when converted into heat is a mathematical equivalent, but that heat when converted into motion is not. There is, he says, some loss of motion in every instance in which heat is converted into motion. The final result, consequently, if there is no interference ab extra, will be that motion will gradually diminish in the universe and finally cease; and heat or temperature will be uniform (Gardiner, Bibliotheca sacra, Jan. 1881).

This lack of demonstration is acknowledged by Balfour Stewart. He remarks (Conservation of Energy, 8) that

we have the strongest possible evidence for the assertion, that all the various energies in the universe are a constant quantity, which the nature of the case admits. The assertion is, in truth, a peculiar one; peculiar in its magnitude, in its universality, in the subtle nature of the agents with which it deals. If true, its truth certainly cannot be proved after the manner in which we prove a proposition in Euclid. Nor does it admit a proof so rigid as that of the somewhat analogous principle of the conservation of matter; for in chemistry we may confine the products of our chemical combination so as to completely prove, beyond a doubt, that no heavy matter passes out of existence.

Stewart then gives some indirect proofs which, he contends, make the position probable.

Another objection to the theory that mechanical and vital forces are identical is the fact that mechanical forces never originate varieties, while the vegetable and animal kingdoms are full of them. In inorganic nature, there is no deviation from the typical form. Crystals are rigorously confined to their order. No new varieties arise. Gold and copper always crystallize in a cube; bismuth and antimony in a hexagon; iodine and sulfur in a rhomb. But flowers are not thus rigorously confined to their type. A white flower, in some individuals, shows a reddish tint. This is a so-called accidental variety. If seeds be taken from it, its offspring will be redder yet. In this way, a new variety is artificially produced. But this cannot be done with a crystal. The geometrical form here is produced by a mechanical and inorganic, not a vital force; and it is unchangeable. There is no "accidental variety" of a crystal. No such alterations of typical form can be artificially produced in this inorganic province. A crystal can be produced artificially by chemical action, as well as by the natural action of mechanical forces. But in this case too, there can be no variation from the type. This proves a difference in kind between the inorganic and organic; the chemical and the vital.

A fourth objection to the hypothesis of the variation of mechanical motion is found in the immutability of the molecule. Maxwell, professor of Physics at Cambridge, in an address before the British Association, remarked as follows:

A molecule of hydrogen, whether on earth, in Sirius or Arcturus, executes its vibrations in the same time. No theory of evolution can be formed to account for this identity of molecules; for evolution implies continual change, and the molecule is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or destruction. None of the processes of nature have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. We are, therefore, unable to ascribe either the existence of the molecules, or the identity of their properties, to any of the causes we call natural. On the other hand, the exact equality of each molecule to all others of the same kind gives it, as John Herschel has well said, the essential character of a manufactured article and precludes the notion of its being eternal and self-existent. Though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred, and may yet occur, in the heavens; though ancient systems may be dissolved, and new ones constructed out of their ruins, the molecules out of which these systems are built, the foundation stones of the material universe, remain unbroken and unworn. They continue this day as they were created, perfect in number, and measure, and weight; and from the ineffaceable characters impressed upon them, we may learn that those aspirations after accuracy in measurement, and justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are ours because they are the essential qualities of him who, in the beginning created not only the heaven and earth, but the materials of which heaven and earth consist.

Theory of Evolution vs. Creation Ex Nihilo

The second theory antagonistic to the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is that of pseudoevolution. There is a true and a false theory of evolution. The former defines evolution to be simply "the transformation of the homogeneous"; the latter defines it to be the "transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous." This is Spencer's definition adopted from von Baer. The two definitions and the two theories are direct contraries and contradictories. Evolution in the historical physics of Linnaeus, Cuvier, Hunter, Blumenbach, and Agassiz wholly excludes the heterogeneous. It is the same substance in kind under new forms. A vegetable seed evolves or develops into a root and stalk; but the root and stalk are still vegetable. They are still homogeneous with the seed. A vegetable bud, again, becomes a flower, and the flower becomes fruit; but both flower and fruit are still homogeneous with the vegetable substance of the bud; they are vegetable. If anything mineral or animal, anything heterogeneous, should appear in this evolution of the seed and the bud, this would prove that it was no evolution. But pseudoevolution postulates what true evolution denies, namely, that homogeneous substance transmutes itself into heterogeneous. It asserts that a homogeneous mineral, by intrinsic force, slowly, by infinitesimal degrees, converts itself into a heterogeneous vegetable. Evolution is thus not a mere change of form, but of matter. As this assertion is not supported by proof, it is surreptitiously introduced into a preliminary definition which the opposing party is expected to accept. But this is begging the question in dispute. The question is whether homogeneous substance ever does or can change itself into heterogeneous substance (Shedd, Theological Essays, 133–37, 154–67). (supplement 3.7.9.)

According to this theory of evolution, all the kingdoms of nature issue out of each other without any intervening creative agency. The fiats in the Mosaic account are denied. The homogeneous mineral develops into the heterogeneous vegetable; the homogeneous vegetable into the heterogeneous animal; the homogeneous animal into the heterogeneous man. The doctrine is applied through the entire scale of existence. Vegetable life issues from the lifeless mineral. Sentient and conscious life evolves from the insentient and unconscious plant. Rational and moral life develops from an animal and brutal life that is utterly destitute of reason and morality. This accounts for and explains the universe of being. In each of these instances, the homogeneous substance is transmuted into the heterogeneous by purely material laws and causes. There is no rational act of an intelligent and personal Creator when the animal kingdom supervenes upon the vegetable or when the rational kingdom supervenes upon the animal. Impersonal, unintelligent, and unconscious evolution accounts for all varieties of being.

Several methods of explanation have been proposed. Lamarck explained by habit. The giraffe at first had a short neck. The habit of reaching up for the leaves of trees when the grass failed lengthened the neck. The frog's foot and that of the goose was at first without web. The attempt to swim finally produced it. When the long neck and the webfoot were thus produced, they were propagated, and a new species was the result. St. Hilaire explained by circumstances. Somehow or other the atmosphere lost carbon, and the proportion of oxygen was increased. This made the breathing quicker; this heated the blood; this made the nerves and muscles more active; this changed the scales of reptiles into feathers; and thus the reptile was transformed into the bird. This scheme, just now, is revived in that of "creation by environment."

The first objection to the theory of pseudoevolution is that it is contradicted by the whole course of scientific observation and experiment. It is a theory in the face of the facts. "Darwinism," says Agassiz (On Classification), "is an a priori conception" and "a burlesque of facts." It "shuts out almost the whole mass of acquired knowledge, in order to retain and use only that which may serve its purpose." Quatrefages (Human Species 1.1) asserts that

to attempt, under any pretext whatever, to confound the inorganic with the organic, is to go in direct opposition to all the progress made for more than a century, and especially during the last few years, in physics, chemistry, and physiology. It is inexplicable to me that some men, whose merits I otherwise acknowledge, should have recently again compared crystals to the simplest living forms: to the sarcodic organisms, as they are called by Du Jardin who discovered them. A change of name is useless; the things remain the same, and protoplasm has the same properties as sarcode. The animals whose entire substance they seem to form have not altered their nature; whether monera or amoebas, these forms are the antipodes of the crystal from every point of view.

"No conceivable combinations," says Roget (Physiology 2.582), "of mechanical or of chemical powers bear the slightest resemblance or the most remote analogy to organic reproduction or can afford the least clue to the solution of this dark enigma" (Foreign Quarterly Review 3.189–96).

No naturalist has ever discovered an instance of the transmutation of species. Varieties under a species have been seen to be changed into other varieties. Darwin shows how pigeons may be made to vary from pigeons, but not how pigeons can be evolved into the horse. No observer has furnished even a scintilla of proof that the vital develops from the nonvital. It is an axiom older than Aristotle and always accepted in the historical physics that "every animal comes from an egg." Life supposes life. The living individual issues only from the living germ. A material molecule never transmutes itself into a vegetable germ. A mustard seed is never changed into the egg of animal life. A grain of wheat may be kept in a mummy for three thousand years, and upon being cast into the ground it will begin to sprout. A true evolution of this vegetable seed immediately begins. But no natural or artificial force can cause a diamond to bud and blossom, can transmute this homogeneous mineral into a heterogeneous vegetable. The vast geological ages which the theorist brings in do not help his theory. A force of nature is no stronger in a million years than it is in a hundred. What gravitation cannot do in a century it cannot do in a hundred centuries. A mechanical force is fixed. It does not increase with the lapse of time. Rousseau (Dictionnaire botanique) thus speaks of the nouvelle physique of his day, which confounded the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms and maintained that "minerals live, and vegetables feel": "I have often seen a tree die which before had been full of life; but the death of a stone is an idea that would never enter my mind. I see exquisite feeling in a dog, but never saw it in a cabbage. The paradoxes of Jean-Jacques are very celebrated, but I never advanced anything so absurd as this." (supplement 3.7.10.)

The experimental and scientific evidence for the transmutation of substance is so deficient that only enthusiasts like Haeckel, Huxley, and Maudsley venture to maintain the evolution of the organic from the inorganic. Darwin confines the transmutation of substance to the organic world. He postulates life, primarily given by the Creator. "I imagine," he says in phraseology that is curiously unscientific: "I imagine that probably all organic beings that ever lived on this earth descended from some primitive form, which was first called into being by the Creator." In the Origin of Species (577) he speaks of "the breathing of life, by the Creator, into a few forms, or into one." He does not assert that the mollusk can be developed from inorganic molecules; though he maintains that man may be evolved from the mollusk. While he bridges by evolution the chasm between the oyster and man, he lets it stand between the mineral and the oyster. His work upon insectivorous animals looks like an attempt to prove that animal life can be developed from vegetable, but he makes no distinct statement to this effect.

That this spurious theory of evolution is contradicted by the general course of physical experiment and observation is proved by its failure to obtain general currency. Lamarck did not supersede Linnaeus. Eminent microscopists like Ehrenberg and Spallanzani demonstrated that the infusoria which Lamarck asserted to be vegetable were animal (Kirby, On Animals 1.4). St. Hilaire made no impression upon the established zoology of Cuvier, so that to this day French physics is even more unanimous than either German or English in affirming an impassable limit between the kingdoms of nature. In Germany, Kepler, Leibnitz, Kant, Haller, and Blumenbach are greater names in physical science than Goethe, Oken, Haeckel, and Büchner. In England, the physics of Newton, Linnaeus, Hunter, Cuvier, Faraday, Whewell, Herschel, Agassiz, Guyot, and Dana influences the educated and disciplined intellect of the nation far more than do the speculations of Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall. Haeckel (Creation 1.34) mentions it as a discouraging sign that the views of Linnaeus, Cuvier, and Agassiz are adopted by "the great majority of both scientific and unscientific men" and that "the majority of French naturalists are the blind followers of Cuvier." He adds that "in no country has Darwin's doctrine had so little effect as in France."

The opinions of Kant are entitled to great respect, for he began his remarkable philosophical career with the metaphysics of mathematics. He investigated inorganic nature before he investigated mind, and his attitude is firm in reference to theism and the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. In his Critique of the Judgment (§§74–79), while maintaining that the inorganic world is explainable by mechanical forces and laws, he is explicit in saying that these forces and laws themselves have a teleological character. They imply a designing mind beyond them. He holds that theism and creation ex nihilo are the truth and rejects the hylozoism of Spinoza and of atheism. Respecting the possibility of the evolution of the organic from the inorganic, he remarks that "it is absurd even to think of explaining organized creatures and their potentialities by purely mechanical principles, or to expect that a Newton will one day arise who will be able to explain the production of a blade of grass, according to a law ordained by no designing intelligence." "Give me," he said, "inorganic matter, and I will explain the formation of an inorganic world." But he denied that it can be said, "Give me inorganic matter, and I will explain the production of a caterpillar" (this latter remark is quoted by Strauss, Old Faith, 196). (supplement 3.7.11.)

Physical science can perhaps explain the formation of the solar system by the nebular hypothesis, but not the creation of it. For this hypothesis supposes a nebulous matter with its inherent force of gravity and other forces to be already in existence. Unless this postulate of fire mist and the attraction of gravitation, cohesion, etc., is granted, it cannot account for the solar system. The question immediately arises: "Whence is this fire mist with its properties?" If this is the origin of the solar system, what is the origin of this origin? If this is the explanation of the material universe, what is the explanation of this explanation? The nebular hypothesis may be a correct generalization from observed facts and have its place in the system of physics, but it cannot be a substitute for the first cause. The words of Whewell, respecting the nebular hypothesis, are true and forcible:

Let it be supposed that the point to which this hypothesis leads us is the ultimate point of physical science; that the farthest glimpse we can obtain of the material universe by our natural faculties, shows it to us as occupied by a boundless abyss of luminous matter; still we ask, how space came to be thus occupied, how matter came to be thus luminous? If we establish by physical proofs that the first fact that can be traced in the history of the world is that "there was light," we shall still be led, even by our natural reason, to suppose that before this could occur, "God said, Let there be light." (Astronomy and General Physics 2.7)

Since there is no proof of the theory of pseudoevolution from the past results of scientific inquiry, its advocates when called upon for the demonstration betake themselves either to an a priori method or else to prophecy. Haeckel, for example (Creation 1.169), replies in the following manner to the assertion of the opponent that the theory is a hypothesis which is yet to be proved: "That this assertion is completely unfounded may be perceived even from the outlines of the doctrine of selection." But the "outlines of a doctrine" are the doctrine itself; and the doctrine itself cannot be the proof of the doctrine unless it be a priori and axiomatic in its nature. And this characteristic Haeckel actually claims for his theory of evolution in the following terms: "The origin of new species by natural selection, by the interaction of inheritance and adaptation, is a mathematical necessity of nature which needs no further proof. Whoever, in spite of the present state of our knowledge, still seeks for proofs of the theory of selection, only shows that he does not thoroughly understand the theory." Haeckel, here, makes short work with the whole subject, by claiming an a priori necessity for the theory of pseudoevolution. Of course, if this be so, experiment and observed facts are not to be demanded. But such a claim for a science that professes to rest upon experiment and observation and not upon a priori grounds is of a piece with Haeckel's assertion (Creation, 2) that a posteriori knowledge, by means of use and habit, can be transmuted into a priori knowledge; in other words, that a truth of experience becomes axiomatic when the experience is long continued—a notion similar to that mentioned by Coleridge "that a weathercock may form a habit of turning to the east, from the wind having been a long time in that quarter" (Works 3.227).

Respecting spontaneous generation, Haeckel (Creation 1.340–41) remarks that

experiments on autogeny have furnished no certain and positive results. Yet we must protest against the notion that these experiments have proved the impossibility of spontaneous generation. The impossibility of such a process can, in fact, never be proved. For how can we know that in remote primeval times there did not exist conditions quite different from those at present obtaining, which may have rendered spontaneous generation possible?

By such reasoning as this, any hypothesis whatever may be proved. Haeckel (Creation 1.335) explains vital growth by chemical action thus: "A crystal grows by the apposition of particle upon particle; a plant grows by the intussusception of particle into particle. The fluidity of the albuminous carbon, in the instance of the plant, permits this penetration, so that the addition is not mere accretion upon the outside or addition of surface to surface." But why does a chemical force act so differently from a vital one? A salt in solution is as much a fluid as the albumen; but it yields a crystal instead of a plant. If the chemical and the vital are really one and the same mechanical force, why this diversity? A really mechanical force acts in only one way. The force of gravity does not sometimes lift bodies and sometimes cause them to fall.

As an example of the employment of prophecy in support of the theory of pseudoevolution, consider the following remark of Haeckel (Creation 1.32) respecting the production of albumen by a chemical process—thus far found to be impossible: "At some future time, we shall succeed in discovering, in the composition of albuminous matter, certain molecular relations as the remoter causes of these phenomena of life." There is no logic against prophecy. Seers and soothsayers have an advantage over ordinary investigators, who have nothing but their understandings to work with.

Second, the examples adduced by the advocate of pseudoevolution do not prove that species develops from species, but only that varieties develop from species—which no one denies. Haeckel shows that many varieties of sponges spring from the one species olynthus. But the difference between sponge and sponge is not the same as that between mineral and plant or between plant and animal. When one kind of sponge is transformed into another kind of sponge, this is not the transmutation of a homogenous substance into a heterogeneous. This does not answer to Spencer's definition of evolution, if the definition is to be taken as it reads. If the sponge should develop into the rose, or the rose into the worm, this would answer the definition. But nothing approaching to such a mortal leap as this is seen in nature. Darwin makes it seem probable that all varieties of pigeons may have sprung from one original pair of pigeons—say the blue rock pigeon; but this does not prove that the pigeon sprang from a fish, still less from a cabbage, and still less from a bit of granite.

Virchow, in an address at Munich, said that two doctrines are not yet proved, but are hypotheses still: (1) spontaneous generation of living from inorganic matter and (2) the descent of man from some nonhuman vertebrate animal. We may expect, he says, that these will hereafter be proved, but meanwhile must not teach them as scientific facts (Nineteenth Century, April 1878). Gray, though accepting the Darwinian theory of evolution as "fairly probable," asserts that it is a "complex and loose hypothesis, less probable than the nebular hypothesis or the kinetic theory of gases" (New York Times, 6–7 Feb. 1880).

Third, if the doctrine of pseudoevolution be true, it should be supported, like that of gravitation, by a multitude of undisputed facts and phenomena. A law of nature—and this kind of evolution is claimed to be such, even the law of laws—is a uniform and universal thing. The hypothesis of gravitation is not supported by a few doubtful and disputed facts, like those which are cited in proof of spontaneous generation. If there were really such a transition by development from the inorganic to the organic, from the vegetable to the animal, and from the animal to the rational, as is asserted, the process ought to be going on all the time and all around us in nature and before the eyes of everyone. A real and actual law of nature cannot be put under a bushel. The theorist should have millions of examples to show. But as yet he has not a single example. Darwin's pigeons, after all his efforts to transform them into another species, are pigeons still. Said Ambrose (Hexaemeron 3.10), "When wheat degenerates, it does not cease to be wheat; there is no alteration of species: 'It would seem that it ought to be attributed to a certain degeneration of the seed, not to a transformation of kind.' "

Fourth, the well-known fact that hybrids between real species are infertile proves that there is no transmutation of species. A hybrid is an artificial, not a natural product. When man attempts to originate a new species by crossing breeds, as in the case of the horse and ass, he is working against nature and fails. "Domestication," says Agassiz (Animal Life, 51), "never produces forms which are self-perpetuating and is therefore in no way an of the process by which species are produced." Quatrefages (Human Species 1.6–9) takes the same view. Haeckel (Creation 1.45) mentions as hybrids that can be propagated some between hares and rabbits and between different varieties of dog. Also of plants the willow, the thistle, and the mullein, he says, are hybrids. But hares and rabbits are varieties of the same species; and, as Macbeth says, "Hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, shoughs, waterrugs, and demiwolves are cleped all by the name of dogs." A true species is self-perpetuating. Says Dana: "When individuals multiply from generation to generation, it is but a repetition of the primordial type-idea, and the true notion of the species is not in the resulting group, but in the idea or potential element which is the basis of every individual of the group" (Bibliotheca sacra 1857: 861).

Fifth, this theory of evolution, conflicting as it does with the invariability of nature in the several kingdoms, conflicts also with the certainty of natural science. There can be no fixed laws of operation upon this scheme. Anything may originate out of anything. There is no certainty that mineral substance will always be mineral, for it may become vegetable substance. It is not certain that a vegetable species will always remain vegetable, for it may be transmuted into an animal species. Chance rules in nature, not invariable law. And the transmutation of substance may descend as well as ascend. Man may evolve into ape, as well as ape into man. As an example of the haphazard that is introduced into physical science by this theory, take its explanation of the origin of the eye as an organ of vision. Once there was no such organ in existence. It came into being in the following manner. A certain piece of nervous tissue happened in the lapse of ages to become sensitive to light; then, after another lapse of time, a transparent tissue happened to be formed over it; then, after other ages, a fluid happened to be formed which increased in density and adaptedness to vision; and thus changes at haphazard take place; and finally we have the eye of an animal. The Duke of Argyll exposes the capriciousness of this kind of physics in the following terms:

Under the modes of applying the theory of evolution which have become commonplace, it is very easy to account for everything. We have only to assume some condition opposite to that which now exists and then to explain the change by showing that the existing conditions are useful and adapted to existing needs. Do we wish, for example, to explain why the female pheasant is dull colored? We have only to assume that once she was gaily colored and became dull by the gaudier hens being killed off when setting on eggs, and by the duller hens being saved. Do we wish, on the contrary, to explain the brilliant coloring of the male pheasant? We have only to make the reverse assumption—that once they were all dull colored, and that accidental dandies were preserved by the admiration and the consequent selection of the ladies. In like manner, the migration of birds is explained by assuming at once upon a time there were no migratory birds, although there must always have been the same changing seasons. Then a few birds came to travel a little way, and then a little farther, and so at last they came to go a great way, and finally the habit, "organized in the race," became the migratory instinct. It is curious that in this and all similar explanations of what are admitted to be now pure instincts, the theory demands that the earliest beginnings were more rational than the last developments; the commencements were more in the nature of intelligent perception than the final results, which have become the mere mechanical effect of hereditary habits.

According to the theory of pseudoevolution, there is no preconceived plan and design by which the origin of living and organized objects in nature is accounted for. They come wholly by chance. Those varieties from which new species are claimed to spring are denominated "accidental." If a piece of nervous tissue happens to become sensitive to light, the first step toward the production of the eye of animal life is taken; otherwise not. And so with the second step, by which a film is drawn over the sensitive tissue; and so with all the steps. The processes of nature are entirely fortuitous upon this scheme, and there is nothing possible but the calculation of chances. No invariable and uniform order of nature is possible, and therefore no science of nature is possible. Haeckel (Creation 1.167) would parry this objection, by the following self-stultifying remark: "The difference between the two forms of selection is this: In artificial selection, the will of man makes the selection according to a plan, whereas in natural selection, the struggle for life (that universal interrelation of organisms) acts without a plan, but produces quite the same result, namely, a selection of a particular kind of individual for propagation." This is saying that nature's acting by chance will produce "the same result" that man's acting by plan does; and that nature would have the same regularity and order by the method of chance as by the method of design. (supplement 3.7.12.)

Sixth, some evolutionists, for example, Darwin, Wallace, and Huxley, try to adopt a middle theory. They say that a species may be originated either by selection or by creation. But the alternative is impossible. One idea necessarily excludes the other. If a particular being is intrinsically such that creation ex nihilo accounts for it, then molecular motion and natural selection cannot and vice versa. If a thing is intrinsically such that it may be equal to four, it must be. It may not be equal to five. The ideas of creation and evolution are as incompatible with each other, as four and five are. Both cannot be true.

Seventh, the abundant proof of design in nature overthrows the theory of evolution. This design is executed even in an extreme manner. The mammary glands on man's breast and the webfeet of the upland goose and the frigate bird show that the plan of structure is carried out with persistence, even when in particular circumstances there is no use for the organ itself. The symmetry of the species is preserved. Nature is punctilious in respect to design. Even in the deformed and irregular products of nature, the same respect for plan is observed. There is design in these. In a misgrowth of a vegetable, matter is organized methodically. It is not thrown together at haphazard, as in a kaleidoscope. Holberg's (Memoirs, 196) anecdote of the priest and the humpback will apply here. The priest had said in his sermon that everything which God makes is well made. "Look at me," said a humpback, "Am I well made?" The priest looked at him, and replied that he was well made for a humpbacked man. The priest was wiser than he knew, and his answer had truth in it, as well as wit. The humpback was built upon the plan of a man, not of a dog. (supplement 3.7.13.)

The theory of development is valid when properly applied. Take, for example, Linnaeus's arrangement of the genus felis: felis domestica (common cat), felis catus (wild cat), felis pardus (leopard), felis onca (jaguar), felis tigris (tiger), felis leo (lion). These six species of the one genus, as Linnaeus uses terms, may be developed from one original type. The same may be said also of the seven species of the one genus pinus in the vegetable kingdom. But according to Linnaeus, felis could not develop from equus; nor pinus from pirus.

Species should not be multiplied or the creative act be introduced extravagantly often. The biblical phrases let the earth bring forth and let the waters bring forth imply that within the several kingdoms, after they have been established by creative power, much may then have been done in the production of varieties (not species) by the law of evolution impressed upon each kingdom. There is no objection to tracing all varieties of pigeon to one original, say the blue rock pigeon, as Darwin does, or all varieties of rabbit to one original type. John Hunter held that "the true distinction between different species of animals must ultimately be gathered from their incapacity of propagating with each other an offspring capable again of continuing itself by subsequent propagation." Hunter wrote a tract entitled "Observations Tending to Show That the Wolf, Jackal, and Dog are All of the Same Species."

It should be understood, moreover, how terms are employed. If "genus" is the base, then "species" are the divisions. If "species" is the base, then "varieties" are the divisions. In the first case, species can come from species; in the second, not (Quatrefages, Human Species 1.3). Dana defines a species as the "unit" in the organic world. Morton defines it as a "primordial organic form." The criteria of a species are (1) permanent fecundity; (2) sameness of external form (animals with teeth for eating flesh belong to a different species from those having teeth for eating vegetable food; animals with webbed feet are not of the same species with those having feet without a web); and (3) sameness of internal structure shown in habits and instincts. Of these three, the first is the surest criterion. The other two are less certain. Two animals of great similarity in external structure may be of wholly different species—for example, the ape and man. Hence all three criteria must be combined.

A plausible argument for the development of man from lower animals is derived from a comparison of the embryo of man at four weeks with that of the chick, or at eight weeks with that of the dog. There is a great similarity. The evolutionist asks: "Is it any more improbable that man should develop from the ape than that a Plato or a Shakespeare should develop from an embryo so like the dog's embryo?" It certainly is not any more improbable, upon the supposition that the human embryo contains nothing but what is in that of the chick or the dog. But if the human embryo contains, over and above the physical elements, a rational and spiritual principle; if this embryo be a synthesis of mind and matter and not mere matter, then it is more probable that a Plato will come from it than from the canine embryo. This kind of argument proves too much. For not only the embryo, but the newborn babe itself has little more in its external appearance to suggest the career of a Newton or an Aristotle than a newborn dog has. The wailing unconsciousness of the one is as far from science and philosophy as the yelping unconsciousness of the other. But the babe possesses along with physical qualities the "image of God," namely, a rational soul, while the dog has only an animal soul. There is an invisible rational principle in one that is not in the other. The maxim "judge not by the outward appearance" has full force here.

Resemblance in corporeal form has been overestimated. Similarity in the visible and material structure does not necessarily prove similarity in the invisible and mental structure. It is conceivable that a creature might be produced whose anatomy might be entirely like that of man and yet have no human as distinguished from brutal traits. The idiot is an example. A human body with only an animal soul would look like a man, but would be as far from man as is an ox. The gorilla is nearer to man in physical structure than is a dog; but he is not so near to man in respect to sagacity, affection, and other manlike traits. The monkey species is not so intelligent as the canine species. The elephant is nearer to man in respect to mental traits than is the gorilla, but his anatomy is farther off. The ant and bee have more intelligence than many animals have, yet are entirely destitute of brain. Naturalists notice that the period of infancy in man is much longer than in the brute. This is because there is a rational soul in the one and not in the other, which unfolds more slowly than a physical organism does. The animal takes care of itself in infancy; but the infant man must be taken care of. For example, the young calf, of itself, finds its nourishment from the dam; but the babe must be put to the breast of the mother. The latter if left to itself would die; but the former would not.

Antiquity of Man

Respecting the time when man was created and his antiquity, the narrative in Genesis teaches that he is the last in the series of creations and that the Creator rested from creation ex nihilo after the origination of the human species. While minerals, vegetables, and irrational animals, according to Genesis, may be referred back to a long duration in the first five days, man cannot be referred to any but the sixth day and to the "morning" or last part of that. From six to eight thousand years is the period during which the human species has existed. The Septuagint gives fifteen hundred years more from the creation of man than the Hebrew text. The Christian fathers generally adopted the Septuagint chronology. Theophilus of Antioch (To Autolycus 24–25, 28) makes the Scriptures to give 5,698 years from the creation of man to the death of the emperor Aurelius Verus in A.D. 69. Julius Africanus (230), the earliest Christian chronologist, dates the creation to 5499 B.C. Eusebius, Jerome, and Bede reckon 2,242 years between Adam and the deluge—following the Septuagint. The Hebrew text gives 1,656 years. Augustine (City of God 15.20) says: "From Adam to the deluge, there are reckoned according to our copies of the Scripture 2,262 years and according to the Hebrew text 1,656 years" (cf. City of God 20.7). Hales (Chronology 1.273–303) and Clinton (Fasti hellenici 1.283–301) defend the Septuagint chronology (see "Introduction to Jeremiah" in Speaker's Commentary, 323–26, where Payne Smith favors the Septuagint recension). Murphy On Genesis, 196) defends the Hebrew chronology. The Samaritan text gives only 1,307 years between the creation and the deluge. Desvignoles, in the preface to his Chronology, says that he has collected above two hundred calculations, of which the longest makes the time between the creation and the incarnation to have been 6,984 years and the shortest 3,483 years. (supplement 3.7.14.)

Extravagant statements respecting the great antiquity of man are not found in the Greek and Roman literatures. Plato (Laws 2.656; 3.676) speaks of "ten thousand years ago" and "thousands and thousands of cities." But this is indefinite description; and the first instance relates to Egypt. Mythical and fabulous representations appear in the Egyptian and Hindu traditions. The Egyptian priests told Herodotus that they possessed a history going back 11,340 years; and they also told him that during this period the sun had four times altered its regular course, having been twice observed to rise in the west and to set in the east (cf. Spenser's Faery Queen 5). The zodiac of Denderah, according to Dupuis, went back 15,000 years. The astronomer Delambre thought it to be later than the time of Alexander; and Biot demonstrated that it represented the state of the heavens in 700 B.C. Furthermore, it was discovered in an Egyptian temple that proved to have been built during Roman rule (Pouchet, Universe, 610). The conclusions of Lepsius from the monuments of Egypt make that civilization 20,000 years old. But the dates on the Babylonian and Assyrian tablets disprove this chronology. Even if it be conceded that Egypt is older than Assyria, it cannot be so immensely older.

Smith (Assyrian Discoveries, 51) gives 1850 B.C. as the date for Assur, the first capital of Assyria, and 1350 B.C. for Nineveh, the second capital. He makes Babylon "the capital of the whole country" in the sixteenth century B.C. "The enormous reigns ascribed by Berosus of Babylon to his ten kings, making a total of 432,000 years, force us to discard the idea that the details are historical" (Smith, Chaldean Genesis, 307). This scholar thinks the representation of ancient authors that the walls of Babylon were from forty to sixty miles in circumference to be an exaggeration and infers from the ruins that they were "about eight miles around, making Babylon nearly the same size with Nineveh." He believes that the Babylonian records "reach to the 24th century B.C.," adding that "some scholars are of opinion that they stretch nearly 2,000 years beyond that time." The oldest date assigned by Smith is 2500 B.C. He places the early Babylonian monarchy 2500–1500 B.C. and refers the Izdubar (Nimrod) legends to 2000 B.C. (Assyrian Discoveries, 166–67). By the Septuagint reckoning, according to Theophilus, there would be 887 years from the deluge to 2500 B.C. and from the creation to the deluge 2,242 years ("Introduction to Kings" §8 and "Hosea" in Speaker's Commentary; Conder, Syrian Stone Lore).

The Vedas, according to Max Müller (Origin of Religion, 147), go back to 1000 B.C.; how much earlier is uncertain. Whitney (Oriental Studies, 21) places them between 1500 B.C. and 2000 B.C. The Brahmins asserted that the astronomical tables of India were compiled more than 20,000,000 years ago. But Laplace proved that the calculations had been made after the alleged events and moreover that they were incorrect (Pouchet, Universe, 610).

Had man existed 20,000 years upon the globe, its population would be immensely greater than it is. Remains of ancient cities would be found all over the planet. But there are only 1.2 billion or 1.4 billion men now on the globe, and remains of cities are found mostly around the Mediterranean and in Asia. If we go back to the beginning of profane history (say, to 1000 B.C.), we find most of the globe uninhabited by man. All of the Western hemisphere, all of middle and northern Europe, all of northern Asia, all of Africa south of Sahara, and all of Australia and the islands of the sea were without human population. At the time of the advent, the majority of the population of the globe was still gathered about the Mediterranean Sea. Probably there were not more than 100,000,000 people on the globe, at that date. Man is very recent upon the American continents. South America has only about 30,000,000 inhabitants. North America at the time of its discovery had but a handful of men, compared with the vast extent of territory. We cannot assume an extravagant antiquity for man, because by this time the globe would be overrunning with population; as we cannot assume an extravagant antiquity even for the material globe, because by this time it would have parted with all its caloric and would be stone-cold at the center. The small number of human bones that have been found, compared with the large number of the bones of animals, shows that man was of late origin. Were the earth now to be subjected to earthquake and deluge, human bones would be the most numerous of any in some of the strata that would be opened a thousand years hence. Few fossil human bones have been discovered; but there are multitudes of animal and vegetable fossils. (supplement 3.7.15.)

Even if the shorter biblical chronology be adopted, Manetho's Egyptian chronology might possibly be harmonized with it. The following is one explanation of it. Placing the flood in 2348 B.C., according to Ussher's reckoning, there are 450 years between the flood and the call of Abraham in 1900 B.C. The first twelve dynasties of Manetho (280 B.C.) can be placed here, giving 37 years to each dynasty. This would be the Old Empire of Menes and his successors. The pyramids of Gizeh were built in this age. There is, however, great difference of opinion. Mariette Bey makes the Old Empire a period of 2,700 years; Brugsch Bey says 2,400 years; Bunsen 1,076 years (making its beginning 3059 B.C.); Wilkinson and Poole say 650 years, beginning 2700 B.C. The second period from Abraham to Joseph, 1900–1637 B.C., is that of the Middle Empire and the Shepherd kings, embracing five dynasties of 52 years each (Manetho's dynasties 13–17). According to the Bible, Egypt during this period had a settled government. Abraham comes into contact with its pharaoh for the first time (Gen. 12). Rawlinson (Ancient Egypt 2.22) regards the Middle Empire as beginning about 1840 B.C. and terminating about 1640 B.C. The third period, 1637–1117 B.C., includes Egyptian history from Joseph downward, in which the remaining thirteen of Manetho's thirty dynasties may be placed. This is the New Empire, commencing with the eighteenth dynasty. This period includes the ascendancy of Joseph and of all the pharaohs mentioned in Scripture, excepting the one contemporary with Abraham (Gen. 12). The 520 years of this period would give forty years to each dynasty.

The alleged great antiquity of Egypt must be found, if at all, in the first period of the Old Empire. The data here are in utter obscurity. "For times anterior to 700 B.C., Egypt has no fixed chronology" ("Manetho" in Kitto's Encyclopedia). De Rougé says that "Manetho's texts are significantly changed, and the series of monumental dates is very incomplete." Rawlinson (Ancient Egypt 2.9, 21) says that

the chronological riddle in respect to early Egypt is insoluble. Manetho's general scheme, being so differently reported, is in reality unknown to us; its details, being frequently contradicted by the monuments, are untrustworthy; and the method of the scheme, the general principles upon which it was constructed, was so faulty, that even if we had it before us in its entirety, we could derive from it no exact or satisfactory chronology. (supplement 3.7.16.)

The repopulation of the globe after the deluge presents no serious difficulty. Population is rapid. According to Malthus, the increase of the means of subsistence is in arithmetical proportion; that of population is in geometrical. "Every man," says Blackstone (Commentaries 2.14), "has above one million lineal ancestors, if he reckons back to the twentieth generation." Blackstone's table gives 1,048,576 descendants from a single pair in the twentieth generation, or 660 years, supposing only two children to each pair. But supposing four children to each pair, the twentieth generation would yield a vast population. Petavius, taking only seven hundred years of the sixteen hundred between the creation and the deluge and supposing that seven hundred years is the average of patriarchal life and that twenty children are born to a single pair in each century, makes the total product 1,347,368,420. The increase is very great in the last century. The sixth century has 64,000,000; the seventh has twenty times this: 1,347,368,420. But in every generation, this total number of descendants is diminished by death. Supposing, continues Petavius, that Noah and his wife and his three sons and their wives had six children (Gen. 10 mentions sixteen children of Shem, Ham, and Japhet) to each pair and that this ratio continues to give 12,937,284 descendants in fourteen generations of thirty-three years each or 462 years. But six children is a low estimate in view of the longevity of man in this period and the easiness of subsistence in the simplicity of the East and of early civilization. The United States census shows that in 250 years, the 20,000 Puritans who emigrated from England between 1620 and 1640 have now 13,000,000 descendants.

The objections to the biblical account of the origin of man drawn from varieties of color and of race are not serious. Climatic influence is very great, especially in a state of barbarism. When man is not protected from the sun and the elements by the appliances of civilization, when he is a savage, changes go on very rapidly (see Quatrefages, Human Species, 7): "The Portuguese during a 300 years' residence in India have become as black as Caffres, yet they form connections among themselves alone, or if they can, with Europeans" (Heber, Indian Journal, 53–55; Quarterly Review 37.100; see Carpenter, Physiology, 17). (supplement 3.7.17.)

The argument from languages is strong for the unity of the race. The oldest form of Sanskrit, the Vedic, strikingly resembles its next neighbors to the westward: the language of the Avesta called the Zend and that of the Persian inscriptions. The later form of the Sanskrit has less resemblance (Whitney, Oriental Studies, 8): "The mutual agreement of the Indo-Germanic or Aryan languages is complete enough to justify the conclusion that all the nations of this family of languages are only branches of one great nation, which was settled in Upper Asia and included the ancestors of the Indians, Persians, Greeks, Italians, Germans, Slavs, and Celts" (Curtius, Greece 1.1).

The opinions of scientific zoologists favor the recent origin of man: "Cuvier does not date the appearance of man farther back than tradition. According to this illustrious zoologist, the history of the human race attests that man has not ruled over the surface of the globe for more than a limited number of years" (Pouchet, Universe, 609). "Man," says Quatrefages (Human Species 2.12.13), "was most certainly in existence during the quaternary period; has in all probability seen Miocene (middle tertiary) times and, consequently, the entire Pliocene (later tertiary) epoch." As to the question whether man was earlier than this, Quatrefages says it is possible: "Man is a mammal, and the conditions of existence sufficient for mammals ought to have been sufficient for him. Man is intelligent and can protect himself against cold. There is nothing then impossible in the idea that he should have survived other species of the same class. But this is a question to be proved by facts. Before we can even suppose it to be so, we must wait for information from observation" (152–53). "The discoveries of Bourgeois testify, in my opinion, to the existence of a tertiary man. But everything seems to show that, as yet, his representatives were few in number. The quaternary population, on the contrary, were, at least in distribution, quite as numerous as the life of the hunter permitted" (177). man is known to us only from a few faint traces of his industry. Of tertiary man himself, we know nothing. Portions of his skeleton have been discovered, it has been thought, in France, Switzerland, and especially in Italy. Closer study has, however, always forced us to refer to a comparatively much later period these human remains, which at first sight, were regarded as tertiary" (286). Arcelin makes the age of quaternary clay 6,750 years. Quatrefages thinks this rather too low and says that the present geological period goes much farther back than 7,000 to 8,000 years (140). "No facts have as yet been discovered which authorize us to place the cradle of the human race otherwise than in Asia" (178).

The discovery of human bones and implements in situations and connections that seem to imply a great antiquity for man is not a sufficient reason for rejecting the biblical account, owing to the uncertainty of the data. Human bones found in juxtaposition with the bones of the cave bear and the elephant are not conclusive. (a) They may not have been deposited contemporaneously. The action of floods and of violent convulsions makes it very difficult to say with certainty when deposits were made or to tell the order in which they occurred. The bear may have laid his bones in the cave hundreds of years before the man laid his, and yet the two now be found side by side. When the bones of extinct animals and stone implements are found together in a gravel bed, who can be certain whether the gravel was deposited upon them or whether they were deposited upon the gravel and subsequently mingled and buried under it by earthquakes and inundations? (b) The now extinct animal may not have been extinct four or five thousand years ago. He and early man may have been contemporaneous. The elephant has been found encased in ice in Siberia during the nineteenth century. It had long hair and was adapted to a cold climate. This specimen could not have been many thousands of years old (see Life of Agassiz, 708–10). (supplement 3.7.18.)

Agassiz found in the deep waters of the West Indies "three characteristic genera of sponges from the secondary formation, till now supposed to be extinct." He also caught in his dredge "three specimens of the genus micrestor of the cretaceous formation, of which no living species had been previously found."

Antiquity is fabricated for things that are recent. The so-called lake dwellings are an instance. Gibbon (Rome, 42) relates that the Bulgarians in the time of Justinian (A.D. 525) lived in lacustrine structures. It is probable that no remains of them are earlier than the time of Julius Caesar. Herodotus (§5, beginning) speaks of lake dwellings among a people in Asia Minor in 450 B.C. Robert Gray, an English traveler, speaks of seeing them in 1794 on the borders of Lake Wallenstadt. The skeleton discovered at Mentone has all the characteristic marks of the Ligurian Gaul, who was a man of large skeleton according to Livy's account of the Gauls. Livingstone (Last Journal, 442) says that he never found a single flint arrowhead or any other flint implement in Africa. No flint exists south of the equator, but quartz might have been used. Iron, he says, was smelted in the remotest ages in Africa. According to this, the iron age was the earliest.

There is great uncertainty in the conclusions drawn from the varieties of implements used by men in past ages. Three kinds have been discovered: (a) rude stone implements, (b) finished stone implements, and (c) bronze and iron implements. Some theorists give this as the natural order. Geikie, however (Ice Age, 405), remarks that the difference between the rude flint arrowheads and axes of Paleolithic men and the polished and finely finished tools of the Neolithic men is too great to have no intermediate. And yet, no intermediate, he says, has been found. But may not the bronze implements be this intermediate? In the history of arts, the cutting of gems did not begin until after much skill had been acquired in the use of metals; and the finish of the "elegantly shaped" stone implements is more like that of gem cutting than like that of the rude Paleolithic implements. May not the order, consequently, be (1) Paleolithic, (2) bronze, (3) Neolithic instead of, as the geologist claims, (1) Paleolithic, (2) Neolithic, (3) bronze. It is difficult to suppose that the polished stone implement could have been made by the rude stone implement. It requires iron tools. (supplement 3.7.19.)

Again, the use of rude stone implements is no proof of the great antiquity of a people. There are tribes of men now on the globe who are using them. Should these tribes become extinct and their implements be discovered one thousand years hence, it would be a false inference to assert that they belonged to a race that lived before Adam. The stone implement is an of a particular period in the history of a nation's civilization, rather than of its antiquity. A nation may be in its barbarous state and its stone age at almost any time in the history of the world. "Neobarbarism," says Mahaffy (Greece, 16), "means the occurrence in later times of the manners and customs which generally mark very old and primitive times. Some few things of the kind survive everywhere; thus in the Irish Island of Arran, a group of famous savants mistook a stone donkey shed of two years' standing for the building of an extinct race of great antiquity. As a matter of fact, the construction had not changed from the oldest type." Says Turner (Anglo-Saxons 1.10), "we even now, at this late age, see the Eskimo, the wild Indian, the Backsettler, and the cultivated Philadelphian existing at the same time in North America; so did the Egyptian, the Scythian, and the Greek; so did high polish and rude barbarism at all times appear in disparted but coeval existence." A contributor to the public press remarks that

scientific teachers who hold to the succession of stone, bronze, and iron ages, in the development of early civilization, have found a peculiarly incorrigible scholar in Dr. Schliemann. From a very careful study of the store of stone and bronze weapons and implements treasured in the prehistoric portion of the museum in Leiden, he has become convinced that the distinction between the different stone, bronze, and iron ages is purely artificial and imaginary and concludes that there never was a time, when the earliest inhabitants of Denmark (from whence the proofs were derived), were totally unacquainted with bronze or used only unpolished, rude stone weapons and implements.

SUPPLEMENTS

3.7.1 (see p. 367). Creation ex nihilo more than any other metaphysical idea differences and separates the Bible from all human cosmogonies. All of these latter exclude this idea by their postulate of an eternal, amorphous, and chaotic matter, which is formed by the operation of its own intrinsic properties and forces into the universe. Scripture refers all chaotic matter, with its properties and laws, to a personal deity who is other than it and before it. The creative power of God, according to the biblical conception, is as much needed to account for the forces and laws of material nature as the voluntary power of the watchmaker is needed to account for the watch. In the case of an artificial product like a watch, both the working force and the intelligent art by which it is made are in the artificer. In the case of a natural product like a tree, both the working force and the formative art by which it is constructed are in the tree; the watch is manufactured; the tree grows. But in both cases a Creator other than the watchmaker and the informing vegetable life is requisite. The watch cannot make the watchmaker; and the principle of vegetable life cannot make itself. Both artificial and natural products must therefore ultimately be referred to a first cause, who from nothing, by an absolutely originating act, creates the artificer who makes the watch and the vital principle which builds up the tree.

Augustine (Faith and Creed 2) teaches the creation of matter ex nihilo and of matter in its visible and invisible modes: "You did make the world out of 'matter unseen,' or also 'without form,' as some copies give it; yet we are not to believe that this material of which the universe was made, although it might be 'without form', although it might be 'unseen,' whatever might be the mode of its subsistence, could possibly have subsisted of itself, as if it were coeternal and coeval with God. For even although the world was made of some sort of material, this self-same material itself was made of nothing."

Neander (History 1.372) directs attention to the radical difference between creation and evolution or emanation as constituting the difference in kind between the Christian cosmogony and the pagan or ethic: "Christianity separated entirely what belongs to the province of religion from what belongs to speculation and a merely speculative interest. And just by so doing Christianity preserved religion from the danger of confounding things divine with the things of this world; the idea of God with that of nature. It directed the eye of the mind beyond that whole series of the phenomena of the world, where, in the chain of causes and effects, one thing ever evolves out of another, to that almighty creative word of God by which the worlds were framed; so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear (Heb. 11:3). The creation was here apprehended as an incomprehensible fact by the upward gaze of faith, which rose above the position of the understanding, the faculty which would derive all things from one another, which would explain everything and hence denies all immediate truth. This one practically important truth the church was for holding fast in the doctrine of creation from nothing; taking her stand in opposition to the ancient view, which would condition God's act of creation by a previously existing matter; and which, in an anthropopathic manner conceived of him, not as the free, self-sufficient author of all existence, but as the fashioner of a material already extent. Gnosticism would not acknowledge any such limits to speculation. It would explain, clear up to the mental vision, how God is the source and ground of all existence. It was thus compelled to place in the essence of God himself a process of development, through which God is the source and ground of all existence. From overlooking the negative sense of the doctrine concerning creation from nothing, it was led to oppose against it the old principle 'nothing can come out of nothing.' It substituted in place of this doctrine the sensuous imageable idea of an efflux of all existence out of the Supreme Being of the deity. This idea of an emanation admits being presented under a great variety of images; of an irradiation of light from an original light; of a development of spiritual powers or ideas acquiring self-subsistence; of an expression in a series of syllables and tones, dying away gradually to an echo."

Pagan cosmogonies postulate a germ or egg when they explain "creation." Absolute origination of entity from nonentity is not only denied, but asserted to be impossible. On this scheme there is nothing but second causes. The eternal germ is operated upon by secondary agents and agencies, and the so-called creation is merely the emanation and evolution of an existing substance. There is no first cause originating substance itself. Charnock (Power of God, 419) thus notices the need of a Creator in order to such an evolution: "Nature, or the order of second causes, has a vast power; and the sun and the earth bring forth harvests of corn, but from seed first sown in the earth; were there no seed in the earth, the power of the earth would be idle and the influence of the sun insignificant. All the united strength of nature cannot produce the least thing out of nothing. It may multiply and increase things by the powerful blessing God gave it at the first erecting of the world, but it cannot create." Pagan cosmogonies which account for the universe by emanation reappear in the modern materialism which accounts for it by evolution.

3.7.2 (see p. 369). Spinoza, often and with emphasis, denies that substance can be created. In a letter to Oldenburg (Letter 2) he says: "In the universe there cannot exist two substances without their differing utterly in essence. Substance cannot be created. All substance must be infinite or supremely perfect." The assertion that "there cannot be two substances without their differing utterly in essence" is true. One must be infinite, and the other finite. But as Spinoza assumes that the postulate upon which his whole system depends, namely, that there is only one substance and that infinite, is axiomatic and needs no proof, it follows from his assumption that there cannot be two substances. Two infinites are impossible.

3.7.3 (see p. 371). Howe (Oracles 2.9) thus explains the phrase heaven and earth in Gen. 1:1: "The first and most obvious distribution of the created universe is into these two heads, matter and mind. This is the distribution in Col. 1:16: 'By him were all things made that are in heaven or that are in earth, visible and invisible.' We may well enough suppose all matter to be, some way or other, visible, though there be indeed a finer sort of matter than is visible to us. But then there is the other head of things that are absolutely invisible; as it is altogether impossible that any sense can perceive a mind or a thought which is the immediate product of that mind. Some, indeed, will have by 'heavens' all intellectual beings that are created to be comprehended and meant; and by 'earth,' all matter whatsoever. We shall not dispute the propriety of that conjecture or what probability it has or has not; but take what is more obvious to ourselves. And so, by 'heaven' must be understood not only all the several superior orbs, but all their inhabitants, unto which our own minds and spirits do originally appertain, as being nearer of kin and more allied to the world of spirits than they are to this world of flesh and earth. And then, by 'earth' is meant this lower orb, which is replenished with numerous sorts of creatures with one or another sort of lives; either that do live an intellectual life or from an intelligent soul as we live; or else that live a merely sensitive life as all the brutes do; or else that live a merely vegetable life as the plants do; and then there are inanimate things that have no proper life at all. Of such extent is this created universe; it takes in all these several sorts of things." Pearson (On the Creed, art. 1) explains similarly, "The two terms heaven and earth taken together signify the universe or that which is called the world, in which are contained all things material and immaterial, visible and invisible. Under the name of 'heaven and earth' are comprehended all things contained in them, which are of two classes. Some were made immediately out of nothing by a proper creation; and some only mediately, as out of something formerly made out of nothing by an improper kind of creation. By the first were made all immaterial substances, all the orders of angels, and the souls of men, the heavens, and the simple or elemental bodies, as the earth, the water, and the air. By the second were made all the 'hosts of earth' (Gen. 2:1), the grass and herb yielding seed, the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea: 'Let the earth bring forth grass; let the waters bring forth the moving creature that has life and fowl that may fly above the earth.' As well may we grant these plants and animals to have their origination from such principles when we read, 'God formed man out of the dust of the ground' and said unto him whom he created in his own image, 'Dust you are.' " This statement needs qualification. Plants and animals and the body of man did not "originate" from earth, water, and air in the strict sense of the term; for a vital principle was required to vitalize and organize these nonvital and inorganic elements. "Nothing is satisfactory," says Bell (Hand, chap. 2), "until it is declared that it has been the will of God to create life; and that it was he who gave the animating principle to produce organization." This animating principle was as much an immediate creation from nothing as the spirits of angels and men or the simple elements of matter. When it is said, "Let the earth bring forth grass; let the waters bring forth the moving creature," the meaning is that the earth and waters furnish the nonvital material elements that constitute the visibility of a plant or animal, which are vivified and assimilated by an invisible principle of vegetable or animal life created ex nihilo (p. 377). The vegetable and animal kingdoms fall into Pearson's first class.

Augustine (City of God 11.33) sums up as follows: "Under these names heaven and earth the whole creation is signified, either as divided into spiritual and material, which seems the more likely, or into the two great parts of the world in which all created things are contained, so that, first of all, the creation is presented in sum and then its parts are enumerated, according to the mystic number of the days."

3.7.4 (see p. 374). Grabe, in his Spicilegium patrum (2.195), gives a fragment from the commentary of Anastasius upon the six days' work, in which the latter remarks that "Justin Martyr says that all things which were made by God are sextuply divided: Into immortal and intelligent things such as angels; into mortal things endowed with reason such as men; into sentient things destitute of reason such as cattle, birds, and fishes; into insentient things that move such as winds, clouds, waters, and stars; into things that grow but do not move such as trees; and into insentient things that do not move such as mountains, land, and the like. All the creatures of God fall into one of these divisions and are circumscribed by them." This shows that the classification of the works of creation was a familiar conception at a very early date. This would harmonize with the theory of long periods and creative days and would naturally suggest it.

3.7.5 (see p. 379). The tendency to explain the kingdoms of vegetable and animal life by evolution of the one from the other, instead of by a divine fiat creating them from nothing, is seen in the following remark of Coleridge (Table Talk for 30 April 1823): "There are only two acts of creation, properly so called, in the Mosaic account: the material universe and man. The intermediate acts seem more as the results of secondary causes or, at any rate, of a modification of prepared materials." Bacon (Natural History, century 5), on the contrary, calls attention to the creation from nothing of life as the organizing principle and power which vivifies and assimilates the lifeless elements of earth, air, and water. "Plants or vegetables are the principal part of the third day's work. They are the first producat, which is the word of animation; for the other words are but words of essence." Agassiz, also, during the recent revival by Darwin of the pseudoevolution of Lamarck and St. Hilaire, has maintained the historical physics of Linnaeus, Blumenbach, Cuvier, and Hunter: "To Agassiz, as the leading opponent of the development or Darwinian theories, development meant development of plan as expressed in structure, not the change of one structure into another. To his apprehension this change was based upon intellectual not upon material causes" (Life of Agassiz 1.244). Similarly, Davy (Consolations, dialogue 4) remarks: "I can never believe that any division or refinement or subtilization or juxtaposition or arrangement of the particles of matter can give them sensibility; or that intelligence can result from the combinations of insensate and brute atoms. I can as easily imagine that the planets are moving by their will or design round the sun or that a cannonball is reasoning in making its parabolic curve." Charles Bell (Hand, chap. 6) says, "Everything declares the diversity of species to have its origin in distinct creations; and not to be owing to a process of gradual transition from some original type. Any other hypothesis than that of new creations of animals, suited to the successive changes in the inorganic matter of the globe; the condition of the water, atmosphere, and temperature; brings with it only an accumulation of difficulties. Life preserves the materials of the body free from the influence of those affinities which hold the inorganic world together; and it not only does that, but it substitutes other laws. Of the wonders of the microscope none exceed those presented on looking at the early rudiments of an animal. This rudimentary structure will appear but a homogeneous, transparent, soft jelly; there will be visible in it only a single pulsating point; yet this mass possesses within it a principle of life; and it is not only ordered what this principle shall perform in attracting matter, and building up the complex structure of the body, but even the duration of the animal's existence is from the beginning defined. The term may be limited to a day, and the life be truly ephemeral; or it may be prolonged to a hundred years; but the period is adjusted according to the condition and enjoyment of the individual and to the continuance of its species, as perfectly as are the mechanism and structure themselves.… There is nothing like this in inanimate nature. It is beautiful to see the shooting of a crystal; to note the formation of the integrant particles from their elements in solution, and these, under the influence of attraction or crystalline polarity, assuming a determinate shape; but the form here is permanent. In the different processes of elective attraction and in fermentation we perceive a commotion; but in a little time the products are formed, and the particles are rigidly at rest. In these instances there is nothing like the revolutions of the living animal substance, where the material is alternately arranged, decomposed, and rearranged. The changes in the embryo state are a remarkable example of the latter. The human brain in its earlier stage of growth resembles that of a fish; next, it bears a resemblance to the cerebral mass of the reptile; in its increase it is like that of a bird; and slowly, and only after birth, does it assume the proper form and consistence of the human brain." Such is the judgment of the eminent naturalist to whom "the honor is exclusively due of having demonstrated for the first time that the nerve of motion is distinct from the nerve of sensation, and that when a nerve, apparently simple, possesses both properties, it is a sign that it is really compound and consists of fibrils derived from distinct divisions of the brain or spinal cord"—a discovery with which, in respect to originality and influence upon biology, nothing in the entire results of the recent materialistic physics can be compared for a moment.

Haeckel (Evolution of Man 1.73–74) calls attention to the fact that the current pseudoevolutionary theory is a revival of that of Lamarck and St. Hilaire and until recently had so sway in biology: "As an instance how utterly biologists refrained from inquiries into the origin of organisms and the creation of the animal and vegetable species during the period from 1830 to 1859, I mention from my own experience the fact that during the whole course of my studies at the university I never heard a single word on these most important and fundamental questions of biology. During the time from 1852 to 1857 I had the good fortune to listen to the most distinguished teachers in all branches of the science of organic nature; but not one of them even once alluded to the question of the origin of the vegetable and animal species. It was never thought worth while to allude to Lamarck's valuable Zoological Philosophy, in which the attempt to answer it had been made in 1809. The enormous opposition which Darwin met with when he first took up this question again may therefore be understood. His attempt seemed at first to be unsubstantial and unsupported by previous labors. Even in 1859 the entire problem of creation, the whole question of the origin of organisms, was considered by biologists as supernatural and transcendental. The dualistic position taken by Kant, and the extraordinary importance attached during the whole of the nineteenth century to this most influential of modern philosophers, probably offer the best explanation of this fact. For while this great genius, equally excellent as a naturalist and a philosopher, in the field of inorganic nature made a successful attempt in his theory of the heavens to treat the constitution and mechanical origin of the material universe according to Newtonian principles, in other words, to treat it mechanically and to conceive it monistically, he for the most part adopted the supernatural view of the origin of organisms. He maintained that 'the principle of the mechanism of nature, without which there could be no science of nature, was wholly inadequate to explain the origin of living organisms and that it was necessary to assume supernatural causes effecting a design (causae finales) for the origin of these.' " Haeckel then adds that Kant sometimes departed from this view and "expressed himself in quite the opposite or monistic sense." But he gives no passages in proof and remarks that "these monistic utterances are but stray rays of light; as a rule Kant adhered in biology to those obscure dualistic notions according to which the powers which operate in organic nature are entirely different from those which prevail in the inorganic world." The assertion that Kant in his theory of the heavens adopted monism or Spinoza's doctrine of only one substance is contradicted by Haeckel's own statement that Kant explained the material universe "according to Newtonian principles." Newton held with energy to the dualism of mind and matter and to theism, and his Principia is the strongest of all demonstrations of the truth of this theory, because it is mathematical. Haeckel has confounded Newton's explanation of inorganic nature by the operation of inorganic and mechanical forces employed by the Creator with the very different theory which explains it by the operation of these inorganic forces of themselves and without a superintending mind. The fact that Kant accounted for the inorganic world by the operation of nonvital and mechanical forces and of the organic world by the operation of vital and nonmechanical forces—the forces in both instances being created, upheld, and controlled by the Creator—by no means proves that in the former domain he adopted pantheistic monism and in the latter theistic dualism.

3.7.6 (see p. 382). Haeckel (Evolution of Man 2.391) endows matter with the intelligent properties of mind, namely, self-motion and choice, in the most extreme form conceivable. Even the germ cell, he maintains, decides for itself whether it will be male or female: "At first two united cells may have been entirely alike. Soon, however, by natural selection a contrast must have arisen between them. One cell became a female egg cell, the other a male seed or sperm cell."

3.7.7 (see p. 383). The discussions respecting the scientific value of the theory of pseudoevolution which makes all the phenomena of the mineral, vegetable, animal, and rational kingdoms to be alike the mechanical motion of molecules of matter have overlooked the fact that it has no foundation or support in mathematics. A really mechanical force and motion can be investigated and enunciated arithmetically and algebraically. Gravitation is expressed in the well-known formula that its attraction is inversely as the square of the distance. The motion of light, in the refraction and dispersion of its rays, is governed by laws that have been demonstrated by the employment of calculus. Mathematical optics is one of the most striking examples of the manner in which material nature operates mathematically. The motion of heat has been subjected to the tests of mathematics, and Clausius by this method has proved that when the heat-motion of ignited gunpowder is converted into the motion of the cannonball and then is reconverted into heat-motion by impact upon an iron plate, there is an actual loss of heat and consequently of motion. This is something which no observation of the senses, naked or armed, could have demonstrated. Electricity and magnetism are likewise beginning to be measured by this method. "Geometers," says a French journalist, "who are the continuators of Ampère, Fourier, Ohm, Gauss, Helmholtz, Thompson, and Maxwell and have helped so much in connecting electricity with the laws of mechanics are preparing a great synthesis which will mark an epoch in the history of natural philosophy. They are very near demonstrating that the electromagnetic phenomena are subjected to the same elementary laws as the optical; that they are two manifestations of a motion in the same element, namely, ether; the problems of optics are solved by equations of electromagnetism; and the speed of light, determined by optical methods, is measured also by purely electrical measures."

It is owing to the fact that whatsoever is really mechanical is also mathematical that it has from the first been the aim of the natural philosopher to introduce as much as possible the calculations and methods of mathematical science into physics, because in this way a precision and certainty are secured such as the most careful observations by the senses, even when aided by instruments, cannot afford. In some instances the algebraic process demonstrates irrefragably a result that contradicts the notices of the senses. An eminent geometer has demonstrated that the center of the shadow made by a circular plate of metal in a ray of light coming through an aperture is in fact no shadow, but an illumination as bright as if the metal plate were away. The remark of Euler, after demonstrating certain properties of the arch, that "all experience is in contradiction to this, but that this is no reason for doubting its truth," paradoxical as it sounds, is scientific certainty.

Accordingly, the progress of genuine, in distinction from spurious, physics has invariably been accompanied with that of mathematics. Newton's theory of gravitation immediately resulted in the Principia—that wonderful treatise of which the full title is Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy—in which calculus is employed by an intellect never excelled in the power of concentrated reflection to demonstrate the truth of a hypothesis which without this method of proof would be open to doubt and denial. For subtract the evidence furnished by the theorems and calculations of the Principia and leave the law of gravitation to be accepted merely on the ground of what can be observed and measured of its operations by the naked or the armed eye, and it would no longer have the certainty which it now has for the scientific mind.

Now if, as the materialist contends, the phenomena of the vegetable, animal, and rational kingdoms are really and truly mechanical, like those of gravitation, cohesion, chemical affinity, light, heat, electricity, and magnetism, they should like these latter be capable of mathematical expression and demonstration. If it indeed be true, as Haeckel (Creation 1.21) asserts that "when a stone falls by certain laws to the ground, or a solution of salt forms a crystal, the result is no less a mechanical manifestation of life than the flowering of a plant, the generation or sensibility of animals, or the feelings or mental activity of man"—if it be indeed true that all these phenomena are alike the effect of molecular motion, then the vitality of the plant, the sensibility of the animal, and the rationality of the man can be examined mathematically and the results expressed in mathematical formulas. In this case treatises in biology and psychology should be as full of mathematical propositions and calculations as those in chemistry and mechanics. But the mere assertion of such a possibility is the refutation of the theory of pseudoevolution. The law of vegetable life has nothing in common with that of gravitation, and to attempt to express it in mathematical terms is absurd. The same is true of the law of animal life, and still more of rational. How would a scientist set about describing the motion of the sap or the circulation of the blood in terms of calculus? How would he express the thinking of the human mind or the feeling of the human heart by algebraic equations? No evolutionist has yet gone to the length of asserting that one sense can evolve from another; that smelling can transmute itself into hearing, or seeing into tasting; and no one of this class has attempted to explain one sensation by another; but the task would not be greater than to explain vegetable life in the blooming of a rose or animal life in the crawling of a worm or rational life in "the thoughts that wander through eternity" and are "too deep for tears" by the mechanical motion of atoms algebraically formulated by some Newton or Laplace.

When one considers the great amount of publication by materialistic physicists during the last twenty years upon subjects in physics and how little of mathematics there is in it all, he is made suspicious respecting its credibility. Former periods in the history of science that were distinguished, as the last two decades have not been, for real discoveries and additions to the knowledge of nature were marked by the cultivation of mathematical analysis. But the present is a time when the most novel and improbable theories of matter and mind are broached without a particle of this highest order of proof. Let anyone read the History of the Physical Sciences by Whewell, one of the first mathematicians of the century and a natural philosopher in the line of Newton and Leibnitz, and see how constantly and inextricably mathematical calculation is in-woven with all that is really mechanical and inorganic in them, and then let him turn to the physics of Haeckel, Huxley, Maudsley, and Büchner and see how destitute their schematizing is of all support from the exact sciences and how contradictory it is to the demonstrated and established results of past investigation, and he will perceive the immense difference between the historical and the provincial physics.

A striking instance of the error introduced into the physics of inorganic nature by theories that not merely lack corroboration by mathematics, but are refuted by it, is seen in Goethe's theory of colors. He contended, in opposition to Newton and physicists generally, that color is not a particular mode of light, but a mixture of light and darkness. He held that darkness is a positive quality and not the mere negation of light and that colors are composed of light and darkness—which, as his biographer Lewis remarks, is "like saying that tones are composed of sound and silence." He prosecuted his experiments and observations with great industry, but in a purely empirical way, without any knowledge or employment of mathematical optics. On the contrary, he rejected the aid of this science and actually took credit to himself for so doing: "I raised," he said, "the whole school of mathematicians against me, and people were greatly amazed that one who had no insight into mathematics could venture to contradict Newton. For that physics could exist independently of mathematics, no one seemed to have the slightest suspicion." His biographer, who shared in the exaggerated estimate of Goethe common to all his devotees, was nevertheless too sound a physicist to fall in with this view of mathematics. Respecting Goethe's theory of color and those sciences which are concerned with really mechanical forces, he remarks: "On Goethe's theory, the phenomena are not measurable; and whoever glances into a modern work on optics will see that the precision and extent to which calculation has been carried are themselves sufficient ground for preferring the theory which admits such calculation. No amount of observation will render observation precise, unless it can be measured. You may watch falling bodies for an eternity, but without mathematics mere watching will yield no law of gravitation. You may mix acids and alkalies together with prodigality, but no amount of experiment will yield the secret of their composition if you have flung away the balance. Goethe flung away the balance" (Lewis, Life of Goethe 5.9). It is worthy of particular notice that this error of the poet was endorsed by the philosophers Schelling and Hegel, both of whom, like Goethe, adopted the monism of Spinoza, which explains all the phenomena of the universe by the doctrine of one infinite substance. This accounts for the agreement between them.

Goethe was more successful in botany than in optics. His Metamorphoses of Plants, in which he developed a theory that had been suggested but not adopted by Linnaeus, namely, that all the parts of a plant are varieties of the leaf, has met with favor among scientific botanists. But botany is within the domain of life, not of mechanics, if the historical physics is to be accepted rather than that of the materialistic schools. Because botany is concerned with a vital force, it cannot be constructed mathematically, and consequently Goethe's ignorance of the exact sciences did no great harm in this instance, as it did in that of optics.

The inability of the materialist to ground his theory that mind is matter and that thought, like heat, is a mode of molecular motion in the mathematics that support all genuine mechanics is proof that it will be short lived, that the pseudoevolution of Darwin at the close of the nineteenth century will share the fate of the pseudoevolution of Lamarck at the beginning of it.

A writer in the Foreign Quarterly Review (3.194–95) makes the following objections to the position that life is a property of inorganic matter and the effect of the arrangement of its atoms: "(1) If the living principle is an essential property of inorganic matter, it would follow that this property would increase with the quantity of matter. This, however, is not the fact. Nature nowhere manifests more living energy than in its most minute productions. The insect, for example, the spider, with its instincts performs more remarkable functions than many a larger animal; the dog more than the horse, and man more than the elephant, and this more than the whale. (2) The first rudiment of all living forms, whether animal or vegetable, is a fluid in which a few globules are found. If the arrangement of particles or structural organization were the cause of life, this cause would have little energy in a fluid in which no organ at all is to be detected; and yet the reverse is the fact, for in no state does the living principle act so energetically as in the first periods of existence. In the first month of conception the human embryo weighs only a few grains; at the ninth month it weighs eight pounds and is twenty inches in length. In the first month it is as simple as a worm in its structure; at the ninth it has all the characteristic complication of the human species. In the early periods of our existence, therefore, the living principle operates with much greater intensity than in the later; being employed not so much in merely preserving as in the later periods, but in forming and building up from the beginning. Every most minute artery, nerve, or vein is then laid out with uniform skill; parts are planned and formed which had no previous existence; and it seems as unreasonable to assert from a contemplation of such facts that organization or structure is the cause of life as that the house is the cause of the architect. If the arrangement of particles is the cause of life, then the consistent materialist must in physics give up the axiom that the effect is in proportion to the cause. The effects and changes are far greater in the embryo and uterine existence than they are in the body after birth; but the number of the particles of matter that are arranged is far smaller. (3) In the mechanical sciences, we say that certain substances are the conductors of electricity, but we do not say that they cause electricity; they develop its phenomena, and that is all. Now life, like electricity, or any other mechanical force, though it does not exist separate from matter, yet is transferable from one body to another. The plant, for example, collects from air, earth, and water that which it transforms into wood, sap, leaf, and fruit, thus vivifying these elements. The animal collects from the plant its material for nerve, blood, and muscle. Man converts bread and meat into blood, muscle, nerve, and bone, all of which are capable of vital motion. In all these instances a piece of inanimate matter has received the gift of life; it has acquired vital properties. Is it not a distinct transfer of something from one substance to another, which something cannot be a mere property of the substance to which it is transferred? Is the principle of life any more a property of the matter which is vitalized by it than the principle of heat is the property of the iron that is melted by it? If the two things are entirely diverse in the latter case, are they not also in the former? (4) Extension, figure, impenetrability are properties of matter, and we never see them leave matter; but the dead nerve, although to all appearance the same as the living, loses sensation, and the dead muscle loses irritability. If it be replied that the dead muscle or nerve is not the same as the living, but that death has been accompanied by a cessation of motion in the fluids or atoms, this implies that the motion of the fluids or atoms produces life. But is there a single instance in nature of motion producing anything but motion of identically the same kind? Is there any proof from observed phenomena that mechanical motion sometimes does more than this and produces sensation, thought, and volition?"

In agreement with this last remark, Quatrefages (Human Species, 13) remarks: "We do not find in the application of the laws of life and in the results to which they lead the mathematical precision of the laws of gravitation and ethero-dynamy. Crystals, when similar in composition and when formed under similar circumstances, resemble each other perfectly; but we never find two leaves exactly alike upon the same tree."

Regarding spontaneous generation, "Pasteur proves and Tyndall corroborates that if all germs of life are excluded, inorganic matter never ferments, never of itself produces life, and remains inorganic" (Popular Science Monthly, Dec. 1876: 135).

3.7.8 (see p. 384). The effect of friction in diminishing force is seen even in the provinces of imponderable matter. Every reflection of a ray of light diminishes its intensity; going in a direct line it is stronger, in a zigzag it is weaker. Moonlight is paler than sunlight. But reflection is resistance by friction. The deflection of a bullet diminishes its motion. When it glances from a rock its movement is less swift than before the glancing. The same is true of sound when deflected and of heat when reflected.

3.7.9 (see p. 387). The fallacy in pseudoevolution is the assumption that variation is identical with transmutation, that the rise of new varieties is the same thing as the rise of new species. Quatrefages (Human Species, 37) notices this: "Lamarck, St. Hilaire, Darwin and his school consider the species not only as variable but as transmutable. The specific types are not merely modified, they are replaced by new types. Variation is, in their estimation, only a phase of the very different phenomena of transmutation." Consider, for illustration of this remark of Quatrefages, Darwin's explanation of the moral sense out of the gregarious instinct in animals, and this latter from animal instinct. Animals associate; thence cooperation, as in the instance of beavers; then the wishes of others of the same community are perceived; then the idea of a common good; then the notion of obligation to consult the common good. There are the following objections to this genesis of the moral sense. (1) This process stops with the animal, but moral obligation stops with God. Even if the improbable supposition be granted that a beaver may come to feel obliged and bound by a sense of duty to another beaver, this would not make him feel obliged and bound to a Supreme Being; if for no other reason, that there is nothing in Darwin's account of the matter by which the beaver can get the idea of such a being. The only idea the beaver has is the idea of another beaver. But a "moral sense" without a knowledge of a Supreme Being and a sense of duty to him is nonsense. (2) This process surreptitiously injects elements into succeeding parts of it that cannot be derived out of the preceding. This destroys the alleged evolution. There is a leap from actual fact to mere imagination of a fact. An examination shows this. Animals "associate" from animal instinct and "cooperate" from animal instinct. But they do not "perceive the wishes of others" from animal instinct or "have the idea of a common good" from animal instinct or "the notion of obligation to consult the common good"from animal instinct. Association and cooperation are action; but perception of others' wishes, the idea of a common good, and the notion of obligation to consult the common good are reflection. The former may be explained by animal instinct; but the latter require human reason to account for them. This pedigree of the moral sense is like Irving's derivation of mango from Jeremiah King: "Jerry King, gherkin, cucumber, mango."

This criticism applies also to Spencer's explanation of the moral sense by the idea of utility: "Experiences of utility organized and consolidated in generations by transmission become experiences of morality; of right and wrong." The mere "organization"and "consolidation" of a thing does not alter the nature and substance of it. It only changes its form. Utility condensed ad infinitum is only infinite utility.

3.7.10 (see p. 389). The materialist when pressed with the fact that there is no visible transmutation of species within the period of time that man has existed replies that the asserted change requires vast ages. This implies that natural forces grow stronger as they grow older. But the inherent force of matter is no more augmented by the increase of time than by the increase of size. If a minute atom of matter cannot start itself into motion today, it cannot in three hundred and sixty-five days; and the same is true of a granite boulder or the plant Jupiter. Longer duration will add no new and additional force to either of these which it does not intrinsically have. So also with the increase of bulk. If a grain of sand cannot begin motion from a state of rest, neither can the entire globe of which it is a part. Size, greater or smaller, is of no account in such a case, and neither is time.

3.7.11 (see p. 390). J. W. Dawson (Salient Points in the Science of the Earth, chap. 7) presents the following view of the succession of animal forms, as the teaching of scientific paleontology. "(1) The existence of life and organization on the earth is not eternal or even coeval with the beginning of the physical universe, but may possibly date from Laurentinian or immediately pre-Laurentinian ages. (2) The introduction of new species of animals and plants has been a continuous process, not in the sense of derivation of one species from another, but in the higher sense of the continued operation of the cause or causes which introduced life at first. (3) Though thus continuous the process has not been uniform; but periods of rapid production of species have alternated with others in which many disappeared and few were introduced. This may have been an effect of physical cycles reacting on the progress of life. (4) Species, like individuals, have greater energy and vitality in their younger stages and rapidly assume all their varietal forms and extend themselves as widely as external circumstances will permit. Like individuals, also, they have their periods of old age and decay, though the life of some species has been of enormous duration in comparison with that of others; the difference appearing to be connected with degrees of adaptation to different conditions of life. (5) Many allied species, constituting groups of animals and plants, have made their appearance at once in various parts of the earth, and these groups have obeyed the same laws with the individual and the species in culminating rapidly and then slowly diminishing, though a large group once introduced has rarely disappeared together. (6) Groups of species, as genera and orders, do not usually begin with their highest or lowest forms, but with intermediate and generalized types, and they show a capacity for both elevation and degradation in their subsequent history. (7) The history of life presents a progress from the lower to the higher and from the simpler to the more complex and from the more generalized to the more specialized. In this progress new types are introduced and take the place of the older ones, which sink to a relatively subordinate place and thus become degraded. But the physical and organic changes have been so correlated and adjusted that life has been enabled to assume more complex forms, and thus older forms have been made to prepare the way for newer, so that there has been, on the whole, a steady elevation culminating in man. Elevation and specialization have, however, been secured at the expense of vital energy and range of adaptation, until the new element of a rational and spiritual nature was introduced in the case of man. (8) In regard to the larger and more distinct types, we cannot find evidence that they have in their introduction been preceded by similar forms connecting them with previous groups; but there is reason to believe that many supposed representative species in successive formations are really only races or varieties. (9) Insofar as we can trace their history, specific types are permanent in their characters from their introduction to their extinction, and their earlier varietal forms are similar to their later ones. (10) Paleontology furnishes no direct evidence, perhaps never can furnish any, as to the actual transmutation of one species into another; but the drift of its testimony is to show that species come in per saltum, rather than by any slow and gradual process. (11) The origin and history of life cannot, any more than the origin and determination of matter, be explained on purely material grounds, but involve the consideration of power referable to the unseen and spiritual world. There is a creative force above and beyond them, to the threshold of which we shall inevitably be brought."

3.7.12 (see p. 394). Respecting Haeckel's assertion that "natural selection, which acts without a plan, produces quite the same result as artificial selection, which the will of man makes according to a plan," Janet (Materialism of the Present: A Critique of Büchner, 174) remarks: "The true stumbling block of Darwin's theory is the passage from artificial to natural selection; it is when he wishes to prove that a blind and designless nature has been able to obtain, by the fortuitous occurrence of circumstances, the same results which man obtains by well-calculated industry."

3.7.13 (see p. 394). A striking example of the punctilious carrying out of the plan of structure when there is no use for the organ is seen in the whale. The whale is not a fish, but a mammal. It has lungs, not gills; cannot live continually under water, but must come to the surface to breathe; is warm blooded, having a bilocular heart, movable eyelids, ears opening externally, viviparous generation, and suckles its young. In all these respects it is like a quadruped, yet there are no external legs. "But," observes Roget (Physiology 1.485), "although the bones of the legs do not exist, yet there are found in the hinder and lower part of the trunk, concealed in the flesh and quite detached from the spine, two small bones, apparently corresponding to pelvic bones, for the presence of which no more probable reason can be assigned than the tendency to preserve an analogy with the more developed structures of the same type. A similar adherence to the law of uniformity in the plan and construction of all the animals belonging to the same class is strikingly shown in the conformation of the bones of the anterior extremities of the cetacea; for although they present, externally, no resemblance to the leg and foot of a quadruped, being fashioned into finlike members, with a flat oval surface for striking the water, yet when the bones are stripped of the think integument which covers them and conceals their real form, we find them exhibiting the same divisions into carpal and metacarpal bones, and phalanxes of fingers, as exist in the most highly developed organization, not merely of a quadruped, but also of a monkey, and even of a man."

3.7.14 (see p. 397). The biblical chronology, while forbidding the immense antiquity for the existence of man on the globe attributed to him by one class of geologists, does not require an exact mathematical definiteness, but allows an uncertain margin of one or two thousand years. This is due to the difference between the two texts from which the contents of Scripture are derived. The following account of the case is given by a learned writer in the London Quarterly Review (43.120–21): "We are accustomed to suppose that we possess an undoubted, precise canon of chronology in the Holy Scriptures; but perhaps next to a clear acquaintance with what the sacred volume does undoubtedly contain, the most valuable knowledge is of what it does not. In the Universal History above one hundred and twenty dates are given for the creation, most of them made out by persons who regard with sincere reverence, and derive their arguments from, the sacred writings. The first of these places that event 6984 B.C.; the last, 3616 B.C.; differing by the amount of more than 3,000 years. The period of the deluge is fixed with no greater uniformity. The Septuagint gives 3246 B.C.; the Hebrew text, according to Ussher, gives 2348 B.C. The extreme dates assigned to the exodus are those of Josephus, according to Hales, who agrees nearly with Des Vignolles, 1648 B.C.; of the English Bible, according to Ussher, 1491 B.C.; and by the common Jewish chronology, 1312 B.C.

"Our object is to show that the longer of these chronologies is the best supported and affords ample space for the highest antiquity which the great Egyptian kingdom can claim. For the period between the flood and the first connection of sacred history with Egypt we have four distinct authorities: the Septuagint version; the Samaritan text; Josephus, who professes to have adhered faithfully to the sacred volume; and the Hebrew chronology adopted in our Bibles. None of these, strictly speaking, agree, but the first three concur in assigning a much longer period between the deluge and the birth of Abraham: the Septuagint, 1,070 years; the Hebrew, only 292. If it should be urged that the translators of the Septuagint, environed on all sides by Egyptian antiquities and standing in awe of Alexandrian learning, endeavored to conform their national annals to the more extended chronological system and that Josephus, either influenced by their authority or actuated by the same motives, may have adopted the same views, yet the ancient Samaritan text still remains an unexceptionable witness to the high antiquity of the longer period. In fact, we are perhaps wasting our time in contesting this point, as we may fairly consider the Hebrew chronology of this period between the deluge and the call of Abraham almost exploded. In our own country, most of those who have investigated the subject, men who certainly cannot be suspected of want of reverence for the sacred volume—Bryant, Faber, and Hales—concur in reverting to the system which generally prevailed in the early Christian church; and, last, Russell, in an essay prefixed to his work on the connection of sacred and profane history, has shown, with great probability, not only the late construction of what may perhaps fairly be called the rabbinic chronology, in the second century of Christianity, but also, following the steps of the ancient Christian writers on the subject, the peculiar object for which it was framed.

"It would be difficult, indeed, to conceive the vast extension and multiplication of the human race, the slow development of civilization, the revolutions in the forms of government, the rise of mighty empires, the splendor of great cities, within the narrow limits of two or three centuries; but in above a thousand years what changes might not be wrought. Compare the France and England, the Paris and London, of the days of William the Conqueror with their present state; or the wild woods of America, inhabited by wandering tribes of savages, with her present populous cities. Nor must it be forgotten that from the visit of Abraham to Egypt, above two centuries more elapsed before the migration of his descendants; and of the state of Egypt in the days of the patriarch we know little more than that a king was ruling, with some degree of state, in some part of Lower Egypt—probably at Tanis or Zoan; and that the valley of the Nile had begun to make its rich return to the toil of the agricultural cultivator."

3.7.15 (see p. 398). In corroboration of the position that the population of the globe at the beginning of profane history was comparatively sparse, the following estimates are noteworthy. Caesar states that the population of Helvetia, or Switzerland, in his time was 368,000. In 1880 it was 2,846,000. Gibbon (chap. 9) asserts that the populousness of northern Europe in the time of Caesar has been much exaggerated. Robertson (Charles V, 1) says the same; and so does Hume (Populousness of Ancient Nations). In 1756 Burke says: "I think the numbers of men now upon earth are computed at five hundred millions, at the most" (Vindication of Natural Society). The Abbé Raynal (History 6) says concerning the Mexican Empire: "The Castilian historians tell us that before the tenth century after Christ this vast space was inhabited only by some wandering hordes that were entirely savage. They tell us that about this period some tribes issuing from the north and northwest occupied parts of the territories and introduced milder manners. They tell us that three hundred years after, a people still more advanced in civilization and coming from the neighborhood of California, settled on the borders of the lakes and built Mexico there."

3.7.16 (see p. 399). Whether some of the dynasties of Manetho were contemporaneous or all of them were successive makes a great difference with the antiquity of Egypt. Eratosthenes (died 194 B.C.), adopting the first view, reduced Manetho's Old Empire from 2,900 years to 1,076. Panadorus (?) reduced the 5,000 or more years of the thirty dynasties to 3,555. The total number of years assigned by Manetho to his thirty dynasties is given in the Eusebius of Syncellus (A.D. 800) as 4,728, in the Armenian Eusebius as 5,205, in the Africanus of Syncellus as 5,374. Eusebius (Chronicle 1.20) says: "We are told that there were, perhaps, at one and the same time several kings of Egypt" (Rawlinson, Egypt 2.6–8).

3.7.17 (see p. 399). Carpenter (Physiology §§941–48) mentions the following facts in proof of the original unity of the human species and of the variations produced by climate and manner of life: "The influence of habits of life, continued from generation to generation, upon the form of the head is remarkably evinced by the transition from one type to another, which may be observed in nations that have undergone a change in their manners and customs and have made an advance in civilization. Thus, to mention but one instance, the Turks at present inhabiting the Ottoman and Persian empires are undoubtedly descended from the same stock with those nomadic races which are still spread through Central Asia. The former, however, having conquered the countries which they now inhabit, eight centuries since, have gradually settled down to the fixed and regular habits of the Indo-European race and have made corresponding advances in civilization; while the latter have continued their wandering mode of life and can scarcely be said to have made any decided advance during the same interval. Now the long-since civilized Turks have undergone a complete transformation into the likeness of Europeans, while their nomadic relatives retain the pyramidal configuration of the skull in a very marked degree. Some have attributed this change in the physical structure of the Turkish race to the introduction of Circassian slaves into the harems of the Turks; but this could only affect the opulent and powerful among the race; and the great mass of the Turkish population have always intermarried among themselves. In like manner, even the Negro prognathous head and face may become assimilated to the European by long subjection to similar influences. Thus, in some of our older West Indian colonies, it is not uncommon to meet with Negroes, the descendants of those first introduced there, who exhibit a very European physiognomy; and it has even been asserted that a Negro belonging to the Dutch portion of Guiana may be distinguished from another belonging to the British settlements by the similarity of the features and expression of each to those which respectively characterize his masters. The effect could not be here produced by the intermixture of bloods, since this would be made apparent by alteration of color. But not only may the pyramidal and prognathous types be elevated toward the elliptical; the elliptical may be degraded toward either of these. Want, squalor, and ignorance have a special tendency to induce that diminution of the cranial portion of the skull and that increase of the facial, which characterizes the prognathous type, as cannot but be observed by anyone who takes an accurate and candid survey of the condition of the most degraded part of the population of the great towns of Great Britain and as it is seen to be preeminently the case with regard to the lowest class of Irish emigrants. A certain degree of retrogression to the pyramidal type is also to be noticed among the nomadic tribes which are to be found in every civilized community. Among these, as has been remarked by a very acute observer (Mayhew, in London Labor and the London Poor), according as they partake more or less of the purely vagabond nature, doing nothing whatsoever for their living, but moving from place to place, preying on the earnings of the more industrious portion of the community, so will the attributes of the nomadic races be found more or less marked in them; and they are all more or less distinguished for their high cheekbones and protruding jaws, thus showing that kind of mixture of the pyramidal with the prognathous type, which is to be seen among the lowest of the Indian and Malayo-Polynesian race. Hence we are led to conclude that, so far as regards their anatomical structure, there is no such difference among the different races of mankind as would justify to the zoologist the assertion of their distinct origin. The variations which they present in physical respects are not greater than those which we meet with between the individuals of any one race. Thus, we not only find the average duration of life to be the same, making allowance for the circumstances which induce disease, but the various epochs of life—such as the times of the first and second dentition, the period of puberty, the duration of pregnancy, the intervals of catamenia, and the time of their final cessation—present a marked general uniformity such as does not exist among similar epochs in the lives of species allied but unquestionably distinct. Further, the different races of man are all subject to the same diseases—to the sporadic, endemic, and epidemic; the only exceptions being those in which the constitution of a race has grown to a certain set of influences (as that of the Negro to the malaria which generates certain pernicious fevers in the Europeans) producing a hereditary immunity in the race, which is capable of being acquired by individuals of other races by acclimatization begun sufficiently early. Although the comparison of the structural characters of the human races does not furnish any positive evidence of their descent from a common stock, it yet justifies the assertion that even if their stocks were originally distinct, there could have been no essential difference between them—the descendants of any one stock being able to assume the characteristics of the other. The most important physiological test, however, of specific unity or diversity is that furnished by the generative process. It may be considered as a fundamental fact, alike in the vegetable and in the animal kingdom, that hybrid races originating in the sexual connection of individuals of two different species, do not tend to self-perpetuation; the hybrids being nearly sterile with each other, although they may propagate with either of their parent races, in which the hybrid race will soon merge; while, on the other hand, if the parents be themselves varieties of the same species, the hybrid constitutes but another variety, and its powers of reproduction are rather increased than diminished, so that it may continue to propagate its own race or may be used for the production of other varieties almost ad infinitum. The application of this principle to the human races leaves no doubt with respect to their specific unity; for, as is well known, not only do all the races of men breed freely with each other, but the mixed race is generally superior in physical development and in tendency to rapid multiplication to either of the parent stocks. Finally, the question of psychical conformity or difference among the races of mankind is one which has a most direct bearing upon the question of their specific unity or diversity; but it has an importance of its own, even greater than that which it derives from this source. For, as has been recently argued with great justice and power by Agassiz, the real unity of mankind does not lie in the consanguinity of a common descent, but has its basis in the participation of every race in the same moral nature and in the community of moral rights which hence becomes the privilege of all. 'This is a bond,' says Agassiz, 'which every man feels more and more the further he advances in his intellectual and moral culture and which in this development is continually placed upon higher and higher ground; so much so that the physical relation arising from a common descent is finally lost sight of in the consciousness of higher moral obligations. It is in these obligations that the moral rights of men have their foundation; and thus while Africans have the hearts and consciences of human beings, it could never be right to treat them as domestic cattle or as wild fowl, even if it were ever so abundantly demonstrated that their race was but an improved species of ape and ours a degenerate kind of god.' The psychical comparison of the various races of mankind is really, therefore, the most important part of the whole investigation; but it has been, nevertheless, the most imperfectly pursued until the inquiry was taken up by Dr. Prichard. The mass of evidence which he has accumulated on this subject leaves no reasonable doubt that no more 'impassable barrier' really exists between the different races with respect to their psychical than in regard to their physical peculiarities; the variations in the development of their respective psychical powers and capacities not being greater, either in kind or degree, than those which present themselves between individuals of our own or of any other race, by some members of which a high intellectual and moral standard has been attained. The tests by which we recognize the claims of the outcast and degraded of our own or any other highly civilized community to a common humanity are the same as those by which we should estimate the true relation of the Negro, the Bushman, or the Australian to the cultivated European. If, on the one hand, we admit the influence of want, ignorance, and neglect in accounting for the debasement of the savages of our own great cities and if we witness the same effects occurring under the same conditions among the Bushmen of Southern Africa, we can scarcely hesitate in admitting that the long-continued operation of the same agencies has had much to do with the psychical as well as the physical deterioration of the Negro, Australian, and other degraded races."

3.7.18 (see p. 400). The following article upon the antiquity of man by John A. Zahn was published in the American Catholic Review:

"Archeologists divide the first period of human history into three ages called, in the order of succession, the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age.

"If the evolution theory of the origin of man and the development of civilization be true, we should expect to find the archeological division universally true and applicable equally to all peoples in all parts of the world. There does not seem to be any doubt that in certain parts of Europe, perhaps throughout the greater portion of it, the Stone Age preceded the Ages of Bronze and Iron. It would be a mistake, however, to imagine that the Stone Age marks a fixed period in human history and that it prevailed at the same time in all lands and among all peoples. Nothing could be farther from the truth. While one nation or one tribe was living in the Age of Stone, its next neighbors may have been enjoying the advantages of the Age of Bronze or of Iron.

"If there is no fixed period in time for the Stone Age, neither is there a hard-and-fast line of demarcation between the Age of Stone and that of Bronze or between the Age of Bronze and that of Iron. They frequently overlap one another and are, in many instances, quite synchronous.

"Again, it would be equally wide of the truth to assert that all peoples passed through the three phases of civilization indicated by the Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron. This is so far from being the case that numerous instances are citable when there were but two ages, and sometimes only one. Some of the more barbarous tribes of the earth are still in the Stone Age and have never known any other. There are others, in Europe, that have never known a Bronze Age, but who passed directly from the Stone to the Iron Age. From the fact that stone, bronze, and iron implements are found together in the most ancient Chaldean tombs and Assyrian ruins, archeologists have inferred that neither Chaldea nor Assyria ever knew the Ages of Bronze and Iron as distinct from that of Stone. More remarkable still, we find that, in the case of the majority of the tribes of Africa, excluding the Egyptians, the only age that has ever existed is the Age of Iron. Stone has been used, but from the most remote period that archeology has been able to reach, iron has been in common use, while bronze has been entirely unknown.

"Yet more. According to the researches of Dr. Schliemann, there was neither a Stone Age nor a Metal Age in Greece and Asia Minor. In the finds at Troy, especially, there is the most striking evidence of devolution. Here, as well as at Mycenae, the ornaments and implements discovered, even in the lowest strata, far from indicating a state of savagery and degradation, betoken one of high civilization. In the light of Schliemann's discoveries, not to speak of others pointing in the same direction made in Egypt and among the ruins of Assyria and Babylonia, bearing on the condition of primitive man in the Orient, the conclusion seems to be inevitable that the modern evolution school is wrong—that the history of our race is not one of development, but one of degeneration. Thus the story of the fall, as recorded in Holy Writ, is corroborated by the declarations of the newest of sciences—prehistoric archeology.

"The Age of Iron, even according to those who claim a great antiquity for our race, was posterior to the alleged Age of Bronze. But when, in European countries, was the Age of Bronze ushered in, and when did it close? The bronze used in Europe in prehistoric times and even in historic times was brought by the Phoenicians. The period of commercial prosperity for Phoenicia, it is thought, extended approximately from the twelfth to the fifth century before the Christian era. And this is the epoch, according to the latest and most reliable researches, during which the many objects of bronze, mostly of Phoenician design and manufacture, were distributed over western, central, and northern Europe. This would place the so-called Bronze Age in the neighborhood of 1000 B.C. But this, probably, is assigning it a maximum antiquity.

"As to the Iron Age in Scandinavia, it belonged, if we are to credit the ablest authorities on the subject, to the fourth and sixth centuries after Christ. The Age of Iron in Gaul dates back, probably, to the fourth century before our era. Judging from the finds in the necropolis of Hallstatt, the Iron Age began in Austria one or two centuries earlier. The Stone Age terminated in Denmark about 500 B.C. or 600 B.C.

"But the fact is, it is utterly impossible to arrive at anything even approximating exact dates for any of the three Ages. They are different for different peoples. For this reason, therefore, to construct a system of chronology based on the implements of stone, bronze, and iron that have been used by man in the prehistoric past is, at least in the present state of science, clearly impracticable.

"What has been said of the futility of all attempts to arrive at a system of chronology based on the various objects of human industry obviously applies with equal force to the skulls and other bones of primitive man that have attracted so much attention during the past few decades. They can, no more than the implements of stone and bronze and iron so far discovered, be accepted as evidence of the great antiquity of the human race.

"We heartily endorse the words of W. H. Holmes, of the Smithsonian Institution, when he says: 'The whole discussion of early man has been so surcharged with misconception of facts and errors of interpretation that all is vitiated, as a stream with impurities about its source. Until an exhaustive scientific study of the origin, form, genesis, and meaning of all the handiwork of man made use of in the discussion is completed, the discussion of man and culture is worse than useless, and speculation can lead but to embarrassment and disaster.'

"When examining some of the evidence presented by geologists in favor of the antiquity of man, one cannot help saying with Goethe, 'The thing the most terrible to hear is the constantly reiterated assurance that geologists agree on a given point.' In 1857 the famous Neanderthal skull was discovered near Düsseldorf. Professor Schaaffhausen adjudged it to be 'the most ancient memorial of the early inhabitants of Europe.' Professor Fuhbrott wrote a book on it in which he declared the age of the relic to be from 200,000 to 300,000 years, but Dr. Mayer, of Bonn, after a critical examination of the 'fossil' and the locality in which it was found came to the conclusion that it was the skull of a Cossack killed in 1814!"

The conclusions that are drawn within the province of paleontology are of a very uncertain nature because the data are largely conjecture and are also exposed to misrepresentation and forgery. The following extract from the public press illustrates this:

"In those parts of England and Europe where relics of the Stone Age have been found and where new discoveries occasionally come to light, the manufacture of counterfeit Paleolithic implements has become a fine art. Forgeries of prehistoric antiquities, both in stone and bronze, are numerous. The chipping of the English imitations is said to be superior to that of the French, but in each case the lancelet form is the favorite. The appearance of antiquity is usually given by a thin coating of fine clay, but at Amiens a plan of whitening the flint by long boiling in the family kettle has been introduced. In some of the bone caves of the reindeer period, both in France and Germany, ancient bones have had designs engraved upon them by modern forgers, and ancient flint tools have been inserted in sockets of ancient bone so as together to form a composite falsification. Something of the same kind has been practiced with regard to relics from the Swiss lake dwellings, many of the bronze objects from which have also been imitated by casting. Of Neolithic implements forgeries are equally abundant and in some instances equally difficult to detect. Large perforated axheads when made of soft sandstone, which could not possibly be used for cutting purposes, of course betray themselves; but the modern flint axes and arrowheads are not so easily distinguishable from the ancient. To the experienced eye there is, however, a difference both in the workmanship and the character of the surface, the ancient arrowheads having probably been worked into shape by pressure with a tool of stag's horn and not by blows of an iron hammer. The grinding of the edges of modern imitations has usually been effected on a revolving grindstone; in ancient times a fixed stone was always used, on which the surface and edges of axes or hatchets were ground by friction."

3.7.19 (see p. 401). In some nations civilization is found to be very ancient and in others barbarism very modern. Two thousand years before Christ, Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria were far advanced in the knowledge of the mechanical arts and inventions. Two thousand years after Christ the barbarous tribes of the islands of the sea and of portions of the continents, like Alaska and Greenland, have little or no knowledge of them. "The tools of the pyramid builders," says Petrie, "show that the Egyptian stoneworkers of 4,000 years ago had a surprising acquaintance with what have been considered modern tools. Among the many tools used by the pyramid builders were both solid and tubular drills and straight and circular saws. The drills, like those of today, were set with jewels (probably coriandrum, as the diamond was very scarce), and even lathe tools had such cutting edges. So remarkable was the quality of the tubular drills and the skill of the workmen that the cutting marks in hard granite give no indication of wear of the tool, while a cut of a tenth of an inch was made in the hardest rock at each revolution, and a hole through both the hardest and softest material was bored perfectly smooth and uniform throughout. Of the material and method of making the tools nothing is known." Even in semibarbarous tribes a considerable inventiveness is found. "We were shown," says Lady Brassy (Last Voyage, 148), "one of the ingenious air-compressing tubes which have been used by the natives of Borneo for hundreds of years to produce fire. Professor Faraday alluded in one of his lectures to the possibility of producing fire by means of compressed air as a discovery of comparatively modern science; whereas the fact has long been known and put to use in these obscure regions of the earth."

Respecting the high degree of civilization in Egypt and Babylon at a very early date, corroborating the representations of the Pentateuch and Job, J. W. Dawson (London Expositor) says: "We are only beginning to understand the height of civilization to which Egypt and other ancient countries around the Mediterranean had attained even before the time of Moses. Maspero and Tomkins have illustrated the extent and accuracy of the geographical knowledge of the Egyptians of this period. The latter closes a paper on this subject with the following words: 'The Egyptians, dwelling in their green, warm river course, and on the watered levels of their El Faiyûm and Delta, were yet a very enterprising people, full of curiosity, literary, scientific in method, admirable delineators of nature, skilled surveyors, makers of maps, trained and methodical administrators of domestic and foreign affairs, kept alert by the movements of their great river and by the necessities of commerce, which forced them to the Syrian forests for their building timber and to Kush and Pun for their precious furniture woods and ivory, to say nothing of incense, aromatics, cosmetics, asphalt, exotic plants, and pet and strange animals, with a hundred other needful things.' The heads copied by Petrie from Egyptian tombs show that the physical features of all the people inhabiting the surrounding countries, as well as their manners, industries, and arts, were well known to the Egyptians. The papers of Lockyer have shown that long before the Mosaic age the dwellers by the Euphrates and the Nile had mapped out the heavens, ascertained the movements of the moon and planets, established the zodiacal signs, discriminated the poles of the ecliptic and the equator, ascertained the law of eclipses and the precession of the equinoxes, and, in fact, had worked out all the astronomical data which can be learned by observation and had applied them to practical uses. Lockyer would even ask us to trace this knowledge as far back as 6000 B.C. or into the postglacial or antediluvian period; but, however this may be, astronomy was a very old science in the time of Moses, and it is quite unnecessary to postulate a late date for the references to the heavens in Genesis or Job. In geodesy and allied arts also, the Egyptians had long before this time attained to a perfection never since excelled, so that our best instruments can detect no errors in very old measurements and levelings. The arts of architecture, metallurgy, and weaving had attained to the highest development; civilization and irrigation, with their consequent agriculture and cattle breeding, were old and well-understood arts; and how much of science and practical sagacity is needed for regulating the distribution of Nile water, anyone may learn who will refer to the reports of Colin Scott Moncrieff and his assistants. Sculpture and painting in the age of Moses had attained their acme and were falling into conventional styles. Law and the acts of government had become fixed and settled. Theology and morals and the doctrine of rewards and punishments had been elaborated into complex systems. Ample material existed for history, not only in monuments and temple inscriptions, but in detailed writings on papyrus. Egypt has left a wealth of records of this kind, unsurpassed by any nation, and very much of these belongs to the time before Moses; while, as Birch has truly said, the Egyptian historical texts are 'in most instances contemporaneous with the events they record and written and executed under public control.' There was also abundance of poetical and imaginative literature and treatises on medicine and other useful arts. At the court of Pharaoh correspondence was carried on with all parts of the civilized world in many languages and in various forms of writing, including that of Egypt itself, that of Chaldea, and probably also the alphabetical writing afterward used by the Hebrews, Phoenicians, and Greeks, but which seems to have originated at a very early period among the Mineans or Punites of South Arabia. Educations were carried on in institutions of various grades, from ordinary schools to universities. In the latter, we are told, were professors or 'mystery teachers' of astronomy, geography, mining, theology, history, and languages, as well as many of the higher technical arts."

According to a correspondent of the London Daily Chronicle, an exhibition of exceeding interest has just been opened at the Vienna Museum: "This consists of a collection of upward of 10,000 Egyptian papyrus documents, which were discovered at El Faiyûm and purchased by the Austrian Archduke Rainer several years ago. The collection is unique, and the documents, which are written in eleven different languages, have all been deciphered and arranged scientifically. They cover a period of 2,500 years and furnish remarkable evidence as to the culture and public and private life of the ancient Egyptians and other nations. They are also said to contain evidence that printing from type was known to the Egyptians as far back as the tenth century B.C. Other documents show that a flourishing trade in the manufacture of paper from linen rags existed six centuries before the process was known in Europe. Another interesting feature in the collection is a number of commercial letters, contracts, tax records, wills, novels, tailors' bills, and even love letters, dating from 1200 B.C.

"There are two documents in existence which sufficiently prove the wealth and civilization of Jerusalem in the time of Hezekiah (726 B.C.). The first contains evidence of wide commercial relations; the second gives indications of a considerable lapse of time since the first birth of Hebrew civilization. The first is the account given by Sennacherib of his unsuccessful siege of Jerusalem; the second is the celebrated Siloam inscription, the oldest monument of Hebrew literature still extant. In the face of these documents it is no longer possible to suppose that the Hebrews were merely rude tribes, which only attained to a knowledge of writing and to a national literature by adopting the civilization of their Assyrian and Babylonian captors. Hezekiah, we are told by Sennacherib, sent a tribute, including £15,000 of gold, 800 talents (£400,000) of silver, precious stones, a chain of ivory, elephants' hides and tusks, rare woods, etc. The mention of ivory is important. We know that Egyptian ivory objects have been found in Nineveh and in the oldest remains of Troy. It appears, therefore, that during, or more probably before, the time of Hezekiah, a trade with Egypt existed. We learn that Sargon took 27,280 prisoners from the city of Samaria in 772 B.C. This would make Jerusalem, which was a city certainly as important as Samaria, cover about 200 acres of ground, representing a population of at least 20,000 souls. The Siloam inscription has been placed by Dr. Taylor as late as the time of Manasseh; but if we accept the Old Testament account of the great waterworks of Hezekiah (2 Chron. 29:30), it seems more probable that the date should be earlier than 703 B.C." (Conder, Syrian Stone Lore, 116–17).

8 Providence

"God's works of providence are his most holy, wise, and powerful, preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions" (Westminster Larger Catechism 18). Preservation and government are the two functions in the eternal providence of God. They presuppose creation. Preservation is described in Heb. 1:3 as an "upholding." The Son of God "upholds all things by the word of his power." Nothing that is created ex nihilo is self-sustaining. Consequently, it must be sustained in being. It would not require a positive act of omnipotence, antithetic to that exerted in creation from nothing, in order to annihilate created existences. Simple cessation to uphold would result in annihilation. For to suppose that matter, for example, could persist in being after the withdrawal of God's preserving power, with such an intensity as to necessitate a direct act of omnipotence to annihilate it, would imply that matter has self-existence and self-continuance. But this is an attribute that is incommunicable to the creature. This is true of finite mind, as well as of matter. Created spiritual substance is not immortal because it has self-subsistence imparted to it by the Creator, but because he intends to uphold and sustain it in being forever:

When we speak of the soul as created naturally immortal, we mean that it is by divine pleasure created such a substance as not having in itself any composition or other particles of corruption will naturally or of itself continue forever, that is, will not by any natural decay or by any power of nature be dissolved or destroyed; but yet nevertheless depends continually upon God, who has power to destroy or annihilate it if he should think fit (Clarke, Letter to Dodwell). (supplement 3.8.1.)

Preservation is more than merely imparting to matter certain properties and placing it under certain invariable laws. This is the deistical view of providence. God is not immediately present nor does he operate directly, but only at a distance. This amounts to communicating self-subsistence to the creature. God so constitutes the creation that it can continue to exist and move by means of its own inherent properties and laws. But the elements and laws of matter are only another name for matter itself; another aspect or mode of matter. The deistical theory, consequently, implies that matter, after its creation, is self-sustaining and self-governing. But self-subsistence and self-sustenation are incommunicable properties. They can characterize only the Creator. Neither is preservation the immediate presence and operation of God, as the soul of the world. This is the pantheistic view of providence. According to this theory, God is the informing life, the plastic force in mind and matter. God is the only agent in this case; as he is the only substance, of which his life is the life. This allows no secondary substance and no second causes.

According to the Scriptures, preservation is the immediate operation of God as a distinct and different being upon, in, and with the creature as a different and distinct being and always in accordance with the nature of the creature. In the material world, God immediately works in and through material properties and laws. In the mental world, God immediately works in and through the properties and faculties of mind. Preservation never runs counter to creation. God does not violate in providence what he has established in creation. The Creator, if we may so say, adjusts and accommodates himself to his creature in his providential operation. "God," says Cardinal Toletus, "concurs with second causes in accordance with their nature. To work out his own most agreeable arrangement of everything, he concurs freely with free causes; with necessary causes, necessarily; with weak causes, weakly; and with powerful causes, powerfully." The best illustration of the mode in which God operates in providence is found in the action of the human soul upon the body. The soul is immediately present to and with the body, yet a different essence from it. The mental force that moves a muscle is not physical, but different in kind from physical force. The soul is not the mere animal vitality which inheres in the muscle and in the body generally. If it were, it would not be mental force. If the human soul moved the human body, not voluntarily, but in the same way that the vegetable life moves the atoms of the plant or the animal life moves the molecules of animal protoplasm, it would be only a plastic and informing force that would die with the plant or the animal. It would not be a distinct and different subject or substance from the body. The soul as an ego and a whole exists in every part of the body and operates immediately at every point of the body, yet as an entity other than the body and controlling it. It is present at every point where there is bodily sensation and works at every point where there is bodily motion. So, also, in the instance of God and the created universe, there are two beings of different substance and nature, one of which is immediately present with the other, directly operating in and upon it, upholding, and governing. The immediate operation of God in his providence is taught in Acts 17:28: "In him we live and move and have our being (kai esmen)." God preserves (a) the being, that is, the substance, both mental and material, of the creature; (b) the inherent properties and qualities of the substance given in creation; (c) the properties and qualities acquired by use, development, and habit.

Thus providential agency relates (a) to physical nature generally: "He causes grass to grow" (Ps. 104:14); "he causes vapors to ascend" (135:5–7; 147:8–15); "he removes the mountains and shakes the earth out of her place" (Job 9:5–9); "he gives rain from heaven and fruitful seasons" (Acts 14:17); (b) to the animal creation (Ps. 104:21–29; 147:9): "Not a sparrow falls to the ground without your father" (Matt. 6:26; 10:29); (c) to the events of human history (1 Chron. 16:31; Ps. 47:7; Prov. 21:1; Job 12:23; Isa. 10:12–15; Dan. 2:21); (d) to individual life (1 Sam. 2:6; Ps. 18:30; Prov. 16:9; Isa. 45:5; James 4:13–14); (e) to so-called fortuitous events (Exod. 21:13; Ps. 75:6–7): "Trouble does not spring out of the ground" (Job 5:6); "the lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord" (Prov. 16:33):

All nature is but art unknown to thee,

And chance direction which you cannot see.

—Pope

(f) to particulars as well as universals: "The hairs of your head are all numbered" (Matt. 10:29; 10:20); universal providence logically implies particular providence because the universal is composed of particulars and depends upon them more or less; moreover, in reference to the infinite being, great and small are alike; the pagan view of providence made it universal only: "The gods are concerned with weighty matters and ignore what is inconsequential" (Cicero, Concerning the Nature of the Gods 2.66); (g) to the free actions of men (Exod. 12:36; 1 Sam. 24:9–15; Prov. 16:1; 19:21; 20:24; Jer. 10:23; Phil. 2:13); and (h) to the sinful actions of men (2 Sam. 16:10; 24:1; Ps. 76:10; Rom. 11:32; Acts 4:27–28).

The second part of providence is government. This follows from creation and preservation. He who originates a substance or being from nothing and upholds it must have absolute control over it: "His kingdom rules over all" (Ps. 103:19). The government of God in the physical universe is administered by means of physical laws. A law of nature is the manner in which the material elements invariably act and react upon each other under the present arrangement of divine providence. The law of gravitation, for example, is the fact that matter, as man now knows it, attracts matter inversely as the square of the distance.

The following particulars are to be noticed in respect to all the laws of nature, in distinction from mental and moral laws. A law of nature is a positive statute as much so as the statute of circumcision or the law of the Sabbath. Physical laws have no a priori necessity. They might have been otherwise than they are had the Creator of them so determined. God could have originated from nonentity a kind of matter that should have attracted directly as the distance or inversely as the cube of the distance. He might have established the law of chemical affinity upon a different numerical basis from the present. Supposing certain gases to combine with others in the proportion of 1, 3, 5, 7, etc., God might have created instead of them, gases that combine with others in the proportions of 1, 2, 4, 6, etc. This follows from the fact that creation is ex nihilo and consequently is absolutely untrammeled by any preexisting substance which necessitates the qualities of the thing created. He who creates matter from nonentity has the most absolute and arbitrary power conceivable, in respect to the properties which matter shall possess. A demiurge who merely molds an existing hylē has no such option and freedom as this. He must take the properties of the hylē5 into consideration. But a Creator is not thus conditioned. Galileo, in his Dialogues on the Ptolemaic and Copernican Systems, says, through Simplicio: "It is not to be denied that the heavens may surpass in bigness the capacity of our imaginations nor that God might have created them a thousand times larger than they are" (Private Life of Galileo, 237). Whewell remarks that "some writers have treated the laws of motion as self-evident and necessarily flowing from the nature of our conceptions. We conceive that this is an erroneous view and that these laws are known to us to be what they are by experience only; that the laws of motion might, so far as we can discover, have been any others" (Astronomy and General Physics 2.2) (see p. 59).

It follows from this that the so-called invariableness of natural laws is relative, not absolute. They are invariable under the present constitution of matter and arrangement of the material system. Suppose another constitution and arrangement, and they would be different from what they are. And such a supposition is possible, unless we assume that he who creates something from nonentity is limited and conditioned by nonentity. And surely those who can conceive that there may be a world in which two and two do not make five can conceive of more than one constitution of matter and course of nature.

The government of God in the mental world is administered (a) mediately through the properties and laws of mind and (b) immediately by the direct operation of the Holy Spirit. Moral agents are governed and controlled by all the varieties of moral influence, such as circumstances, motives, instruction, persuasion, and example, and also by the personal efficiency of the Holy Spirit upon the heart and will.

SUPPLEMENT

3.8.1 (see p. 412). Taylor (Physical Theory of Another Life, chap. 18) affirms that all material motion is the effect ultimately of mental volition: "Motion in the natural universe in all cases originates from mind; or, in other words, is the effect of will, either the supreme will or the will of created minds. Motion is either constant and uniform, obeying what we call a law, or it is incidental and intermittent. The visible and palpable world then, according to this theory, is motion, constant and uniform, emanating from infinite centers and springing during every instant of its continuance from the creative energy. The instantaneous cessation of this energy, at any period, is therefore abstractly quite as easily conceived of as its continuance; and whether in the next instant it shall continue or shall cease; whether the material universe shall stand or vanish, is an alternative of which, irrespective of other reasons, the one member may be as easily taken as the other; just as the moving of the hand, or the not moving it, in the next moment, depends upon nothing but our volition. The annihilation of the solid spheres, the planets and the suns, that occupy the celestial spaces, would not, on this supposition, be an act of irresistible force, crushing that which resists compression or dissipating and reducing to an ether that which firmly coheres; but it would simply be the nonexertion in the next instant of a power which has been exerted in this instant; it would be, not a destruction, but a rest; not a crash and ruin, but a pause."

9 Miracles

The government of God is occasionally administered by means of miracles. The miracle is an extraordinary act of God. It does not differ from the ordinary course of nature because it requires a greater exertion of divine power, but because it requires a different exertion of it. To cause the sun to rise and to cause Lazarus to rise both alike demand omnipotence; but the manner in which omnipotence works in one instance is unlike the manner in the other. The possibility of the miracle rests upon the fact mentioned in Westminster Confession 5.3 that "the Creator is free to work without means, above means, and against means, at his pleasure."

Whenever the ordinary method by natural means is inadequate to accomplish the divine purpose in the government of the universe or any part of it, God employs the extraordinary method by miracle. The rule which Horace lays down for introducing the supernatural into poetry applies to its introduction into theology: "Nor should a god intervene unless a knotty problem worthy of such a liberator shall have occurred."

The miracle occurs only when there is an occasion requiring it. When, for example, it became necessary on account of its great wickedness to destroy the world of mankind more suddenly and swiftly than was possible by natural causes, God miraculously opened the fountains of the great deep, and the flood destroyed them all. The miraculous judgments recorded in the Old Testament were sent for the purpose of controlling and "governing human creatures and all their actions." The birth of Jesus Christ, the promised Redeemer of man, a God-man, was impossible by the method of ordinary generation; hence, the miraculous conception. In the future history of the world, certain events are to be brought about miraculously because they cannot be by ordinary physical laws. The resurrection of the bodies of all men is one of them. The sudden dissolution and reconstruction of this material world at the end of the redemptive economy (1 Cor. 15:24; Matt. 25:31–46) cannot be effected by the present slow and gradual operation of natural laws. There must, therefore, be a miraculous interference similar to that by which the world was first created and by which it was whelmed in the waters of the deluge.

The miracle, consequently, is to be expected under the government of an intelligent and wise God. Says Channing (Evidences of Revealed Religion):

To a man whose belief in God is strong and practical, a miracle will appear as possible as any other effect, as the most common event in life; and the argument against miracles drawn from the uniformity of nature will weigh with him, only as far as this uniformity is a pledge and proof of the Creator's disposition to accomplish his purposes by a fixed order or mode of operation. Now it is freely granted, that the Creator's regard or attachment to such an order may be inferred from the steadiness with which he observes it; and a strong presumption lies against any violation of it on slight occasions or for purposes to which the established laws of nature are adequate. But this is the utmost which the order of nature authorizes us to infer, respecting its author. It forms no presumption against miracles universally, in all imaginable cases; but may even furnish a presumption in their favor. We are never to forget that God's adherence to the order of the universe is not necessary and mechanical, but intelligent and voluntary. He adheres to it, not for its own sake or because it has a sacredness which compels him to respect it, but because it is most suited to accomplish his purposes. It is a means and not an end; and like all other means must give way when the end can best be promoted without it. It is the mark of a weak mind to make an idol of order and method; to cling to established forms of business when they clog, instead of advancing it. If, then, the great purposes of the universe can best be accomplished by departing from its established laws, these laws will undoubtedly be suspended; and though broken in the letter, they will be observed in their spirit, for the ends for which they were first instituted will be advanced by their suspension.

Miracles are not unnatural events; they are natural to God. The miracles of Christ wear no appearance of magic and artifice, like the tricks of a juggler. They are not whimsical and extravagant, like the miracles attributed to him in the apocryphal gospels or like the ecclesiastical miracles of the papal church. "A miracle," says Feltham (Resolves, 33), "when God pleases, is as easy to him as a natural cause. For it was at first by miracle that even that cause was natural. And all the miracles that we have heard of in the world are less a miracle than the world itself." Says Richter: "Miracles upon earth are nature in heaven."

Miracles are natural to a personal deity, but unnatural and impossible to an impersonal. All the arguments against them by Spinoza, Baur, and Strauss proceed upon the pantheistic assumption that the infinite is impersonal and that everything occurs through the operation of an impersonal system of natural law. But if the existence of a personal infinite is conceded, it would be strange and unnatural if there were never any extraordinary exertion of his omnipotence. Miracles are tokens of a person who can modify his plans and make new arrangements in space and time. They are the natural accompaniments of personality and free will. If a human person should never by the exercise of will enter upon a new course of action, but should pursue through his whole existence one unvarying tenor like an animal led by instinct or a machine propelled mechanically, we should doubt his personality. He would come under the suspicion of being only a brute or a machine. (supplement 3.9.1.)

Miracles, as Paley argues, are to be expected in connection with a revelation from God:

Hume states the case of miracles to be a contest of opposite improbabilities; that is to say, a question whether it be more improbable that the miracle should be true or the testimony false. But in describing the improbability of miracles, he suppresses all those circumstances of extenuation which result from our knowledge of the existence, power, and disposition of the deity. As Hume has represented the question, miracles are alike incredible to him who is previously assured of the constant agency of a divine being and to him who believes that no such being exists This, surely, cannot be a correct statement. (Paley, Evidences, preface)

The laws of nature are being continually modified in their action by the interference of the human will. A stone falls to the ground in a perpendicular line by the operation of gravity. Taking this material force, only, into view, there is and can be no variation from this. But a stone can be made to fall in a curve by human volition. In this case, there is still the operation of the force of gravity, but with this an accompanying voluntary force that deflects the stone from the perpendicular. If there were only a single solitary instance of such an alteration of nature by will, it would be regarded as supernatural.

The laws of nature are also being continually modified in their action by the intervention of the divine will. The striking differences in the seasons are examples. The winter of 1885 is remarkably different from that of 1884. But there is the same system of nature and of natural laws, and these in themselves considered, apart from any influence of a personal will, are invariable in their operation. On the hypothesis that there is no Creator and no God, one physical year should be a facsimile of another. Why this difference between two winters, unless an element of personal will be combined with that of impersonal laws? Physical properties and laws in themselves are invariable in their operation. The occasional variety, therefore, that is witnessed in the general uniformity of natural phenomena implies divine volition modifying the general system.

Consider as another example of the modifying influence of the divine will upon natural properties and laws the difference in the longevity of individuals. A person of feeble constitution lives to old age; one with a vigorous constitution dies in early manhood. If nothing but physical properties and laws determines the event, the former person must necessarily die before the latter. But if the personal will of the author of nature can modify the action of nature, then the former may outlive the latter. The race will not be to the swift nor the battle to the strong.

Physical nature is full of examples that go to prove the presence of a personal will in impersonal nature and matter. Cut off a snail's head, and it will grow out again; but cut off a crab's head, and it will not grow out again. Cut off a crab's claw, and it will grow out again; cut off a dog's leg, and it will not grow out again (Roget, Physiology 2.587). Why this difference in the operation of the very same properties and laws of animal substance? The properties and laws themselves will not account for it. The modifying power of a will above them explains it. Molecules of matter in atmospheric air are very elastic. If pressure is removed, they recede from each other indefinitely. Air in an air pump becomes extremely rarefied. Molecules of matter in a fluid are less elastic. If pressure is removed, they recede from each other, but much less than in the case of air or a gas. Molecules of matter in a solid are still less elastic than those of a fluid. The removal of pressure makes very little change (Herschel, Preliminary Discourse §§239–43). Why should molecules of matter have these different degrees of elasticity, but from the will which created them from nothing?

The reality of miracles implies the superiority of mind to matter. The denial of a power above material laws and phenomena is materialism. It is equivalent to asserting that matter controls mind. He who denies the supernatural affirms that nature and matter are the ultimate basis of the universe. The conflict consequently between the believer and the disbeliever is a conflict between the spiritual and the material, the intellectual and the sensual. It is therefore a conflict between civilization and barbarism.

The position of the materialist is that matter moves mind and that material motion explains mental phenomena. This is incompatible with the miracle. The position of the spiritualist is that mind moves matter and that mental motion or volition explains material phenomena. This is compatible with the miracle. That the latter position is the truth is proved by the following facts: (1) Thinking tires the body, but digging does not tire the mind; (2) feeling in the mind causes the molecular change in the brain, not vice versa; shame causes the blush, not the blush shame; (3) the human tear in its purely physical or healthy state is insipid; in its morbid state, as affected by grief, is salt, pungent, and corrosive; (4) the saliva when affected by gluttonous appetite, that is, by a mental desire, is greatly increased in quantity, compared with the secretion from mere hunger; and (5) teasing bees in a hive generates heat in the swarm (Kirby and Spence, Entomology 2.214). Bees have adaptive intelligence, and the irritation of this affects their material organism. (supplement 3.9.2.)

The assertion that the miracle is impossible proceeds upon the hypothesis that nothing can happen but what is now happening. The present is the norm for all the past and all the future. The local is the rule for universal space. The skeptic assumes that the phenomena which he now witnesses are the only phenomena that are possible. This implies that his experience is the only criterion. It not only makes man the measure of all things, but a class of men. For the experience of each a great majority of mankind does not constitute universal experience. There is nothing in the structure of the human intellect that supports this assumption. On the contrary, the mind repels the proposition that the experience of certain generations of men is an infallible of all that is possible in all time and throughout the vast universe of being:

All reasoning from analogy or similitude is from the habitual association of ideas and consequently can amount to no more than this: That the thing appears so to us because it always has appeared so and we know of no instance to the contrary. I have seen the sun set tonight and conclude that it will rise again tomorrow; because my own experience and the tradition received from others have taught me to associate the idea of its rising again, after a certain number of hours, with that of its setting; and habit has rendered these ideas inseparable. But, nevertheless, I can give no demonstrative reason from the nature of things why it should rise again; or why the Creator and Governor of the universe may not launch it, as a comet, to wander forever through the boundless vacuity of space. I only know that during the short period and within the narrow sphere which bound my knowledge of this universe, he has displayed no such irregular exertions of power: but still that period and that sphere shrink into nothing in the scale of eternity and infinity; and what can man know of the laws of God or nature that can enable him to prescribe rules for omnipotence? (Knight, On Taste 2.3)

The miracle is a suspension of a law of nature in a particular instance. Hume defines the miracle to be "a violation of the laws of nature," "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the deity" (Essay on Miracles, 1). This is incorrect. When our Lord raised Lazarus from the dead, he merely suspended in that particular instance, and in that only, the operation of the chemical action by which putrefaction goes on. He did not violate the law. This would have required that he should cause the same chemical action that was putrefying the flesh to stop the putrefaction. Christ in working this miracle did not undo or revolutionize any law of nature. The general course of nature was undisturbed. Another corpse lying beside that of Lazarus, like all the other corpses in the world, would have continued to putrefy by chemical decomposition.

But the mere suspension of a law of nature in a particular instance is not sufficient to account for the miracle. Christ, by virtue of the control which he had over natural law, might have arrested the process of decomposition, and yet Lazarus would not have come forth from the tomb, any more than he would if he had been embalmed or petrified. Over and above this power to suspend existing natural laws, there must have been the exertion of a positively reanimating power. Christ must have been able to create or originate physical life itself. Lazarus was made alive from the dead by the exertion of an energy of the same kind by which the first man was made on the sixth day, that is, by the operation of mere mind itself, apart from matter and its laws.

The explanation that a miracle is the effect of an unknown law of nature higher than the ordinary law is untenable because …

1. It supposes two systems of nature that are contrary to each other. If the iron ax of Elijah's pupil was made to swim, not by the suspension of the law of gravity in that instance but by the operation of another natural law, it is plain that this latter law is exactly contrary to the law of gravity. But this would imply two systems of nature: one in which gravity of matter is the law and one in which levity of matter is the law. This destroys the unity of the material universe.

2. The miracle could not be accounted for upon this theory except by supposing that one of these two systems of nature is superior to the other. If the two systems were equal in force, the result of their collision would be an equilibrium, and nothing would occur. But if one is superior to the other, the latter must be overcome and disappear. The higher system would annihilate the lower, and finally all nature would become miraculous (so-called). If it be said that the two systems are kept apart and do not come into collision, that each system is a distinct circle having its own center, then it is impossible that a miracle could happen at all. Everything in the circle where gravity is the natural law must occur accordingly. The iron must sink in every instance. And everything in the circle when a force contrary to gravity prevails must occur accordingly. The iron must swim in every instance. If it be said that there is no system or circle where such a higher natural law prevails, but that this force is originated in each instance for the particular purpose of working a miracle, there are these objections: First, it is improper to denominate a few exceptional instances a "law." Second, it is unnatural to suppose that the Creator would call a new material force into being to bring about what he might accomplish by the simple suspension of an existing force and by the exertion of a single volition of his own.

3. A miracle, by the very definition, must be exceptional, solitary, and sporadic. It is the effect of a single volition. Miracles are disconnected from one another. They do not evolve out of each other, but are wrought one at a time. Consequently, a miracle cannot occur by a law because this implies a connected series and an endless series so long as the law remains in existence. Miracles would be as numerous and constant if there were a law of miracles as the phenomena of gravitation. When God made the hand of Moses leprous (Exod. 4:6–7), he did it by an omnipotent volition. This, from the human point of view, was a single separate act of the divine will. And when he healed the leprosy, this was a second volition. Neither miracle was effected by a force operating continuously like a law of nature. (supplement 3.9.3.)

The argument of Hume against the credibility of miracles begins with asserting that a miracle "contradicts uniform experience." This is begging the point. The question between the disputants is this: Does the miracle contradict the uniform experience of mankind? By the word uniform Hume must mean "universal"; otherwise his argument would fail. A single experience of a miracle would be as good as a thousand in logical respects. Mill so understood his use of the term. He states it thus: "Whatever is contrary to a complete induction is incredible." But a complete induction would embrace all the particular facts. If one were omitted, it would be incomplete. "Uniform experience," consequently, would involve an experience covering all the phenomena upon earth from the beginning of human history. It must be more than the experience of the majority of men. It must include that of the minority. In this case as in politics, the minority have rights which the majority are bound to respect. The miracle cannot be decided by a majority vote. That a miracle contradicts the experience of all men in the eighteenth century is not sufficient to prove that it contradicted the experience of all men in the first century. The induction of particulars must be absolutely complete in order to evince incredibility. It is not enough to show merely that the miracle contradicts the experience of the disbeliever and of his contemporaries.

There is nothing in physical science that justifies the position that there never has been and never will be a miraculous event in all space and all time because there is nothing in physical science to prove the necessary and eternal immutability of nature. That things have been as they are for a million years does not prove that they will be the same for a billion years and forevermore. All that physics teaches is that there is nothing in nature and natural forces that can work a miracle. This, the theologian is as ready to say as anyone. But by what right is it inferred that because in matter and nature there is no power able to raise the dead there is no power anywhere? Physics has examined only physical nature. It may affirm with reference to this, but not beyond this. And to deny that there is anything beyond this is begging the question. To infer respecting the supernatural power of God and the probability of its exercise from the experience of only a portion of mankind—even though it be the greater portion thus far—is unwarranted. In the future, the experience of the greater part of mankind or of the entire whole may be reversed, for all that the objector knows. It is a general law that substances contract by cold. Water contracts by cold down to 39° Fahrenheit; at which point it begins to expand, and on reaching 32° it freezes—which is a great expansion. This law is reversed, Hume might say "violated," at 39°. Suppose that the whole human race had never been in a climate below 40° and had known nothing of a chemistry by which artificial cold can be produced. If they should infer a so-called necessary law of nature from "experience," in this instance, as Hume has in that of miracles, they would assert it to be impossible that water should expand by cold. And the testimony of fifty witnesses living eighteen centuries before Hume's day and generation to the effect that they had seen the law of contraction by cold actually reversed would be liable to the same species of objection as that which now seeks to invalidate the testimony of the twelve apostles and others that a man was raised from the dead eighteen centuries ago. It might be said that the fifty witnesses of the expansion of a substance by cold were more likely to be deceived than that a phenomenon so contrary to the present universal experience of mankind should have occurred. Locke (Understanding 4.15) relates that "a Dutch ambassador entertaining the king of Siam with the particularities of Holland which he was inquisitive after, among other things told him that the water in his country would sometimes in cold weather be so hard that men walked upon it and that it would bear an elephant if he were there; to which the king replied, 'Hitherto, I have believed the strange things you have told me, because I look upon you as a sober, fair man, but now I am sure you lie.' " (supplement 3.9.4.)

Hume concedes the possibility, that is, the conceivability of a miracle (Inquiry, 4): "The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible." But he denies the demonstrability of a miracle. In order to establish this denial, he defines a miracle so as to exclude all testimony to it. His definition of a miracle is that it is an event that never has been seen by an eyewitness. His language is as follows: "It is a miracle that a dead man should come to life because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against any miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation" (Inquiry §10). That is to say, if an event was once an object of the senses, this takes it out of the category of the miraculous; for a miracle, by definition, is something that "never has been observed," never was the object of the senses. It is impossible, consequently, to prove a miracle; for the proof of the miracle would be the destruction of the miracle. If the event was seen, it was not miraculous. The sophism in this argument of Hume is so patent that it is strange that it should have acquired so much reputation as it has. The point in dispute, namely, whether a miracle has ever been an object of the senses, is settled in favor of the skeptic by this definition of a miracle.

There are two observations to be made respecting Hume's position that a miracle is possible but undemonstrable. (1) The admission that a miracle is possible amounts to nothing if a miracle is incapable of being proved. A thing that is possible but indemonstrable is practically equivalent to an impossibility. (2) It is logically inconsistent to assert the possibility and deny the demonstrability of an event. Anything that is conceivably possible is conceivably demonstrable. If there is nothing in the nature of an event to prevent our conceiving that it might happen, there is nothing in its nature to prevent our conceiving that it might be observed to happen. If there be no absurdity in supposing that an event might occur, there is certainly none in supposing that it has occurred; and if it has occurred, there is no absurdity in supposing that it has been seen.

The miracle is a part of a great whole which is supernatural, namely, the person of the Redeemer and the work of redemption. If there is no incarnation and no redemption, there is no need of the miracle. But if there is, then the miracle is necessary and natural. Hence the person of Christ, his incarnation and resurrection, is the real battleground. The Old Testament miracles are connected with the Jehovah-Angel or the redeeming God. Those of the New Testament are connected with the Jehovah-Logos or Jesus Christ. Here is the point from which both faith and unbelief take their departure. He who believes that God incarnate has appeared on earth to save man from sin will have no difficulty with the miracle. He who disbelieves this cannot accept it. It is the first step that costs. If the human mind does not stumble over that divine-human person who is "set for the fall and rising again of many," it will not stumble over the supernaturalism that is naturally associated with him.

SUPPLEMENTS

3.9.1 (see p. 417). The following fatalistic definitions of Spinoza follow logically from his postulate that God is impersonal and of one substance with the universe. They also exhibit his abuse of the terms of theism and of Scripture. God, decrees, election, and miracles are words which he continually uses, but in a wholly different signification from the true one. No writer so "palters with us in a double sense." "By the help of God, I mean the fixed and unchangeable order of nature, or the chain of natural events; for I have said before, and shown elsewhere, that the universal laws of nature, according to which all things exist and are determined, are only another name for the decrees of God, which always involve eternal truth and necessity. So that to say that everything happens according to natural law and to say that everything is ordained by the decree and ordinance of God is the same thing. Now, since the power in nature is identical with the power of God, by which alone all things happen and are determined, it follows that whatsoever man, as a part of nature, provides himself with to aid and preserve his existence, or whatsoever nature affords him without his help is given him solely by divine power, acting either through human nature or external circumstances. So whatever human nature can furnish itself with by its own efforts to preserve its existence may fitly be called the inward aid of God, whereas, whatever else accrues to man's profit from outward causes may be called the external aid of God" (Theologico-Political Treatise, chap. 3). "We can now easily understand what is meant by the election of God. For since no one can do anything save by the predetermined order of nature, that is, by God's eternal ordinance and decree, it follows that no one can choose a plan of life for himself or accomplish any work save by God's vocation choosing him for the work, or the plan of life in question, rather than any other person" (Theologico-Political Treatise, chap. 3). "By fortune or chance I mean the ordinance of God, insofar as it directs human life through external and unexpected means" (Theologico-Political Treatise, chap. 3). "Miracles require causes and follow not from some mysterious royal power which the masses attribute to God, but from divine rule and decree, that is, as we have shown from Scripture itself, from the laws and order of nature. Miracles were natural occurrences and must therefore be so explained as to appear neither new (in the words of Solomon in Eccles. 1:9) nor contrary to nature, but as far as possible in complete agreement with ordinary events. We may be absolutely certain that every event which is truly described in Scripture necessarily happened, like everything else, according to natural laws; and if anything is there set down which can be proved in set terms to contravene the order of nature or not to be deducible therefrom, we must believe it to have been foisted into the sacred writings by irreligious hands. Scripture does not explain things by their secondary causes, but only narrates them in the order and the style which has most power to move men, and especially uneducated men, to devotion, and therefore it speaks inaccurately of God and of events, seeing that its object is not to convince the reason, but to attract and lay hold of the imagination. If the Bible were to describe the destruction of an empire in the style of political historians, the masses would remain unstirred, whereas the contrary is the case when it adopts the method of poetic description and refers all things immediately to God" (Theologico-Political Treatise, chap. 6).

3.9.2 (see p. 419). A miracle necessarily implies the difference in kind between mind and matter. He who denies this difference cannot believe in miracles. For a miracle is an effect of mind exerted upon matter with nothing intervening, of a spiritual agent operating directly upon a material object. When matter operates upon matter in accordance with material laws there is no miracle; but when will operates upon material and physical nature, not in accordance with material and physical laws but above them and without them by pure self-decision, this is of the essence of the miraculous. The operation of a man's will upon his own body furnishes an analog to the miracle. When a volition of the will, which is spirit not matter, moves a muscle and thereby a limb of the body, this is finite mind moving matter immediately, without the instrumentality of anything material or physical. A person does not raise his hand by employing the law of gravitation or any other material law, but by a pure volition. This immediate action of the human will upon the muscles of the body is so common that its supermaterial, and in this sense supernatural, character is overlooked. But if a person by the exertion of a volition should move immediately without the use of any means the muscle of another person, this would be considered miraculous. Yet both cases are alike in regard to the point of the direct action of mind upon matter without intervening media.

Locke (Understanding 4.10) calls attention to the inexplicableness and wonderful nature of the voluntary action of mind upon matter and to the impossibility of explaining it by the operation of material and physical properties: "We cannot conceive how anything but impulse of body can move body; and yet that is not a reason sufficient to make us deny it to be possible, against the constant experience we have of it in ourselves in all our voluntary motions, which are produced in us only by the free action or thought of our own minds and are not, nor can be the effects of the impulse or determination of the motion of blind matter in or upon our bodies; for then it could not be in our power or choice to alter it. For example, my right hand writes, while my left hand is still. What causes rest in one and motion in the other? Nothing but my will, a thought in my mind. If my thought changes, the right hand rests, and the left hand moves. This is matter of fact, which cannot be denied. Explain this and make it intelligible, and then the next step will be to understand creation. For the giving a new determination to the motion of the animal spirits, which some make use of to explain voluntary motion, clears not the difficulty one jot; for to alter the determination of motion in this case is no easier nor less than to give motion itself; since the new determination given to the animal spirits must be either immediately by thought, or by some other body put in their way by thought which was not in their way before, and so must owe its motion to thought; either of which suppositions leaves voluntary motion an unintelligible as it was before."

Coleridge (Works 5.543) reasons in a similar manner: "A phenomenon in no connection with any other phenomenon as its immediate cause is a miracle; and what is believed to have been such is miraculous for the person so believing. When it is strange or surprising, that is, without any analogy in our former experience, it is called a miracle. The kind defines the thing; the circumstances the word. To stretch out my arm is a miracle, unless the materialists should be more cunning than they have proved themselves hitherto. To reanimate a dead man by an act of will, no intermediate agency being employed, not only is, but is called, a miracle. A Scripture miracle, therefore, must be so defined as to express not only its miraculous essence, but likewise the condition of its appearing miraculous; add therefore to the preceding, the words beyond all prior experience. A miracle might be defined, likewise, as an effect not having its cause in anything congenerous. That thought calls up thought is no more miraculous than that a billiard ball moves a billiard ball; but that a billiard ball should excite a thought, that is, be perceived, is a miracle, and were it solitary and strange would be called such. For suppose the converse, that a thought should produce a billiard ball! Yet where is the difference, but that the one is a common experience, the other never yet experienced? It is not strictly accurate to affirm that everything would appear a miracle if we were wholly uninfluenced by custom and saw things as they are; for then the very ground of all miracles would probably vanish, namely, the heterogeneity of spirit and matter. As objective, the essence of a miracle consists in the heterogeneity of the consequent and its causative antecedent; as subjective, it consists in the assumption of the heterogeneity. Add the wonder and surprise excited when the consequent is out of the course of experience, and we know the popular sense and ordinary use of the word."

Of the same tenor is the following from Carlyle (Sartor resartus 3.8): "Were it not miraculous could I stretch forth my hand and clutch the sun? Yet you see me daily stretch forth my hand and therewith clutch many a thing and swing it hither and thither. Are you a grown baby, then, to fancy that the miracle lies in miles of distance or in pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see that the true inexplicable God-revealing miracle lies in this, that I can stretch forth my hand at all; that I have free force to clutch aught therewith?"

That the miracle is wrought by an exertion of personal will that is independent of the usual means or instruments that are employed in nonmiraculous events is taught by Shakespeare:

Miracles are ceased,

And therefore we must admit the means

How things are perfected.

—Henry V 1.1

The essence of the miracle is creation ex nihilo. Whoever holds this doctrine holds that of miracles generally; for every miracle is an exercise of this kind of power. In every one of the biblical miracles there is an element of creation from nonentity by pure will without the use of existing materials or instruments. This element is greater in some miracles than in others, but it is in them all. When Christ multiplied the loaves, there was some existing material to being with; but the addition to them was origination of bread from nothing. The "five loaves" could not become a mass of bread sufficient for "five thousand men besides women and children" by mere evolution. But when Christ raised Lazarus from the dead, there was no existing life to which life was added by an act of will. Here there was no existing element upon which the miraculous power joined. This was a higher grade of miracle than the former. Christ teaches that the power to work a miracle originally, as he did, and not by delegated power, is proof conclusive of omnipotent deity, like the power to forgive sin (Mark 2:6–11).

3.9.3 (see p. 421). To explain a miracle as the effect of a higher natural law is to make the miracle natural, not supernatural. A higher law of nature is as much within the sphere of nature as a lower law is. Says the writer of "Miracles" in Penny Cyclopaedia: "If the raising of Lazarus from the dead was an event which took place by virtue of a preestablished law or course of events, in which this one event, to us an apparent exception, was in fact a necessary consequence of this preestablished law or course of events, such event is not a miracle nor such an event as is generally understood by the word miracle. Those then who would bring miracles within what are called the laws of nature mistake the question. If the event of raising of Lazarus and all the attendant circumstances took place in the course of things agreeably to a law unknown by us, such an event is as much an event consistent with what are called the laws of nature as the event of any man's death; but in that case it is not the kind of event which the New Testament presents to us." The miracle of the woman with the issue of blood is a good illustration of this. Had the touch of Christ wrought the cure naturally and mechanically apart from his will in the particular instance and apart also from the faith of the person to be healed, which was also an act of will though not an efficient in producing the miracle like the will of Christ, every touch of Christ in a crowd would have healed a disease in a diseased person. The operation of the "virtue" in this case would have been like that of gravity and chemical affinity. But it was not. Our Lord evidently knew who the woman was and only asked the question "who touched me?" in order that she might avow her faith. The "virtue went out" of him, in this instance, because he so willed, and not by a uniform material law of operation: "A plain farmer who was teaching a Sabbath school in a country schoolhouse was asked to define a miracle. He was thoughtful for a moment and then replied: 'A miracle is something which there is no law to produce, no law to govern, but is the direct act of God himself.' "

3.9.4 (see p. 422). Hume rests his argument very much upon the improbability of a miracle. But in a question that depends upon the testimony of eyewitnesses this feature is of secondary importance. A particular murder by a particular person may, on the face of it, seem highly improbable, but if actual witnesses testify to its commission by such a person and there is no reason to doubt their veracity, the improbability in the case does not nullify the testimony. Witnesses in a court are believed or disbelieved, not because of the probability or improbability of the fact to which they testify but because of the soundness of their senses and their honesty.

It is too generally forgotten in discussing the argument for miracles that there is no rebutting testimony against them to contradict or weaken the testimony of the Jewish and Christian eyewitnesses. Not a single person of the generation contemporary with the apostles testifies that he was present when the alleged miracles were wrought and that he did not see them. In a court trial, if the testimony is all in one way and not a single witness appears to contradict, it is considered to make the case highly certain. The denial of miracles is not supported by any countertestimony of persons living at the time. It is merely the verbal denial of persons living in later generations, who offer no testimony of eyewitnesses to support their denial. In the eighteenth century Hume asserts that no miracles were wrought in the first century, but brings forward no witnesses from the first century who were present at the crucifixion of Christ and testify that they saw no darkness over the whole land, that there was no earthquake, no resurrection of dead men, and no rending of the temple veil. Such rebutting testimony as this from persons on the ground at the time of the crucifixion would be a strong argument against miracles, compared with the weak argument from the inference that because miracles are not wrought now and have not been for centuries they never were—which is the substance of Hume's argument.

That there should not be much testimony to the truths and facts of the Old Testament from profane or secular history is to be expected. The history of Israel does not make a part of secular history, like that of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. It is a lesser circle by itself within the great circle of universal history. Being founded upon a supernatural revelation, it is not in the common stream of merely natural events and therefore is not known to the common historian and is not noticed by him. It has its own special history, recorded by its own prophets and contained in its own documents. The same remark holds true of Christianity and the life of its founder. This is the reason why there are so few references to Christ in contemporary historians. At the same time it should be observed that there are many events and things in secular history that are not spoken of by secular writers. The magnificent temples at Paestum, for example, which are among the most remarkable structures of antiquity, are not alluded to by an classical author.

Part 4

Anthropology

1 Man's Creation

Preliminary Considerations

Anthropology (anthrōpou logos) includes the topics that relate to man as created and holy and as apostate and sinful. It excludes those relating to man as regenerate and sanctified because these belong to redemption, which is a special provision not contained in creation. Man's endowment by creation provided for his actual holiness and his possible apostasy, but not for his recovery from apostasy. Anthropology comprises only what man is and becomes under the ordinary arrangements of the Creator: what he is by creation and what he makes himself by self-determination. Man's creation, primitive state, probation, apostasy, original sin, and its transmission are anthropological topics. Anthropology is principally concerned with the doctrine of sin, not because man is ideally and originally a sinner, but because he remained holy but a short time, and consequently his history, apart from redemption, is that of moral evil and its development.

Respecting man's creation, Westminster Confession 4.2 teaches that "God created man male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls." The first part of this statement is supported by Gen. 1:27: "Male and female created he them." The second part is supported by 1:26: "God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness"; by 2:7: "God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul"; by Eccles. 12:7: "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it"; and by Matt. 10:28: "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."

In this statement, two particulars are to be marked. First, that man is bisexual: "God created man male and female." This implies that the idea of man is incomplete if either the male or the female be considered by itself in isolation from the other. The two together constitute the human species. A solitary male or female individual would not be the species man nor include it nor propagate it. In Milton's phrase: "Two great sexes animate the world."

The angels are sexless. Like man, they were created "with reasonable and immortal souls," but unlike him, they were not "created male and female": "They neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God" (Matt. 22:30). Angels being sexless are not a race or species of creatures. They were created one by one, as distinct and separate individuals. This is proved by the fact that they do not have a common character and history; some remain holy and some lapse into sin.

Second, that the body is of a different nature and substance from the soul: "God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul" (nepeš ḥayyâ), a breath or soul of life (Gen. 2:7). According to this statement, man is composed of a material part resulting from the vivification of the dust of the ground by creative energy and of an immaterial part resulting from the spiration or inbreathing of God. The Creator first enlivens inorganic matter into a body and then creates a rational spirit which he infuses into it. The same difference between body and soul is taught in Eccles. 12:7: The "dust" returns to the earth, and the "spirit" returns to God. Christ "commends his spirit into God's hands" and "and gave up the spirit" (Luke 23:46). Stephen said, "Lord Jesus receive my spirit" (Acts 7:59). "Jacob gathered up his feet into the bed and yielded up the ghost" (Gen. 49:33). Job exclaims, "O that I had given up the ghost" (Job 10:18). "The hope of the wicked shall be as the giving up of the ghost" (11:20). "She has given up the ghost" (Jer. 15:9).

In Gen. 1:20 God says, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life" (see also 1:24). The irrational animal is here denominated a "soul of life" as man is; but it is not added, as in the case of man, that God "breathed" the "soul of life" into him. On the contrary, the origin of animals is associated with the material world alone. When God creates man, he addresses himself: "Let us make man in our image" (1:26). But when he creates animals, he addresses the inanimate world: "Let the waters bring forth the moving creature" (1:20); "let the earth bring forth the living creature" (1:24). The "soul of life" in the instance of the animal is only the animal soul, which is physical and material in its nature, and perishes with the body of which it is the vital principle. The "soul of life" in the instance of the man is a higher principle, the rational soul, which was inbreathed by the Creator and made in his image. Hence it is said in Eccles. 3:21 that "the spirit (rûaḥ) of man goes upward," and "the spirit (rûaḥ) of the beast goes downward to the earth."

Theories of the Mode of Man's Creation

Three theories have been formed of the mode of man's creation: (1) preexistence, (2) traducianism, and (3) creationism.

Preexistence teaches that all human souls were created in the beginning of creation and before the creation of Adam. Each individual human soul existed in an antemundane state and is united with a human body by ordinary generation. This theory found some support in Plato's speculations respecting intuitive knowledge as the relics of a preexistent state of the soul. Some of the Jewish rabbinic schools adopted it, and Origen endeavored, unsuccessfully, to give it currency in the Christian church. Müller, in his work entitled Sin, has revived it in a modified form. He assumes, not an antetemporal but a supratemporal state, in which the soul existed and the origin of sin occurred. The fall of man was not in a time before time, but is timeless. This is virtually the same as Kant's conception of sin as a noumenon or thing in itself, which is always timeless and spaceless, in distinction from a phenomenon, which always occurs in space and time. Philippi (Doctrine 3.96) contends that Müller's view is virtually that of preexistence. The propagation of the body still leaves the ego preexistent.

Preexistence confines the idea of species to the body. As this is propagated, it is derived out of a common physical nature. The body, consequently, cannot be older than that physical human nature which was created on the sixth day. The spirit, on the other hand, was created prior to the sixth day. The human spirit is purely individual, like that of an angel. (supplement 4.1.1.)

Traducianism applies the idea of species to both body and soul. Upon the sixth day, God created two human individuals, one male and one female, and in them also created the specific psychico-physical nature from which all the subsequent individuals of the human family are procreated both psychically and physically. Hase (Hutterus redivivus §79) represents this theory as having been adopted by Tertullian, Augustine, and the elder Protestant divines, in the interest of the stricter theory of original sin. Hagenbach (§§55, 106) says that Tertullian was an earnest advocate of traducianism; that Augustine and Gregory the Great express themselves doubtfully and "with reserve respecting creationism"; and that "traducianism was professed not only by heterodox writers like Apollinaris, but by some orthodox theologians like Gregory of Nyssa." The writer in the Middle Ages who maintains traducianism with most decision is Bishop Odo of Cambray. His treatise entitled Original Sin has received little attention even from the historians of doctrine, though it is marked by great profundity and acumen.

Neander (1.615) describes the traducianism of Tertullian in the following terms:

It was his opinion, that our first parent bore within him the undeveloped germ of all mankind; that the soul of the first man was the fountain head of all human souls, and that all varieties of individual human nature are but different modifications of that one spiritual substance. Hence the whole nature became corrupted in the original father of the race, and sinfulness is propagated at the same time with souls. Although this mode of apprehending the matter, in Tertullian, is connected with his sensuous habits of conception, yet this is by no means a necessary connection.

This last remark of Neander is important. Bellarmine claims Augustine as a creationist. Melanchthon and Klee reckon him among traducianists. Gangauf says that he was undecided. Delitzsch (Biblical Psychology §7) asserts that he was wrestling with the subject all his life. Luther, according to Delitzsch, was at first inclined to traducianism, being urged by Bugenhagen, but afterward distinguished the creation and infusion of the soul into the body as the second conception, from the first bodily conception. Smith (Theology, 168) asserts that "traducianism, on the whole, has been the most widely spread theory." (supplement 4.1.2.)

Turretin (9.12.6) remarks as follows respecting the traducian view:

Some are of opinion that the difficulties pertaining to the propagation of original sin are best resolved by the doctrine of the propagation of the soul (animae traducem); a view held by not a few of the fathers and to which Augustine frequently seems to incline. And there is no doubt that by this theory all the difficulty seems to be removed; but since it does not accord with Scripture or with sound reason and is exposed to great difficulties, we do not think that recourse should be had to it.

Maresius (De Marets), a Calvinistic theologian whose opinions had great weight, speaks as follows respecting traducianism:

Although Augustine seems sometimes to have been undecided (fluctuasse aliquando) respecting the origin of the soul; whether it is by immediate creation or by propagation; he is fixed in the opinion that original sin cannot be transmitted otherwise than by propagation. And he is far more inclined (longe pronior) to the last mentioned doctrine, nay, to speak truly, he constantly held it (constanter retinuit), in order to save the justice of God; because it is difficult to show the justice of infusing a soul newly created and destitute of sin and having no guilt of its own into a vitiated body, by whose concupiscence and lust it is stained and burdened, is exposed to many and great evils in this life, and condemned to everlasting punishment hereafter (Augustine, Letter 28.137; Concerning the Soul; and Jansenius, Concerning the State of Nature 1.15). This was the opinion of Apollinaris and of nearly all the Western divines in Jerome's day and is defended by Marnixius, Sohnius, and Combachius, truly great divines of our communion; to which, if this were the place to lay down the statements, I should not be much disinclined (valde alienus). (Maresius, Elenctic Theology, controversy 11)

Charnock (Discourse 1), after remarking that wisdom and folly, virtue and vice, and other accidents of the soul, are not propagated, adds: "I do not dispute whether the soul were generated or not. Suppose the substance of it was generated by the parents, yet those more excellent qualities were not the result of them," that is, of the parents. Hooker (Ecclesiastical Polity 2.7), also, speaks doubtfully: "Of some things, we may very well retain an opinion that they are probable and not unlikely to be true, as when we hold that men have their souls rather by creation, than propagation." (supplement 4.1.3.)

Creationism confines the idea of species to the body. In this respect, it agrees with the theory of preexistence, the difference relating only to the time when the soul is created. Creationism and preexistence both alike maintain that the human soul is individual only and never had a race-existence in Adam. The creationist holds that God on the sixth day created two human individuals, one male and one female, and in them also created the specific physical nature from which the bodies of all the subsequent individuals were procreated, the soul in each instance being a new creation ex nihilo and infused into the propagated body.

Hase (Hutterus redivivus, 79) represents this view as having been favored by Aristotle and adopted by Ambrose, Jerome, Pelagius, Bellarmine, and Calixtus. Hagenbach (§106) mentions as advocates of creationism Lactantius, Hilary, and Jerome and remarks (§173) that this theory gained gradually upon traducianism in the Middle Ages. John of Damascus, Anselm, and Aquinas were creationists. Heppe (Reformed Dogmatics, 12) says that the Lutheran theologians almost without exception adopted traducianism, while the Reformed divines with very few exceptions maintained creationism. Creationism has been the most common view during the last two centuries.

The choice must be made between traducianism and creationism, since the opinion that man as to his soul existed before Adam has no support from revelation. The Bible plainly teaches that Adam was the first man; and that all finite spirits existing before him were angels.

The question between the traducianist and the creationist is this: When God created the first two human individuals, Adam and Eve, did he create in and with them the invisible substance of all the succeeding generations of men, both as to the soul and body or only as to the body? Was the human nature that was created in Adam and Eve simple or complex? Was it physical solely, or was it psychico-physical? Had the human nature in the first pair two sides or only one? Was provision made for propagating out of the specific nature deposited in Adam individuals who would be a union of body and soul or only a mere body without a soul?

The question, consequently, between the parties involves the quantity of being that was created on the sixth day, when God is said to have created "man." The traducianist asserts that the entire invisible substance of all the generations of mankind was originated ex nihilo by that single act of God mentioned in Gen. 1:27, by which he created "man male and female." The creationist asserts that only a part of the invisible substance of all the generations of mankind was created by that act, namely, that of their bodies; the invisible substance which constitutes their souls being created subsequently by as many distinct and separate creative acts as there are individual souls. (supplement 4.1.4.)

Traducianism and creationism agree with each other in respect to the most difficult point in the problem, namely, a kind of existence that is prior to the individual existence. The creationist concedes that human history does not start with the birth of the individual man. He does not attempt to explain original sin with no reference to Adam. He maintains that the body and physical life of the individual is not a creation ex nihilo in each instance, but is derived from a common physical nature that was originated on the sixth day. In so doing, the creationist concedes existence in Adam, to this extent. But this race-mode of human existence, which is prior to the individual mode, is the principal difficulty in the problem, and in conceding its reality as to the body the creationist carries a common burden with the traducianist. For it is as difficult to think of an invisible existence of the human body in Adam as to think of an invisible existence of the human soul in him. In reality, it is even more difficult; because the body of an individual man, as we now know it, is visible and tangible, while his soul is not. And an invisible and intangible existence in Adam is more conceivable than a visible and tangible.

In discussing either traducianism or creationism, it is important to define the idea of substance. The term, in this connection, does not imply either extension or figure. It is taken in its etymological and metaphysical sense to denote that entity which stands under phenomena and is the base for them. As in theology, the divine "substance" or nature is unextended and formless yet a real entity, so in anthropology, the human "substance" or nature is without extension and figure yet is a certain amount of real being with definite and distinguishable properties (Shedd, Theological Essays, 135–37).

So far as the mental or psychical side of the human nature is concerned, when it is said that the "substance" of all individual souls was created in Adam, of course nothing extended and visible is implied. The substance in this case is a spiritual, rational, and immortal essence similar to the unextended essence of God, in whose image it was made ex nihilo. And so far as the physical and corporeal side of man is concerned, the notion of "substance" must be determined in the same manner. That which stands under, that which is the substans of the corporeal form and phenomena, is an invisible principle that has no one of the geometrical dimensions. Physical life, or the animal soul, though not spiritual and immortal like the rational soul, is nevertheless beyond the reach of the five senses. It occupies no space; it is not divisible by any material instruments; it cannot be examined by the microscope. In speaking therefore of the primary created "substance" of the human body, we must abstract from the notion everything that implies figure and extension of parts: "The things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" (Heb. 11:3). The visible body is constituted and built up by an invisible vitality. Neither the cell nor protoplasm nor the "ether" of Carus (Physiology 1.13) nor any visible whatever can be regarded as the substans of the body, as the vital principle in its primordial mode. These are all of them extended and objects of sensuous perception. They are the first form, in which the primarily formless physical life embodies itself. They each presuppose life as an invisible. In thinking, therefore, of the "substance" of all individual bodies as having been created in Adam, we must not with Tertullian and others think of microscopic atoms, corpuscles, or protoplasm; but only of the unseen principle of life itself, of which these are the first visible organization. Modern physiology (Haeckel, Creation 1.297) describes the human egg as one one-hundred-twentieth of an inch in diameter, so that in a strong light it can just be perceived as a small speck, by the naked eye. This egg is a small globular bladder which contains all the constituent parts of a simple organic cell. These parts are (a) the mucous cell substance or protoplasm, called the "yolk"; (b) the nucleus or cell kernel, called the "germinal vesicle," which is surrounded by the yolk (this nucleus is a clear glassy globule of albumen about one six-hundredth of an inch in diameter); and (c) the nucleolus, the kernel speck or "germinal spot" (this is enclosed and surrounded by the nucleus and is the last phase of visible life under the present microscope). This nucleolus is not the invisible life itself in its first phase, as immediately created ex nihilo. This "germinal spot" is only the first hardening, as it were, of the invisible into visibility. It is life in this form; whereas, in the beginning, as created in Adam, physical life was formless and invisible.

General Approaches to the Doctrine of Original Sin

Before entering upon the discussion of the two theories of traducianism and creationism, we observe that there are several ways of handling the doctrine of original sin, or sin as related to Adam.

It may be held simply as a revealed fact without any attempt at explanation. The theologian contents himself with affirming that Scripture teaches that all men were created holy in Adam, had an advantageous probation in Adam, sinned freely in Adam, and are justly exposed to physical and spiritual death upon these three grounds and declines to construct any explanatory theory. In this case, he treats the doctrine of original sin as he does that of the creation of the universe: "Through faith he understands that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" (Heb. 11:3). Similarly, through faith he understands that "death passed upon all men because all sinned" (Rom. 5:12); that "by one offense, judgment came upon all men to condemnation" (Rom. 5:18); and that "in Adam all die" (1 Cor. 15:22); and formulates this in the statement that "all mankind descending from Adam by ordinary generation sinned in him, and fell with him, in the first transgression" (Westminster Larger Catechism 22). But as he does not undertake to explain creation ex nihilo, neither does he undertake to explain the fall in Adam. He accepts the fact of revelation in each case. He has reason to believe that the doctrine of the fall in Adam is truth not error: first, because God would not reveal error; second, because God has made an infinite self-sacrifice in order to deliver man from the guilt and pollution of original sin: a thing he would not have done if he knows that it is not really and truly sin.

The doctrine may be held as a revealed fact, and an explanation attempted by the theory of natural or substantial union with Adam. In this case, Adam and his posterity existed together and sinned together as a unity. The posterity were not vicariously represented in the first sin, because representation implies the absence of the party represented; but they sinned the first sin being seminally existent and present; and this first sin is deservedly imputed to them, because in this generic manner it was committed by them. The guilt of the first sin, both as culpability (culpa) and obligation to the penalty of eternal death (reatus poenae), is chargeable to Adam and his posterity upon the common principle that sin is chargeable to the actor and author of it. The imputation of Adam's sin, upon this theory, differs from the imputation of Christ's righteousness in being deserved, not undeserved or gratuitous.

The doctrine may be held as a fact of revelation, and an explanation of it attempted by the theory of representative or forensic union with Adam. In this case, Adam as an individual, distinct from Eve, and distinct from his posterity whom in respect to the soul he did not seminally include, sinned representatively and vicariously for his nonexistent and absent posterity. As their vicar and representative, he disobeyed the Eden statute in their room and place, precisely as Christ obeyed the moral law, in respect to both precept and penalty, as the vicar and representative of his people. The sin of Adam, consequently, is imputed to his posterity in the very same way that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to the believer—namely, undeservedly or gratuitously. The posterity are not guilty in the sense of being inherently and personally ill deserving on account of Adam's sin, just as the believer is not righteous in the sense of being inherently and personally deserving on account of Christ's obedience. As in the latter instance, only the consequences without the inherent merit of Christ's obedience—namely, freedom from the obligation to suffer the penalty of eternal death and a title to eternal life—inure to the believer; so in the former instance, only the consequences of Adam's disobedience without the inherent demerit—namely, the obligation to suffer the penalty of eternal death and forfeiture of a title to eternal life—inure to his posterity. On this theory, Adam's sin itself, as a disobedient and rebellious act causative of the penalty of eternal death, is not imputed to the posterity because it was not committed by them. Only its penal consequences are imputed. Adam's act is separated from its effect, namely, the penalty: the former not being chargeable to the posterity; the latter being imputed to and inflicted upon them. The posterity suffer the punitive evil produced by Adam's sin but are not inherently and personally guilty of this sin itself.

The doctrine may be held as a fact of revelation, and an explanation of it attempted by a combination of natural with representative union. This is a middle theory between traducianism and creationism, combining elements of both. But like middle theories generally, it contains contradictory elements. If the posterity were present, as natural union implies, they could not be represented; for this supposes absence. If they were absent, as representative union implies, they could not be present, as natural union supposes. A consistent scheme can be constructed upon either view of the Adamic union by itself, but not upon both in combination. This is evinced by the fact that the tendency on the part of the advocates of representation has been to minimize natural union in the combination. The latest and one of the ablest of its defenders, the elder Hodge, founds imputation solely on representation (45). It is important to observe that the earlier advocates of the combination, such as Turretin, for example, asserted that Adam's sin is imputed both as culpa8 and reatus poenae. Some of the later advocates assert that it is imputed only as reatus poenae—only as obligation to suffer the penalty of eternal death.

These four ways of handling the doctrine of Adam's sin fall, generally, into the Augustino-Calvinistic anthropology, though some of them have a closer and more self-consistent conformity to it than others. All four assert that penal evil befalls the posterity on account of Adam's transgression and that this penal evil is physical and spiritual death. This differentiates them from all theories which deny these two points:

Any man who holds that there is such an ascription of the sin of Adam to his posterity, as to be the ground of their bearing the punishment of that sin, holds the doctrine of imputation; whether he undertakes to justify this imputation merely on the ground that we are the children of Adam or on the principle of representation or of scientia media; or whether he chooses to philosophize on the nature of unity until he confounds all notions of personal identity, as President Edwards appears to have done. (Princeton Essays 1.139)

A fifth method is that of the ancient Semipelagian and the modern Arminian: The doctrine of original sin is received as a truth of revelation, and an explanation is attempted by the theory of representative union. Adam acted as an individual for the individuals of his posterity. The latter are not guilty of his first sin, either in the sense of culpability or of obligation to punishment, but are exposed on account of it to certain nonpenal evils—principally physical suffering and death. They do not either deserve or incur spiritual and eternal death on account of it. This results only from actual transgression, not from Adam's sin.

The doctrine of the unity of Adam and his posterity in the commission of the first sin and the fall from God is of the utmost importance in anthropology. Without it, it is impossible to maintain the justice of God in the punishment of inherited sin. For it is evident that an individual person cannot be morally different from the species to which he belongs. He cannot be holy if his race is sinful. No individual can rise above his species and exhibit a character and conduct radically different from theirs. Consequently, in order to establish the responsibility and guilt of the individual in respect to the origin of sin, a foothold must be found for him in the being and agency of the race to which he belongs. He must exist in and act with his species. This foothold is furnished in the biblical doctrine of a primary existence and a primary act of the common human nature in Adam, of which the secondary individual existence and the secondary individual character and acts are the manifestation. Accordingly, all schools of evangelical anthropology have held to St. Paul's representation of the Adamic connection, however differently they may have explained it. No one of them has adopted the Pelagian dogma of pure individualism and absolute isolation from Adam. In contending that the human species was a complete whole and an objective reality in the first parents, traducianism obtains a foundation for that community of action whereby a common sinful character was originated by a single voluntary act of apostasy, the consequences of which appear in the historical series of individuals who are propagated parts of the species. The sinful disposition of an individual is the evil inclination of his will; this evil inclination comes along in and with his will; and his will comes from Adam by ordinary descent. (supplement 4.1.5.)

The perplexity into which a devout and thoughtful mind that resolutely holds the Augustinian position that inherited sin is damning and brings eternal death, while not holding the coordinate Augustinian position of a primary existence and act of the species in Adam, is thrown is seen in the following extract from Pascal:

How astonishing is the fact that the mystery, the most profound of all in the whole circle of our experience, namely, the transmission of original sin, is that of which from ourselves we can gain no knowledge. It is not to be doubted that there is nothing more revolting to our reason, than to maintain that the first man's sin has entailed guilt upon those whose remoteness from the original source seems to render them incapable of its participation. Such transmission appears to us not only impossible, but even unjust. For what can be more opposed to the laws of man's poor justice than eternally to condemn an infant incapable of free will for a sin in which he had so little share that it was committed six thousand years before he came into existence. Nothing, assuredly, is more repugnant to us than this doctrine; yet, without this mystery, of all the most incomprehensible, we are incomprehensible to ourselves. Through this abyss it is that the whole tangled thread of our moral condition takes its mazy and devious way; and man is actually more inconceivable apart from this mystery, than the mystery itself is inconceivable by man. (Thoughts: Greatness and Misery of Man)

There are difficulties attending either theory of the origin of man, but fewer connected with traducianism than with creationism. If the mystery of a complete existence in Adam on both the psychical and physical side is accepted, the difficulties connected with the imputation of the first sin and the propagation of corruption are relieved. As Turretin says: "There is no doubt that by this theory all the difficulty seems to be removed." It is only the first step that costs. Adopting a revealed mystery in the start, the mystery in this instance, as in all the other instances of revealed mysteries, throws a flood of light and makes all things plain.

There are three principal supports of traducianism: (1) Scripture, (2) systematic theology, and (3) physiology.

Scriptural Support for Traducianism

The preponderance of the biblical representations favors it. The Bible teaches that man is a species, and the idea of a species implies the propagation of the entire individual out of it. Individuals, generally, are not propagated in parts, but as wholes. In Gen. 1:26–27, the man and the woman together are denominated "man." In these two verses, as in the remainder of the first chapter, Hebrew ˒ādām is not a proper name. It does not denote the masculine individual Adam alone, but the two individuals, Adam and Eve, together. Adam, here, is the name of the human pair or species. It is not until the second chapter of Genesis that the word is used as a proper name to denote the masculine and to exclude the feminine: "God said, Let us make man (˒ādām) in our image, and let them have dominion. So God created man (˒et-hā˒ādām) in his own image; in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (1:26–27; cf. 5:2, where the same usage occurs). In employing the singular pronoun him, the writer still has both individuals in his mind, as is evinced by the change of him to them. Eve is included when it is said that God created "man" in his own image. In such connections Adam = Adam and Eve. The term is specific, not individual. Augustine (City of God 15.17) thus notices the specific use of the word man:

˒ĕnôš signifies "man" not as Adam does, which also signifies man, but is used in Hebrew indifferently for man and woman; as it is written: "Male and female created he them and blessed them and called their name Adam" (Gen. 5:2), leaving no room to doubt that though the woman was distinctively called Eve, yet the name Adam, meaning man, was common to both. But Enos means man in so restricted a sense, that Hebrew linguists tell us it cannot be applied to woman. (supplement 4.1.6.)

The same usage is found in the New Testament. In Rom. 7:1 St. Paul asks, "Know not, brethren, how that the law has dominion over the man (tou anthrōpou) as long as he lives?" The law spoken of is that of marriage, to which the wife equally with the husband is subject, both of whom are here denominated "the man." When, in verse 2 the apostle wishes to individualize and distinguish the husband from the wife, he designates him not by anthrōpos but by anēr. When St. Paul asserts (1 Cor. 15:21) that "by man came death," he means both Adam and Eve, whom in the next clause he denominates to adam. Again, our Lord is denominated the Son of Man (anthrōpou), although only the woman was concerned in his human origin, showing that woman is "man." When Christ (Matt. 12:5) asks: "How much then is a man better than a sheep?" he includes both sexes. When St. Paul addresses a letter to the "saints and faithful brethren which are at Colossae" (Col. 1:1) and St. John (1 John 3:15) asserts that "whosoever hates his brother is a murderer," they mean both male and female alike and equally. And this original unity of species is referred to in St. Paul's statement respecting the marriage relation: "They two shall be one flesh" (Eph. 5:31). In accordance with this, Augustine denominates Adam and Eve "the first men in paradise" (City of God 11.12). The elder Protestant divines call them protoplasti.

That man was created a species in two individuals appears also from the account of the creation of Eve. According to Gen. 2:21–23, the female body was not made, as was the male, out of the dust of the ground, but out of a bone of the male. A fractional part of the male man was formed by creative power into the female man. Eve was derived out of Adam. "The man," says St. Paul (1 Cor. 11:8), "is not made out of (ek) the woman, but the woman out of (ex) the man." And the entire woman, soul and body, was produced in this way. For Moses does not say that the body of Eve was first made out of Adam's rib and then that her soul was separately created and breathed into it—as was the method when Adam's body was made out of the dust of the ground—but represents the total Eve, soul and body, as formed out of a part of Adam: "The rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man" (Gen. 2:22–23). That the total female was supernaturally produced from the male favors the traducian position that the total man is propagated; that the soul like the body may be derived. The same creative act which produced the body of Eve out of a rib of Adam produced her soul also. By a single divine energy, Eve was derived from Adam, psychically as well as spiritually. This goes to show that when a child of Adam is propagated, the propagation includes the whole person and is both psychical and physical. For the connection between a child and its parents is nearer and closer than was the connection between Adam and Eve at creation (see Augustine, On the Soul 1.29, where this argument is employed).

These two individuals, created ex nihilo in the manner thus described, are in Scripture sometimes both together called "man" and sometimes separately are called "male-man" (˒îš) and "female-man" (˒iššâ), man and woman (Gen. 1:27; 2:23). In and with them was also created the entire human species, namely, the invisible substance, both psychical and physical, of all their posterity. This one substance or "human nature" was to be transformed into millions of individuals by sexual propagation. The creation proper of "man" was finished and complete on the sixth day. After this, there is only the generation of "man." The biblical phraseology now changes. Eve is "the mother of all living" (Gen. 3:20). Adam "fathered a son after his own image" (5:3). There is no longer any creation of man ex nihilo by supernatural power; but only the derivation of individual men out of an existing human substance or nature, by means of natural law, under divine providence and supervision.

The question now arises: Why is not this propagation only physical, as the creationist asserts? Why should not propagation be confined to the body?

The first reply is because it is contrary to Scripture. Certain texts forbid it. In John 3:6 Christ affirms that "that which is born (begotten) of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit." The term flesh here denotes man in his entirety of soul and body. The spiritual birth certainly includes both; and the connection implies that the natural birth is equally comprehensive. Men, says our Lord, are born naturally of their parents and spiritually of God; and it is the same whole man in both instances. Now to the term flesh employed in this signification of the total person, Christ applies the participle gegennēmenon. The flesh or man, consisting of soul and body together, is begotten and born. That sarx28 often comprehends the soul as well as the body is clear from many passages (Matt. 24:22; Luke 3:6; John 1:14; 17:2; Acts 2:17; Rom. 3:20; 8:4–5, 8; Gal. 5:16, 19). In all these places "flesh" comprises both the psychical and physical nature of man. Christ employs it in the same signification in John 3:6 and teaches that it is a generation and birth.

Traducianism is taught in John 1:13. Here, the regenerate are said to be "begotten (egennēthēsan) not of blood (human seed) nor of the will of the flesh (sexual appetite) nor of the will of man (human decision)." This implies that the unregenerate are "begotten of blood and of the will of the flesh and of the will of man." But an unregenerate man is an entire man, consisting of soul and body. His soul and body, therefore, were "begotten and born of blood and of the will of the flesh and of the will of man." In this passage, the soul sustains the same relation to generation and birth that the body does; both come under one and the same category.

In Rom. 1:3 it is said that Christ "according to the flesh (kata sarka) was made of the seed of David." The term flesh here denotes the entire humanity of our Lord, antithetic to his divinity, denominated pneuma hagiōsynēs. Christ's soul and body together constituted his sarx; and this is represented as being "made of the seed of David." St. Paul employs the verb ginōai to denote a generation, in distinction from a creation, in the origin of Christ's humanity. The connection forbids the confinement of this generation to the physical side of his human nature, so that his human body only, not his human soul, sprang from David (Shedd on Rom. 1:3).

In Heb. 12:9 it is said that "we have had fathers of our flesh (tēs sarkos hēmōn), and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of Spirits (tōn pneumatōn) and live?" This text is quoted by the creationist to prove that man is the father of the body only, God being the father of the soul. There are two objections to this explanation. (1) God is not called the "Father of our spirits," which would be the required antithesis to "fathers of our flesh." He is denominated "the Father of spirits" generally, not of human spirits in particular. The omission of hēmōn36 with pneumatōn shows that the fatherhood is universal—relating to men and angels. God is the heavenly Father in distinction from an earthly father. (2) Had the writer intended to set the human spirit in contrast with the human body, as the creationist interpretation supposes, he would have said "the Father of our spirit" (tou pneumatos hēmōn) instead of "the Father of spirits" (tōn pneumatōn). In this text, therefore, as in John 3:6, sarx comprehends the whole man, soul and body. Chrysostom and Theophylact refer "spirits" in this text to angels exclusively. Calvin and Bengel find creationism in it. Moll (in Lange's Commentary) and Ebrard find traducianism: "Neither here nor anywhere else does sarx mean body. (Therefore, this reference is incorrectly cited to support creationism, which teaches that only the body is engendered by the parents but the soul is created by God.) On the contrary, sarx here means, as always, the life that comes into existence naturally through creaturely power" (Ebrard, "Sarx").

Traducianism is taught in Acts 17:26: God "has made of one blood all nations." The natural interpretation of this text is that men of all nationalities are made of one common human nature as to their whole constitution, mental and physical. There is nothing to require the creationist qualification—"every man, as to his body"—but everything to exclude it. For the apostle was speaking particularly of man as rational, immortal, and having the image of God; and therefore in saying that "man is made of one blood," he certainly could not have intended to exclude his rational soul in this connection.

In Heb. 7:10 it is said that "Levi," that is, the whole tribe of Levi (v. 9), "was yet in the loins of father, when Melchizedek met" Abraham. Here Abraham is called the father of Levi, though he was Levi's great-grandfather. Levi and his descendants are said to have had an existence that was real, not fictitious, in Abraham. But it contradicts the context to confine this statement to the physical and irrational side of Levi and his descendants. The "paying of tithes" which led to the statement is a rational and moral act and implies a rational and moral nature as the basis of it.

In Ps. 139:15–16 there is a description of the mysterious generation of man: "My substance was not hid from you when I was made in secret." Though the reference is to the embryonic and fetal life, yet it includes the mental and moral part of man with the physical. The clauses I was made and my substance certainly denote the speaker as an entire whole. The same is true of Job 10:10: "Have you not poured me out as milk and curdled me like cheese?" "Me" here is the whole person. The total ego is described as begotten in Jer. 1:5: "Before I formed you in the belly, I knew you." In Ps. 22:9–10 David says, "You are he that took me from the womb. I was cast upon you from the womb; you are my God from my mother's belly."

Genesis 2:1–3 teaches that the work of creation was complete on the sixth day: "God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God had created and made." If the human soul has been a creation ex nihilo, daily and hourly, ever since Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day, it could not be said that "on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made." Compare Exod. 20:11: "In six days God made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day"; and Heb. 4:4: God "rested from all his works."

First Cor. 15:22 supports traducianism: "In Adam (tō adam) all die." The article shows that Adam here, as in Gen. 1:17, denotes Adam and Eve inclusive of the species. To "die in Adam" implies existence in Adam. The nonexistent cannot die. Merely metaphorical existence in Adam is nonexistence. Merely physical existence in Adam without psychical existence would allow physical death in Adam but not spiritual death. To die in Adam both spiritually and physically supposes existence in Adam both as to soul and body.

The same remark is true respecting Eph. 2:3: "We were by nature (physei) children of wrath." Here the term physis44 denotes a real nature derived from foregoing ancestors, as in Gal. 2:15: hēmeis physei ioudaioi. And this nature is the whole nature of man, not a part of it. The apostle does not mean to teach that men are exposed to divine displeasure because of a sensuous and physical corruption which belongs to the body in distinction from the soul, but because of a corruption that is mental as well as physical.

The word hēmarton in Rom. 5:12 strongly supports the traducian view. The invariable usage in both the Old and New Testaments makes it an active verb. There is not a single instance of the alleged passive signification. Had the apostle meant to teach that all men were "regarded" as having sinned, he would not have said pantes hēmarton, but pantes hēmartēkotes ēsan48 as in Gen. 44:32; 43:9. But if all "sinned" in Adam in the active sense of hēmarton, all must have existed in him. Nonentity cannot sin; and merely physical substance cannot sin (Shedd on Rom. 5:12).

These scriptural texts support the traducian position that the individual man is propagated as an entire whole consisting of soul and body and contradict that of the creationist that a part of him is propagated and a part is created. These biblical data countenance the view, however difficult it may be to explain it, that man being a unity of body and soul is begotten and born as such a unity. Says Edwards (Against Watts's Notion of the Preexistence of Christ's Human Soul):

To be the son of a woman is to receive being in both soul and body, in consequence of a conception in her womb. The soul is the principal part of the man; and sonship implies derivation of the soul as well as the body, by conception. Not that the soul is a part of the mother as the body is. Though the soul is no part of the mother, and be immediately given by God, yet that hinders not its being derived by conception; it being consequent on it according to a law of nature. It is agreeable to a law of nature, that when a perfect human body is conceived in the womb of a woman, and properly nourished and increased, a human soul should come into being: and conception may as properly be the cause whence it is derived, as any other natural effects are derived from natural causes and antecedents. For it is the power of God which produces these effects, though it be according to an established law. The soul being so much the principal part of man, a derivation of the soul by conception is the chief thing implied in a man's being the son of a woman.

In saying that the soul is "no part of the mother as the body is," that it is "immediately given by God" and yet that this "does not hinder its derivation by conception," Edwards evidently means that the soul is not physical substance like the body and has a psychical in distinction from physical derivation or generation that is peculiar to itself.

Samuel Hopkins (Works 1.289) follows Edwards in saying that "the mother, according to a law of nature, conceives both the soul and body of her son; she does as much toward the one as toward the other, and is equally the instrumental cause of both." Says Nitzsch: "That the individual dispositions of the soul are propagated by generation will scarcely be disputed. Why not their generic dispositions also? Hence, we cannot but maintain the doctrine of derivation, together with creation" (Christian Doctrine §107). Weiss (Theology of the New Testament §67) explains St. Paul as teaching that "the soul is begotten."

The few texts that are quoted in favor of creationism are as easily applicable to traducianism: "The souls which I have made" (Isa. 57:16). The context does not imply a distinction of the soul from the body. On the contrary, "soul" here is put for the whole person. Traducianism equally with creationism holds that God is the maker of the soul. The body, certainly, is propagated, yet God is its maker. Augustine (On the Soul 17) remarks that God may as properly be said to "make" or "create" in the instance of the propagation of the soul, as in that of its individual creation:

Victor wishes the passage, "Who gives breath to the people," to be taken to mean that God creates souls not by propagation, but by insufflation of new souls in every case. Let him, then, boldly maintain, on this principle, that God is not the Creator of our body, on the ground that it is derived from our parents; and that because corn springs from corn, and grass from grass, therefore God is not the maker of each, and does not "give each a body as it has pleased him."

God "forms the spirit of man in him" (Zech. 12:1). The verb yāṣar in this place favors the traduction of the soul (see Lewis's note in "Genesis" in Lange's Commentary, 164). "The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty has given me life" (Job 33:4). This is true also from the traducian position: "The God of the spirits of all flesh" (Num. 16:22). The context shows that "spirit" here is put for the whole man: "Shall one man sin, and you be angry with the whole congregation." "Father of spirits" (Heb. 12:9). The antithesis is not between the body and soul of man, but between man and spirits generally. If we are subject to our earthly fathers, ought we not to be subject to the universal Father? (see p. 441). "My father works hitherto" (John 5:17). God works perpetually in preservation and providence. Another explanation, favored by the context, refers the statement to the exertion of miraculous power. Christ asserts that he works miracles like his Father.

Theological Arguments for Traducianism

Second, the theological argument strongly favors traducianism. The imputation of the first sin of Adam to all his posterity as a culpable act is best explained and defended upon the traducian basis. The Augustinian and Calvinistic anthropologies affirm that the act by which sin came into the world of mankind was a self-determined and guilty act and that it is justly chargeable upon every individual man equally and alike. But this requires that the posterity of Adam and Eve should, in some way or other, participate in it. Participation is the ground of merited imputation, though not of unmerited or gratuitous imputation (Shedd on Rom. 4:3, 8). The posterity could not participate in the first sin in the form of individuals, and hence they must have participated in it in the form of a race. This supposes that the race-form is prior to the individual form, that man first exists as a race or species and in this mode of existence commits a single and common sin. The individual, now a separate and distinct unit, was once a part of a greater whole. Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 16 asserts the commission of a common sin in the following terms: "All mankind, descending from Adam by ordinary generation, sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression." The term mankind denotes here the human nature before it was individualized by propagation. This nature sinned. Human nature existing primarily as a unity in Adam and Eve and this same human nature as subsequently distributed and metamorphosed into the millions of individual men are two modes of the same thing.

Again, that a participation of some kind or other in the first sin is postulated in the Westminster formula is proved by the fact that the first sin is called "a transgression": "Every sin, both original and actual, being a transgression of the righteous law of God, does bring guilt upon the sinner" (Westminster Confession 6.6). This agrees with Rom. 5:15, where the first sin of Adam is denominated paraptōma. But a transgression supposes a transgressor; and the transgressor in this instance must be the "all" who "sinned," spoken of in 5:12, and who are the "mankind descending by ordinary generation"—that is to say, the human nature existing in Adam and subsequently individualized by propagation. Anselm (Concerning the Virginal Conception 10) reasons as follows:

Each and every child of Adam is man by propagation, and a person by that individuation whereby he is distinguished from others. He is not responsible for original sin because he is man or because he is a person. For if this were so, it would follow that Adam would have been responsible for original sin before he sinned, because he was both man and a person prior to sin. It remains, therefore, that each and every child of Adam is responsible for original sin because he is Adam. Yet not merely and simply because he is Adam, but because he is fallen Adam.

Anselm here uses "Adam" to designate the "human nature" created in Adam and Eve. (supplement 4.1.7.)

The doctrine of the specific unity of Adam and his posterity removes the great difficulties connected with the imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity that arise from the injustice of punishing a person for a sin in which he had no kind of participation. This is the Gordian knot in the dogma. Here the standing objections cluster. But if whatever is predicable of Adam as an individual is also predicable of his posterity, and in precisely the same way that it is of Adam, the knot is not cut but untied. No one denies (1) that the individual Adam committed the first sin prior to its imputation to him and that it was righteously imputed to him as a culpable and damning act of disobedience or (2) that his first sin corrupted his nature simultaneously with its commission and that this corruption, like its cause the first sin, was prior to its imputation as culpable and damning corruption. There is certainly nothing unjust in imputing the first sin and the ensuing corruption to the individual Adam, on the ground that he was the author of both.

Now if the traducian postulate be true, namely, that Adam and his posterity were specifically one in the apostasy, all that is said of the individual Adam can be said of his posterity. The posterity committed the first sin prior to its imputation to them, and it was imputed to them as a culpable and damning act of disobedience. And the first sin corrupted the nature of the posterity simultaneously with its commission, and this corruption, like its cause the first sin, was prior to its imputation to them as culpable and damning corruption. There is certainly nothing unjust in imputing the first sin and the ensuing corruption to the posterity, on the ground that they were the author of both. There is indeed something inscrutably mysterious in the postulate of specific unity, but not more than there is in the postulate that God creates individual souls each by itself and brings about corruption of nature in them negatively by the withdrawment of grace, instead of positively by the first sin of Adam.

Edwards argues that a coexistence of the posterity with the first parents, if conceded, would relieve the difficulties connected with the imputation of their sin. For this implies coagency, and this implies common responsibility. He says (Original Sin in Works 1.491):

I appeal to such as are habituated to examine things strictly and closely, whether, on supposition that all mankind had coexisted in the manner mentioned before, any good reason can be given why their Creator might not, if he had pleased, have established such a union between Adam and the rest of mankind as was in the case supposed. Particularly, if it had been the case that Adam's posterity had, actually, according to a law of nature, somehow grown out of him and yet remained contiguous and literally united to him, as the branches to a tree or the members of the body to the head; and had all, before the fall, existed together at the same time though in different places, as the head and members are in different places: in this case, who can determine that the author of nature might not have established such a union between the root and branches of this complex being, as that all should constitute one moral whole; so that there should be a communion in each moral alteration and that the heart of every branch should at the same moment participate with the heart of the root, be conformed to it, and concurring with it in all its affections and acts, and so jointly partaking in its state, as a part of the same thing.

This is defective, in that Edwards supposes a unity composed of individual persons aggregated together, instead of a single specific nature not yet individualized by propagation, as in Augustinianism. But it shows that in his opinion, if a unity of action in the first sin can be obtained for all mankind, then the imputation of the first sin to them is just.

The following from Coleridge (Aids to Reflection 1.289) also implies that if oneness of nature and substance between Adam and his posterity could be proved, the justice of imputing the first sin would follow: "Should a professed believer ask you whether that which is the ground of responsible action in your will could in any way be responsibly present in the will of Adam—answer him in these words: 'You, sir, can no more demonstrate the negative, than I can conceive the affirmative.' "

The transmission of a sinful inclination is best explained by the traducian theory. "Original sin," says Westminster Larger Catechism 26, "is conveyed from our first parents unto their posterity by natural generation, so that all that proceed from them in that way are conceived and born in sin" (Job 14:4; Ps. 51:5; 58:3; John 3:6; Eph. 2:3). This moral corruption, resulting from the first transgression, could not be transmitted and inherited unless there were a vehicle for its transmission, unless there were a common human nature, both as to soul and body, to convey it. Tertullian's maxim is logical: "The transmission of sin involves the transmission of the soul." The transmission of sin requires the transmission of the sinning soul. Sin cannot be propagated unless that psychical substance in which sin inheres is also propagated. Sin cannot be transmitted along absolute nonentity. Neither can it be transmitted by a merely physical substance. If each individual soul never had any other than an individual existence and were created ex nihilo in every instance, nothing mental could pass from Adam to his posterity. There could be the transmission of only bodily and physical traits. There would be a chasm of six thousand years between an individual soul of this generation and the individual soul of Adam, across which "original sin" or moral corruption could not go "by natural generation."

The difficulty of accounting for the transmission of sin upon the creationist theory has led some creationists to assert the creation of all individual human souls simultaneously with the creation of Adam and their quiescent state until each is united with its body. Ashbel Green adopts this view in his lectures on the catechism (Presbyterian Board edition). But this does not relieve the difficulty because, as distinct and separate individuals, the souls of the posterity could not commit the one single sin, the "one offense" of Adam. They could only sin "after the similitude of Adam's transgression" (Rom. 5:14), that is, imitate and repeat Adam's sin; and there would be as many sins to be the cause of death as there were souls. These souls must therefore primarily have been a single specific psychical nature, in order to "sin in Adam and fall with him in his first transgression."

These difficulties in respect to participation in the sin that is imputed and its transmission are felt by those who hold to the imputation of original sin and yet reject traducianism. Hence, the creationist partially adopts traducianism. The theory of representative union is compelled to fall back upon the natural union of Adam and his posterity for support. Turretin does this (9.9.11–12):

There can be no imputation of another's sin (peccati alieni) unless some conjunction with him is supposed. This union (communio) may be threefold: (1) natural, like that between parent and child; (2) moral and political, like that between king and subject; and (3) voluntary, like that between friends or between debtor and surety. This latter kind of union we do not include here, since we acknowledge that it implies a previous consent of the parties; but only the first two kinds, in which it is not necessary that there should be an actual consent in order that the sin of one should be imputed to another. Adam was conjoined with us by this double bond: natural, so far as he is our father and we are his children; political and also forensic, as far as he was the head (princeps) and representative head (caput representativum) of the whole human race. The foundation therefore of imputation is not only the natural union, but especially (praecipue) the moral and federal union, by means of which God made a covenant with Adam as our head.

Turretin mentions the "natural" union first in the order, but describes it as second in importance. In explaining what he means by denominating Adam a public and representative person, he quotes the statement of Augustine that "all those were one man, who by derivation from that one man were to be so many distinct and separate individuals." But he then qualifies Augustine's phraseology by adding that "they were not one man by a specific or numerical unity, but partly by a unity of origin, since all are of one blood, and partly by a unity of representation, since one represented all by the ordinance of God." This qualification shows that Turretin was not willing to adopt Augustine's statement in full and that he departed in some degree from the Augustinian anthropology. He denies what Augustine affirms, namely, that all men were in Adam by both a specific and a numerical unity, and introduces an idea foreign to Augustine, namely, that of unity by representation. Furthermore, he implies that there is a difference between "specific unity" and "unity of origin." But they are the same thing. Specific unity is of course the unity of a species; and this means that all the individuals are propagated from a common nature or substance. This, certainly, is unity of origin. Second, he implies that numerical unity is identical with specific unity. But the two are distinct from each other. A numerical unity may or may not be a specific unity. In the instance of the persons of the Trinity, there is a numerical unity of nature or substance, but not a specific unity. A specific unity implies the possibility of the division of the one numerical substance among the propagated individuals of the species. But there is no possibility of a division of the divine essence among the trinitarian persons. Consequently, they constitute a numerical but not a specific unity. But in the instance of man, the unity is both numerical and specific. The human nature while in Adam is both numerically and specifically one. But when it is subdivided and individualized by propagation, it is no longer numerically one. The numerically one human nature becomes a multitude of individual persons, who are no longer the single numerical unity which they were at first. But they are still specifically one.

It is evident that while this eminent theologian lays more stress upon representative union than upon natural, he does not think that it can stand alone. He supports the representation by the unity of nature. He does not venture to rest the imputation of an act of Adam that brought eternal death upon all his posterity as a penal consequence, solely upon a representation by Adam of an absent and nonexistent posterity. A mere and simple representative acts vicariously for those whom he represents; and to make the eternal damnation of a human soul depend upon vicarious sin contradicts the profound convictions of the human conscience. To impute Adam's first sin to his posterity merely and only because Adam sinned as a representative in their room and place makes the imputation an arbitrary act of sovereignty, not a righteous judicial act which carries in it an intrinsic morality and justice. This, Turretin seems to have been unwilling to maintain; and therefore, in connection with representative union, he also asserted to some extent the old Augustinian doctrine of a union of nature and substance. Yet, adopting creationism as he did, this substantial union, in his system, could be only physical ("in a physical sense and in a seminal way"; 9.9.23), not psychical.

Turretin marks the transition from the elder to the later Calvinism, from the theory of the Adamic union to that of the Adamic representation. Both theories are found in his system and are found in conflict. He vibrates from one to the other in his discussion of the subject of imputation. Sometimes he represents the union of Adam with his posterity as precisely like that of Christ with his people, namely, that of vicarious representation alone, without natural and seminal union. Adam's posterity, he says, "did not yet exist in the nature of things" when Adam's sin was committed and consequently "in the same way that we are constituted sinners in Adam, even so we are constituted righteous in Christ. Now in Christ we are constituted righteous through the imputation of righteousness; therefore, we are constituted sinners in Adam through the imputation of his sin"56 (9.9.16). Sometimes, on the other hand, he teaches that Adam's posterity were "in the nature of things," having seminal existence in Adam, and for this reason the exaction of penalty from them is a matter of justice. The following is an example of this style of reasoning:

In the imputation of Adam's sin, the justice of God does not exact punishment from the undeserving, but the ill deserving—ill deserving, if not by proper and personal ill desert, yet by a participated and common ill desert founded in the natural and federal union between Adam and us. As Levi was tithed by Melchizedek in the person of Abraham, so far as he was potentially in his loins, so that he was regarded as justly tithed in and with Abraham, who then bore the person of his whole family, so, much more, can the posterity of Adam be regarded as having sinned in him, seeing that they were in him as the branches in the root, the mass in the first individuals and the members in the head.59 (9.9.24–25)

This phraseology denotes more than vicarious representation. A representative, pure and simple, does not contain his constituents as the root contains the branches, as the first individuals contain the mass or species, as the head contains the members. Turretin defines Adam as the "stem, root, and head of the human race" (stirps, radix, et caput generis humani; 9.9.23), but qualifies this, by saying that he was so "not only physically and seminally, but morally and representatively." But a representative proper could not be denominated the stem, root, and head of his constituents.

Comparing this latter passage with the first cited, it is evident that Turretin oscillates between natural and representative union, sometimes relying more upon the one and sometimes more upon the other. While unwilling, with Augustine and the older Reformed anthropology, to rest the imputation of Adam's sin wholly upon natural union, he feared to rest it wholly upon vicarious representation. He felt the pressure of the difficulties attending a specific or race-existence in Adam and sought to relieve them by combining with the doctrine of natural union that of representative union. In so doing, he attempts to combine iron with clay. For the two ideas of natural union and representation are incongruous and exclude each other. The natural or substantial union of two things implies the presence of both. But vicarious representation implies the absence of one of them. Says Heidegger (Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, 228), "to represent is to exhibit by a certain power of law the presence of that which is not present." The natural union of the posterity with Adam implies their existence in him. Two things cannot be naturally or substantially united, one of which is not present; and still less if one is nonexistent. A soul created ex nihilo in A.D. 1880 could not have been naturally or substantially united with the soul of Adam in 4004 B.C. And, on the other hand, the vicarious representation of the posterity by Adam implies their absence from him and is consistent with even their nonexistence. (supplement 4.1.8.)

If, therefore, the posterity were existent and present in the progenitors by natural or substantial union, they did not need to be represented and could not be, since representation supposes absence of substance. If, on the other hand, the posterity were absent as to substance when the representative acted, then it is contradictory to endeavor to have them present by means of a natural or substantial union. In other words, natural union logically excludes representation, and representation logically excludes natural union. Either theory by itself is consistent; but the two in combination are incongruous. Nevertheless, the two ideas since the time of Turretin have been combined very extensively in Calvinistic schools, the combination being favored by the rise and progress of representative in the place of monarchical government. De Moor-Marck (15.31) employs both. Witsius (Covenants 1.1.1, 3) unites the two: "Adam sustained a twofold relation: (1) as man; (2) as head and root or representative of mankind." Here, the root is regarded as a representative of the tree, when in fact it is the tree itself in a certain mode or form of its existence.

It may be said that political representation requires that the parties should be of the same nation and that this implies a natural union as the foundation of the political. But in this case reference is had to expediency or the fitness of the representative to conduct the business of his constituent, not to the justice of the proceeding. So far as justice is concerned, a constituent may be represented by anyone whom he pleases to select and who pleases to act in the capacity of a representative. An American might be represented by an Englishman, provided all the parties concerned are willing. Representative union requires and supposes the consent of the individuals who are to be represented and properly falls under Turretin's third division of "voluntary union," which he excludes in the explanation of imputation. But natural union does not require the consent of the individuals. The posterity, prior to their individual existence, are created a specific unity in Adam by the will of God, and while in this status they participate in the first sin. The human species created in this manner acted in and with Adam, and the act had all the characteristics for the species that it had for Adam. It was a moral, a self-determined, and a guilty act for the progenitors and the posterity alike, because it was such for the one human nature itself, which was the first mode in which the posterity were created and existed.

Since the idea of representation by Adam is incompatible with that of specific existence in Adam, the choice must be made between representative union and natural union. A combination of the two views is illogical. But the doctrine of the covenant of works is consistent with either theory of the Adamic connection. The covenant of works was "made with Adam as a public person" (Westminster Larger Catechism 22). If "a public person" means the individual Adam solely, acting representatively and vicariously for his posterity, both in obeying and sinning, then the covenant of works was made between God and the individual Adam acting as a representative. If "a public person" means Adam and his posterity as a specific unity, acting directly and not by representation, both in obeying and sinning, then the covenant of works was made between God and the specific Adam. But in either case, it must be observed that it was not the covenant of works that made the union of Adam and his posterity. The union of Adam and his posterity, be it representative or natural, was prior to the covenant and is supposed in order to it. If Adam was a mere individual and represented his nonexistent and absent posterity, this was provided for before the covenant of works was made with him. If Adam was specific and included his existent and present posterity, this also was provided for before the covenant of works was made with him. Hence, the so-called federal union does not mean a union constituted by the foedus or covenant of works. It is rather a status or relation than a union proper. There is a covenant relation resting either upon a representative or a natural union. The union itself of Adam and his posterity, in either case, was not made by the covenant of works but by a prior act of God—by a sovereign declarative act, if the union is representative; by a creative act, if the union is natural and substantial.

According to the traducianist, the facts are as follows: Adam and his posterity were made a unity by the creative act of God. The human species was created in and with Adam and Eve, both psychically and physically. This is natural or substantial union. With this unity, namely, Adam and the human species in him, God then made the covenant of works, according to which this unity was freely to stand or fall together: "The unity of the covenant rested on the unity of nature" (Leydecker in Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, locus 15). Having reference to this covenant, Adam and his posterity were "federally one," that is, one in, not by a foedus, league, or covenant. They were not constituted a unity by the covenant; for they were already and previously a unity by creation. And because they were so, God established the covenant with them. When therefore a "federal union" is spoken of, it must be remembered that it is a secondary union resting upon a primary union: upon natural union according to the traducianist or upon representative union according to the creationist.

In the creeds and theological treatises, both Lutheran and Calvinistic, of the Reformation period, the unity of Adam and his posterity is described as natural, substantial, and specific. It is denoted by such terms as massa, natura, essentia. And Adam means Adam and Eve inclusive of their posterity, as in the first chapter of Genesis: "For although in Adam and Eve the nature initially was created pure, good, and holy, nevertheless, through the fall, their sin entered into the nature"67 (Formula of Concord, solid declaration; Hase, 643); "the entire human mass, nature, and essence itself was corrupted by the most evil power of Adam's fall" (Formula of Concord, epitome; Hase, 574). Witsius (Covenants 2.4.11) quotes Cloppenburg as saying that "the apostle in Rom. 5 did not so understand one man Adam as to exclude Eve: which is here the leading error of some." De Moor-Marck (15.10) remarks respecting Paul's statement in 1 Tim. 2:14: "Nor does the apostle deny, on the other hand, the sin of the woman, when he teaches that the one man, whom he opposes to Christ as the type of the one to come (typon tou mellontos), is the author of propagated sin, in whom we all sinned and die, whom he also expressly calls Adam (cf. Rom. 5:12–19 with 1 Cor. 15:21–22)." De Moor (5.10) cites Paraeus as making Adam to include Eve (a) by a common nature and (b) by husband and wife being one flesh (Gen. 2:24). Augustine (City of God 11.12) denominates Adam and Eve "the first men in paradise." Odo (Bibliotheca maxima patrum71 21.230) remarks: "It is asked how we have sin from our origin, which is Adam and Eve." All this agrees with St. Paul, who asserts that "the woman being deceived was in the transgression" (1 Tim. 2:14). And the narrative in Genesis (3:16–19) shows that the punishment for the first sin fell upon Eve as well as upon Adam.

The elder Calvinistic theologians say nothing respecting representation. The term is foreign to their thought. The order with them is (1) specific existence in Adam, (2) specific participation in the first sin, (3) imputation of the first sin, and (4) inherence and propagation of original sin. Paraeus (on Rom. 5:12) explains pantes hēmarton by "all sinned, that is, are held fast in guilt and in obligation to punishment."74 All men are both culpable and punishable. He proves that they are so by three particulars: (1) By participation in the first act of sin (participatione culpae) because the posterity existed seminally in Adam: "All men committed the first sin when Adam committed it, as Levi paid tithes in the loins of Abraham, when Abraham paid them"; (2) by the imputation of the obligation to punishment resulting from participation in the first sin (imputatione reatus) because "the first man so stood in grace, that if he should sin, not he alone but all his posterity should fall from grace and become liable with him to eternal death, according to the threatening, 'In the day you eat thereof you shall surely die' "; and (3) by the propagation of the inherent corruption of nature which results from the participation in and imputation of the first sin. (supplement 4.1.9.)

According to the elder Calvinism, as represented by Paraeus and those of his class, original sin propagated in every individual rests upon original sin inherent in every individual; original sin inherent in every individual rests upon original sin imputed to every individual; and original sin imputed to every individual rests upon original sin committed by all men as a common nature in Adam. On this scheme, the justice and propriety of each particular and of the whole are apparent. The first sin, which it must be remembered consisted of both an internal lust and an external act, of both an inclination and a volition, is justly imputed to the common nature because it was voluntarily committed by it, is justly inherent in the common nature because justly imputed, and is justly propagated with the common nature because justly inherent. This scheme if taken entire is ethically consistent. But if mutilated by the omission of one of more particulars, its ethical consistency is gone. To impute the first sin without prior participation in it is unjust. To make it inherent without prior imputation is unjust. To propagate it without prior inherence is unjust. The derangement of the scheme by omission has occurred in the later Calvinism. The advocate of mediate imputation deranges it by imputing original sin as inherent, but not as committed either substantially or representatively. The advocate of representative imputation deranges it by imputing original sin as inherent, but not as committed, except in the deluding sense of nominal and putative commission.

The elder Calvinism, like Augustinianism, starts with a unity, namely, Adam and his posterity in him as a common unindividualized nature. This unity commits the first sin: "all sinned" (Rom. 5:12). This sin is imputed to the unity that committed it, inheres in the unity, and is propagated out of the unity. Consequently, all the particulars regarding sin that apply to the unity or common nature apply equally and strictly to each individualized portion of it. The individual Socrates was a fractional part of the human nature that "sinned in and fell with Adam in his first transgression" (Westminster Larger Catechism 22). Consequently, the commission, imputation, inherence, and propagation of original sin cleave indissolubly to the individualized part of the common nature, as they did to the unindividualized whole of it. The distribution and propagation of the nature make no alteration in it, except in respect to form. Its natural properties and characteristics by creation and its acquired properties and characteristics by apostasy remain unchanged.

Calvin relies upon the natural union between Adam and his posterity for the explanation of the imputation of original sin (2.1.8):

Two things should be distinctly noticed; first, that our nature being so totally vitiated and depraved, we are on account of this very corruption considered as deservedly condemned in the sight of God. And this liability (obligatio) arises not from the fault of another (alieni delicti). For when it is said that the sin of Adam renders us obnoxious to divine judgment, it is not to be understood as if we being innocent were undeservedly loaded with the guilt (culpam) of his sin. We derive from him not only the punishment, but also the pollution to which the punishment is justly due. Wherefore Augustine, though he frequently calls it the sin of another, in order to indicate its transmission to us by propagation, yet at the same time also asserts it to belong properly to every individual. Therefore infants themselves, as they bring their condemnation into the world with them, are rendered obnoxious to punishment by their own sinfulness, not by the sinfulness of another. For though they have not yet produced the fruits of their iniquity, yet they have the seed of it within them, nay, their whole nature is as it were a seed of sin and therefore odious and abominable to God. Whence it follows that it is properly accounted sin in the sight of God because there could not be liability to punishment without guilt (quia non esset reatus absque culpa).

The later Calvinism, in some of its representatives, takes the extreme ground of rejecting natural union altogether, as a support of the doctrine of imputation, and resting it wholly upon representation. The elder Hodge is one of the most positive and ablest of this class. "Adam," he says (Princeton Essays 1.187), "was our representative; as a public person, we sinned in him in virtue of a union resulting from a covenant or contract. Let it be noted, that this is the only union here mentioned. The bond arising from our natural relation to him as our parent is not even referred to." The objections to this statement are the following: (1) The Westminster Larger Catechism denominates Adam a "public person," but does not denominate him a "representative." The term representative is not once employed in the Westminster standards. It has been introduced from the outside to define a "public person." (2) The Westminster Larger Catechism gives its own definition and defines a "public person" as one "from whom all mankind descend by ordinary generation." Here, only our natural relation to Adam is mentioned; as it is also in Westminster Confession 6.3, where "our first parents," as public persons, are denominated "the root of all mankind." Natural not representative union is the "only" union referred to in this definition of a public person by the terms root, descent, and ordinary generation. A representative is not the root of his constituents nor do they descend from him by ordinary generation. (3) The Westminster Larger Catechism states that the covenant was made "with Adam as a public person." Consequently, Adam could not have been made a public person by the covenant nor could the union between him and his posterity "result from the covenant or contract," as Hodge asserts. Adam and his posterity, prior to the covenant of works, had been made a natural unity by the creative act of God, as the traducianist contends or else a representative unity by the sovereign act of God as Hodge contends; and with this unity, God established the covenant of works. The covenant presupposes the unity, in both cases. (supplement 4.1.10.)

Natural union is excluded and representative union made the sole ground of the imputation of Adam's sin in the following statement of Hodge:

In the imputation of Adam's sin to us, and of our sins to Christ, and of Christ's righteousness to believers, the nature of the imputation is the same, so that the one case illustrates the others. By virtue of the union between Adam and his descendants, his sin is the judicial ground of the condemnation of his race, precisely as the righteousness of Christ is the judicial ground of the justification of his people. (Theology 2.194–95)

There is confessedly no natural union between Christ and his people; therefore, argues Hodge, there is none between Adam and his posterity. Christ did not include his people by race-union with them, therefore Adam did not include his posterity by race-union with them. Christ's people did not participate in his obedience, therefore Adam's posterity did not participate in his disobedience. Natural union being thus excluded, nothing but representative union remains. Hence it follows that, as Christ vicariously represented his absent people when he obeyed, Adam also vicariously represented his absent posterity when he disobeyed, and "his sin is the judicial ground of the condemnation of his race, precisely as the righteousness of Christ is the judicial ground of the justification of his people." The correctness of this reasoning depends upon that of the assumption, and there is an exact similarity between union in Adam and union in Christ. For proof that this is an erroneous assumption, see p. 461.

Examination of the Westminster standards evinces that in the judgment of their authors natural or substantial union is the true ground of the imputation of Adam's sin and that vicarious representation is inadequate. They never once use the verb represent or the noun representative in the Confession of Faith and catechisms—a fact utterly inconsistent with the assertion that "representative union was the only one they maintained." The avoidance and total omission of these terms when they were making careful definitions of Adam's sin shows that they regarded them as unsuitable in this connection. The terms represent and representative, it is true, occur in the theological treatises of this period, even in those of the Westminster divines themselves; but they are excluded from their dogmatic formulas, because while in a loose popular sense Adam may be called a representative of the posterity whom he seminally included, in the strict scientific sense he cannot be. A thing existing in one mode is sometimes said to represent itself as existing in another mode, as when the root is said to represent the tree. But the two are one and the same thing in two forms.

The Westminster Assembly explained original sin and its imputation by "natural generation," "ordinary generation," the figure of a "root," and the phrase public person. All the passages in the Westminster documents relating to Adam's sin are the following: "They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation" (Westminster Confession 6.3); "the first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam, and in him to his posterity" (7.2, 3); "God gave to Adam a law, by which he bound him and all his posterity to obedience" (19.1); "original sin is conveyed from our first parents unto their posterity, by natural generation" (Westminster Larger Catechism 26); "the covenant being made with Adam as a public person, not for himself only but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation sinned in him and fell with him, in that first transgression" (22); "the rule of obedience revealed to Adam and to all mankind in him, beside a special command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, was the moral law" (92).

In the first of these statements it is said that "the guilt of the first sin was imputed and death and corruption of nature is conveyed" because "our first parents were the root of all mankind." This teaches natural not representative union, for the root does not vicariously represent the tree as something other than and different from itself and absent and apart from it, but it is the tree itself in the first mode of its existence. A root buried in the ground does not stand for an absent tree and still less for a nonexistent one. When a potato is planted, all the subsequent individuals are seminally present. The vital principle and substance that will produce them is all in the root. And the same is true when the figure of "seed" is taken instead of that of a "root," as is so often the case in Scripture.

Again, when it is said that "original sin is conveyed from our first parents unto their posterity by natural generation," unity of substance and nature is taught. Whatever descends by natural generation must be seminally and substantially present in the progenitors. And the same is taught in the explanation of the phrase public person. A public person is described as one "from whom all mankind descend by ordinary generation, in whom all mankind sinned and with whom all mankind fell in the first transgression."

In all these Westminster statements, there is not a syllable that teaches that Adam was a nonspecific individual who vicariously represented a nonexistent and absent posterity. And even if it be conceded that the posterity were existent and present physically, their merely physical existence and presence would not justify the assertion that they "sinned with and fell in him." The verbs sinned and fell and the prepositions with and in are too strong to be applied to the theory of vicarious representation. Men say that a constituent acts "by" his representative, not "in" and "with" him.

The temptation by Satan is best explained by traducianism. Upon the theory of creationism, it is impossible to account for the fall of the individual soul by means of a temptation of the devil. The individual soul viewed as newly created ex nihilo is holy. The Calvinistic creationist denies equally with the Calvinistic traducianist that God creates a soul without character. This is the Pelagian view. God's creative work is always "good" and is so pronounced by him. The soul as a new creation must therefore first be positively holy and then freely fall from this created holiness into sin. And it must be tempted to fall. But on the creationist theory, there is no possibility of a temptation by Satan or from any other quarter. And no attempt is made by the representationist to explain the fall of the posterity by temptation. The only reason that he assigns is that God withdraws grace from the posterity. It is not so in the traducian theory. In the instance of the fall of the entire species in the first human pair, the species was tempted to fall in and with Adam. Adam and Eve were mature and perfect in all their powers—physical, intellectual, and moral. The human nature acted in and with the two sinless individuals, in and with whom it was created. In them it was tempted by Satan and yielded to the temptation.

The universality of sin is best accounted for by traducianism. The fall being that of the species in the first pair is of course coextensive with the species. But upon the creationist theory, the fall is that of the individual only. Each soul apostatizes from God by itself. Why should every soul without exception fall? Why not a fall of only a part, as in the case of the angels, who fell as individuals not as a species? A soul as created and holy "has the law written upon the heart, and power to fulfill it" (Westminster Larger Catechism 17). Why should it invariably apostatize?

If it be replied that God withdraws common supporting grace in the instant when he creates each individual soul and therefore every soul apostatizes, this is of the nature of punishment and punishment according to Scripture and reason supposes previous fault (culpa). God did not withdraw the common supporting grace of his Spirit from Adam until after transgression. But here, by the supposition of the creationist, is a pure and holy soul fresh from the hand of God, from whom previous to its apostasy God totally withdraws one of his own gifts by creation in order to bring about apostasy. The withdrawing of grace occurs not because of apostasy, but in order to produce it.

If it be said that this is done because of the transgression of Adam, this is a good reason from the position of traducianism, because the withdrawal, in this case, is after the fall of the posterity in and with Adam. An act has now been performed by Adam and his posterity together, which makes the withdrawal of created gifts from the whole unity righteous and just. But from the creationist position, a newly created and innocent soul that never was substantially one with Adam and did not participate with him in the first transgression is deprived of certain created gifts by an act of sovereignty. There is no reason, upon this theory, why by the same sovereignty men might not be deprived of divine gifts on account of the transgression of Lucifer. Upon the theory of creationism, the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit from the newly created soul is an arbitrary, not a judicial act. The so-called guilt of obligation to penalty (reatus poenae), on the ground of which the withdrawment of grace rests, is putative and fictitious, not real. It is constructive guilt—the product of an act of sovereign will which decides that an innocent person shall be liable to penal suffering because of another's sin. As in the gospel scheme there is a "righteousness of God," that is, a constructive and unmerited righteousness when the obedience of Christ is gratuitously imputed, so in this scheme there is an "unrighteousness of God," that is, a constructive and unmerited unrighteousness when the disobedience of Adam is gratuitously imputed. But this confounds all moral distinctions and destroys all ethics by annulling the difference between righteousness and unrighteousness and putting each in precisely the same relation to divine sovereignty and agency.

If it be replied, as it is by those who combine representative with natural union, that between Adam and his posterity there is a natural union such as does not obtain between man and Lucifer and that this relieves the imputation of the first sin and withdrawal of grace from the charge of arbitrariness, this is creationism betaking itself to traducianism for support. Because, natural union when examined will be found to be race-union; and race-union must be total not partial, psychical as well as physical, in order to be of any use in justifying the imputation of Adam's sin. Sin is mental, and a merely bodily connection with Adam is not a sufficient ground for imputing his transgression.

The representative theory of imputation endeavors to parry the objection to an arbitrary punishment for another's culpability by separating punishment (poena) from culpability (culpa) and by asserting that Adam's posterity are punishable for his sin but not culpable for it. They are compelled to endure penal suffering on Adam's account, though they are not chargeable with his fault or crime. To this separation between the punishment and the culpability of Adam's first sin, so frequently employed in the later Calvinism, but never in the earlier, there are the following objections.

First, it conflicts with the intuitive conviction of the human mind that culpability and punishment stand in the relation of cause and effect and hence, like these, are inseparable. A free agent is punished because he is culpable. No culpability, then no punishment. No cause, then no effect. That there can be an involuntary obligation to endure the punishment of culpability when there is no culpability contravenes the common sense and judgment of mankind. "There could be no punishment without culpability (non esset reatus absque culpa)," says Calvin (2.1.8). The position that there can be involuntary punishment without culpability nullifies ethics as completely as the position that there can be an effect without a cause nullifies physics. No more demoralizing postulate could be introduced into the province of law and penalty. When the instance of Christ's suffering punishment without culpability is cited to justify this in the instance of Adam's posterity, it is forgotten that Christ consented and agreed to this uncommon arrangement, while Adam's posterity have no option in the matter. If an innocent person, having the proper qualifications and the right to do so, agrees to suffer judicial infliction for another's culpability, of course no injustice is done to him by the infliction; but if he is compelled to do so, it is the height of injustice.

Second, the separation of punishment from culpability is a characteristic of the Semipelagian and Arminian anthropology and when adopted introduces a Semipelagian and Arminian tendency into Augustinianism and Calvinism. Chrysostom and the Greek fathers generally make this separation. They explain hēmarton in Rom. 5:12 to mean not "sinned" but "regarded as a sinner," not culpability (culpa) but liability to suffer what is due to culpability (poena). They denied that the posterity of Adam participated by natural union in the first sin and are culpable and damnable for it. Adam, they contended, only represented his posterity in their nonexistence and absence, and consequently the statement of the apostle that "death passed upon all men for that all have sinned" means that all men are liable by the sovereign appointment of God to suffer certain evils on account of Adam's sin but are not really guilty of it in his sight. This same interpretation reappears in the modern Arminianism. Grotius, Limborch, Locke, Whitby, John Taylor, Wahl, and Bretschneider explain hēmarton in Rom. 5:12 to mean "to be exposed to suffering and death," "to be regarded as sinners," "to endure the punishment of sin" (Grotius), "to bear the culpability for sin"82 (Wahl, Clavis in voce). And the reason for giving such an uncommon signification to an active verb which nowhere else in Scripture has such a sense was the opinion that "all men sinned" representatively, not really. (supplement 4.1.11.)

This is wholly foreign to Augustine. In his theory of imputation, "death passed upon all men because all men sinned"—not because "all men were reckoned to have sinned." He explained hēmarton in Rom. 5:12 in its active sense as denoting the act of the species in Adam. According to him, Adam's sin is both culpable and punishable in the posterity. The culpability (reatus culpae) as well as the obligation to suffer penalty (reatus poenae) passes by participation, not by representation—an idea unknown to Augustine. Julian, for example, crowds him with the common objection that the posterity could not voluntarily sin in Adam "before they themselves were born and before even their parents or grandparents were begotten." Augustine replies, first citing the high authority of Ambrose to the same effect, by saying: "Through the evil will of this man all sinned in him, when all were that one man" (Opus imperfectum 4.104). The same reply is made in a multitude of instances (cf. Concerning Merits 1.9; 3.7; Concerning Marriages 2.5; Opus imperfectum 2.179; City of God 21.12). (supplement 4.1.12.)

This Augustinian method of defending the imputation of Adam's sin passed, as we have observed (pp. 451–52), to the Lutheran and Calvinistic creeds of the Reformation and to Calvinistic theologians generally, down to the seventeenth century. Turretin, we have seen (pp. 447–48), while laying the first stress upon representation, yet retains the doctrine of natural union in connection with it, though adopting creationism. With Augustine and the elder Reformed theologians, he regards culpability and punishability as inseparable; and the imputation of Adam's sin, with him as with them, meant the imputation of both reatus culpae and reatus poenae. While holding, of course, to the separation of punishment from culpability in the instance of Christ's vicarious atonement for sin, he denies that such separation is possible when the personal punishment of Adam's posterity for original sin is the instance. The Tridentine theologians had misemployed this valid separation of the two obligations in the case of Christ's suffering by transferring it to the ordinary ethical relations of man to the moral law in order to establish their doctrine of ecclesiastical penance. They contended that although the sacrifice of Christ had freed the believer from the culpability of original sin, it had not freed him altogether from its punishment, and therefore he was still bound, more or less, by the reatus poenae and must therefore do penance. From the Tridentine divines, this separation passed subsequently, for a different dogmatic reason, to the Arminians and to some of the later Calvinists. Turretin combats this papistic distinction. He argues as follows to prove that when original sin is in question there is no possible separation between culpability and punishability and that if the sacrifice of Christ frees a believer from the culpability of original sin it frees him from all obligation to suffer the punishment of it:

The papists erroneously distinguish judicial obligation (reatus) into obligation of culpability (reatus culpae) and obligation to punishment (reatus poenae). Obligation of culpability, they say, is that whereby the sinner is undeserving of the favor of God but deserving of his wrath and condemnation; but obligation to punishment is that whereby he is liable to condemnation and is bound to it. The former obligation, they say, was taken away by Christ; but the latter can remain, at least in respect to the obligation to temporal punishment. But the falsity (vanitas) of this distinction is evident from the nature of each. For since culpability (culpa) and punishment (poena) are correlated, and judicial obligation (reatus) is nothing else than obligation to a punishment that springs from culpability (reatus nihil aliud est quam obligatio ad poenam quam nascitur ex culpa), they mutually establish or abolish each other (se mutuo ponunt et tollunt); so that if culpability and its obligation is taken away, punishment, which cannot be inflicted except on account of culpability, ought necessarily to be taken away. Otherwise it cannot be said that culpability is remitted and its obligation taken away, if anything still remains to be expiated by the suffering of the sinner.

De Moor on Marck (15.8) repudiates this separation of punishment from culpability in similar terms: "The papal distinction between the obligation of guilt and of punishment must altogether be repudiated." Heppe (Reformed Dogmatics, locus 15), by quotations, shows that this was the common view among the elder Calvinists. Amesius (12.2) founds the obligation to suffer punishment on culpability. "Liability to punishment (reatus) is the obligation of the sinner to endure the just penalty on account of his guilt." Riissen (9.57) distinguishes between reatus potentialis88 and actualis, but rejects the distinction between reatus culpae90 and reatus poenae:

The obligation is either potential—which denotes the intrinsic dessert of punishment, which is inseparable from sin—or actual, which can be separated from it through God's mercy, namely, through remission, which properly is the removal (ablutio) of the actual obligation. The former pertains to the demerit of sin and to the to katakritikon or condemnability of it, which always is connected to sin. But the latter pertains to the judgment of demerit or katakrima, condemnation, which is taken away from those for whom the pardon of sin has been accomplished. (9.59)

But the papists falsely distinguish the obligation of guilt and of punishment in the fall. The obligation of guilt is stated by them to be that by which the sinner, of himself, is unworthy of the grace of God but is worthy of his wrath and damnation. But the obligation of punishment is that by which he is made liable to damnation and is obligated to it.

Braun (1.3.3, 14) also distinguishes between potential and actual obligation, but denies that punishment can be separated from culpability:

The papists foolishly distinguish between the obligation of punishment and the obligation of guilt, as if it were possible that the obligation of guilt could be taken away from us with, nevertheless, the obligation of punishment remaining. It is as if Christ had freed us from guilt, but in such a way that we ourselves must undergo punishment, either in purgatory or elsewhere. This is totally false. For where there is no guilt, there is absolutely no obligation, and no penalty can be imagined.

As late as the middle of the eighteenth century, we find the elder Edwards objecting to the separation of punishment from culpability, which is implied in the passive signification given to hēmarton by Taylor and the Arminian writers of that day:

No instance is produced wherein the verb sin which is used by the apostle, when he says "all have sinned," is anywhere used in our author's sense for "being brought into a state of suffering" and that not as a punishment for sin. St. Paul very often speaks of "condemnation," but where does he express it "by being made sinners?" Especially how far is he from using such a phrase to signify being condemned without guilt or any imputation or supposition of guilt. Vastly more still is it remote from his language so to use the word sin and to say man "sins" or "has sinned," though hereby meaning nothing more nor less than that he by a judicial act is condemned. He has much occasion to speak of "death," temporal and eternal; he has much occasion to speak of "suffering" of all kinds, in this world and the world to come; but where does he call these things "sin" and denominate innocent men "sinners" or say that they "have sinned," meaning thereby that they are brought into a state of suffering? (Original Sin 2.4.1)

The position that there may be punishment without culpability, in the instance of Adam's posterity, is sought to be supported, as we have before noticed, by the parallel between Adam and Christ. It is said that Christ confessedly suffered punishment "for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2) without being culpable for them, and therefore Adam's posterity may suffer punishment for Adam's first sin without being culpable for it. If Christ may endure penal suffering for a sin in which he did not participate, then Adam's posterity may also. This is the standing argument of the representationist and is often accompanied with the assertion that the two unities are so exactly alike that it is impossible for the traducianist to hold that Adam's posterity are inherently and personally culpable through their union with Adam and not also hold that believers are inherently and personally meritorious through their union with Christ, that participation in Adam's disobedience carries with it participation in Christ's obedience. But examination will show that the two unities, though alike in some particulars, are wholly unlike in others, so that certain characteristics, particularly those of vicariousness and gratuitousness that are connected with one cannot be with the other. St. Paul himself directs attention to some points of difference in the parallel (Rom. 5:15–16).

In the first place, Christ suffered freely and voluntarily for the sin of man, but Adam's posterity suffer necessarily and involuntarily for the sin of Adam. Christ was under no obligation to suffer penalty for man's sin and had he so pleased need not have suffered for it: "No man takes my life from me, but I lay it down of myself" (John 10:17–18; Phil. 2:6–7). But Adam's posterity owe penal suffering on account of Adam's sin and have no option in regard to its endurance. They do not, like Christ, volunteer and agree to suffer, but are compelled to suffer; and their suffering, unlike that of Christ, is accompanied with the sense of ill desert. Original sin as imputed, inherent, and propagated; is felt to be guilt; is confessed as such; and is forgiven as such. This implies that, unlike Christ, they must in some way have committed the sin for which they feel personally guilty and for which they are liable to suffer eternal death.

Second, Christ was undeservedly punished when he suffered for the sin of man; but Adam's posterity are not undeservedly punished when they suffer for the sin of Adam. Christ "suffered the just for the unjust"; but Adam's posterity do not suffer the just for the unjust. Christ was innocent of the sin for which he suffered; but Adam's posterity are not innocent of the sin for which they suffer. Consequently, inherent and personal guilt is separable from punishment in the instance of Christ's suffering, but not in that of Adam's posterity.

Third, Christ was a substitute when he suffered, but Adam's posterity are the principals. They do not suffer in the place of sinners when they suffer for Adam's sin, but they suffer as sinners. They are not vicarious sufferers, as Christ was. They suffer for themselves, not for others. Consequently, the imputation of sin to Christ was constructive and putative; but the imputation of sin to Adam's posterity is real, like that in the case of an actual criminal.

Fourth, the purpose of Christ's suffering is expiatory; that of the suffering of Adam's posterity is retributive. Christ endured penalty in order to the remission and removal of sin; but Adam's posterity endure penalty solely for the satisfaction of justice. Their suffering obtains neither the remission nor the removal of sin.

Fifth, the guilt of Adam's sin did not rest upon Christ as it does upon Adam's posterity, and hence he could voluntarily consent and agree to endure its penalty, without being under obligation to do so. Christ was free from the guilt of Adam's sin, both in the sense of culpa and poena. But the posterity are obligated by both. Christ therefore suffers as an innocent person to expiate a sin in which he did not participate; but Adam's posterity suffer as guilty persons to satisfy the law for a sin in which they did participate.98 (supplement 4.1.13.)

This comparison of the union of Christ and his people with that of Adam and his posterity shows clearly that Christ's relation to the penal suffering which he voluntarily endured was radically different in several particulars from that which Adam's posterity sustain to the penal suffering which they involuntarily endure and that it is a great error to argue from one union to the other, so far as these particulars are concerned and especially in regard to the particulars of vicariousness and gratuitousness.

The obvious fallacy in this argument from the parallel between Christ and Adam lies in the assumption that because there may be vicarious penal suffering there may be vicarious sinning and that because there may be gratuitous justification without any merit on the part of the justified there may be gratuitous condemnation without any ill desert on the part of the condemned. The former is conceivable, but the latter is not. One person may obey in the place of others in order to save them; but one person may not disobey in the place of others in order to ruin them. Christ could suffer by mere representation for his absent people for the purpose of their justification; but Adam could not sin by mere representation for his absent posterity for the purpose of their condemnation.

Those who force the parallel between Adam and Christ so far as to make the imputation of Adam's sin precisely like that of Christ's righteousness commit the great error of supposing that sin, like righteousness, may be imputed to man in two ways: meritoriously and unmeritoriously or gratuitously. This is contrary both to Scripture and reason. St. Paul teaches that righteousness may be imputed either kata opheilēma or kata charin101 = dōrean = chōris ergōn103 (Rom. 3:21, 24, 28; 4:3–6). He asserts that righteousness may be placed to a man's account either deservedly or undeservedly, either when he has obeyed or when he has not obeyed: "To him that works is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that works not, but believes on him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness" (4:4–5). But St. Paul nowhere teaches the same thing respecting sin. He never says that sin may be put to a man's account either deservedly or undeservedly, either when he has sinned or when he has not sinned. His doctrine is that of Scripture uniformly that sin is always imputed to man and angel kata opheilēma, never dōrean, never chōris ergōn, never undeservedly and gratuitously. The punishment of man's disobedience he denominates "wages," but the reward of his obedience he denominates a "gift" (6:23). Christ's obedience, which is the same thing as "the righteousness of God" (1:17; 9:3), can be a gift to his people; but Adam's disobedience cannot be a gift to his posterity. Heaven can be bestowed upon the sinner for nothing that he has done; but hell cannot be. The characteristic of gratuitousness or absence of inherent desert can be associated with righteousness, but not with unrighteousness (Shedd on Rom. 4:3).

Turretin directs attention to this radical difference between the imputation of Christ's righteousness and that of Adam's sin. He shows that the nature of the imputation is not identical in both cases, but differs in respect to the ground and reason of the imputation. The ground and reason is judicial and forensic when Christ's obedience is imputed, but inherent and personal when Adam's disobedience is imputed. His language is as follows:

Christ by his obedience is rightly said to constitute us righteous not by inherent righteousness, but by imputed: as Rom. 4:6 teaches and 4:19 implies where the contrast with the antecedent condemnation is mentioned. For those are constituted righteous before God who are absolved from merited punishment on account of the obedience of Christ imputed to them not less than Adam's posterity are constituted unrighteous, that is liable to death and condemnation, on account of the disobedience of Adam. Nor does it follow that because Adam constituted us unrighteous efficiently, through the propagation of inherent depravity (effectivé, per propagationem vitiositatis inhaerentis), on account of which we are liable to death before God, Christ in like manner constituted us forensically and judicially righteous before God by an inherent righteousness given to us by himself. Because the scope of the apostle, which alone is to be considered, does not tend to this, but only exhibits the ground of the condemnation on the one side and of the justification on the other, in our union with the first and second Adam respectively, as to the fact (rem), though the mode of the union is different, owing to the diversity of the subject. (16.2.19)

It is plain that Turretin here founds the imputation of Adam's sin upon some kind of participation in it. Adam, he says, constituted his posterity unrighteous "efficiently, through the propagation of an inherent depravity." The propagation of inherent holiness is not the way in which Christ makes his people righteous. The ground of the imputation of Adam's disobedience, according to this statement of Turretin, is different from that of the imputation of Christ's obedience because "the mode of the union is different, owing to the diversity of the subject" or agent. The former imputation rests upon something propagated, inherent, and subjective in the posterity; the latter rests upon something wholly objective—namely, the sovereign decision and judicial declaration of God.

The common distinction between legal and evangelical righteousness also shows that righteousness may be imputed in two ways, but sin in only one. "The foundation," says Turretin (16.3.7), "of imputation is either in the merit and worth of the person to whom something is imputed or else it is outside of the person, in the mere grace and compassion of him who imputes. The first mode is legal imputation, and the last evangelical imputation." It is clear that while both of these imputations apply to righteousness, only one of them is applicable to sin. Obedience may be imputed to man both legally and evangelically, but disobedience may be imputed to him only legally. (supplement 4.1.14.)

The inference that because God gratuitously imputes Christ's righteousness to Christ's righteousness to Christ's people he also gratuitously imputes Adam's sin to Adam's posterity is the same kind of fallacy that lies in the inference that because God works in the human will "to will and to do" when it wills rightly, he also works in it "to will and to do" when it wills wrongly. And to argue that if gratuitous imputation is not true in the case of Adam's sin it is not true in the case of Christ's righteousness is like arguing that if God is not the author of sin by direct efficiency he is not the author of holiness by direct efficiency. Both errors proceed upon the false assumption that God sustains precisely the same relation to holiness and sin. But holiness and sin are absolute and irreconcilable contraries; so that some things that are true of the former are untrue of the latter. God may be the author of holiness, but not of sin. He can "give," that is gratuitously and undeservedly impute, righteousness, but not unrighteousness. He can pronounce a man innocent when he is guilty because Christ has obeyed for him; but he cannot pronounce a man guilty when he is innocent because Adam disobeyed for him. These are self-evident propositions and intuitive convictions; and they agree with the scriptural representations respecting the difference between the imputation of righteousness and the imputation of sin.

Physiological Arguments for Traducianism

The physiological argument favors traducianism. Sex in man implies a species, and a species implies that the entire invisible rudimental substance of the posterity is created in the first pair of the species. In nature universally, the Creator does not create a species piecemeal. The term species has a twofold definition according to the point of view taken. A species may be defined at its beginning (prior to its generation and propagation) or at its close (subsequent to its generation and propagation). In the first case, the species is a unity; in the second case, it is an aggregate or multitude.

Defining in the first manner: A species is a single invisible nature created in a primitive pair of individuals, which nature, by division of substance through generation and propagation, becomes a multitude of individuals. This defines the human species at the beginning of its history or at the moment of its creation on the sixth day. He who saw Adam and Eve prior to the conception of Cain saw the human species in its first mode. The species then was one and undistributed in the first pair of individuals.

Defining in the second manner: A species is a multitude of individuals who are procreated portions of a single invisible nature that was created in a primitive pair and have descended from them in a natural succession of families. This defines the human species at the close of its history or at the end of the world. He who shall see all the individuals of the human species in the day of judgment will see the human species in its second mode. The species then will be a multitude, not a unity.

Naturalists generally define in the second manner, that is, as an aggregate of individuals. De Candolle defines a botanical species as "a collection of all the individuals which resemble each other more than they resemble anything else; which can by mutual fecundation produce fertile individuals; and which reproduce themselves by generation, in such a manner that we may from analogy suppose them to have sprung from a single individual" ("Species" in Penny Cyclopaedia) Quatrefages defines an animal species as "a collection of individuals more or less resembling each other, which may be regarded as having descended from a single primitive pair, by an uninterrupted and natural succession of families" (Human Species 1.3).

A species or a specific nature is that primitive invisible substance or plastic principle which God created from nonentity, as the rudimental matter of which all the individuals of the species are to be composed. The first oak tree, for example, contained the seminal substance of all oak trees. The Creator has exerted no strictly creative power in the line of the oak since he originated that vegetable species. He has exerted only a sustaining and providential agency in the propagation of individual oak after individual oak, as this agency is seen in the law of vegetable growth. This doctrine of the creation of a species is taught in Gen. 2:5: God "made every plant of the field before it was in the earth and every herb of the field before it grew." This describes the origination ex nihilo of a species in the vegetable kingdom. A plant made by God "before it was in the earth and before it grew" could not have been an evolution out of the earth. It is true that into the composition of the first oak there entered various material elements that were already in existence, the earths and gases, but these did not constitute the oak proper. The oak itself, considered as a new and previously nonexistent species, was that invisible principle of vegetable life which the Creator originated ex nihilo in this particular instance, by which these earths and gases were built up into the visible oak. It belongs among those "things invisible" of which the eternal Son of God is said to be the Creator in Col. 1:16. It is one of those "things not seen" (mē phainomena) of which the "things seen" (ta blepomena) are made (Heb. 11:1, 3). Hodge (Theology 2.80–82) explains the original invisibility of a species by the following quotations. Says Agassiz:

The immaterial principle determines the constancy of the species from generation to generation and is the source of all the varied exhibitions of instinct and intelligence which we see displayed. The constancy of species is a phenomenon dependent upon the immaterial nature. All animals may be traced back in the embryo to a mere point upon the yolk of an egg, bearing no resemblance whatever to the future animal. But even here, an immaterial principle which no external influence can prevent or modify is present and determines its future form; so that the egg of a hen can produce only a chicken, and the egg of a codfish only a cod.

Similarly Dana says that "the true notion of the species is not in the resulting group, but in the idea or potential element which is at the basis of every individual of the group." "Here," says Hodge, "we reach solid ground. Unity of species does not consist in unity or sameness of organic structure, in sameness as to size, color, or anything merely external; but in the sameness of the immaterial principle or 'potential idea' which constitutes and determines the sameness of nature."

This view of life as an invisible formative principle lies under all the historical physics and has been adopted by the leading scientific minds. None but the materialists have rejected it, and their speculations have been destructive of scientific progress whenever they have prevailed. Agassiz's "invisible principle" and Dana's "idea" or "potential element" is the same thing as the vis vitae of Haller, the nisus formativus114 of Blumenbach, the vis medicatrix naturae of Stahl, the "living principle" of Hunter, the "individuating principle" of Coleridge, the "animating form" of Saumerez. Says Saumerez (Physiology 1.16–17; cf. Heinroth, Anthropology, 54):

The animating form of a physical body is neither its external organization nor its figure nor any of those inferior forms which make up the system of its visible qualities; but it is the power, which not being that organization nor those visible qualities, is yet able to produce, to preserve, and to employ them. It is the presiding principle which constitutes the power of the system; the bond of its elementary part; the cement that connects them in one whole; the efficient cause whence the individuality of every system arises and in which the form it assumes resides. It is the power by which the human species differs from the brute, the brute from the vegetable, the vegetable from inanimate matter; it is the cause that inanimate matter is converted into organs living and active; that the acorn is evolved into an oak; that the brute embryo is evolved into an animal, and the human embryo into a man.

The generation and propagation of individuals succeeds the creation of a species in the biblical account. God having originated an invisible specific nature or substance, then provides for its division and propagation into a multitude of distinct and separate individuals. This is taught in Gen. 1:12: "The earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed after his kind and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed is in itself, after his kind." This is vegetable propagation. The generation of the animal is taught in 1:22: "Be fruitful and multiply." In the Mosaic cosmogony, the creation of a species is the base, and its evolution into individuals is the superstructure. Every true and real species begins by a creative fiat, back of which there is no species of this kind in existence. A true and real species cannot be accounted for by evolution because this implies existing substance to be evolved. But when the invisible specific substance has been originated from nonentity, it then develops. When God has made a vegetable species "before it was in the earth," it then "yields seed after its kind."

That the species contains all the individuals is proved by nonsexual propagation. In the lowest range of vegetable and animal life, propagation is without sex. The moner (cell) simply divides itself into two (fission); and these divide again, and so on indefinitely. Here the child is as old as the parent (Roget, Physiology 2.583). Again in the instance of propagation by buds (gemmation), the cell protrudes a part of itself. It buds. And this protruded part may exist either partially or entirely separate from the stock. In both fission and gemmation, there is no impregnation of egg by sperm, of female by male.

Now in both of these instances, the creative act that originated ex nihilo the species or primitive type inlaid in it all that evolves from it either by fission or by gemmation. The species is capable of producing all this series by innumerable splittings or dividings without the intervention of a second creative act of God. This is all prepared and provided for in the one act that originated the species from nonentity.

Sexual propagation, which is the usual method in the higher plants and animals, also proves that the species contains all the individuals. The two sexes may exist in one individual who is hermaphrodite or double-sexed. In most of the higher plants, every blossom contains both the male organs (the stamen and anther) and the female organs (the pistil and germ). The garden snail produces eggs in one part of the sexual gland and in another part sperm, but the conjunction of the two individuals is requisite to impregnation.

The majority of plants are hermaphrodites. Only a few, like the willow and poplar and some aquatic plants, propagate themselves by sex in two individuals. But in the animal world, the rule is the reverse. Propagation of a species, here, is by male and female individuals; and each successive pair is the offspring of a preceding pair and so backward until the very first primitive pair is reached. This primitive pair was a creation ex nihilo; and the Creator of the first pair created in and with them the invisible but real substance of all their posterity.

A species or specific nature then, though an invisible principle, is a real entity, not a mere idea. When God creates a primordial substance which is to be individualized by propagation, that which is created is not a mental abstraction or general term having no objective correspondent. A specific nature has a real existence, not a nominal.

The dispute between the realist and nominalist is easily settled if the parties distinguish carefully between specific and nonspecific substance or, in other words, between organic and inorganic substance. When specific or vital substance is in view, then realism is the truth; the species is a reality equally with the individuals that are produced out of it. Both species and individuals are entities. But when there is no species, when there is no vital specific substance out of which the individual is produced, then the only reality is the individual. "Species" in this case is employed in a nominal and improper sense. It is only an abstract term denoting a collection of individuals who are the only reality in the case.

Accordingly, the answer to the question between realism and nominalism—namely, whether a general conception has objective reality—depends upon the nature of the thing referred to. The dispute between the parties has overlooked this. In respect to certain things, the assertion of the nominalist is correct; in respect to certain others, the realist is correct. For example, the general conception of an inkstand has no objective correspondent because inkstands are not propagated from a specific substance or nature. They are inorganic, nonvital substance. They are not a species. They are only individuals. The only reality is the particular single inkstand. "Inkstand" as a general term is merely a name, not a thing. The assertion of the nominalist is correct here. The same is true of the crystal. There is no propagation of crystals from a common specific substance. The only reality here is the individual crystal. Again, there is no objective correspondent to such general terms as biped, quadruped, animal, vegetable, etc., because these denote classes or orders, not species; neither is there an objective correspondent to the general term state or nation: "Although we speak of communities as sentient beings; although we ascribe to them happiness and misery, desires, interests, and passions; nothing really exists or feels but individuals" (Paley, Moral Philosophy 6.11). The individuals of a nation are not propagated out of the nation, but out of the race. There is no English or French propagation. Propagation is human, not national. Englishmen and Frenchmen are primarily the sons of Adam and only secondarily the sons of Alfred and Clovis.

But the general conception of an oak, eagle, lion, or man has objective reality because each of these is a species. All of them belong to the organic world. The individual oak is a portion of a primitive invisible substance, which substance really exists, because God created it from nothing "in the day that he made every plant of the field before it was in the earth" (Gen. 2:5). The oak has two modes of existence, while the crystal has only one. The oak first exists as a single specific nature and then afterward as a multitude of individuals. The crystal has no existence but that of the single particular crystal. And the same is true of the eagle, lion, and man. In reference to these propagated things, realism is correct in asserting that the general conception has objective reality, and nominalism is incorrect in denying it.

Realism, then, is true within the sphere of specific, organic, and propagated being; and nominalism is true within that of nonspecific, inorganic, and unpropagated being. "Crystal" as a general conception denotes only the collective aggregate of all the individual crystals that ever exist. The individual, here, is the only actual and objective reality. But "man" as a general conception denotes not only the collective aggregate of all the individual men that ever exist, but also that primitive human nature of which they are fractional parts and out of which they have been derived. The individual, in this instance, is not the only actual and objective reality. The species is real also. The one human nature in Adam was an entity as truly as the multitude of individuals produced out of it. The primitive unity "man" was as objective and real as the final aggregate "men."

There is a spurious realism arising from a wrong definition of the term human nature. Human nature is sometimes explained to be merely a common property of a substance like "rationality" or "immortality." As all individual men have rationality and immortality as a characteristic quality, so all men have "humanity" or "human nature" as a characteristic quality. Human nature, as thus defined, is only an attribute or adjunct of each individual; and the whole of "human nature," in this case, belongs equally and alike to each individual, as does the whole of the property or quality of rationality or immortality. Dr. Hodge, in his explanation of realism and objections to it, so understands and defines "human nature." He regards it as an adjunct of the individual; as something united with it. He explains it as "the manifestation of the general principle of humanity in union with a given corporeal organization" (Theology 2.51). "An individual man is a given corporeal organization, in which humanity as a general life or force is present" (2.52). "That which constitutes the species, or genus, is a real objective existence, one and the same numerically as well as specifically. This one general substance exists in every individual belonging to the species and constitutes its essence" (2.53). "Individual men are the manifestations of this substance, numerically and specifically one and the same, in connection with their several corporeal organizations" (2.54). He illustrates his view by magnetism, electricity, etc.: "As magnetism is a force in nature existing antecedently, independently, and outside of any and all individual magnets; and as electricity exists independently of the Leyden jars in which it may be collected or through which it is manifested as present; so humanity exists antecedently to individual men and independently of them" (2.52). (supplement 4.1.15.)

This is an erroneous definition. Human nature is a substance, not the property or quality of a substance. It is not the property or quality of an individual substance, but is itself a specific or general substance. Nor is it a specific or general substance added to or united with an individual, because the latter is only an individualized part of the former. Nor is it a "general principle manifesting itself in a given corporeal organization." All of these definitions are incorrect. Human nature is a specific or general substance created in and with the first individuals of a human species, which is not yet individualized, but which by ordinary generation is subdivided into parts and these parts are formed into distinct and separate individuals of the species. The one specific substance, by propagation, is metamorphosed into millions of individual substances or persons. An individual man is a fractional part of human nature separated from the common mass and constituted a particular person having all the essential properties of human nature. The individual Socrates, for example, is not a previously existing "corporeal organization" to which "human nature" either in the sense of a property like rationality or in the sense of a "general substance" or "general principle" is added, but he is a distinct part of the human nature created in Adam, which part has been separated from the common mass and individualized by ordinary generation and which individualized part has the very same properties that the common mass has, but a different form. Suppose that a bit of clay is broken off from a larger mass and then molded into a cup. This cup now has an individual form that is peculiar to itself, such as it did not have before it was broken off and molded. This cup still has all the specific properties of clay; such as extension, color, mineral, and earthly elements, etc. But the clay that is in this individual cup is not the clay that is left in the lump from which it was broken off. Nor is it the clay that is in other individual cups that have been formed from other pieces broken off from the lump. Neither is this cup a piece of clay without properties to which a certain set of properties belonging to the lump are added, but it is simply a piece of the lump itself, having all the essential properties of the clay, but with an individual shape peculiar to itself. Take another illustration of individuality. There is a definite and fixed amount of carbon in the universe. A certain part of it is individualized under the providential law of crystallization and becomes a black diamond; and a certain other part of it is individualized by the same method and becomes the Kohinoor. The substance of each of these individual diamonds is a fraction of carbon, taken from the original sum total of carbon in the universe. But the form or individuality of the one is quite different from that of the other. And no atom of the carbon that enters into the black diamond enters into the Kohinoor. Similarly, no integrant of that portion of "human nature" which constitutes the individual Peter is an integrant of the individual John. But John is as truly human as Peter. The common properties of human nature belong to each alike. (supplement 4.1.16.)

Another illustration of individuality is furnished by the magnetic stone. If it be broken into small fragments, each piece will be a complete magnet by itself, having all the qualities of the original unity. Each fragment will have its magnetic poles and its point of indifference, like the undivided mass. The only difference will be in the quantity and the form, that is, in the individuality of the piece.

The question respecting the priority of the universal (the species) and the individual (res) arises here. Whether the universal is prior to the individuals depends upon what individuals are meant. If the first two individuals of a species are in mind, then the universal, that is, the species, is not prior, but simultaneous (universale in re). The instant God created the first pair of human individuals, he created the human nature or species in and with them. But if the individuals subsequent to the first pair are in mind, then the universal, that is, the species, is prior to the individuals (universale ante rem). God created the human nature in Adam and Eve before their posterity were produced out of it.

Accordingly, the doctrine of universale ante rem is the true realism in case res denotes the individuals of the posterity. The species as a single nature is created and exists prior to its distribution by propagation. The universal as a species exists before the individuals (res) formed out of it. And the doctrine of universale in re is the true realism in case res denotes only the first pair of individuals. The specific nature as created and existing in these two primitive individuals (res) is not prior to them, but simultaneous with them.

Traducianism or propagation on the side of the body presents less difficulty and is adopted by creationism. It should not be confined to the body but extended to the soul, for the following physiological reasons.

Man at every point in his history, embryonic as well as fetal, is a union of soul and body, of mind and matter. He is both psychical and physical. There is no instant when he is a mere brute. An embryo without a rational principle in it would be brutal, not human. The human embryo is only potentially a human body; and it is also potentially a human soul. The development of the psychical part keeps pace with that of the physical. The body of a newborn infant is as distant from the body of manhood as the mind of a newborn infant is from the mind of manhood. That the human egg cell under the microscope cannot be distinguished from the canine egg cell does not prove that the two are identical in species. If they were, the evolution of one into a man and the other into a dog is unaccountable. There must be a psychical principle in one that is not in the other which makes the difference in the growth and development of each. The fact that there is no manifestation of mind does not prove that there is no mental principle in the human embryo. The newborn child reveals moral and mental traits as little as does the unborn child. Feticide is murder in the eye of God and of a pure human conscience; but it could not be unless there is rational as well as animal life in that which is killed. Were there merely and only a physical entity without a psychical, the extinguishment of this life would no more be criminal than the crushing of a caterpillar. Creationists themselves suppose a very early creation of the individual soul and its infusion into the body. Some make the date the fortieth day after conception.

In the fetal state, the soul sleeps as it does in the infant or the adult; only it is a continual sleep. But the soul is as really existent in its sleeping state as in its waking state. Says Saumerez (Physiology 1.231):

Sleep is that condition of the system when the sentient and rational principles have a total suspension of action, when external impressions are of none effect and the mind itself is in a dormant state. Such is the natural condition of the fetal state that the various substances are absent upon which the organs of sense and of sensation are destined to act; and the organs themselves are not properly evolved. Sleep, therefore, must be its natural condition.

The creation of the soul subsequently to the conception of the body and its infusion into it is contrary to all the analogies in nature. Under the common providence of God, as seen in nature, one portion of a living organism is not first propagated and then a second part created and added to it. Composition and juxtaposition of parts is not the method in propagation; but generation and growth of the whole individual creature at once and altogether. Says Bolingbroke, borrowing from Bacon:

Nature does not proceed as a statuary proceeds in forming a statue, who works, sometimes on the face, sometimes on one part, and sometimes on another; but "she brings forth and produces the rudiments of all the parts at the same time": she throws out altogether, and at once, the whole system of every being, and the rudiments of all the parts. The vegetable or the animal grows in bulk and increases in strength; but it is the same from the first. (Patriot King)

So, too, the soul and the body have a parallel and equal growth:

Nature, crescent, does not grow alone

In thews and bulk; but as this temple waxes,

The inward service of the mind and soul

Grows wide withal.

—Hamlet 1.3

If the body is propagated and the soul created, the body is six thousand years older than the soul in the instance of an individual of this generation. Personal identity is jeopardized by such a hypothesis.

Traducianism as Both Mysterious and Reasonable

The doctrine of the creation of a specific nature that is psychical as well as physical and its individualization by propagation is a mystery like that of all creation ex nihilo and is a matter of faith. The creation of all mankind in Adam cannot be explained. All that can be done is to keep the doctrine clear of self-contradiction: "By faith we rationally understand (nooumen) that the worlds were framed by the word of God" (Heb. 11:3). By the exercise of the same kind of reasonable faith, we understand that all men existed and apostatized in the first human pair. The fall in Adam is a doctrine of revealed religion, not of natural religion. Human consciousness and observation teach the doctrine of sin, but not of the sin in Adam. If the Scriptures teach this and the symmetry of doctrine requires it and all the analogies of nature favor it and it explains other doctrines that are inexplicable without it, then it is rational to hold it as a constituent part of the Christian system. And in some form or other, the sin in Adam is affirmed in all evangelical anthropologies.

But like all the mysteries of the Christian religion, there is an element of reason and intelligence in this mystery, and it is possible to say something in its defense. The following particulars are to be noted, in this reference.

The distinction between "nature" and "person" required in traducianism is acknowledged to be valid in both trinitarianism and Christology. God is one nature in three persons. Christ is one person in two natures. In these spheres, the general term nature denotes an objective entity or substance, as much as the general term person. Realism, not nominalism, is the philosophy adopted by the church when constructing the doctrines of the Trinity and the God-man. Traducianism carries this same distinction into anthropology. Man was originally one single human nature which by propagation became millions of persons. This human nature was as much an objective reality as divine nature. And a human person is of course a reality.

The individualization or personalizing of a common nature in and by its issuing persons is wholly different in anthropology from what it is in theology. Human generation is infinitely diverse from eternal generation and procession. Each trinitarian person is the whole divine nature in a particular mode or "form of God" (Phil. 2:6); but each human person is only a portion of the human nature in a particular mode or form of man. In trinitarianism there is no division and distribution of essence; but in anthropology there is. The persons of the Trinity are, each one of them, the same numerical essence, identical, and entire. When it is said that the Son is "of" the essence of the Father, the preposition ek is not used partitively, as it is when it is said that an individual man is "of" the substance of mankind. The trinitarian persons are also said to be "in" the essence—a preposition never used respecting a human person. God the Father is not a portion of the divine essence, but is the whole essence in that hypostasis. The same is true of the Son and the Spirit. But a human person is only a part of the specific human nature. If we should suppose God to create a human species that was intended to be propagated into a million human persons or individuals and that the distribution of substance was to be mathematically equal in every instance, then each individual of such a species would be one-millionth part of it. (supplement 4.1.17.)

Adam and Eve were two human persons created by God on the sixth day. In and with them, God also created the entire invisible nature of the human species; the masculine side of it in Adam, the feminine in Eve. This nature was complex: being both psychical and physical, spiritual and material. Adam and Eve procreated Cain "in their own image and likeness" (Gen. 5:3). As they were each of them a synthesis and union of body and soul, so was their son. This son was an individualized part of the psychico-physical nature that was created and included in the parents. Abel was another individualized part. Four individuals now constituted and also included the human species, instead of two as at first. "Human nature" was now comprised in four persons instead of two. By ordinary generation, the specific nature was still further subdivided and individualized into millions of persons. There is no creation ex nihilo in this process, but procreation out of an existing substance. He who looked upon Adam and Eve in Eden, the moment after their creation, saw the whole human race in its first form. And he who shall look on the millions of individuals in the day of judgment will see the same human race in its last form. The difference between the two visions is formal, not material.

The conception of a "nature" or "specific substance" must be kept metaphysical in anthropology, as it is in theology and Christology. All visible and ponderable elements must be banished, and we must think of a substance that is unextended, invisible, and formless. It was at this point that Tertullian and other traducianists erred. They attempted to explain the mystery by "atoms," "corpuscles," and "animalcules."

In conceiving of the one human nature of which all individual men are portions, we are to think of an invisible in accordance with Heb. 11:3: "The things which are seen were not made of things that do appear." Visibilities were made out of invisibilities. This way of conceiving is possible, so far as the psychical or mental side of the human nature is concerned. The mind of man is substance—yet spiritual substance, occupying no space and having no form. It is also possible so far as the physical or bodily side of the human nature is concerned. For scientific physiology cannot stop with the microscopic cell. It goes back of this, to the invisible life, which no microscope can exhibit, as the ultimate or metaphysical mode of the human body. The vital principle is as invisible as the human spirit itself, though it is animal, not rational entity or substance. We can think of the invisible substance or formative principle of a human body as still in existence, although the body as a visible organization and an extended form has been dissolved to dust for centuries. The body of Alexander the Great, as an invisible, is still a part of the physical universe. It has not been annihilated. And yet it is as difficult to explain its present existence, as to explain its existence in Adam. "The life," says our Lord, "is more than the meat." The invisible principle that animates the body is "more," that is, more real and permanent than the food that nourishes it or even the material elements which it builds up into a visible form.

The elder Edwards was unquestionably tending toward the Augustinian doctrine of a specific human nature in his scheme of a unity of Adam and his posterity constituted by divine omnipotence working after the manner of a continual creation in unifying the acts and affections of the posterity. The defect in this is the absence of an underlying substance to be the ground and support of the phenomenal acts and exercises. Adam's posterity lack substantial being in him, on this theory. Had Edwards definitely employed the old category of "substance" instead of "a communion and coexistence in acts and affections" (Original Sin in Works 2.483), he would have simply reaffirmed the doctrine of Augustine, of the more orthodox of the Schoolmen, and of the theologians of the Reformation—namely, that the posterity were one in Adam as natura, massa, substantia. A mere "unity of acts and affections" brought about by a divine constitution would not be a unity of nature and substantial being. Neither is this conceivable. For acts and affections require a subject; and this subject must be either an individual substance or a specific substance; either an individual soul, as the creationist postulates, or a specific one, as the traducianist contends.

In some places Edwards, however, suggests that there may be unity of substance between Adam and his posterity:

From these things it will clearly follow that identity of consciousness depends wholly on a law of nature and so on the sovereign will and agency of God; and therefore, that personal identity, and so the derivation of the pollution and guilt of past sins in the same person, depends on an arbitrary divine constitution; and this, even though we should allow the same consciousness not to be the only thing which constitutes oneness of person, but should, beside that, suppose sameness of substance requisite. For even this oneness of created substance, existing at different times, is merely dependent identity—dependent on the pleasure and sovereign constitution of him who works all in all. (Original Sin in Works 2.487)

Answers to the Principal Objections against Traducianism

The following are the principal objections urged against the theory of traducianism.

It is said that it conflicts with the doctrine of Christ's sinlessness. It does not if the doctrine of the miraculous conception is held. The Scriptures teach that the human nature of our Lord was perfectly sanctified in and by his conception by the Holy Spirit. Sanctification implies that the nature needed sanctification. Had Christ been born of Mary's substance in the ordinary manner, he would have been a sinful man. His humanity prior to conception was an undividualized part of the common human nature. He was the "seed of the woman," the "seed of David." As such simply, his human nature was like that of Mary and of David, fallen and sinful. It is denominated "sinful flesh" in Rom. 8:3. It required perfect sanctification before it could be assumed into union with the second trinitarian person, and it obtained it through the miraculous conception. Says Pearson (On the Creed, art. 3):

The original and total sanctification of the human nature was first necessary, to fit it for the personal union with the Word, who out of his infinite love humbled himself to become flesh and at the same time out of his infinite purity could not defile himself by becoming sinful flesh. The human nature was formed by the Spirit, and in its formation sanctified, and in its sanctification united to the Word. (see Christology, 29–35; Shedd on Rom. 8:3)

Theologians have confined their attention mainly to the sanctification of Christ's human nature, saying little about its justification. But a complete Christology must include the latter as well as the former. Any nature that requires sanctification requires justification, because sin is guilt as well as pollution. The Logos could not unite with a human nature taken from the virgin Mary and transmitted from Adam unless it had previously been delivered from both the condemnation and the corruption of sin. The idea of redemption also includes both justification and sanctification; and it is conceded that that portion of human nature which the Logos assumed into union with himself was redeemed. His own humanity was the "firstfruits" of his redemptive work: "Christ the firstfruits, afterward they that are Christ's" (1 Cor. 15:23). Consequently, the doctrine is not fully constructed unless this side of it is presented.

So far, then, as the guilt of Adam's sin rested upon that unindividualized portion of the common fallen nature of Adam assumed by the Logos, it was expiated by the one sacrifice on Calvary. The human nature of Christ was prepared for the personal union with the Logos by being justified as well as sanctified: "God was manifested in the flesh, was justified (edikaiōthē) by (en) the Spirit" (1 Tim. 3:16). Here, "flesh" denotes the entire humanity, psychical and physical, and it was "justified." The justification in this instance, like that of the Old Testament believers, was proleptic, in view of the future atoning death of Christ. (supplement 4.1.18.)

The gracious redemption of the humanity which the Logos assumed into union with himself is a familiar point in patristic Christology. Augustine (Enchiridion 36) teaches it as follows:

Wherefore was this unheard-of glory of being united with deity conferred on human nature—a glory which, as there was no antecedent merit, was of course wholly of grace—except that here those who have looked at the matter soberly and honestly might behold a clear manifestation of the power of God's free grace and might understand that they are justified from their sins by the same grace which made the man Christ Jesus free from the possibility of sin?

To the same effect, Athanasius (Against the Arians 2.61) says that Christ's human nature was "first saved and redeemed (esōthē kai ēleuthepōthē) and so became the means of our salvation and redemption."

It is objected that traducianism implies division of substance and that all division implies extended material substance. Not necessarily. When it is said that that which is divisible is material, divisibility by man is meant. It is the separation of something that is visible, extended, and ponderable by means of material instruments. But another kind of divisibility is effected by the Creator by means of a law of propagation established for this purpose. God can divide and distribute a primary substance that is not visible, extended, and ponderable and yet is real by a method wholly different from that by which a man divides a piece of clay into two portions. There is an example of this even in the propagation of the body. Here, individual physical life is derived from specific physical life. But this is division of life. Imponderable physical substance is separated from imponderable physical substance. An individual body is not animated by the total physical life of the species, but by a derived part of it. That invisible principle that constitutes the reality and identity of the individual human body (pp. 465–66) is abscised invisibly and mysteriously from the specific physical nature of man. But this process is wholly different from the division of extended and visible substance by human modes. Animal life in its last analysis is as invisible as psychical life and is as little capable of human divisibility. (supplement 4.1.19.)

Accordingly, the advocates of traducianism distinguish between physical and psychical propagation. Maresius, a Reformed theologian of high authority, refers to this distinction in the following terms:

Whatever be the origin of the soul, these three things are to be held as fixed and certain: First, that the soul is immortal; second, that God is not the author of sin; third, that we are born from Adam corrupt and depraved. It would not be more difficult to harmonize the propagation of the soul with its immateriality and immortality than to harmonize the creation of each individual soul with the propagation of original sin. Only it must be remembered that the propagation in this instance is not a coarse (crassam) material propagation from animal substance, but a subtle spiritual derivation from a mental essence similar to that of the light of one candle propagating itself to another. (Elenctic Theology, controversy 11).

Heppe (Reformed Dogmatics, 11) quotes the testimony of Riissen:

The more common opinion is of those who hold that the soul is derived from propagation (ex traduce), that is, that the soul is propagated (traduci) from the soul. This occurs not through a cutting off or partitioning of the soul of the parent, but in a certain spiritual way, as light is kindled from light. But we hold all souls to be immediately created by God and to be implanted in creating.

But if there may be division and derivation of invisible substance in the case of the body, there may be in the case of the soul. It is the invisibility and imponderability that constitutes the difficulty, and if this is no bar to propagation in respect to the physical part of man, it is not in respect to the psychical part. When God by means of his own law of propagation derives an individual soul from a specific psychical nature, he does not sever and separate substance in any material manner. The words of our Lord may be used by way of accommodation here: "That which is born of the spirit is spirit." Psychical propagation yields a psychical product. When God causes an individual soul to be conceived and born simultaneously with the conception and birth of an individual body, that entity which he thus derives out of the psychical side of the specific human nature is really and truly mind, not matter. "God is the one who makes us personal," says Augustine. God is the author of our personality. If he can create an entity which at the very first instant of its existence is a spiritual and self-determined substance, then certainly he can propagate an entity that is a spiritual and self-determined substance. The propagation of the soul involves no greater difficulty than its creation. If creation may be associated with both spirit and matter without materializing the former, so may propagation. We do not argue that if spirit is created, it must be material because matter is created. And neither should we argue that if spirit is propagated, it must be material because matter is propagated. God creates matter as matter and mind as mind. And he propagates matter as matter and mind as mind. We continually speak of the "growth of the soul" and "the development of the mind." These are primarily physical terms, but we apply them literally to a spiritual substance, not supposing that we thereby materialize it. Why may we not, then, speak of the "propagation" or "derivation" of a soul without thereby materializing it?

If the distinction between creation and propagation is carefully observed, there is no danger of materialism in the doctrine of the soul's propagation. For propagation cannot change the qualities of that which is being propagated. Propagation is only transmission of something that has already been created and already in existence. The quality is fixed by the original creative act. Propagation consequently can only yield what is given in creation. If we grant, therefore, that God did create the human species in its totality, as a complex of matter and mind, body and soul, physical substance and mental substance, it is plain that the mere individualizing of this species by propagation must leave matter and mind, body and soul, just as it finds them. Matter cannot be converted into mind by being conceived and born, and neither can mind be converted into matter by propagation. Propagation makes no alteration of qualities because propagation is transmission only. Both sides of man, the physical and the psychical, will therefore retain their original created qualities and characteristics in this process of procreation, which, it must be remembered, is the Creator's work, carried on by means of laws which he has established for this very purpose of propagating a species and which is conducted under his immediate and continual providence. That which is body or physical will be propagated as body; and that which is soul or psychical will be propagated as soul; and this because propagation is merely transmission and makes no changes in the created qualities of that which is propagated or transmitted.

Propagation implies continuity of substance and immutability of properties. In the propagation of the body, there is continuity of substance and sameness of properties between the producing and the produced individuals, between the parents and the child. There is no creation ex nihilo of new substance and properties. In every instance of bodily conception, a certain amount of cellular substance which has been secreted and prepared by the invisible physical life issues and is transformed into a child's embryo. The child, physically considered, is a part of the specific human nature transmitted through the parents and by their instrumentality formed into a separate individual body. It is an offspring from them. Now suppose this continuity of substance and unchangeableness of properties in the instance of psychical or spiritual substance, and we have the propagation of the soul. Spiritual substance is transmitted under the same providential law by which physical substance is. The soul of the child, simultaneously with his body, is derived psychically out of the common human nature, which is both psychical and physical, upon the traducian theory.

Traducianism would be liable to the charge of materialism if it maintained either of the two following positions: (1) that the soul is originated by propagation and (2) that the soul is propagated by physical propagation. Neither of these positions belong to the theory. In the first place, traducianism contends as strenuously as creationism that the human soul is the product of creative power; only, this power was exerted once on the sixth day, not millions of times subsequently. The origin of the soul is supernatural on this theory as well as on the other. The human soul as specific was not an evolution from physical substance, but a creation ex nihilo of spiritual substance. Propagation merely transmits and individualizes what was given in creation. In the second place, the transmission is not by a physical but a psychical propagation. There is nothing in the term propagate that necessarily implies materialism. Before this can be charged, it must be asked: What kind of substance is it that is propagated and by what kind of propagation? To assert that there is only one kind and mode of propagation and that propagation can only mean the propagation of matter is to beg the question.

It is objected that upon the traducian theory all the sinful acts of Adam and Eve—as well as the first sin—ought to be imputed to their posterity. The reply is that the sinful acts of Adam and Eve after the fall differed from the act of eating of the forbidden fruit in two respects: (a) They were transgressions of the moral law, not of the probationary statute; and (b) they were not committed by the entire race in and with Adam.

In the first place, by divine arrangement in the covenant of works, it was only that particular act of disobedience that related to the positive statute given in Eden that was to be probationary. This statute and this transgression alone were to test the obedience of the race. God never gave this commandment a second time. The command not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil would be superfluous after the fall. Fallen man had got the knowledge. Consequently, all sins subsequent to this one peculiar transgression of a peculiar statute belonged to a different class from the first sin because they were transgressions of the moral law and the moral law was not the statute chosen by God to decide man's probation. According to Rom. 5:15–19 Adam and his posterity were to stand or fall according as they did not or did commit this one sin—and this only. Postlapsarian sins were violations of the moral law, not of the probationary law. Romans 5:13–14 teaches that infants sinned in Adam against the probationary statute only. They did not sin "after the similitude of Adam's transgression," but sinned Adam's transgression itself. They did not commit individual transgressions like Adam's first transgression by sinning against either the law of conscience or the written law, but they sinned Adam's identical transgression. The fact that "death passes" upon them, as upon all of Adam's posterity, proves this.

Second, only the first act of sin is imputed, because the entire posterity were in Adam and Eve when it was committed, but ceased to be in them afterward. Unity of nature and participation are the ground of the imputation of the first sin. When this unity is broken even in the least, the ground is taken from under imputation, and imputation ceases. The conception of the first individual of the species destroys the original unity. When Cain was begotten, his separate individual existence began. He was no longer "in Adam"; and no longer an unindividualized part of the species. He was now the offspring of Adam and Eve, an individualized part of the human nature that was created on the sixth day. He received and inherited the corruption that was now in human nature and subsequently acted it out in individual transgressions. His natural and substantial union with his progenitors being at an end, whatever transgressions they might commit were no sins of his and whatever sins he might commit were no sins of theirs. With reference to the first sin committed by Adam and Eve before the conception of any individual man, St. Paul (Rom. 5:18–19) says: "By one offense, judgment came upon all men to condemnation; by one man's disobedience many were made sinners." With reference to the subsequent individual sins committed after the conception of the first individual man, Ezek. 18:20 says: "The soul that sins, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son."

When the advocate of representative union is asked why the sins of Adam after the first sin are not imputed to the posterity, his answer is that Adam ceased to represent; ceased to be a public person. In like manner, the advocate of natural union replies to the same inquiry that Adam ceased to be the race-unity postulated in order to the imputation of the first sin. The moment the individualization of the nature begins by propagation, the unity is at an end. If it be objected that at least the individual transgressions of Adam and Eve during the interval between the first sin and the conception of Cain must be imputed to the posterity because the entire posterity are still in Adam and Eve during this interval, the reply is that the imputation, even in this case, would not lie upon any individual persons of the posterity, for there are none, but only upon the nonindividualized nature. These personal transgressions of Adam, if charged at all, could be charged only upon the species. But the fact, already mentioned, namely, that it was the transgression of the Eden statute and not of the moral law that was made the probationary sin by divine arrangement, shows that the personal transgressions of Adam after his first sin would not be imputable even to the nonindividualized nature in him.

The first two individuals included the species, but considered simply as individuals were not the species. Adam and Eve viewed as individuals were not the entire human race, but contained it. So Milton, Paradise Lost 9.414:

Where likeliest he might find

The only two of mankind, but in them

The whole included race, his destined prey.

In Adam, as a common receptacle, the whole nature of man was reposited, from him to flow down in a channel to his posterity; for all mankind "is made of one blood" (Acts 17:26), so that according as this nature proves through his standing or falling, before he puts it out of his hands, accordingly it is propagated from him. Adam, therefore, falling and sinning, the nature became guilty and corrupted, and is so derived. Thus in him "all have sinned." (Matthew Henry on Rom. 5:12)

The specific nature was a deposited invisible substance in the first human pair. The prepositions in and with in the clause sinned in and fell with imply this. As thus deposited by creation in Adam and Eve, it was to be transmitted. In like manner, every individual man along with his individuality receives, not as Adam did, the whole human nature but a fraction of it, to transmit and individualize. Every individual is to assist in perpetuating his species (Gen. 1:28). Every man, consequently, includes a portion of nonindividualized human nature transmitted to him from his ancestors immediately and from Adam primarily. When and so long as Adam and Eve were the only two individuals, the entire species was in two individuals. When and so long as Adam, Eve, and Cain were the only three individuals, the whole species was in three. At this present moment of time, the whole species consists of millions of individuals, namely, of the millions now living in this world together with the nonindividualized human nature in them and the disembodied millions in the other world who include no nonindividualized substance, because they "are as the angels of God" (Matt. 22:30). Thus it appears that the human nature was single, entire, and undivided only in those first two individuals in whom it was created. All individuals excepting the first two include each but a fractional part of human nature. A sin committed by a fraction is not a sin committed by the whole unity. Individual transgression is not the original transgression or Adam's first sin. (supplement 4.1.20.)

Hence it follows that what is strictly and purely individual in a human person must not be confounded with what is specific in him. As an individual, he sins individually; but what he does in this individual manner does not affect that portion of fallen human nature which he receives to transmit. This fractional part of the nature does not "sin in and with" the individual containing and transmitting it. He may be regenerated as an individual, but this does not regenerate that part of the human species which he includes and which he is to individualize by generation. His children are born unregenerate. Regeneration is individual only, not specific. It is founded upon an election out of an aggregate of separate individuals. Consequently, it does not sanctify that fraction of human nature which is deposited in each individual to be propagated. Neither do the individual transgressions of a natural man make the corrupt nature of his children any more corrupt. The nonindividualized nature in his person remains just as it came from Adam. Nor are his individual transgressions imputable to his children because the portion of human nature which he has received and which he transmits does not act with him and sin with him in his individual transgressions. It is a latent nature or principle which remains in a quiescent state, in reference to his individuality. It is inactive, as existing in him. It does not add to or subtract from his individual power. It constitutes no part of his individuality. Not until it is individualized and being separated from the progenitor becomes a distinct person by itself does it begin to act out the sinful disposition originated in it when Adam fell.

It is no valid objection to the doctrine of existence in Adam and in foregoing ancestors that it is impossible to explain the mode. The question "how can these things be?" as in the instance of Nicodemus must be answered by the affirmation that it is a fact and a mystery. It is no refutation of the doctrine to ask how the nature exists before it is individualized or procreated, any more than it is a refutation of the doctrine of the resurrection to ask how the invisible substance of a human body still continues to exist after death. We know the fact from Scripture; and science also confirms it by its maxim that there is no annihilation of rudimental substance in the created universe. The body of Julius Caesar is still in being, as to its fundamental invisible substance, whatever that substance may be. Resurrection, though miraculous, is not the creation of a body ex nihilo. In like manner, the elementary invisible substance of the individual Julius Caesar, both as to soul and body, was in existence between the time of the creation of the whole human species on the sixth day and the time of the conception of Julius Caesar. Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 37 states that the bodies of believers, "being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection." This implies that the believer's body, as to its invisible substance, continues to exist for hundreds or thousands of years between its death and its resurrection. But this kind of existence is no more mysterious than the existence of the human nature in Adam and its continued existence between Adam and the year 1875. In one sense, the posterity of Adam are as old as Adam, the children as old as the parents. The human nature out of which all individuals are derived was created on the sixth day, and all sustain the same relation to it so far as the time of its creation is concerned. The Seyn of all was then, though the Daseyn135 was not; the noumenon, though not the phenomenon, was in existence.

It is important to distinguish traits that are derived and inherited from secondary ancestors, either immediate or remote, and traits that are derived and inherited from the first ancestors. To inherit the gout from one's father is very different from inheriting the carnal mind from Adam. Such inherited idiosyncrasies are not sinful, though they tempt to sin. A hankering for alcohol or opium may be inherited from a grandfather or father without culpability for it; but pride and enmity toward God are inherited from Adam and are accompanied with a sense of guilt. To inherit a temperament is to inherit a secondary trait. A choleric temper is not guilt. But envy and hatred are. The testimony of conscience in each case is different. These qualities inherited from secondary ancestors may run themselves out in a few generations. But original sin never runs itself out. The former are conquerable without grace; some persons overcome their hankering for alcohol and opium without regeneration. But original sin is unconquerable without regeneration.

Derivation and inheritance of sinful character is compatible with responsibility for sinful character, provided that while it is derived and inherited at a secondary point, it is self-originated at a primary one. If sinful character be derived at both the primary and the secondary points, then responsibility is impossible. The individual man derives and inherits his sinful disposition from his immediate ancestors, but originated it in his first ancestors. He is born sinful from his father and mother, but was created holy in Adam and Eve. But if he had derived his sinfulness at both points, if sin in Adam had been derived from God, then its transmission from Adam to the posterity would not have involved any responsibility or fault. In Ps. 50:5 David mentions the fact that he was born sinful, as an aggravation of his particular act of adultery, not as an excuse for it. It evinced the depth and intensity of his wickedness. This could not be, if to be born sinful is the same thing as to be created sinful.

The difficulty in regard to existence in Adam, the first ancestor, is really no greater than the difficulty in regard to existence in the immediate ancestors. The mystery is only farther off.

SUPPLEMENTS

4.1.1 (see p. 431). Augustine argues against the doctrine of preexistence in Forgiveness and Baptism 1.31: "Perhaps, however, the now exploded and rejected opinion must be resumed that souls which once sinned in their heavenly abode descend by stages and degrees to bodies suited to their deserts and as a penalty for their previous life are more or less tormented by corporeal punishments. They who entertain such an opinion are unable to escape the perplexities of this question: Whence does it come to pass that a person shall from his earliest boyhood show greater moderation, mental excellence, and temperance and shall to a great extent conquer lust and yet live in such a place as to be unable to hear the grace of Christ preached; while another man, although addicted to lust and covered with crime, shall be so directed as to hear and believe and be baptized? Where, I say, did they acquire such diverse deserts? If they had indeed passed any part of their life in heaven, so as to be thrust down or to sink down to this world and to tenant such bodily receptacles as are congruous to their own former life, then, of course, that man ought to be supposed to have led the better life previous to his present mortal body, who did not much deserve to be burdened with it, so as both to have a good disposition and to be importuned by milder desires, which he could easily overcome; and yet he did not deserve to have that grace preached to him whereby he could be delivered from the ruin of the second death. Whereas the other, who was hampered with a grosser body as a penalty, so they suppose, for worse deserts and was accordingly possessed of obtuser affections, while he was in the ardor of his lust succumbing to the flesh and by his wicked life aggravating his former sins, which had brought him to such a pass, either heard upon the cross, 'Today shall you be with me in paradise,' or else joined himself to some apostle by whose preaching he became a changed man. I am at a loss to know what answer they can give to this, who wish us to maintain God's righteousness by human conjectures and, knowing nothing of the depths of grace, have woven webs of improbable fable." In Letter 166.27 to Jerome, Augustine says: "That souls sin in another earlier life and that for their sins in that state of being they are cast down into bodies as prisons, I do not believe. I reject and protest against such an opinion. I do this, in the first place, because they affirm that this is accomplished by means of some incomprehensible revolutions, so that, after I know not how many cycles, the soul must return again to the same burden of corruptible flesh and to the endurance of punishment—than which opinion, I do not know that anything more horrible can be conceived. In the next place, who is the righteous man gone from the earth, about whom we should not, if what they say be true, feel afraid, at least, lest sinning in Abraham's bosom he should be cast down into the flames which tormented the rich man in the parable? For why may not the soul sin after leaving the body, if it can sin before entering it? Finally, to have sinned in Adam, in whom the apostle says all have sinned, is one thing; but it is a wholly different thing to have sinned, I know not where, outside of Adam, and then, because of this, to be thrust into Adam, that is, into the body which is derived from Adam, as into a prisonhouse."

4.1.2 (see p. 431). The following series of extracts presents Augustine's traducianism. Notwithstanding his refusal to declare positively for either theory, no such series in favor of creationism can be found in his works. "Those sins of infancy are not so said to be another's, as if they did not belong to the infants at all, inasmuch as all of them sinned in Adam when in his nature, and by virtue of that power whereby he was able to produce them, were all as yet the one Adam; but they are called another's (aliena), because as yet they were not living their own lives, but the life of the one man contained whatsoever was in his future posterity" (Forgiveness and Baptism 3.14). "Now observe, I pray you, how the circumspect Pelagius felt the question about the soul to be a very difficult one, for he says, 'If the soul is not propagated, but the flesh alone, then the latter alone deserves punishment, and it is unjust that the soul, which is newly made, and that not out of Adam's substance, should bear the sin of another committed so long ago.' He does not say absolutely, 'Because the soul is not propagated.' Wherefore I, too, on my side, answer this question with no hasty assertion: If the soul is not propagated, where is the justice that what has been but recently created and is quite free from the contagion of sin should be compelled in infants to endure the passions and other torments of the flesh and, what is more terrible still, even the attacks of evil spirits?" (Forgiveness and Baptism 3.18).

"Let it not be said to me that the words of Zechariah, 'He forms the spirit of man within him,' and of the psalmist, 'He forms their hearts severally' (Septuagint), support the opinion that souls are created one by one. For to create means more than to form. It is written, nevertheless, 'Create in me a clean heart, O God'; yet it cannot be supposed that a soul here desires to be made before it has begun to exist. Nor is your opinion, which I would willingly make my own, supported by that sentence in Ecclesiastes, 'Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it.' Nay, it rather favors those who think that all souls are derived from one; for they say that as the dust returns to the earth as it was, and yet the body of which this is said returns not to the first man from whom it was derived, but to the earth, from which the first man was made, the spirit, in like manner, though derived from the spirit of the first man, does not return to him, but to the Lord, by whom it was given to our first parent. Meanwhile, though I do not yet know which of these opinions is to be preferred, this one thing I profess as my deliberate conviction, that the opinion which is true does not conflict with that most firm and well-grounded article in the faith of the church that infant children, even when they are newly born, can be delivered from perdition in no other way than through the grace of Christ's name, which he has given in his sacraments" (Letter 166.26, 28 to Jerome, A.D. 415). "The words of the scriptural passage, 'The spirit returns to God who gave it,' are somewhat adverse to these two opinions, namely, the one which supposes each soul to be created in its own body and the one which supposes each soul to introduce itself into its own body spontaneously. But there is no difficulty in showing that the words are consistent with either of the other two pinions, namely, that all souls are derived by propagation from the one first created or that, having been created and kept in readiness with God, they are given to each body as required" (Letter 143.9 to Marcellinus, A.D. 412). "Whether all souls are derived by propagation from the first, or are in the case of each individual specially created, or, being created apart from the body, are sent into it, or introduce themselves into it of their own accord, without doubt this creature endowed with reason—namely, the human soul—after the entrance of sin does not govern its own body absolutely according to its free will. Whoever is disposed to maintain any one of these four theories of the soul's origin must bring forward either from the Scriptures passages which do not admit any other interpretation or reasonings founded on premises so obviously true that to call them in question would be madness" (Letter 143.6, 11 to Marcellinus, A.D. 412). "There are four opinions as to the manner of the soul's incarnation: (1) That all other souls are derived from the one which was given to the first man; (2) that for each individual a new soul is made; (3) that souls already in existence somewhere are sent by divine act into the bodies; or (4) glide into them of their own accord" (Letter 166.7 to Jerome, A.D. 410). "I know that you are not one of those who have begun of late to utter certain new and absurd opinions, alleging that there is no guilt derived from Adam which is removed by baptism in the case of infants. If I knew that you held this view, I would certainly neither address this question to you nor think that it ought to be put to you at all. Teach me, therefore, I beseech you, what I may teach others, and tell me this: If souls are from day to day made for each individual separately at birth, where, in the case of infant children, is sin committed by these souls so that they require the remission of sin in the sacrament of Christ because of the sin of Adam from whom the sinful flesh has been derived? Of, if they do not sin, how is it compatible with the justice of the Creator that, because of their being united to mortal bodies derived from another person, they are so brought under the bond of the sin of that other that, unless they be rescued by the church, perdition overtakes them, although it is not in their own power to secure that they be rescued by the grace of baptism? Where, therefore, is the justice of the condemnation of so many thousands of souls, which in the deaths of infant children leave this world without the benefit of the Christian sacrament, if, being newly created, they have no preceding sin? Seeing, therefore, that we may not say concerning God either that he compels them to become sinners or that he punishes innocent souls; and, seeing that on the other hand, it is not lawful for us to deny that nothing else than perdition is the doom of the souls even of little children which have departed from the body without the sacrament of Christ, tell me, I implore you, where anything can be found to support the opinion that souls are not all derived from that one soul of the first man, but are each created separately for each individual as Adam's soul was made for him" (Letter 166.6, 10 to Jerome, A.D. 415).

Odo, at first abbot of Tournai and afterward bishop of Cambray, adopted traducianism, but not as Augustine and subsequent traducianists generally did by postulating a complex specific nature which is both psychical and physical and furnishes the substance of which the individual soul and body are constituted by division and derivation. His specific nature is physical substance only, that is, material seed which is made psychical by the modifying influence and action upon it of the individual soul in the act of propagation. This feature is not an improvement and introduces difficulties that do not attach to the other view. Odo died in 1113. His treatise Concerning Original Sin is in Bibliotheca maxima patrum 21.221–22 and Migne's Patrology 160.1071–72. The following account is taken from it:

"The orthodox," he says (book 2), "favor creationism and declare that we were in Adam only according to the flesh. They deny that the soul is propagated. There are, nevertheless, many who derive the soul, like the body, by traduction or propagation. The reasons which they assign are not to be despised, so that we shall discuss both views, and first we examine those of the orthodox. The orthodox view has this difficulty. If I have my body from Adam and not my soul (anima) from Adam but from God alone, since sin is in the soul and not in the body, how can I be said to have sinned in Adam? Adam sinned, and sin was in his soul alone, not in his body; but my soul, in which my sin is, I do not have from him. How then am I said to have sinned in him? If sin were in the body, I might rightly be said to have sinned in him because my body was in him; but as sin is not in the body, I cannot properly be said to have sinned in Adam."

Odo then defines the relation of the individual to the species and the difference between specific and individual transgression: "Sin is spoken of in two ways: personal and natural. Natural is the sin in which we are born and which we derive from Adam, in whom all have sinned. Indeed, my soul was in him—in species, not in person; not as an individual, but in the common nature. Now, the nature of every human soul was guilty of sin in Adam. Consequently, every human soul is culpable according to its nature, though not according to its person. So, the sin by which we sinned in Adam is indeed natural to me, but personal in Adam. In Adam it was more severe; it is less so in me. For I sinned in him not in terms of who I am, but what I am. I as a man sinned, but Odo did not. I the substance sinned, not I the person. But because substance does not exist except in a person, the sin of the substance is also the sin of the person, though not personal. Now, personal sin is what I myself commit—I in the sense of who I am, not what I am. Personal sin is that in which I Odo sin, not man; in which I the person sin, not the nature. But because a person does not exist without a nature, the sin of the person is also of the nature, though not natural" (book 2). "Just as something concerning the universal is said in place of the individual, even so something is said of the part concerning the whole. Thus, on account of the soul alone it is said that the individual man is a sinner, who possesses a body and soul together. Sin does not pertain to the body, but nevertheless the sinner is one who has a body. It is not, therefore, the soul alone that is said to have sinned in Adam, but even he himself through the soul—namely, the whole composed of many parts through the one part. Therefore, Adam is said to have sinned because the soul which he himself had sinned. And if Adam sinned, man sinned, because if this man himself sinned, human nature, which is man, sinned. But at that point human nature in its entirety was in him, nor was the human species (specialis homo) located anywhere else. Therefore, when the person sinned, namely, the man himself, the entire nature sinned, that is to say, the common nature of man (communis homo). In the sin of the person, the man of the common nature was made culpable. Adam made such a human nature in himself as even would be handed down to his posterity after him. It was necessary that what human nature had become through the foolishness of a sinner must be transferred to his posterity through justice" (book 3).

Odo would explain the propagation of the soul by the fact that the soul is the animating, energizing, and governing part of the man. The life and force of the body come from the mind or spirit behind it; for when the spirit leaves the body, this has neither life nor force. In man the material sensations of the five senses are spiritualized by the higher intellectual principle which penetrates them and makes them to be human sensation instead of merely brutal and animal. The bodily sensations of a man are of a higher grade than those of a beast. And, generally, it is the mind in the human body and using it that makes it and its sensations to be what they are. Now this, says Odo, holds true of the bodily act of propagation, as well as of all other bodily acts. The merely material and physical semen is rationalized and spiritualized by the mental life which ejects it, so that the human embryo becomes both psychical and physical, animal and rational, while the brute embryo remains only physical and animal. The human embryo is the resultant of one solely physical ovum. It is not the resultant of an ovum which contains a rational principle and is a combination of both psychical and physical substance from which the individual soul and body issue. There is no such thing as this latter. But the merely physical ovum is animated and rationalized by the life of reason which is in the mind or spirit of the man, so that the human embryo in this way comes to have two principles, an animal and a rational, and is both body and soul. The brute embryo contains only one principle, the animal, because the ovum is not modified by the life of reason, of which the brute is destitute. This action of the rational soul in propagation is evinced in the mental and human pleasure connected with coition, which is higher than the wholly brutal and animal pleasure of the dog or hog in the same act. The following extracts give Odo's explanation:

"Those who hold to the traducian doctrine, the argument of whom we have employed after the manner of the orthodox, say that every soul comes from a rootstock (de traduce), that is, the soul comes through a seed (semen) from the soul, just as its body is propagated through a seed from a body or a tree from a tree. Thus, they say that the seed's power (vim seminariam) is in the soul, just as in the body. In animals, unless the seed of the parent draws the nutritive power (vim vegetabilem), it will not progress to the creation of subsequent offspring. How does a seed implanted in the female grow unless it draws upon the nutritive power of the soul (vim animae vegetabilem)? How will the seed sown in the womb of a pregnant woman grow unless it is animated somehow? Let the parent's urine or spittle or whatever else be introduced (infundantur) into and no birth or child will result. Nor is an animal ever born by such an infusion, because an infusion such as this lacks animation. Such an infusion draws no power of the soul and consequently results in no birth nor does anything grow from this.… Therefore, the body's seed draws the soul's seed with it, namely, the power of growth (vim vegetationis), which nourishes the corporeal seed into a human form, growing with it into a rational soul. Consequently, just as a particle that is not a human body flows from a human body in sowing the seed, even so a particle that is not a human soul flows from a human soul like a seed. And just as the lust of the body (pruritus corporis) typically does not occur without the soul's delight, even so, the lust (pruritus) does not eject the seminal fluid from the body unless at the same time the soul's delight should produce the seed's power (seminarium vim) from the soul—that is, the nutritive power (vegetabilitatem)—so that it might become the nutritive power of the human soul, just as the seminal fluid is the seed of the body. Just as the causes proceed together—namely, delight and lust (pruritus)—even so, the effects follow together, that is, the nutritive power (vis vegetabilis) and seminal fluid progress at the same time with the one growing—the one into a human form and the other into a rational soul. From that point on they remain together in one person until death. The conjoined causes join their effects at the same time into one individual, which consists of body and soul.… Take away the soul, and the body does not produce seed; it makes seed, therefore it has a soul. Therefore, the seed has the nutritive power (vim vegetabilem) from the soul. Now, it has this power either from the soul or from the body. If this power is from the body, then take away the soul and implant (funde) the seed, and we shall grant you the palm of victory if you see any offspring result. But if it cannot happen, then admit the truth and grant the nutritive power to the soul. Even though the power itself is not the soul, nevertheless through it the soul is propagated from a soul and the seed of the propagating soul becomes the soul" (book 3).

4.1.3 (see p. 432). The Arminian Watson (Institutes 2.82) favors traducianism. "Some contend," he says, "that the soul is ex traduce; others that it is by immediate creation. As to the metaphysical part of this question, we can come to no satisfactory conclusion. The Scriptures, however, appear to be more in favor of the doctrine of traduction. 'Adam fathered a son in his own likeness.' 'That which is born of the flesh is flesh'; which refers certainly to the soul as well as the body. The usual argument against the traduction of the human spirit is that the doctrine of its generation tends to materialism. But this arises from a mistaken view of that in which the procreation of a human being lies; which does not consist in the production out of nothing of either of the parts of which the compounded being, man, is constituted, but in uniting them substantially with one another. The matter of the body is not, then, first made, but disposed; nor can it be supposed that the soul is by that act first produced. That belongs to a higher power; and then the only question is whether all souls were created in Adam and are transmitted by a law peculiar to themselves, which is always under the control of the will of that same watchful providence of whose constant agency in the production and ordering of the kinds, sexes, and circumstances of the animal creation we have abundant proof; or whether they are immediately created. The tenet of the soul's descent appears to have most countenance from the language of Scripture, and it is no small confirmation of it that when God designed to incarnate his own Son he stepped out of the ordinary course and found a sinless human nature immediately by the power of the Holy Spirit."

4.1.4 (see p. 433). The difficulty which the creationist finds in retaining the Augustinian anthropology generally and particularly the doctrine that original sin had a free origin and is damnable for every man is seen in his disposition to emphasize the natural union of Adam and his posterity. For example, Aquinas, though formally rejecting traducianism, nevertheless often asserts the unity of nature between them. Says Neander (History 4.495), "Thomas Aquinas declares, it is true, against traducianism; at the same time, however, he says all the descendants of Adam are to be considered as one man, by reason of the community of nature received from the father of the race." Aquinas's argument against traducianism is given in his Summa 1.118.

Hagenbach (§248) says that "Luther taught traducianism, followed by most of the Lutheran divines, with the exception of Calixtus. Gerhard (9.8.118) left it to the philosophers to define the modus propagationis, but he himself taught (§116) that 'the souls of those begotten from Adam and Eve were not created nor even generated, but were propagated.'143 Similar views were expressed by Calovius (3.1081) and Hollaz (1.5 Q. 9): 'The human soul is not created immediately but is generated by the mediation of the fertilized seed from the parents and is transferred (traducitur) into the children. The soul is not generated from transference (ex traduce) without the fertilized seed, as if from a material principle, but it is propagated through transference (per traducem) or with the fecund (prolifico) seed mediating as a vehicle, so to speak.' The Renewed Confession of the True Lutheran Faith, point 22145 (in Henke, 18), declares: 'We profess and teach that man fathers man, and that not only with respect to the body but with respect to the soul as well. We reject those who teach that in individual men individual souls do not arise from propagation but are at first created ex nihilo and infused when the fetuses are conceived and prepared for animation in the wombs of their mothers.' "

4.1.5 (see p. 437). The prime importance of the doctrine of the original unity of Adam and his posterity appears from the fact that it is only at this point in man's history that his self-determination in the origin of sin and responsibility for it can be found. At the instant when Adam and his posterity as an included specific nature were created ex nihilo, this unity was holy and self-determined in holiness; yet mutably be so, because it was not infinitely so. Self-determination to sin was possible, but not in the least necessary. At the instant when Adam and the included human nature inclined or self-determined to evil, he might have persisted in the holy self-determination which he was already exerting. At this point his destiny and that of his posterity is placed by his maker in his free agency. But when he has acted and a new self-determination to evil has occurred, he has lost his original freedom to good and become enslaved to evil. He can no longer self-determine or incline to holiness; and yet his self-determination or inclination to sin is and continues to be unforced self-motion. When a man commits suicide, it is in his power at the instant of the suicide to continue to live; but after the suicide, to live is no longer in his power. At no point subsequent to Adam and Eve in Eden can man be found upon a position of holiness and innocency, with plenary power to remain in it, from which he falls by an act of free self-determination—a state of things necessary, in order justly to charge him with the guilt of both original sin and actual transgression of both native depravity and sinful conduct and justly to expose him to eternal death.

4.1.6 (see p. 438). The employment of the term Adam in Gen. 1 to denote the species and in Gen. 2 to denote only the individual Adam might as well be cited by the rationalistic critic to prove his hypothesis of a non-Mosaic composite origin of the Pentateuch by several authors as the fact that Elohim is employed in it and subsequently Jehovah to denote the divine being. Moses in the Pentateuch presents subjects comprehensively, in their various parts and aspects. Consequently, in one place the Supreme Being is described in his abstract and universal character as the deity; and in another in his particular relation to his church or covenant people. Hence the employment sometimes of Elohim, sometimes of Jehovah, and sometimes of both together. So, likewise, he presents a comprehensive view of man, now as specific and now as individual, and hence the double use of "Adam." The rationalistic critic assumes that the inspired writer views subjects as he himself does, bit by bit, and presents them only in a piecemeal manner.

4.1.7 (see p. 445). The injustice of punishing a person for a sin in which he had no kind of participation gets voice in the passionate utterance of Lucrece, as she sees the face of Helen in the "skillful painting made for Priam's Troy":

Show me the strumpet that began this stir,

That with my nails her beauty I may tear.

Thy heat of lust, fond Paris, did incur

This load of wrath that burning Troy doth bear;

Thy eye kindled the fire that burneth here;

And here in Troy, for trespass of thine eye,

The sire, the son, the dame, and daughter die.

Why should the private pleasure of someone

Become the public plague of many mo?

Let sin, alone committed, light alone

Upon his head that hath transgressed so,

Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe;

For one's offense why should so many fall,

To plague a private sin in general?

4.1.8 (see p. 449). Owen, like Turretin, avails himself of Augustine when necessary, but oscillates between natural and representative union as he does: "The first sin in the world was on many accounts the greatest sin that ever was in the world. It was the sin, as it were, of human nature, wherein there was a conspiracy of all individuals; 'we all were that one man' (Augustine); in that one man, or that one sin, 'we all sinned' (Rom. 5:12). It left not God one subject, as to moral obedience, on the earth, nor the least ground for any such to be unto eternity. When the angels sinned, the whole race or kind did not prevaricate. Thousand thousands of them and ten thousand times ten thousands continued in their obedience (Dan. 7:10)" (Forgiveness in Works 14.136). The phraseology of Owen here shows that the Augustinian doctrine of the Adamic unity was held hesitatingly by him with respect to the point of literal substantial unity. He qualifies the assertion that the first sin was "the sin of human nature" by the clause as it were. He also speaks of the angels as a "race" or "kind": a term which taken strictly is not applicable to them. Witsius (Apostles' Creed, diss. 26) combines natural and representative union: "And so it is written: 'The first man Adam,' the natural and federal head of the rest of mankind, 'was made a living soul.' "

4.1.9 (see p. 452). In his commentary on Gen. 2:17, Paraeus, as quoted by Landis (Original Sin, 231), declares that "all the posterity of Adam do communicate in the original offense, not only by participation of a sinful nature, but likewise in the act of sinning itself (sed etiam ipso peccandi actu). We all, therefore, when we suffer for his sin, do not suffer simply for the sin of another, but also for our own. And it is said to be imputed to us all not as simply another's, but also as our own. Neither as being innocent, but as companions in the offense, and together guilty with him (non ut simpliciter alienum, sed etiam ut nostrum; nec ut insontibus, sed ut delicti sociis, et una reis)." Owen (Arminianism, chap. 7) declares that "Scripture is clear that the sin of Adam is the sin of us all, not only by propagation and communication (whereby not his singular fault, but something of the same nature is devised to us), but also by an imputation of his actual transgression unto us all, his singular transgression being by this means made ours. The grounds of this imputation may be all reduced to his being a common person: (1) As we were then in him and parts of him. (2) As he sustained the place of our whole nature in the covenant God made with him." Such a statement as this of Owen agrees with traducianism, not with creationism.

4.1.10 (see p. 454). The Westminster definition of Adam as a "public person" is so different from that of Christ as a "public person" that it is impossible to maintain, on the ground of it, either that both unions are representative or that both are natural and substantial. On the contrary, the definition implies that one is natural and the other representative. Adam as a "public person" is described as "the root of mankind" (Westminster Confession 6.3) and one from whom "all mankind descend by ordinary generation" (Westminster Larger Catechism 22). Christ as a "public person" is described only as "the head of his church" (52). Of Adam it is said that "all mankind were in him" (92); of Christ it is only said that he is "the head of his members" (83).

The two "public persons," together with the two unions and the two covenants connected with them, may be thus described: (1) The legal covenant of works being made with Adam as a public person, not for himself only but for his posterity, all mankind originally constituting a common unity and descending from him by ordinary generation specifically and really sinned in him and fell with him in the first transgression. (2) The evangelical covenant of grace being made with Christ as a public person, not for himself only but for his elect, all of mankind who are united to him by faith representatively and putatively suffered with him in his atoning death and obeyed with him in his perfect obedience. Consequently, the imputation of the sin of Adam to all men is real and meritorious; of the righteousness of Christ to elect men is nominal and gratuitous. The clause all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation is not limiting, as if there were some of mankind who do not so descend and who therefore did not sin in him, but is descriptive. All mankind are a total distinguished by descent from Adam by ordinary generation and by reason of this descent sinned in and with him when they were all a common specific nature in him. Descent by propagation proves an original unity of the posterity and progenitors, and this unity proves the commission of the "one offense" which made the unity guilty and corrupt.

The universalism that has infected Calvinistic theology of late originates in the erroneous assumption that Christ is united with the whole human race in the same specific and universal way that Adam was. Hence the assertion that "Christ has redeemed the human race." The scriptural statement is that he has "redeemed his people" (Luke 1:68); and the Westminster statement is that he has "redeemed his church." The doctrine of a discriminating election of some and preterition of others, which applies to redemption and the representative headship of Christ but not to apostasy and the natural headship of Adam, is vehemently opposed by all who make redemption to be as wide as apostasy and contend that "as all die" without exception "in Adam," so "all shall be made alive" without exception "in Christ." The great difference between the two kinds of "public person" needs to be urged in this reference, so that the natural and universal race-union of Adam and his posterity shall be marked off from the spiritual and individual union of Christ and his people. This is one of the many instances in which the value of accurate dogmatic statements appears. If a certain definition of Christ as a public person is adopted, universal salvation necessarily follows; if it is rejected, it is necessarily excluded.

Another way in which universalism is introduced into Calvinism is by claiming that the covenant of grace is made with all mankind instead of with a part of it. The only covenant which God has made with all mankind is the legal covenant of which the terms are "this do and you shall live." The terms of the covenant of grace are "I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts and will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jer. 31:33). This promise is not universal. Accordingly, Westminster Larger Catechism 30 declares that "God does not leave all men to perish in the estate of sin and misery, … but of his mere love and mercy delivers his elect out of it and brings them into an estate of salvation by the second covenant, commonly called the covenant of grace"; and also that covenant of grace was made with Christ as the second Adam, and in him with all the elect as his seed" (31). At the same time all mankind are represented as obtaining a certain kind of benefit from the covenant of grace. This is the offer to them of redemption on condition of their own faith and repentance, but not the effectual application of redemption by the Holy Spirit in regeneration, which latter is confined to the elect: "The grace of God is manifested in the second covenant, in that he freely provides and offers to sinners a mediator and life and salvation by him; and requiring faith as the condition to interest them in him promises and gives his Holy Spirit to all his elect to work in them that faith with all other saving graces and to enable them unto all holy obedience" (32).

According to these statements, the promise in the covenant of grace to the elect is absolute and unconditional, but to the nonelect is relative and conditional. The success of the covenant in the former instance is certain because the fulfillment on the part of the elect is secured by the action of God in overcoming their resistance and inclining and enabling them to keep it: "I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts," says God. This inward writing of the law is not dependent upon man's action, but wholly upon God's. But the success of the covenant in the latter instance is uncertain because its fulfillment on the part of the nonelect is dependent upon their action. If they will believe they shall be saved; but God does not promise to subdue their unbelief by "working faith in them, with all other saving graces." No better account of this subject has been given than by Bunyan in his "Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ":

"We call that an absolute promise that is made without any condition. That is an absolute promise of God, or of Christ, which makes over to this or that man any saving spiritual blessing without a condition to be performed on his part for the obtaining thereof. And this Scripture which we are speaking of is such an one. Let the best master of arts on earth show me, if he can, any condition in the text, 'All that the Father gives me shall come to me,' that depends upon any qualification in us which is not by the same promise to be wrought in us by the Lord Jesus. An absolute promise, therefore, is, as we say, without if or and; that is, it requires nothing of us that itself may be accomplished. It says not, they shall if they will, but they shall; not, they shall if they use the means, but they shall. You may say that a will, and the use of means is supposed, though not expressed. But I answer, no, by no means, that is, as a condition of this promise. If they be at all included in the promise, they are included there as the effect of the absolute promise, not as if it is to be expected that the qualification arise from us. 'Your people shall be willing in the day of your power' (Ps. 110:3). This is another absolute promise; but does this promise suppose a willingness in us as a condition of God's making us willing? Does it mean that they shall be willing, if they are willing; or they shall be willing, if they be willing. This is ridiculous; there is nothing of this supposed. The promise is absolute and certain to us; all that it requires for its own accomplishment is the mighty power of Christ and his faithfulness to accomplish.

"The difference, therefore, between the absolute and conditional promises is this: (1) They differ in their terms. The absolute promises say, I will and you shall; the conditional say, I will if you will; or, Do this and you shall live (Jer. 31:32, 34; Ezek. 34:24–31; Heb. 8:7–12; Jer. 4:1; Ezek. 18:30–32; Matt. 19:21). (2) They differ in their way of communicating good things to men. The absolute promises communicate good things freely only of grace; the conditional communicate good things only if there be that qualification in us which the promise calls for, not else. (3) The absolute promises engage God, the others engage us; I mean God only, us only. (4) Absolute promises must be fulfilled; conditional may or may not be fulfilled. The absolute ones must be fulfilled because of the faithfulness of God; the others may not be because of the unfaithfulness of men. (5) The absolute promises have, therefore, a sufficiency in themselves to bring about their own fulfilling; the conditional have not so. The absolute promise is therefore a big-bellied promise, because it has in itself a fullness of all desired things for us and will, when the time of that promise is come, yield to us mortals that which will verily save us, yea, and make us capable of answering the demands of the conditional promise. Wherefore, though there be a real, yea, an eternal difference in these respects and others, between the conditional and the absolute promise, yet again, in other respects, there is a blessed harmony between them, as may be seen in these particulars: (1) The conditional promise calls for repentance, the absolute gives it (Acts 5:30–31). (2) The conditional promise calls for faith, the absolute promise gives it (Zeph. 3:12; Rom. 15:12). (3) The conditional promise calls for a new heart, the absolute promise gives it (Ezek. 36). (4) The conditional promise calls for holy obedience, the absolute promise gives it or causes it (Ezek. 36:27). And as they harmoniously agree in this, so again the conditional promise blesses the man who by the absolute promise is endued with its fruits. As for instance: (1) The absolute promise makes men upright; and then the conditional follows, saying, 'Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord' (Ps. 119:1). (2) The absolute promise gives to this man the fear of the Lord; and then the conditional follows, saying, 'Blessed is everyone that fears the Lord' (118:1). (3) The absolute promise gives faith; and then the conditional follows, saying, 'Blessed is he that believes' (Zeph. 3:12; Luke 1:45). (4) The absolute promise brings free forgiveness of sins; and then says the conditional, 'Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven and whose sin is covered' (Rom. 4:7–8). (5) The absolute promise says that God's elect shall hold out to the end; then the conditional follows with its blessings, 'He that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved' (Mark 13:13). Thus do the promises gloriously serve one another and us, and this is their harmonious agreement."

In the covenant of saving grace faith is a means or instrument, not a condition. Properly speaking, a condition is something rendered by one party to the other; for example, in the covenant of works perfect obedience was the condition of life, and this was to be supplied by man. But in the covenant of saving grace faith is not supplied by the believer, but is the gift of God; by regeneration the believer is inclined and enabled to believe. Faith, therefore, is not a condition of the covenant of saving grace, but a means of its fulfillment. In the covenant of common grace, on the contrary, faith is a condition; for under this form of grace God demands faith from the sinner and does not give it to him. These remarks apply also to repentance, which in common grace is required of the sinner as something which he is to originate as a condition of salvation, but which in special grace is originated in him by the Holy Spirit, not as a condition to be performed on his part, but as a means or instrument employed by God to accomplish his unconditional promise to the elect: "I will put my laws into their mind and write them in their hearts."

4.1.11 (see p. 458). Owen (Arminianism, chap. 7) thus speaks of the separation of punishment from culpability: "Sin and punishment, though they are sometimes separated by God's mercy, pardoning the one and so not inflicting the other, yet never by his justice, inflicting the latter when the former is not. Sin imputed by itself alone, without an inherent guilt, was never punished in any but Christ." Augustine (Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 4.6) says the same: "But how can the Pelagians say 'that only death passed upon us by Adam's means?' For if we die because he died, but he died because he sinned, they say that the punishment passed without the guilt and that innocent infants are punished with an unjust penalty by deriving death without the desert of death. This the catholic faith has known of the one and only mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who condescended to undergo death, that is, the penalty of sin, without sin, for us. As he alone became the Son of Man in order that we might through him become sons of God, so he alone, on our behalf, underwent punishment without ill desert, that we through him might obtain grace without good desert. Because as to us nothing good was due, so to him nothing bad was due. Therefore, commending his love to them to whom he was about to give undeserved life, he was willing to suffer for them an undeserved death. This special prerogative of the mediator the Pelagians endeavor to make void, so that this should no longer be special in the Lord, if Adam in such wise suffered a death due to him on account of his guilt as that infants deriving from him no guilt should suffer undeserved death."

4.1.12 (see p. 458). Augustine gives his view of natural union and of the relation of Adam's first sin and his subsequent individual transgressions to his posterity in the following extracts:

"Julian then proceeds to ask: 'Why, then, are they whom God created in the devil's power? And he finds an answer to his own question apparently from a phrase of mine. 'Because of sin,' says he, 'not because of nature.' Then framing his answer in reference to mine, he says, 'But as there cannot be offspring without the sexes, so there cannot be sin without the will.' Yes, indeed, such is the truth. For even as 'by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, so also has death passed through to all men, for in him all have sinned.' By the evil will of that one man all sinned in him, since all were that one man from whom, therefore, they individually derived original sin" (Marriage and Concupiscence 2.15). The unity of Adam and his posterity here affirmed by Augustine is natural, not representative. A constituent can derive nothing from his vicarious representative by propagation; but the posterity of Adam, according to Augustine, derive original sin by this method, which infers an original unity of species or nature: "So soon as the infant, who owes his first birth to others acting under the impulse of natural instincts, has been made partaker of the second birth by others acting under the impulse of spiritual desires, he cannot thenceforward be held under the bond of that sin in another to which he does not with his own will consent. 'Both the soul of the father is mine,' says the Lord, 'and the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sins, it shall die.' That bond of guilt, which was to be canceled by the grace of the sacrament of baptism, he derived from Adam for the reason that at the time of Adam's sin he was not yet a soul having a separate life, that is, another distinct soul respecting which it could be said, 'Both the soul of the father is mine, and the soul of the son is mine.' Therefore, now, when a man has a personal, separate existence, being thereby made distinct from his parents, he is not held responsible for that sin in another which is performed without his consent. In the former case he derived guilt from another, because at the time when the guilt which he derived was incurred he was one with the person from whom he derived it and was in him. But one man does not derive guilt from another, when from the fact that each has a separate life belonging to himself the word may apply equally to both: 'The soul that sins, it shall die' " (Letter 98.1 to Boniface, A.D. 408).

4.1.13 (see p. 462). Repentance for Adam's sin is conceivable and possible upon the traducian theory of its origin, but not upon the creationist theory. If the posterity were a specific unity with Adam and as such participated in the first transgression, repentance for it by any individual who is a part of that unity is virtually repentance for personal sin, which presents no difficulty. But if they were not a specific unity with him and he committed the first transgression as an individual wholly separate from them and merely as their vicar and representative, then repentance for Adam's sin by Adam's posterity would be repentance for vicarious sin, which is impossible.

There is no dispute that the sense of guilt and godly sorrow may accompany the consciousness of innate and inherited depravity in the heart. David gives expression to it in Ps. 51. He confesses the evil and damnableness of his inborn disposition and imputes to himself responsibility and guilt for this disposition. In so doing he repents of Adam's sin as his own sin, because as an individual he is a propagated part of that one specific nature which "sinned in Adam and fell with him in his first transgression" (Westminster Larger Catechism 16). In being conscious of the evil inclination of his will, he is conscious of it as something in the origin of which he was concerned when his individual nature was a part of the common mass in Adam and Eve. This individual nature is a fraction of the specific nature which committed the sin of apostasy from God, which sin is imputable as a whole and with all its guilt, to each and every one of the individual parts, because the guilt of an act of sin cannot be divided and distributed among the several or many individuals who committed it. The fact that the sense of guilt does accompany the sense of inward corruption proves that the individual must have been a sharer in its origin. Otherwise the fact of birth sin and of inherent depravity would go to excuse sin rather than to magnify it. But in the self-consciousness of the regenerate man, it goes to aggravate it. David so represents it. He mentions the fact that he "was shaped in iniquity" and that "in sin did his mother conceive him" in proof not only of the depth of his depravity but of the greatness of its guilt. This is explicable only on the supposition that through his immediate parents was transmitted that self-determined inclination of will and sinful disposition of heart which had its responsible origin not in his own father and mother, but in the first two remote parents from whom he and all other individuals descend and in whom they all sinned specifically.

4.1.14 (see p. 464). Turretin (16.3.15) again marks the difference in the kind of union between Adam and his posterity and Christ and his people: "Nor does it follow that if we are constituted unrighteous and obligated to punishment by the sin propagated from Adam, we ought, therefore, to be justified by the righteousness inherent in us by the regeneration communicated by Christ because the reason (ratio) of each is most diverse. And, moreover, Paul here (Rom. 5:18–19) instituted a comparison between the first and second Adam, in respect to the fact, but not in respect to the manner of the fact (in re, non in modo rei)."

4.1.15 (see p. 469). Mill commits the same error as Hodge in supposing that realism means that the individual contains the whole specific nature instead of being merely a severed part of it. "If man," he says, "was a substance inhering in each individual man, the essence of man (whatever that might mean) was naturally supposed to accompany it; to inhere in John Thompson and Julius Caesar and form the common essence of Thompson and Julius Caesar" (Logic 1.6). When it is said by the creationist himself that the individual man is a part of the human species, it is not meant, of course, that he is a part of a nonentity, of something that has only a nominal and fictitious existence. A part of a nonentity would also be a nonentity; and therefore the denial that the species is a reality is logically the denial that the individual is such. A fraction of a whole can have no reality unless the whole has it. The common definition, therefore, of an individual as a portion of the species implies traducianism, that is, that the species is objectively real, not nominal.

4.1.16 (see p. 470). The following questions and answers may help to explain the difference between nonindividualized human nature and individualized:

1. Can the specific human nature exist outside of individual persons? No; it must exist either as a whole in the first human pair or as subdivided parts in the individuals who are constituted out of it by generation. As an entire nature it was created and existed in and with Adam and Eve. As subsequently subdivided and transmitted in parts by propagation, it exists not as at first solely in Adam and Eve, but also in their individual posterity. Either as a whole or as fractional parts it cannot be conceived of as outside of individual persons. Every transmitted part of the specific nature is transmitted in and by particular individuals.

2. Although the original human nature has been individualized by propagation into innumerable human persons, yet does not each pair, male and female, of these persons contain the whole of the human nature? Suppose the whole race excepting one pair should now be cut off or annihilated, would not the human nature be entire in these two? No; no pair of individuals, excepting the first pair of a species, contains the whole nature. All the individuals of a race can be propagated only from the first two individuals. Should an individual pair be taken at the middle of the series it would be impossible to derive as much population from them as from Adam and Eve. And the reason is that they do not contain the whole specific nature, but only a portion of it. Should ten pairs of individuals be placed upon one island, and only one pair upon another, more population, the circumstances being the same in both islands, would issue from the ten pairs than from the one; but neither from ten nor ten thousand pairs would so many issue as from Adam and Eve.

3. After Cain and Abel were conceived, the specific human nature was in four individuals instead of two; was there any less of the specific nature in Adam and Eve than there was before any children were conceived? Certainly; a part of the nature is now divided from the primitive whole and constitutes a separate offspring. This diminishes the original mass in two ways: (a) by that fraction of the nature which is formed into the individuals Cain and Abel and (b) by that additional fraction of the nature which is taken to be transmitted and propagated by the individuals Cain and Abel. In this way there is a constant diminution of the primitive nonindividualized human nature when once its division and individualization begins by conception. The specific human nature will not yield so many individuals from 1882 to the end of the world as it will have yielded from Adam to the end of the world. Hebrews 7:9–10 is cited in proof of the existence of all mankind in Adam, but it is inadequate except in the way of illustration. The tribe of Levi was only a fraction of mankind. Not the entire race, but a small part of it "paid tithes in Abraham."

4. The nonindividualized human nature is a combination of both psychical and physical substance. Is the psychical factor contained in the physical, or the physical in the psychical? The meaning of "substance," as defined on pp. 433–34, 440, 465–67, 474, and 477–78, must be remembered. Both psychical and physical substance are invisibles. One of them, consequently, is not contained in the other. Mental life or substance is not held in animal life or substance as in a local receptacle of it. Both are coordinate but heterogeneous principles; one of them being invisible mind, and the other invisible matter. But as invisibles, both coexisted in the primitive nonindividualized nature in Adam and Eve and continue to coexist in every transmitted fraction of it and produce each its appropriate product: one produces the soul and the other produces the body of the individual person.

5. Why did the entire human nature act in and with the first two individuals, while the transmitted fraction of human nature does not act in and with each of the subsequent millions of individuals? Because in the former instance the entire nature by being created in the first two individuals constitutes a unity with them, but in the latter instance the fractional part being only transmitted, not created, does not constitute a unity with the individual in whom it is. When a specific nature is immediately created in the first pair of individuals, it has had no previous existence and makes an indispensable part of the newly created unity. But when a part of this nature is separated from the primary mass and is transmitted in and with a subsequent individual in order to be individualized by propagation, it has had a prior existence in the first pair of individuals and a unity with them and therefore does not constitute a unity with and a necessary part of the subsequent individual. The individual in this latter case is complete without it because he is not a specific individual. He does not require, like Adam and Eve, in order to the completeness of his personality the unification of the specific nature with his individuality. Hence, when the propagated individuals of the human species sin against God, the fraction of human nature in them does not sin in and with them, because it is not one with them. It has already sinned in the first transgression in and with Adam, with whom it was one and is corrupt human nature, but it will not act out its own sinfulness until it is individualized by propagation and becomes a distinct and separate person by itself. In brief, the total human nature sinned in Adam and Eve because it was a unity with them; but does not sin in their posterity because it is not a unity with them. Only of Adam and Eve can it be said with St. Paul: "In Adam all die" (1 Cor. 15:22) and "in whom all sinned" (Rom. 5:12); and with Augustine: "We all were that one man."

Augustine asserts the objectivity of human nature as substance or entity as follows: "Man's nature was created at first innocent and without any sin; but that nature of man in which everyone is born from Adam now needs the physician because it is not sound. All good qualities, doubtless, which it still possesses in its make and constitution, namely, life, senses, and intellect, it has from the most high God, its Creator. But the flaw which darkens and weakens all those natural excellences so that it has need of illumination and healing, it has not contracted from its blameless Creator, but from that original sin which it committed by free will. Accordingly, guilty nature has its part in most righteous punishment. For if we are now newly created in Christ we were for all that 'children of wrath even as others.' The entire mass, therefore, incurs penalty; and if the deserved punishment of condemnation were rendered to all, it would without doubt be righteously rendered" (Nature and Grace 3.5). The nature is here described as having objective and real existence: "it" was created innocent; "it" needs the healing of the physician; "it" still possesses life, senses, intellect, will, and other constitutional qualities; "it" committed original sin by free will. The "entire mass" incurred penalty and deserves punishment: "Because Adam forsook God of his own free will he experienced the just judgment of God that with his whole race, which being as yet all placed in him had sinned with him, he should be condemned. Hence, even if none should be delivered no one could justly blame the judgment of God" (Rebuke and Grace 28).

4.1.17 (see p. 473). Pearson (On the Creed, art. 2) thus explains the difference between eternal and temporal generation: "In human generation the son is begotten in the same nature with the father, which is performed by derivation or decision of part of the substance of the parent; but this decision includes imperfection, because it supposes a substance divisible and consequently corporeal; whereas, the essence of God is incorporeal, spiritual, and indivisible, and therefore his nature is really communicated, not by derivation or decision, but by a total and plenary communication. The divine essence being by reason of its simplicity not subject to division and in respect to its infinity incapable of multiplication is so communicated as not to be multiplied; insomuch that he which proceeds by that communication has not only the same nature, but is also the same God. The Father God and the Word God; Abraham man and Isaac man; but Abraham one man, Isaac another man; not so the Father one God, and the Word another, but the Father and the Word both the same God." Pearson, from his creationist position, understands by "human nature" only physical human nature and does not distinguish with the traducianist between physical and psychical division. By division he means human division of ponderable substance, which, as he says, would imply that the substance is corporeal.

4.1.18 (see p. 476). The omission of the justification of Christ's human nature, while the sanctification of it is asserted, is seen in Owen's account of the subject in his "Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" (2.1). "Christ," he says, "was never federally in Adam and so not liable to the imputation of Adam's first sin. It is true that sin was imputed to him when he was made sin; thereby he took away the sin of the world. But it was imputed to him in the covenant of the mediator, through his voluntary susception; and not in the covenant of Adam by a legal imputation. Had it been reckoned to him as a descendant from Adam, he had not been a fit high priest to have offered sacrifices for us, as not being 'separate from sinners' (Heb. 7:25). Christ was in Adam in a natural sense from his first creation, in respect of the purpose of God (Luke 3:23, 38), yet he was not in him in a law sense until after the fall; so that as to his own person he had no more to do with the first sin of Adam than with any personal sin of one whose punishment he voluntarily took upon him. As for the pollution of our nature, it was prevented in him from the instant of conception (1:35). He was 'made of a woman,' but that portion whereof he was made was sanctified by the Holy Spirit, so that what was born thereof should be a holy thing." The objections to this view of the subject, which is common among Calvinistic creationists, are the following. (1) It separates the guilt of sin from the pollution and separates justification from sanctification, both of which from their nature are inseparable. If, as Owen concedes that "portion" of human nature which was derived from the virgin was "sanctified by the Holy Spirit" from the pollution of sin, it necessarily had also the guilt of sin which required to be expiated in order to the perfect preparation of the nature for union with the Logos. Neither Scripture nor reason know of a sin that is without guilt. Whenever sanctification is required, justification is also. (2) It destroys the unity between that portion of human nature which the Logos assumed into union with that remainder which was not so assumed; in other words, between Christ's humanity and that of his people whom he redeemed. The guilt of the first sin was upon the latter, but not upon the former, according to this view. But the Scriptures describe Christ's human nature, in its original condition and before it was miraculously prepared for the union with the Logos, as being like that of fallen man in every respect. It was created holy in Adam, put upon probation in him, was tempted in him, fell in him, and came under guilt and condemnation in him, because it was the "seed of Adam," the "seed of the woman," and "sinful flesh" in the same way as was the human nature of David, Abraham, and Adam, whose son Christ is said to be (3:31, 34, 38). But if, as Owen says, Christ was in Adam "in a natural sense," but not "in a law sense," this could not have been the case, because it is only the law that condemns and charges guilt. St. Paul (Gal. 4:4) expressly asserts not only that Christ was "made of a woman," but was "made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law." The implication is that he was "under the law" in the same sense that those whom he redeemed were and sustained the same relation to it in all respects. (3) This view makes the redemption of the "portion" of human nature which the Logos assumed to be different from the redemption of his people. But Scripture describes it as the same. Christhumanity was the firstfruits of redemption: "Christ the firstfruits, afterward they that are Christ's at his coming" (1 Cor. 15:23). Christ's people are redeemed from both the guilt and pollution of Adam's sin; but, according to the view we are criticizing, Christ's humanity was redeemed only from the pollution of it.

Instead, therefore, of making Christ's human nature in its original state in the virgin, as derived from Adam and previous to its miraculous preparation in her for the hypostatic union, to be different from the fallen human nature of Adam and his posterity generally by not being under condemnation but only polluted and as requiring sanctification but not justification, it agrees better with Scripture to make it precisely the same in every respect and then to have it completely justified from guilt and sanctified from pollution. Christ's human nature before the incarnation was thus a fractional part of the common fallen human nature, having the same common characteristics with it. As it was in the virgin mother, it was "sinful flesh" (Rom. 8:3). But when it was no longer in the virgin mother, but was in the God-man, having been made by the miraculous conception the human nature of the incarnate Word, it was no longer "sinful flesh," but that "holy thing" which Luke (1:35) speaks of and which is described in Heb. 7:26 as "holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners." The difference between Christ's human nature as it was originally in the virgin mother and as it subsequently was in him is marked by St. Paul in Rom. 8:3: "God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin condemned sin in the flesh." He does not say that Christ "condemned sin in the sinful flesh." The epithet sinful in the first clause describes the human nature prior to its assumption; and the omission of the epithet in the second clause describes it subsequently to this. "Sinful flesh" could not be an offering for sin.

This method of explanation makes the human nature of Christ after its preparation for assumption by the Logos to be as guiltless of Adam's sin as Owen's explanation does. As the justification of an individual sinner sets him as completely free from guilt and condemnation as if he had never been a sinner at all, so the justification of that "portion" of fallen human nature which the Logos assumed made it as free from the guilt and condemnation of Adam's sin as if it had not fallen and come under condemnation in Adam. And it avoids the serious defect in Owen's explanation of separating the pollution from the guilt of Adam's sin and of making the human nature of Christ as it existed in the virgin mother to be different from that of Adam and his posterity generally, thereby conflicting with Scripture, which represents Christ as "not taking the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham" and as being "made like unto his brethren in all things" (Heb. 2:16–17).

In 13.5.19 Turretin gives a similar explanation of the human nature of Christ: "Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh (John 3:6), that is, if born according to the order of nature and in a natural manner, by ordinary generation; but not if born beyond such order and in a supernatural manner, as was the case with Christ. Hence, although Christ derived origin from sinful Adam, he did not nevertheless derive sin from him, either imputed or inherent, because he did not descend from him by the force of the general promise 'increase and multiply,' but by virtue of the special promise concerning 'the seed of the woman.' And although he was in Adam in respect to nature, he was not in respect to person and moral state or federal relationship, by which it happens that all the posterity of Adam, Christ excepted, participate in his sin." The objection to this explanation is this: Christ's "nature" cannot be separated in this manner from his "person," so that what is predicable of the former is not of the latter; so that the "nature" might have been in Adam, but not the "person." The "person" of an individual man is constituted out of the specific "nature" of man and is a fractional part of it; consequently, if the whole was in Adam the part was also; and the very same properties and qualities belong to both. If the "nature" is rational, immortal, and voluntary, the "person" will be also. If the "nature" is holy or sinful, the "person" will be so likewise. Both the intrinsic and the acquired properties will be alike. The only difference between the "nature" and the "person" is in the form, not in the substance with its properties and qualities. The "person" of Christ, being a part of the common human nature that was created in Adam and which sinned with him in the first transgression, must have had all the properties and qualities of fallen human nature. Both the guilt and the pollution of the first sin attached to it. And therefore, in order to be prepared and fit for union with the divine nature of the second trinitarian person, both the guilt and the pollution must be completely and perfectly removed.

If the Logos redeemed the human nature which he assumed and in order to assume it, it is evident that the nature was justified as well as sanctified. Besides the citations on pp. 475–76 in proof that this was the understanding of Scripture by the church, the following from the Formula of Concord 1 is explicit: "This same human nature of ours (to wit, his own work or creation) Christ has redeemed, the same (his own work) he sanctifies, the same he raises from the dead, and with great glory adorns it (to wit, his own work)" (see p. 634).

4.1.19 (see p. 477). Owen (Person of Christ 12.247–49) teaches the divisibility of the common specific nature of man in his explication of the human nature of Christ: "The Scripture abounds in the declaration of the necessity that the satisfaction for sin be made in the nature itself that sinned and is to be saved. 'Christ took not on him the nature of angels. Inasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same.' The same nature that sinned must work out the reparation and recovery from sin. That part of human nature wherein or whereby this work was to be effected, as unto the essence or substance of it, was to be derived from the common root or stock of the same nature in our first parents. It would not suffice hereunto that God should create a man out of the dust of the earth or out of nothing, of the same nature in general with ourselves. For there would be no cognation or alliance between him and us, so that we should be in any way concerned in what he did and suffered. For this alliance depends solely hereon, 'that God has of one blood made all nations of men' (Acts 17:26). Hence it is that the genealogy of Christ is given us in the gospel not only from Abraham, to declare the faithfulness of God in the promise that he should be of his seed, but from Adam also, to manifest his relation unto the common stock of our nature and unto all mankind therein.

"This human nature, wherein the work of our recovery and salvation is to be wrought out, was not to be so derived from the original stock of our kind or race as to bring along with it the same taint of sin and the same liableness unto guilt upon its own account, as accompany every other individual person in the world. For if this nature in him were so defiled as the nature is in us before our renovation, it could make no satisfaction for the sin of others.

"To take a little further view hereof, we must consider on what grounds spiritual defilement and guilt do adhere unto our nature, as they are in all our individual persons. And the first of these is that our entire nature, as unto our participation of it was in Adam as our head and representative. Hence his sin became the sin of us all and is justly imputed unto us and charged on us. 'In him we all sinned'; all did so who were in him as their common representative when he sinned. Hereby we became the natural 'children of wrath' or liable unto the wrath of God, for the common sin of our nature in the natural and legal head or spring of it. And the second ground is that we derive our nature from Adam by the way of natural generation. By that means alone is the nature of our first parents as defiled communicated unto us. For by this means do we come to appertain unto the stock as it was degenerate and corrupt. Wherefore that part of our nature wherein and whereby this great work of salvation was to be wrought must, as unto its essence and substance, be derived from our first parents, yet so as never to have been in Adam as a common representative nor be derived from him by natural generation. This, as we know, was done in the person of Christ; for his human nature was never in Adam as his representative nor was he comprised in the covenant whereon Adam stood. For Christ derived it legally only from and after the first promise when Adam ceased to be a public person. Nor did it proceed from him by natural generation, the only means of the derivation of its depravation and pollution. For it was a 'holy thing' created in the womb of the virgin by the power of the Most High." (Owen here uses the term created not in its strict sense of creation ex nihilo, but of quickening, making alive. He refers to the agency of the Holy Spirit in the conception of the "seed of the woman" and expressly says that "it would not suffice in the incarnation that God should create a man out of nothing, for there would be no alliance between the God-man and ourselves.")

In this statement Owen combines traducianism and creationism, natural and representative union, and introduces the following difficulties: (1) This "part" of human nature which the Logos assumed into union with himself was surely in Adam along with all the other parts of the common nature when "all sinned." How could it have been in him and not have been "represented" by him? (2) How could it have been a part of the common human nature and "not be comprised in the legal covenant" which God made with this human nature as it was in Adam? (3) In exempting that "part" of human nature assumed into union by the Logos, as it existed in Adam and the virgin and prior to its preparation for this union by the miraculous conception of the Holy Spirit, from "representation" by Adam and participation in the legal covenant, Owen is in conflict with what he says respecting the necessity that Christ's human nature be like that of the race whom he came to save. His individual human nature, being a part of the specific human nature, was "sinful flesh" (Rom. 8:3) because it "sinned in Adam and fell with him in the first transgression." But in order to this sinning and fall it must not only have been "made of a woman," but "made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law" (Gal. 4:4) and have been "represented" by Adam, if representation and not natural union be the truth. And because this portion of human nature was in the same fallen and sinful condition with the remainder, it could not be assumed into union as it was, but the miraculous conception by the Holy Spirit was necessary to fit it for its union with the second person of the Trinity. As Owen himself says (Meditations on the Glory of Christ, preface), "In this condition, lost, poor, base, yea, cursed, the Lord Christ, the Son of God, found our nature. And hereon, in infinite condescension and compassion, sanctifying a portion of it unto himself, he took it to be his own in a holy, ineffable subsistence, in his own person." In the following passage Owen teaches that the relation of Christ's individual human nature to the specific human nature is like that of any other individual human nature to the specific nature: "The eternal person of the Son of God or the divine nature in the person of the Son did, by an ineffable act of his divine power and love, assume our nature into an individual subsistence in or with himself, that is, to be his own nature, even as the divine nature is his. This is the infallible foundation of faith, even to them who can comprehend very little of these divine mysteries. They can and do believe that the Son of God did take our nature to be his own; so that whatever was done therein was done by him as it is with every other man. Every man has human nature appropriated unto himself by an individual subsistence, whereby he becomes to be that man which he is and not another; or that nature which is common unto all becomes in him to be peculiarly his own, as if there were none partaker of it but himself. Adam, in his first creation, when all human nature was in him alone, was no morethat individual man which he was, than every man is now the man that he is by his individual subsistence. So the Lord Christ taking that nature which is common unto all into a peculiar subsistence in his own person, it becomes his, and he the man Christ Jesus. This was the mind that was in him. By reason of his assumption of our nature, with his doing and suffering therein, whereby he was found in fashion as a man, the glory of his divine person was veiled, and he made himself of no reputation. It is also to be observed that in the assumption of our nature to be his own nature he did not change it into a thing divine, but preserved it entire in all its essential properties and actings. Hence it really died and suffered, was tried, tempted, and forsaken, as the same nature in any other man might do and be. That nature as it was peculiarly his, and therefore he or his person therein, was exposed unto all the temporary evils which the same nature is subject unto in any other person" (Glory of Christ in Works 12.419).

4.1.20 (see p. 481). Is the moral agency of the human race in Adam and Eve possible and conceivable? Can a specific human nature, which is subsequently to be transformed by propagation into millions of individuals, act voluntarily and responsibly "in and with" (Westminster Larger Catechism 22) the first two individuals in whom it was created? Can human nature self-determine to sin, first as a unity and a whole and then afterward continue this self-determination in every one of the million parts into which it is subdivided by propagation into separate individuals? It can if the constituent properties are the same in both instances. If the nature as a whole is identical in kind, that is, has the same essential properties of spirituality, rationality, voluntariness, and immortality with its individual parts, what the latter can do the former can. In this case if the individual man can sin the specific man can. There is no dispute that the fractional part of human nature which makes the substance of an individual person of the human species is a spiritual, rational, voluntary, and immortal substance and is capable of rational and voluntary agency by reason of these properties; there ought, therefore, to be no denial that the entire human nature as a unity and prior to its individualization by propagation is capable of the same kind of agency because it has the very same qualities. The power of any substance or nature depends upon the kind of properties belonging to it.

2 Man's Primitive State

Preliminary Considerations

Holiness, in the order, is prior to sin. Man must be holy before he can be sinful. "The good," says Plato (Protagoras 344), "may become bad; but the bad does not become bad; he is always bad." Similarly, Aristotle (Categories 9.5) remarks that "the man of former times was reputed to be better and more honorable by nature." The golden age of the poets is the echo and corruption of the biblical account of man's original state. Tacitus describes the earliest generation of men as follows: "The oldest among mortals used to act with no evil desire, without disgrace or wickedness, and therefore without punishment or restraints. Nor were rewards necessary, since they would strive to do what is right by their own noble character. Since they would desire nothing against what is moral, they were forbidden nothing through fear"2 (Annals 3.26).

The Westminster statement is the common one in the Augustino-Calvinistic creeds: "God created man after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness" (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 10). "God said, Let us make man in our own image. So God created man in his own image" (Gen. 1:26–27). "God has made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions" (Eccles. 7:29). "The new man is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him" (Col. 3:10).

Holiness is more than innocence. It is not sufficient to say that man was created in a state of innocence. This would be true if he had been destitute of a moral disposition either right or wrong. Man was made not only negatively innocent, but positively holy. Man's regenerate condition is a restoration of his primitive state; and his righteousness as regenerate is described as kata theon (Eph. 4:21) and as "true holiness" (4:24). This is positive character, not mere innocency.

Concreated holiness is one of the distinguishing tenets of Augustinianism. Pelagianism denies that holiness is concreated. It asserts that the will of man by creation and in its first condition is characterless. Its first act is to originate either holiness or sin. Non pleni nascimur: we are not born full of character. Adam's posterity are born, as he was created, without holiness and without sin (Pelagius, quoted by Augustine, Concerning Original Sin 13). Semipelagianism holds the same opinion excepting that it concedes a transmission of a vitiated physical nature, which Pelagianism denies. So far as the rational and voluntary nature of man is concerned, the Semipelagian asserts that holiness like sin must be self-originated by each individual. Tridentine anthropology is a mixture of Pelagianism and Augustinianism. God created man in puris naturalibus, without either holiness or sin. This creative act, which left man characterless, God followed with another act by which he endowed man with holiness. Holiness was something supernatural and not contained in the first creative act. Creation is, thus, imperfect and is improved by an afterthought. In the modern church, Calvinists and early Lutherans adopted the Augustinian view. Arminians and some later Lutherans reject the doctrine of concreated holiness. (supplement 4.2.1.)

Two Phases of Holiness: Knowledge and Inclination

Holiness has two sides or phases. (1) It is perception and knowledge. As such, it relates to the understanding. God and divine things must be apprehended in order to holiness. (2) It is inclination and feeling. As such, it relates to the will and affections. God and divine things must be desired and delighted in in order to holiness.

The knowledge in which man was created was the knowledge of God. It was conscious and spiritual, in distinction from speculative. It was that immediate and practical apprehension spoken of in 1 Cor. 2:14: "The things of the Spirit are spiritually discerned." This is proved (a) by the fact that regeneration "is a renewal in knowledge" after the divine image (Col. 3:10); but regeneration restores what man had by creation; and (b) by the fact that being associated with love and reverence, it must have been experimental.

The knowledge possessed by Adam and Eve before the fall was different from what it was after. This is proved by Gen. 2:25: "They were naked and were not ashamed." They were conscious of holiness and had no consciousness of sin. But apostasy brought with it the conscious knowledge of evil: "The eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked" (3:7). "God said, Behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil" (3:22). God knows good consciously and evil, not consciously but, intuitively by his omniscience. Thus his knowledge of both good and evil is perfect; although his knowledge of the former is by a different method from that by which he knows the latter. Unfallen man knew good consciously and evil only speculatively and theoretically. Hence his knowledge of sin was imperfect. On the other hand, fallen man knew evil consciously and good only speculatively and theoretically: "The eyes of both of them were opened, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden" (3:7–8); "the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him" (1 Cor. 2:14). (supplement 4.2.2.)

There are two ways of knowing sin: (a) as the sinner knows it and (b) as the saint knows it. A sinful man knows vice by the immediate consciousness of it; a holy angel perceives it as the contrast of his own virtue and purity. The latter knowledge of sin is far inferior in thoroughness to the former. Thus it appears that in Adam the conscious experimental knowledge of holiness implied only a speculative and inadequate knowledge of sin; and the conscious experimental knowledge of sin implied only a speculative and inadequate knowledge of holiness. Holy man was ignorant of sin; and sinful man was ignorant of holiness. Consciously to know good is a good; consciously to know evil is an evil.

The inclination and moral disposition with which man was created consisted in the perfect harmony of his will with divine law. The agreement was so perfect and entire that there was no distinction between the two in holy Adam's consciousness. Inclination was duty, and duty was inclination. Unfallen Adam, like the holy angels, did not feel the law to be over him as a taskmaster, but in him like a living actuating principle. In a perfect moral condition, law and will are one; as in the sphere of physical nature, the laws of nature and the forces of nature are identical. It is in this reference that St. Paul (1 Tim. 1:9) affirms that "the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners." Law coupled with the threat of punishment is law in a form suited only to a will at enmity with it. Law when proclaimed at Sinai to rebellious man is accompanied with thunders and lightnings; but not when proclaimed in heaven to the holy and obedient (Shedd, Sermons to the Spiritual Man, 212–24). (supplement 4.2.3.)

Proof That Man Was Created Holy

The positive holiness, then, with which man was endowed by creation consisted in an understanding enlightened in the spiritual knowledge of God and divine things and a will wholly inclined to them. The following are some of the rational proofs that man was so created.

The maturity and perfection of man suppose it. Adam was not created an infant, but an adult. To suppose him to be vacant of the knowledge of God, and of moral character in this advanced stage of existence contradicts the idea of complete and mature manhood. A perfect man who has neither the knowledge nor the love of God is a contradiction.

The idea of the will as a mental faculty implies a concreated holiness. Inclination enters into the definition of the will, as necessarily as triangularity does into that of a triangle; as intelligence does into that of an understanding; as properties do into that of a substance. To create a will, therefore, is to create an inclination also. If we should suppose God to create a certain faculty which at the instant of its creation was uninclined and undetermined either to good or evil, it would not be a voluntary faculty. For a voluntary faculty is one marked by voluntariness. It is determined and inclined and evinces thereby that it is a will. If it is destitute of inclination, it is involuntary; and an involuntary will is a solecism. To say that it will become voluntary by becoming inclined does not relieve the difficulty. This is to concede that at present it is not voluntary.

The human will is by creation voluntary, as the human understanding is by creation cognitive. When God creates the understanding, he endows it with innate ideas and laws of thought, by virtue of which it is an intelligent faculty. These are the content of the understanding. And when he creates the human will, he endows it with an inclination or a disposition or a self-determination, whatever be the term employed, by virtue of which it is a voluntary faculty. This is the content of the will. As the understanding without this created intelligence in its constitution would not be an understanding at all, so the will without this created voluntariness in its constitution would not be a will at all.

The creation of a finite mind or spirit implies the creation of holiness. Spiritual substance is distinguished from matter by the characteristic of self-motion or motion ab intra. Matter must be moved from without, by another material substance impinging upon it. But mind moves from within. Its motion is not from external impact, but is self-motion. Adam was created a spirit. The instant, therefore, that he was created, he had all the characteristics that distinguish spirit from matter. One of these, and one of the most important, is self-motion. But self-motion is self-determination, and self-determination is inclination.8 The Scriptures asserts that Adam was created a "living soul." Life implies motion; and the motion in this case was not mechanical or material, but the motion of mind. Thus in creating a rational spirit, God creates a self-moving essence, and this is a self-determining will.

If holiness is not created, the creature improves the Creator's work. Augustine (City of God 12.9) thus argues:

Was the good inclination of the good angels created along with them, or did they exist for a time without it? If along with themselves, then doubtless it was created by him who created them; and as soon as ever they were created, they attached themselves to him who created them with that love which he created in them. But if the good angels existed for a time without a good inclination and produced it in themselves without God's interference, then it follows that they made themselves better than he made them. We must therefore acknowledge that not only of holy men, but also of the holy angels, it can be said, that "the love of God is shed abroad in their hearts, by the Holy Spirit which is given unto them."

The dependent nature of finite holiness implies that it is created. Uncreated, independent holiness is possible only in a self-existent and self-sustaining being. Holiness in the creature is ultimately suspended upon the action of the Creator. It is derived from him. In its first beginning, it must be given both to angels and men. Says Edwards (Efficacious Grace §§43–51):

The nature of virtue being a positive thing can proceed from nothing from God's immediate influence and must take its rise from creation or infusion from God. There can be no one virtuous choice unless God immediately gives it. Reason shows that the first existence of a principle of virtue cannot be given from man himself nor in any created being whatsoever; but must be immediately given from God. God is said, in Scripture, to give true virtue and purity to the heart of man; to work it in him, to create it, to form it; and with regard to it, we are said to be his workmanship: "I am the Lord which sanctify you" (Lev. 20:8); "there shall come out of Zion the deliverer and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob" (Rom. 11:26–27).

Anselm (On the Fall of the Devil 12) argues similarly for the derivation of holiness in the finite will. He contends that if the will of man or angel be supposed to be created in a state of indifference, without any inclination whatever, it could not begin any self-motion at all. It would remain indifferent forever and never have any inclination. A creature with no character will never originate a character. Consequently, the first inclination of the will must be given to the will when the will is made ex nihilo; and since the holy Creator cannot give to his own work a bad inclination, he must give a good one.

That holiness is creatable in man is proved by the facts of regeneration and sanctification. The regeneration of the soul is the origination of holiness a second time, within it. This is described in Scripture as "giving a heart of flesh," "renewing a right spirit within," "working in you to will." This phraseology teaches that God produces a holy inclination. Again, such terms as "creating anew," "fathering," and "quickening" imply the creation of holiness.

Sanctification likewise proves that holiness is creatable. Sanctification is the increase of holiness; and the increase is by derivation, not by original production. No Christian augments his own holiness by his own isolated decision. The law of sanctification is stated in John 15:4: "Abide in me and I in you: as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can you except you abide in me." The vine branch bears fruit spontaneously (aph' heautou). The grape is a vital, not a mechanical product. But this spontaneity is possible to the branch only in case it is in the vine. Similarly, sanctification is spontaneous and free, yet only as it is derived from Christ the source of holiness. Another passage in point is 2 Cor. 9:8: "God is able to make all grace abound toward you, so that having all sufficiency (autakreian) in all things, you may abound to every good work." This "sufficiency" is that genuine and spontaneous inclination to holiness which impels to good acts; but this inclination is "made to abound" in the Christian by the grace of God. These facts prove that the spontaneous motion of the will may be a product of God as well as a characteristic of man; in other words, a good inclination, while it is the personal quality of a man, may be likewise a created quality in him.

Voluntariness as Self-Determination

The arguments that have been presented for the creatability of holiness assume the correctness of the Augustinian definition of voluntariness or free agency, namely, that it is the spontaneous self-determination of the will. This can be created along with the will, if the will itself can be created. Consequently, it is necessary to establish the correctness of this definition. The freedom of the will is its self-motion. That which is self-moved is not forced to move; and that which is not forced to move is free. Simple self-motion or self-determination, therefore, is the freedom of the will: "God has endued the will of man with that natural liberty that it is neither forced nor by any absolute necessity of nature determined to good or evil" (Westminster Confession 9.1); "to be moved voluntarily is to be moved by oneself and not by another" (Aquinas, Summa 1.105.4).

It is indispensable to voluntary freedom that the motion shall proceed from an ego or true self. The falling of water and the rising of sap is only seeming self-motion. One globule pushes another by mechanical law or by vital force. No globule is self-moved. Could a man demonstrate that his action, either internal or external, is not the energy of his own personal essence but that of another personal essence or is caused by some physical law or force, he would demonstrate that his action is neither voluntary nor free. But if this indispensable characteristic exists, the substance of moral freedom is secured. Many things may still be out of the power of the will, for omnipotence is not necessary in order to freedom, yet if the will be really self-inclined and self-determined in its activity, internal and external, it is a free will. It is important, here, to notice that the central as well as the superficial activity of the will must be self-activity in order to freedom and responsibility. The central action of the will is its steady inclination; and the superficial action is its momentary volition in a particular instance. The murderer's hate is the central activity of his will; the murderer's act is the superficial. Both must be self-moved in order to responsibility and guilt. And both are self-moved. The murderer is not forced to hate. He is willing in his hatred and in all his moral desires and feelings: willing in anger, envy, malice, pride, and all forms of sinful inclination. While, however, the central and the superficial activity of the will are alike in regard to free self-motion, they differ in regard to the power to the contrary. The superficial activity or the volition is accompanied with this power; the central or the inclination is not. The murderer can refrain from the outward act of murder by a volition; but he cannot refrain from his inward hatred by a volition. A volition can stop another volition; but a volition cannot stop an inclination. A man can reverse his sinful volition but not his sinful inclination. This is an indisputable fact of consciousness.

It follows from this that the power to the contrary or of antagonistic action is not necessary in order to the freedom of the will. Simple self-determination, without the additional power to antagonize the existing self-determination, is enough to constitute voluntariness. If the will move in the direction of holiness by its own self-motion, this fact alone demonstrates the freeness of its action. It is not necessary to add a power to act in opposition to the existing self-motion in order that the existing self-motion may be self-motion any more than it is necessary to add the power to fly in order that the power to walk may be a power to walk. When holy Adam was self-determining in holiness, it was not necessary to give him the power to self-determine to sin in order that he might be self-determining in holiness. The possibilitas peccandi13 was associated with Adam's primitive state, not in order to his freedom, but in order to his probation. If God, by the operation of his Spirit, had preserved Adam from the exercise of an antagonistic and contrary self-determination, Adam would still have been self-determined and spontaneously inclined to holiness. And the same is true upon the side of sin. If the will of Satan or of fallen Adam is spontaneously self-inclined to sin, this fact alone demonstrates the unforced nature of its sinful action. It is not necessary to add the power to the contrary, that is, the power to self-incline to holiness in order that the existing sinful self-inclination may be self-inclination. It is not necessary in order to responsibility for a sinful inclination that the sinner be able to reverse his sinful inclination. It is only necessary that he was able to originate it and that he did originate it. (supplement 4.2.4.)

That self-determining or inclining is compatible with inability to the contrary is proved by the following examples. A man wills to be happy. He is free in thus willing because the action of his will is self-action. It is his own spontaneous inclination. Yet he cannot will the contrary. No man is able to will to be miserable. If the power to the contrary necessarily enters into the definition of freedom along with the power of inclining or self-determining, then this man who wills to be happy is not free in so willing. But if self-determination alone and simply is the proper definition of freedom, then this man is free in his will or inclination to be happy because it is his real and genuine spontaneity.

Another instance of moral freedom with inability to the contrary is that of the unregenerate sinner. His sin is voluntary self-determination. It issues out of the self, and it is the working of the self. It is not another man who sins, but this very man and no other. This fact establishes his free agency in this sin. He is inclined to sin, and inclination is free agency. Yet he is unable to overcome and eradicate this sinful inclination. This is a well-established fact of consciousness. It is also the teaching of revelation: "No man can come unto me except the Father which has sent me draw him" (John 6:44); "whosoever commits sin is the slave of sin" (8:34); "without me you can do nothing" (15:5). Here are two facts: (a) the will wills its own sin; this is self-determination; (b) having so willed, it cannot unwill its own sin; this is inability.

It is false to infer that the will does not will its own sin if it cannot unwill it, that a person does not act freely if he cannot recall his act. If the fact of self-determination has been established by conclusive proofs, the fact must stand. A man throws himself off a precipice. This is an act of the self. He was not flung off by another self or by a physical force in nature. It was his own spontaneous act. This makes it a free act. Yet he cannot undo his act. He has no power to the contrary at any point of his fall. Nevertheless, his fall from top to bottom is chargeable to him as his own responsible act. At no point in his fall is he innocent of suicide. He is guilty of self-murder at every inch in the descent. An inability that results from an act of the self is as absolute as that which results from the act of another. A man who kills himself is as dead as a man killed by another. In like manner, an inclination to sin that is originated by the self is as insuperable by the self that originated it and which now has it as it would be if it were originated by a third party and forced upon him. Moral inability is as real inability as natural inability; but the former is guilty inability because it is the product of the will itself, while the latter is innocent inability because it is the product of God in creation and providence. In every act of transgressing the law of God, there is a reflex action of the will upon itself, whereby it becomes unable perfectly to keep that law. A man is not forced to sin, but if he does, he cannot of himself get back where he was before sinning. He cannot get back to innocency nor can he get back to holiness of heart.

Another instance of self-determination without power to the contrary is that of God. The Supreme Being is self-moved. But he is unable to sin. This is taught in James 1:13: "God cannot be tempted." A being who is intemptable is impeccable. Yet in the Supreme Being is to be found the highest form of moral freedom. The more intense the self-determination in any being, the more intense the freedom. Consequently, a will self-determined to holiness in an infinite degree is marked by a higher grade of freedom than one self-determined in only a finite degree. But in proportion as self-determination increases, the power to the contrary diminishes. In God, the infinitude of self-determination excludes the possibility of a change in the self-determination, that is, excludes a power to the contrary. Freedom and moral necessity are one and the same thing in the Supreme Being.

Freedom in the infinite being is immutable self-determination; in a finite being it is mutable self-determination. God is free in his holiness because he is self-moved in the righteous action of his will. That this motion is eternal and unchangeable in one and the same direction does not destroy the self-motivity and convert it into compulsion. Man also was free in his holiness yet could sin. He was free because self-moved in the right action of his will. That this self-motion was mutable and could take another direction did not destroy the self-motivity and convert it into compulsion. Thus it appears that the power to the contrary or the power to reverse the existing self-determination of the will is not the substance of freedom, but only the accident. The freedom of both the infinite and the finite will is in the self-motion of mind or spirit as diverse from matter. That God cannot alter his self-determination to good does not diminish his self-determination. That man could alter his self-determination to good did not increase his self-determination. The freedom in both instances is in the existing action of the will, not in a conceivable or possible action. The present inclining is willing unforced agency. (supplement 4.2.5.)

Inclination or self-determination excludes indifference. A will that is determined or inclined toward God is not indifferent toward God. Indifference is the exact contrary of inclination or self-determination.

It is here that the two principal theories of moral freedom find their starting point. The Augustinian asserts that the essence of voluntariness is self-determination merely and only. The Pelagian asserts that indetermination or indifference, with power to will in either direction, is the essence of voluntariness. Unless this power of alternative choice continually exist, there is no freedom. Hence it perpetually accompanies the will, both here and hereafter. The Augustinian affirms that if a will be really self-moved in a particular activity, such as hatred of a fellowman, for example, it is free even though it be not able to start another activity of a contrary nature, such as love of that fellowman. A man who is walking is really and truly walking, though he is not able to fly. His inability to fly does not affect the nature of the act of walking. And similarly man's inability to love does not destroy the spontaneity and self-motion of his hate.

The Pelagian contends that such self-motion is insufficient. There must be an indefectible, inalienable power of alternative choice in order to freedom of the will. But in order that there may be this constant power, the will must have no inclination in either direction. Consequently, indifference or indetermination, not positive self-determination, is the sine qua non of moral freedom for the Pelagian. The text Deut. 30:19 is quoted to prove indifference and the power of alternative choice: "I have set before you life and death: therefore choose life." But no alternative between these two final ends—and no indifference—is allowed. Only one final end is permitted. Men are not bidden to choose either life or death, but to choose life. Death is set before them that it may be rejected, not that it may be elected. Life is set before them that it may be elected, not that it may be rejected. Simple self-determination to good is required. Indifference is forbidden. "Choose life." The election of good is ipso facto the rejection of evil and vice versa. The holiness of Immanuel is described in a similar manner in Isa. 7:16: "Before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good." He is not indifferent, choosing either evil or good, but positively inclined to good and ipso facto disinclined to evil. In brief, the difference between the Augustinian and the Pelagian doctrine of freedom is this: The Pelagian asserts that the will as uninclined and indifferent chooses. He postulates a volition antecedent to any inclination. The Augustinian asserts that the will is never uninclined or indifferent. There is no volition prior to inclination. The former places freedom in an act of the will prior to inclining; the latter places it in the very act itself of inclining. (supplement 4.2.6.)

Refutation of the Theory That Freedom Consists in Indetermination or Indifference

The objections to the theory that freedom is indetermination or indifference are the following.

The free will, in this case, has no contents. The power of choosing either one of two contrary ways implies that as yet there is no action of the will at all. The will is undetermined. But we have seen that an undetermined will is a contradiction in terms. "A freedom of indifference is impossible," says Leibnitz (Concerning Freedom, 669.

The freedom of indifference is never found in actual existence. There is no example of it. The so-called formal freedom is indifference. It is defined by Müller (Sin 2.28) as "the ability, from an undetermined state, to self-determine." This supposes the faculty to be in equilibrio. It is uncommitted either to right or wrong. From this position of equilibrium and indifference, it starts a decision in one direction or the other. Such a condition and such an act of the human will never occurred within the domain of human consciousness. Consciousness always reports an inclined will, never an indifferent one. Hence Müller places the first act of self-determination to evil from an undetermined state of the will back of consciousness and beyond time. Müller, however, differs from the Pelagian, in holding that formal freedom is confined to a particular instant. It is not a perpetual accompaniment of the will. Having out of the indifferent state of formal freedom taken a determination, the will afterward is inclined and the indifference ceases. Starting with the Pelagian view of freedom, Müller ends with the Augustinian view of sin.

The freedom of the will is primarily a self-determination to a single end, not a choice between two yet unchosen contrary ends. The central and deepest activity of the will is to incline or tend, not to select or choose. It moves forward by self-motion and self-decision to one point. Two contrary objects or ends are not requisite in order to self-determination. It is not necessary that there should be a comparison of one object with a contrary one and a choice of the one rather than of the other in order to the self-determination of the will. If the will should know of but one object, say, its Creator, it might tend or incline to that object, and the tendency or inclination would be the free voluntariness of the will. It is true that the will, in this case, would not be forced to incline to the one object before it. It would have an option to incline or to disincline to the one object. But this is already said in saying that the inclining is self-motion. This liberty to incline or to disincline to one object is very different, however, from the liberty to choose either of two contrary objects. In the latter case, there is a comparison of one object with another; in the former, there is no such comparison. But what is far more important, in the latter case there is indifference toward both objects; but in the former, there is no indifference toward the single object. For if there is not inclination to it, there is aversion to it; if there is not desire for it, there is hatred of it; if the will does not incline to God, it disinclines and is at enmity with him; if there is not the spiritual mind, there is the carnal mind; if there is not holy self-determination, there is sinful self-determination. The will, in this instance, is not indifferent as in the other, but is committed to an ultimate end; if not to its Creator, then to itself.

That self-determining or inclining is the ultimate fact in the freedom of the will is evident from considering the relation of motives to the will. The will, it is said, is determined by motives. This is often understood to mean that the will is efficiently and ultimately determined by a motive out of itself and other than itself. This is an error. The will is only proximately and occasionally determined by external motives. Take a case. A man's will is determined by wealth as a motive. But only because his will is already so self-determined or inclined is wealth a motive for him, that is, desirable to him. Were his will self-determined or inclined to ambition instead of avarice, wealth would not be a motive for him, but power would be. Again, were his will inclined or self-determined to sensual pleasure, this would be the motive that would move or determine it, and neither wealth nor power would be. Thus it is evident that the motivity of a motive, that is, its power to move or influence the will, depends primarily and ultimately upon the will's prior inclination or self-determination. The inclination makes the motive, instead of the motive making the inclination. But the inclination itself is self-made in the sense of being self-motion. If the will is inclined to the Creator as an ultimate end, then the only motives that influence and move it are spiritual and heavenly. If the will is inclined to the creature as an ultimate end, then the only motives that influence and move it are carnal and earthly. The motives in each instance are determinants, only because of the prior bias or self-determination of the will; they influence the person, only because of his existing inclination. They are only the proximate and occasional, not the ultimate and efficient cause of the will's action.

The first activity, therefore, of the will, considered as a faculty, is inclination, not volition. Man is always disposed or biased in his will before he exerts choices. The will does not incline because it first chooses from out of a state of indifference; but it chooses because it has already inclined. Inclining or self-determining is the primary and central action of the will, and volition or choice is the secondary and superficial. The will, therefore, in its idea and nature is causative and originative rather than elective. Hence guilt is denoted in Greek by aitia. It implies causation. "The notion of pure will," says Kant (Practical Reason, 205), "contains that of a causality accompanied with freedom, that is, one which is not determinable by physical laws."

The truth of this view of voluntary freedom is evident from considering the case of Adam, first as holy and second as sinful. First, the will of holy Adam was by the creative act inclined to God as the chief good before it exerted any volitions and made any choices. Adam as a created spirit was self-determined to God and goodness the instant he was created and in consequence of this internal bias and disposition chose the various means of gratifying it. Holy Adam at the instant of his creation did not find himself set to choose either the Creator or the creature as an ultimate end, being indifferent to both, but he found himself inclined to the Creator and choosing means accordingly. He was committed to one and only one supreme end of existence, God and goodness, and selected means corresponding. That Adam's self-determination to God was created with his will itself is not inconsistent with its being self-determination. His will if created at all must have been created as voluntary; since it could not be created as involuntary or uninclined. This inclination was self-motion. It was the spontaneity of a spiritual essence, not an activity forced ab extra. God necessarily creates a self-determining, self-moving faculty in creating a will. Consequently, holy inclination is both a creation and a self-determination, according as it is viewed. Viewed with reference to God, it is created: inclinatio originata. Viewed with reference to the voluntary faculty, it is spontaneous and self-moving: inclinatio originans. Holy inclination is at once the Creator's product and the creature's activity. (supplement 4.2.7.)

Second, the will of sinful Adam by his own act had been inclined to the creature as the chief good before it exerted sinful volitions and made sinful choices. Adam as fallen was self-determined to evil and in consequence of this inward bias of his will chose the various means of gratifying it. The first of these choices was plucking and eating of the tree of knowledge. But there is this important difference, namely, that the evil inclination was not created by God but originated by Adam. Sinful inclination is both the creature's product and the creature's activity. It is referable to the creature both as inclinatio originans and inclinatio originata.

Thus the term self-determination has two significations. It may mean that the self-motion is in the self, but not from the self as the ultimate author. This is created self-determination, which is always holy. Or it may mean that the self-motion is both in the self and from the self as the ultimate author. This is sinful self-determination. Holiness is self-determined, but not self-originated. Sin is both self-determined and self-originated.

Created self-determination or holy inclination is only relatively meritorious or deserving because man is not the efficient in its origination. Being either concreated in creation or recreated in regeneration, the reward due to a holy inclination of the will is gracious: "Eternal life is the gift of God" (Rom. 6:23). Self-originated self-determination or sinful inclination, on the contrary, is absolutely demeritorious or ill deserving. Man is the sole efficient in its origination, and therefore the retribution due to it is a strict debt: "Eternal death is the wages of sin." Justice owes retribution to the sinner. Man is absolutely rewardable for transgression, but only relatively rewardable for obedience. (supplement 4.2.8.)

SUPPLEMENTS

4.2.1 (see p. 495). The statement in the text that "the Arminians reject the doctrine of concreated holiness" needs qualification. Some of the elder Arminians do not. Wesley (Original Sin) opposes Taylor of Norwich, who asserted that "Adam could not be originally created in righteousness and true holiness, because habits of holiness cannot be created without our knowledge, concurrence, or consent." He reasons as follows: "Holiness is love. Cannot God shed abroad this love in any soul without its concurrence? God could create men or angels endued from the very first moment of their existence with whatsoever degree of love he pleased. Your capital mistake is in defining righteousness as 'the right use and application of our powers.' No; it is the right state of our powers. It is the right disposition of our soul, the right temper of our mind. Take this with you, and you will no more dream that 'God could not create man in righteousness and true holiness.' " Watson (Institutes 2.18) defends Wesley's view and quotes approvingly Edwards's answer to Taylor on this same point in his treatise on Original Sin. In his Institutes (2.77), Watson asserts that "Limborch and some of the later divines of the Arminian school materially departed from the tenets of their master in denying man's natural tendencies to be sinful until they are complied with and approved by the will; and affirms a universal pravity of will previous to the actual choice."

4.2.2 (see p. 495). Stillingfleet (Origins 1.1.2) thus describes the knowledge with which man was created: "If we consider that contemplation of the soul which fixes itself on that infinite being who was the cause of it and is properly theoria, it will be found necessary for the soul to be created in a clear and distinct knowledge of him, because of man's immediate obligation to obedience unto him; which must necessarily suppose the knowledge of him whose will must be the rule. For if man were not fully convinced, in the first moment after his creation, of the being of him whom he was to obey, his first work and duty would not have been actual obedience, but a search whether there was any supreme, infinite, and eternal being or not; and whereon his duty to him was founded, and what might be sufficient declaration of his will and laws, according to which he must regulate his obedience. For man, as he first came from God's hands, was the reflection of God himself on a dark cloud. His knowledge then was more intellectual than discursive, not so much employing his faculties in the operose deductions of reason, but immediately employing them about him who was the fountain of his being and the center of his happiness. There was not then so vast a difference between the angelic and the human life; the angels and men both fed on the same dainties; all the difference was, they were in the hyperōon, the upper room in heaven, and man in the summer parlor in paradise."

These descriptions of the superior knowledge of man as created, like those of his sinless perfection which the elder theologians, together with the reformed creeds, often gave and which are regarded as extravagant by many, apply only to the specific nature as it existed in Adam before the fall, not to Adam and Eve after the fall or to any of the individuals that were propagated out of it. Neither Cain nor Abel nor Seth nor Enoch nor fallen Adam and Eve possessed the knowledge and holiness belonging to the original nature. No such knowledge and no such sinlessness have characterized any of the generations of mankind and constitute no part of secular human history. This latter exhibits only the consequences of the apostasy of the specific nature, namely, willing ignorance of God and alienation from him, the substitution of polytheism and idolatry for monotheism, and all the dreadful development of human depravity in individual and national life. Had the original unity, namely, Adam and his posterity, remained as created, this description of man as endowed with an intelligence and character like that of the angels would have been applicable to all the individual persons as well as to the common nature. For this reason the scriptural data respecting the creation of mankind in and with the first pair and their fall in Eden from their created and ideal position are of the utmost importance in constructing the theodicy of sin. If they are overlooked or denied it is impossible to justify the penalty of eternal death upon the posterity of Adam or to make it evident that redemption from the guilt and pollution of original sin by the incarnation and sufferings of incarnate God is real unobliged mercy. Man must have had original holiness and perfection in order to be responsible for subsequent sinfulness and imperfection; and he had these in Adam or not at all.

4.2.3 (see p. 496). Will in unfallen Adam is thus described by Augustine: "The first man had not that grace by which he should never will to be evil; but assuredly he had that in which if he willed to abide he would never be evil and without which also he could not by free will be good, but which nevertheless by free will he could forsake. God, therefore, did not will him to be without his grace, which he left in his free will. Because free will is sufficient for evil, but is too little for good unless it is aided by omnipotent good. And if that man had not forsaken that assistance of his free will, he would always have been good; but he forsook it and then was forsaken. Because such was the nature of the aid that he could forsake it when he would and that he could continue in it if he would, but not such that it could be brought about that he would continue. The first is the grace which was given to the first Adam; but more powerful than this is that in the second Adam. For the first grace is that whereby it is effected that a man may have righteousness if he will; the second can do more than this, since by it it is effected that he will—and will so intensely and love with such ardor, that by the will of the Spirit he overcomes the will of the flesh that lusts in opposition to it" (Rebuke and Grace 31). In the unfallen Adam there was no "will of the flesh that lusts in opposition to the Spirit." Had the unfallen will persisted in the perfect holiness in which it was created, that struggle with indwelling sin described in Gal. 5:16–24 and Rom. 7:14–8:26 would not have been experienced. The indefectibility that would have resulted would have been only the intensification of Adam's original righteousness to that point where it becomes the non posse peccare, without any of that fight with inward lust which occurs when the regenerate will is enabled to persevere and reach indefectibility after a severe conflict with remaining corruption.

It should be noticed that Augustine in this extract, as often elsewhere, employs the term grace to denote that which is given to man by God in creation in distinction from that which is bestowed in redemption. Unfallen man was not a sinner and did not need "grace" in the latter sense. But Augustine regards all the endowments of unfallen Adam (his faculties of reason and will, his enlightened understanding, and his holy heart and inclination) as a gracious bestowment because the Creator is under no obligation of indebtedness to the creature whom he originates from nonentity. It was a sovereign and unobliged act on the part of God to make man "after his own image in righteousness and true holiness." The creature cannot bring the Creator under an original obligation to him, because this would require him to do a service that he did not owe the Creator and which he rendered to him from an independent position—neither of which things characterize the action of a creature. See Luke 17:7–10; Job 22:3; 35:7; Ps. 16:2–3; Rom. 11:35; 1 Cor. 4:7; 9:16–17.

4.2.4 (see p. 500). Owen (Holy Spirit 3.3) teaches that the freedom of the will consists in its self-motion only and not in the power to begin another motion contrary to the existing self-motion. "It is will," he says, "and not power that gives rectitude or obliquity to moral actions." That is to say, it is simple spontaneity or self-determination and not an ability to do contrary to the existing self-determination that constitutes voluntariness and imparts responsibility to the action of the will. Owen in this place is combating the Pelagian doctrine of freedom.

4.2.5 (see p. 501). The possibility of the fall of a holy finite will is explicable by the finiteness of its power. If self-motion to good is not omnipotent, but only a certain degree of finite energy, it is plain that it may lapse from holy to sinful self-motion. But when self-motion is almighty, as in the case of God, a change of motion is not conceivable. Omnipotent energy is immutable energy. The infinite is the unchangeable in every particular because it is the omnipotent; hence God's infinite self-determination to good is eternal and unalterable, but man's and angel's finite self-determination to good is mutable.

4.2.6 (see p. 502). Scripture defines freedom as choosing the one particular thing that is commanded by God and refusing the contrary: "I have set before you life and death: therefore choose life" (Deut. 30:19); "before the child shall know to choose the good and refuse the evil" (Isa. 7:16). Pelagian psychology defines freedom as choosing either the one particular thing commanded by God or its contrary. In this instance the contrary is not refused but may be chosen; in which latter case the thing commanded by God is refused. If the will chooses the spiritual good which is commanded and refuses the contrary spiritual evil, it virtually chooses all varieties of spiritual good and refuses all varieties of spiritual evil. But if it chooses either spiritual good or spiritual evil, it refuses no variety of the latter. The Scripture's definition of freedom, which is that of Augustine and Calvin, connects freedom with moral obligation in making it to be the spontaneous inclining of the will to what the divine command enjoins and the spontaneous aversion of the will to what it forbids. The Pelagian definition wholly disconnects freedom from moral obligation by making it to be the indifference of the will to both divine command and its contrary.

The command of God is to choose and refuse, not to choose or refuse. The former allows no alternative; the latter does. The former requires only one object or ultimate end because the choice of good is the rejection of evil; the latter requires two objects because the choice of good still permits the choice of evil. The former excludes indifference; the latter supposes it. He who chooses good and refuses evil is positively inclined and has moral character. He who chooses either good or evil has no positive inclination to either and no moral character.

Furthermore, if simultaneous refusal of evil does not accompany the choice of good, the will dallies with evil; and dalliance with evil is evil desire itself. Eve's nonresistance and nonrejection of Satan's suggestion to eat of the tree of knowledge implied a wish, more or less strong, for the forbidden knowledge. It is a maxim of the world that "the woman who deliberates is lost." The reason is that in this deliberation and delay there is toying and playing with the temptation and no instantaneous rejection of what is proposed. In a yet higher sense the woman in Eden who deliberated respecting Satan's proposition lost herself and her race. That pause and parleying of her mind, instead of resistance and rejection, when temptation was presented, in order to consider and reason about it with Satan, was fatal.

This important feature in the fall of the will and the origin of sin did not escape the wonderful insight of John Bunyan. In his Holy War he represents the town of Mansoul first as listening to the falsehoods of Diabolus and while listening as losing by a shot from the ambush "Mr. Resistance, otherwise called Captain Resistance. And a great man in Mansoul this Captain Resistance was; and a man that the giant Diabolus and his band more feared than they feared the whole town of Mansoul besides." In bringing this about, Diabolus is assisted by "one Ill-pause, who was his orator in all difficult matters. When this Ill-pause was making of his speech to the townsmen, my Lord Innocency, whether by a shot from the camp of the giant Diabolus or from a sinking qualm that suddenly took him, or rather by the stinking breath of that treacherous villain old Ill-pause (for so I am most apt to think), sank down in the place where he stood, nor could he be brought to life again. Thus these two brave men died; brave men I call them, for they were the beauty and glory of Mansoul so long as they lived therein; nor did there now remain any more a noble spirit in Mansoul, they all fell down and yielded obedience to Diabolus and became his slaves and vassals as you shall hear. And first they did as Ill-pause had taught them; they looked, they considered, they were taken with the forbidden fruit, they took thereof and did eat; and having eaten they became immediately drunken therewith; so they opened the gate, both Ear-gate and Eye-gate, and let in Diabolus with all his bands." This allegory translated into a philosophy of the human will means that instantaneous resistance and refusal of the contrary must accompany the choice of good and that the absence of this refusal and resistance, which is implied in the Pelagian indifference and liberty to choose either good or evil, is a false definition of human freedom.

The regenerate and sanctified soul offers immediate resistance and refusal to temptation instead of dalliance. Bunyan indicates this in saying that in the fighting by which the town of Mansoul was recaptured by Emmanuel "Mr. Ill-pause received a grievous wound in the head; some say that his brainpan was cracked; this I have taken notice of, that he was never after this able to do that mischief to Mansoul as he had done in times past."

The difference between the Augustinian freedom of positive self-determination and the Pelagian freedom of negative indetermination or nondetermination is the same as that between inclination and option. The will may be freely inclined by its self-motion and yet be unable to reverse its self-motion. It has no option in this case. That is to say, it cannot incline or disincline by a resolution or volition, which is implied in optional power. It is not optional with a miser to make himself generously inclined, and yet his avaricious inclination is voluntary and uncompelled. He is willing in his avarice because he is self-moved in it. It is not optional with a sinner to convert his supreme love of self into supreme love of God, and yet his selfish love is the self-activity of his will. It is necessary in order to responsibility for sin that the will incline freely to sin and continue so to incline; but not necessary in order to responsibility for sin that it have an optional ability to overcome sin after its voluntary origination. In having power to apostatize, holy Adam had a kind of "power to the contrary," but it differed greatly from the Pelagian "power to the contrary" (1) in that it was not exerted from a state of indifference, but of positive holiness and (2) in that there was not equal facility to choose good or evil. It was easier for Adam to remain holy than to begin sin. He had an inclination to good and was happy in it.

The Pelagian idea of the will makes its action consist wholly in volitions. The will really has no inclination because it is constantly indifferent. It is undetermined, not self-determined upon this supposition. The volitions occur without any ground or source for them in a permanent disposition or character of the will. But to omit that central action of the will which consists in a steady self-motion to an ultimate end and resolve all its agency into a series of superficial volitions or choices over which the man has the same optional control that he has over the movement of his muscles and which have no basis in an inclination or disposition of the faculty is to omit the most important part of the contents of the will and the most essential element in voluntariness. Employing Kant's phraseology, it is denying will as noumenon or the real thing itself and affirming will only as phenomenon or as it appears to the senses in a series. Or using the category of cause and effect, it is to recognize the effect and overlook the cause. The inclination of the will is the cause of all the volitions exercised by it, and to postulate these latter without the former is to postulate effects without a cause, a tree without a root.

4.2.7 (see p. 504). That the holy self-movement of the human will is both the Creator's product and the creature's activity is taught in 1 Chron. 29:14: "Who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of you and of your own have we given you." The benevolent disposition of the will is a "willing" disposition. It is the spontaneity of the man; his own personal activity. But that the man is "able" thus to energize is due to divine impulse and actuation. God "works in him to will" in this manner. The holy will is compared by our Lord to a vine branch which bears fruit "of itself" (aph' heautou); but in order to do so it must "abide in the vine." The holy will is spontaneous and self-moving, but in order to this the Holy Spirit must be under and behind the self-motion. This important truth, which precludes human egotism and pride, is abundantly taught in revelation and from thence has passed into all orthodox theology. Paul like David teaches it: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure" (Phil. 2:12–13); "not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; who has made us able ministers of the new testament" (2 Cor. 3:5–6); "I labored more abundantly than they all; yet not I but the grace of God which was with me" (1 Cor. 15:10). The Son of God teaches it more repeatedly than any of his prophets and apostles: "All that the Father gives to me shall come to me; and him that comes to me I will in no wise cast out" (John 6:37); "no man can come to me except the Father which has sent me draw him" (6:44); "no man can come unto me except it were given unto him of my Father" (6:65); "I give unto my sheep eternal life. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all" (10:28–29); "you have given your Son power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him" (17:2); "I have manifested your name unto the men which you gave me out of the world" (17:6); "I pray not for the world, but for them which you have given me" (17:9); "holy Father, keep through your own name those whom you have given me" (17:11); "those that you gave me I have kept" (17:12); "Father, I will that they whom you have given me be with me where I am" (17:24).

Milton (Paradise Lost 3.173–81) states the doctrine:

Man shall not quite be lost, but saved who will;

Yet not of will in him, but grace in me,

Freely vouchsafed; once more I will renew

His lapsed powers, though forfeit and enthralled

By sin to foul exorbitant desires;

Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand

On even ground against his mortal foe;

By me upheld, that he may know how frail

His fallen condition is, and to me owe

All his deliverance, and to none but me.

4.2.8 (see p. 505). The Pelagian inference that because the human will can originate sin by solitary self-determination it can originate holiness in the same way is contained in the common remark that "the sinner is responsible for accepting or rejecting the invitations of the gospel." He is responsible only for rejecting, not for accepting them, because the latter act is right and the former wrong. Responsibility is an idea that is properly associated only with sin and guilt. To hold a man responsible implies that he has committed an offense of some kind. We never say that a person is responsible for an innocent and virtuous action. Whenever a man's responsibility is inquired into, it is with reference to some fault with which he is charged. If the sinner voluntarily rejects the offered mercy of God, he is culpable for so doing and is therefore amenable to the charge of culpability and responsible before the divine tribunal because of it. But if under the operation of the Holy Spirit he accepts the divine offer of mercy, he is not culpable for so doing any more than he is meritorious for it, nor is he liable or responsible to a criminal charge. In the former instance, in which his voluntary action is sinful, the action is his alone; in the latter instance, in which his voluntary action is holy, it is the consequence of God's "working in him to will." Man is responsible for sin because he is both the author and the actor of it; but he is not responsible for holiness because he is only the actor and not the author. In the above-mentioned statement the term free instead of responsible is the proper one: "The sinner is free in accepting or rejecting the invitations of the gospel." If he accepts them, he does so freely under the actuation of the Holy Spirit. If he rejects them, he does so freely without this actuation and solely by his own self-determination.

Scripture marks the difference between holiness as having God for its author and sin as having the creature alone for its author by denominating sin "works of the flesh" and holiness "fruits of the Spirit" (Gal. 5:19, 22). Augustine (Grace and Free Will 21) says of the use of "wages" for the one and "gift" for the other: "The apostle says that 'the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord,' having just said that 'the wages of sin is death.' Deservedly did he call it 'wages,' because everlasting death is awarded as its proper due to diabolical service. Now when it was in his power to say and rightly to say, 'But the wages of righteousness is eternal life,' he yet preferred to say, 'The gift of God is eternal life,' in order that we may hence understand that God does not for any merits of our own, but from his own divine compassion prolong our existence to everlasting life. It is not, however, to be supposed that because he said, 'It is God who works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure,' that free will is taken away. If this had been his meaning, he would not have said just before, 'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.' For when the command is given to 'work,' their free will is addressed; and when it is added, 'with fear and trembling,' they are warned against boasting of their good deeds as if they were the original authors of them." Man is self-moving and self-determined in sin only by reason of God's preserving and upholding agency, not by reason of his inworking and actuating energy; but he is self-moving and self-determined in holiness by reason both of God's preserving and actuating power. In the first instance, nothing is requisite but to keep the will in being; the inward nisus and motion to evil being the agency solely of the will itself. In the last instance it is not sufficient merely to sustain the will; it must also be influenced and incited to motion, yet spiritually, not physically. Though actuated by the Holy Spirit, the holy will is nevertheless a self-moving and uncompelled faculty. Holy inclination is the will's right self-motion because of divine actuation or "God's working in the will to will." Sinful inclination is the will's wrong self-motion without divine actuation. But the motion in both instances is that of mind not of matter, spiritual not mechanical, free not forced motion.

The other view of the will and freedom, namely, that both in holiness and sin the will is merely sustained in being and by an act of its own alternative choice originates either by its solitary efficiency, is not supported by self-consciousness, which always reports bondage to evil and inability to good, nor by Scripture.

This important difference is sometimes overlooked, and sin seems to be placed in the same relation with holiness to God. The following from Zanchi (Predestination, 29) is an instance: "We are hereby taught not only humility before God, but likewise dependence on him. For if we are thoroughly persuaded that of ourselves and in our own strength we cannot do good or evil; but that being originally created by God, we are incessantly supported, moved, influenced, and directed by him this way or that as he pleases; the natural inference from hence will be that with simple faith we cast ourselves entirely as on the bosom of his providence." This phraseology is not sufficiently guarded; for taken by itself it teaches that the human will needs divine help in order to sin, in the same way that it needs it in order to obedience; the truth being that in the former instance it needs only to be left to itself, while in the latter it requires the positive inworking of the Holy Spirit. But that Zanchi only means, here, that the human will, when sinning, requires to be upheld in being and to have its power of free will maintained by God is evinced by his statements elsewhere in this treatise: "God as the primary and efficacious cause of all things is not only the author of those activities done by his elect as actions, but also as they are good actions; whereas, on the other hand, though he may be said to be the author of all the actions done by the wicked, yet he is not the author of them in a moral sense, as they are sinful, but as they are mere actions abstractedly from all consideration of the goodness or badness of them" ("Introduction," 25). "God does not mock his creatures; for if men do not believe his word nor observe his precepts, the fault is not in him, but in themselves; their unbelief and disobedience are not owing to any ill infused into them by God, but to the vitiosity of their depraved nature and the perverseness of their own wills" ("Introduction," 5). "Augustine, Luther, Bucer, the Scholastic divines, and other learned writers are not to be blamed for asserting that 'God may in some sense be said to will the existence and commission of sin.' For were this contrary to his determining will of permission, either he would not be omnipotent or sin could have no place in the world; but he is omnipotent and sin has place in the world, which it could not have, if God had willed otherwise. No one can deny that God permits sin; but he neither permits it ignorantly nor unwillingly; therefore knowingly and willingly. Luther maintains this, and Bucer and Augustine. Yet God's voluntary permission of sin lays no man under any forcible or compulsive necessity of committing it; consequently God can by no means be termed the author of sin; to which he is not in the proper sense of the word accessory, but only remotely or negatively so, inasmuch as he could, if he pleased, absolutely prevent it" ("Introduction," 13). "Since all things are subject to divine control, God not only works efficiently in his elect in order that they may will and do that which is pleasing in his sight, but does likewise frequently and powerfully suffer the wicked to fill up the measure of their iniquities by committing fresh sins" ("Introduction," 22). These extracts show that Zanchi means by his statement that "we cannot do good or evil in our own strength" that we are not self-existent and self-sustaining beings.

3 Human Will

Definition of the Will

In discussing the subject of original sin, much depends upon the definition of the will; whether it be taken in a wide or in a narrow sense. The elder psychology divides the powers of the soul into understanding and will; the later psychology divides them into intellect, sensibility, and will. The former includes the moral affections and desires in the will; the latter excludes them from it. For the former, inclination is the principal characteristic of voluntariness; for the latter, volition is the principal characteristic. In classifying the powers of the soul under two modes, it is not meant that there is a division of the soul into two parts. The whole soul as cognizing is the understanding; and the whole soul as inclining is the will.

Locke laid the foundation for the later view of the will, by excluding moral desire and affection from the faculty:

I find the will often confounded with several of the affections, especially desire, and one put for the other. This, I imagine, has been no small occasion of obscurity and mistake in this matter and therefore is, as much as may be, to be avoided. For he that shall turn his thoughts inward upon what passes in his mind when he wills, shall see that the will or power of volition is conversant about nothing but that particular determination of the mind whereby, barely by a thought, the mind endeavors to give rise, continuation, or stop to any action which it takes to be in its power. This, well considered, plainly shows that the will is perfectly distinguished from desire, which may have quite a contrary tendency from that which our will sets us upon. A man whom I cannot deny may oblige me to use persuasions to another, which, at the same time I am speaking, I may wish may not prevail with him. In this case, it is plain the will and desire run counter. I will the action that tends one way, while my desire tends another, and that the direct contrary. (Essay 2.21)

Here "will" denotes a particular act of the faculty, namely, a volition, and excludes a general act of it, namely, desire or inclination. A man's desire, according to Locke's use of terms, is involuntary. If "will" means only volition, then a man's inclination is not "will" because inclination is the same as desire.

Edwards (Will 1.1) combats Locke and contends that

a man never wills anything contrary to his desires or desires anything contrary to his will. In the instance cited, it is not carefully observed what is the thing willed and what is the thing desired: if it were, it would be found that will and desire do not clash in the least. The thing willed, on some consideration, is to utter such words; and certainly, the same consideration so influences him that he does not desire the contrary: all things considered, he chooses to utter such words and does not desire not to utter them. And so, as to the thing which Locke speaks of as desired, namely, that the words, though they tend to persuade, should not be effectual to that end; his will is not contrary to this; he does not will that they should be effectual, but rather wills that they should not, as he desires. In order to prove that will and desire never run counter, it should be shown that they may be contrary one to the other in the same thing; but here the objects are two; and in each, taken by themselves, the will and desire agree.

Kant, on the other hand, defines the will as the faculty of desire: Begehrungsvermögen. He says: "The notion of the chief good determines the faculty of desire" and "the will may be defined as the faculty of ultimate ends (das Vermögen der Zwecke), since these are always determinants of the desires." Kant also denominates the will the practical reason "because the objects of the practical reason are good and evil. By good is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by evil, one necessarily shunned according to a principle of reason" (Practical Reason, 210). Green (Prolegomena to Ethics, 152) contends that will is desire toward a moral end: "The man as desiring or putting himself forth in desire for the realization of some object present to him in idea is the same thing as willing. Will is desire having the action of a self-determining self upon and within it."

We regard the elder psychology as correct in including the moral desires and affections in the total action of the will and in making two faculties of the soul, namely, understanding and will.

The understanding is the cognitive faculty or mode of the soul. It comprises the intellect and the conscience. These are percipient and perceptive powers. They are destitute of desire and inclination; and they are not self-determining and executive powers. The intellect perceives what ought to be done, and the conscience commands what ought to be done, but they never do anything themselves. They do not incline to an end. They have no love and desire for what is commanded; and no hatred and aversion toward what is forbidden. The intellect neither loves nor hates, neither desires nor is averse. The conscience approves and disapproves; but approbation is not love and desire, nor is disapprobation hatred and abhorrence (Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 15).

The understanding is the fixed and stationary faculty or mode of the soul. It can be vitiated and injured, but not radically changed. The operation of the human intellect cannot be totally reversed and revolutionized, as that of the human will may be. After the apostasy, the understanding of man obeys the same rules of logic as before and possesses the same mathematical and ethical ideas and intuitions. And the same is true of the human conscience, as involving the perception of right and wrong. Its structure and laws are unaltered by apostasy. After the fall, man does not have moral perceptions that are exactly contrary to those he had before it. He does not perceive that the love of God is evil or that the love of sin is good. He does not approve of disobedience of law and disapprove of obedience. The energy with which both intellect and conscience operate after apostasy is, indeed, greatly diminished; but the same general mode of operation continues. The effect of sin upon the cognitive side of the human soul is to darken, dim, and stupefy, but not radically to change. This fixedness of the understanding is in striking contrast, as we shall see, with the mobility and mutability of the will.

The will is that faculty or mode of the soul which self-determines, inclines, desires, and chooses in reference to moral and religious objects and ends. These objects and ends are all centered and summed up in God. We say moral and religious objects and ends because there is a class of propensities and desires that refer to nonmoral and nonreligious objects. They are the natural or instinctive desires, which are involuntary. Speaking generally, the voluntary and moral desires relate to God. They are either inclined or averse to him; they are either love or hatred. The natural and instinctive desires, on the other hand, relate to the creature. Of these latter, there are four kinds: (a) physical appetites, (b) family affections, (c) social affections, and (d) esthetic feeling. These all relate to some form or phase of the finite and therefore are not in themselves of the nature of virtue or religion, because religion relates to the infinite. They may be sanctified by the moral and religious desires and are so sanctified when the religious desires coexist with them; but they are in themselves neither sinful nor holy. They are constitutional, nonmoral propensities, flowing necessarily from man's physical and mental structure. Unregenerate men have them, as well as regenerate. They are none of them the object of a divine command or prohibition, like the moral and religious desires. When husbands are commanded to "love their wives" (Col. 3:19) and wives to "love their husbands and children" (Titus 2:4), they are commanded to love "in the Lord." The mere instinctive love itself is not commanded. This is provided for in the created relation of husband and wife, of parent and child. The instinctive affection as sanctified by a connection and union with the religious affection of supreme love of God is what is enjoined. The same is true of the love and obedience of children toward their parents (Col. 3:20), of the love and care of parents toward their children (3:21), of the relation of the citizen to the state (Rom. 13:5; 1 Pet. 2:13–14), of the relation between master and servant (Col. 3:22; 1 Tim. 6:1–2), and of the physical appetites (Rom. 14:6; 1 Cor. 10:31). None of these are commanded merely as natural instinctive desires and affections, but as sanctified instinctive desires and affections.

The instinctive or natural desires and affections are transient. They relate to the temporal, not the eternal. The family and the state are institutions that are confined to earth and time. This fact shows that they are nonmoral in their nature. The moral and religious is eternal. None of the natural and instinctive desires were lost by the fall, though all of them were vitiated and corrupted by it. None of them were converted into their contraries by the apostasy of Adam (cf. Edwards, Nature of Virtue, 5–8; Calvin 2.2.13).

The elder theologians include the moral and religious desires and affections in the will. Edwards (Affections, 1) states the view in the following terms: "The will and the affections of the soul are not two faculties; the affections are not essentially distinct from the will, nor do they differ from the mere actings of the will and inclination of the soul, but only in the liveliness and sensibleness of exercise." Again he says (Will 3.4), "The affections are only certain modes of the exercise of the will." "The inclination of the will is a leading act of the will." In this sense of the term Will, the religious affections are voluntary affections. Edwards identifies the will with the heart and contradistinguishes it from the understanding: "In the former case is exercised merely the speculative faculty or the understanding strictly so called, in distinction from the will or disposition of the soul. In the latter, the will or inclination or heart is mainly concerned" (Spiritual Light in Works 4.442). Augustine's psychology is the same: "The love or stronger delight is the will" (On the Trinity 15.21.41); "what are desire and joy, but a will inclined toward the things we desire and rejoice in? And what are fear and hatred, but a will disinclined toward the things we fear and hate?" (City of God 14.6). Clement of Alexandria (Miscellanies 2.15) says that "what is voluntary is either what is by desire or what is by choice." It is the common view among the elder theologians: "Feelings (affectus) in God are nothing other than the acts of the divine will" (Van Mastricht 2.15.19); "the will of God, according to its divers objects, has different names, to wit: of holiness, goodness, love, mercy, and such like" (Ross, Wollebius, 17). The elder Calvinists often defined the will as rational appetency: "The will, which is the rational appetite, is always conjoined with the sensitive appetite, in such a way that in man, the sensitive appetite itself responds proportionally to the will" (Keckermann in Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, locus 15). Consequently, they regarded the inward motions of this rational appetency as sinful and punishable and refused to call them involuntary: "These very motions are not totally involuntary, because we have attracted them by our will. Nothing prevents us from attributing these motions to actual sin, because obviously concupiscence is actual sin. Moreover, these motions are either parts of, or the starting points of, concupiscence" (Keckermann in Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics); "as the will does now work upon that object by desire, which is as it were a motion toward the end as yet unobtained, so likewise upon the same hereafter received, it shall work also by love" (Hooker, Polity 1.11); "the knowledge of man is of two kinds: the one respecting his understanding and reason, and the other respecting his will, appetite, and affections; whereof the former produces position or decree, the latter action or execution" (Bacon, Advancement of Learning, 2); "the difference of men is very great; you would scarce think them to be of the same species; and yet it consists more in affection than in intellect" (Selden, Table Talk, 71). (supplement 4.3.1.)

The terms inclination, desire, and affection are interchangeable. The "desire" of the psalmist's heart is one and the same thing with the "inclination" of his will. He often asks God to "incline" his heart. The inclination of the will is its constant self-determination. The affections or desires are the various phases or aspects of the inclination. Love of God is an affection of the heart; but it is also one variety of the disposition or inclination of the Christian. Hatred of sin is the aversion of a good man's will, its disinclination to evil: "To will is nothing other than a certain inclination toward an object of the will, which is universal good" (Aquinas, Summa 1.105.4).

In the Authorized Version, "willing" sometimes means "desiring" and sometimes "purposing," according as it translates thelō or bouleuō: "What if God willing (thelōn) to show his wrath endured" (Rom. 9:22); "willingly (thelontas) ignorant" = desiring to be ignorant (2 Pet. 3:5; cf. 1 Tim. 2:4); "the centurion willing (boulomenos) to save Paul" (Acts 27:43; cf. 1 Tim. 2:8; 5:14; 2 Pet. 3:9). In Eph. 2:3, the "lusts" (epithymiai) are called "inclinations" (thelēmata). St. James (4:2) represents sinful desire to be the same as sinful inclination, when he says, "You lust (epithymeite) and have not, you desire to have (zēloute) and cannot obtain." When Christ (John 5:6) asks, "Will you be made whole?" "will" means desire.

The will, unlike the understanding, is mutable. It is capable of a radical and total change or revolution. It has met with such a change in the apostasy of Adam. Man now is inclined exactly contrary to what he was by creation. In respect to moral and religious ends and objects, he inclines, desires, loves, and acts directly contrary to what he did when he came from the Creator's hand. This great change is denominated a "fall." It is an overthrow, a catastrophe. It is not a mere difference in the degree or intensity with which the will operates, but it is an entire alteration of the direction of its activity. The fall of the will was a revolution, not an evolution.

The elder psychology, by regarding the moral desires and affections as modes of the inclination of the will, brings them within the sphere of responsibility and distinguishes in kind between the moral (or voluntary) and the natural (or involuntary) desires. In this way, it precludes necessitating theories of human nature and agency. Spinoza, for example, breaks down the distinction between the natural and the moral, the instinctive and the voluntary, by rejecting Descartes's view of the moral affections as voluntary inclination and contending that "the affections of hatred, anger, envy, etc., considered in themselves, follow from the same necessity and force (virtus) of nature as other things" (Ethics, 3). The physical appetites together with the family, social, and esthetic desires and affections are clearly different from such affections as envy, pride, hatred, and malice in their origin and nature. The report and verdict of conscience concerning them is wholly different. They are instinct, not will. That a man craves food is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy. That he feels love and desire toward his kindred, his country, and artistic beauty is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy. But to feel love and desire when God is presented as the supreme object and end is holiness and to feel hatred and aversion is sin. These latter are not instinctive and constitutional affections, but modes of the man's moral inclination, for which he is approved or condemned. (supplement 4.3.2.)

Moral desires and affections are the self-activity of the will; its inclination and tendency showing itself in the phases of love or hatred of God, of desire or aversion toward goodness. They are commanded or prohibited by the moral law, which proves that they are voluntary. The feelings of supreme love toward God and of equal love toward a fellow creature are not instinctive, but voluntary. Such love and inclination is not, like the storgē of the parental relation or the involuntary affection of the citizen for his country, a merely natural and necessary efflux from the human constitution, deserving neither praise nor blame; but it is the free determination of the human will. To have it is meritorious. Not to have it or to have its contrary is guilt requiring atonement and remission. Again, the feeling of aversion toward God or of hatred toward a fellowman is not like the shrinking of animal life from death or the recoil of a child from a viper, an involuntary activity of the soul which stands in no relation to law and justice and is deserving of no punishment. This aversion toward God is called "enmity" (Rom. 8:7), the positive hostility of the inclination, the disinclination of the will in its deepest recesses. This hatred of a fellow creature is the repugnance of the will and is murderous in its quality; for "he that hates his brother is a murderer" (1 John 3:15). Accordingly, in Scripture, holy desire is holy inclination: "My soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you" (Ps. 63:1); "so pants my soul after you" (42:1). Such desire is the object of command: "Delight yourself in the Lord" (37:4). The sum of the moral law is a command to love: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart." And evil desire is evil inclination: "The desire of the wicked shall perish" (112:10); "grant not, O Lord, the desires of the wicked" (140:8); "the expectation of the wicked shall perish" (Prov. 10:28); "depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of your ways" (Job 21:14).

Objections to the More Recent Psychology

Recent psychology distributes the faculties of the soul into three divisions: intellect, sensibility, and will. The objections to this classification are the following.

The moral desires and religious affections must, if anywhere, be included under sensibility by this arrangement. But this is too narrow and shallow a term to denote those profound feelings, desires, and inclinations that relate to religion. "Sensibility"by its etymology refers to the five senses. Properly speaking, it comprises only sensuous feelings and desires. Hence it is wholly inadequate to denote feelings and desires that have no connection at all with the five senses, such as the holy affections of reverence, faith, hope, humility, joy, peace, and love or the sinful affections of pride, envy, malice, hatred, and the like. Both holy and sinful affections, in their deeper forms, are mental and disconnected with a physical organism. They have no connection with the sensuous sensibility. The seraph who adores and burns does not inherit flesh and blood. His religious desires and feelings are purely mental. The fiend, also, is intellectual in his depravity. Lucifer, the ethereal son of the morning, was not tempted to apostasy by any sensuous appetite; and his existing moral condition is mainly intellectual. The wickedness of the fallen angels is denominated by St. Paul "spiritual wickedness" (Eph. 6:12). "Sensibility," therefore, is an inadequate term to cover that wide domain which includes the moral desires of the heart and the inclination of the will and which is entirely distinct from the physical and fleshly side of man.

The explanation of the moral desires and religious affections is inadequate by this classification. According to this division, the will excludes inclination and desire and is only the power of exerting volitions; and the sensibility includes only the physical appetites, together with certain instinctive, involuntary, and innocent desires. The love of approbation and the love of happiness are mentioned as the principal of these latter. When these physical appetites and involuntary desires are "adopted" and strengthened" by a volition or are weakened and rejected by it, then sinful or holy affections arise. Virtue and vice thus differ only in degree, not in kind. The love of approbation intensified by volition becomes pride, diminished by volition becomes humility. The love of happiness strengthened by volition becomes selfishness, weakened by volition becomes benevolence. The rudimental base of virtue and vice is neither virtuous nor vicious. Thus there is no positive intrinsic morality upon this theory. Those sinful affections mentioned in Gal. 5:19–20, "hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders," instead of being regarded as the simple and immediate inclination of the will and therefore culpable in their own intrinsic nature, are regarded as complex and compounded. They are made out of innocent and involuntary material derived from the "sensibility," which when intensified by volitions or particular choices becomes guilt.

Furthermore, when a list of involuntary and innocent sensibilities sufficiently large to account for all the virtuous and vicious moral affections is asked for, it is not forthcoming. It is impossible to find innocent bases for "malice, envy, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, murders, and such like." Neither can "the fruits of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, temperance" (Gal. 5:22)—be explained out of involuntary and characterless materials.

The theory, moreover, breaks down when the so-called innocent sensibility, the "love of approbation," is examined. This is really nothing but the love of human applause, the sinful desire mentioned by St. John (5:44; 12:43) when he speaks of those who "receive honor one of another and seek not the honor that comes from God only" and who "love the praise of men more than the praise of God" and by St. Paul, in 1 Cor. 4:3, affirming that "it is a very small thing to be judged of man's judgment." This desire for popular approbation is not the same thing as the desire for self-approbation or the approval of conscience. The latter is virtuous and proper; but the former is the base of all egotism, pride, and ambition. It is exactly contrary to the meekness and lowliness of Christ and utterly opposed to that poverty of spirit and humbleness of mind which every sinful man ought to have and upon which Christ pronounces a blessing. Such a "sensibility" as this cannot be the elementary base of holy affections. And the other "sensibility," also, the "love of happiness," is essentially selfish. It underlies the selfish theory of morals, which is ethically unsound. No mere modification of the love of happiness can possibly produce the love of God or the love of holiness or the love of man. This scheme, in reality, derives and explains virtue out of vice. Pope describes the method, with his usual condensation and brilliancy:

As fruits ungrateful to the planter's care,

On savage stocks inserted, learn to bear;

The surest virtues thus from passions shoot,

Wild nature's vigor working at the root.

What crops of wit and honesty appear

From spleen, from obstinacy, hate, or fear!

See anger, zeal and fortitude supply;

E'en avarice, prudence, sloth, philosophy;

Lust, through certain strainers well refined,

Is gentle love, and charms all womankind;

Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave,

Is emulation in the learn'd or brave;

Nor virtue male or female can we name,

But what will grow on pride, or grow on shame.

—Essay on Man 2

Spinoza represents all affections, good and bad, as alike springing out of "the endeavor of a thing to persevere in its being." From this one source he derives the affections of anger, revenge, jealousy, ambition, sensuality, covetousness, love, benevolence, humility, compassion, hatred, joy, grief, envy, contempt, hope, fear, self-distress, pride, repentance, etc. (Ethics, part 3).

Scriptural Passages and Terms Defining the Will

The elder psychology agrees with Scripture in its definition of the will. In the biblical psychology, the will includes the moral desires and is antithetic to the understanding. In the New Testament kardia, thelēma, and boulē21 are terms for the voluntary side of the soul; and in the Old Testament lēb denotes the same. The cognitive side of the soul is designated in the New Testament by pneuma, nous, and phrēn; and in the Old Testament by nepeš26 and rûaḥ (Girdlestone, Synonyms of the Old Testament).

The primary and dominant meaning of kardia is will, as antithetic to understanding. It includes the inclination, together with the moral desires and affections: "lusts of the heart" (Rom. 1:24); "impenitent heart" (2:5); "purposed in the heart" (2 Cor. 9:7); "with the heart man believes" (Rom. 10:9–10); "turn the hearts" (Luke 1:17); "if you seek with all your heart" (Deut. 4:29); "love with all your heart" (6:5); "I have inclined my heart" (Ps. 119:112); "the heart of her husband does trust her" (Prov. 31:11); "does not afflict willingly (Hebrew: from the heart)" (Lam. 3:33).

These passages evince that in biblical psychology the will comprehends the heart. It comprises all that moral activity of the soul which is manifested in loving, hating, inclining, desiring, purposing, seeking, repenting, turning, delighting, trusting, hoping, believing. Each and all of these affections are phases of the will. They are modes of a man's inclination and self-determination. If they are conformed to the moral law, they are right affections and the will is a holy will. If they are contrary to the moral law, they are evil affections and the will is a sinful will. This species of psychical activity is not intellectual and percipient, but affectionate and executive. "The kardia or heart," says Owen (On the Spirit 3.3), "in Scripture, is to praktikon in the soul, the practical principle of operation, and so includes the will also. It is the actual compliance of the will and affections with the mind and understanding, with respect to the objects proposed by them."

Thelēma denotes inclination and desire in distinction from volition: "your will be done" (Matt. 6:10); "do the will of my Father" (7:21); "it is not the will of your Father" (18:14); "the will of him that sent me" (John 4:34); "know his will" (Rom. 2:18); "good pleasure of his will" (Eph. 1:15); "the desires (thelēmata) of the flesh and of the mind" (2:3). In these passages, the "will" is the will of desire and delight (see Bruder in voce).

Boulē and boulēma34 denote volition in distinction from inclination and desire: "The same had not consented to the counsel of them" (Luke 23:51); "I will be no judge of such matters" (Acts 18:15); "when Paul would have entered" (19:30); "I would also hear the man myself" (25:22); "I was minded to come unto you" (2 Cor. 1:15); "the determinate counsel of God" (Acts 2:23); "God willing to show more abundantly unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his council" (Heb. 6:17) (see Bruder, under the appropriate words). In these passages, boulē denotes, not a continuous and steady inclination of the will, but its single decision or volition in a particular instance. This decision may agree or disagree with the inclination. When Christ was crucified by God's will of purpose (Acts 2:23), it was contrary to his will of desire and delight.

The primary and dominant meaning of pneuma and its cognates nous37 and phrēn is understanding as antithetic to will. It comprises all the perceptive agencies of the soul: "Knowing in his spirit" (Mark 2:8); "what man knows the things of a man, save the spirit of man that is in him?" (1 Cor. 2:11); "be not children in understanding (phresin)" (14:20); "opened their understanding (noun)" (Luke 24:45); "sing with the understanding (noi)" (1 Cor. 14:15); "my soul (nepeš) knows right well" (Ps. 139:14); "that the soul be without knowledge is not good" (Prov. 19:2); "keep your soul diligently, lest you forget" (Deut. 4:9); "the spirit (rûaḥ) of my understanding" (Job 20:3); "they that erred in spirit shall come to understanding" (Isa. 29:24); "the spirit of wisdom" (Exod. 28:3).

As the understanding and will are one soul or person, the terms for each are frequently interchanged. Kardia is put for pneuma45 in the following: "reasoning in their hearts" (Mark 2:6); "the law written in their hearts" (Rom. 2:15); "shined in the heart to give the light of the knowledge of God" (2 Cor. 4:6); "God is greater than our heart and knows all things" (1 John 3:20); "wise in heart (lēb)" (Job 9:4); "void of understanding (lēb)" (Prov. 7:7); "I have understanding (lēb) as well as you" (Job 12:3); "she spoke with him all that was in her heart," that is, all she knew (1 Kings 10:2) (Gesenius in loco; Hodge, Ephesians, 249).

Similarly, pneuma is put for kardia50 in the following: "poor in spirit" (Matt. 5:3); "spirit of meekness" (1 Cor. 4:21); "newness of spirit" (Rom. 7:6); "mind (phronēma) of the spirit" (8:6); "he who searches the heart (kardia) knows what is the mind (phronēma) of the spirit (pneumatos)" (8:27); "rejoiced in spirit" (Luke 10:21); "in whom my soul (nepeš) delights" (Isa. 42:1); "my soul thirsts for God" (Ps. 42:2); "if it be your mind (nepeš)" (Gen. 23:8; 2 Kings 9:15); "with a willing mind (nepeš)" (1 Chron. 28:9). In the Old Testament nepeš is very often used to denote the heart and will.

Inclination vs. Volition

The distinction between the will's inclination and its volition is of the highest importance in both psychology and theology. The key to the distinction is found in the following discrimination by Descartes (Passions 1.18): "Our acts of will are of two kinds. One are the actions of the soul which terminate on the soul itself; as when we will to love God. The other kind are the actions of the soul that terminate on the body; as when from the mere will to take a walk, there follows the movement of our limbs, and we go forward." The first of these acts of will is inclining; the last is the exertion of a volition. The same distinction is referred to by Constant: "I am able to do good and sound deeds, but I cannot find the good means of accomplishing them."

When I say, "I will pick up that stone," this is volition. The action of the will terminates on the body. I am conscious of ability to do it or not. In this instance, there is a power of alternative choice. I can do one as easily as the other. But when I say, "I will love God supremely," this is inclination. The action of the will terminates on the will. I am not conscious of ability to do it or not. In this instance, there is not a power of alternative choice. I cannot do one as easily as the other. And the reason is that I am already loving myself supremely. I am already inclined or self-determined. I am already doing the contrary of loving God supremely. And the existing inclination precludes the other. I can do the one which I am doing, but not the other which I am not doing. But when I said, "I will pick up that stone," I was not already inclined to the contrary act—namely, not to pick it up. In this instance, I was indifferent and undetermined in regard to the act of picking up the stone. Consequently, I could do one thing as easily as the other. In the instance of a proposed change of self-determination or inclination, there is a contrary self-determination or inclination already existing and opposing. In the instance of a change of volition, there is indifference or the absence of inclination or self-determination. (supplement 4.3.3.)

The difference between inclination and volition is seen by considering the moral desires and affections. The desire of human applause or ambition does not rise by a volition. In this sense, it is involuntary, and those who resolve all the action of the will into volition so denominate it. Yet it is free and unforced activity. It rises by spontaneous inclination. In this sense, it is voluntary. The man is willingly proud and ambitious and is punishable for it. His desire for fame is the determination of the self. If it is not self-determination, it must be determination by some cause other than self. But in this case, the sense of guilt which accompanies it is inexplicable. The same reasoning applies to envy, hatred, malice, and all other sinful desires. They are not volitionary, but they are voluntary; they are the inclination of the will, not its volition.

The following particulars mark the difference between inclination and volition.

Inclination is the central action of the will; volition is the superficial action. The inclination is the source of volitions. "It is," says Edwards (Original Sin 2.1.1), "the general notion, not that principles derive their goodness from actions, but that actions derive their goodness from the principles whence they proceed." By "principles" Edwards means, as he teaches in the context, the disposition or inclination; and by "actions" he means particular choices or volitions. That the inclination is more profound action than a volition is proved by the fact that a man cannot incline himself by a volition or resolution. When he is already inclined, no exertion of that volitionary power by which he lifts a hand or applies his mind to a given subject, like geometry, for example, can originate a contrary inclination. He may by volitionary effort fix his thoughts upon God as the being toward whom he ought to incline, but this is as far as he can go, if he is not already inclined. No conceivable amount of resolution, even though it rise to spasm, can start that profound and central action of the will which is its inclination and is identical with its moral affection and disposition. The central action of the will in inclining is better denominated "voluntary," and the superficial action in choosing "volitionary." The voluntary is the spontaneous. Milton speaks of "thoughts that voluntarily (i.e., spontaneously) move harmonious numbers." If the term voluntary is made to do double duty and designate both the central and the superficial action of the will, both inclination and volition, it leads to confusion. Some things are predicable of a volition that are not of an inclination. Volitions can be originated at any instant and in any number; an inclination cannot be. If, however, the term choice be used to denote the inclination, it should be qualified as the choice of an ultimate end in distinction from the means to it and also as not proceeding from an indifferent state of the will.

The volition has the same moral quality with the inclination. This is taught by Christ in Matt. 7:17: "Every good tree brings forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit." Hence the volition has been denominated "executive volition" and the inclination "immanent volition" by those who do not discriminate technically between inclination and volition.

All the volitionary acts of particular choice are performed in order to gratify the prevailing inclination or determination of the will. A man is inclined to ambition; and he endeavors to attain the ambitious end to which he is self-determined by thousands and tens of thousands of volitions. These are all of them of the same moral quality with the inclination. They are vicious, not virtuous. Self-seeking or selfishness is the generic character of human inclination; pride, envy, malice, covetousness, etc., are varieties of this. These are modes of man's inclination, all of which have the creature not the Creator for the ultimate end. Volitions are exercised in choosing and using means in order to gratify these varieties of inclination. In their moral quality, they are the same as the inclination. A volition exerted to attain an ambitious end and gratify an ambitious inclination is ambitious. A volition exerted to attain a malignant end is malignant. And so through the entire list. Volitions cannot be morally different from the inclination which prompts them. This also is taught by our Lord in Matt. 7:18: "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit."

The volition sometimes seems to run counter to the inclination, but really it does not. A drunkard, from fear or shame, may by a volition reject the cup that is offered to him. He acts contrary, in this particular instance, to his physical appetite for alcohol, but not contrary to the central inclination of his will to self. By the supposition, he is still determined to the creature as the ultimate end, not to the Creator. He still loves himself supremely. The motive, consequently, from which he rejects the intoxicant in the instance supposed is a selfish one: shame, pride, fear of man, or some other merely prudential consideration. He is still controlled by his inclination to self. The volition by which he rejected the cup agrees in its moral quality with the state of his heart. It is not holy, because not prompted by the desire and determination to please and obey God. Had he rejected the intoxicant from regard to the divine command against drunkenness, this would prove him to have obtained a new inclination of the will. But in the case supposed, his volition, though counter to his physical appetite, yet agrees with his moral character and disposition of will. He has carried out his selfish inclination by his volition, only in a different manner from common. His volition in this instance ministered to his pride instead of to his physical appetite.

The inclination of the will is the result of self-determination, not of a volition, because the inclination is the self-determination viewed objectively. Consider the facts. Adam as created was inclined to holiness. This inclination, although created with his will, was at the same time the self-motion of his will. Viewed with reference to its first author and origin, it was the product of his maker; but viewed with reference to his own will, it was the activity of his will and in this secondary sense the product of his will. This holy inclination was both concreated and self-determined; the former, because it was a created voluntariness; the latter, because of the intrinsic nature of voluntariness.

Now it is evident that this holy inclination was not the product of a volition exerted prior to the inclination and when there was no inclination, but it was the simple self-motion of the will. The will of Adam moved spontaneously to God as a supreme end, and this spontaneity of the will was identical with the will's inclination. The will as uninclined did not choose to incline and by this choice made an inclination, but it simply inclined, and this inclining was its inclination.

And the same is true of Adam's evil inclination. This, also, was the result of self-determination, not of a volition. Adam, in the act of apostasy, did not make a choice between two contraries, God and the creature, to neither of which was he yet inclined; but he passed or "lapsed" from one inclination to another, from one self-determination to another. This instant, he is wholly inclined to good; the next instant, he is wholly inclined to evil. Such a fall of the will cannot be accounted for by an antecedent choice from an indifferent state of the will. It is explained by the possibilitas peccandi. This is the power of self-determining to evil, implied in the mutable holiness of a creature who is not self-sustaining and omnipotent. When God created Adam's will with a holy inclination, this inclination, because finite, was not immutable. Mutable Adam, unlike his immutable maker, could lose holiness. He was able to persevere in his holy self-determination, and he was able to start a sinful self-determination. God left it to Adam himself to decide whether he would continue in his first created inclination or would begin a second evil inclination. This was his probation. The first sin was the self-determining of the will to evil, which expelled the existing self-determination to good, and not a volition in a state of indifference. It was self-determination to an ultimate end, not a choice of means to an ultimate end. Sinful inclination began in Adam immediately by self-determination and not mediately by a foregoing volition. He did not choose to incline to evil, but he inclined.

In the instance of regeneration, also, a new inclination is begun immediately by the Holy Spirit, not mediately by the exertion of a human volition. The Holy Spirit regenerates the fallen will instantaneously, and the effect is a new inclining or self-determining of the faculty. The will is "powerfully determined," as the Westminster Confession phrases it. The sinner does not choose or resolve to incline to God, but God the Spirit immediately inclines him. The inclination or self-determination of regeneration differs from that of apostasy in that it is the effect of God "working in the will to will." God in this instance determines the will by renewing it, while in the instance of the apostasy Adam determined himself to evil without any immediate operation of God. Yet there is no compulsion of the will in regeneration, because the Holy Spirit operates as spirit upon spirit, that is, in accordance with the nature of a mental and self-moving substance and not as matter operates upon matter. The new inclination of the will is real and true spontaneity or self-determination. But, there are two beings concerned in it, namely, the Holy Spirit the efficient and the human spirit the recipient. In the case of the sinful self-determination in the apostasy, there was only a single being concerned, namely, man.

Consequently, inclination or self-determination may be viewed either subjectively or objectively, as an activity or as a result, as an act or as a fact. Holy inclination, viewed subjectively, is the activity of the will, its voluntary spontaneity: justitia originans. Viewed objectively, it is this spontaneity as originally created or subsequently recreated by God: justitia originata. Sinful inclination, viewed subjectively, is the activity of the will, its voluntary spontaneity: peccatum originans. Viewed objectively, it is this spontaneity considered as an abiding state of the will originated by the will itself in Adam's fall:66 peccatum originatum.

Inclination differs from volition as the end differs from the means. Inclination is self-determination to an ultimate end, God or the world. When Adam apostatized, his will inclined to self and the creature as the supreme end. This was a self-originated self-determination. When this new inclination to self and sin had begun, then began a series of choices or volitions by means of which he might attain the new end of existence which he had set up. And the first of these choices, the first volition that succeeded the origination of the inclination, was the reaching forth of the hand and taking the forbidden fruit. This volitionary act was the means of attaining the selfish end he had now assumed. He gratified his new inclination by a choice. For Adam had fallen in his heart and will before he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge. He was already inclined to self prior to this outward act; and the volition by which he reached forth the hand and took the fruit was executive of his new inclination. It did not originate his inclination, but expressed and exhibited it.

The term choice, as has been observed, is applied indiscriminately to the election of the end as well as of the means by those who do not distinguish between voluntary and volitionary action. Adam, they say, chose self as the ultimate end instead of choosing God. But this indiscriminate use of the term is confusing. It is preferable to appropriate each term to its proper act. The will "inclines" to an end and "chooses" a means. Edwards sometimes appropriates the term choice to volitions and uses the term disposition or affection to denote inclination. "It is agreeable," he says (Original Sin 2.1.1), "to the sense of the minds of men in all nations and ages, not only that the fruit or effect of a good choice is virtuous, but the good choice itself from which that effect proceeds; yea, and not only so, but also the antecedent good disposition, temper, or affection of mind from whence proceeds that good choice is virtuous." In this passage three elements are mentioned: (a) the outward act: "the fruit or effect of a good choice"; (b) the choice or volition that caused the outward act; and (c) the "disposition, temper, or affection" which produced the volition. Edwards's position in regard to each of them is (a) that the outward act is preceded and produced by the volition; (b) that the volition is preceded and produced by the disposition or inclination; and (c) that the disposition or inclination, if holy, is either concreated with the will or else reoriginated in regeneration; if sinful it is originated in Adam's apostasy. But inasmuch as Edwards does not formally and technically appropriate the term choice to volitions, but employs it oftentimes to designate the inclination; and still more, because he uses the term voluntary, as his Arminian opponents did, to denote alike what is volitionary or "caused by antecedent choice" (Works 2.122) and what is bias or inclination, he has exposed himself to the misinterpretation which his views have sometimes met with.

Julius Müller (Sin 1.31) remarks that "the true conception of the will does not lie in the element of self-determination alone. This we must attribute in a certain sense to creatures without rational intelligence. Self-determination becomes will only when it is conscious of itself." But it is incorrect to call the volitions of animals "self-determination" and to make the only difference between human and animal will to lie in an act of knowledge. There is a difference in the kind of activity. Will in man is rational, unnecessitated self-activity toward a moral end. Will in animals is irrational, necessitated activity in choosing means to a physical end necessitated by physical instinct. The former is real self-determination; the latter is not. The animal is forced by the law of his physical nature to the end aimed at in his volitions; the man is not. The brute must attain the end of his creation; the man may or may not. Instinct in the animal is involuntary; inclination in man is voluntary.

Volition is common to man and the animal creation; inclination or self-determination belongs only to man and other rational beings. The movements of the fingers of a pianist are each caused by an act of choice, in distinction from an act of self-determination to an ultimate end. There are thousands of volitions exerted in a few moments. Volition is also seen in insects and is inconceivably rapid in them. Volition here is innervation. Excitement of the nerve results in excitement of the muscle. If the molecular theory of vitality were true, volition in insects would be rightly defined as Haeckel defines will: "the habit of molecular motion." It would be the molecular process in the nervous-muscular system. A gnat, according to a French naturalist, vibrates its wings five hundred times in a second. The vibrations of the wings of the common fly, according to an English naturalist, are as many as six hundred in a second (Pouchet, Universe, 112). These are each and every one of them volitionary, not voluntary acts—choice not self-determination—and are the same in kind with those by which the pianist plays a tune or a drummer beats a tattoo. For if the vibrations of the gnat's wing were not caused by volitions, it could not stop flying. The motion would be mechanical and animals would be machines, as Descartes asserted in his curious theory. Naturalists are now distinguishing between vegetable (or passive) life and active (or willful) life. The vegetable puts forth no volitions; the animal does.

But volition in the animal or the insect has something behind it as its ground and cause, as volition in man has. This background and originating source in the animal is instinct. This takes the place of self-determination or inclination in man. All the volitions of an animal or an insect are exerted for the purpose of attaining the end prescribed by animal instinct, just as the volitions of a man are exerted for the purpose of reaching the end prescribed by his moral inclination. Volitionary action in man is responsible because the disposition or inclination prompting it is self-moved. But in the animal, volitionary action is irresponsible because instinct is not self-moved. Instinct is the necessitated motion of physical substance in accordance with physical properties and laws. Inclination is the free motion of mental and spiritual substance, which is not controlled by physical law. (supplement 4.3.4.)

Inclination or self-determination is inherited; volitions or choices are not. The bias of the will is born with the individual. His choices or volitions are not born with him and do not begin until self-consciousness begins. The sinful self-determination began in Adam prior to birth; sinful volitions begin in the individual after birth.

Inclination is free because it is self-determined; volition is necessitated because it is determined in its morality by the inclination of which it is the executive. The selfishly inclined drunkard may drink or not drink in a particular instance and thus seems to be free in regard to volition, but in either case his volition is selfish like his inclination. Apparently and formally it is free, but really it is necessitated. No volition can be holy if it is the executive of a sinful inclination or sinful if it is the executive of a holy inclination. Hence man's freedom must be sought for in his inclination, not in his volitions. Moral necessity can be predicated of volitions, but not of inclination. There is a necessary connection between volitions and the foregoing inclination of which they are the and executive; but no such necessary connection exists between an inclination and a foregoing inclination or between an inclination and a foregoing volition. It is improper to say that a person must incline in a certain manner, but proper to say that he must choose in a certain manner. If he has an evil inclination, his choices are necessarily evil; but his inclination itself is not necessarily evil. Inclination has no antecedent, but constitutes an absolute beginning ex nihilo; but a volition does not.

This is what Kant means when he asserts that the will as noumenon or "thing in itself" is free, but as phenomenon is necessitated (Practical Reason, 269–89). The law of cause and effect or of the antecedent causing the consequent operates in regard to the phenomenal series of volitions in time, but not in regard to the abiding inclination which underlies them and which is referable to no particular moment of time. The inclination is not a series, but a unit. There is only one inclination (noumenon), but myriads of volitions (phenomena). The inclination is not caused either by an antecedent inclination or by a volition, but is self-caused. And the inclination is the real will of the man: the Ding an sich. Ritschl (History of Justification, 7) states Kant's doctrine as follows: "Freedom denotes the will as unconditioned causality out of time, in distinction from the phenomena of will that run on in time, and are subject to natural necessity. The reason why every recollection of an act committed long ago calls forth sorrow is that reason in all that pertains to our moral existence recognizes no distinctions of time, but asks only if the action was really mine." Edwards teaches the same truth in his doctrine of moral necessity—according to which the volition in its moral quality necessarily follows the inclination. M. Hopkins, also, says that "choice" is free but "volition" is necessary (Study of Man, 212, 231, 257). (supplement 4.3.5.)

Self-determination is causative and originative of character. It starts a bias or disposition in the will. Volition is unproductive of character and disposition. A volition leaves the man's inclination exactly as it found it. It makes no alteration in the bias of the will. This is seen in the futile attempt of the moralist to change his inclination by volitionary resolutions. Inclination is a positive determination of the will in one direction and toward one final end. Volition or choice is the selection of one out of two or more things, not from any interest in one rather than another, but because it is best adapted to the end in view. A volitionary choice is indifferent toward the thing chosen. If the drunkard could gratify his selfish inclination to physical pleasure better by water than by alcohol, he would choose water.

Inclination is spontaneous; volition is nervous and often spasmodic. Inclination is easy and genial; volition is more or less an effort, whether exerted against the inclination or in accordance with it. When the drunkard by a volition refuses the cup because of his selfish inclination in the form of shame or fear, this volition costs him a great effort. When the drunkard by a volition takes the cup because of his selfish inclination in the form of desire of sensual pleasure, the volition is still an effort, though not a great one. He is, at least, compelled to exert his will sufficiently to move his muscles and limbs. Volition moves the body; and this requires a distinct and separate resolution of the will back of the bodily movement. Inclination moves the will itself; but this does not require a distinct and separate resolution of the will back of the mental and voluntary movement. The inclining is itself the mental activity; the cause and the effect are one and the same thing. But the volition is not itself the muscular bodily action; the cause and the effect are two different things. When a person loves or hates, he does not need to resolve to do it. But when he picks up a pin or applies his mind to a geometrical proposition, he must resolve to do so. Love and hatred are easy because spontaneous; volitions are more or less an effort.

To recapitulate, then, we say that the total action of the will is to be distinguished into voluntary and volitionary action, according as we speak of the central abiding inclination or the superficial momentary choice. "Voluntary" action both originates and is inclination, according as the action is viewed as subjective or objective, as originans or originata. It has only three points at which it may begin: (1) the instant of creation, when a holy inclination commenced by being concreated in the will of the specific Adam; (2) the instant of apostasy, when a sinful inclination commenced in the will of the specific Adam by solitary self-determination without divine cooperation; or (3) the instant of regeneration, when a holy inclination is reoriginated in the sinful will of the individual man by the Holy Spirit. The beginning of a self-determined inclination is consequently an epoch in the history of the human will, and epochs are infrequent and rare from the nature of the case. Creation, apostasy, and regeneration are the great epochal points in man's existence.74 But volitions are beginning continually and are numberless. "Volitionary" action has innumerable points of beginning and in every instance supposes a prior inclination to an ultimate end.

This distinction between "voluntary" and "volitionary" action or between inclination and choice is marked in German by Wille and Willkühr, in Latin by voluntas and arbitrium, and in Greek by thelēma and boulē77 (cf. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.6). The neglect of the distinction results in confusion and misunderstanding. If he who makes this distinction asserts that "original sin is voluntary but not volitionary," he is understood to say that original sin is the inclination of a man and not a successive series of single choices, that it is the constant and central determination of the will to self and sin and not the innumerable outward transgressions that proceed from this. But if one who does not make this distinction between voluntary and volitionary action asserts that "original sin is voluntary," he may be understood to mean that there is no sin but that of volitions, that original sin is the product of a volition and can be removed by a volition. (supplement 4.3.6.)

Theologians who in fact agree with each other appear to disagree in case the distinction is not recognized. Owen, for example, remarks (Indwelling Sin, 12) that "the will is the principle, the next seat and cause of obedience and disobedience. Moral actions are unto us, or in us, so far good or evil as they partake of the consent of the will. He spoke truth of old who said: 'Every sin is so voluntary, that if it be not voluntary it is not sin.' " In this statement "will" is employed in the comprehensive sense as antithetic to the understanding, and "voluntary" does not mean "volitionary." Owen would not say that "every sin is so volitionary, that if it be not volitionary it is not sin." Hodge (Theology 1.403), on the other hand, asserts that "freedom is more than spontaneity" and that "the affections are spontaneous but not free. Loving and hating, delighting and abhorring do not depend upon the will." This agrees with the modern psychology, not with the elder. For by "will" Hodge here means the volitionary power and by "freedom" the power to the contrary in the exercise of single choices. If this is the true psychology and freedom means the power of contrary choice, then it is correct to say that "the affections are not free" because they are most certainly not the product of volitions. Yet Hodge holds that evil affections are guilty and punishable. But this requires that they be free in the sense of inclination or disposition; that they are not the product of compulsion and necessity. And in saying that "the affections are spontaneous," he implies that they are from the will (ex sponte). For spontaneity in a rational being is free will. Spontaneity in an animal is mere physical instinct; but in man it is rational self-determination. Leibnitz (Concerning Freedom, 669) says, "Freedom is the spontaneity of intelligence. Thus, that which is spontaneous in man or another rational substance rises higher than what is spontaneous in a brute or other substance lacking intellect and is called freedom."80 Instinct in a brute is necessitated because it is grounded wholly in sense and animal nature; inclination in man is free because it is grounded in reason and a spiritual essence. Inclination is the subject of command and prohibition. Man is bidden to have a good inclination and forbidden to have an evil one. The commands to love (Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:39–40), to "make the tree good" (Matt. 12:33), to love not (1 John 2:15), to lust not (Exod. 20:17) are examples. (supplement 4.3.7.)

The great question in anthropology and in reference to sin and holiness relates to inclination rather than volition is the true subject of inquiry: How does an inclination (either holy or sinful) begin? Had unfallen man power to change his holy inclination? Has fallen man power to change his sinful inclination? That man has power over his volitions is undisputed.

SUPPLEMENTS

4.3.1 (see p. 512). Edwards (Religious Affections in Works 3.4–5) defines the moral desires as being the same thing as voluntary inclination, in much the same terms with Augustine: "What are commonly called affections are not essentially different from the will and inclination. In every act of the will whatsoever, the soul either likes or dislikes, is either inclined or disinclined to what is in view. These are not essentially different from those affections of love and hatred; that liking or inclination of the soul to a thing, if it be in a high degree and be vigorous and lively, is the very same thing with the affection of love; and that disliking and disinclining, if in a greater degree, is the very same thing with hatred. As all the exercises of the inclination and will are either in approving and liking, or disapproving and rejecting, so the affections are of two sorts; they are those by which the soul is carried out to what is in view, cleaving to it or seeking it; or those by which it is averse from it and opposes it. Of the former sort are love, desire, hope, joy, gratitude, complacence. Of the latter kind are hatred, fear, anger, grief, and such like."

There are two criticisms to be made upon Edwards's definition: (1) "Approbation" and "disapprobation" of an object are the action of the conscience not of the will and come under the head of the understanding; but "liking" and "disliking" are the action of the heart and affections and belong to the will. Edwards here confounds understanding and will, which he has distinguished from each other elsewhere when he says that "the exercises of the inclination and will are either approving and liking or disapproving and rejecting." A man may like what he disapproves of and dislike what he approves of. The will and conscience are different faculties and in fallen man are in direct antagonism. (2) It is not necessary that the "liking" and "disliking" or the moral affections of love and hatred should "be in a high degree," or "vigorous and lively," in order to be the inclination of the will. It is not the degree of a thing that makes the kind, but the kind itself. If the moral affections are the same thing as the voluntary inclination, as Edwards affirms, there is no need of bringing in the intensity or laxity of either in the definition. Moderate hatred is as really hatred as immoderate.

4.3.2 (see p. 514). When the will is defined as desire, it is of the highest importance to observe the difference in kind between sensuous and mental desire. The former was denominated "animal appetite" and the latter "rational appetite" by the elder Protestant divines. There is an appetency or craving in both instances, but the one is in the physical nature and the other in the spiritual. The former is involuntary; the latter is voluntary. Eve's desire for the fruit of the tree of knowledge as "good for food and pleasant to the eye" is an example of the first; her desire for "the knowledge of good and evil" to be obtained by eating of the fruit is an example of the last. The former was innocent; the latter culpable.

This expresses the general relation of involuntary physical appetite to voluntary self-moving desire or moral inclination. The appetite for food is physical, organic, and involuntary; but the desire to satisfy it for the purpose of self-enjoyment is mental and voluntary. The former is instinctive; the latter is not. The latter is the gluttonous inclination of the will; its disposition to please self by means of the physical appetite for food. The sexual appetite is physical, organic, and involuntary; but the desire to satisfy it for the purpose of self-enjoyment is mental and voluntary. This desire is the voluptuous inclination or self-determination of the will; the wish to please self by the indulgence of sexual appetites instead of pleasing God by obeying his command to deny it. It is not the mere existence of the appetite for food or of sexual appetite that evinces the existence of sin in the human soul, but the existence of an inclination in the will to use these physical and involuntary appetites for the purpose of personal enjoyment in contradiction to the divine command forbidding such a use. The sin is in this inclination of the will or disposition of the heart to disobey God, not in the mere physical appetite itself. The physical appetite is indeed made inordinate and difficult to control by habitual indulgence; but its nature is not thereby changed. It is still physical and involuntary appetite, not mental, moral, and voluntary inclination.

Mental and moral desire is self-moving and therefore voluntary and responsible, but physical and sensuous desire is the operation of physical law, not of self-determination. The desire for fame or wealth is wholly disconnected from the physical nature, so that it might be experienced by a disembodied spirit. But the desire for food or alcohol or the sexual desire requires a physical nature. These latter are appetites in distinction from desires; although the older divines sometimes denominated the desires of the mind, in distinction from those of the body, rational appetites, the others being animal appetites. St. Paul mentions both in Eph. 2:3: "lusts of the flesh and wills or desires of the mind." Rational or mental desire seeks (appetit) an end, but the end is wholly mental. An animal or physical desire seeks an end, but the end is wholly sensuous. The motion or action in the former instance is that of mind or spirit and is self-motion, which makes it voluntary and responsible. The motion or action in the latter instance is that of organized vital matter, which moves necessarily by reason of physical properties and in accordance with a physical law to which it is subject. When the body desires food, this is a necessary craving or appetency which never changes. It is not voluntary self-determination which might become the contrary by a revolutionary act of the physical nature. No such revolutionary change is possible within this physical sphere. Man's sensuous and material nature always hungers and always thirsts. But when the rational mind or spirit desires fame, this is a self-moving craving or appetency, which may be changed by grace into its contrary. The ambitious and proud spirit may become a meek and lowly one and vice versa. This species of desire is not sensuous and physical, occurring by reason of the law of animal and material life, but rational and mental, occurring by the pure self-motion and self-determination of spirit. Mental desires may be lost and restored, and this proves that they are modes of the will. The desire after God and holiness with which man was created was lost in the fall and is restored in regeneration. It is not so with the involuntary physical desires. The appetites for food, etc., existed after the fall in the same manner as before. The degree of the appetite for food, etc., is increased by the apostasy of the will and becomes gluttony, but the kind remains the same. There is no revolutionary change into an aversion to food, drink, etc. But in the instance of a rational and moral appetite, or mental desire proper, the change is one of kind and not merely of degree. The desire after God and goodness becomes hatred of them. These facts show that the desires of the mind or spirit are voluntary, and those of the body and the material part of man are involuntary. The former are modes of the will; the latter are modes of instinct and sense. Sensuous desires are merely the operation of physical properties and laws in an individual man or animal and are no more self-moving and voluntary than the operation of the properties of matter and the law of gravitation when a stone falls to the earth. The molecules of inorganic matter in the stone when it falls and the molecules of organic matter in the man when he craves food are moved by a physical law that forces their movement. But when the immaterial and spiritual will inclines or determines to an immaterial and moral end, there is no movement of molecules of matter, either inorganic or organic, in accordance with a physical law, but the self-motion of spirit as the contrary of matter in all its modes. The doctrine of Plato and of the Greek theism generally—that mind and matter are diverse in kind and that the motion of the former is self-motion but that of the latter is not, being instinctive and necessitated by physical properties and laws—is the key to the true doctrine of the will. The self-motion of spirit is free and responsible motion, because it is the product of spirit; and yet, though it be self-motion it may be bondage in reference to the power to reverse itself. Evil self-motion left to itself is endless self-motion for the reasons given on pp. 591–93.

4.3.3 (see p. 519). He who confines his attention to volitions or choices will not discover the secret of the will any more than he will discover the secret of anything by confining his attention to the effect and overlooking the cause. The defect in many modern treatises on the will arises from regarding the power to choose between two contraries as a complete definition of the voluntary faculty. A choice between two contraries is an effect of an existing bias or inclination of the will as a cause. This bias constitutes the motive to the choice. A comprehensive view of the whole subject of voluntary action requires, therefore, the consideration of both of these modes of the will's action. To study the numerous and constantly changing volitions and choices of the will while neglecting the one single and permanent inclination that prompts and explains them is to omit the most important part of the problem. It also leads to an erroneous conception of the nature of freedom, because a choice or resolution is indifferent toward its object and may take or reject it with equal facility because of its indifference. There is no inclination or desire for the object in a mere volition. The drunkard does not desire the alcohol by his volition, but only desires to take it as a means of gratifying his inclination or desire for sensual pleasure. If water were as good a means as alcohol for this end, he would choose water. The real will of the man is in the central inclination or self-determination to sensual pleasure and not in the superficial choice of the means of attaining it. But this inclination is not, like the volition, indifferent to the end aimed at by it, namely, sensual pleasure. It is the self-motion of the entire will to this one end, in which it is absorbed with an intense energy and interest that opposes and precludes a contrary self-motion. The person in inclining cannot incline or disincline to the end with the same facility that he can choose or refuse the means. The distinction between inclination and volition is continually being made in common parlance. "I will do it though not inclined," is often said. This means that the speaker wills by a volition or a choice of means in a particular instance to do an act that is contrary to his abiding disposition. By a volition he can decide to have a limb amputated contrary to his desire not to suffer pain. "I am inclined to do it, but will not," is often said. This means that the speaker is in his heart disposed in a certain way but lacks energy or resolution to execute his inclination by a volition. An example of this is St. Paul's, "The good that I would (thelō), I do not, but the evil which I would not (ou thelō), that I do (prassō)" (Rom. 7:19). By reason of his regeneration and the implanting of the new life he is centrally and steadily inclined to holiness and disinclined to sin, but in a particular instance, under the stress of a temptation addressed to the remainders of his sinful inclination derived from his fall in Adam, he commits by a volition or choice, a single sin. His inclination is right, but his volition is wrong. And, be it observed, the volition in this instance gets its sinful quality from the remainders of sinful inclination, of which it is the executive, and not from the holy inclination, of which it is not the executive and with which it conflicts.

The distinction between inclination and volition explains moral ability. A holy angel can tell a lie if he so desires or inclines to lie; otherwise, not. Yet as holy and without the inclination to lie, he could still speak the words of a lie with his vocal organs by the exertion of a volition that does not agree with his truth-loving disposition. He could formally tell a lie, but not really, because real lying consists in the desire and inclination to deceive. The question is not whether a holy being can control the muscles and organs of his body, but whether he can desire and incline to sin. It is possible for a holy person to fall from God and become a sinful person, and then he can desire to lie; but so long as he remains unfallen he cannot so desire: "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit." Before it can do this it must undergo a radical change and become an evil tree. The same is true of a sinful person. So long as he is sinful in his disposition and inclination he cannot incline to holiness. Hence in the creeds inclination and ability are convertible terms: "The Lord promises to give unto all those that are ordained unto life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe" (Westminster Confession 7.3); "when God converts a sinner he enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good" (9.4); "the elect are enabled to believe" (14.1); "redemption is effectually communicated to those who are by the Holy Spirit enabled to believe" (Westminster Larger Catechism 59); "the elect are made willing and able freely to answer the call" (67); "effectual calling, by renewing the will, persuades and enables us to embrace Jesus Christ" (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 31).

Suppose the following propositions to be made by the advocate of "natural ability." (1) I am able to lift a hundred pounds weight, but I am not doing it. (2) I am able to love God supremely, but I am not loving him. In the former instance I must move my muscles by my will. In the latter, I must move my will by my will. In the former instance a volition will move the body and convert the asserted ability into actual lifting. In the latter instance a volition will not move the will and convert the asserted ability into actual loving. In the first instance I do not need to start an inclination to lift in order to lift; a mere volition is sufficient to move the muscles that move the limbs. In the latter instance I need to start an inclination to love in order to love, because love is inclination. In the former instance I lift by resolving, not by inclining; in the latter I love by inclining, not by resolving. There is nothing in lifting, more than in not lifting, that requires feeling or affection. I do not love lifting and hate not-lifting. I am indifferent to both and would choose one as soon as the other if it would be as good a means to attain my end. But in inclining I am not indifferent but interested. I love the inclining to good or evil and hate the contrary.

Inclination and volition may be illustrated by the deep Gulf Stream current and the surface waves of the ocean. Both of the former are the movement of the will, as both of the latter are the movement of the ocean. But as the surface undulations have no control over the central current, so the superficial volitions have no control over the inclination.

Augustine marks the difference between inclination and volition as follows: "There are two things: will (velle) and ability (posse). Not everyone who has will (vult) has ability (potest); nor everyone that has ability has will. For as we sometimes will (volumus) what we are unable to execute (non-possumus), so also we sometimes execute what we do not will (volumus). Will (velle) is derived from willingness (voluntas), and ability (posse) from ableness (potestas). As the man who inclines (vult) has will (voluntas), so the man who can (potest) has ability (potestatem). But in order that a thing may be done by ability (potestatem), there must be volition (voluntas). For no man is said to do a thing with ability, if he did it without any act of will whatever (invitus). Although, if we observe more precisely, even what a man is moved to do against his inclination he nevertheless does by his volition; only he is said to act unwillingly in this instance because he prefers or desires something else. By some unfortunate influence (malo aliquo) he is made to do what he does by a volition, though inclined to avoid the doing of it. But if his inclination is so strong that it overrides such influence, then he resists and does not exert the volition. If, however, contrary to his inclination, he does perform the act by a volition, while it is not performed with a full, free-will (voluntas) yet it is not performed without will" (Spirit and Letter 53). Augustine also describes inclination as desire and affection: "Our will or love or pleasure (dilectionem), which is a stronger will, is variously affected according as various objects are presented to it, by which we are attracted or repelled" (On the Trinity 15.41).

4.3.4 (see p. 524). The inclination of the will must originate in self-motion and continue to be self-moving in order to human freedom, and man's liberty and responsibility must be found in his inclination or nowhere. It cannot be found in the volitions that execute it, because these cannot change the inclination and have no control over it. Hence that definition of freedom which makes it to be merely the acting out of the inclination by volitions is inadequate. Edwards (Remarks on Principles of Morality in Works 2.182) defines liberty as follows: "Liberty is the power that anyone has to do as he pleases, or of conducting in any respect according to his pleasure; without considering how his pleasure comes to be as it is." That is to say, liberty is the mere power of exerting a volition in accordance with the inclination or "pleasure" of the will, whether the inclination be self-moved or necessitated ab extra. Edwards correctly maintains that the moral connection between a choice or volition and the inclination behind it is as necessary as the physical connection between cause and effect in the physical world. Liberty or freedom, therefore, cannot be found in this fixed nexus between the inclination and the volition. It must, therefore, be found at a prior point, namely, in the inclination or "pleasure" itself, and this requires raising the question how pleasure comes to be as it is. For if the inclination or "pleasure" of the will is not voluntary in the sense of self-originated and self-moving, then the volition which follows the inclination and has not the least control over it has nothing of freedom in it.

It is for this reason that the free origin of man's sinful inclination in Adam is a doctrine of the utmost importance. If the fall of human nature in Adam was involuntary and man's sinful inclination was not and is not self-motion, then the mere volitionary power to act in accordance with this inclination or "pleasure" of the will is no more liberty than is the power of gunpowder to explode if a spark is applied to it.

The allegation is common among opponents of Augustino-Calvinism that original sin and corruption of nature, ascribed to man by this theology, are something not originated by the human will but created and necessitated by God. Watson, who is one of the most candid of Arminians and has more in common with Calvinism than many of this school, so represents the subject. His argument against unconditional election and preterition depends chiefly upon the assumption that men are arbitrarily predestinated to life or death from a state of inherited depravity which is wholly involuntary and forced upon them by the action of God. The following extracts from his Theological Institutes show this: "In whatever light the subject of reprobation be viewed, no fault, in any right construction, can be chargeable upon the persons so punished or, as we may rather say, destroyed, since punishment supposes a judicial proceeding which this act shuts out. For either the reprobates are destroyed for a pure reason of sovereignty without reference to their sinfulness and thus all criminality is left out of the consideration or they are destroyed for the sin of Adam to which they were not consenting or for personal faults resulting from a corruption of nature which they brought into the world with them and which God wills not to correct and they have no power to correct themselves" (Theological Institutes 2.342). "The doctrine of predestination comes to this, that men are considered in the divine decree as justly liable to eternal death because they have been placed by some previous decree, or higher branch of the same decree, in circumstances which necessitate them to sin. This is not the view which God gives us of his own justice; and it is contradicted by every notion of justice which has ever obtained among men. Nor is it at all relieved by the subtlety of Zanchi and others, who distinguish between being necessitated to sin and being forced to sin and argue that because in sinning the reprobates follow the motions of their own will they are justly punishable, though in this they fulfill the predestination of God. They sin willingly, it is said. This is granted; but could they ever will otherwise? According to this scheme they will from necessity, as well as act from necessity" (Theological Institutes 2.396–97). "Upon a close examination of the sublapsarian scheme, it will be found to involve all the leading difficulties of the Calvinistic theory as it is broadly exhibited by Calvin himself. In both cases reprobation is grounded on an act of mere will, resting on no reason. It respects not in either, as its primary cause, the demerit of the creature. Both unite in making sin a necessary result of the circumstances in which God has placed a great part of mankind which by no effort of theirs can be avoided. How either of these schemes can escape the charge of making God the author of sin, which the Synod of Dort acknowledges to be 'blasphemy,' is inconceivable. For how does it alter the case of the reprobate whether the fall of Adam himself was necessitated or whether he acted freely? They, at least, are necessitated to sin; they come into the world under a necessitating constitution which is the result of an act to which they gave no consent; and their case differs in nothing except in circumstances which do not alter its essential character from that of beings immediately created by God with a nature necessarily producing sinful acts" (Theological Institutes 2.401). "It is manifestly in vain for the Dort synodists to attempt in article 15 to gloss over the doctrine of reprobation by saying that men 'cast themselves into the common misery by their own fault,' when they only mean that they were cast into it by Adam and by his fault" (Theological Institutes 2.405). "It is most egregiously to trifle with the common sense of mankind to call it a righteous procedure in God to punish capitally, as for a personal offense, those who never could will or act otherwise, being impelled by an invincible and incurable natural impulse over which they never had any control. Nor is the case at all amended by the quibble that they act willingly, that is, with the consent of the will; for since the will is under a natural and irresistible power to incline only one way, obedience is full as much out of their power by this state of the will, which they did not bring upon themselves, as if they were restrained from all obedience to the law of God by an external and irresistible impulse always acting upon them. President Edwards, in his well-known work on the will, applied the doctrine of philosophical necessity (namely, that the will is swayed by motives; that motives arise from circumstances; that circumstances are ordered by a power above us and beyond our control; and that therefore our volitions necessarily follow an order and chain of events appointed and decreed by infinite wisdom) in aid of Calvinism. But who does not see that this attempt to find a refuge in the doctrine of philosophical necessity affords no shelter to Calvinism. For what matters it whether the will is obliged to one class of volitions by the immediate influence of God or by the refusal of his remedial influence, which is the doctrine of the elder Calvinists; or whether it is obliged to a certain class of volitions by motives that are irresistible in their operation, which result from an arrangement of circumstances ordered by God and which we cannot control?" (Theological Institutes 2.439).

We believe that the explanation of original sin and inherited depravity adopted by those Calvinistic schools which deny the natural and substantial union of Adam and his posterity and which justify the imputation of the first sin to the posterity by vicarious representation and vicarious sinning gives ground for this assertion of Watson that Calvinism teaches that original sin and inherited depravity are involuntary in the posterity; that "they did not bring it upon themselves" and "gave no consent to it"; and that "their case differs in no essential particular from that of beings immediately created by God with a nature necessarily producing sinful acts." It was this type of Calvinism which Watson had in view when making the charge of fatalism against Calvinism. But the doctrine of Augustine and the elder Calvinists, of the natural and substantial unity of Adam and his posterity and the voluntary fall of this entire unity from holiness to sin and their consequent responsibility for this one act of apostasy, is not liable to this charge. According to this theory the responsible and guilty origin of sin and all the retributive suffering that follows it is to be sought for at the beginning of human history, as Moses in Genesis and Paul in Romans teach, and not later down in the individual choices of individual men. It is possible for the opponent to deny that there was any such natural and specific unity between Adam and his posterity; in which case he is bound to establish the truth of his denial. But upon the supposition of the truth of the Augustino-Calvinistic theory it is impossible for the opponent to deny that the charge of a created and involuntary depravity in the posterity of Adam is unfounded.

4.3.5 (see p. 525). According to Kant the categories of the understanding when applied by the understanding to a rational and spiritual faculty like the human will yield only subjective and relative truth, not objective and absolute. For illustration, bring the will under the category of causality. Affirm that it is a true and real cause in the sense that it originates motion and action and produces effects by free self-determination. When the category of causality is empirically applied by the understanding to the will as phenomenon, that is, as choosing means to ends and producing an observable series of volitions, no true first cause and real freedom is found. There is only a succession of antecedents and consequents. In this connected chain of phenomena there is no real beginning of motion. One volition is caused by a preceding one and so backward forever. There is no causation of the kind required, namely, self-causation or self-motion. This volitionary movement is ab extra, according to the same law of physical cause and effect which prevails in the physical world. But when the category of causality is applied intuitively by the practical reason to the will as noumenon, that is, as inclining or self-moving, the action of the will is not seen as a numerous series of movements, but as one single and steady self-movement; not as a multitude of volitions following each other and dependent upon each other and upon outward circumstances and motives, but as a single and abiding inclination which constitutes the character or disposition of the person himself. This real and true self-motion is instantaneous, not sequacious: un certain élan libre93 (Foullée, Freedom, 217). As such it is one and indivisible. As such it is timeless, that is, free from successions in time. This does not mean that the person who is thus inclining is not a creature of time and in time, but that his will in this act of inclining or self-motion does not act seriatim according to the common law of physical cause and physical effect, but immediately and instantaneously. According to the law of cause and effect in the physical world, the cause and the effect are two distinct things. The motive is the cause, and the volition is the effect. But in the instance of inclining, the cause and the effect are one and the same thing in two aspects. The self-motion is the cause, and the self-motion is also the effect. The self-motion or inclining is not preceded by something that produces it, such as a motive that is presented by a previous inclination or by a volition that causes it, but is itself the very first thing from which all motives and volitions issue. There is no character behind the character; no disposition back of the disposition. In this way freedom for the method of the understanding is impossible; but for the method of the practical reason is certain. The understanding proceeds from the phenomena of volitions viewed under the categories of cause and effect, antecedent and consequent, time and place; the practical reason proceeds from the direct intuition of the inclination as the underlying noumenon of freedom or the thing in itself, apart from all these categories.

Kant regards the "speculative" reason as reason cognizing by means of the categories of the understanding, which are adapted only to the physical world, not to the moral and spiritual, and as being hampered and limited by them, but the "practical" or "moral" reason as cognizing directly and intuitively without them. The latter is reason in its highest form. Hence Kant maintains that the will and the practical reason are the same thing. This, it is true, was the original and normal relation of the will to the reason as they were created at first, but it is not the actual and present relation. By the fall the human will was thrown into antagonism with the human reason, so that the primary unity and harmony of both have become duality and disharmony. The philosophical in distinction from the theological definition of sin would be this: the schism and conflict between will and reason, between inclination and conscience. In saying that the will and the practical reason are identical, Kant means that the will, as ideal and perfect, is one with the moral law written in the moral reason. He proves it thus: The will is a free faculty. But if it were governed by something other than itself, it would not be free because it would not be self-governed. The law that properly controls the will must therefore be in and of the will. But the true and proper law for the will is the reason. Reason, therefore, must be one with the will in such a manner that the will when governed by reason is also self-governing and self-controlling. Consequently, when the will receives its governing law from something that is not reason, namely, sense and sensual appetite, this is not ideal and true will and there is no ideal and true freedom. There is self-determination, but not self-government. The will receives its law from that which is not the true and proper self, the reason and conscience (see Kant's Metaphysics of Morals).

It is noteworthy that Milton also identifies will and reason. God asks respecting the worth of Adam's obedience, in case he had not been left to decide for himself whether he would stand or fall:

What pleasure I from such obedience paid,

When will and reason (reason also is choice)

Useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled,

Made passive both, had served necessity,

Not Me?

—Paradise Lost 3.107–11

The following extract from Kant's Practical Reason, 269–73 (trans. Abbott) contains his own account of his distinction between will as noumenon and phenomenon or between will in its inward and real nature and will as it appears in its manifestations. The former, as we have said, is will as a single abiding inclination, which because it is a unity having no sequences in it is timeless or out of relation to time, which always implies a series. The latter is will as a series of choices or volitions, which is in time because it has sequences. Will as phenomenon is a series of antecedents and consequents. Will as noumenon is not a series of antecedents and consequents, but is one steady unbroken volume of self-motion. Respecting a choice or volition, the question "what caused it?" is proper, because as one of a series of antecedents and consequents it has a cause other than itself, namely, preceding volitions and ultimately the inclination of the will. Respecting the inclination of the will, the question "what caused it?" is improper, because it has no cause other than itself. It is self-caused, that is, is self-moving. It is not caused either by an antecedent volition or an antecedent inclination. It cannot be explained, as volitions can be, by the method of antecedents and consequents or of cause and effect. The reasoning of Kant is close and requires strenuous attention.

"The notion of causality," says Kant, "as physical necessity, in opposition to the same notion of causality as freedom, concerns only the existence of things so far as they are determinable in time, and consequently as phenomena, in opposition to their causality as things in themselves. Now if we take the attributes of things in time for attributes of things in themselves, which is the common error, then it is impossible to reconcile the necessity of the causal relation with freedom; they are contradictory. For from the former it follows that every event and consequently every action that takes place at a certain point of time is a necessary effect of what existed in time preceding. Now as time past is no longer in my power, it follows that every action of this kind that I perform must be the necessary result of certain antecedents which are not in my power, that is, at the moment in which I am acting in this manner I am not free. Nay, even if I assume that my whole existence is independent of any foreign cause (for instance, God), so that the determining principles of my causality and even of my whole existence were not outside of myself but within me, yet this would not in the least transform that physical necessity into freedom. For at every moment of time I am still under the necessity of being determined to action by that which is not in my power; and the series of antecedents and consequents, infinite a parte priori, which I only continue according to a predetermined order and could never actually begin of myself, would be a continuous physical chain, and therefore my causality of this kind could never be free causality.

"If, then, we would attribute freedom to a being whose existence is determined in time, we cannot except him from the law of necessity, as to all events in his existence and consequently as to his actions also; for that would be to hand him over to blind chance. Now as this law of necessary sequence inevitably applies to all the causality of things, so far as their existence is determinable in time, it follows that if this were the mode in which we had also to conceive of the existence of these things in themselves, freedom must be rejected as a vain and impossible conception. Consequently, if we would still save it, no other way remains but to regard the action of the will so far as it is determinable in time, and therefore its causality, according to the law of physical necessity, as belonging to appearance only and to attribute freedom to the will as the thing in itself. This is certainly inevitable if we would retain both of these contrary concepts together; but in application, when we try to explain their combination in one and the same action, great difficulties present themselves which seem to render such a combination impracticable.

"When I say of a man who commits a theft that by the physical law of causality or of antecedent and consequent this deed is a necessary result of the determining causes in preceding time, I say that it was impossible that it could not have happened. How then can the judgment, according to the moral law, make any change and imply that it could have been omitted because the law says that it ought to have been omitted; that is, how can a man be called entirely free at the same moment and with respect to the same action in which he is subject to an inevitable physical necessity? Some try to evade this by saying that the causes that determine his causality are of such a kind as to agree with a comparative notion of freedom. According to this explanation, that is sometimes called a free effect, the determining physical cause of which lies within, in the acting thing itself; e.g., that effect which a projectile produces when it is in free motion, in which case we use the term freedom, because while it is in flight it is not urged by anything external; or as we call the motion of a clock a free motion because it moves its hands itself and therefore does not require to be pushed by external force; so although the volitionary actions of man are necessarily determined by causes which precede them in time, we yet call them free because these causes are ideas produced by our own faculties whereby desires are evoked on occasion of circumstances, and hence actions are wrought according to our own pleasure. This is a wretched subterfuge with which some persons still let themselves be put off and so think they have solved with a petty word-jugglery that difficult problem at the solution of which centuries have labored in vain and which can therefore scarcely be found so completely on the surface. In fact, in regard to the question about the freedom which must be the foundation of all moral laws and of moral responsibility, it does not matter whether the principles which necessarily determine causality by the physical law of antecedents and consequents reside within the subject or without him; or in the former case, whether these principles are sensuous and instinctive or are conceived by reason, if, as is admitted by these men themselves, these determining ideas have the ground of their existence in time and in an antecedent state, and this again in an antecedent, etc. Then, again, it matters not that these are internal; it matters not that they have a psychological and not a mechanical causality, that is, produce actions by means of ideas and not by bodily movements; they are still determining principles of the causality of a being whose will is determinable in time and therefore under the necessitation of antecedents in past time, which therefore, when the person has to act, are no longer in his power. This may imply psychological freedom (if we choose to apply this term to a merely internal chain of ideas in the mind), but it involves physical necessity and therefore leaves no room for transcendental, i.e., spiritual freedom, which must be conceived as independence of everything empirical and consequently of nature generally, whether it be an object of the internal sense considered in time only or of the external sense in time and space. Without this freedom in the latter and true sense, which alone is practical a priori, no moral law and no moral responsibility are possible. Just for this reason the necessity of events in time, according to the physical law of causality, may be called the mechanism of nature, although we do not mean by this that things which are subject to it must be really material machines. We look here only to the necessity of the connection of events in a time series of antecedents and consequents, as it is developed according to the physical law of cause and effect, whether the subject in which this development takes place is called automaton materiale when the mechanical being is moved by matter or with Leibnitz is called automaton spirituale97 when it is impelled by ideas; and if the freedom of our will were no other than the latter (say the psychological and comparative, not also transcendental, that is, metaphysical and absolute), then it would at bottom be nothing better than the freedom of a turnspit, which when once it is wound up accomplishes its motions of itself.

"Now in order to remove in the supposed case the apparent contradiction between freedom and the mechanism of nature in one and the same action, we must remember what was said in the Critique of the Pure Reason or in what follows therefrom, namely, that the necessity of nature which cannot coexist with the freedom of the subject or will appertains only to the attributes of the thing, that is, subject to time conditions, consequently only to those of the subject acting as phenomenon; that therefore in this respect the determining principles of every action of the same subject reside in what belongs to past time and is no longer in his power (in which must be included his own past actions, and the character which these may determine for him in his own eyes as a phenomenon). But the very same subject being, on the other hand, conscious of himself as a thing in himself contemplates his existence also, insofar as it is not subject to time conditions and as determinable only by laws which he gives himself through reason; and in this his existence nothing is antecedent to the self-determination of his will, but every act and in general every modification of his being varying according to his internal sense, even the whole series of his existence and experience as a sensible being, is in the consciousness of his supersensible existence nothing but the result, and never the determinant, of his causality as a noumenon. In this view the rational being can justly say of every unlawful action which he performs that he could have left it undone; although as a phenomenon it is fully determined in the past and in this respect is infallibly necessary; for it, with all the past which determines it, belongs to the one single phenomenon of his character which he makes for himself and in consequence of which he imputes the causality of these phenomenal manifestations of the will to himself as a cause independent of sense."

Kant speaks of a "combination in one and the same action (Handlung) of the freedom of the noumenon with the necessity of the phenomenon. By the "same action" he must mean the action or agency of the same subject or agent. One and the same action, strictly taken, could not have both of these contrary qualities; but one and the same actor might. The whole aim of Kant's abstruse discussion is to show that one and the same man is free when contemplated in one aspect and necessitated when viewed in another; that the action of the will when it inclines or self-determines to an ultimate end is absolutely free because depending upon no antecedents, and when it exerts a volition is not free because depending upon something foregoing. It is evident that both of these modes of action cannot be combined in a single act of the will.

Schelling, in his Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom, adopts and defends Kant's doctrine of the will as not being within the sphere of physical cause and effect and with him marks the difference between will as inclination (Wille) and as arbitrary volition (Willkühr). "The ideal philosophy," he says, "was the first to lift the doctrine of freedom into that sphere where alone it is comprehensible. According to this philosophy the intelligible nature of everything, and especially of man, is out of all causal connection, as well as out of or above all the sequences of time. Hence it can never be determined by any antecedent, since itself as an absolute unity which must be whole and complete in order that the separate and numerous volitions that manifest it may be possible is antecedent to everything that is or will be in itself, not only as to time but to nature and conception. We here express the Kantian conception of freedom, not in his exact words but as we believe he must have expressed himself in order to be understood." Schelling then proceeds to combat the doctrine of the indifference of the will.

Respecting this tract of Schelling, Müller (Sin 2.95) says that "Schelling was the first to take up the thread of the investigation where Kant had left it, in a work which is unquestionably the most important contribution to modern speculation respecting freedom and evil and which in profundity and wealth of thought, in nobleness and power of exposition, has seldom been equaled in philosophical literature." It is, however, vitiated by a dualistic view of the nature of the Supreme Being and his relation to good and evil. Schelling maintains that "there are two equally eternal principles, darkness and light, the real and the ideal, the particularizing self and the universalizing intellect, both of which are in God and the union of which is the condition of all life."

Aristotle's distinction between the voluntary and the involuntary is this: "Those things that are done by compulsion or through ignorance are involuntary; and that is done by compulsion, of which the principle is external, and of such a character that the agent or patient does not at all contribute toward it. That is voluntary, on the contrary, of which the principle is in the agent; and the doing or not doing of the action is in himself also" (Ethics 3.1). Similarly, Cicero (Dream of Scipio) defines the physical as that which is moved by external impulse and the spiritual as that which is moved by its own interior self-motion: "An inanimate (inanimatum, i.e., soulless) thing is everything that is acted upon by external impulse. On the other hand, the soul is that which is moved by an interior motion and of itself." The "inanimate" here does not mean the lifeless, but that which is destitute of the rational spirit (anima); the anima denoting the rational spirit, which is the same thing as the will.

It is important to remember that the fall of the will, while destroying its power to good, does not destroy its self-motion. The will, be it holy or sinful, is immutably a self-moving faculty. Satan is as self-determining in disobeying as Gabriel is in obeying. Respecting this point Coleridge (Works 1.276, 281, 285) describes the corruption of nature by the fall as "the admission of a nature into a spiritual essence by its own act" and asserts that "a nature in a will is inconsistent with freedom" because there is "no free power in a nature to fulfill a law above nature" and because a will which has received a nature into itself "comes under the mechanism of cause and effect." This abolishes the guiltiness of sin by transmuting spirit into nature or, as Coleridge uses terms, a voluntary self-moving essence into an involuntary necessitated substance or mind into matter. But the apostasy of the will still leaves the finite spirit unchanged as spirit. Original sin in the will is self-motion still and not mechanical motion according to the law of cause and effect. The inability of overcoming it by the will itself arises from the fact that a volition cannot change an inclination and not from the fact that, as Coleridge states it, "spirit" has been transmuted into "nature." The philosophical use of "nature" as the contrary of "spirit" is wholly different from its theological use as denoting the natural inherited disposition of the will.

Drummond in his Natural Law in the Spiritual World adopts the same error and destroys the distinction between the natural and the supernatural, the involuntary and the voluntary. To assert, as he does, that the spirit or will of man operates like a law of nature is the same as asserting that the human mind operates like gravity. The present popularity of this writer has greatly promoted the antisupernaturalism of the day.

4.3.6 (see p. 526). Carpenter (Physiology §666) discriminates between the voluntary and the volitionary: "The term volitional was some years since suggested by Dr. Symonds in an excellent essay on the Connection between Mind and Muscle as expressing more emphatically than voluntary the characteristics of an action proceeding from a distinct choice of the object and from a determined effort to attain it. The word voluntary may perhaps be applied to that wider class of actions in which there is no very distinct choice or conscious effort, but in which the movement flows as it were spontaneously from the antecedent mental state."

4.3.7 (see p. 527). The neglect of many modern Calvinists to mark the distinction, as the elder did, between inclination and volition and the adoption of the modern psychology respecting the will leads to the positions (1) that self-determination means volitionary action only and (2) that the state of the will as seen in the disposition or character of the man, in distinction from single acts of the will, is not voluntary agency. The following from Hodge (Theology 3.52) is an example: "If we take the word voluntary in the sense which implies volition or self-determination, it is evident that faith cannot be defined as voluntary assent. It is not true that in faith as faith there is always, as Aquinas says, an election 'voluntarily shunning one way more than another.' To tell a man he can believe if he will is to contradict his consciousness. He tries to believe. He earnestly prays for faith; but he cannot exercise it. It is true, as concerns the sinner in relation to the gospel, that this inability to believe arises from the state of his mind. But this state of his mind lies below the will. It cannot be determined or changed by the exercise of any voluntary power. On these grounds the definition of faith, whether as generic or religious, as a voluntary assent to truth must be considered unsatisfactory." Here what is affirmed is true, but what is denied is erroneous. It is true that "the state of the mind cannot be changed by the exercise of any voluntary power" which he has; but not true that the state of the sinner's mind "lies below the will" and is therefore involuntary. For "the state of the sinner's mind" is the same thing as the state of his will. Mind is often put for will in English usage. The "carnal mind" (phronēma tēs sarkos; Rom. 8:6–7) is the carnal will, that is, the carnal inclination or disposition or character of the will; the same that Turretin means by "the inclination fighting with God's law"; the same that Rivetus means when he defines concupiscentia102 as inclinatio voluntaria; the same that Charnock means by "the sin which is voluntary not by an immediate act of the will, but by a general or natural inclination"; the same that Owen means when he declares that "original sin as peccatum originans104 was voluntary in Adam and, as it is originatum in us, is in our wills habitually and not against them"; and the same that Baxter (Dying Thoughts) means when he says: "As the will is the sinner, so it is the obstinate continuance of a will to sin which is the bondage and the cause of continued sin; and a continued hell is continued sin, as to the first part at least. Therefore they that continue in hell do continue in a sinning will and so continue in a love and willingness of so much of hell. So far as God makes us willing to be delivered from sin, so far we are delivered; and our initial, imperfect deliverance is the way to more." According to these extracts the "character" is the same thing as the permanent state or disposition of the will. When the character or state of the will is sinful, the origin of it must be sought for in the self-determined fall of Adam and his posterity. But when the character or state of the will is holy, the origin of it must be referred to the Holy Spirit in regeneration, who in this case as he does not in the other "works in the human will to will." But in both instances the human character is the abiding state and inclination of the human will and in this use of terms and this psychology is voluntary. It is the free activity of a rational spirit, not the instinctive and necessitated activity of an animal soul.

Again, it is true that "to tell a man that he can believe if he will is to contradict his consciousness," but not true "that faith cannot be defined as voluntary." That it is more than a "voluntary assent to truth" is certain. It is a voluntary, that is, willing and affectionate reliance and rest upon Christ's person and work, to which the sinner is "made willing and able" in effectual calling (Westminster Larger Catechism 67). But after the Holy Spirit has thus made the sinner "willing in the day of his power," it is self-contradictory to say that the faith that results is not voluntary. Whatever is "willing" is certainly voluntary. It is the central and spontaneous movement of the will to Christ as the object of faith. It is true freedom: "If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed."

Owen (Justification, chap. 2) defines saving faith as voluntary. Speaking of the spurious faith of Agrippa (Acts 26:27) he declares that "as it included no act of the will or heart, it was not that faith whereby we are justified." Defining justifying faith he says: "(1) It includes in it a sincere renunciation of all other ways and means for the attaining of righteousness, life, and salvation. (2) There is in it the will's consent, whereby the soul betakes itself cordially and sincerely as to all its expectation of pardon of sin and righteousness before God unto the way of salvation proposed in the gospel. This is that which is called 'coming unto Christ' and 'receiving of him.' (3) There is an acquiescency of the heart in God, as the author and cause of the way of salvation prepared and as acting in a way of sovereign grace and mercy toward sinners."

Those who adopt the view of the will and of freedom expressed in the above extract from Hodge lay the foundation for the charge often made that Augustino-Calvinism is fatalism. The volitionary acts of a man unquestionably proceed from the disposition and character of his will and have the same moral quality with it. But if that disposition and character itself is not voluntary in the sense of self-moving, in distinction from moved ab extra and compelled, the volitions that issue from it are not; and the disposition or character is certainly not voluntary if it "lies below the will" and outside of it. This kind of fatalistic "determinism" is not chargeable upon the anthropology which is founded upon the elder psychology. According to this, while the sinful volitions necessarily agree with the sinful "state of the will" or the sinful "character," this state of the will or character itself is the will's self-motion and self-determination: a self-motion that began in the fall of Adam and his posterity and continues by propagated transmission in each and every individual of them. If the whole unindividualized human nature in Adam self-determined or inclined to sin, this self-determination or inclination might be propagated along with the individual soul, which is a propagated fractional part of it, and still remain self-determination and inclination. In this way original sin in the individual, though derived and inherited, is voluntary and responsible agency.

In an article on regeneration commonly ascribed to Hodge (Princeton Essays), there is a better statement of the extent of the will and of the voluntariness of its disposition and state. "There is a continual play," it is said, "upon the double sense of the word voluntary. When the faculties of the soul are reduced to understanding and will, it is evident that the latter includes all the affections. In this sense all liking or disliking, desiring or being averse to, etc., are voluntary or acts of the will. But when we speak of the understanding, will, and affections, the word Will includes much less. It is the power of the soul to come to a determination to fix its choice on some object of desire. In the latter sense will and desire are not always coincident. A man may desire money and not will to make it an object of pursuit. When we speak of a volition, of a choice, of a decision or self-determination of the will, the word Will is used in the restricted sense. There are a thousand things capable of ministering to our happiness: riches, honor, sensual pleasure, the service of God; the selection which the soul makes is made by the will in the narrower sense. This is a voluntary act in one sense of the term. But in another the desire itself which the soul has for these objects, and not merely its particular decision or choice, is a voluntary act. For, according to Edwards, 'all choosing, refusing, approving, disapproving, liking, disliking, directing, commanding, inclining, or being averse, a being pleased, or displeased with,' are acts of the will. In this sense all the affections and all the desires are voluntary exercises, whether constitutional or not, and not merely the decisions to which they lead. Hence self-love, the love of children, the love of society, the desire of esteem are all voluntary, although springing from native tendencies of the mind." In this use of" the writer of this would grant that "faith is voluntary."

In saying, however, that the "constitutional" desires are voluntary, the writer abolishes the distinction commonly made between the two. The "love of children" and the "love of society" are not voluntary, but natural and instinctive. They belong to the fixed constitution of man and not to his changeable will. Hence they were not reversed by the fall of man. They are not moral and responsible. They do not deserve praise or blame. They exist in the unregenerate as well as the regenerate (see pp. 511 and 578–79).

4 Man's Probation and Apostasy

Adam and Eve as Mutably Holy by Creation

"Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, through the temptation of Satan transgressed the commandment of God in eating the forbidden fruit and thereby fell from the estate wherein they were created (Gen. 3:6–8, 13; Eccles. 7:29; 2 Cor. 11:3)" (Westminster Larger Catechism 21). In this statement, it is not meant that the external act of eating the forbidden fruit was the whole of the first transgression and constituted the whole of human apostasy. A part is put for the whole. The full statement would be that "our first parents transgressed the commandment of God by lusting after and eating the forbidden fruit." This is evident from the prooftext cited by the Westminster divines: "When the woman saw that the tree was a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat" (Gen. 3:6). According to the inspired account, the first sin began with a lustful desiring of the heart, which is the same thing as a sinful inclining of the will.

The possibility of such a lustful desiring or wrong inclining in Adam's will supposes its mutability: "God created man male and female, with righteousness and true holiness, having the law of God written in their hearts, and power to fulfill it: and yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject unto change" (Westminster Confession 4.2; Westminster Larger Catechism 17).

Adam was holy by creation, but not indefectibly and immutably so. The inclination of his will, though conformed to the moral law, was mutable, because his will was not omnipotent. When voluntary self-determination is an infinite and self-subsistent power, as it is in God, the fall of the will is impossible. But when voluntary self-determination is a finite and dependent power, as it is in man or angel, the fall of the will is possible. A will determined to good with an omnipotent energy is not "subject to change"; but a will determined to good with a finite and limited force is so subject. By reason of the restricted power of his created will, Adam might lose the righteousness with which he was created, though he was under no necessity of losing it. His will had sufficient power to continue in holiness, but not so much additional power as to make a lapse into sin impossible. By the terms of the covenant of works, perseverance and indefectibility in holiness were made to depend upon Adam's own decision. In this respect they differed from the believer's perseverance and indefectibility under the covenant of grace, which are infallibly secured by the operation of the Holy Spirit. The regenerate man is "kept from falling" (Jude 24; Eph. 1:10; John 10:28–; 1 Thess. 4:17; Rev. 21:4). God imparted such a measure of grace to holy Adam as enabled him to continue inclined to the Creator if he would; but not such a measure of grace as to preclude inclining to the creature if he would. The power to the contrary, the possibilitas peccandi or power to originate sin, belonged to Adam's will because of its finiteness. The use of this power was left wholly to him. He might continue to believe and trust in God, in which case he would persevere in holiness and obtain indefectibility as his reward; or he might believe and trust in Satan, in which case he would apostatize and lose holiness. The already existing power to incline rightly and to persevere in this inclination was real and true freedom and did not need this additional power to incline wrongly in order to be such. The power to originate sin was not requisite in order to make Adam a free agent, but to make him a probationary agent. (supplement 4.4.1.)

Consequently, the paradisaical state, though a holy and happy state, was not equal to the heavenly state. It had not the safety and security of the latter. Eden differed from heaven as holiness differs from indefectibility of holiness, as a mutable perfection differs from an immutable. The perfection of holy Adam was relative, not absolute. It differed from that of God, who by reason of his omnipotence and infinity cannot fall from holiness (James 1:13); from that of the elect angels, who were kept from falling by a special measure of grace that was not granted to the fallen angels, whose perseverance like that of Adam was left to themselves; and from that of redeemed men, who like the elect angels are preserved by special grace (Howe, Man Created Mutable, 6).

God created man with relative perfection, or the possibility of sinning, for the purpose of placing him in probation. Had the Creator given Adam indefectibility in the outset by bestowing upon him that extraordinary measure of grace which infallibly secures perseverance in holiness, Adam's own strength of will would not have been tested. In this case, God would have prevented the use of the power to the contrary by intensifying the existing self-determination to holiness. Adam would have been kept from falling by God and would not have kept himself.

The object of this probation was that Adam, by resisting Satan's temptation and persevering in holiness, might secure by his own work indefectibility or immutable perfection. This was to be an infinite reward for standing the trial of his faith and obedience. God did not place Adam in a state of probation from mere curiosity to see if he would fall or from malevolence to cause him to fall, but from the benevolent desire that Adam, in the exercise of the ample power with which he was endowed, might merit and obtain as the recompense of his fidelity a final and everlasting deliverance from the possibility of sinning. The possibility of sinning is in itself an evil. It is one of the perils of finite freedom. To be delivered from it is an infinite and eternal good. The cry in Wesley's hymn, "Take away the power of sinning," is the cry of the Christian heart. A will that is so strongly determined to holiness, by its union with the divine will, that it is beyond the hazard of apostasy is a greater good than a will which though holy is exposed to this hazard. Everlasting holiness is better than temporary; immutable perfection is more desirable than mutable; heaven is more blessed than paradise. (supplement 4.4.2.)

The righteousness which Adam had by creation did not merit indefectibility. God owed nothing at the instant of creation to a creature whom he had just originated from nonentity, to whom he had given holiness and whom he was upholding by his power. He had a right to terminate Adam's existence and reduce him to nonentity again if he so pleased. A creature, from the very definition of a creature, cannot bring the Creator under an obligation, except so far as the latter by covenant and promise permits him to do so. Witsius (Covenants 1.4.12) cites

Durandus's reasoning, which Bellarmine was unable to refute: "What we are and what we have, whether good acts, habits, or practices, are all of them from the bounty of God, who both gives freely and preserves them. And because no one after having given freely is obliged to give more, but rather the receiver is the more obliged to the giver; therefore from good habits, acts, or practices given us by God, God is not bound by any debt of justice to give anything more."

Says Calvin (1.15.8):

Adam could have stood if he would, since he fell merely by his own will, because his will was flexible to either side and he was not endued with constancy to persevere. If any object that he was placed in a dangerous situation on account of the imbecility of his will, I reply that the station in which he was placed was sufficient to deprive him of all excuse. For it would have been unreasonable that God should be confined to this condition, to make man so as to be altogether incapable either of choosing or of committing any sin. It is true that such a nature would have been more excellent; but to expostulate with God as though he had been under any obligation to bestow this upon man were unreasonable. Why he did not sustain him with the power of perseverance remains concealed in his own mind. Yet there is no excuse for man; he received so much that he was the voluntary procurer of his own destruction; but God was under no necessity to give him any other than a mutable will, midway between sin and indefectibility (medium et caducam).

Covenant of Works

God graciously entered into a covenant with holy Adam and with his posterity in him to the effect that if he obeyed the command not to eat of the forbidden fruit he should receive as his reward indefectibility of holiness and blessedness. This is proved by Gen. 2:17: "In the day you eat thereof you shall surely die"; which implies the converse: "If you do not eat thereof, you shall surely live." The "life" here implied and promised is a good additional to what Adam already had; otherwise it would not be a reward. Adam already had spiritual life, namely, holiness and happiness; but it was mutable. The additional good, therefore, must have been immutable holiness and happiness. He was to have had spiritual life as indefectible. He was to have passed beyond all possibility of apostasy and misery.

This covenant is denominated "the covenant of works": "These women are the two covenants" (Gal. 4:24); one of works and the other of grace (Rom. 9:4); "but they like man (margin: Adam) have transgressed the covenant" (Hos. 6:7).

The consent implied in the covenant of works was by acquiescence on the part of man, like that between child and parent and between the citizen and the state. Assent cannot be righteously or wisely refused to that which is both equitable and advantageous. Adam, being holy, would not refuse to enter into a righteous engagement with his maker; and being intelligent he would not decline an improvement in his condition (see Howe, Man Created Mutable).

The merit to be acquired under the covenant of works was pactional. Adam could claim the reward, in case he stood, only by virtue of the promise of God, not by virtue of the original relation of a creature to the Creator. Upon the latter basis, he could claim nothing, as Christ teaches in Luke 17:10.

The probationary statute was a positive precept. It was not sinful per se to eat of the tree of knowledge, but only because God had forbidden it. The Eden statute was, thus, a better test of implicit faith and obedience than a moral statute would have been, because it required obedience for no reason but the sovereign will of God. At the same time, disobedience of this positive statute involved disobedience of the moral law. It was contempt of authority, disbelief of God and belief of Satan, discontent with the existing state, impatient curiosity to know, pride and ambition (Anselm, Why the God-Man? 1.21).

The "tree of knowledge" was an actual tree bearing fruit in the garden. It might have been a date tree or any other kind of tree and still have been the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Because, when once God had selected a particular tree in the garden and by a positive statute had forbidden our first parents to eat of it, the instant they did eat of it they transgressed a divine command and then knew consciously and bitterly what evil is and how it differs from good. The tree thus became "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," not because it was a particular species of tree but because it had been selected as the tree whereby to test the implicit obedience of Adam. (supplement 4.4.3.)

Nature of the First Sin

The first sin was unique in respect to the statute broken by it. The Eden commandment was confined to Eden. It was never given before or since. Hence the first Adamic transgression cannot be repeated. It remains a single solitary transgression, the "one"sin spoken of in Rom. 5:12, 15–19.

The first sin was willful and wanton in a high degree, because committed under circumstances that made it easy not to commit it (Charnock, Holiness of God, 477). Adam was holy and had full power to remain so. And, still more, the temptation that assailed him was much weaker than that which now assails his posterity. Fallen man is now tempted by solicitation addressed both to innocent desire and susceptibility and to sinful desire and susceptibility; but unfallen man was tempted by a solicitation addressed only to innocent desire and susceptibility. Holy Adam had no rebellious inward lust to which Satan could appeal; none of that selfish and sinful desire which St. James speaks of when he says that a man "is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed" (James 1:14). The only subjective susceptibility in Adam which Satan could address was the natural and innocent desire for the fruit of the tree of knowledge considered as "good for food and pleasant to the eyes" (Gen. 3:6). This was a desire and susceptibility founded in the created relation between the nature of man and that of the tree. The other desire for the fruit as "making wise like the gods" (3:6) was forbidden desire, and forbidden desire is sin (20:17; Matt. 5:28; Rom. 7:7). Forbidden and sinful desire was not provided for in the creative act, and the established relation between man's nature and the outward object as permitted and innocent desire was. Adam was not created with a desire for that knowledge of good and evil which would make him like the "gods," that is, like Satan and his angels. Such a kind of knowledge as this is falsehood, not truth, and to desire it is wrong and sinful. "You shall not covet" is a command that prohibits such a species of desire. On the contrary, Adam was created with a desire for true knowledge, and this desire was satisfied by the knowledge of God which he possessed as made in his maker's image. He was created "in knowledge and true holiness." If Adam was already lusting after the spurious knowledge of good and evil and was already proudly desiring to be like the "gods" when Satan suggested the temptation to eat of the fruit, this would have proved that he was already fallen and would have very greatly increased the force of the temptation and made it far more difficult for him to refrain from eating of it. But he was not lusting after and desiring this kind of knowledge when Satan proposed that he should eat of the fruit. This kind of rebellious, disobedient desire required to be originated by Adam himself, as something not previously existing in his submissive heart and obedient will. God had not implanted any such wrong desire as this. This proud and selfish lust for a false and forbidden knowledge had to be started by Adam himself, as something entirely new and aboriginal. It was not a primary God-created desire of the finite will, but a secondary self-originated one. It was not the product of the creative act, but of voluntary self-determination.

Such being the facts in the case, it is evident that inward lust or sinful desire did not contribute to the force of temptation in the instance of unfallen Adam as it does in that of his fallen posterity, nor can it be postulated as helping to explain his fall. Sinful desire was begun by an act of pure self-determination and therefore could not have been the cause of this act. Unfallen Adam was not "drawn away of his own lust and enticed," as his fallen posterity now are. He willfully and wantonly yielded to an external suggestion of Satan which had by no means the violent strength of an internal desire. To disobey the command of God under the stress of no greater temptation than this was willfulness and wickedness in a high degree. That a holy and happy being, not dragged down in the least by inward lust, with full power to remain holy and happy, should by an act of sheer self-determination convert himself into a sinful and miserable being, under a moderate temptation like that in Eden, was strange and not to be expected. The fall of Adam was intrinsically improbable. A spectator would have prophesied that the holy and happy man would continue in holiness and happiness and not plunge into sin and misery.

Hence, the origin of sin has somewhat of the characteristic of caprice. It was not a natural or a rational act, but unnatural and irrational. Sin is "the mystery of iniquity." The fall of man cannot be rationalized, that is, explained on natural and rational grounds. This would require that it be accounted for not by pure self-determination but by the operation of the law of cause and effect. In the physical world, a fact can be explained and made to look rational by pointing to a foregoing cause for it that is different from the fact itself. But the fact of sin cannot be so explained and rationalized. There was no prior sinful act or sinful inclination of Adam by which to account for the fact of his apostasy. The sinful self-determination of Adam's will was both the cause of the first sin and the first sin itself. Sin is self-caused and therefore cannot be an effect proper of a cause proper, because an effect is different from its cause. "Let no one," says Augustine (City of God 12.7), "look for an efficient cause of the evil will; for it is not efficient, but deficient, since the evil will itself is not an effecting of something, but a defect. To seek for an efficient cause of sin is like attempting to see darkness or hear silence." Again he says (City of God 14.2), "God made man upright and consequently with a good inclination. The good inclination, then, is the work of God. But the first evil inclination, which preceded all of man's evil acts, was rather a kind of falling away from the good work of God to its own work, than any positive work; the will now not having God, but the will itself, for its end" (see also Concerning Free Will 2.20).

And this action of Adam's will in apostatizing was not only self-determination, but self-determination with no good and sufficient reason. The good reasons were all against it. Self-determination to evil is contrary to pure reason. Sin is the divorce of will from reason. Says Müller (Sin 2.173–75):

We must acknowledge that evil is in its nature inconceivable and incomprehensible; that is to say, is the product of arbitrariness (Willkühr), and arbitrariness is a violation of right reason and true sequence. The inexplicableness of evil is contained in the very conception of evil. The incomprehensibleness of its origin arises not so much from the limitedness of our knowledge as from the nature of evil itself. Hence its inexplicableness does not dwindle and disappear with the increase of our knowledge; and at no future stage of development and growth in wisdom do we pass from this incomprehensibleness to an insight into a higher necessity of evil. On the other hand, the purer and more perfect our moral and religious knowledge becomes, the more attentively we listen to the solemn voice of our inmost consciousness and to the word of divine revelation, the more thoroughly do we perceive evil to be contrary to nature and to reason and thoroughly unaccountable and groundless.

Death as the Consequence of the First Sin

The death threatened in Gen. 2:17 was physical, spiritual, and eternal. That it was physical is proved by the following: "Unto dust you shall return" (3:19); "death reigned from Adam to Moses" (Rom. 5:14); "Adam died" (Gen. 5:5). Physical death as a mortal principle befell Adam immediately, though he did not actually die on the day he sinned. When a man is smitten with mortal disease he is a dead man, though he may live some months. Adam's body immediately became a mortal body. Symmachus translates the Hebrew by thnētos esē (you shall become mortal) (cf. Edwards, Original Sin in Works 2.403).

That the body of Adam was not mortal by creation is proved by the threatening of death in Gen. 2:17, which implies that as things then were there was no liability to death. No sin, then no death. Also by 3:22: God "drove out the man from the garden lest he take of the tree of life and live forever." This implies that in the original plan provision was made for the immortality of the body. After the transgression, it was necessary to prevent the immortality of the body by a special act of God. "In my opinion," says Augustine (Concerning the Guilt and Remission of Sins 1.3), "Adam was supplied with sustenance against decay from the fruit of the various trees and with security against old age from the tree of life." In Rev. 2:7 the Holy Spirit promises to him "that overcomes" the privilege of "eating of the tree of life which is in the center of the paradise of God." Complete redemption places man beyond the possibility of death, either physical or spiritual. See also Rom. 8:11, 23, where the glorified body is connected with the sinless perfection of the soul. The perfection of unfallen Adam's body, also, excluded an inherent mortality. (supplement 4.4.4.)

The difference between the immortal body of holy Adam and the mortal body of fallen Adam is that prior to the fall the human body was not liable to death from internal causes, but only from external. It had no latent diseases and no seeds of death in it. Neither had it inordinate and vicious physical appetites, such as craving for stimulants, gluttonous appetite for food, licentious sexual appetite, etc., all of which tend to destroy the body. It could, however, be put to death. If it were deprived of food or air, it would die. It was not a celestial body like that of the glorified saints, but a body of flesh and blood. The question was raised in the patristic church whether Christ's body previous to his resurrection was like that of unfallen Adam or of fallen (Smith, Hagenbach §103; Schaff, History §143). Christ was weary and hungry and thirsty; but it is never said that he was sick with any bodily disease. And he certainly had no inordinate physical appetites. That he might have had a diseased and dying body is compatible with his sinless perfection. For although a sinless soul like that of our Lord deserves an undying and immortal body, yet he might have voluntarily submitted to that part of the "curse" of sin which consists in a diseased and dying body, without thereby becoming a partaker of sin itself (Gal. 3:13).

This original immortality of the body, like Adam's moral perfection, was mutable and relative only. It might be lost. In case he fell from holiness, his body would be affected by his sin. The seeds of mortality would be implanted, the organism would begin to die from the moment of its birth, and the temperate physical appetite would become intemperate and inordinate. On the contrary, if Adam stood probation, that possibility of being put to death (posse mori) which was associated with Adam's relative perfection would become an impossibility (posse non mori), like that connected with the glorified body of Christ and the resurrection body of believers. These latter not only have no seeds of death in them, but they cannot be put to death by external agency. Says Augustine (Concerning the Guilt and Remission of Sins 1.2), "If Adam had not sinned, he would not have been divested of his body, but would have been clothed upon with immortality and incorruption, that 'immortality might have been swallowed up of life'; that is, that he might have passed from the natural body into the spiritual body."

The mere possibility of death is not the same as a tendency to death. Unfallen Adam might have the former, but not the latter. A tendency implies the germinal base or seed of the thing. There is a possibility that every man may have all the physical diseases; but there is no tendency to all of them in every man.

That the death threatened was spiritual is proved by Rom. 5:18, where it is opposed to "spiritual life" (so also in Rom. 5:21; 6:23; 2 Tim. 1:10). The description of the consequences of apostasy discloses mental characteristics that belong to spiritual death, namely, terror and shame before God (Gen. 3:8, 10, 24).

That the death was endless is proved by the texts that represent it as the contrary of life, because the life is unquestionably endless (Rom. 5:18, 21; 6:23). Also by the texts that prove endless punishment (pp. 889–90).

Cause of the First Sin

Adam and Eve fell from the state of holiness by an act of self-determination, as the efficient cause: "Being left to the freedom of their own will, our first parents transgressed and thereby fell" (Westminster Larger Catechism 21). They also fell by the external temptation of Satan addressed to their innocent susceptibility, as the occasional cause: "Through the temptation of Satan, they transgressed" (Westminster Larger Catechism 21). On the freeness of the first sin, see Charnock, Holiness of God, 476–77 (ed. Bohn).

Adam and Eve were already holy and did not need to originate holiness. In being holy, that is, enlightened in their understanding and rightly inclined in their will, they had plenary power to continue and persevere in holiness. The temptation by Satan had no power to force their decision. To fall under these circumstances was as free and unnecessitated an act of self-determination as can be conceived of. As previously remarked, it was a species of voluntary caprice which cannot be made to look rational or natural. All sin after the first sin is explicable by selfish inclination and strong evil propensities concurring with outward temptation. But the first sin had not these antecedents. There was nothing but an external temptation addressed to an innocent susceptibility:

This sin was aggravated in being committed when man had full light in his understanding; a clear copy of the law in his heart; when he had no vicious bias in his will, but enjoying perfect liberty; and when he had a sufficient stock of grace in his hand to withstand the tempting enemy; in being committed after God had made a covenant of life with him and given him express warning of the danger of eating the forbidden fruit. (Fisher, Catechism Q. 15)

If the will of Adam and Eve had been in a state of indifference, the probability of the fall would have been far greater, because the resistance of an undetermined will is less than that of a determined holy will. Under the circumstances, the fall of the holy pair was unlikely. That it occurred proves that it was a very willful act: wanton and gratuitous. It was also an extremely guilty act, because of being committed against great light and under no great stress of temptation. (supplement 4.4.5.)

The trial of man upon the Pelagian and Semipelagian theories was very disadvantageous compared with his trial upon the Augustinian and Calvinistic. An indifferent and undecided will is extremely liable to succumb to temptation. A will positively inclined to holiness can very readily resist temptation. It is, therefore, a defect in Müller's theory (Sin 2.70) and also in Howe's that the human will at the instant of its creation is regarded as "created without any determination to good; it was made in that state of liberty as to be in a certain sort of equipoise, according as things should be truly or falsely represented to it by the mind or understanding" (Howe, Oracles 2.22). If this was the original condition of Adam when subjected to temptation and probation, he was unfavorably placed by his Creator.

"Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God" (Westminster Larger Catechism 14). "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). "All have deviated (exeklinan)" (3:12). "Sin is lawlessness (anōia)" (1 John 3:4). Sin is "the work of the flesh" (Gal. 5:19–21). Sin is "the carnal mind and enmity toward God" (Rom. 8:7).

The intrinsic and inmost characteristic of sin is its culpability or guilt. Guilt is desert of punishment. Sin is damnable and punishable before the moral law. Consequently, sin must be the product of free agency. Necessitated sin is a contradiction. The primary source and seat of sin, therefore, is the will, because this is the causative and originating faculty of the soul: "Our first parents being left to the freedom of their will fell." From this inmost center of the soul, it passes into the understanding and through the entire man. The inclination and affections having become contrary to what they were by creation, the understanding is darkened and the conscience benumbed.

Some theologians explain the origin of sin by the understanding, rather than the will. Eve was deceived (1 Tim. 2:14). Deception is cognitive. The human mind by creation was enlightened so that it knew God and divine things spiritually. But it was not omniscient. It was capable therefore of being deceived by an apparent good, namely, the knowledge of good and evil. The tempter addresses his temptation to the understanding: "You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." This was a plausible temptation to a creature already knowing much and capable of knowing more. But this does not account for the first sin. For this temptation through an apparent good ought to have been repelled and might have been by an act of the will. Eve ought to have remained content with the knowledge she already possessed by creation. By self-determination, she should and could have continued to be satisfied with her maker's arrangement and refused this promised increase of knowledge. Had she done so, she would have remained unfallen and sinless. In this way, it appears that the proximate and efficient cause of the first sin was the will rather than the understanding. It was not necessary that unfallen Eve should incline or self-determine in accordance with an apparent good. Even though her understanding did perceive a species of good in the forbidden knowledge of good and evil, yet her still holy will could have rejected it. Her understanding had no power to compel her will by means of an apparent or seeming good. This is expressed in the lines of Dante:

Then through the glowing air was sweetly sent

A strain so ravishing to mortal sense,

It made me Eve's audacity lament:

That when both heaven and earth obedient were,

Woman alone, and she but just created,

Refused the veil of ignorance to bear;

To which had she submitted patiently,

O how extended, how much antedated

Had been these joys ineffable.

—Purgatory 29.22

The deception of the understanding is a misjudgment of the understanding that does not of necessity carry the will with it. Free will can reject a seeming good as well as a real good, can decide against a false judgment as well as against a true one. Furthermore, a deceived understanding is rather an effect of an evil will than its cause. A false judgment results from a sinful inclination rather than from the converse. Error in the head comes from error in the heart. When the will has once substituted self and the creature for God and the Creator as its ultimate end, then false judgments respecting what is good and what is happiness and what is true knowledge immediately arise. Then finite objects take on a false appearance and are deemed to be the summum bonum: "When once man surrenders himself to the sway of that perverted principle which makes his own satisfaction the aim of all his endeavors, there will necessarily spring from this foul root a multitude of erroneous notions as to what this satisfaction consists in" (Müller, Sin 1.165). But if the will continues true in its primary created determination to God as the chief end, the understanding is not thus hoodwinked, but sees through all the deceptions of temptation and rejects them. (supplement 4.4.6.)

Still less is the origin of sin to be sought for in the sensuous nature of man—a theory at one time considerably current in Germany and which has received a thorough examination by Müller (Sin 1.295–34). The great objection to it is that it finds the source of sin outside of the voluntary faculty. Man's sensuous nature is not his will; sarx is not pneuma. Sense is not causative and originative in its working. Consequently, sin does not begin in the lower physical nature and ascend to the will and reason but vice versa. The will and reason fall first in the order. The soul sins and then the body becomes vitiated.

In respect to its having no sinful antecedent out of which it is made, sin is origination ex nihilo. Sin is the beginning of something from nothing, and there is this resemblance between it and creation proper. In holy Adam, there was no sinful inclination or corruption that prompted the first transgression. Adam started the wicked inclination itself ex nihilo, by a causative act of self-determination. The first sin was an act of origination, not of selection or choice. If the first sinful act were one of choice between good and evil, this would require an existing indifference toward both and the absence of inclination. But if it was a self-determining and causative act, this would be compatible with an existing holy inclination. The will, in this case, passed or "lapsed" from one inclination to another by the inherent energy of self-motion that originated something new. As in regeneration, a new holy inclination originated by the Holy Spirit expels the existing sinful inclination, so in apostasy a new sinful inclination originated by the human will expels the existing holy inclination (p. 521).

But sin differs from creation proper, in that it is not a substance. Creation originates beings and things; but sin is neither a being nor a thing. Yet it is not "nothing" in every sense of the term nothing. Anselm denominated it essentia and denied that it is substantia. But essentia is too strong a term for sin. Habit and accident are better terms. These are the terms employed by the Reformed theologians. Inasmuch as sin is a habitus inhering in the will and infecting the understanding, it is not a strict nonentity. To commit sin is not to do nothing. To do evil is to do something (cf. Turretin 9.1). Neither is sin a "property" of a substance, because properties necessarily belong to a substance. Sin is an "accident," that is, a characteristic that may or may not belong to a spiritual substance:

When we say that God is the cause of all things, we mean of all such things as have a real existence; which is no reason why those things themselves should not be the cause of some accidents, such as actions are. God created man and some other intelligences superior to man with a liberty of acting; which liberty of acting is not itself evil, but may be the cause of something that is evil. (Grotius, Christian Religion 1.8)

"Sin is not something substantial, as Flacius Illyricus, scarcely different from Manicheism, ultimately was establishing concerning the original fall. The proximate material of sin is the very practice (hexis) or bad action itself" (Maresius, System 6.6, 8). The term hexis is used by Plato and Aristotle to denote the habitual disposition of a faculty of the mind in distinction from the substance of the faculty itself. "Sin," says Calvin (2.1.11), "is rather an adventitious quality or accident than a substantial property originally innate." (supplement 4.4.7.)

The first sin of man, though proximately and formally the violation of the Eden statute, was ultimately and implicitly the violation of the whole moral law. The contempt of divine authority in transgressing the commandment not to eat of the tree of knowledge was the contempt of divine authority generally: "He who offends in one point is guilty of all" (James 2:10). Hence sin is defined as "the transgression of law" or lawlessness (1 John 3:4).

The moral law violated by the free will of man is both written and unwritten: the law of nature and the Decalogue (Rom. 2:14–16). The points of difference between them have been specified under the head of revelation (pp. 85–86). The two laws are originally and essentially the same. The ethics of man's rational nature as he came from the Creator's hand and of the Decalogue are identical. The now existing difference between the two is due to apostasy. Says Ursinus (Christian Religion Q. 92):

The natural law does not differ from the moral in nature not corrupted; but in nature corrupted, a good part of the natural law is darkened by sins, and but a little part only concerning the obedience due to God was left remaining in man's mind after the fall: for which cause, also, God has in his church repeated again and declared the whole sentence and doctrine of his law in the Decalogue. Therefore the Decalogue is a restoring and reentering or reinforcing of the law of nature; and the law of nature is a part only of the Decalogue.

Such being the connection between the unwritten and written law, it follows that sin in the heathen is the same in kind with sin in Christendom. Free and responsible human will, in both instances, transgresses a common law and ethics. The difference between the violation of the unwritten law and the written is one of degree only: "As many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law; and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law" (Rom. 2:12). (supplement 4.4.8.)

SUPPLEMENTS

4.4.1 (see p. 536). Respecting the freedom of Adam and the possibility of his remaining holy as created, Stillingfleet (Origines 3.3) remarks as follows: "Adam had a power to stand, in that there was no principle of corruption at all in his faculties; but he had a pure and undefiled soul which could not be polluted without its own consent. God cannot be said to be the author of sin, though he did not prevent the fall of man; because he did not withdraw before his fall any grace or assistance which was necessary for his standing. Had there been, indeed, a necessity of supernatural grace to be communicated to man at every moment in order to continue him in his innocency; and had God before man's fall withdrawn such assistance from him without which it were impossible for him to have stood it would be very difficult to free God from being the cause of the fall of man. But we are not put to such difficulties for acquitting God from being the author of sin. For if God made man upright, he certainly gave him such a power as might be brought into act without the necessity of any supervenient act of grace to elicit that habitual power into particular actions. God would not, certainly, require anything from the creature in his integrity but what he had a power to obey; and if there were necessary further grace to bring the power into act, then the subtracting of this grace must be by way of punishment to man; which it is hard to conceive for what it should be before man had sinned; or else God must subtract this grace on purpose that man might fall, which would follow on this supposition, in which case man would be necessitated to fall. But if God did not withdraw any effectual grace from man whereby he must necessarily fall, then though God permitted man to use his liberty, yet he cannot be said to be in any way the author of sin, because man still had a power of standing if he had made a right use of his liberty." Similarly Augustine (Rebuke and Grace 28) declares that "God made man with free will, and if he had willed by his own free will to continue in the state of uprightness and freedom from sin in which he was created, assuredly without any experience of death and of unhappiness he would have received by the merit of that continuance the fullness of blessing with which the holy angels also are blessed, that is, the impossibility of falling any more and the knowledge of this with absolute certainty." This indefectibility, which would have been the reward of Adam's rejecting the temptation of Satan and continuing in the holiness in which he was created, Augustine describes in Rebuke and Grace 33: "We must consider with attention in what respect these pairs differ from one another, namely, to be able not to sin and not to be able to sin; to be able not to die and not to be able to die; to be able not to forsake good and not to be able to forsake good. For the first man was able not to sin, was able not to die, was able not to forsake good. Are we to say that he who had such a will could not sin? Or that he to whom it was said, 'If you shall sin you shall die by death,' could not die? Or that he could not forsake good, when by sinning he would forsake this and so die? Therefore the first liberty of the will was to be able not to sin, the last will be much greater: not to be able to sin; the first immortality was to be able not to die, the last will be much greater: not to be able to die; the first will the power of perseverance, to be able not to forsake good, the last will be the felicity of perseverance, not to be able to forsake good. But because the last blessings will be preferable and better, were those first ones, therefore, either no blessings at all or mere trifling ones?"

4.4.2 (see p. 536). Anselm (Concerning Free Will 1) argues as follows respecting the undesirableness of the power to sin:

Master: To sin is to do something that is injurious and dishonoring, is it not?

Disciple: Certainly.

Master: Consequently, that will which is unable to deviate from the rectitude of not sinning is freer than that will which is able?

Disciple: Nothing seems more rational.

Master: Do you think that which if added diminishes liberty, and subtracted increases it, should be regarded as a necessary element in liberty?

Disciple: I cannot so think.

Master: The power to sin, therefore, which if added to the will diminishes liberty, and if taken away from the will increases liberty, is no part of liberty.

Disciple: Nothing is clearer.

According to the Pelagian idea of freedom, as indifference and indetermination involving the power to the contrary, the power to sin is as necessary to liberty as the power to act holily; and writers of this school commonly represent it as one of the excellences and prerogatives of a free moral agent. But if freedom be defined, with Augustine and Anselm, as self-motion pure and simple, it is evident that freedom would not be increased by the addition of a power to sin, because this would be no increase of the self-motion which already exists in self-motion to good. And neither would the self-motion of sin be augmented in the least by the addition to it of the power to be holy. To add a contrary motion to an existing motion is certainly no increase of the existing motion, and if the existing motion is free self-motion such addition is no addition of freedom.

4.4.3 (see p. 538). Augustine's explanation of the tree of knowledge is as follows: "Adam and Eve were forbidden to partake of one tree only, which God called the tree of knowledge of good and evil, to signify by this name the consequence of their discovering what good they would experience if they obeyed the prohibition or what evil if they transgressed it. They are no doubt rightly supposed to have abstained from the forbidden tree previous to the malignant persuasion of the devil and to have used all which had been allowed them and therefore among all the others and before all the others the tree of life. For what could be more absurd than to suppose that they partook of the fruit of other trees, but not of that which had been equally with others granted to them and which by its special virtue prevented their animal bodies from undergoing change through the decay of age and from aging unto death? But they were forbidden, as the test of absolute obedience, the use of a tree which, if it had not been for the prohibition, they might have used without suffering any evil effect whatever; and from this circumstance it may be clearly understood that whatever evil they brought upon themselves, because they made use of it contrary to the prohibition, did not proceed from any noxious or pernicious quality in the fruit of the tree, but wholly from their violated obedience" (Forgiveness and Remission 2.35).

Matthew Henry (on Gen. 2:8–9) explains as follows: "The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was so called not because it had any virtue in it to father or increase useful knowledge, for surely then it would not have been forbidden; but (1) because there was an express positive revelation of the will of God concerning this tree, so that by it Adam might know moral good and evil. What is good? ''Tis good not to eat of this tree.' What is evil? ''Tis evil to eat of this tree.' The distinction between all other moral good and evil was written in the heart of man by nature, but this which results from a positive law was written upon this tree. (2) Because in the event it proved to give Adam an experimental knowledge of good by the loss of it and of evil by the sense of it. As the covenant of grace has in it not only 'believe and so be saved' but also 'believe not and be damned' (Mark 16:16), so the covenant of innocency had in it not only 'do this and live,' which was sealed and confirmed by the tree of life, but 'fail and die,' which Adam was assured of by this other tree; so that in these two trees God set before Adam 'good and evil,' the 'blessing and the curse' (Deut. 30:19). These two trees were as two sacraments or symbols."

4.4.4 (see p. 541). Augustine (Forgiveness and Baptism 1.21) thus explains the text "in the day you eat thereof you shall surely die": "When Adam sinned then his body lost the grace whereby it used in every part of it to be obedient to the soul. Then there arose in men appetites common to the brutes, which are productive of shame and which made man ashamed of his own nakedness. Then, also, by a certain disease which was conceived in men from a suddenly infected and pestilential corruption, it was brought about that they lost that stability of life in which they were created, and by reason of the mutations which they experienced in the stages of life the disease issued at last in death. However many were the years they lived in their subsequent life, yet they began to die on the day when they received the law of death, because they kept verging toward old age." Similarly Charnock (God's Patience) remarks: "So it is to be understood, not of an actual death of the body, but the desert of death and the necessity of death: 'You will be obnoxious to death, which will be avoided if you do forbear to eat of the forbidden fruit; you shall be a guilty person and so come under a sentence of death, that I may when I please inflict it upon you.' Death did not come upon Adam that day because his nature was vitiated; he was then also under an expectation of death, he was obnoxious to it, though that day it was not poured out upon him in the full bitterness and gall of it; as when the apostle says, 'The body is dead because of sin,' he speaks of the living, and yet tells them the body was dead because of sin; he means that it was under a sentence and so a necessity of dying, though not actually dead."

4.4.5 (see p. 543). Charnock (Holiness of God, 476) describes the ease with which the first sin might have been avoided: "God cannot necessitate sin. Indeed sin cannot be committed by force; there is no sin but is in some sort voluntary; voluntary in the root or voluntary in the branch; voluntary by an immediate act of the will or voluntary by a general or natural inclination of the will. The plain story of man's apostasy from God discharges God from any part in the crime as an encouragement and excuses him from any appearance of connivance, when he showed him the tree he had reserved as a mark of his sovereignty and forbade him to eat of the fruit of it; he backed the prohibition with the threatening of the greatest evil, namely, death; and in that couched an assurance of the perpetuity of his felicity if he did not rebelliously reach forth his hand to take and 'eat of the fruit.' Though the 'goodness of the fruit for food and its pleasantness to the eye' (Gen. 3:6) might allure him, yet the force of his reason might have quelled the liquorishness of his sense, and the perpetual thinking of and sounding out of the command of God had silenced both Satan and his own appetite. What inward inclination in him to disobey can we suppose there could be from the Creator, when upon the very first offer of the temptation Eve opposes to the tempter the prohibition and threatening of God and strains it to a higher peg than we find God had delivered it in? For in 2:17 it is 'you shall not eat of it'; but she adds (3:3) 'neither shall you touch it,' which was a remark that might have had more influence to restrain her. Had our first parents kept this fixed upon their understandings and thoughts, that God had forbidden any such act as the eating of the fruit and that he was true to execute the threatening he had uttered, of which veracity of God they could not but have a natural notion, with what ease might they have withstood the devil's attack and defeated his design! There is no ground for any suspicion of any encouragements, inward impulses, or necessity from God in this affair. A discharge of God from complicity in this first sin will easily imply a freedom of him from all other sins which follow from it. God does not encourage or excite or incline to sin. How can he excite to that which when it is done he will be sure to condemn? How can he be a righteous judge to sentence a sinner to misery for a crime actuated by a secret inspiration from himself? Iniquity would deserve no reproof from him, if he were in any way positively the author of it. Were God the author of it in us, what is the reason that our own conscience accuses us for it and convinces us of it? Conscience, being God's deputy, would not accuse us of it if the sovereign power by which it acts did incline or force us to it. The Apostle Paul execrates such a thought (Rom. 9:14)."

4.4.6 (see p. 544). The question whether the will or the understanding is the most central and whether the will follows the understanding or the converse is important in determining which is the true ego. Locke (Conduct of the Understanding, introduction) teaches that the will follows the understanding: "The agent determines himself to this or that voluntary action upon some precedent knowledge or appearance of knowledge in the understanding. No man ever sets himself about anything but upon some view or other which serves him for a reason for what he does. The will itself, how absolute and uncontrollable soever it may be thought, never fails in its obedience to the dictates of the understanding." This remark is true of the action of the will as choosing the means to an end in volitions, but not as inclining to the ultimate end itself. When a person chooses to steal money he erroneously judges with the understanding that money is the chief good. This erroneous judgment of the understanding precedes and moves him to the volition by which he steals the money. But money appears to be the chief good to the understanding only because the inclination of the will tends to self and the creature as its ultimate end. Did the inclination of the will tend to God and infinite good as its ultimate end, holiness, not money, would be desired as the chief good, and the judgment of the understanding that it is such would follow accordingly. The understanding always judges according to the person's abiding desire or inclination. If this latter is unselfish and right, the judgment is always correct. If it is selfish and wrong, the judgment is always erroneous. A reference to Adam as unfallen and fallen will illustrate this. Unfallen Adam discerned correctly between the greater and the inferior good. He was not deceived into judging the lesser good to be the greater. But fallen Adam was so deceived. How came he to be so? Not by an act of judgment that was prior to the change of his inclination and desire. So long as he was unfallen and inclined in his will to God as the chief good and desired him as such, he did not pass such a false judgment. He judged in accordance with his holy inclination and desire, and his judgment that God is the chief good was true. But when the inclination of his will underwent a revolution and he came to desire the creature, namely, his wife Eve, instead of the Creator as the chief good, then his judgment followed his inclination and he esteemed what he desired to be the summum bonum. This demonstrates that the last dictate or judgment of the understanding is according to the will or inclination and not the will or inclination according to the last judgment of the understanding. Objects appear to the understanding as they agree or disagree with the dominant desire of the heart or inclination of the will.

The following extract from Charnock (Goodness of God) is a clear statement of the fact that the will must have a good of some kind, real or seeming, true or false, as its end: "Nothing but a good can be the object of a rational appetite. The will cannot direct its motion to anything under the notion of evil, evil in itself, or evil to it; whatsoever courts it must present itself in the quality of a good in its own nature or in its present circumstances, to the present state and condition of the desire; it will not else touch or affect the will. This is the language of that faculty, 'Who will show me any good?' (Ps. 4:6), and good is as inseparably the object of the will's motion as truth is of the understanding's inquiry. Whatsoever a man would allure another to comply with, he must propose to the person under the notion of some beneficialness in point of honor, profit, or pleasure."

But whether a true or a false good shall be the end aimed at by the will depends upon the state and condition of the will and not upon the intrinsic quality of the true or the false good. If the will is holy in its inclination or appetency, the good aimed at by it will be the true good, and the good refused and rejected will be the false good. If the will is sinful in its inclination and desire, the good aimed at will be the false good, and the true will be rejected. The judgment of the understanding respecting the desirableness of the good, in each instance, is not a prior and independent one. It depends upon the existing bias of the will and follows it. Instead therefore of the maxim "the will follows the last dictate of the understanding," the truth is that the last dictate of the understanding follows the will. The understanding will judge that wealth, honor, and pleasure are the good to be sought after, instead of "glory, honor, and immortality," in case the inclination of the will is selfish and carnal and lusts after these. This judgment is a false one, but an actual and real one. It is the judgment of the natural man universally. On the contrary, the understanding will judge that "glory, honor, and immortality" are the summum bonum, if the will is spiritually inclined to them, and this judgment is the true one. It is the judgment of the renewed man.

In this way it appears that the will, not the understanding, is the most central and profound of the human faculties. It is the ego in its ultimate essence: "For the will is not merely the surface faculty of single volitions, over which the person has arbitrary control, but also that central and inmost active principle into which all the powers of cognition and feeling are grafted, as into the very core and substance of the personality itself" (Shedd, Literary Essays, 326; Theological Essays, 233–35).

This was also Aristotle's view, according to Neander ("Grecian and Christian Ethics," Bibliotheca sacra, Oct. 1853: 806): "It is Aristotle's great service to ethics that he has urged the principle that the free determination of the will is the lever of all moral development; that knowledge is not the first or original element, but the direction of the will; that the judgment does not, as the primal power of the mind, determine the will, but the abiding decision of the will determines the judgment; that the man by his permanent determination of will forms his character, and this character having become what it is freely reacts upon the views and judgment of the man."

Jeremy Taylor (sermon to the University of Dublin) quotes Aristotle's view and endorses it as follows: "Said Aristotle, 'Wickedness corrupts a man's reasoning'; it gives him false principles and evil measure of things; the sweet wine that Ulysses gave to the Cyclops put his eye out; and a man that has contracted evil affections and made a league with sin sees only by those measures. A covetous man understands nothing to be good that is not profitable; and a voluptuous man likes your reasoning well enough if you discourse of bonum jucundum, the pleasures of the sense; but if you talk to him of the melancholy lectures of the cross, the peace of meekness, and of rest in God, after your long discourse, and his great silence, he cries out, 'What is the matter?' He knows not what you mean. Either you must fit his humor or change your discourse. Every man understands by his affections more than by his reason. A man's mind must be like your proposition before it can be entertained; it is a man's mind that gives the emphasis and makes your argument to prevail.

"Do we not see this by daily experience? Even those things which a good man and an evil man know, they do not know them both alike. A wicked man knows that good is lovely and sin is of an evil and destructive nature; and when he is reproved he is convinced; and when he is observed he is ashamed; and when he is done he is unsatisfied; and when he pursues his sin he does it in the dark: tell him he shall die and he sighs deeply, but he knows it as well as you: proceed and say that after death comes judgment, and the poor man believes and trembles; he knows that God is angry with him; and if you tell him that for aught he knows he may be in hell tomorrow, he knows that it is an intolerable truth, but it is also undeniable; and yet, after all this, he runs to commit his sin with as certain an event and resolution as if he knew no argument against it; these notices of things terrible and true pass through his understanding as an eagle through the air; as long as her flight lasted the air was shaken, but there remains no path behind her.

"Now at the same time we see other persons, not so learned it may be, not so much versed in Scripture, yet they say a thing is good and lay hold of it; they believe glorious things of heaven, and they live accordingly as men that believe themselves; half a word is enough to make them understand; a nod is a sufficient reproof; the crowing of a cock, the singing of a lark, the dawning of the day, and the washing their hands are to them competent memorials of religion and warnings of their duty. What is the reason of this difference? They both read the same Scriptures, they read and hear the same sermons, they have capable understandings, they both believe what they hear and what they read, and yet the event is vastly different. The reason is that which I am now speaking of; the one understands by one principle, the other by another; the one understands by nature, and the other by grace; the one by human learning, and the other by divine; the one reads the Scriptures without, the other within; the one understands as a son of man, the other as a son of God; the one perceives by the proportions of the world, and the other by the measures of the Spirit; the one understands by reason, and the other by love."

The fact mentioned by St. Paul (1 Tim. 2:14) that "Adam was not deceived by Satan" as Eve was and yet apostatized from God proves that the first cause of sin is the self-determination of the will, not the misjudgment of the understanding. Says Augustine (City of God 14.11): "For as Aaron was not induced to agree in judgment with the people when they blindly wished him to make an idol and yet yielded to their constraint; and as it is not credible that Solomon was so blind as to suppose that idols should be worshiped but was drawn over to such sacrilege by the blandishments of women; so we cannot believe that Adam was deceived and supposed the devil's word to be truth and therefore transgressed God's law, but that he, by the drawings of kindred, yielded to the woman, the husband to the wife, the one human to the only other human being. The woman accepted as true what the serpent told her, but the man could not bear to be severed from his only companion, even though this involved a partnership in sin. He was not on this account less culpable, but sinned with his eyes open. And so the apostle does not say 'he did not sin' but 'he was not deceived.' For he shows that he sinned when he says, 'By one man sin entered into the world,' and immediately after, more distinctly, 'In the likeness of Adam's transgression.' "

Kant (Practical Reason, 212) directs attention to the ambiguity of the expression sub ratione boni: "It may mean: We represent something to ourselves as good, when and because we desire it; or we desire something because we represent it to ourselves as good, so that either the desire determines the notion of the object as a good, or the notion of the good determines the desire; so that in the first case sub ratione boni would mean that we will something under the idea of the good; in the second, in consequence of this idea, which, as determining the will, must precede it."

4.4.7 (see p. 545). The Formula of Concord 1 rejects the doctrine that sin is the substance of the soul: "We condemn as a Manichean error the teaching that original sin is properly and without any distinction the very substance, nature, and essence of corrupt man, so that between his corrupt nature after the fall, considered in itself, and original sin, there is no difference at all, and that no distinction can be conceived between them by which original sin can be distinguished from man's nature, even in thought. Dr. Luther, it is true, calls this original evil a sin of nature, personal, essential; but not as if the nature, person, or essence of man, without any distinction, is itself original sin; but he speaks after this manner in order that by phrases of this kind the distinction between original sin, which is infixed in human nature, and other sins, which are called actual, may be better understood."

Augustine denies that sin is the substance of the soul and asserts that it is its agency: "That which we have to say on this subject our author mentions when concluding this topic he says: 'As we remarked, the passage in which occur the words, The flesh lusts against the Spirit, must needs have reference not to the substance but to the works of the flesh.' We, too, allege that this is spoken not of the substance of the flesh but of its works, which proceed from carnal concupiscence—in a word, from sin, concerning which we have this precept: 'Not to let it reign in our mortal body, that we should obey it in the lusts thereof' " (Nature and Grace 66). "From the body of this death nothing but God's grace alone delivers us. Not, of course, from the substance of the body, which is good; but from its carnal offenses. It was this that the apostle meant when he said, 'I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members' " (Nature and Grace 62). "There is nothing of what we call evil if there be nothing good. But a good which is wholly without evil is a perfect good. A good, on the other hand, which contains evil is a faulty or imperfect good; and there can be no evil where there is no good. From all this we arrive at the curious result: that since every being, so far as it is a being, is good, when we say that a faulty being is an evil being we seem to say that what is good is evil, and that nothing but what is good can be evil. Yet there is no escape from this conclusion. When we accurately distinguish we find that it is not because a man is a man that he is an evil, or because he is wicked that he is a good; but that he is a good because he is a man, and an evil because he is wicked. Whoever, then, says, 'To be a man is an evil' or 'To be wicked is a good,' falls under the prophetic denunciation: 'Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil!' For he condemns the work of God, which is the man, and praises the defect of man, which is the wickedness. Therefore every being, even if it be a defective one, insofar as it is a being is good, and insofar as it is defective is evil" (Enchiridion 13). This means that man as a substance is created by God and as such is good; man as an agent is sinfully self-moving and as such is evil.

Athanasius, also arguing against the Manichean hypothesis that sin is a substance and not the misuse or abuse of a creature's will, compares this opinion to that of a person "who were to shut his eyes at noonday, and finding it dark should fancy that darkness is something as real as the light or that the substance of the light is changed into another substance of a quite contrary nature" (Oration against the Gentiles 7). There is a science of light, namely, optics, but no science of darkness, which evinces the nonsubstantiality of the latter. Darkness has no properties or qualities that can be examined by instruments and whose nature can be expressed in the terms of mathematics. It has no theory like that of emission or of undulation by which it can be explained. Nothing can be predicated of it of a positive nature. It can be defined only negatively as the absence of light. So, likewise, sin is not a substance, and neither is holiness. But while sin may be defined as the absence of holiness and darkness as the absence of light, holiness may not be defined as the absence of sin, nor light the absence of darkness. Holiness and light are positive conceptions; sin and darkness are negative.

4.4.8 (see p. 546). Leighton (Exposition of the Ten Commandments) thus states the relation of the written law to the unwritten: "At first the commandments were written in the heart of man by God's own hand, but as the first tables of stone fell and were broken, so was it with man's heart; by his fall his heart was broken and scattered among earthly perishing things that was before whole and entire to his maker; and so the characters of that law written in it were so shivered and scattered that they could not be perfectly and distinctly read in it; therefore it pleased God to renew that law after this manner by a most solemn delivery with audible voice and then by writing it on tables of stone. And this is not all, but this same law he does write anew in the hearts of his children."

5 Original Sin

Preliminary Considerations

"The sinfulness of that estate (status or condition) whereinto man fell consists in the guilt of Adam's first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of the whole nature: which is commonly called original sin; together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it" (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 18).

According to this doctrinal statement, there are three particulars under the general head of sin: (1) the guilt of the first sin, (2) the corruption of nature resulting from the first sin, and (3) actual transgressions or sins of act which result from corruption of nature.

The first part of the sinfulness of man's estate or condition is the guilt of the first sin. The first sin of Adam, strictly and formally considered, was the transgression of the particular command not to eat of the tree of knowledge. This was a positive statute and not the moral law. It tested obedience more severely than the moral law does because the latter carries its own reason with it, while the former containing no intrinsic morality appealed to no reason except the mere good pleasure of God. To disobey it was to disregard the authority of God and involved disobedience of all law. The guilt of Adam's first sin is the guilt of transgressing the law of Eden explicitly and the moral law implicitly: "The rule of obedience revealed to Adam, besides a special command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, was the moral law" (Westminster Larger Catechism 92).

Adam's Sin as Twofold: Internal and External

The first sin of Adam was twofold: (a) internal and (b) external. The internal part of it was the originating and starting of a wrong inclination. The external part of it was the exertion of a wrong volition prompted by the wrong inclination. Adam first inclined to self instead of God as the ultimate end. He became an idolater and "worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator" (Rom. 1:25). Then, in order to gratify this new inclination, he reached forth his hand and ate of the forbidden fruit:

Our first parents fell into open disobedience, because already they were secretly corrupted; for the evil act had never been done had not an evil inclination (voluntas) preceded it. And what is the origin of our evil inclination but pride? And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation, when the soul abandons him to whom it ought to cleave as its end and becomes an end to itself. The wicked desire to please himself secretly existed in Adam, and the open sin was but its consequence. (Augustine, City of God 14.13)

Edwards (Original Sin in Works 2.385) directs attention to the internal part of Adam's first sin in the following manner. His opponent Taylor had said that "Adam could not sin without a sinful inclination." Edwards replies that "this is doubtless true; for although there was no natural sinful inclination in Adam, yet an inclination to that sin of eating the forbidden fruit was begotten in him by the delusion and error he was led into, and this inclination to eat the forbidden fruit must precede his actual eating." Edwards considers the rising of this sinful desire and inclination to be the first sin itself. There was not a first sin prior to it of which the sinful inclination was the effect; but the very inclining away from God to the creature was Adam's fall itself and that of his posterity in him:

I am humbly of the opinion that if any have supposed the children of Adam to come into the world with a double guilt, one the guilt of Adam's sin, another the guilt arising from their having a corrupt heart, they have not so well conceived of the matter. The guilt a man has upon his soul at his first existence is one and simple, namely, the guilt of the original apostasy, the guilt of the sin by which the species first rebelled against God. This and the guilt arising from the first corruption or depraved disposition of the heart are not to be looked upon as two things, distinctly imputed and charged upon men in the sight of God. It is true that the guilt that arises from the corruption of the heart as it remains a confirmed principle and appears in its subsequent operations is a distinct and additional guilt; but the guilt arising from the first existing of a depraved disposition in Adam's posterity, I apprehend is not distinct from their guilt of Adam's first sin. For so it was not in Adam himself. The first evil disposition or inclination of the heart of Adam to sin was not properly distinct from his first sin, but was included in it. The external act he committed was no otherwise his, than as his heart was in it, or as that action proceeded from the wicked inclination of his heart. Nor was the guilt he had double, as for two distinct sins: one, the wickedness of his heart and will in that affair; another, the wickedness of the external act caused by his heart. His guilt was all truly from the act of his inward man; exclusive of which the motions of his body were no more than the motions of any lifeless instrument. His sin consisted in wickedness of heart, fully sufficient for and entirely amounting to all that appeared in the act he committed. (Original Sin in Works 2.481) (supplement 4.5.1.)

The internal part of Adam's first sin was the principal part of it. It was the real commencement of sin in man. It was the origination from nothing of a sinful disposition in the human will. There was no previous sinful disposition to prompt it or to produce it. When Adam inclined away from God to the creature, he exercised an act of pure self-determination. He began sinning by a real beginning, analogous to that by which matter begins to be from nothing. In endowing Adam with a mutable holiness, God made it possible, but not necessary, for Adam to originate a sinful inclination and thereby expel a holy one. The finite will can fall from holiness to sin if it is not "kept from falling" (Jude 24) by God's special grace, because it is finite. The finite is the mutable by the very definition.

Since this first inclining of the human will had no sinful antecedent, it is denominated "original" sin. There is no sin before it by which to explain it. Says Lombard (2.22.12):

If it be asked whether inclination (voluntas) preceded that first sin, we answer, in the first place, that inasmuch as that first sin consisted both of inclination (voluntas) and of outward act (actus), inclination preceded outward act, but another evil inclination did not precede the evil inclination itself; and, second, that through the persuasion of Satan and by the arbitrary decision (arbitrio) of Adam that evil inclination was produced by which he deserted righteousness and began iniquity. And this inclination (voluntas) itself was iniquity.

The following dialogue in Anselm's On the Fall of the Devil 27 is to the same effect:

Disciple: Why did the wicked angel will what he ought not to have willed?

Master: No cause preceded this wrong act, except it were that the angel could so will.

Disciple: Did he then will wickedly because he was able to?

Master: No, because the good angel had the same power, but did not will wrongly. No one wills wrongly merely because he can so will.

Disciple: Why then does he will wrongly?

Master: Only because he will. The wicked will has no other cause but this, why it determines to sin. It is both an efficient and an effect in one. (supplement 4.5.2.)

The internal part of Adam's first sin was "voluntary" not "volitionary." It was will as desire, not will as volition; will as inclining, not will as choosing. The fall was the transition from one form of self-motion to another form of self-motion, and not the beginning of self-motion for the first time. The fall was a self-determining to evil expelling an existing self-determination to good. It was inclining away from one ultimate end to another, not choosing between two ultimate ends to neither of which was there any existing inclination. Adam before he fell was self-determined to God and goodness. Consequently, in the garden of Eden, he had not to choose either good or evil as two contraries to both of which his will was indifferent. By creation, he was positively inclined to good. The question put before him in the probation and temptation was whether he would remain holy as he was or begin a new inclination to evil; not whether, having no inclination at all, he would choose either good or evil. His act of apostasy, if it occurred, was to be an act of new and wrong desire in place of the existing holy desire, of new and wrong self-determination in place of the existing and right self-determination. The fall was a change of inclination, not the exertion of a volition.

The internal part of Adam's first sin is described in Gen. 3:1–6. According to this narrative, Eve first listened to the crafty query of Satan whether God could have given such a command; then she entered into a discussion with him; then she believed him. All this internal agency of the soul occurred prior to plucking and eating the forbidden fruit. But this listening, discussing, and believing on the part of Eve occurred because she was secretly desiring the forbidden knowledge by which she would "be as the gods" (3:5). Lust for that false knowledge which Satan had promised explains these mental processes. Dalliance with temptation always implies a desire for the tempting object. Had Eve continued to desire and to be content with that true knowledge which she had by creation, she would have abhorred the false knowledge proposed by the tempter, and this abhorrence would have precluded all parleying with him and all trust in him.

A comparison of the manner in which our Lord dealt with the same tempter is instructive. Christ, in the wilderness, entered into no parley and debate with Satan, as Eve did in paradise. He did not dally with temptation, because no desire for what God had forbidden arose within him. The second Adam did not lust, like the first Adam, after the false good presented by the tempter. The first two of Satan's suggestions he instantaneously rejects, giving reasons therefor in the decisive language of Scripture. And the third and more blasphemous suggestion he thrusts away with the avaunt of abhorrence. There was not the slightest swerving from God, the faintest hankering after prohibited good, in the most secret soul of our Lord. His will from center to circumference, both as inclination and volition, both in desire and act, remained steadfast in holiness. Christ met Satan's temptation with aversion and loathing. Eve met it with inclination and liking.

The history of the rise of evil desire or lust is given by divine inspiration. Along with the listening, the debating, and the believing on the part of Eve, there was, according to the narrative in Genesis, a yet more important activity that occurred in the soul of Eve prior to the eating of the forbidden fruit: "The woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise" (3:6). Eve looked upon the tree of knowledge not only with innocent, but with sinful desire. She not only had the natural created desire for it as producing nourishing food and as a beautiful object to the eye, but she came to have, besides this, the unnatural and self-originated desire for it as yielding a kind of knowledge which God forbade man to have. She "lusted" after that "knowledge of good and evil" which eating of the fruit would impart. This knowledge was not the true wisdom and spiritual knowledge which Adam and Eve already had by creation and which is the intellectual side of holiness, but it was the false knowledge which "the gods," that is, Satan and his angels, had acquired by apostasy. This lusting of Eve for a knowledge that God had prohibited was her apostasy. This was the self-determining and inclining of her will away from God as the chief end and chief good to self and the creature as the chief end. To desire what God has forbidden is to prefer self to God, and this is to sin. This concupiscence was the beginning of sin in her will. It was the same thing, in kind, with the concupiscence which God forbids in the tenth commandment. The command not to covet or lust is a command not to desire anything that God has forbidden. God has forbidden theft. To inwardly desire another man's property is theft. God has forbidden murder. To be inwardly angry at a fellowman is murder. God has forbidden adultery. To inwardly desire another man's wife is adultery. In like manner, God had forbidden to Adam satanic knowledge of good and evil. To inwardly desire it was the first sin. Achan's sin began with inward desire or lust: "When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonian garment and two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold, then I coveted them and took them" (Josh. 7:21).

All this internal action of the soul of Eve, then, occurred prior to the outward act of plucking and eating. Says Fisher (Catechism Q. 3), "Were not our first parents guilty of sin before eating the forbidden fruit? Yes: they were guilty in hearkening to the devil and believing him before they actually ate it. Why, then, is their eating of it called their first sin? Because it was the first sin finished (James 1:15)." "The first sin," says Pictet (Theology 4.2), "commenced when Eve began to doubt whether she had rightly understood the intention of God in forbidding the fruit of the tree. Afterward, when she ought to have consulted God upon this subject, she believed the devil, who said that they should not die; in the next place, she was flattered with the hope held out to her by Satan of knowing all things and being equal to God; and at last, she reached forth her hand to the fruit." "From the account in Genesis," says Hodge (Theology 2.128), "it appears that doubt, unbelief, and pride were the principles which led to this fatal act of disobedience. Eve doubted God's goodness, she disbelieved his threatening, she aspired after forbidden knowledge."

The account given in Gen. 3:1–6 favors the supposition that Eve had the colloquy with Satan by herself, as Milton represents it in his poem. The woman alone entered into the discussion with Satan of a subject that ought not to have been discussed at all. "And when," continues the narrative, "the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant (ta˒ăwâ) to the eyes and a tree to be desired (neḥmād) to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat; and gave also unto her husband and he did eat" (Gen. 3:6). St. Paul (1 Tim. 2:14) affirms that "Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived by him fell into the transgression (en parabasei gegone)." This implies that Adam did not believe the tempter's assertion that a good would follow the eating of the forbidden fruit and that death would not be the consequence. According to St. Paul, Adam was seduced by his affection for Eve rather than deceived by the lie of Satan. He fell with his eyes wide open to the fact that if he ate he would die. But in loving his wife more than God, he "worshiped and served the creature instead of the Creator" and like Eve set up a different final end from the true one.

The account in Gen. 3:6 describes (a) the innocent physical desire of man's unfallen nature for the fruit of the tree of knowledge and (b) the rising of sinful moral desire for it: "The woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant (ta˒ăwâ) to the eyes." This denotes merely the correlation between the created qualities of man's physical constitution and this particular product of God's creation. It was not wrong, but perfectly innocent, to perceive that the tree was good for food and to desire it as such and to be pleasantly affected by the beauty of it. This divinely established relation between man's physical nature and that of the tree of knowledge constituted the subjective basis for the temptation. Had the tree been repulsive to the sight and taste, its fruit would not have been employed by Satan as a means of solicitation. Up to this point in the description, the phraseology is the same as that in 2:9 respecting all the trees in the garden: "Out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant (neḥmād) to the sight and good for food." All the physical products of God, the tree of knowledge included, were agreeable and pleasant objects for the newly created and sinless man. (supplement 4.5.3.)

But the account in Gen. 3:6 further adds that the tree of knowledge came to be for Eve a tree "to be desired (neḥmād), to make one wise." The sinful moral desire here mentioned is different from the innocent physical desire spoken of in the preceding part of the verse. It was a mental hankering after the fruit as imparting to the eater a kind of knowledge which God had forbidden to man. This is something new and different from the innocent craving belonging to man's sensuous nature. To desire the fruit simply as food and as a beautiful object was innocent. But to desire a knowledge of good and evil such as the "gods" had, which the eating of it would communicate, was rebellious and wicked, because this kind of knowledge had been prohibited. The word neḥmād, descriptive of Eve's longing after the prohibited knowledge, is the same employed in the tenth commandment (Exod. 20:17), which the Septuagint renders by ouk epithymēseis. Eve's evil desire was also the same in kind with the epithymia12 of St. Paul, which he declares to be hamartia (Rom. 7:7). It was also the same in kind with the epithymia mentioned in James 1:14: "Every man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed."

The self-willed origination and rising of this desire for a knowledge that God had forbidden was the fall of Eve. It was a new inclination of her will to self, directly contrary to that inclination to God with which she had been created. As regeneration is denominated a "birth" of the soul because of the totality of the moral change, so apostasy may be called a "birth" of the soul for the same reason. By the fall, the children of God became the children of Satan (John 8:44; Matt. 13:38). Each "birth" alike is an entire revolution in human character: one upward the other downward. As regeneration is the origination by the Holy Spirit of holy desire and inclination, so apostasy was the origination by Adam of sinful desire and inclination. God had not forbidden the existence of the desire for the fruit as "good for food and pleasant to the eye," and had this continued to be the only desire in Eve in regard to the tree, she would have remained sinless as she was created. But God had forbidden the desire for the fruit as fitted "to make one wise" with the knowledge of good and evil. The instant the desire "to be as gods" arose in Eve's heart, she sinned. God's command, in its full form, was "you shall not lust after but abhor the knowledge of good and evil; you shall not choose but refuse it." The prohibition in the instance of the Eden statute, as in that of the tenth commandment, included both the inward desire and the outward act, both inclination and volition. If a man hates his brother, he violates the sixth commandment, even if he does not actually kill him (Matt. 5:22). So, too, if when Eve had desired the forbidden knowledge, she had been prevented from reaching out the hand and plucking the fruit, she would still have transgressed the Eden statute. Obedience to God required that she abhor and reject the knowledge proffered by Satan. But to lust after it was to prefer and love it. Even, therefore, if she had been forcibly stopped from completing, or as St. James (1:15) phrases it "finishing" the sin of desiring, by the outward act of eating, she would still have been guilty of disobeying God, for the divine command is to choose the good and refuse the evil (Deut. 30:19). The holiness of Immanuel, which is true holiness, is described as "refusing the evil and choosing the good" (Isa. 7:16). But whoever desires the evil that is prohibited "chooses" it and thereby refuses the good that is commanded. Had Eve continued to desire and love the true knowledge which she already had by her creation in the divine image, this desire and love would have been the rejection and abhorrence of the false knowledge offered in the temptation. But when she began to desire and love the false knowledge, this was the rejection and hatred of the true knowledge. And this was apostasy. Neutrality or indifference was impossible in the will of Eve or any will whatever. For her to incline to self was to disincline to God, to desire false knowledge was to dislike true knowledge, to choose the evil was to refuse the good, to love the creature was to hate the Creator. The rising of her evil desire, consequently, was the expulsion of her holy desire; the starting of her new sinful self-determination was the ousting of her existing holy self-determination. She could not have two contrary desires or inclinations simultaneously. Hence the universal command, "You shall not covet"; that is, "You shall not desire anything that God has forbidden"; because this is the same thing as to dislike and hate what God has commanded. (supplement 4.5.4.)

This evil inclining and desiring is denominated "concupiscence" in the theological nomenclature. In the Augustinian and Calvinistic anthropology, it includes mental as well as sensual desire; in the Pelagian anthropology, it is confined to sensual appetite. Says Calvin (2.1.9):

Man has not only been ensnared by the inferior appetites, but abominable impiety has seized the very citadel of his mind, and pride has penetrated into the inmost recesses of his heart; so that it is weak and foolish to restrict the corruption which has proceeded thence to what are called the sensual appetites. In this the grossest ignorance has been discovered by Peter Lombard, who when investigating the seat of it says it is in the flesh according to the testimony of Paul in Rom. 7:18, not indeed exclusively, but because it principally appears in the flesh; as though Paul designated only a part of the soul and not the whole of our nature which is opposed to supernatural grace. Now Paul removes every doubt by informing us that the corruption resides not in one part only, but that there is nothing pure and uncontaminated by its mortal infection. For, when arguing respecting corrupt nature, he not only condemns the inordinate motions of the appetites, but principally insists on the blindness of the mind and the depravity of the heart (Eph. 4:17–18).

Says Luther on Gal. 5:17: "When Paul says that the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, he admonishes us that we must feel the concupiscence of the flesh, that is to say, not only carnal lust but also pride, wrath, slothfulness, impatience, unbelief, and such like" (see Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, locus 15, for definitions from the elder Calvinists).

Concupiscence is different from natural created appetency or desire. Hunger and thirst are not evil concupiscence. They are instinctive, constitutional, and involuntary. Gluttony on the contrary is voluntary, not constitutional. It is not pure instinctive craving for food. There is will in it. It is the inclining and desire of the will for a more intense pleasure from eating food than the natural healthy appetite provides for. Innocent hunger makes use of the appointed food, and when satisfied it rests. If a man simply quiets his hunger with bread convenient for it, he does not have or exhibit concupiscence. But if he craves sensual pleasure from eating and gratifies the craving by tickling the palate, he has and exhibits concupiscence or evil desire.

Concupiscence is not natural and innocent appetite intensified. It is not a difference in degree, but in kind. A starving man is not concupiscent, though his desire for food is intense to the very highest degree. His famine-struck craving for food is not a gluttonous craving for sensual pleasure. It is purely physical. But gluttony is the mental in the physical. Gluttony is the will's selfish inclination manifested in a bodily appetite. It is the will in the senses.

These remarks apply to thirst and the sexual appetite. As created and constitutional, neither of these is evil concupiscence. But as mixed with will and moral inclination—the form in which they appear in drunkards who "shall not inherit the kingdom of God" and "whoremongers and adulterers whom God will judge"—they are sinful concupiscence. Concupiscence is not confined to the sensuous nature. There is concupiscence or lust of the reason as well as of the sense. Pride and ambition is a lust of the mind: "We had our conversation in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires (thelēmata) of the flesh and of the mind (tōn dianoiōn)" (Eph. 2:3). According to 2 Cor. 7:1 there is a "filthiness of the flesh and the spirit (pneumatos)."

The external part of Adam's first sin was the act of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. After the sinful inclination had arisen, a sinful volition followed: "When the woman saw that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat" (Gen. 3:6).

Imputation of Adamic Guilt

This first sin in both of its parts, internal and external, is imputed to Adam and his posterity as sin and guilt because they committed it. The evil desire and the evil act were the desiring and acting of the human nature in the first human pair. The biblical proof of this fundamental and much disputed position is found in the following: "Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Rom. 5:12); "through the offense of one (man) many be dead (apethanon)" (5:15); "the judgment was by one (offense) unto condemnation" (5:16); "by one man's offense (or by one offense) death reigned by one" (5:17); "by the offense of one (Lachmann and Tischendorf have 'one offense'), judgment came upon all men to condemnation" (5:18); "by one man's disobedience many were made sinners" (5:19); "in Adam (tō adam) all die" (1 Cor. 15:22).

The very important discussion of St. Paul in Rom. 5:12–19 teaches (1) that the death which came upon all men as a punishment came because of one sin and only one and (2) that this sin was the one committed by Adam and his posterity as a unity. Three explanations have been given of hēmarton in this passage: (1) It is active in its meaning and denotes the first sin of Adam and his posterity as a unity: his posterity being one with him by natural union or else by representation or by both together; (2) it is active in its meaning and denotes the first sin of each individual after he is born (in this case, hēmarton22 does not denote Adam's first sin); and (3) it is passive in its meaning, signifying, either "to be sinful" or "to be reckoned as having sinned" (Shedd on Rom. 5:12–19).

That hēmarton is active in its signification is proved (a) by the fact that eph' hō pantes hēmarton24 means the same as dia tēs hamartias in the preceding context and hamartias26 is active in signification; (b) by the invariable use of the word hēmarton elsewhere (Matt. 27:4; Luke 15:18; John 9:2; Acts 25:8; Rom. 2:12; 3:23; 5:14, 16; 6:15; 1 Cor. 7:28; Eph. 4:26; 1 Tim. 5:20; 1 Pet. 2:20); (c) by the invariable signification of the substantive hamartia (a verb has the same meaning as its noun); and (d) by the interchange of hamartia29 with paraptōma, which is active in meaning (Rom. 5:16–21). (supplement 4.5.5.)

Turretin (9.9.16) denies that hēmarton signifies "to be sinful": "The word hēmarton cannot properly refer to the disposition of sin or to habitual or inhering corruption. Rather, it properly denotes some actual sin, and that past, which can be no other than the very sin of Adam. Indeed, it is one thing to be or to be born a sinner, but another thing actually to sin" (so also Witsius, Covenants 1.8.31). Edwards (Original Sin in Works 2.448) denies that hēmarton signifies "to be regarded as sinners":

There is no instance wherein the verb sin, which is used by the apostle when he says "all have sinned," is anywhere used in our author's sense, for being brought into a state of suffering, and that not as a punishment for sin or as anything arising from God's displeasure. St. Paul is far from using such a phrase to signify a being condemned without guilt or any imputation or supposition of guilt. Vastly more, still, is it remote from his language, so to use the verb sin and to say man "sins" or "has sinned," hereby meaning nothing more nor less than that he by a judicial act is condemned.

Unless, therefore, St. Paul departed from the invariable Scripture use of the word hēmarton when he asserts that death as a just punishment, passed upon all men "because all sinned," he employs the word sinned actively. And if he does depart here from the invariable Scripture meaning of hēmarton, he is the only inspired writer that does so; and this is the only instance in his own writings in which he does so—his use of the verb hamartanein36 in scores of other instances being the ordinary use.

But while hēmarton in Rom. 5:12 is active in signification, it does not denote the transgressions of each individual subsequent to birth, and when no longer in Adam, but the transgression of Adam and Eve inclusive of their posterity. This is proved by the following considerations: One and but one sin is specified as the ground of the penalty of death. This is asserted five times over in succession in 5:15–19. In 5:12 hēmarton unquestionably refers to the same sin that is spoken of in 5:15–19.

In Rom. 5:14 some who die, namely, infants, "did not sin after the similitude of Adam's first transgression." That is, they did not repeat the first sin. They must, therefore, have sinned in some other manner because they are a part of the "all" (pantes) who sinned and because they experience the death which is the wages of sin. The only other conceivable manner of sinning is that of participation in the first sin itself. But participation in Adam's first sin is not the repetition of it by the individual.

From these considerations, it is evident that the word sinned in Rom. 5:12 is active in its signification; but the action is specific, not individual—the action of the common nature in Adam prior to any conception and birth and not the action of the individuals one by one after conception and birth.

The passive signification given to hēmarton is twofold: (a) to be sinful (Calvin) and (b) to be reckoned as having sinned (Chrysostom). The first has never had much currency. The last has been extensively adopted by Semipelagian and Arminian theologians and also by many later Calvinists. The objections to this explanation are the following:

1. It is contrary to invariable usage. This would be the only instance in the New Testament in which the verb hamartanō would have such a meaning.

2. Had St. Paul intended to bring in the notion of regarding or treating as sinners, this would require the combination of hamartanein with einai, and he would have used the compound form pantes hēmartēkotes hēsan44 as does the Septuagint in Gen. 43:9; 44:32 (hēmartēkōs esomai); 1 Kings 1:21 (esomai egō kai salōmōn hamartoloi).

3. The passive signification excludes Adam and Eve from the pantes who sinned. They, certainly, were not "reckoned" to have sinned.

4. According to the passive signification, hēmarton would denote God's action, not man's; God's act of imputing sin, not man's act of committing it. But it is the sinner's act, not that of the judge, which is the reason for punishment.

5. It destroys the logic. All die because all are reckoned to deserve death. This is one reason for death, but not the particular one required here. The argument demands a reason founded upon the act of the criminal, not of the judge. To say that all die because all are condemned to die is to give no sufficient reason for death. For the question immediately arises why they are condemned to die.

6. It tends to empty thanatos of its plenary biblical meaning as including hell punishment. A qualified meaning is given to it in order to make it agree with the qualified meaning given to hēmarton. The withdrawment of grace is said by some later Calvinists to be the only penalty inflicted upon original sin, the positive pains of hell being due only to actual transgression. Historically, this passive signification was forced upon hamartanō51 by those (Chrysostom and the Greek fathers) who asserted that the first sin was not imputed as culpable. Arminian writers like Whitby and John Taylor follow Chrysostom.

The total guilt of the first sin, thus committed by the entire race in Adam, is imputed to each individual of the race because of the indivisibility of guilt. If two individual men together commit a murder, each is chargeable with the whole guilt of the act. One-half of the guilt of the murder cannot be imputed to one and one-half to the other. Supposing that the one human nature which committed the "one offense" (Rom. 5:17–18) became a family of exactly a million individuals by propagation, it would not follow that each individual would be responsible for only a millionth part of the offense. The whole undivided guilt of the first sin of apostasy from God would be chargeable upon each and every one of the million individuals of the species alike. For though the one common nature that committed the "one offense" is divisible by propagation, the offense itself is not divisible nor is the guilt of it. Consequently, one man is as guilty as another of the whole first sin, of the original act of falling from God. The individual Adam and Eve were no more guilty of this first act and of the whole of it than their descendants are; and their descendants are as guilty as they.

The same principle applies also to the indivisibility of merit. The merit of Christ's obedience is indivisible, and the whole of it is imputed to every individual believer alike. A million believers do not each obtain by imputation a millionth part of their Redeemer's merit. One believer is as completely justified by gratuitous imputation as another, because all alike receive by faith the total worthiness and desert of their Lord's obedience, not a fractional part of it. As the unmerited imputation of Christ's obedience conveys the total undivided merit of this obedience to each and every believer, so the merited imputation of Adam's disobedience conveys the total undivided guilt of this disobedience to each and every individual of the posterity.

The first sin of Adam, being a common, not an individual sin, is deservedly and justly imputed to the posterity of Adam upon the same principle upon which all sin is deservedly and justly imputed, namely, that it was committed by those to whom it is imputed. "All men die, because all men sinned," says St. Paul. Free agency is supposed as the reason for the penalty of death, namely, the free agency of all mankind in Adam. This agency, though differing in the manner, is yet as real as the subsequent free agency of each individual.

The imputation either of Adam's sin or of Christ's righteousness must rest upon a union of some kind. It is just to impute the first sin of Adam to his posterity, while it would be unjust to impute it to the fallen angels because Adam and his posterity were a unity when the first sin was committed, but Adam and the fallen angels were not: "It hardly would have been just for the crime of one angel to be imputed to another, or the sin of one man to be accounted to another, on the supposition that they were each created separately just as angels. But there is a unity of nature, on which the covenantal unity was supported" (Leydecker, "Synopsis," 164 in Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, locus 15). The fact that the fallen angels have committed individual transgressions of their own would not justify imputing a common race-transgression to them. Again, it is just to impute Christ's righteousness to a believer, but not just to impute it to an unbeliever, because the former has been united to him by faith and the latter has not.

The popular explanation of the imputation of Adam's sin—that under divine government children inherit the poverty and disease of their vicious parents—is inadequate. Divine government does not punish the children of vicious parents for their inherited poverty and disease. If Adam's posterity merely inherited moral corruption, but were not punished for it, this explanation would be pertinent. But inherited corruption is visited with divine retribution according to Eph. 2:3. And this requires participation in the origin of it. Men must sin in Adam in order to be justly punished for Adam's sin. And participation requires union with Adam.

There is a similar fallacy in citing the biblical instances in which innocent individuals suffer for the sins of guilty individuals in proof that Adam's posterity though innocent of his sin are punishable for it. To suffer in consequence of the sin of another is not the same as to be punished for it. The sufferings that came upon the descendants of Ham because of his individual sin were not retributive, like those which come upon the whole human race because of the one specific sin of Adam or like those which come upon an individual for his own transgressions. Ham's descendants have suffered for centuries on account of their ancestor's sin, but have not been under eternal condemnation on account of it. They are exposed to eternal death in common with the rest of mankind because of the sin in Adam and of their own individual sins, but not because of the individual sin of Ham. The same is true of the sin of Korah in relation to his family. In reference to all individual transgressions, Ezek. 18:20 asserts that "the son shall not bear the iniquity of his father"; that is, he shall not be punished for it, though he may suffer for it. Suffering and affliction are sovereign acts of God and may or may not be connected with the individual sin of a secondary ancestor, according to his good pleasure; but punishment is a judicial act that is necessary and necessarily connected with the specific sin of the first ancestor and the individual sins of the person himself. (supplement 4.5.6.)

The imputation of Adam's sin rests upon a different kind of union from that upon which the imputation of Christ's righteousness rests. The former is founded upon natural union: a union of constitutional nature and substance. The possibility of an existence, a probation, and a free fall in Adam has been considered under the head of traducianism. The entire human species as an invisible but substantial nature acts in and with the first human pair. Traducianism is true only in anthropology and with reference to apostasy. It has no application at all to soteriology and redemption. There is no race-unity in redemption. All men were in Adam when he disobeyed; but all men were not in Christ when he obeyed. All men are propagated from Adam and inherit his sin. No man is propagated from Christ or inherits his righteousness. Apostasy starts with the race. Redemption starts with the individual. All men fall. Some men are redeemed. Union in Adam is substantial and physical, in Christ is spiritual and mystical (Westminster Larger Catechism 66); in Adam is natural, in Christ is representative; in Adam is by creation, in Christ is by regeneration; in Adam is with man as a species, in Christ is with man as an individual; in Adam is universal, in Christ is particular and by election (Shedd on Rom. 5:19).

The theory of Schleiermacher, Rothe (Steinmeyer, History of Christ's Passion, 15), and Nevin as criticized by Hodge supposes that Christ united himself with the entire human nature. This is an error. In the incarnation, the Logos assumed into union with himself only a fractional part of human nature, namely, that flesh and blood which was derived from the virgin. There was no union in the incarnation with the human race as a whole. This would have required the Logos to have united with the human nature as it was in Adam, prior to any division and individualization of it. Furthermore, in regeneration, Christ is united with only a particular individual who has been elected and separated (Gal. 1:15) from all other individuals.

The principal objection to the tenet of the participation of the posterity in the first sin is that the individual has no self-conscious recollection of such an event and that he cannot be held responsible for an act of which he is not self-conscious and cannot remember.

The reply to this is that upon any theory, no individual man is self-conscious of and remembers the first act of sin. Neither Pelagianism nor Semipelagianism, neither Socinianism nor Arminianism, has any advantage in this respect over Augustinianism and Calvinism. Neither does creationism have any advantage over traducianism. Upon any theory that recognizes the fact of sin in man, the first act of sin is not observed by self-consciousness at the time of its occurrence. No man remembers the time when he was innocent and the particular first act by which he became guilty before God.

Guilt is caused by self-determination, not by self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is not action, but vision; and it is action, not the sight of an action that constitutes crime. A man is wrongly inclining all the time to self and the creature, but he is not self-conscious all the time that he is wrongly inclining. If it be said that he might become self-conscious that he is so inclining, this does not prove that such a self-consciousness is necessary in order to responsibility for the wrong inclining. Even if he does not become self-conscious of his wrong inclining (as he may not for days and weeks), this does not destroy the fact that he is so inclining. It is the inclining, not the self-consciousness of inclining, which constitutes the free action of his will; and it is this free action which constitutes the sin and guilt. This is true also of the momentary volition, as well as of the abiding inclination. If a man commits a murder, it is not necessary that at the time when he stabs his victim he should have that clear apprehension of the enormity of the act which he subsequently has in order to be chargeable with murder. Sins of thoughtlessness are as truly sinful as deliberate sins (Lev. 5:17–18; Luke 12:48). Men generally are not self-conscious of the "secret sins" (Ps. 19:12; 90:8) of feeling and desire which they are committing inwardly all the time. The purpose of preaching the law is to produce the self-consciousness of sin. The "darkness" in which, according to St. Paul (Eph. 4:18), men "walk" is the thoughtless unconsciousness in which they live and act. It is a proverb that man sins more the less that God and sin are in his thoughts. The clearness of the self-consciousness is not the measure of the intensity of the self-determination. The two may be in inverse proportion. The will may be vehemently resolute and determined to a particular end, and yet the understanding be very blind to the will's activity. It is frequently the case that great strength and energy in voluntariness are accompanied with great obtuseness and stupidity in moral perception. The most wicked and devilish men are oftentimes the most apathetic and hardened of men. The will is awake and full of force, but the conscience is asleep. When the sinner is convicted by the truth and Spirit of God, he does not excuse or extenuate his guilt on the ground of his past unconsciousness in sin. Even the heathen, when convinced of the abominations of idolatry and of selfish lust in its varied forms, do not plead "the ignorance that was in them because of the blindness of their hearts" in excuse for having "given themselves over to work all uncleanness with greediness" (Eph. 4:17).

It is on this ground that Samuel Hopkins contends that infants are moral agents:

Many have supposed that none of mankind are capable of sin or moral agency before they can distinguish between right and wrong. But this wants proof which has never yet been produced. And it appears to be contrary to divine revelation. Persons may be moral agents and sin without knowing what the law of God is or of what nature their exercises are and while they have no consciousness. (Works 1.233)

Hamilton (ed. Bowen, 13–14) contends that there are agencies of the soul deeper than self-consciousness. Pascal, in the fourth of his Provincial Letters, shows the consequences of the position of the Jesuit that "nothing is voluntary but what is accompanied with deliberation and clear consciousness of the nature of the act."

There was, comparatively, more self-consciousness attending the first sin for the posterity, if it was committed by them in Adam, than can be found upon any other theory. The first sin of every man must have been committed either (a) in Adam, (b) in the womb, or (c) in infancy. We cannot conceive of any relation to or connection with self-consciousness in the last two cases. We can in the first, for the individuals Adam and Eve were self-conscious. So far as they were concerned, the first sin was a very deliberate and intensely willful act. The human species existing in them at that time acted in their act and sinned in their sin, similarly as the hand or eye acts and sins in the murderous or lustful act of the individual soul. The hand or the eye has no separate self-consciousness of its own, parallel with the soul's self-consciousness. Taken by itself, it has no consciousness at all. But its union and oneness with the self-conscious soul in the personal union of soul and body affords all the self-consciousness that is possible in the case. The hand is coagent with the soul and hence is particeps criminis and has a common guilt with the soul.

In like manner, the psychico-physical human nature existing in Adam and Eve had no separate self-consciousness parallel with that of Adam and Eve. Unlike the visible hand or eye, it was an invisible substance or nature capable of being transformed into myriads of self-conscious individuals; but while in Adam and not yet distributed and individualized, it had no distinct self-consciousness of its own, any more than the hand or eye in the supposed case. But existing, and acting in and with these self-conscious individuals, it participated in their self-determination and is chargeable with their sin, as the hand, and eye, and whole body is chargeable with the sin of the individual man. As in the instance of the individual unity, everything that constitutes it, body as well as soul, is active and responsible for all that is done by this unity, so in the instance of the specific unity: everything that constitutes it, namely, Adam and the human nature in him, is active and responsible for all that is done by this unity.

Original Sin as a Corruption of Nature

The second part of "the sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell" consists in "the want of original righteousness and the corruption of the whole nature." This part of human sinfulness stands to the first in the relation of effect to cause. Human nature in Adam and Eve inclined from holiness to sin, and as a consequence that nature became destitute of its original righteousness and morally corrupt.

It is easy to see how this negative destitution of righteousness and positive inclination to evil, with all the moral corruption attending it, should be imputed as guilt, provided it be conceded that the first sin is really committed and righteously imputed. If it is just to impute the cause, it is certainly just to impute the effect. But, on the contrary, it is impossible to see why the corruption of nature should be imputed as sin if the first sin is not. It is improper to impute the effect when the cause cannot be imputed.

It is here that the illogical character of the theory of mediate imputation is apparent. This was first advanced by Placaeus in 1640. To relieve, as he supposed, the Calvinistic doctrine of original sin of some of its difficulties, he maintained that the corruption of nature which is inherited from Adam is chargeable upon each individual as sin and guilt, but the act of transgressing the probationary statute given in Eden is not chargeable. This is to be imputed only to Adam and Eve as individuals. A man is guilty and punishable for his evil heart, but not for Adam's first sin. His own personal corruption is imputable, because it is personal; but the act of another person is not imputable, because it is another's act. Placaeus would impute Adam's sin as a state, but not as an act; the "corruption of nature," but not the "guilt of the first sin" in the Westminster formula.

This theory made a greater difficulty than it relieved. The corruption of nature, according to Placaeus himself, is the effect of Adam's first sin. Why should the effect be imputed and not the cause? Such a kind of imputation looked unreasonable and, as the Helvetic Consensus Formula says, "imperiled the whole doctrine of original sin." It would be difficult to retain the imputation of the corruption of nature by this method; and both the first sin and corruption would cease to be imputed.

The Synod of Charenton in 1644 condemned the view of Placaeus and also charged him with denying the imputation of Adam's sin. He objected to this, saying that he did not deny the imputation of Adam's sin altogether, but only when stated in a certain manner:

For in these words either the view expounded was not Placaeus's or it was badly stated. For he never simply denied the imputation of Adam's first sin and never wished to deny it. Since he would affirm a certain kind of imputation of the first sin and deny another kind, his view is not represented if he is said to deny—simply and without offering any distinction—the imputation of Adam's first sin. (Placaeus, Concerning Imputation 1.3)

The criticism of Turretin (9.9.5) upon this is as follows:

To break the force of the statement of the Synod of Charenton, Placaeus distinguished between immediate or antecedent imputation and between mediate or consequent imputation. The former he calls that imputation by which the first act of Adam was imputed immediately to all his posterity, Christ only excepted, and antecedently to any inherent corruption. The latter, he calls that imputation which follows upon seeing in the posterity that hereditary corruption derived to them from Adam and which is brought about by it as the means or medium.

The first "immediate" imputation Placaeus rejects, the second "mediate" imputation he accepts; and upon this ground contends that he does not reject the imputation of Adam's sin absolutely and without qualification.

But, as Turretin proceeds to say:

This distinction does in fact do away with the imputation of Adam's sin altogether. For if the sin of Adam is imputed to us only in this mediate manner, according to which we are constituted guilty before God and made liable to penalty, on account of a hereditary corruption which we derive from Adam, there is no real and proper imputation of Adam's sin, but only of inherent corruption. This the synod intended to prevent and proscribe by distinguishing original sin into two parts, namely, inherent corruption and imputation proper—a thing that could not be done, if imputation cannot be except upon the ground of a foregoing corruption of nature. For it is one thing to be exposed to the wrath of God on account of inherent and hereditary corruption and quite another thing to be exposed to this wrath on account of Adam's first act of sin.

The phrase original sin in Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 18 comprises both the first sin and the corruption of nature: Adam's sin both as an act and a resulting state of the will. Edwards (Original Sin, introduction) remarks that original sin "is vulgarly understood in that latitude as to include not only the depravity of nature, but the imputation of Adam's first sin." The whole truth of the doctrine of original sin includes the imputation of both the first sin and the ensuing corruption. The first sin of Adam and his posterity is immediately imputed to them as sin, antecedently, in the order of nature, to inherent corruption, because it was their voluntary act. And then the resulting inherent corruption is imputed as sin; not, however, as in Placaeus's theory, through itself as the medium of the imputation, but through the medium of the first sin, because this was the cause of it. Both the cause and the effect, both the first sin and the corruption caused by it, are imputed to Adam and his posterity.

The phrase original sin is sometimes employed to denote only the corruption of nature in distinction from the sins of act that proceed from it. In this use of the term, original sin is equivalent to the scriptural phrases "evil treasure of the heart" (Mark 12:35), "corrupt tree" (12:33), "heart from which proceed evil thoughts" (7:21), "stony heart" (Ezek. 11:19), "carnal mind" (Rom. 8:7), "flesh" (8:4), among others.

It is also equivalent to the theological phrases corrupt nature, sinful inclination, evil disposition, and apostate will. When the term nature is applied to sin, it does not denote nature in the primary but the secondary sense. In the primary sense, nature denotes a substance and one that is created by God. In this sense, Augustine denies that sin is nature and asserts that it is intentio (Shedd, History of Doctrine 2.82; Theological Essays, 220). Howe (Oracles 2.24) remarks that "that evil heart, that nature, not as it is nature but as it is depraved nature, is now transmitted." When "nature" signifies created substance, it is improper to call sin a nature. Aristotle (Politics 1.2) says: "What every being is in its perfect state, that certainly is the nature of that being, whether it be a man, a horse, or a house." Sin is imperfection and therefore not "nature" in this sense. But there is a secondary meaning of the word. In this use of it, "nature" denotes "natural inclination" or "innate disposition." In this sense, sin is a "nature," and the adjective natural is applicable to the corruption of sin. In the same sense, holiness is called a "nature" in 2 Pet. 1:4. Believers are "partakers of a divine nature" by being regenerated and coming to possess a holy disposition or inclination: "It is true that sin is a nature, but then it is a second nature, a state of degeneration" (Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine §107). Calvin (on Eph. 2:3) says: "Since God is the author of nature, how comes it that no blame attaches to God if we are lost by nature? I answer, there is a twofold nature: The one produced by God and the other is corruption of it. We are not born such as Adam was at first created" (see Formula of Concord 1.12; Calvin 2.2.12).

Viewed as natural corruption, original sin may be considered with respect to the understanding. It is blindness: "a light to open blind eyes" (Isa. 42:7); "recovering of sight to the blind" (Luke 4:18); "know not that you are blind" (Rev. 3:17); "the god of this world has blinded their minds" (2 Cor. 4:4). Many texts speak of regeneration as "enlightening" (2 Cor. 4:6; Eph. 5:14; 1 Thess. 5:5; Ps. 97:11). And many texts call sin "darkness" (Prov. 4:19; Isa. 60:2; Eph. 5:11; Col. 1:13; 1 John 2:11; 1 Thess. 5:4; Eph. 4:18; Rom. 1:28").

Sin blinds and darkens the understanding by destroying the consciousness of divine things. For example, the soul destitute of love to God is no longer conscious of love, of reverence is no longer conscious of reverence, etc. Its knowledge of such affections, therefore, is from hearsay, like that which a blind man has of colors or a deaf man of sound. God, the object of these affections, is of course unknown for the same reason. The spiritual discernment spoken of in 1 Cor. 2:6 is the immediate consciousness of a renewed man. It is experimental knowledge. Sin is described in Scripture as voluntary ignorance: "This they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old" (2 Pet. 3:5). Christ says to the Jews: "If I had not come and spoken unto them they had not had sin"—the sin of "not knowing him that sent me" (John 15:21–22). But the ignorance in this case was a willing ignorance. They desired to be ignorant.

Another effect of original sin upon the understanding as including the conscience is insensibility. It does not render conscience extinct, but it stupefies it: "having cauterized their own conscience" (1 Tim. 4:2). A third effect is pollution: "even their reason (nous) and conscience (syneidēsis) are polluted" or stained (memiantai) (Titus 1:15); "they became vain in their reasonings" or speculations (dialogismous) (Rom. 1:21). The pollution of reason is seen in the foolish speculations of mythology. The myths of polytheism are not pure reason. The pollution of conscience is seen in remorse. The testifying faculty is spotted with guilt. It is no longer a "good conscience" (Heb. 13:18; 1 Pet. 3:16, 21; 1 Tim. 1:5, 19; Acts 23:1) or a "pure conscience" (1 Tim. 3:9: syneidēsis kathara). It is an "evil conscience" (ponēra syneidēsis): a conscience needing cleansing by atoning blood "from dead works" (Heb. 9:14). Dead works, being no fulfillment of the law, leave the conscience perturbed and unpacified.

Considered with respect to the will, original sin is (a) enmity (Rom. 8:6; James 4:4; Deut. 1:26; Job 34:37; Isa. 1:1; 30:9; 45:2; Ezek. 12:2); (b) hatred (Rom. 1:29; Ps. 89:23; 139:21; Exod. 20:5; Prov. 1:25; 5:12; John 7:7; 15:18, 23–24); (c) hardness of heart or insensibility (Exod. 7:14, 22; 2 Kings 17:14; Job 9:4; Isa. 63:17; Dan. 5:20; John 12:20; Acts 19:9; Heb. 3:8, 15; 4:7); (d) aversion (John 5:40; Rev. 2:21); (e) obstinacy (Deut. 31:27; Exod. 32:9; Ps. 75:5; Isa. 26:10; 43:4; Acts 7:51; Rom. 10:21); (f) bondage (Jer. 13:23; Mark 3:23; John 6:43–44; 8:34; Rom. 5:6; 6:20; 7:9, 14, 18, 23; 8:7–8; 9:16; 2 Pet. 2:14).

Corruption of Nature as Guilt

Original sin, considered as corruption of nature, is sin in the sense of guilt: "They condemn the Pelagians and others who deny that the flaw (vitium) of our origin is sin" (Augsburg Confession 2); "every sin, both original and actual, being a transgression of the righteous law of God does in its own nature bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God and made subject to death, temporal and eternal" (Westminster Confession 6.6); "corruption of nature does remain in those that are regenerated, and although it be through Christ pardoned and mortified, yet both itself and all the motions thereof are truly and properly sin" (Westminster Confession 6.5). Semipelagian, papal, and Arminian anthropologies differ from the Augustinian and Reformed by denying that corruption of nature is guilt. It is a physical and mental disorder leading to sin, but is not sin itself.

Corruption of nature is guilt because …

1. The Scriptures do not distinguish between sin proper and improper. Hamartia as denoting the principle of sin is exchanged with paraptōma71 denoting the act of sin and vice versa (Rom. 5:13, 15–17, 19, 21).

2. Hamartia is the equivalent of epithymia73 and sarx: "I had not known sin, except the law had said, You shall not lust" (7:7; cf. 8:3, 5).

3. The remainders of corruption in the regenerate are hated as sin by the regenerate himself (7:15) and by God, who slays them by his Spirit (8:13).

4. Evil desire is forbidden in the tenth commandment (Exod. 20:17; cf. 1 John 2:16). The tenth commandment, which the Septuagint renders ouk epithymēseis, prohibits that internal lusting which is the chief characteristic of the corrupt nature. It is also forbidden by Christ in his exposition of the seventh commandment (Matt. 5:28): "Whosoever hates his brother is a murderer" (1 John 3:15).

5. Corruption of nature is guilt because it is the inclination of the will. It is "voluntary" though not "volitionary." It is conceded that the inclination to murder is as truly culpable as the act of murder: "The thought (zimmâ) of foolishness is sin" (Prov. 24:9).

6. Corruption of nature is guilt, upon the principle that the cause must have the same predicates as its effects. If actual transgressions are truly and properly sin, then the evil heart or inclination which prompts them must be so likewise. If the stream is bitter water, the fountain must be also. If the murderer's act is guilt, then the murderer's hate is.

7. If corruption of nature or sinful disposition is not guilt, then it is an extenuation and excuse for actual transgressions. These latter are less blameworthy, if the character which prompts them and renders their avoidance more difficult is not self-determined and culpable.

8. If corruption of nature is not culpable, it is impossible to assign a reason why the dying infant needs redemption by atoning blood. Christ came "by water and blood," that is, with both expiating and sanctifying power (1 John 5:6). But if there be no guilt in natural depravity, Christ comes to the infant "by water only" and not "by blood," by sanctification and not by justification. Infant redemption implies that the infant has guilt as well as pollution. The infant has a rational soul; this soul has a will; this will is inclined; this inclination, like that of an adult, is centered on the creature instead of the Creator. This is culpable and needs pardon. It is also pollution and needs removal.

9. God forgives original sin as well as actual transgression when he bestows the "remission of sins." The "carnal mind" or the enmity of the heart is as great an offense against his excellence and honor as any particular act that issues from it. Indeed, if there be mutual goodwill between two parties, an occasional outward offense is less serious.

Says Thirlwall (Letters, 46):

Suppose two friends really loving one another, but liable now and then to quarrel. They may easily forgive the occasional offense, because their habitual disposition is one of mutual goodwill; but should the case be the reverse—hatred stifled, but occasionally venting itself by unfriendly acts—how little would it matter though they should forget the particular offense, if the enmity should continue at the bottom of the heart.

This illustrates the guilt of sin as a state of the heart toward God, and the need of its forgiveness and removal. (supplement 4.5.7.)

With the Scriptures, the theologians assert that corruption of nature is sin:

We must not only abstain from evil deeds, but even from the desire to do them. Christ commanded not only to abstain from things forbidden by the law, but even from longing after them. Our Lord forbade concupiscence itself, as well as the act of adultery. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.13)

The command not to lust condemns the beginnings of sin, that is, unruly desires and wishes, no less than overt acts. (Tertullian, Concerning Modesty)

something coveted, said, or done contrary to God's law. (Turretin 9.1.3)

sometimes denominates concupiscence infirmity, teaching that it becomes sin in cases where action or consent is added to the conception of the mind; but sometimes he denominates it sin; as when he says, "Paul gives the appellation of sin to this from which all sins proceed, that is, to carnal concupiscence." (Calvin 3.3.10)

If lust which wars against the soul (1 Pet. 2:11) be already sin (Exod. 20:17; Matt. 5:28), then must the act of sin be regarded as augmenting its degree. (Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine §111)

By the precept concerning the tree of knowledge, man was taught that God is Lord of all things and that it is unlawful even to desire, but with his leave. Man's true happiness is placed in God alone, and nothing is to be desired but with submission to him. (Witsius, Covenants 1.3.21)

The irregular pleasure proceeding from the sensualized mind, inasmuch as it is corrupt, is sin; because it ought to have been subject to reason and moves in an undue manner contrary to reason. (Hales, quoted by Davenant, Justification 2.214)

To root out the pernicious error of self-righteousness, our Lord gives the spiritual intention of the law and declares that the law had regard to the regulation of the heart with all its first motions and actings. For he asserts that the first motions of concupiscence, though not consented to, much less actually accomplished, are directly forbidden in the law. This he does in his exposition of the seventh commandment. He also declares the penalty of the law upon the least sin to be hellfire, in his assertion of causeless anger to be forbidden in the sixth commandment. (Owen, Justification, 17)

Have we felt any evil desire in our heart? we are already guilty of concupiscence and are become at once transgressors of the law; because the Lord forbids us not only to plan and attempt anything that would prove detrimental to another, but even to be stimulated and agitated with concupiscence. The curse of God always rests on the transgression of the law. We have no reason, therefore, to exempt even the most trivial emotions of concupiscence from the sentence of death. (Calvin 2.8.58)

The law says, "Do not lust." And so, even if you do not give assent to the lust which inflames you, this very impulse of your flesh is sin nevertheless. (Bullinger)

Original Sin as Voluntary Inclination

The position that original sin is voluntary inclination has been maintained in anthropology from the beginning of speculation upon the subject. Augustine argues as follows with Julian: "Says Julian, 'If sin is from will, then it is an evil will that produces sin; but if from nature, then an evil nature produces sin.' I quickly reply that sin is from will. Then he asks 'whether original sin is also from will.' I answer, certainly, original sin also, because this was transmitted from the will of the first man" (Concerning Marriages 2.28.2). Turretin defines sin as "an inclination, action, or omission opposing God's law" (9.1.3). Ursinus, speaking of corruption of nature in infants, says that "infants want not the faculty of will, and though in act they do not will sin, yet they will it by inclination" (Christian Religion, Original Sin Q. 7). Rivetus asserts that "concupiscence is a voluntary inclination" (Explication of the Decalogue, v. 15). William of Auxerre, quoted by Davenant (Justification 2.214), asserts that "the movement of wrong desire in man is a voluntary act, and it is sin, even when it moves before the reason has had time to exercise its judgment." Says Charnock (Holiness of God, 476), "There is no sin but is in some sort voluntary; voluntary in the root or voluntary in the branch; voluntary by an immediate act of the will or voluntary by a general or natural inclination of the will. That is not a crime, to which a man is violenced without any concurrence of the faculties of the soul to that act." Says Owen (Vindication of the Gospel, 6): "Original sin, as peccatum originans, was voluntary in Adam; and as it is originatum82 in us is in our wills habitually and not against them, in any actings of it or them. The effects of it, in the coining of sin and in the thoughts of men's hearts, are all voluntary" (cf. Indwelling Sin 6.12). Says Howe (Oracles 2.24):

We must understand that an evil inclination or a depraved nature is that which does first violate the law of God; and so that it is not infelicity only to be ill inclined, but it is sin: sin in the highest and most eminent sense thereof. It is the habitual frame and bent of the soul which the law of God does in the first place direct. So that the empoisoned nature of man, the malignity of the heart and soul, is that which makes the first and principal breach upon the law of God.

It must be remembered that sin in its entire history is inclination and self-determination. While it is true that the first sin of Adam is the fall of the human race and decides its eternal destiny apart from redemption, yet it must not be supposed that after the first act of Adam, all self-determination ceases. Original sin as corruption of nature in each individual is only the continuation of the first inclining away from God. The self-determination of the human will from God to the creature, as an ultimate end, did not stop short with the act in Eden, but goes right onward in every individual of Adam's posterity, until regeneration reverses it. As progressive sanctification is the continuation of that holy self-determination of the human will which begins in its regeneration by the Holy Spirit, so the progressive depravation of the natural man is the continuation of that sinful self-determination of the human will which began in Adam's transgression.

In connection with the doctrine that the corruption of nature is the same as the free inclination of the will, a position of Edwards is sometimes misunderstood and misapplied. Edwards (Will 4.1) asserts that "the virtuousness or viciousness of a disposition consists not in the origin or cause of it, but in the nature of it." This position cannot be understood without taking into view the error which Edwards was combating. He was opposing the view of Arminian writers Taylor, Whitby, and others that a disposition or inclination cannot be chargeable as guilt unless it has been originated by a volitionary act preceding it. Their doctrine of the will implied that inclination can be produced by volition, and must be in order to responsibility for the inclination. This Edwards denies: "It is agreeable to the natural notions of mankind that moral evil, with its desert of dislike and abhorrence, and all its other ill deservings, consists in a certain deformity in the nature of certain dispositions of the heart and acts of the will and not in the deformity of something else, diverse from the very thing itself which deserves abhorrence, supposed to be the cause of it." That is to say, the disposition of the heart or inclination of the will is in its own quality and nature an evil disposition and does not get its evil quality from "something else"—namely, a volition that went before it and caused it. If a man is inclined or disposed to sin, this inclination or disposition is itself sin. It is not necessary that he should, previously to the inclining, resolve to incline or choose to incline in order that the inclination should be sinful. The inclining itself is sin and guilt:

Thus, for instance, ingratitude is hateful and worthy of dispraise, according to common sense, not because something as bad or worse than ingratitude was the cause that produced it; but because it is hateful in itself by its own inherent deformity. So the love of virtue is amiable and worthy of praise, not merely because something else went before this love of virtue in our minds which caused it to take place there (for instance our own choice—we chose to love virtue and by some method or other wrought ourselves into the love of it), but because of the amiableness and condecency of such a disposition and inclination of the heart.

In other words, Edwards here teaches that a man does not choose to incline, but he inclines; he does not choose to love, but he loves. The first thing in the order is not a volition and then after this a disposition or inclination; but the first thing is a disposition or inclination and then a volition.

Now it is only with reference to the relation of a volition to a disposition or inclination that Edwards lays down the position that "the virtuousness or viciousness of a disposition lies not in the origin of it, but in the nature of it." He does not carry the position any further than this. When the volition is left out of the account and only the disposition or inclination is considered, Edwards teaches that this must have a free origin or else it is not sin. The whole purpose of his celebrated argument to prove that Adam and his posterity were one agent in the origin of sin is to show how the sinful disposition is the working of spontaneity or unforced inclination. When it comes to that act of will by which man inclines to sin, Edwards affirms that man is the self-moved and guilty actor and author of it. In his treatise on the will (4.1), he remarks as follows:

If any shall still object and say: Why is it not necessary that the cause should be considered in order to determine whether anything be worthy of blame or praise? Is it agreeable to reason and common sense that a man is to be praised or blamed for that which he is not the cause or author of and has no hand in? I answer, such phrases as "being the cause," "being the author," "having a hand in," and the like are ambiguous. They are most vulgarly understood for being the designing voluntary cause or cause by antecedent choice: and it is most certain that men are not in this sense the causes or authors of the first act of their wills, in any case; as certain as anything is or ever can be; for nothing can be more certain than that a thing is not before it is nor a thing of the same kind before the first thing of that kind; and so no choice before the first choice. As, however, the phrase being the author may be understood, not of being the producer by an antecedent act of will, but as a person may be said to be the author of the act of the will itself by his being the immediate agent or the being that is acting or in the exercise of that act; if the phrase being the author is used to signify this, then doubtless common sense requires men's being the authors of their own acts of will in order to their being esteemed worthy of praise or dispraise on account of them. And common sense teaches that they must be the authors of external actions in the former sense, namely, their being the causes of them by an act of will or choice, in order to their being justly blamed or praised; but it teaches no such thing in respect to the internal acts of will themselves.

In this last remark, Edwards concedes that a volition precedes an outward act and is the cause of it. The Arminian position in respect to volitionary action is true up to this point. An external act is not sinful or holy unless preceded by a volition. But with reference to that internal action of the will which is denominated its inclination or disposition, he holds that the Arminian position is not true. There is no need of a volition to precede this in order to make it sinful or holy; but it is so in its own nature, because it is the spontaneity of the man, because it is the action of "the immediate agent or the being that is acting or in the exercise of the act."

When the question "is man the responsible author of his sinful inclination not by an antecedent volition to incline but by a present actual inclining?" is asked, Edwards answers in the affirmative:

As a person may be said to be the author of the act of the will itself, not by an antecedent act of will, but by his being the immediate agent or the being that is acting or in the exercise of that act; if the phrase being the author is used to signify this, then, doubtless, common sense requires men's being the authors of their own acts of will in order to their being esteemed worthy of praise or dispraise on account of them.

Edwards's objection to the doctrine that the will chooses to choose or chooses its choices—namely, that it supposes "a choice before the first choice" and that this is as absurd as that "a thing is before it is" or that there is "a thing of the same kind before the first thing of the same kind"—implies that there is such a thing as a "first choice." But since he employed the term choice indiscriminately to include all the action of the will, the first choice with him meant an inclination or disposition of the will, not a volition (proper). There is no action of the will that precedes its inclination or disposition. Consequently, this is the primary action, the "first choice" of the will. The other action of the will in volitions (proper) is second choice. This "first choice" of the will in spontaneously inclining Edwards denominates a "leading act," an "original act," the "first determining act" (Will 3.4). The word act in this instance means activity or self-motion or self-determination, not in the Arminian sense of self-determination, which is a volition coupled with power to the contrary and is really indetermination not self-determination, but self-determination in the Calvinistic sense of spontaneously inclining or in the sense of "the immediate agent or the being that is acting or in the exercise of the act," as Edwards phrases it.

Again, that Edwards held the inclination or disposition of the will to be voluntary agency is proved by his position that the inclination or disposition is an object either of command or of prohibition. A man is commanded to have a holy inclination and forbidden to have a sinful one. He is so commanded when he is commanded to love God with all his heart. Love is inclination. He is prohibited from having a sinful inclination when he is prohibited from lust in any form. The tenth commandment prohibits a sinful inclination. But commands and prohibitions are addressed to the will and require or forbid something that is truly voluntary. The following is the phraseology of Edwards upon this point: "The will itself, and not only those actions which are the effects of the will, is the proper object of precept or command. That is, such or such a state or act of men's wills is in many cases properly required of them by command; and not merely those alterations in the state of their bodies or minds only that are consequences of volition." Again he remarks: "The will itself may be required, and the being of a goodwill is the most proper, direct, and immediate subject of command" (Will 3.4; 4.13).

It is important to notice by reference to the connection in what sense Edwards uses the term choice or volition. Sometimes the term denotes volition in distinction from inclination; sometimes it denotes inclination considered as voluntary agency. Had he appropriated the terms choice and volition to only one form of the will's activity, he would have been less liable to misapprehension. The charge of fatalism urged by some against Edwards arises from a failure to observe, that while Edwards taught that volitions necessarily agree with the inclination and have no power over it, he also taught that the inclination itself is free not necessitated agency. In the instance of a holy inclination, it was either created or recreated by God. In the instance of a sinful inclination, it was self-originated in the fall of Adam. The inclination of the will is free spontaneity in both instances. In the former, it results from God working in the will to will; in the latter, it is the will in its solitary self-motion.

The dictum of Edwards to which we have referred is misapplied, sometimes, by writers whose view of sin and the will is substantially that of Edwards. They agree that a man is responsible for his sinful volitions, because they issue from his sinful inclination; but when asked why a man is responsible for his sinful inclination, instead of answering that this had a free and self-determined origin in Adam, they take refuge in the dangerous position that the sinfulness of an inclination does not depend upon its origin but upon its nature and that it is of no consequence how it originated: "Malignity is evil, and love is good, whether concreated, innate, acquired, or infused. A malignant being is a sinful being, if endowed with reason, whether he was so made or so born" (Hodge, Theology 2.808). In this statement, holiness and sin are made to hold precisely the same relation to God and the human will, when in fact they hold totally different relations. All four of these adjectives will apply to "love," but only two of them to "malignity," namely, "innate" and "acquired." God creates a holy inclination or disposition whenever he creates a holy will in man or angel; and he recreates a holy inclination whenever he regenerates a sinner. Holiness is good and meritorious, "whether concreated, innate, acquired, or infused." But then it is meritorious only in a relative sense. Since God is the ultimate author of holiness in both the creation and the regeneration of the will, to him belongs the glory of it. Man is not the originating agent, when holy inclination is the instance. God works in him to will. But the case is wholly different in the instance of an evil disposition or inclination. Man is the sole author, here. The demerit here is absolute, not relative. The doctrine of created holiness is true, but not of created sin; of infused holiness, but not of infused sin. To say that God can "create" and "infuse" a malignant inclination is to contradict the explicit teaching of Scripture, which asserts that God cannot sin and that he hates sin with an infinite hatred. God cannot create and infuse what he hates and punishes. And it shocks alike the moral sentiment of the natural man and the holy reverence of the renewed man. An evil inclination may be "innate" or "acquired." But it cannot be "created" or "infused." There may be a created merit, but not a created demerit. God can create and infuse holiness, but not sin.

The testimony of Scripture and of consciousness is to this effect. When David in Ps. 51 is brought to a sense of the wickedness of his heart or sinful disposition, he never dreams of referring this disposition to God as its Creator and Author. He imputes his inborn depravity to himself. He acknowledges that the demerit of it is absolute. It is the creature's agency and the creature's only. He describes it as "innate," but not as "created" or "infused" by God. He derives it from his mother, but not from his maker. But when David rejoiced over his own holy disposition and that of the people to honor God in the erection of a temple, his utterance is very different: "Whom am I, and what is my people that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? For all things come of you, and of your own have we given you" (1 Chron. 29:14). (supplement 4.5.8.)

Because holiness can be created and infused, it does not follow that sin can be, unless it can be shown, first, that the demerit of sin is only a relative demerit, as the merit of holiness is only a relative and gracious merit; and, second, that God's creative agency can be exerted in the origination of sin in the same manner that it is in the origination of holiness, namely, by direct spiritual efficiency and operation.

When it is said that "malignity is evil," it is meant of course that it is morally evil, that is, damnable and punishable. The punishableness of it is what constitutes it evil. It is not evil in the sense that poverty or sickness are evils. To say, therefore, that such a form of evil as sin can be understood without looking at the origin of it is self-contradictory. A malignant disposition is morally evil, that is, damnable and punishable, only in case it is guilt. If it is misfortune, it is not moral evil at all. If therefore it is not the product of the human will solely, but the product of God working in the human will, if it is "created" and "infused," it is certainly neither damnable nor punishable. Auctor mali non ultor mali. It is no answer to say that a holy disposition is commendable and rewardable, and yet this is created and infused. The merit in this case, we repeat, is gracious and pactional and does not rest upon any absolute and primary obligation in God to reward. God in this case rewards his own grace and his own work in his creature. But the demerit of a sinful disposition is absolute, and its reward necessary, that is, resting upon an absolute and primary obligation in God as just to punish sin. God in this case does not punish his own cooperating agency in a creature's will or visit with judicial infliction his own work.

Thus it appears that the "nature" of man's sinful inclination or disposition cannot be determined except by knowing its "origin." If it originates in one way, it is not sin; if in another, it is sin. Suppose that a judge should say to a jury: "You are not to look at the origin of this act of killing, but only at the nature of it; killing a man is killing a man, whatever may be the source from which the act originated." The reply would be that it is impossible to determine the nature of the act in this instance without tracing it to its origin. Killing is of the nature of murder, only in case it originates in a murderous inclination and purpose. The nature depends upon the origin. In like manner, it is impossible to decide that a particular human disposition or inclination is of a culpable and damnable nature until it has been decided whether God or man is the author of it. The very epithet original applied to Adam's first sin implies that its origin is a feature that is vital to the understanding of it, that its nature cannot be determined but by examining its first source. The term original when applied to sin implies that it originates in man. But the very same term when applied to righteousness implies that it originates in God: "In all agency, whether of good or evil, much is wont to be attributed to this: who was first in it? In point of good, the blessed God has no competitor; he is the undoubted first fountain of all good and is therefore acknowledged the supreme good. In point of evil (namely, moral) there is none prior to the devil, who is therefore eminently called the evil or wicked one" (Howe, Living Temple 2.8).

Original sin is to be distinguished from indwelling sin. The latter is the remainder of original sin in the regenerate. Its workings are described in Rom. 7:14–8:27 (Shedd, Commentary in loco). It is not, like original sin, a dominant and increasing principle in the believer, but a subjugated and diminishing one. Indwelling sin is the minuendo movement of sin. "It has a dying fall." Original sin is the crescendo movement:

Original sin does not remain in the same manner after regeneration as it remained before; for there are two remarkable differences. In the unregenerate, it occupies all the faculties of the soul peaceably and rules in their mind, will, and affections; but in the regenerate, it neither dwells peaceably, because grace from above is infused into them, which daily opposes this disease, and more and more expels it from every faculty of the soul; nor does it rule over them, because grace prevailing and predominating restrains it and sends it as it were under the yoke. The other difference is that in the unregenerate it has the guilt of eternal death annexed to it; but in the regenerate it is absolved from this fruit, for the sake of Christ the mediator. (Davenant, Justification, 15)

Says Luther (Table Talk: Of Sins): "Original sin after regeneration is like a wound that begins to heal; though it be a wound, yet it is in course of healing, though it still runs and is sore. So, original sin remains in Christians until they die, yet itself is mortified and continually dying. Its head is crushed to pieces, so that it cannot condemn us." Indwelling sin is denominated "the law in (not of) the members" (Rom. 7:23); original sin is denominated "the law of sin and death" (8:2). (supplement 4.5.9.)

Original Sin and Moral Inability

The bondage of sin is defined in Westminster Larger Catechism 25. It describes the corruption of nature, called original sin in distinction from actual transgression, as that corruption "whereby man is utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all that is spiritually good." The Westminster Confession describes this corruption as that "whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil." The creeds of the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches are equally explicit upon this point. For the scriptural proof, see p. 502.

This introduces the subject of the inability to good of the apostate will, respecting which the following particulars are to be noted: (a) the inability relates to spiritual good and (b) the inability is self-caused and voluntary.

In the Westminster statement, the inability and opposition of the will relates to all that is "spiritually good." Spiritual good is holiness, and holiness is supreme love of God and equal love of man. The creed statement therefore is that apostate man, alone and of himself, is unable to love God with all his soul and his neighbor as himself. He cannot start such an affection as this in his heart. He cannot originate within his will an inclination or disposition that is "spiritually good." The inability relates to voluntary action in distinction from volitionary, to self-determination to an ultimate end in distinction from the choice of particular means.

The doctrine in question does not imply that fallen man is unable to be moral; but that he is unable to be spiritual, holy, and religious. St. Paul teaches (Rom. 2:14) that some unregenerate pagans practice morality; that they "do by nature the things contained in the law," that is, some things contained in the law (ta tou nomou), not all things.88 Their obedience is fractional and imperfect. Under the natural stimulus of conscience, they refrain more or less from vice and live more or less virtuously, as compared with others around them. But this morality is not supreme love of God and perfect obedience of his law. St. Paul denies that these virtuous heathen are spiritually good and holy when he affirms that, if tested by the law that requires supreme love of God, "every mouth must be stopped and all the world become guilty before God" (3:19); that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (3:23); and that "there is none righteous, no, not one" (3:10).

Again, this inability and opposition to all that is "spiritually" good does not imply that fallen man is destitute of certain natural and instinctive affections that are attractive and beneficent. First in the list are family affections. The love of the parent for the child, of the children for the parents, of brothers and sisters for each other, is an amiable sentiment and oftentimes leads to great self-sacrifice. But the self-sacrifice is for the brother or sister, not for God. Family affection may and often does exist without any supreme love of God. It may and often does lead to disobedience of God. The workings of natural affection must be subordinated to the claims of Christ in order to become religious affection or "spiritually good": "He that loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me" (Matt. 10:37). When the two come in conflict, the instinctive human affection if allowed sway is positively idolatrous and irreligious.

Second are social affections. Man is instinctively interested in his fellowman and performs many acts of self-sacrifice and generosity toward him. The sailor will share his last crust with his fellow sailor; the fireman will risk his own life for a fellow creature whom he never saw before and will never see again. But both actions may be performed, and often have been, by one who takes the name of God in vain and breaks every other commandment of the Decalogue whenever he is tempted to it. The self-sacrifice in this instance, also, is for man, not for God. The act in this case is one of gallantry or courage, and the common sense of man never denominates it a spiritual and holy act. Men call it "noble" and reward it by some token of admiration: a silver cup or a purse of money. They would not think of so rewarding a spiritual or holy act, like that of the martyr who dies for his faith in Christ or of the missionary who lays his bones among the savages to whom he has preached the gospel.

Third are civil affections. Man is by his constitution a political animal, as Aristotle denominates him. He is interested in the nation and country to which he belongs by reason of his birth. This patriotic feeling, like social and family affections, rises up instinctively and uniformly in every man, the unregenerate as well as regenerate. This, too, like the others, is not spiritual and holy in its nature. The most intense patriotism may be accompanied with atheism and unbelief and immorality. Such patriotism is expressed in the sentiment: "My country—right or wrong."

Fourth, the esthetic feeling is not spiritual or religious. A love for the beautiful in art has nothing of holy virtue in it: "Who will affirm that a disposition to approve of the harmony of good music or the beauty of a square or equilateral triangle is the same with true holiness or a truly virtuous disposition of mind?" (Edwards, Nature of Virtue). Good taste is not piety and religion. A refined voluptuary is oftentimes a good judge in fine art; and even a coarse sensualist may be. Turner, one of the first painters that England has produced, was an example of the latter. Good taste may be spiritualized and elevated by being associated with and subordinated to a higher affection. But until this is done, it is of the earth earthly. It terminates only on that which is finite and temporal; and anything that terminates solely upon earth and time is unspiritual and unreligious. The same is true of the love of literature and science. Human discipline and culture is not holiness of heart and spirituality of mind.

In all these instances, we have to do with a portion of man's constitution that is outside of the voluntary nature. We are concerned with instinct, using the term in a wide sense, not with will. In its narrow and common signification, instinct signifies only the impulse of animal nature in brutes. But it may be used to denote all the constitutional impulses of human nature. Man did not lose esthetic impulse and feeling by the apostasy of his will; neither did he lose family, social, or civil affections. When he inclined away from God he did not incline away from art, science, the family-state, society, government, and country. His instinctive and constitutional interest in all these objects continued after the apostasy. His will was revolutionized, but not his instinctive nature. His love of God was gone, but not his love of family, country, beauty. Man continued to take pleasure in finite objects and relations, but lost delight in infinite and eternal objects and relations.

The foundation of all these affections is natural instinct, not will. They are constitutional, not voluntary; physical, not moral. Their source and basis is physical, using the term etymologically and broadly, to denote that which belongs to the physis or created nature of man. The family affection is founded in blood and lineage. A father does not love and toil for another man's son. The patriotic affection springs from flesh and birth. An Englishman will not lay down his life for a Frenchman. Aristotle notices this. He founds the state upon the family, and the family he founds upon the sexual relation and affection, which manifests itself "not through voluntary choice, but by that natural impulse which acts both in plants and animals, namely, the desire of leaving behind them others like themselves" (Politics 1.2). The esthetic feeling, also, is founded in the created constitutional nature, but in the mental not the animal side of it. It does not depend, like family and patriotic affection, on affinity in blood and birth.

There is nothing voluntary in the love of a parent for his child, in the love of a citizen for his country, in the love of the artist for beauty. They are not the inclination of the will. This is proved by the fact that the apostasy of the will does not radically change them. If they belonged to the will, they would be converted into their contraries when the will is. When man began to be destitute of love to God, he would begin to be destitute of love for his family and his nation. In becoming an enemy of God and holiness, he would become an enemy of his family, society, culture, and art. In becoming disinclined and averse toward the Creator, he would become disinclined and averse toward these forms of the creature also.

In the Westminster statement, the disability or inability is connected with the disposition and inclination of the will. Man is "indisposed to all spiritual good and inclined to all evil." It follows from this that the cause and seat of the inability in question is in the action and state of the voluntary faculty. It is moral or willing inability: "For the will is a slave to sin, not unwillingly but willingly. For indeed, the 'will' (voluntas) is not called the 'unwill' (noluntas)" (Second Helvetic Confession 9).

In denominating it "moral" inability, it is not meant that it arises merely from habit or that it is not "natural" in any sense of the word nature. A man is sometimes said to be morally unable to do a thing, when it is very difficult for him to do it by reason of an acquired habit, but not really impossible. This is not the sense of the word moral when applied to the sinner's inability to holiness. He is really and in the full sense of the word impotent. And the cause of this impotence is not a habit of doing evil which he has formed in his individual life, but a natural disposition which he has inherited from Adam. The term moral, therefore, when applied to human inability denotes that it is voluntary in distinction from created. Man's impotence to good does not arise from the agency of God in creation but from the agency of man in apostasy.

Whether, therefore, it can ever be called "natural" inability will depend upon the meaning given to the term nature. (a) If nature means that which is created by God, there is no natural inability to good in fallen man. But if nature means "natural disposition" or "natural inclination," there is a "natural" inability to good in fallen man. (b) Again, "natural" sometimes means something which is born with man in distinction from that which he acquires after birth, something in man at birth, yet not caused by birth. In this sense, man's inability to good is "natural." It is innate inability. The Scriptures sometimes employ the word in this sense: "The natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them" (1 Cor. 2:14); "and were by nature (physei; i.e., by birth) children of wrath" (Eph. 2:3); "conceived in sin and shaped in iniquity" (Ps. 51:5). In this last passage, "conceived" is not synonymous with "created" and must be carefully distinguished from it. So, also, in Rom. 9:11: "The children being not yet born" does not mean "the children being not yet created." As opposed, therefore, to what is natural in the sense of created by God, man's inability is moral, not natural; but as opposed to what is moral in the sense of acquired by habit, man's inability is natural. When "natural" means "innate," we assert that inability is "natural." When "natural" means "created," we assert that inability is "moral," that is, voluntary. (supplement 4.5.10.)

Owing to this ambiguity in the signification of the terms natural and moral, the elder Calvinistic theologians did not use either term exclusively to denote the sinner's inability to good. Sometimes they employ one and sometimes the other and explain their meaning. The creeds of the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches frequently use the word natural and assert entire inability with great decision and unanimity: "When God converts a sinner, he frees him from his natural bondage under sin" (Westminster Confession 9.4). (supplement 4.5.11.)

The elder Edwards differs from the old Calvinists in two particulars: (1) in refusing to denominate the bondage of the human will "natural inability" and (2) in denying that "moral inability," by which term exclusively he designates the sinner's bondage, is "inability proper." As these positions bring Edwards into contradiction with himself and open the way for a different anthropology from that contained in his writings generally and particularly in his treatise Original Sin, we direct attention to them. His view is contained in the following statements: "Natural inability alone is properly called inability" (Will in Works 2.104); "no inability which is merely moral is properly called by the name inability" (Will in Works 2.103).

In his treatise Will (in Works 2.104), Edwards defines "natural inability" as the want of the requisite mental faculties. Consequently, "natural ability" for him is the possession of the requisite mental faculties viewed apart from their moral state and condition. In so viewing them, he differs from the elder Calvinists, who regarded a mental faculty and its moral condition as inseparable. Edwards conceives of the will abstractly and separate from its inclination and, as so conceived, contends that it is "naturally able" to obey the law of God. The elder Calvinists denied that the will can be so conceived of.

"Natural inability," says Edwards, "arises from the want of natural capacity or from external hindrance." A man would be naturally unable to obey the divine law if he were destitute of any of the faculties of the human soul or if he were prevented from obeying the divine law by external force. Now, argues Edwards, inasmuch as man is not destitute of either understanding or will and is not compelled to sin by outward circumstances or by another being, it cannot be said that man is naturally unable to obey the divine law. This is true of the fallen man as well as of the unfallen.

Again, Edwards defines "natural inability" with reference to inclination or disposition. If a man is inclined to do a thing and is prevented, he is naturally unable. "We are said," he remarks (Will in Works 2.15), "to be naturally unable to do a thing when we cannot do it if we will, because what is most commonly called nature does not allow it or because of some impeding defect or obstacle that is extrinsic to the will, either in the faculty of understanding, constitution of body, or external objects."

There are two criticisms to be made upon this statement. In the first place, if "the impeding defect or obstacle in the faculty of understanding" should amount to the total absence of reason, it would not be possible for a man to have an inclination to obey. An idiot or an insane person is not a moral agent and is incapable of moral inclination. If, however, Edwards means only a deficiency in intelligence that hinders the man in acting out his inclination—as when a man, though inclined to a right course, does not know what is the best means of accomplishing it—then, in this case, the will or inclination would be taken for the deed, and this would not be an instance of inability.

In the second place, if a man is inclined to obey God, but is prevented in a particular instance from performing the outward service by sickness or by imprisonment—by "constitution of body" or by "external objects"—he is regarded by God, who always looks upon the truth or reality of things, as an obedient servant: "If there be a willing mind (prothymia), it is accepted according to what a man has and not according to what he has not" (2 Cor. 8:12). The inclination is the obedience; and Edwards supposes the inclination. This case, also, is not an instance of inability to obey the divine law. "The very willing is the doing," says Edwards himself (Will in Works 2.17).

Edwards's denial of "natural inability" is equivalent inferentially and indirectly to the assertion of "natural ability." But he nowhere formally and directly asserts "natural ability" and in one instance directly and explicitly denies and combats it:

It will follow on our author's principles that redemption is needless and Christ is dead in vain. For God has given a sufficient power and ability, in all mankind, to do all their duty and wholly to avoid sin. Yea, this author insists upon it that when men have not sufficient power to do their duty, they have no duty to do. These things fairly imply that men have in their own natural ability sufficient means to avoid sin and to be perfectly free from it, and so from all the bad consequences of it. And if the means are sufficient, then there is no need of more; and therefore there is no need of Christ's dying, in order to it. (Original Sin in Works 2.464)

The explanation is this. Edwards was combating the doctrine of Whitby and Taylor that apostate man has plenary power to keep the divine law. Consequently, he had no motive to advocate the doctrine of ability in any form. His great object in the controversy was to establish the doctrine of inability. When, however, he is pushed by his opponents with the objection, that if there be no power in fallen man to keep the divine law there is no obligation to keep it, instead of recurring, as the elder Calvinists did, to the fall in Adam and the loss of ability by a free act of will, Edwards meets the objection by asserting that fallen man is under no "natural inability" to keep the divine law and in this way implies that he has a "natural ability" to keep it. But when his definition of the "natural ability" thus indirectly attributed to fallen man is examined, it proves not to be efficient and real power, but only a quasi ability that is incapable of producing the effect required in the objection, namely, perfect obedience. In this way, he evades the objection of his opponent rather than answers it. "It is easy," he says (Will in Works 2.17), "for a man to do the thing if he will, but the very willing is the doing. Therefore, in these things to ascribe a nonperformance to the want of power or ability is not just, because the thing wanting is not a being able, but a being willing. There are faculties of mind and capacity of nature and everything sufficient but a disposition; nothing is wanting but a will." But this amounts only to the truism that the sinner is able to obey the law of God if he is inclined to obey it and avoids the point in dispute. For the real question is whether the sinner can originate the "thing that is wanting" in order to obedience, namely, "a being willing" or a disposition to obey. Edwards always and everywhere asserts that he cannot; but for the purpose of meeting the objection that if the sinner is unable to obey he is not obligated to obey, he contends that it is improper to call the inability to "be willing" or inclined an inability, because the mere existence of the faculty of will without the power to change its disposition constitutes ability. "To ascribe a nonperformance," says Edwards, "in these things, to the want of power is not just; because the thing wanting is not a being able, but a being willing. There are faculties of mind and a capacity of nature and everything sufficient but a disposition." But the absence of a disposition to obey is fatal. The presence of a disposition to obey is necessary in order to obedience. No man can obey the divine law without being willing or inclined to obey it; and Edwards asserts over and over again that the sinner is unable to incline himself to obedience. A man destitute of an inclination to obey the divine law cannot obey it merely because he has the abstract faculty of will. Volitionary acts can be performed, but since they do not proceed from a right inclination, they are not obedience. The sinner's so-called natural ability, consisting of everything except a "disposition" to obey, consists of everything necessary to efficient power except efficiency itself. The ability to obey is an ability to incline, because it is the inclination of the will that constitutes true obedience. Consequently, if inclining to good is not within the competence of the sinner, he is unable to obey.

In order, therefore, that a man destitute of an inclination to obey the divine law may be said without any equivocation to be "able" to obey, he must be able to originate such an inclination. The question that settles the question respecting "ability" and precludes all evasion is this: Has fallen man the ability to start and begin that right inclination of will which is the essence of obedience and without which it is impossible to obey the law of God? If so, he has without any ambiguity the "ability" to perfectly obey the divine law. But if not, he is unable to obey it, and this impotence is properly called inability. In answering this question, Edwards is explicit in the negative and stands upon the position of Augustine and Calvin in respect to the bondage and helplessness of the apostate will (see Edwards, Will in Works 2.101; Endless Punishment in Works 1.615–16). (supplement 4.5.12.)

Pascal (Provincial Letters 2) illustrates this equivocation respecting "natural ability" (a distinction employed by the Jesuits) in the following manner:

A man setting out on a journey is encountered by robbers who wound him and leave him half dead. He sends for aid from three neighboring surgeons. The first on examining his wounds pronounces them mortal and tells him that God alone can restore him. The second tells him that he has strength enough to carry him back to his dwelling and that he will recover by the force of his system. The patient, perplexed between the two, calls upon the third surgeon. This latter after examination sides with the second surgeon and ridicules the opinion of the first. The patient naturally supposes that the third surgeon agrees with the second; and in fact receives in reply to his inquiries an assurance that he has strength sufficient to prosecute his journey. The poor man, however, conscious of his weakness, asks on what his conclusions are founded? "Because," said he, "you still have your legs, and the legs are the natural organs for walking." "But," says the sick man, "have I strength to make use of them; for they seem to me useless, in my state of weakness?" "Certainly not," replied the doctor; "and in reality you never will walk, unless God shall send you supernatural aid to sustain and lead you." "What!" cries the patient, "have I not then in myself sufficient strength for walking?" "Very far from it," replied the surgeon. "Your opinion then is entirely opposed to the second surgeon respecting my state?" "I confess it is," he replied.

When "ability" is attributed to the human will, it is naturally understood to mean the power to use and control the energetic force of the faculty. Inclining to an ultimate end is the energy of the will, and its most important activity. But if the sinful will is unable to incline to God as the supreme end and good, it is improper to say that it has a "natural ability" to do this because "ability" properly denotes efficient power. The man in Pascal's illustration who "still had his legs" but had lost the power to use them could not properly be said to be able to walk; and the man who "still has a will" but is unable to incline it to good cannot properly be said to be able to obey. If when Edwards replied to his opponent that "it is easy for a man to do the thing if he will," he had added that "it is easy for a man to will," this would have been an unequivocal assertion of ability. But Edwards not only denied that it is easy for the sinner to will rightly, but asserted that it is impossible.

Ability must not be confounded with capability or power with capacity. The sinner is capable of loving God supremely, but not able to love him supremely; and probably this is all that is intended by many who assert "natural ability." Capacity implies possibility only, as when it is said that man has the capacity for all the diseases to which flesh is heir. But something more than capacity is requisite to warrant the assertion that he is able to have them all. The ability to have all the diseases of the human body would require the germ of them all. A man is not able to have smallpox unless he has the contagion or been inoculated with it. But he is capable of having smallpox without either contagion or inoculation. Adam before the fall had the capacity to sin rather than the ability, the possibility not the propensity. It is, therefore, more strictly proper to say that it was possible for holy Adam to sin than to say that he had the ability to sin. Accurately speaking, the ability to sin is inward sin itself; and the ability to be holy is inward holiness itself. Hence Augustine attributed to the unfallen Adam the posibilitas peccandi and denied the potestas. In moral things, the ability implies the inclination and tendency. (supplement 4.5.13.)

Consequently, in ethics and religion, moral ability is the only kind of power that is properly designated by the term ability. In reference to obedience and disobedience, holiness and sin, if there is not moral or voluntary ability, there is no ability at all. And moral or voluntary ability cannot be separated from inclination. No inclination, no ability. If inclination, then ability. A man who is able to love God supremely is inclined to love him. A man who is able to steal is inclined in his heart to theft. In common parlance we say of a bad man: "He can do anything; he can lie, he can steal." This is the same as saying: "He is a thief, he is a liar." If we say that he is capable of lying, we do not say so much as when we say he is able to lie.

"Natural ability" is, properly, only physical force. It is the power of matter, not of mind. A man has the natural ability to lift one hundred pounds. This is the power of matter, of his body. But we can think of this kind of power as not exerted and as never exerted. The man may have this species of ability and yet never lift a hundred pounds weight. In the case of natural ability, we can abstract and separate the faculty from its exercise and use. The faculty, in the instance of natural ability, is the body of the man. We say that there is in this body the ability or power to lift one hundred pounds weight. Whether this ability shall be exerted depends not upon the body but upon the man's will. But the man's body and the man's will are distinct and separate substances and faculties. We can therefore conceive of this natural or physical ability as inactive and doing nothing until a volition employs it. We can conceive of natural power or ability without any effect produced by it.

But in the instance of moral or voluntary power or ability, we cannot thus abstract and separate the faculty from its use and exercise and conceive of it as inert and producing no effect. The faculty in this case is not the body, but the will itself. But the will cannot be inactive and inert, as matter may be. It is inclined and active by its very idea and definition. There is no conceivable separation, therefore, in this instance between the faculty and its use and exercise, as there is in the instance of the body and the volition that uses the body. Moral or voluntary power is necessarily in exercise. A man may be naturally able to lift a hundred pounds and yet not do it. But a man may not be morally able to love God and yet not do it. The ability to an act in this latter case is one with the act itself. Ability to incline is inclination itself. Ability to love is love itself. Ability to hate is hatred itself.

In the instance of natural ability or physical power, the ability is in one subject, and the use or exercise of it in another subject. The natural force is in the bodily limbs, and the moral force that exerts and uses it is in the will. But in the instance of moral ability or voluntary power, there is only one subject, namely, the human will. The will is the faculty, and the inclining of the will is the use and exercise of the faculty. We cannot, therefore, conceive of the will as being inert and inactive until another agent makes it active. Neither can we conceive of the will as inactive until some act of its own makes it active. Edwards was unquestionably correct in denying that the will can be started out of indifference and inaction by its own antecedent volition. But we can conceive of this in the instance of natural or physical power. We can conceive of the body as inert and inactive until another agent than itself, namely, the soul, makes it active by an antecedent volition. In the instance of moral ability, the faculty of will and its use and exercise are inseparable. If there be a will, it is necessarily in action; it is necessarily inclined. We cannot say that it is able to incline, not yet having inclined. It can pass from one inclination to another; but it cannot exist an instant with no inclination at all. Consequently, if the will is able to do a thing, it is doing it. But in the instance of natural ability, the faculty and its exercise are separable. If there be a body, it is not necessarily exerting its physical force. In this case, we can say that it is able to do a thing and yet is not doing it.

It is ambiguous and misleading, therefore, to apply the term natural ability to a moral faculty like the will, as it confessedly would be to apply the term moral ability to a physical faculty like the human body. No one would attribute to the human body a moral ability to swim; and no one should attribute to the human will a natural ability to love or obey, because a natural ability may not be in use and exercise. Andrew Fuller (Memoir, 15) quotes from Gill the distinction between a thing "being in the power of our hand and in the power of our heart." Natural ability is the power of the hand; moral ability is the power of the heart. Referring to Descartes's distinction between the act of the will that terminates on the will itself and the act of the will that terminates on the body, natural ability would designate the latter and moral ability the former. Obedience of the divine command "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart" is the product of moral, not of natural ability.

Edwards asserts "moral inability" and defines it to be either the absence of right inclination or the presence of wrong inclination:

A man may be said to be morally unable to do a thing when he is under the influence or prevalence of a contrary inclination or has a want of inclination. Moral inability consists either in want of inclination or the strength of a contrary inclination. It may be said, in one word, that moral inability consists in the opposition or want of inclination. A man is truly morally unable to choose contrary to a present inclination. A child of great love to his parents may be unable to be willing to kill his father. (Will in Works 2.15–16, 101–2)

This is the inability meant in the Westminster statement that "man is utterly indisposed and disabled to all that is spiritually good." And this species of inability is real inability. It is not a figure of speech, but an impotence as helpless and insuperable by the subject of it, as natural inability. The substantive inability has its full and strict meaning. The adjective moral does not convert the notion of impotence into that of power, but only denotes the species of impotence. It is true that the "cannot" is a "will not," but it is equally true that the "will not" is a "cannot." The sinful will is literally unable to incline to good apart from grace.

Notwithstanding his assertion that moral inability is improperly called inability, Edwards strenuously maintains that moral inability is utter and helpless impotence. This is the self-contradiction in his theory: "By reason of the total depravity and corruption of man's nature, he is utterly unable, without divine grace, savingly to love God, believe in Christ, or do anything truly good" (Works 2.177). He also asserts the same thing in his doctrine of moral necessity: "Moral necessity may be as absolute as natural necessity—that is, the effect may be as perfectly connected with its moral cause, as a natural necessary effect is with its natural cause. When I use this distinction of moral and natural necessity, I would not be understood to suppose, that if anything comes to pass by the former kind of necessity, the nature of things is not concerned in it, as well as in the latter" (Will 1.4). Edwards means that the connection between the volition and the inclination is as necessary or as much founded in the nature of things as that between a physical effect and its physical cause. Given a wrong inclination, wrong volitions must follow. If the disposition of the will be vicious, the volitions of the will cannot be virtuous, any more than the fruit can be grapes if the root is that of the thistle.

Now in thus asserting that moral necessity is properly called necessity, Edwards is inconsistent in denying that moral inability is properly called inability. For the sinner's moral necessity of sinning is the very same thing as his moral inability to obedience. If, therefore, Edwards was willing to say that moral necessity is as real and absolute as natural necessity, he should have been willing to say that moral inability is as real and absolute as natural inability. If the term necessity is properly applicable to moral necessity, the term inability is properly applicable to moral inability. Necessity is a stronger term than inability, and it is singular that while Edwards was not afraid to employ the former in connection with voluntary action, he should have shrunk from the latter. The same general argument that proves that moral necessity, taken in its full unambiguous sense, is consistent with the freedom of the will would prove that moral inability, taken in its full unambiguous sense, is likewise consistent with it. The nature of Edwards's answer to the Arminian objection that if there is not ability in the sinful will there is no obligation resting upon it explains the inconsistency. Instead of denying, with the Calvinistic creeds generally, the Arminian premise that all inability however brought about is inconsistent with obligation, he concedes it and endeavors to show that there is ability. (supplement 4.5.14.)

Moral necessity is asserted by Augustine and Calvin. It means that necessity in the moral character of the volitions which arises from a habitus of the will, from a bias or disposition of the voluntary faculty. A holy will has a holy habitus and is thereby under a moral necessity of exerting holy volitions: "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit." Hence St. Paul denominates the spiritual man "a servant (slave) of righteousness" (Rom. 6:18). St. John asserts that "whosoever is born of God cannot sin" (1 John 3:9). A sinful will has a sinful habitus and is thereby under a moral necessity of exerting sinful volitions: "You were servants (slaves) of sin" (Rom. 6:17); "whosoever commits sin is the servant (slave) of sin" (John 8:34). A holy will is unable to disobey; and a sinful will is unable to obey.

Fatalism has been charged upon this doctrine of moral necessity, but erroneously. Were the sinful disposition of the will itself necessitated, the charge would be well founded. Were the sinful inclination the necessary effect of some antecedent act or arrangement of God, as the volition is the necessary effect of the antecedent inclination, man would not be responsible for sin. But it is not. The sinful inclination is the abiding self-determination of the human will. Its origin is due to an act of freedom in Adam; and its continuance is due to the unceasing self-determination of every individual of the posterity. Each individual man prolongs and perpetuates in himself the evil inclination of will that was started in Adam. Sinful inclination began freely in the one sin of the whole race and is continued freely in the millions of individual inclinations in the millions of individuals of the race. Had sinful inclination been created and infused by God, then as the sinful volitions are referred to the inclination as their cause, the sinful inclination must have been referred to God as its cause. The doctrine of moral necessity means only that the volitions must necessarily be like the inclination. It does not mean that the inclination itself is originated and necessitated by God.

A habitus or disposition in the will intensifies and confirms free voluntary action, instead of weakening or destroying it. For a habitus is a vehement and total self-determination. But that which promotes determination by the self of course precludes compulsion by that which is not self. Hence the bondage of the will to sinful inclination does not destroy either the voluntariness or the responsibility of the will. The enslaved will is still a self-determining faculty; the bondage of sin is a responsible and guilty bondage, because proceeding from the ego, not from God. Calvin (2.2.5) maintains this in the following manner:

Bernard subscribing to what is said by Augustine, thus expresses himself: "Among all the animals, man alone is free; and yet by the intervention of sin, he also suffers a species of violence; but from the will, not from nature, so that he is not thereby deprived of his innate liberty." For what is voluntary is also free. And a little after, Bernard says, "The will being, by I know not what corrupt and surprising means, changed for the worse is itself the author of the necessity to which it is subject; so that neither necessity, being voluntary, can excuse the will, nor the will, being fascinated (illecta), can exclude necessity." For this necessity is in some measure voluntary. Afterward he says that we are oppressed with a yoke, but no other than that of a voluntary servitude; that therefore our servitude renders us miserable and our will renders us inexcusable; because the will, when it was free, made itself the slave of sin. At length he concludes, "Thus the soul, in a certain strange and evil manner, under this kind of voluntary and free yet pernicious necessity, is both enslaved and free; enslaved by necessity, free by its will; and, what is more wonderful and more miserable, it is guilty because free; and enslaved wherein it is guilty; and so therein enslaved wherein it is free." From these passages, the reader clearly perceives that I am teaching no novel doctrine, but what was long ago advanced by Augustine, with the universal consent of pious men and which for nearly a thousand years after was confined to the cloisters of monks. But Lombard, for want of knowing how to distinguish necessity from coercion, gave rise to a pernicious error.

The moral inability of the sinner, then, is the inability to incline rightly from a wrong state of the will, to convert sinful into holy inclination. He is already sinfully inclined. This sinful inclination is moral spontaneity or self-determination to an ultimate end. From the standpoint and starting point of evil, it is impossible to incline or self-determine to God. The sinner may exert volitions and make resolutions in hope of producing another inclination, but they are failures. A holy inclination cannot be originated by this method. This is moral inability. What are the grounds of it?

The finiteness and limitation of the created will is a ground. Holy inclination, we have seen (see pp. 496–97), must be given in creation. Neither man's nor angel's will can be first created without character and from this involuntary state originate holy inclination. The beginning, therefore, of holiness must always proceed from God. It can no more be originated by the creature than the spiritual substance itself of the will can be. But if this is true of man as finite and of angel as finite, it is still more so of man as sinful. When he is already preoccupied by a sinful inclination, it would be still more impossible for him to originate a holy inclination.

The mutability of the finite will is the possibility of falling from holiness to sin, not the possibility of rising from sin to holiness. If the will of man or angel becomes evil, it is evil immutably, apart from regenerating grace. When holy, it can change its inclination by its own energy without the coagency of God. But when sinful, it cannot do this. The finite will is mutably holy, but immutably sinful, so far as its own force is concerned.

The derivative nature of finite holiness is a second ground of moral inability. Holiness is a concreated quality of man like intelligence or rationality. But concreated qualities are incapable of self-origination. We perceive immediately that man cannot be the author of his own intellectuality. He cannot be created without the ideas of space and time, of God and self, in brief, without innate ideas, and then originate them by his own power. He cannot come from the creative hand an idiot without reason and then rationalize himself. Rationality and intelligence are derived characteristics, and therefore they are beyond man's power to produce. In like manner, holiness is a derived characteristic and therefore cannot be man's product. The creature cannot do the Creator's work. It would be absurd to say that matter can be created lacking one of the necessary properties of matter, say, impenetrability, and can then originate for itself the lacking property. But it would be a like absurdity to affirm that man or angel can be created lacking one of the necessary characteristics of moral perfection, namely, holiness, and can then originate it.

This reasoning does not hold good in regard to sin. Man can be created without sin and afterward originate it himself for three reasons:

1. Because sin is not a derivative quality. Sin starts in the finite will, not in the infinite. If it were derived from God, it would not be damnable and therefore not sin.

2. Because sin is not an element in moral perfection. Everything that comes from the Creator's hand must be perfect after its kind. A created moral being must have created moral perfection. This implies holiness and excludes sin.

3. Because sin is not a primary and normal characteristic of human nature. It does not enter into the idea and ideal of man. Sin, unlike holiness, does not belong to man as man. The human will can originate sin because it is a secondary and abnormal quality. God is the author of the normal, but the creature is the originator of the abnormal. All that belongs to man as ideal and perfect must come from God; but all that belongs to man as fallen and imperfect must come from man himself. Hence man can originate sin but not holiness.

The adorableness of a self-originated holiness is a third proof of moral inability. If man or angel were the sole and ultimate author of holiness in himself, his holiness would be underived and self-subsistent, and he would deserve the glory due to such holiness. Strictly self-originated holiness is worthy of worship. But the testimony of the Christian experience is against this: "By the grace of God I am what I am" (1 Cor. 15:10). The testimony of the angelic consciousness is also against this. The seraphim cried, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts" (Isa. 6:3). The trisagion attributes absolute and original holiness only to God. The testimony of Christ is against this: "None is good but one" (Luke 18:19). If man or angel should begin a holy inclination, his merit before God and law would be absolute and not relative. This contradicts 17:10: "When you shall have done all those things that are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants." God in this case would be under an original and primary obligation to the creature.

The reflex action of sin upon the will itself is a fourth ground of moral inability. Self-determination to evil destroys self-determination to good. The voluntary faculty, like every other faculty of the soul, cannot escape the consequences of its own action. Self-determination to sin reacts upon the will and renders it unable to holiness. The slavery of the will is an effect of the will upon its self. Whosoever commits sin in and by this very voluntary act becomes the slave of sin (John 8:24). Says Augustine (Confessions 8.5):

My will the enemy held and thence had made a chain for me and bound me. For of a perverse will comes lust; and a lust yielded to becomes custom; and custom not resisted becomes necessity. By which links, as it were, joined together as in a chain, a hard bondage held me enthralled. And that new will, to serve you freely and to enjoy you, O God, which had begun to be in me, was not able to overcome my former long-established willfulness. In these spiritual things, ability is one with will, and to will is to do; and yet the thing is not done. Whence is this strange anomaly (monstrum)? The mind commands the body, and it obeys instantly; the mind commands itself and is resisted. The mind commands the hand to be moved, and such readiness is there that command is scarce distinct from obedience. The mind commands the mind, its own self, to will; and yet it does not will. It commands itself, I say, to will and would not command unless it willed; and yet what it commands is not done. But it will not entirely; therefore does it not command entirely. For it commands only so far forth as it wills. The will commands that there be a will; not another's will, but its own will. But it does not command entirely; therefore, what it commands does not take place.

Says Samuel Hopkins (Works 1.233–35):

It is certain that every degree of inclination contrary to duty, which is and must be sinful, implies and involves an equal degree of difficulty and inability to obey. For indeed, such inclination of the heart to disobey and the difficulty or inability to obey are precisely one and the same. The kind of difficulty or inability, therefore, always is great according to the strength and fixedness of the inclination to disobey; and it becomes total and absolute, when the heart is totally corrupt and wholly opposed to obedience. Nothing but the opposition of the heart or will of man to coming to Christ is or can be in the way of his coming. So long as this continues and his heart is wholly opposed to Christ, he cannot come to him; it is impossible and will continue so, until his unwillingness, his opposition to coming to Christ, be removed by a change and renovation of his heart, by divine grace, and he be willing in the day of God's power.

The excess of will to sin is the same as defect of will to holiness. The degree of intensity with which any being inclines to evil is the measure of the amount of power to good which he has thereby lost. If the intensity be total, the loss is entire. Sin is the suicidal action of the human will. To do wrong destroys the power to do right. This is illustrated in the effect of a vicious habit in diminishing a man's ability to resist temptation. But habit is the continual repetition of wrong self-decisions, every one of which reacts upon the will as a faculty and renders it less strong and energetic to good. No man can do a wrong act and be as sound in his will and as spiritually strong after it as he was before it.

Again, the totality of the depravity of the will destroys moral ability or ability to good. The whole and not a mere part of the will is determined. Consequently, when a self-determination to a final end has occurred, there is no remainder of uncommitted power in reserve, as it were, behind the existing determination, by which the direction of the will may be reversed. This total and intense determination to evil is inability to good.

The debilitating effect of self-determination upon the will itself is too often overlooked. When cause and effect are in different subjects, the impotence of the cause itself after its own action is always taken into account; but when, as in the case of a sinful inclination, cause and effect are in one and the same subject, namely, the human will, the impotence of the cause itself after its own action is not always noticed or is practically denied. If, for illustration, one man kill another man, all know that the murderer cannot restore the murdered man to life. The cause cannot undo its effect when they are in different subjects. But the same is true when a man kills himself. Here the cause and the effect are in one and the same subject. Now this is true also of the human will in reference to the sin of which it is the cause. Sin is the effect of free will as the cause; and because the will originates sin, it is assumed that the will can nullify sin, can destroy what it originated. But the effect in this instance is as much beyond the power of the cause, when once the cause has acted, as in any other instance. A man certainly cannot undo the guilt of his sin, and neither can he undo the inclination to sin.

Says the younger Edwards (Against Chauncy, 13):

A certainty that has been established by the will of man with respect to the will itself as effectually binds that will and is equally inconsistent with its liberty as if that certainty were established by any other cause. Suppose the will of any man shall establish in itself a certain and unfailing bias to any particular action or series of actions; it cannot be pretended that this fixed bias already established is any more consistent with liberty and moral agency in the man in whom the bias exists than if it had been established by any other cause. If a man were to cut off his own leg, though he might be more blamable for the act of cutting it off than he would be for the same act performed by another, yet the effect, as to his subsequent ability to walk, would be the very same.

But if man, either unfallen or fallen, cannot begin a holy inclination, how is it that he can begin an evil one? If he cannot be the ultimate and meritorious author of holiness, how can he be the ultimate and ill-deserving author of sin? Why may there be a power to the contrary downward from a holy position, but no power to the contrary upward from a sinful position? Why can man ruin, but not save himself?

Because of the difference between self-determination to holiness and self-determination to sin. The first is relative, the last is absolute self-determination. Relative self-determination is self-determination with a divine element in it; absolute self-determination is self-determination without a divine element in it. The former is self-determination under divine impulse and actuation; the latter is solitary self-determination without divine impulse and actuation. Holiness in man is divine-human: the product of God working in the creature to will and to do. Sin in man is human simply and only: the product of the finite will uninfluenced and unimpelled. Augustine, as quoted by Calvin (2.2.4), defines liberum arbitrium as "a power of reason and will by which good is chosen when grace assists and evil is chosen when grace is wanting." Aquinas, as quoted by Neander (History 4.481), says that holy "free will is not an independent causality. God works in the finite will in the way that the nature of it requires that he should; although, therefore, he changes the inclination of man to another direction, nevertheless, by his almighty power he causes that man should freely will the change which he experiences; and thus all constraint is removed. For to suppose otherwise, that the man willed not the change which is a change in his will, would be a contradiction."

The difference between the two kinds of self-determination is marked in language. The noun sin has an active verb to correspond with it; the noun holiness has none. Sin is "sinning" or "to sin"; but holiness is not "holying" or "to holy." Only the passive is employed in the latter case: "to be holy" or "to become holy." But both the active and passive are employed in the former. Man is willing in holiness; and he is willing in sin. But the willingness in the first case is complex. God works in man to will (Phil. 2:13). The willingness in the second case is simple. Man works alone. In the first instance, the human will harmonizes with the divine; in the second, it antagonizes. In the first instance, the voluntariness is recipient: "What have you that you did not receive?" (1 Cor. 4:7); "you have received the spirit of adoption" (Rom. 8:15). In the second instance, the voluntariness is originant.

The question arises whether the divine element in holy self-determination does not, in reality, destroy the self-determination. If God creates voluntary spontaneity when he creates a holy man or recreates it when he regenerates him, is it in either case real and genuine spontaneity? Must not the human will act alone and independently in order to act voluntarily; and is not the sinful will the only free will, because it is not influenced by God in its action? The answer is in the negative: (a) Because revelation teaches this agency of God in and on the finite will and at the same time teaches that the resulting holiness is true freedom: "If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed" (John 8:36); (b) because consciousness reports that the holy inclination is spontaneous and unforced; and (c) because if the human will in order to act freely must not experience any influence or impulse from God, then all divine influence is necessitating. And the same is true of human influence.

Man can originate sin because sin is imperfection. The infinite will cannot originate imperfection: "God's work is perfect" (Deut. 32:4; 2 Sam. 22:31; Ps. 18:30). This is one of the differentia between the Creator and the creature. Infinite, uncreated, and eternal will cannot cause any defective thing; but finite, created, and temporal will can. Sin is defective because it has less of being in it than holiness has. There was once a time when it was not; but holiness always was. Sin has no positive and eternal right to be; holiness has such a right. Sin is not necessary in the universe of God; had God so decreed, the created will would never have originated it. But holiness is necessary. Because of these facts, the Schoolmen defined sin as a negation, a defect rather than an effect. To originate it is not the sign of power but of weakness. Hence the possibility of sinning is not an excellence but a deficiency. It is one of the limitations of the finite. That it does not belong to God does not prove that God is not free or that he has less power than a man or angel has, any more than the impossibility of having a physical disease or of dying proves that God is inferior to man. The possibility of doing an evil thing is weakness rather than power. (supplement 4.5.15.)

Moral Inability and Moral Obligation

The foundation of man's obligation to perfectly obey the divine law was the holiness and plenary power to good with which he was endowed by his Creator. Because God made man in his own image, he was obliged to sinless obedience. Moral obligation rested upon the union and combination of the so-called natural ability with the moral. It did not rest upon the first alone. Not a will without any inclination, but a will with a holy inclination, was the basis of the requirement of sinless obedience. The possession of a will undetermined would not constitute man a moral agent. God did not make man without moral character and then require perfect obedience from him. When man was created and placed under law, he was endowed not only with the faculties of a man, but with those faculties in a normal condition. The understanding was spiritually enlightened, and the will was rightly inclined. He had both "natural" and "moral" ability. He had real and plenary power to obey the law of God. In the beginning of man's moral existence, ability must equal obligation. And the ability did equal it. Kant's dictum—"I ought, therefore I can"—was true of holy Adam and his posterity in him. If at the instant man came from the hand of God he had been unable to obey, he would not have been obligated to obey:

The law was not above man's strength when he was possessed of original righteousness, though it be above man's strength since he was stripped of original righteousness. The command was dated before man had contracted his impotency, when he had a power to keep it, as well as to break it. Had it been enjoined to man only after the fall, and not before, he might have had a better pretense to excuse himself, because of the impossibility of it; yet he would not have had sufficient excuse, since the impossibility did not result from the nature of the law, but from the corrupted nature of the creature. It "was weak through the flesh" (Rom. 8:3), but it was promulgated when man had a strength proportioned to the commands of it. (Charnock, Holiness of God)

Obligation being thus founded upon the Creator's gifts cannot be destroyed by any subsequent action of the creature. If he destroys his ability, he does not destroy his obligation. If man by his own voluntary action loses any or all of the talents entrusted to him, he cannot assign this loss as a reason why any or all the talents, together with usury, should not be demanded of him in the final settlement (see Christ's parable of the talents): "God's commandments are not the measure of our powers but the rules of our duty. They do not teach what we are now able to do, but what we ought to do, and what we were able to do at one time" (Turretin 10.4.23). Heidelberg Catechism 9 thus represents the subject: "Does not God, then, wrong man by requiring of him in his law that which he cannot perform? A. No; for God so made man that he could perform it; but man through the instigation of the devil, by willful disobedience, deprived himself and all his posterity of this power."

It is objected that if man is unable to keep the law he is not obligated to keep it. This depends upon the nature of the inability and its cause.

If man were destitute of reason, conscience, will, or any of the faculties of a moral being, he would not be obligated. If he were internally wrought upon by an almighty being and prevented from obeying, he would not be obligated. If he were prevented by any external compulsion, he would not be obligated. If he had been created sinful, he would not be obligated. If he had been created indifferent either to holiness or sin, he would not have been obligated. None of these conditions obtain in the case of man. He was created holy, with plenary power to keep perfectly the moral law, and therefore was obligated to keep it. At the point of creation, ability and obligation were equal.

But if after creation in holiness and plenary power, any alteration be made in the original ratio between ability and obligation by the creature's voluntary agency, this cannot alter the original obligation. If ability is weakened by an act of self-determination, obligation is not weakened. If ability is totally destroyed by self-determination, obligation is not destroyed. The latter is the fact in the case. There is a total inability, but it is not an original or created inability. It came to be by man's act, not by God's: "Man's inability to restore what he owes to God, an inability brought upon himself, does not excuse man from paying the satisfaction due to justice; for the result of sin cannot excuse the sin itself" (Anselm, Why the God-Man? 1.24).

The principle that if a moral power once possessed is lost by the voluntary action of the possessor he is not thereby released from the original duty that rested upon it is acknowledged by writers upon ethics. Aristotle (Ethics 3.5) remarks that it is just in legislators:

to punish people even for ignorance itself, if they are the cause of their own ignorance; just as the punishment is double for drunken people. For the cause is in themselves; since it was in their own power not to get drunk, and drunkenness is the cause of their ignorance. And they punish those who are ignorant of anything in the laws which they ought to know and which it is not difficult to know; and likewise in all other cases in which they are ignorant through negligence, upon the ground that it was in their own power to pay attention to it. But perhaps a person is unable to give his attention? But he himself is the cause of this inability, by living in a dissipated manner. Persons are themselves the causes of their being unrighteous by performing bad actions and of being intemperate by passing their time in drunken revels and such like. When a man does those acts by which he becomes unjust, he becomes unjust voluntarily. Nevertheless, he will not be able to leave off being unjust and to become just whenever he pleases. For the sick man cannot become well whenever he pleases, even though it so happen that he is voluntarily sick owing to an incontinent life and from disobedience to physicians. At the time indeed, it was in his own power not to be sick; but when he has once allowed himself to become sick, it is no longer in his power not to be sick; just as it is no longer in the power of a man who has thrown a stone to recover it. And yet the throwing of it was in his own power, for the origin of the action was in his own power. In like manner, in the beginning it was in the power of the unjust and the intemperate man not to become unjust and intemperate; and therefore they are so voluntarily. But when they have become so, it is no longer in their power to avoid being unjust and intemperate.… And not only are the faults of the soul voluntary, but in some persons those of the body are so likewise, and with these we find fault. For no one finds fault with those who are disfigured and ugly by birth, but only with those who are so through neglect of gymnastic exercise or through carelessness. The case is the same with bodily weakness and mutilation. For no one would blame a man who is born blind or who is blind from disease or a blow, but would rather pity him. But everybody would blame the man who is blind from drunkenness or any intemperance. For those faults of the body which are in our own power originally and which result from our own action, we are blamable.

The assertion of Plato (Laws 5.731) that "the unjust man is not unjust of his own free will; because no man of his own free will would choose to experience the greatest of evils," if it were true, would relieve the unjust man of obligation. The ethics of Plato in such an assertion is defective. He, however, contradicts himself, because elsewhere he teaches the guiltiness of the unjust man. Even in this very connection (Laws 5.734), he reasons in a self-contradictory manner. The temperate life, he says, is pleasant and the intemperate is painful, "and he who would live pleasantly cannot possibly choose to live intemperately. If this be true, the inference clearly is that no man is voluntarily intemperate, but that the whole multitude of men lack temperance in their lives, either from ignorance or from want of self-control or both." But "want of self-control" is voluntariness. The probability is that Plato in the above extract employs "voluntary" in the sense of "volitionary."

In secular commercial life, the loss of ability does not release from obligation. A man is as much a debtor to his creditors after his bankruptcy, as he was before. The loss of his property does not free him from indebtedness. He cannot say to his creditor, "I owed you yesterday, because I was able to pay you; but today I owe you nothing, because I am a bankrupt." It is a legal maxim that bankruptcy does not invalidate contracts.

That obligation remains fixed and immutable under all the modifications of ability introduced by the action of the human will is proved by the case of the drunkard and the habit which he has formed. The drunkard is certainly less able to obey the law of temperance than the temperate man is. But this law has precisely the same claim upon him that it has upon the temperate. The diminution of ability has not diminished the obligation. If obligation must always keep pace with the changes in the ability, then there are degrees of obligation. The stronger the will is, the more it is obliged; the weaker it is, the less is it bound by law. In this case, sin rewards the sinner by delivering him from the claims of law. The most vicious man would be least under obligation to duty.

It is objected that if the apostate will is unable to perfectly obey the divine law it is not free. The reply to this objection requires a definition of finite freedom, both negatively and positively. Negatively, finite freedom is not …

1. Freedom of omnipotence (Owen, Arminianism, 12): There are many things out of man's power, but this does not prove that he is necessitated within his own proper sphere of action.

2. Freedom of independence: This species of freedom requires self-existence and self-sustenation. It is beyond the reach of an influence from another being. It is pure aseity (aseitas) or self-sufficiency.

3. Freedom from the internal consequences of voluntary action: The formation of a habit is voluntary; but when the habit has been voluntarily formed, it cannot be eradicated by a volition.

4. Freedom from the external consequences of voluntary action: The objective fact caused by the will cannot be destroyed by the will. The suicide cannot restore himself to life; the homicide cannot reanimate his victim.

5. Freedom from action itself: The will is not free not to act at all. The will must will something, as the mind must think something. Inaction of the will is impossible, like inaction of the understanding.

6. Freedom from the regulation and restraint of law: Even in God, freedom is not unbridled almightiness unregulated by other attributes. God can do all that he wills to do, but there are some things which he cannot will because certain of his attributes prevent: for example, logical contradictions and sinful acts. Freedom in God is rational freedom. Kant denominates the practical reason the will, because, ideally, the will is one with reason. "Subjection (douleia) to righteousness" (Rom. 6:19) is "obedience from the heart" or spontaneity (6:17) and also "glorious liberty" (8:21). The moral law is "a law of liberty" (James 2:25). The believer is "free indeed" (John 8:34).

7. The possibility of willing contrary to what is already being willed: The possibility of willing the contrary is an accident, not the substance of freedom. It may be associated, temporarily, with an existing self-determination for the purpose of testing the strength of it, but not for the purpose of making the self-determination any more self-determined than it is already is in its own nature. Freedom is the present actual willingness and not the power to will something else in addition to the present actual willingness. Suppose, for illustration, that a man thinks of only one single act, say, to walk to a certain tree before him. No other act is in his mind. He walks spontaneously to this tree. Here, he does not choose between two actions, but he self-determines to one action. He walks to the tree and is free in so doing, not because he could have walked away from the tree if the thought of so doing had occurred to him, but because he actually walked to the tree proprio motu and without compulsion.

8. Indifference or freedom from a bias or inclination: A bias or inclination of the will is the central and dominant self-determination of the will. The stronger the bias, the more intense is the self-determination and hence the more intense the freedom. The more the will is self-determined and inclined, the farther off it is from indifference; and hence indifference is not the characteristic of freedom.

9. Mere liberty of performing an outward act: Edwards, in his polemics against the Arminian, finds the substance of freedom in this. According to this, a man is free to worship God only when he is permitted to act out his inclination and to worship externally; and if he is not so permitted, he is not free to worship God. But the truth is that if he has the inclination to worship he is a free worshiper, whether he is allowed to put his inclination into volition and act or not. He is the Lord's freeman and a true worshiper, by virtue of his spontaneous inclination itself. "Fool," says the lady in Comus,

Fool do not boast:

You cannot touch the freedom of my mind

With all thy charms, although this corporal rind

You have immanacled, while Heaven sees good.

The same truth is embodied in the fine lines of Lovelace, written while confined in prison:

Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage,

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage.

If I have freedom in my love,

And in my soul am free,

Angels alone, that soar above,

Enjoy such liberty.

—Percy, Reliques

And on the other hand, if a man has an evil inclination, say to earthly ambition and power, he is free in sin, that is, self-determinedly sinful, whether he is permitted to carry it out in volition and act or not. Shut him in prison, so that he can take no part in earthly affairs, he is still Satan's freeman by virtue of the inclination of his will.

The reason of this is the fact that the subjective energy of the human will is all that a man can call his own and be responsible for. The realization of this personal inward energy in outward act depends upon others and especially upon the providence of God, but not upon the man himself. The circumstances of a man are no part of his spontaneous self-determination, and he is not responsible for them. He is not free in regard to them. As in the case supposed, a man may have the inclination to worship God, but his surroundings prevent. These surroundings are no part of his voluntary agency and ought not to be taken into account in determining whether he is a free agent. If the subjective personal energy of his own will, as seen in his inclination, is truly free from compulsion and really spontaneous, he is free, whether he can give it outward form in a particular act or not. Says Calvin (2.4.8):

The ability of the human will is not to be estimated from the event of things, as some ignorant men are accustomed to do. For they imagine that they disprove the freedom of the human will, because even the greatest monarchs have not all their desires fulfilled. But the ability of which we are speaking is to be considered as within man and not to be measured by external success. For in the dispute concerning free will, the question is not whether a man notwithstanding external impediments can perform and execute whatever he may have determined in his mind, but whether in every case his understanding exerts freedom of judgment (judicii electionem) and his will freedom of inclination (affectionem voluntatis). If men possess both of these, then Attilius Regulus when confined in the small extent of a cask stuck round with nails will possess as much free will as Augustus Caesar when governing a great part of the world with his rod.

To the same effect, Edwards (Will 3.4) remarks that

if the will fully complies, and the proposed effect does not prove, according to the laws of nature, to be connected with his volition, the man is perfectly excused; he has a natural inability to the thing required. For the will itself, as has been observed, is all that can be directly and immediately required by command; and other things only indirectly, as connected with the will. If, therefore, there be a full compliance of will, the person has done his duty, and if other things do not prove to be connected with his volition that is not owing to him. (cf. Reid, Intellectual Powers 3.4.1)

Defined positively, finite freedom is …

1. Self-determination in the sense of moral spontaneity—not self-determination and power to the contrary, but self-determination alone, pure, and simple: The first is true, the last is spurious self-determination and should be denominated indetermination.

2. Freedom from compulsion, either internal or external: "God has endued the will of man with that natural liberty that it is not forced to good or evil" (Westminster Confession 9.1).

3. Freedom from physical necessity or the operation of the law of cause and effect: "God has endued the will of man with that natural liberty that it is not by any absolute necessity of nature determined to good or evil" (Westminster Confession 9.1).

Physical necessity is seen in the sequences of physical cause and effect. There is no freedom in such a series of sequences because there is no true beginning and first start. The cause is itself an effect of a foregoing cause, and this again is the effect of another foregoing cause and so backward indefinitely: causa causae causa causati. No responsible cause can be found in such a line of antecedents and consequents, because as fast as the responsibility is found in a particular cause, it is thrown back upon the cause of this cause. No real and true author or beginner is found until the chain terminates in God, who is not a part of the chain, but the Creator of it. All physical and material events and phenomena must be referred to the Prime Mover. There is no real author and no first cause within the chain of nature itself. But in the sphere of mind, the case is different. The law of cause and effect operating in matter has no operation in the human will. This latter is the faculty of self-motion. Even when the Holy Spirit works in it "to will and to do," the motion is still self-motion—spiritual not physical, voluntary not necessitated. In the origin of sin, the will cannot refer its action back to a physical cause and thus convert it into a mere effect and transfer its responsibility to a foregoing cause of its agency. In respect to sin, it is itself a true originating cause. It begins its own movement ab intra, by an act of self-determination. There is a first inclining of the will to the creature, and away from the Creator, which is not the effect of a foregoing sin, but is the original nisus or start of self-will. And in the origin of holiness, though the will must refer its action back to God, yet not to him as a physical cause producing a physical effect. Holy inclination is the activity of mind, not of matter. It is not produced by the operation of the law of cause and effect, because the divine Spirit works in the human will in accordance with the nature of mind, not of matter.

If this be the true definition of freedom, it follows that the apostate will is free in being inclined or self-determined and that this inclination to evil constitutes an inability to good. The sinner is at once voluntary in sin and impotent to holiness. He is enslaved by himself to himself. He cannot love God supremely, because he loves himself supremely. He cannot incline rightly, because he is inclining wrongly. He is spontaneously and freely evil and therefore is unable to be spontaneously and freely good. Self-determination is a hazardous endowment. It may be an evil as well as a good. When free will is wicked will, it is a curse. (supplement 4.5.16.)

The answer to the question "can the sinner repent if he will?" depends on the meaning of the term Will: whether it denotes inclination or volition. Can the sinner repent if he incline? Yes. But the inclining is the repentance itself. So that this answer is the truism "he can repent, if he repents." Can the sinner repent, if he choose or resolve? No. A volition of the will cannot produce an inclination of the will. If a man inclines to repent, he repents in so inclining; but if a man resolves to repent, he does not repent in so resolving.

It is objected that if the sinner has no power to obey the law he has nothing to do in the matter of religion. He may say with Macbeth,

If chance will have me king, why let chance crown me,

Without my stir.

This does not follow. Because the sinner cannot do the primary work, it does not follow that he cannot do the secondary. He has a very important work to do, namely, to discover his inability. A wide field is open here for his agency. (a) He can compare his character and conduct with the requirements of the law; this tends to convince him of his inability to perfectly obey the law: "I have seen an end of all perfection; your commandment is exceeding broad" (Ps. 119:96). (b) He can try to obey the law; this will convince him of his inability still more.

A sinner has power under common grace to find out that he has no power to the "spiritually good." This is a preparative work to regeneration. The discovery that he is "without strength" leads to the discovery that "Christ died for the ungodly" (Rom. 5:6). When he is weak then he is strong. God has appointed certain means to be employed by common grace prior to his exercise of regenerating grace, not meritoriously, but as congruous or adapted to the end. The sinner is to use them. Says Howe (Decrees 3.7):

Where there is not as yet the light of a saint, there is that of a man, and that is to be improved and made use of in order to our higher light; and if there be that self-reflection to which God has given to every man a natural ability, much more may be known than usually is. It belongs to the nature of man to turn his eyes inward. Men can reflect and consider this with themselves: Have I not an aversion toward God? Have not worldly concernments and affairs, by the natural inclination of my own mind, a greater room and place there than heaven and the things of heaven? Are not other thoughts more grateful? And have they not a more pleasant relish with me than thoughts of God? Men, I say, are capable of using such reflections as these. And therefore of considering: This can never be well with me. If there remain with me a habitual aversion to God, who must be my best and eternal good, I cannot but be eternally miserable. If I cannot think of and converse with him with inclination and pleasure, I am lost. If my blessedness lie above, in another world, and my mind is carried continually downward toward this world, I must have a heart attempered to heaven, or I can never come there. Well, then, let me try if I can change the habit of my own mind, make the attempt, make the trial. The more you attempt and try, the more you will find that of yourselves you cannot; you can do nothing of yourselves, you do but lift a heavy log, you attempt to move a mountain upward, when you would lift at your own terrene hearts. Then is this consideration obvious: I must have help from heaven, or I shall never come there. Therefore fall a-seeking, fall a-supplicating, as one that apprehends himself in danger to perish and be lost, if he have not another heart, a believing heart, a holy heart, a heavenly heart.

It is objected that if the sinner's ability to keep the moral law depends upon the sovereign grace of God he must wait God's time. The reply is that God's time is now and therefore excludes waiting for it: "God says, I have heard you in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succored you: behold now is the day of salvation" (2 Cor. 6:2); "God limits (horizei) a certain day: saying, Today if you will hear his voice harden not your hearts" (Heb. 4:7). God offers the Holy Spirit as a regenerating Spirit this very instant, but confines the offer to this very instant. Nowhere in revelation does God offer to pardon sin or regenerate the soul at a future time. This work is always described as to be done in the sinner's heart, now, this very moment. No future redemption is promised.

The sinner excuses himself from faith and repentance by saying, "I cannot believe. I am unable to repent." He is to be made to feel the truth of his statement, not to be told that his statement is untrue. He needs to become conscious of that inability which in words he asserts, but not in sincerity. The difficulty in the instance in which this objection of inability is urged is that the sinner does not really believe what he says. He does not realize his inability; but he perceives that to urge it is a good verbal objection, an argumentum ad hominem for the preacher. In this case, the work of the preacher is to make the objector eat his own words and seriously feel the truth of his assertion. And in doing this, he will bring out the important fact that the sinner's inability is guilty because self-originated, that the sinner is the sole author of the inability.

It is objected that the doctrine of inability is incompatible with commands and exhortations to believe, repent, and obey the law of God. It is said that we would not command a dead man to rise from the grave or a man without legs to walk. To this it is to be replied that we would so command if God bade us to utter this commandment in a given instance and promised to accompany the word from our lips with his own omnipotent and creative power. Christ's command to preach the gospel to men "dead in trespasses and sins" and who "cannot come unto the Son except the Father draw them" (John 6:44) is coupled with the promise to accompany the truth with the Holy Spirit.

The doctrine of the sinner's ability is exposed to great objections:

1. It contradicts consciousness. The process of "conviction" is a growing sense of inability to everything spiritually good in heart and conduct. Sinful man cannot be made conscious of ability. This form of consciousness has never been in the human soul.

2. The tenet undermines the doctrine of atonement. It is conceded that the sinner has no ability to make atonement for his guilt; it would follow from this theory of ability that he is not obligated to make one, in other words, that punitive justice has no claims upon him.

3. The tenet conflicts with the doctrine of endless punishment. If the power to the contrary belongs inalienably to the apostate will, self-restoration in the future world is possible, and endless punishment is not certain. The Alexandrine theologians Clement and Origen founded their denial of endless punishment upon this view of the will. If the sinner is able at all times to believe and repent, he may do so at any time, and under the impressions of the other world it is probable that he will. Clement and Origen founded the final recovery of Satan and his angels, together with fallen man, in the future world upon the abiding existence of free will to good. It is no reply to this objection to say that the lost man can, but certainly never will repent. If latent power be given in the premise, the natural inference is that it will be used, not that it will not be. Suppose that previous to the fall it had been said, "Adam has the power to sin, but he certainly never will sin." Suppose that it were said, "Gunpowder has the inherent power of self-explosion, but it certainly never will explode." To say that it was certain that Adam would use his power to sin because it was decreed that he would use it is not to the point; because this is inferring the certainty as relative to the divine decree, not as relative to the power of the human will, which is the matter in dispute.

4. The tenet of ability encourages the sinner to procrastination and neglect of the gospel offer. If he believes that from the very nature of free will he has the power to believe and repent at any moment, he will defer faith and repentance. A sense of danger excites; a sense of security puts to sleep. A company of gamblers in the sixth story are told that the building is on fire. One of them answers, "We have the key to the fire escape," and all continue the game. Suddenly one exclaims, "The key is lost"; all immediately spring to their feet and endeavor to escape. While there was the belief of security, there was apathy; the instant there was a knowledge of insecurity, there was action.

5. If the law can be perfectly obeyed by "natural ability" or by will without right inclination, then "moral ability" is superfluous. But if the law cannot be obeyed except by the union of natural and moral ability or by will with right inclination, then either alone is insufficient.

The following propositions comprise the substance of the Augustino-Calvinistic doctrine of inability. (1) There is a free self-determination or inclining to evil in the sinner's will. (2) There is an inability of the sinner to self-determine or incline to good that results from his self-determining or inclining to evil. This inability is culpable because it is the product of the sinner's agency. (3) The Holy Spirit reoriginates self-determination or inclination to good in the sinner's will. (4) The sinner's will is wholly, not partially, dependent upon the divine Spirit for a holy self-determination or inclination. (5) God has elected an immense "multitude whom no man can number" to be the subjects of his regenerating power.

Actual transgressions are the particular sins that proceed from original sin. They are the individual's sins of act in distinction from his inherited nature and inclination. Original sin is one; actual sin is manifold. "Actual" in this connection is not the contrary of "imaginary." Actual transgressions are accompanied with more or less of self-consciousness.

Actual transgressions are (a) interior, namely, a particular conscious doubt in the mind or a particular conscious lust in the heart. These are single manifestations of the general inclination. The worship of the creature or idolatry (Rom. 1:25) is the generic corruption, and an internal actual transgression is the outworking of this in a particular ambitious purpose or a proud aspiration or a malignant emotion, etc. And actual transgressions are (b) exterior, namely, theft, lie, homicide, suicide, etc.

The depravity or corruption of nature is total: Man is "wholly inclined to evil, and that continually" (Westminster Larger Catechism 25); "God saw that every imagination of the thoughts of man was only evil continually" (Gen. 6:5). There can be but a single dominant inclination in the will at one and the same time, though with it there may be remnants of a previously dominant inclination. Adam began a new sinful inclination. This expelled the prior holy inclination. He was therefore totally depraved, because there were no remainders of original righteousness left after apostasy, as there are remainders of original sin left after regeneration. This is proved by the fact that there is no struggle between sin and holiness in the natural man like that in the spiritual man. In the regenerate, "the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh" (Gal. 5:17). Holiness and sin are in a conflict that causes the regenerate to "groan within themselves" (Rom. 8:23). But there is no such conflict and groaning in the natural man. Apostasy was the fall of the human will, with no remnants of original righteousness. Regeneration is the recovery of the human will, with some remnants of original sin.

Total depravity means the entire absence of holiness, not the highest intensity of sin. A totally depraved man is not as bad as he can be, but he has no holiness, that is, no supreme love of God. He worships and loves the creature rather than the Creator (Rom. 1:25).

SUPPLEMENTS

4.5.1 (see p. 551). Edwards (Original Sin in Works 2.385n) makes Adam's sin to be the union of an evil inclining to an end with an evil choice of a means: "Although there was no natural sinful inclination in unfallen Adam, yet an inclination to that sin of eating the forbidden fruit was begotten in him by the delusion and error he was led into, and this inclination to eat the forbidden fruit must precede his actual eating." Strictly speaking, however, the sinful inclination (desire) was not "to eat the forbidden fruit" as fruit, but to obtain the forbidden knowledge of good and evil. This inclination or desire for the selfish end prompted the choice of means for obtaining it, that is, the volition by which the fruit was plucked and eaten. Edwards here, as in other places, confounds inclination with volition and speaks of "an inclination to eat," which properly was only a decision to eat. An inclination is something permanent; a volition is instantaneous and transient and is indifferent toward the means it employs. Eve desired the forbidden knowledge. This was the main thing with her. She had no desire for the fruit as fruit to satisfy hunger. If she could have obtained the knowledge by any other means she would have chosen it just as readily.

Owen also (Arminianism in Works 5.123–36 ) describes Adam's sin as the union of inclination and volition, of an evil desire with an evil act: "In the ninth article of our (English) church, which is concerning original sin, I observe especially four things: First, that it is an inherent evil, the fault and corruption of the nature of every man. Second, that it is a thing not subject or conformable to the law of God; but has in itself, even after baptism, the nature of sin. Third, that by it we are averse from God and inclined to all manner of evil. Fourth, that it deserves God's wrath and damnation, all of which are frequently and plainly taught in the word of God. Respecting the first point: It is an inherent sin and pollution of nature, having a proper guilt of its own, making us responsible to the wrath of God, and not a bare imputation of another's fault to us, his posterity. David describes it as the being 'shaped in iniquity and conceived in sin.' Neither was this peculiar to him alone; he had it not from the particular iniquity of his next progenitors, but by an ordinary propagation from the common parent of us all. The Scriptures cast an aspersion of guilt or desert of punishment on this sinful nature itself, as in Eph. 2:1–3: 'We are dead in trespasses and sins, being by nature children of wrath.' They fix the original pravity in the heart, will, mind, and understanding (Eph. 4:18; Rom. 12:2; Gen. 6:5). They place it in the flesh or whole man (Rom. 6:6; Gal. 5:16), so that it is not a bare imputation of another's fault but an intrinsic adjacent corruption of our nature itself, that we call by this name of original sin. In respect of our wills, we are not innocent of the first transgression; for we all sinned in Adam, as the apostle affirms. Now all sin is voluntary, say the Remonstrants, and therefore Adam's transgression was our voluntary sin also, and that in divers respects: First, in that his voluntary act is imputed to us as ours, by reason of the covenant which was made with him in our behalf; but because this, consisting in an imputation, must be extrinsic to us; therefore, second, we say, that Adam being the root and head of all humankind, and we all branches from that root, all parts of that body of which he was the head, his will may be said to be ours; we were then all that one man, we were all in him, and had no other will but his; so that though that be extrinsic unto us considered as particular persons, yet it is intrinsic, as we are all parts of one common nature; as in him we sinned, so in him we had a will of sinning. So that original sin, though hereditary and natural, is no way involuntary or put into us against our wills. It possesses our wills and inclines us to voluntary sins. Scripture is clear that the sin of Adam is the sin of us all, not only by propagation and communication (whereby not his singular fault, but something of the same nature is derived unto us), but also by an imputation of his actual transgression unto us all, his singular transgression being by this means made ours. The grounds of this imputation are (1) that we were then in him and parts of him and (2) that he sustained the place of our whole nature in the covenant God made with him. When divines affirm that by Adam's sin we are guilty of damnation, they do not mean that any are damned for his particular act, but that by his sin and our sinning in him, by God's most just ordination we have contracted that exceeding pravity and sinfulness of nature which deserves the curse of God and eternal damnation. It must be an inherent uncleanness that actually excludes out of the kingdom of heaven (Rev. 21:27), which uncleanness the apostle shows to be in infants not sanctified by an interest in the covenant." In the same manner with Owen, the Formula of Concord 1 prohibits the separation of the first sin from the corruption produced by it: "We reject and condemn that dogma by which it is asserted that original sin is merely the liability and debt arising from another's transgression, transmitted to us apart from any corruption of our nature."

One school of later Calvinists, on the contrary, explains the corruption of nature in each individual soul to be the effect of two sovereign acts of God: (1) The imputation to it of the vicarious sin of Adam as its representative; (2) the punitive withholding of divine influences at the instant of its creation ex nihilo, on the ground of this imputation. Hodge, for example (Princeton Essays 1.146, 149), says: "According to the common view of immediate imputation, the sin of Adam is imputed to all his posterity as the ground of punishment antecedently to inherent corruption, which in fact results from the penal withholding of divine influences.… The punishment we suffer for Adam's sin is abandonment on the part of God, the withholding of divine influences; corruption is consequent on this abandonment." According to this view the corruption of nature is the result not of Adam's agency but of the agency of God in the two acts above mentioned. It does not naturally and inevitably result from the act of Adam in disobeying the Eden statute. The elder Calvinists, on the contrary, holding to the substantial union of Adam and his posterity, explain this corruption of the individual soul as the natural and inseparable consequence of Adam's transgression in Eden, thereby making it to be the culpable and punishable product of Adam and his posterity, as a unity, in their fall from God. Owen is an example in the extract just given: "The Scriptures cast an aspersion of guilt or desert of punishment on this sinful nature itself—this original pravity in the heart, will, mind, and understanding—so that it is not a bare imputation of another's fault, but an intrinsic adjacent corruption of our nature itself that we call by this name of original sin. Adam's transgression was our voluntary sin also: First, in that his voluntary act is imputed to us as ours by reason of the covenant which was made with him in our behalf; but because this consisting in an imputation must be extrinsic to us therefore, Second, we say that Adam being the root and head of all humankind, and we all branches from that root, all parts of that body of which he was the head, his will may be said to be ours; we were all that one man, we were all in him, and had no other will but his; so that though that be extrinsic unto us considered as particular individual persons, yet it is intrinsic as we are all parts of one common nature; as in him we sinned, so in him we had a will of sinning. So that original sin, though hereditary and natural, is in no way involuntary, or put into us against our wills. When divines affirm that by Adam's sin we are guilty of damnation, they do not mean that any are damned for his particular act, but that by his sin and our sinning in him, by God's most just ordination we have contracted that exceeding pravity and sinfulness of nature which deserves the curse of God and eternal damnation." It is impossible to make this view of the relation of corruption in the individual to the sin of Adam mean that "inherent corruption results from the penal withholding of divine influences" and not from Adam's act of transgression.

4.5.2 (see p. 552). Howe (Vanity of Man as Mortal) argues in the same way as Anselm respecting the simple self-motion and self-origination of the will's inclination or willingness and the irrationality of seeking any other cause of self-motion than the self. Speaking of the unwillingness of the Christian to die and his assigning as the reason that he is "unassured of heaven," he says, "it is not so much because we are unassured of heaven, but because we love this world better, and our hearts center in it as our most desirable good. Therefore we see how unreasonable it is to allege that we are unwilling to change states because we are unassured. The truth is that we are unassured because we are unwilling; and what then follows? We are unwilling because we are unwilling. And so we may endlessly dispute round and round, from unwillingness to unwillingness. But is there no way to get out of this unhappy circle? In order to it, let the case be more fully understood. Either this double unwillingness must be referred to the same thing or to divers, either to itself or to something else. If to the same thing, it is not sense, it signifies nothing. For having to assign a cause of their unwillingness to quit the body, to say it is because they are unwilling is to assign no proper cause. But if they refer the unwillingness to something else than itself and say that they are unwilling to leave the body because they are unwilling to forsake earth for heaven, this is a proper cause."

A cause, in the proper sense of the term, is something different from the effect. But when unwillingness is said to be caused by unwillingness, the so-called cause and effect are not different things but the very same. The truth is that when anything is self-caused it is taken out of the category of cause proper and effect proper and brought into that of free will or self-determination. Hence, to ask for a cause of sin that is other than the self-inclining of the will is to make sin like an effect in the natural world; in other words, no sin at all.

4.5.3 (see p. 555). A kind of good in certain respects can be perceived in an object presented as a temptation to a holy being, without there being a sinful lust for it. Besides the instance of unfallen Eve and the fruit of the tree of knowledge as "good for food" and "pleasant to the eye," that of Christ and his temptation is in point. When "all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them" were presented to him as an object of temptation, he could perceive a species of good in earthly power and dominion without desiring it ambitiously and lusting after it for the purpose of self-aggrandizement. He could view it unselfishly as affording its possessor the means of influence and usefulness among mankind and might desire it only as such, without longing for it as the means of self-glorification.

4.5.4 (see p. 556). Milton represents Adam as perceiving that the inward desire of Eve for the forbidden knowledge was lustful and therefore of the nature of sin:

Bold deed have you presumed, adventurous Eve,

And peril great invoked, who thus has dared,

Had it been only coveting to eye

That sacred fruit, sacred to abstinence.

—Paradise Lost 9.920

4.5.5 (see p. 558). It is a favorite device of rationalism to explain Paulinism by rabbinism. It is contended that the peculiarities of St. Paul's conception of Christianity proceed from his training in the rabbinic theology. Edersheim (Life of Jesus 1.165–66) refutes this by showing the essential difference between the Old Testament and the rabbinic conception of the Messiah and his redemption: "The general conception which the rabbis had formed of the Messiah differed totally from what was presented by the prophet of Nazareth. Thus, what is the fundamental divergence between the two may be said to have existed long before the events which finally divided them. It is the combination of letters which constitutes words, and the same letters may be combined into different words. Similarly, both rabbinism and what by anticipation we designate Christianity might regard the same predictions as messianic and look for their fulfillment; while at the same time the messianic ideal of the synagogue might be quite other than that to which the faith and the hope of the church have clung.

"The Messiah and his history are not presented in the Old Testament as something separated from or superadded to Israel. The history, the institutions, and the predictions of Israel run up into him. He is the typical Israelite, nay, typical Israel itself; alike the crown, the completion, and the representative of Israel. He is the Son of God and the servant of the Lord, but in the highest and only true sense which had given its meaning to all the preparatory development. This organic unity of Israel and the Messiah explains how events, institutions, and predictions which initially were purely Israelitish could with truth be regarded as finding their full accomplishment in the Messiah. From this point of view the whole Old Testament becomes the perspective in which the figure of the Messiah stands out. And perhaps the most valuable element in rabbinic commentary on messianic times is that in which it is so frequently explained that all the miracles and deliverances of Israel's past would be reenacted, only in a much wider manner, in the days of the Messiah. Thus the whole past was symbolic and typical of the future. It is in this sense that we would understand the two sayings of the Talmud: 'All the prophets prophesied only of the days of the Messiah'and 'the world was created only for the Messiah.' In accordance with all this the ancient synagogue found references to the Messiah in many more passages of the Old Testament than those verbal predictions to which we generally appeal. Their number amounts to upward of 456 (75 from the Pentateuch, 243 from the Prophets, and 138 from the Hagiographa), and their messianic application is supported by more than 558 references to the most ancient rabbinic writings. But comparatively few of these would be termed verbal predictions. Rather would it seem as if every event were regarded as prophetic, and every prophecy, whether by fact or by word (prediction), as a light to cast its sheen on the future, until the picture of the messianic age in the far background stood out in the hundredfold variegated brightness of prophetic events and prophetic utterances. Of course there was danger that, amid these dazzling lights or in the crowd of figures, the grand central personality should not engage the attention it claimed, and so the meaning of the whole be lost in the contemplation of the details. This danger was the greater from the absence of any deeper spiritual elements. All that Israel needed: 'Study of the law and good works,' lay within the reach of everyone; and all that Israel hoped for was national restoration. Everything else was but means to these ends; the Messiah himself only the grand instrument in attaining them. Thus viewed, the picture presented would be of Israel's exaltation, rather than of the salvation of the world. To this and to the idea of Israel's exclusive spiritual position in the world must be traced much that otherwise would seem utterly irrational in the rabbinic pictures of the latter days. But in such a picture there would be neither room nor occasion for a Messiah Savior, in the only sense in which such a heavenly mission could be rational or the heart of humanity respond to it. The rabbinic ideal of the Messiah was not that of 'a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of his people Israel'—the satisfaction of the wants of humanity and the completion of Israel's mission—but quite different even to contrariety. On the other hand, it is equally noteworthy that the purely national elements, which well nigh formed the sum total of the rabbinic expectation, scarcely entered into the teaching of Jesus about the kingdom of God. And the more we realize that Jesus did so fundamentally separate himself from all the ideas of his time, the more evidential is it of the fact that he was not the Messiah of Jewish conception, but derived his mission from a source unknown to or at least ignored by the leaders of the people.

"But still, as the rabbinic ideas were at least based on the Old Testament, we need not wonder that they also embodied the chief features of the messianic history. Accordingly, a careful perusal of their Scripture quotations shows that the main postulates of the New Testament concerning the Messiah are fully supported by rabbinic statements. Thus, such doctrines as the premundane existence of the Messiah, his elevation above Moses and even above the angels, his representative character, his cruel sufferings and derision, his violent death and that for his people, his work on behalf of the living and the dead, his redemption and restoration of Israel, the opposition of the Gentiles, their partial judgment and conversion, the prevalence of his law, the universal blessings of the latter days, and his kingdom—can be clearly deduced from unquestioned passages in ancient rabbinic writings. Only, as we might expect, all is there indistinct, incoherent, unexplained, and from a much lower standpoint. Most painfully is this felt in connection with the one element on which the New Testament most insists. There is, indeed, in rabbinic writings frequent reference to the sufferings and even the death of the Messiah, and these are brought into connection with our sins—as how could it be otherwise in view of Isa. 53 and other passages?—and in one most remarkable comment the Messiah is represented as willingly taking upon him all these sufferings, on condition that all Israel—the living, the dead, and those yet unborn—should be saved. But there is only the most indistinct reference to the removal of sin by the Messiah in the sense of vicarious sufferings. In connection with what has been stated one most important point must be kept in view. So far as their opinions can be gathered from their writings, the great doctrines of original sin and of the sinfulness of our whole nature were not held by the ancient rabbis. Of course, it is not meant that they denied the consequences of sin, either as concerned Adam himself or his descendants; but the final result is far from that seriousness which attaches to the fall in the New Testament, where it is presented as the basis of the need of a Redeemer, who as the second Adam, restores what the first had lost."

The difference between St. Paul's conception of the Messiah, of the fall and original sin, of vicarious atonement, and of the nature of redemption and the rabbinic conception as enunciated by a writer deeply versed in rabbinic learning is fundamental. Had the apostle not been lifted out of and beyond his early rabbinic training by the "revelations" and inspiration subsequent to his conversion, of which he repeatedly affirms he was the subject, he never could have made that statement of Christian doctrine which goes under his name and which, next to the gospels, has exerted more influence than any other part of Scripture in shaping Christianity and Christendom.

4.5.6 (see p. 562). Graves (Pentateuch 3.3) refers the divine threatening to "visit the sins of the fathers upon the children" to the sufferings in this life, which God in an extraordinary manner sometimes inflicted upon violators of the Mosaic statutes and regulations, and not to the retributions of the future state, which, though well known and taught by Moses, were not presented and employed by him as the sanctions of his legislation. "The only circumstance," he says, "that makes this denunciation appear severe or unjust is the supposition that the sanctions of a future state are understood; which it would certainly be repugnant to divine justice to suppose should be distributed according to such a rule as this. But this objection vanishes the moment we are convinced that the punishment here meant relates only to outward circumstances of prosperity or distress in the present life. Because if such a direct and visible sanction was necessary in the particular system of providential administration by which God thought fit to govern the Jewish race, it is evident that any inequality as to individuals would be certainly and easily remedied in a future life; so that each should receive his final reward exactly according to his true merit in the sight of God, and thus 'the judge of all the earth do right.'

"Now it seems undeniable that such an immediate and visible sanction was a necessary part of the Jewish polity, so far as this required a providential distribution of national rewards and punishments. These affecting the great mass of the people and extending through such portions of time as were necessary to give them their full efficacy in forming the national character could not be confined within the limits of a single generation or exclude from their operation each private family in succession, as the heads of that family might drop off whose conduct had originally contributed to swell the mass of national guilt or contribute to the progress of national improvement. This is illustrated in the case of Achan, whose children were involved in the punishment of his violation of the divine command (Josh. 7:24), and in the punishment inflicted in consequence of the idolatries of Jeroboam, Baasha, and Ahab, involving their entire posterity.

"But the operation of this sanction was not confined to the participation of national rewards or punishments; it certainly affected individuals who violated the commands to which it was annexed, even though such violation was confined to themselves and could not therefore draw down any national chastisement. Let it be recollected that the great crime, the temporal punishment of which was to extend to the third and fourth generation, was idolatry—that source of all profaneness and pollution which under the Jewish polity was not only a violation of that religious duty for which the children of Israel were set apart from every nation under heaven, but was besides the highest crime against the state, which acknowledged Jehovah as supreme sovereign, the sole object of civil allegiance as well as of religious worship. To introduce idolatry was therefore to subvert the foundation of the social union and engage in the foulest treason and the most audacious rebellion. The supreme sovereign therefore denounced against such treason and rebellion not only condign punishment on the offender himself, but the extension of this punishment to his family and immediate descendants; a principle recognized by many of the most civilized states in which the crime of treason is punished not only by death but by the confiscation of property and the taint of blood; a principle which when carried into execution by a human tribunal may operate in particular instances with unmerited or excessive severity, but which in the Jewish theocracy was applied in every instance by unerring justice. 'For the deity,' as Warburton well observes, 'though he allowed capital punishment to be inflicted for the crime of lese majesty on the person of the offender by the delegated administration of the law, yet concerning his family or posterity he reserved the inquisition of the crime to himself and expressly forbade the magistrate to meddle with it in the common course of justice. The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the father; every man shall be put to death for his own sin (Deut. 24:16). We see the operation of this law in 2 Kings 14:5–6, where we are told that Amaziah, king of Judah, as soon as the kingdom was confirmed in his hand, slew his servants which had slain the king, his father. But the children of the murderers he slew not, according unto that which is written in the book of the law of Moses, wherein the Lord commanded, saying, The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor the children be put to death for the fathers; but every man shall be put to death for his own sin. Now God's appropriating to himself the execution of this law would abundantly justify the equity of it, even supposing it had been given as a part of a universal religion; for why was the magistrate forbidden to imitate God's method of punishing but because no power less than omniscient could in all cases keep clear of injustice in such an inquisition?'

"Maimonides also understands that this visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children is aimed at idolatry: As to that character of God of visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, know that this relates only to the crime of idolatry; as may be proved from the Decalogue, which says, On the third and fourth generation of them who hate me; for nobody is said to hate God but an idolater; as the law expresses (Deut. 12:31), Every abomination to the Lord which he hates have they done unto their gods. And mention is made of the fourth generation, because no man can hope to see more of his progeny than four generations.

"Thus the principle of visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations, by extending the temporal judgments denounced against the perpetration of idolatry to the immediate posterity of the idolater, is perfectly consistent with divine justice; because it interferes not with that final retribution at which every man shall be rewarded according to his works. That this sanction of the Jewish law was not to be understood as a general principle of the divine economy under every form of civil society and every degree of religious improvement, but merely as a necessary part of that administration of an extraordinary providence by which the Jewish law was sanctioned and upheld during the earlier periods of its existence, has been proved by Warburton from a circumstance which infidel writers have laid much stress upon, as an instance of contradiction between different parts of Scripture, when in truth it was only a gradual change in the divine system, wisely and mercifully adapted to the gradual improvement of the human mind. Toward the conclusion of this extraordinary economy, observes Warburton, when God by the later prophets reveals his purpose to give them a new dispensation, in which a future state of rewards and punishments was to be substituted in place of an immediate extraordinary providence, as the sanction of religion, it is then declared in the most express manner that he will abrogate the law of punishing children for the sins of their parents (Jer. 31:29–33; Ezek. 11:19–21; 18:1ff.).

"In this way, in the Jewish system, a people of gross and carnal minds and shortsighted views, slow to believe anything they could not themselves experience and therefore almost incapable of being sufficiently influenced by the remote prospect of a future life and the pure and spiritual blessedness of a celestial existence, were wisely and necessarily placed under a law which was supported by a visible extraordinary providence, conferring immediate rewards and punishments on the person of the offender; or which laid hold of his most powerful instincts, by denouncing that his crimes would be visited upon his children and his children's children to the third and fourth generation. And this proceeding was a necessary part of that national discipline under which the Jews were placed and was free from all shadow of injustice. Because when the innocent were afflicted for their parents' crimes, as Warburton has well observed, it was by the deprivation of temporal benefits, in their nature forfeitable. Or should this not so clearly appear, yet we may be sure that God, who reserved to himself the right of visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children, would perfectly rectify any apparent inequality in the course of his providential government over the chosen people in another and a better world by repaying the innocent who had necessarily suffered here with an eternal and abundant recompense."

That all this class of sufferings which result from the individual sins of immediate ancestors are not penal and retributive, like the suffering that results from the sin of Adam, is also proved by the fact that the whole penalty threatened for sin in the legal covenant was physical and spiritual death; and this comes upon every man because of Adam's sin, not because of the sins of secondary ancestors. Furthermore, men are not twice punished: once for Adam's sin and again for their immediate parents' sins. And again, this class of sufferings is not universal but extraordinary and special. Penalty proper is common and universal and falls upon all the posterity of Adam in the same way and without exception; but the sufferings that befell the family of Korah were uncommon and exceptional and distinguished them from the rest of the families of Israel. The same is true of the sufferings which have come upon the descendants of Ham for their father's sin. The descendants of Shem and Japhet have escaped them.

4.5.7 (see p. 569). Augustine teaches that original sin is guilt in the following extracts: "We understand the apostle to declare that 'judgment' is predicated 'of one offense unto condemnation' entirely on the ground that even if there were in men nothing but original sin, it would be sufficient for their condemnation. For however much heavier will be their condemnation who have added their own sins to the original offense (and it will be the more severe in individual cases, in proportion to the sins of individuals), still, even that sin alone which was originally derived unto men not only excludes from the kingdom of God, which infants are unable to enter (as the Pelagians themselves allow) unless they have received the grace of Christ before they die, but also alienates from salvation and everlasting life, which cannot be anything else than the kingdom of God, to which fellowship with Christ alone introduces us" (Forgiveness and Baptism 1.15). "The human race lies under a just condemnation, and all men are the children of wrath. Of which wrath the Lord Jesus says: 'He that believes not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abides on him.' He does not say it will come, but it 'abides on him.' For every man is born with it; whereupon the apostle says: 'We were by nature the children of wrath even as others.' Now as men were lying under this wrath by reason of their original sin, and as this original sin was the more heavy and deadly in proportion to the number and magnitude of the actual sins which were added to it, there was need of a mediator, that is, of a reconciler who by the offering of one sacrifice, of which all the sacrifices of the law and the prophets were types, should take away this wrath" (Enchiridion 33). "Infants who have not yet done any works of their own, either good or bad, will be condemned on account of original sin alone, if they have not been delivered by the Savior's grace in the laver of regeneration. As for all others who, in the use of their free will, have added to original sin sins of their own commission and who have not been delivered by God's grace from the power of darkness and admitted into the kingdom of Christ, they will receive judgment according to the desert not of original sin only, but also of the acts of their own will" (Letter 215 to Valentinum).

4.5.8 (see p. 575). Job (10:15) refers his holiness to God, but his sinfulness to himself as the author: "If I be wicked woe unto me; and if I be righteous, yet will I not lift up my head." Leighton (Theological Lectures, 10) concisely states the doctrine thus: "If you are sinful and act sinfully, blame yourselves; if you are holy and act holily, praise God."

4.5.9 (see p. 577). Calvin thus distinguishes original from indwelling sin (4.15.10–12): "Original sin is the pravity and corruption of our nature which first renders us obnoxious to the wrath of God and then produces in us the 'works of the flesh.' Two things are to be distinctly observed. First, that our nature being so entirely depraved and vitiated, we are on account of this very corruption considered as convicted and condemned in the sight of God, to whom nothing is acceptable but righteousness, innocence, and purity. And therefore even infants themselves bring their own condemnation into the world with them, who though they have not yet produced the fruits of their iniquity, yet have the seed of it within them; even their whole nature is, as it were, a seed of sin and therefore cannot but be odious to God. By baptism, believers are certified that this condemnation is removed from them; since the Lord promises us by this sign that a full and entire remission is granted both of the guilt which is to be imputed to us and of the punishment to be inflicted on account of that guilt. They also receive righteousness such as the people of God may obtain in this life, that is, only by imputation, because the Lord in his mercy accepts them as righteous and innocent.

"The other thing to be remarked is that this depravity never ceases in us, but is continually producing new fruits—these 'works of the flesh,' which are like the emission of flame and sparks from a furnace or streams of water from an unfailing spring. For concupiscence never dies nor is altogether extinguished in men, till by death they are delivered from the body of death. Baptism, indeed, promises us the submersion of our pharaoh and the mortification of sin; yet not so that it no longer exists or gives us no further trouble; but only that it shall never overcome us. For so long as we live immured in this prison of the body, the relics of sin will dwell in us; but if we hold fast by faith the promise which God has given us in baptism, they shall not domineer or reign over us. But let no one deceive himself, let no one indulge himself in his sin, when he hears that sin always dwells in us. These things are not said in order that those who are already too prone to do evil may securely sleep in their sins, but only that those who are tempted by their corrupt propensities may not faint and sink into despondency; but that they may rather reflect that they are yet in the right way and may consider themselves as having made some progress when they experience their corruption diminishing from day to day, till they shall attain the mark at which they are aiming, even the final destruction of their depravity, which will be accomplished at the close of this mortal life. In the meantime let them not cease to fight manfully and press forward to complete victory. In all this we say nothing different from what is clearly stated by Paul in the sixth and seventh chapters of the Epistle to the Romans."

4.5.10 (see p. 580). Respecting the use of the term nature when applied to original sin, the Formula of Concord 1 thus defines: "We must carefully observe the various significations of the word nature, the ambiguity of which the Manicheans abusing disguise their error and lead many simple men into error. For sometimes nature signifies the substance itself of man, as when we say: God created human nature. But sometimes by the word nature is understood the disposition, condition, defect, or vice of a thing implanted and inherent in its nature, as when we say: It is the serpent's nature to strike; man's nature is to sin and is sin. In this latter signification, the word nature denotes, not the substance itself of man, but something which inheres and is fixed in his nature or substance. As respects the Latin words substantia and accidens, since these are not expressions of Holy Scripture and moreover are not understood by the common people, we should abstain from them in public assemblies where the unlearned multitude are taught; and in this matter account should be taken of the more simple and untaught. But in schools and among learned men (to whom the signification of these words is known and who can use them correctly and without abuse, properly discriminating the essence of anything from that which has been added to it from without and inheres in it by way of accident), they are to be retained in the discussion concerning original sin. For by means of these terms the distinction between the work of God and the work of the devil can be explained with the greatest clearness. For the devil cannot create any substance, but can only by way of accident and under the permission of God deprave a substance created by God."

4.5.11 (see p. 580). Turretin (10.4.39) gives the following account of the distinction between natural and moral inability: "The inability of sinful man is not to be denominated moral simply in distinction from natural, since that is called morally impossible by moral philosophers which arises from custom rather than from nature and is indeed difficult to be done, but nevertheless is sometimes done and cannot be reckoned among the things that are absolutely impossible; while the inability of the sinner is innate and insuperable. Neither is it to be denominated natural simply, since that is natural on account of which we are called neither good nor evil, while it is certain that this inability is something vicious and culpable. Nor is it natural in distinction from voluntary, as there is a natural inability in a stone or a brute to speak, since our inability is especially voluntary (maxime voluntaria). Nor is it natural as arising from a lack of natural faculty or power, like the inability of a blind man to see, of a paralytic to walk, of a dead man to rise from the grave; because our inability does not exclude but always supposes in man the natural powers of intellect and will.

"It is better, therefore, to denominate the sinner's inability both natural and moral, in different respects. It is moral (1) objectively because relating to moral duties, (2) originally because it originates from moral corruption spontaneously brought in by the sin of man, and (3) formally because it is voluntary and culpable, overflowing into the disposition (habitum) of the corrupt will. It is also natural (1) originally because it is congenital with us and by nature—not as nature was created by God but as nature is corrupted by man—as we are said by St. Paul to be 'by nature children of wrath' and by David to be in iniquity and conceived in sin,' as poison is natural in a serpent and rapacity in a wolf; (2) subjectively because it infects our whole nature and causes the deprivation of that power of well-doing which was bestowed upon the first man and constituted original righteousness, and (3) effectually (eventualiter) because it is unconquerable and insuperable, not less than the merely natural inability of a blind man to see or a dead man to rise. For sinful man is no more able to convert himself than a blind man to see or a dead man to rise from the grave. As therefore this inability is rightly called moral and voluntary to indicate the responsibility and guilt of man and render him inexcusable, so it is well denominated natural to express the greatness of his corruption and demonstrate the necessity of divine grace, because, as it is congenital to man, so it is insuperable by him and he cannot shake it off but by the omnipotent energy of the Holy Spirit."

4.5.12 (see p. 583). The equivocation and self-contradiction in Edwards's doctrine of "natural ability and inability" are seen by analyzing the following extract from his work on the will given on p. 597: "If the will fully complies, and the proposed effect does not prove, according to the laws of nature, to be connected with his volition, the man is perfectly excused; he has a natural inability to the thing required. For the will itself, as has been observed, is all that can be directly and immediately required by command; and other things only indirectly, as connected with the will. If therefore there be a full compliance of will, the person has done his duty." Edwards here declares that the person who "has a natural inability to the thing required" because he is prevented by the "laws of nature" from executing his inclination by volitions has nevertheless "done his duty" by the inward inclining and "complying" of his will. This shows that "natural inability," as Edwards defines it, does not prevent the performance of man's duty to God. If this be so, then "natural inability" is of little consequence. It may exist, and yet the whole duty of man be performed notwithstanding. And on the other hand, if "natural ability" be as Edwards conceives of it the mere possession of a will apart from its hostile inclination toward God, such an ability is not adequate to the performance of the duty of loving God supremely. In this case, also, "natural ability" is valueless, because the duty of man cannot be performed by it. This shows that Edwards, in order to meet the exigencies of his argument with his Arminian opponents, employs the term ability is a false sense and not in its true and common signification of real efficient power.

Anselm (Why the God-Man? 2.17) directs attention to the two meanings of "power," according as reference is had to inclination or to volition: "We found when considering the question whether Christ could lie that there are two senses of the word power in regard to it: the one referring to his disposition, the other to the outward act; and that though he had the power to lie externally and verbally, he was so disposed (a seipso habuit) that he could not lie inwardly and from inclination." But in this instance there is no equivocal use of "ability" in the sense of quasi power. The ability of Christ to vocalize the words of a lie was real ability; and his inability to incline to lie was real inability.

4.5.13 (see p. 584). The question between the advocate of ability and the advocate of inability is whether sinful man is able to love God supremely because he so wills or inclines under the regenerating operation of the Holy Spirit or whether he so inclines because of his own inherent power. Is ability the effect of human or of divine power? The advocate of inability contends that ability to love and obey God is the result of enabling the fallen will by regenerating it, that ability is the effect of divine actuation of the will. The Westminster Confession, which agrees with all the Calvinistic creeds upon this point, represents "enabling" or ability as the result of inclining the will and inclining as the result of the operation of the divine Spirit in the will: "Effectual calling is the work of God's almighty power and grace, whereby, by savingly enlightening the minds of his elect and renewing and powerfully determining their wills, they are made willing and able freely to answer his call and to accept and embrace the grace offered therein" (Westminster Larger Catechism 67). Apart from the "powerful determining of the sinful will" in effectual calling, there is no power in the natural man to incline the will from sin to holiness. Edwards asserts this with great energy, both in his doctrinal and controversial writings. In his "Reply to Williams" (Works 1.246–47), for example, he argues that an unconverted person has no right to enter into covenant with God in his own strength and to promise to keep it by his own inherent power or ability, because he cannot keep his covenant and fulfill his promise: "The promises and oaths of unregenerate men must not only be insincere, but very presumptuous, upon these two accounts. (1) Because herein they take an oath to the Most High, which it is ten thousand to one they will break as soon as the words are out of their mouths by continuing still unconverted. To what purpose should ungodly men be encouraged to utter such promises and oaths before the church, for the church's acceptance? How contrary is it to the counsel given by the wise man in Eccles. 5:2, 4–6. (2) When an unconverted man makes such a promise he promises what he has not to give or what he has not sufficiency for the performance of—no sufficiency in himself nor any sufficiency in any other that he has a claim to or interest in. There is indeed a sufficiency in God to enable him; but he has no claim to it. If it be true that an unconverted man who is morally sincere may reasonably on the encouragement promise immediately to believe and repent, though this be not in his own power, then it will follow that whenever an unconverted man covenants with such moral sincerity as gives a lawful right to the sacraments, God never will fail of giving him converting grace that moment to enable him from thenceforward to believe and repent as he promises."

In Religious Affections (Works 3.71), Edwards finds "ability" in "inclination" alone: "This new spiritual sense and the new dispositions that attend it are no new faculties but are new principles of nature. By a principle of nature in this place I mean that foundation which is laid in nature, either old or new, for any particular manner or kind of exercise of the faculties of the soul or a natural habit or foundation for action giving a personal ability and disposition to exert the faculties in exercises of such a certain kind." This implies that if there be no "foundation for any particular manner of exercise of the faculties of the soul," that is, no habit, disposition, or inclination of the will; there is no ability to exert the faculties. Only a holy disposition is able to love and obey God; only a sinful disposition is able to hate and resist him.

4.5.14 (see p. 587). Calvin and the Reformed theologians generally assert the "necessity" of sinning in the case of the fallen will (see the extract from Ursinus on p. 582 n. 96). Edwards does the same as the extract on p. 586 shows. But it is not the necessity of compulsion which is the more common signification of the term, but the necessity produced by voluntary action and the certainty which results from a voluntary state of the will. Edwards (Will 4.3) describes it: "Men in their first use of such phrases as these, 'must, can't, can't help it, can't avoid it, necessary, unable, impossible, unavoidable, irresistible,' etc., use them to signify a necessity of constraint or restraint, a natural necessity or impossibility, or some necessity that the will has nothing to do in; which may be whether men will or no; and which may be supposed to be just the same, let men's inclinations and desires be what they will." Given an evil inclination, and evil thoughts, purposes, and actions are necessary in the sense of certain and invariable, but the evil inclination itself is not necessary in the sense of compelled. This is self-originated and is the simple self-motion of the will. Christ teaches this truth when he says that "a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit" (Matt. 7:18). "The fallen will," says Calvin (2.3.5), is so bound by the slavery of sin that it cannot excite itself, much less devote itself to anything good; for such a disposition is the beginning of a conversion to God, which in the Scriptures is attributed solely to divine grace. Thus Jeremiah prays to the Lord to convert or turn him if he would have him turned (Jer. 31:18). When I assert that the will being deprived of its liberty is necessarily drawn or led into evil, I should wonder if anyone considered it as a harsh expression, since it has nothing in it absurd, nor is it unsanctioned by the custom of good men. It offends those who know not how to distinguish between necessity (necessitatem) and compulsion (coactionem). But if anyone should ask them whether God is not necessarily good (necessario bonus) and whether the devil is not necessarily evil (necessario malus)—what answer will they make? For there is such a close connection between the goodness of God and his deity that his being God is not more necessary than his being good. But the devil is by his fall so alienated from communion with all that is good that he can do nothing but what is evil. But if anyone should yelp (obganniat) that little praise is due to God for his goodness which he is compelled (cogatur) to preserve, shall we not readily reply that his inability to do evil arises from his infinite goodness and not from the impulse of violence. Therefore if a necessity of doing well impairs not the liberty of the divine will in doing well; if the devil, who cannot but do evil, nevertheless sins voluntarily, who then will assert that man sins less voluntarily, because he is under a necessity of sinning?"

In the above extract Calvin speaks of the fallen will's "being deprived of its liberty." He means liberty to good, not liberty in the abstract and unqualified sense. For he says that Satan "sins voluntarily." The action of the fallen will is free agency in the sense of self-motion; but this free action in sin effectually opposes and precludes free action in holiness. One free act prevents another free act. In interpreting the creeds of the Reformation and the systems of the elder divines, it is important to keep in mind the distinction between liberty and ability (for the two things are inseparable) to good and between liberty and ability to evil. They invariably deny to the fallen will liberty to good, but not liberty to evil in the sense of enforced self-determination to evil.

Owen (Saints' Perseverance, chap. 6) explains in the same manner: "God can effectually and infallibly as to the event cause his saints to continue trusting in him without the least abridgment of their liberty. If by necessitated to continue trusting, not the manner of God's operation with and in them for the compassing of the end proposed and the efficacy of his grace, whereby he does it, be intended, but only the certainty of the issue, rejecting the impropriety of the expression, the thing itself we affirm to be here promised of God."

Anselm (Why the God-Man? 2.5) explains "how although a thing may be necessary God may not do it by a compulsory necessity." He says, "When one does a benefit from a necessity to which he is unwillingly subjected, little thanks are due to him or none at all. But when he freely places himself under the necessity of benefiting another and sustains that necessity without reluctance, then he certainly deserves great thanks for the favor. For this should not be called necessity but grace, inasmuch as he undertook it not with constraint but freely." When God has voluntarily promised a thing, then he is under a necessity of fulfilling his promise; but he was under no necessity to promise. In like manner the sinner has voluntarily fallen from God and thus came under the necessity of sinning, but was under no necessity of falling from God.

Luther (On the Bondage of the Will, chap. 44) thus distinguishes the two significations of necessity: "We should carefully distinguish between a necessity of infallibility and a necessity of coercion; since both good and evil men, though by their actions they fulfill the decree and appointment of God, yet are not forcibly constrained to do anything but act willingly."

Edwards, in the following extract, seemingly teaches not only that the lost are in a helpless and necessitating self-bondage, but are destitute of liberty and moral agency. His opponents contended that lost men and angels are still in a state of trial, because they still had the power to the contrary. "If," says Edwards, "the damned are in a state of trial, they must be in a state of liberty and moral agency, as the advocates of future redemption will own; and so, according to their notion of liberty, must be under no necessity of continuing in their rebellion and wickedness, but may turn to God in their thorough subjection to his will, very speedily. And if the devils and damned spirits are in a state of probation and have liberty of will and are under the last and most extreme means to bring them to repentance, then it is possible that the greatest part, if not all of them, may be reclaimed by those extreme means and brought to repentance before the day of judgment. And if so, how could it certainly be predicted concerning the devil, that he 'should be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and false prophet are, and should be tormented day and night, forever and ever'? And how can it be said that when he fell, he was cast down from heaven and 'reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day'?"

In this extract Edwards, taking the words as they read, teaches that the lost are not "in a state of liberty and moral agency" and that consequently they are under "a necessity of continuing in their rebellion and wickedness." But he is using terms in the sense of his opponents and adopting "their notion of liberty." By "liberty and moral agency" they meant power to the contrary, and by "necessity of continuing in wickedness," he himself does not mean physical necessity but the self-bondage of the will, which is insuperable by the will. In denying free moral agency to the sinner, as his opponents defined it, he does not deny it as he himself defined it, in the sense of "being the immediate agent or the being that is acting or in the exercise of the act" (Will 4.1). The radical difference between the Augustino-Calvinistic definition of freedom and moral agency on the one side and the Semipelagian and Arminian on the other must ever be kept in mind when Edwards and other Calvinists deny "freedom and moral agency" to the fallen will. His intention is to deny that the sinful will can reverse its inclination and become holy by its own energy, but not that the sinful inclination itself is the unforced agency and movement of the will, for which the sinner is responsible. Both Augustine and the elder Calvinists, however, were more careful than Edwards was to avoid such seeming denials of free moral agency to the sinner, because they did not, even for the sake of argument, temporarily adopt their opponents' idea of the will and moral agency, but rigorously stuck to their own idea and definition of it as simple self-determination without power to the contrary. The self-determination in sin enabled them to affirm liberty and responsibility in sin; and the want of power to the contrary enabled them to affirm bondage and inability in sin.

Augustine (Enchiridion 30) asserts the sinner's freedom in sinning and denies his freedom to good because of the bondage produced by the sinning: "It was by the evil use of his free will that man destroyed both it and himself. For as a man who kills himself must of course be alive when he kills himself, but after he has killed himself ceases to live and cannot restore himself to life, so, when man by his own free will sinned, then sin begin victorious over him the freedom of the will was lost. 'For of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.' This is the judgment of the Apostle Peter. And as it is certainly true, what kind of liberty, I ask, can the bond slave possess except when it pleases him to sin? For he is freely in bondage who does with pleasure the will of his master. Accordingly, he who is the servant of sin is free to sin. And hence he will not be free to do right until, being freed from sin, he shall begin to be the servant of righteousness. And this is true liberty, for he has pleasure in righteous action; and it is at the same time a holy bondage, for he is subject to the will of God. But whence comes this liberty to do righteousness, to the man who is in bondage to sin and 'sold under sin,' except he be redeemed by him who has said, 'If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed'? And before this redemption is wrought in a man, when he is not yet free to do righteousness, how can he talk of the freedom of his will and his good works, except he be inflated by that foolish pride of boasting which the apostle restrains when he says, 'By grace are you saved, through faith'?"

This passage, which might be paralleled with scores like it from Augustine's writings, contains his doctrine of free will and of freedom. The following are the principal points:

1. Freedom in willing is the actual self-motion or inclining of the will. It excludes indifference, because indifference implies that the will is not yet self-moving and inclining. Freedom is action; indifference is inaction.

2. A distinguishing characteristic of self-motion and inclination is pleasure. The holy will enjoys obedience; the sinful will enjoys disobedience. This evinces the freedom of the self-motion of the will; for were there compulsion there would be no enjoyment. The agent would not be conscious of doing as he pleases.

3. Right self-motion is incompatible with simultaneous wrong self-motion, and the converse. Free action in one direction is inability in respect to the other. Good inclination precludes evil inclination. The servant of sin is free in sinning, but not free to do right, because of his freedom in sin. His bondage to sin is the effect of his self-motion in sin.

4. Freedom to sin may be affirmed, and freedom to holiness denied. Sinful inclination is as really inclination as holy inclination, but it is false freedom because it conflicts with the moral law. When, therefore, Augustine and Calvin deny freedom to the sinner, as they often do, they do not deny his self-motion and voluntariness in sin, but his ability to the contrary, or his power to reverse and change his self-motion (cf. Shedd on Rom. 6:18–20, 22).

4.5.15 (see p. 592). That "sin is a privation, a defect rather than an effect," may be thus illustrated. Sickness is the mere defect of health; the absence of health. But health is not the mere defect or absence of sickness. Health is the normal and right condition of the body, the positive state having its own positive characteristics. Sickness is the abnormal and wrong condition of the body, which is marked not by a set of positive characteristics antithetic to those of health, but only of negative characteristics which consist in the absence of the positive. For illustration, indigestion is the absence of certain properties that make up digestion, not the presence of certain other properties that make up indigestion. Simply ceasing to digest is indigestion; it is not necessary to introduce some new physical processes in order to indigestion, but merely to stop some old ones. Augustine (Enchiridion 13–14) thus explains the subject: "Every being, even if it be a defective one, insofar as it is a being is good and insofar as it is defective, is evil. Good and evil are contraries, but evil cannot exist without good or in anything that is not good. Good, however, can exist without evil. For a man or an angel can exist without being wicked; but nothing can be wicked except a man or an angel; and so far as he is a man or an angel he is good; so far as he is wicked he is an evil. Nothing can be corrupted except what is good, for corruption is nothing else but the destruction of good."

4.5.16 (see p. 598). Sin is idolatry, that is, creature worship. This is St. Paul's definition in Rom. 1:25: "Men worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator." All forms and aspects of sin are reducible to this. And this is the inclining of the human will to self as the ultimate end, because self is the particular creature in which selfishness is most interested. All other creatures are subordinate and subservient to this one. This idolatry is both freedom and bondage: "Whosoever commits sin is the slave of sin" (John 8:34); "of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage" (2 Pet. 2:19). This sin is freedom because it is the uncompelled self-motion of the will; it is bondage because the will is unable to reverse its self-motion. Man is responsible and guilty for this creature worship because he originates and perpetuates it by self-determination; and he is helpless and ruined by it because he cannot overcome and extirpate his central self-determination by his superficial volitions and resolutions.

PART 5

Christology

1 Christ's Theanthropic Person

Preliminary Considerations

Christology (christou logos) is that division of theological science which treats the person of the Redeemer.

As the doctrine of the Trinity is found in the Old Testament, so is that of the Redeemer. As there is an Old Testament trinitarianism, so there is an Old Testament Christology. Both doctrines, however, are less clearly revealed under the former economy than under the latter. Christ is explicit in asserting that the doctrine of his person is found in the Old Testament: "Many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which you see" (Matt. 13:17); "Abraham saw my day and was glad" (John 8:56; cf. 12:41; Luke 24:27); "the prophets searched diligently what the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow" (1 Pet. 1:10–12).

The Redeemer is announced under several names in the Old Testament. The earliest designation is the "seed of the woman" (Gen. 3:15). Christ himself adopts this designation in the title "Son of Man," employed by himself but never by his apostles. The next name in order is Shiloh (49:10). Luther, Gesenius, Rosenmüller, Hengstenberg, and others explain this to mean the "peacemaker." This is favored by other messianic texts: in Isa. 9:6 Messiah is denominated "prince of peace"; in Mic. 5:5 of the Redeemer it is said, "This man shall be our peace"; in Zech. 9:10 he is denominated the "speaker of peace"; and in Eph. 2:14 "our peace." Others explain the term Shiloh to mean "the desired one" (Hag. 2:7); "he who shall be sent"; "his son" (Calvin); "he whose right it is" (Septuagint, Aquila, Symmachus, Onkelos); "the place Shiloh" (Eichhorn, Bleek, Hitzig, Ewald, Delitzsch, Kalisch). In Isa. 7:14 the Redeemer is called Immanuel; in Dan. 9:25 Messiah; in Zech. 6:12 the branch; and in Mal. 3:1 the messenger of the covenant. The designation of the Redeemer that was most common among the Jews was Messiah or Anointed One (māšîaḥ), rendered in the Septuagint by christos. It is found 39 times in the Old Testament (see Alexander on Isa. 52:13).

The time of the Redeemer's advent is distinctly foretold in Gen. 49:10: "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come." Historically, the scepter, that is, self-government, did not depart from the Hebrew nation, represented by the tribe of Judah (Judaei = Jews) until the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The time is again specified very particularly in Dan. 9:24–27: "Seventy weeks are determined upon your people and upon the holy city, to finish the transgression and to make an end of sins and to make reconciliation for iniquity and to bring in everlasting righteousness and to seal up the vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy." In this prophecy, a day stands for a year; 70 weeks denoting 490 years. The prophet announces that in 7 weeks or 49 years from the end of the captivity Jerusalem should be rebuilt; that in 62 weeks or 434 years from the rebuilding Messiah should appear; and that in 1 week or 7 years from his appearance he should "confirm the covenant" and should be "cut off" "in the middle of the week." In the different calculations of exegetes there is a difference of only ten years. The difficulty is to know exactly when the seventy weeks begin. Hales says that they begin from the twentieth year of Artaxerxes Longimanus. W. Smith supposes that "the final and effectual edict of Artaxerxes was the commencing date and that this was issued in 457 B.C. Exactly 490 years may be counted from this to the death of Christ in A.D. 33."

That the Jesus Christ of the New Testament is the Messiah promised in the Old Testament is proved by the agreement between the descriptions of the personage in each. In both he is …

1. the seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15; Ps. 22:10; Mic. 5:3; Gal. 4:4; 1 Tim. 2:15; Rev. 12:15)

2. born of a virgin (Isa. 7:14; Matt. 1:23; Luke 1:26–35)

3. of the family of Shem (Gen. 9:26–27)

4. of the Hebrew race (Exod. 3:18)

5. of the seed of Abraham (Gen. 12:3; 18:18; Matt. 1:1; John 8:56; Acts 3:25)

6. of the line of Isaac (Gen. 17:19; Rom. 9:7; Gal. 4:23–28; Heb. 11:8)

7. of the line of Jacob or Israel (Gen. 28:4–14; Num. 24:5–17; Isa. 41:8; Luke 1:68; 2:32; Acts 28:20)

8. of the tribe of Judah (Gen. 49:10; 1 Chron. 5:2; Mic. 5:2; Matt. 2:6; Heb. 7:14; Rev. 5:5)

9. of the house of David (2 Sam. 7:12–15; 1 Chron. 17:11–14; Ps. 89:4–36; Isa. 9:7; Matt. 1:1; Luke 1:69; 2:4; John 7:42; Acts 2:30; Rom. 1:3; 2 Tim. 2:8; Rev. 22:16)

10. born at Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2; Matt. 2:6; Luke 2:4; John 7:42)

11. to suffer an agony (Gen. 3:15; Ps. 22:1–18; Isa. 53:1–12; Zech. 13:6–7; Matt. 26:37; Luke 24:26)

12. to die in a peculiar manner (Isa. 53:9; Dan. 9:26; Num. 21:9 compared with John 3:14; Ps. 22:18 compared with John 19:24)

13. to be embalmed and entombed (Isa. 53:9; Matt. 27:57; Luke 23:56; John 19:38–41)

14. to rise from the dead (Ps. 16:10; Acts 3:15)

15. to ascend into heaven (Ps. 68:18 compared with Eph. 4:8; Ps. 110:1; Luke 24:51)

16. to come a second time spiritually in regeneration (Isa. 40:10; 62:11; Jer. 23:5–6; Hos. 3:5; Mic. 5:4; Dan. 7:13–14; John 14:3, 18, 23; 16:23, 26)

17. to come a second time visibly (Job 19:25; Ps. 50:1–6; Dan. 12:1–2; Matt. 25:31; 1 Cor. 15:23; 1 Thess. 1:10; Rev. 20:11–12)

The biblical representations of the person of the Redeemer make him to be a complex person, constituted of two natures. He is not merely God or merely man; but a union of both. He is a God-man. The Westminster statement defines him as follows: "The Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who being the eternal Son of God became man, and so was and continues to be God and man in two distinct natures and one person, forever" (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q.21). The principal prooftexts are "the Word was God" (John 1:1); "the Word was made flesh" (1:14); "who being in the form of God took upon him the form of a servant" (Phil. 2:6–7; Gal. 4:4; Luke 1:35; Rom. 9:5; Col. 2:9; Rom. 1:3–4; 1 Tim. 2:5).

In order to a self-consistent scheme of Christ's complex person, the following particulars are to be marked.

Christ's Divine Nature and the Second Trinitarian Person

The divine nature in Christ's person is the second person of the Godhead, the eternal Son, or Logos. This is asserted in John 1:14: "The Word was made flesh." Neither God the Father nor God the Spirit became man. The Godhead did not become incarnate, because the Godhead is the divine essence in all three modes; and the essence in all three modes did not become incarnate. Says Turretin (13.6.4), "It is not proper to say that the Trinity itself became incarnate, because the incarnation is not terminated on the divine nature absolutely, but on the person of the Logos relatively." And Aquinas (3.2.1–2) remarks that "it is more proper to say that a divine person assumed a human nature, than to say that the divine nature assumed a human nature." It was only the divine essence in that particular mode of it which constitutes the second trinitarian person that was united with man's nature. There was, consequently, something in the triune Godhead which did not enter into Christ's person. This something is the personal characteristic of the Father and of the Holy Spirit. The paternity of the first person and the procession of the third person do not belong to Jesus Christ. (supplement 5.1.1.)

The following reasons for the incarnation of the second person, rather than of the first or third, are mentioned by Paraeus (Notes on the Athanasian Creed): First, that by the incarnation the names of the divine persons should remain unchanged; so that neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit should have to take the name of Son. Second, it was fitting that by the incarnation men should become God's adopted sons, through him who is God's natural Son. Third, it was proper that man, who occupies a middle position between angels and beasts in the scale of creatures should be redeemed by the middle person in the Trinity. Last, it was proper that the fallen nature of man which was created by the word (John 1:3) should be restored by him. In addition to these reasons, it is evident that it is more fitting that a father should commission and send a son upon an errand of mercy than that a son should commission and send a father.

Incarnation vs. Transmutation

Incarnation must be distinguished from transmutation or transubstantiation. The phrase became man does not mean that the second person in the Trinity ceased to be God. This would be transubstantiation. One substance, the divine, would be changed or converted into another substance, the human, as in the papal theory the substance of the bread becomes the substance of Christ's body (see Anselm, Why the God-Man? 2.7).

In saying that "the Word was made flesh" (John 1:14), it is meant that the Word came to possess human characteristics in addition to his divine, which still remained as before. The properties of the divine nature cannot be either destroyed or altered. A human nature was united with the divine in order that the resulting person might have a human form of consciousness as well as a divine. Previous to the assumption of a human nature, the Logos could not experience a human feeling because he had no human heart, but after this assumption he could; previous to the incarnation, he could not have a finite perception because he had no finite intellect, but after this event he could; previous to the incarnation, the self-consciousness of the Logos was eternal only, that is, without succession, but subsequent to the incarnation it was both eternal and temporal, with and without succession. This twofold consciousness may be illustrated by the union between the human soul and body. Prior to or apart from its union with a material body, a man's immaterial soul cannot feel a physical sensation or a sensuous appetite; but when united with it in a personal union, it can so feel. In like manner, prior to the incarnation, the second person of the Trinity could not have human sensations and experiences; but after it he could. The unincarnate Logos could think and feel only like God; he had only one form of consciousness. The incarnate Logos can think and feel either like God or like man; he has two modes or forms of consciousness.

When, therefore, it is said that "God became man," the meaning is that God united himself with man, not that God changed himself into man. Unification of two natures, not transmutation of one nature into another is meant. We might say of the union of soul and body, in the instance of a human person, that "spirit becomes matter," that is, is materialized or embodied. We would not mean by this phrase that spirit is actually changed into matter, but that it is united with matter in that intimate manner which is denominated personal union. In the incarnation, God is humanized, as in ordinary human generation, spirit is materialized or embodied. Each substance, however, still retains its own properties. In an ordinary man, spirit remains immaterial and body remains material; and in the God-man, the divine nature remains divine in its properties and the human remains human.

Christ as a Single Person in Two Natures

The distinctive characteristic of the incarnation is the union of two diverse natures, a divine and a human, so as to constitute one single person. A single person may consist of one nature or of two natures or of three. A trinitarian person has only one nature, namely, the divine essence. A human person has two natures, namely, a material body and an immaterial soul. A theanthropic person has three natures, namely, the divine essence, a human soul, and a human body. By the incarnation, not a God, not a man, but a God-man is constituted. A theanthropic person is a trinitarian person modified by union with a human nature, similarly as a trinitarian person is the divine essence modified by generation or spiration. A theanthropic person is constituted, consequently, in the same general manner in which an ordinary human person is—namely, by the union of diverse natures. In the case of a human individual, it is the combination of one material nature and one immaterial that makes him a person. Says Howe (Oracles 2.37), "The production of a human creature does not lie in the production of either of the parts, but only in the uniting of them substantially with one another. It neither lies in the production of the soul, nor does it lie in the production of the matter of the body; but it lies in the beginning of these into a substantial union with one another." Says Hooker (5.54), "The incarnation of the Son of God consists merely in the union of natures, which union does add perfection to the weaker, to the nobler no alteration at all." The divine-human person, Jesus Christ, was produced by the union of the divine nature of the Logos with a human nature derived from a human mother. Before this union was accomplished, there was no theanthropic person. There was the divine person of the Logos existing in the Trinity before this union, and there was the unindividualized substance of Christ's human nature existing in the virgin Mary before this union; but until the two were united at the instant of the miraculous conception, there was no God-man. The trinitarian personality of the Son of God did not begin at the incarnation, but the theanthropic personality of Jesus Christ did.

Divine Nature as the Root of Christ's Person

It is the divine nature and not the human which is the base of Christ's person. The second trinitarian person is the root and stock into which the human nature is grafted. The wild olive is grafted into the good olive and partakes of its root and fatness.

The eternal Son, or the Word, is personal per se. He is from everlasting to everlasting conscious of himself as distinct from the Father and from the Holy Spirit. He did not acquire personality by union with a human nature. The incarnation was not necessary in order that the trinitarian Son of God might be self-conscious. On the contrary, the human nature which he assumed to himself acquired personality by its union with him. By becoming a constituent factor in the one theanthropic person of Christ, the previously impersonal human nature, "the seed of the woman," was personalized. If the Logos had obtained personality by uniting with a human nature, he must have previously been impersonal. The incarnation would then have made an essential change in the Logos and thereby in the Trinity itself. But no essential change can be introduced into the triune Godhead, even by so remarkable an act as the incarnation. (supplement 5.1.2.)

If the human nature and not the divine had been the root and base of Christ's person, he would have been a man-God and not a God-man. The complex person Jesus Christ would have been anthropotheistic, not theanthropic. This was the error of Paul of Samosata, Photinus, and Marcellus, according to whom Christ was an anthrōpos entheos (deified man), the base of the complex person being the human nature. Christ is humanized deity, not deified humanity.

That the personality of the God-man depends primarily upon the divine nature and not upon the human is also evinced by the fact that this complex theanthropic personality was not destroyed by the death of Christ. At the crucifixion, the union between the human soul and the human body was dissolved temporarily, but the union between the Logos and the human soul and body was not. Christ's human soul and body were separated from each other during the "three days and three nights," in which he "lay in the heart of the earth." This was death. The humanity of Christ was thus dislocated for a time, and its complete personality was interrupted. For a soul without its body is not a full and entire human person, although it is the root and the base of the person. Between death and the resurrection, when the human soul and body are separated, although there is self-consciousness in the disembodied spirit, and so the most important element in personality, yet there is an incomplete human personality until the resurrection of the body restores the original union between soul and body.

But no such interruption and temporary dissolution of the unity of Christ's theanthropic personality was caused by the crucifixion. The divine nature was of course unaffected by the bodily dissolution; and although the human soul and body were separated from one another by the crucifixion, they were neither of them separated from the Logos, by this event. Between Christ's death and resurrection, both the human soul and the human body were still united with the Logos. That the body was still united to the Logos is evinced by the fact that it "did not see corruption" (Acts 2:31). Says Hooker (5.53):

The divine and the human natures from the moment of their first combination have been and are forever inseparable. For even when Christ's human soul forsook the tabernacle of his body, his deity forsook neither body nor soul. If it had, then could we not truly hold either that the person of Christ was buried or that the person of Christ did raise up himself from the dead. For the body separated from the Word can in no true sense be termed the person of Christ; nor is it true to say that the Son of God in raising up that body did raise up himself, if the body were not both with him and of him even during the time it lay in the sepulcher. The like is also to be said of the soul; otherwise we are plainly and inevitably Nestorians. The very person of Christ, therefore, forever one and the self-same, was only touching bodily substance concluded within the grave, his soul only from thence severed; but by personal union his deity still inseparably joined with both.

Turretin (13.6.9) makes the same statement: "The natural union of soul and body in the one human nature is separable, which was sundered in Christ's death. But the personal union of the two natures—divine and human—in the one person is inseparable, because that which the Logos assumed once for all he never laid aside." Owen also affirms (Holy Spirit 2.3) that the theanthropic personality of Christ "was necessary and indissoluble, so that it was not impeached nor shaken in the least by the temporary dissolution of the humanity by the separation of the soul and body. For the union of the soul and body in Christ did not constitute him a person, so that the dissolution of them should destroy his personality; but he was a person by the uniting of both into the Son of God" (cf. Belgic Confession 19).

The unification, then, of the three factors—the Logos, the human soul, and the human body—which was effected in the miraculous conception and which continued through the whole earthly life of our Lord was not interrupted by the crucifixion. The God-man existed between the crucifixion and the resurrection, notwithstanding the separation between the human soul and body, as truly as he did before or as he does this instant. And this, because it was the immutable divinity and not the mutable humanity which constitutes the foundation of his personality.

That the divinity and not the humanity is dominant and controlling in Christ's person is proved by the fact that his acts of power were regulated by it. If the Logos so determined, Jesus Christ was powerless; and if the Logos so determined, Jesus Christ was all powerful. When the divine nature withdrew its support from the human, the latter was as helpless as it is in an ordinary human creature. And when the divine nature imparted its power, the human nature became "mighty in word and deed." When the Logos so pleased, Jesus of Nazareth could no more be taken by human hands and nailed to the cross, than the eternal Trinity could be; and when the Logos so pleased, he could be arrested without any resistance and be led like a lamb to the slaughter. This is taught repeatedly in the gospels, when it is related that no man could lay violent hands upon him "because his hour had not come." Jesus Christ, the Son of Mary, speaking generally, had so much power and only so much as the divine nature in his complex person pleased to exert in him. Sometimes, consequently, he was almighty in his acts, and sometimes he was "a worm and no man" (Ps. 22:6). (supplement 5.1.3.)

Again, the knowledge of the God-man depended upon the divine nature for its amount, and this proves that the divinity is dominant in his person. The human mind of Jesus Christ stood in a somewhat similar relation to the Logos that the mind of a prophet does to God. Though not the same in all respects, because the Logos and the human mind in the instance of Jesus Christ constitute one person, while the Holy Spirit and the inspired prophet are two persons, yet in respect to the point of dependence for knowledge, there is an exact similarity. As the prophet Isaiah could know no more of the secret things of God than it pleased the Holy Spirit to disclose to him, so the human mind of Christ could know no more of these same divine secrets than the illumination of the Logos made known. And this illumination, like that of the material sun, was dimmed by the cloud through which it was compelled to penetrate. The finite and limited human nature hindered a full manifestation of the omniscience of the deity. This was a part of the humiliation of the eternal Logos. He condescended to unite himself with an inferior nature, through which his own infinite perfections could shine only in part. When deity does not work as simple deity untrammeled but works in "the form of a servant," it is humbled. The Logos in himself knew the time of the day of judgment, but he did not at a particular moment make that knowledge a part of the human consciousness of Jesus Christ. In so doing, he limited and conditioned his own manifestation of knowledge in the theanthropic person, by the ignorance of the human nature. The same is true respecting the retention of knowledge. Though the Logos himself cannot forget anything, yet he might permit the human nature to forget many things for a season and afterward bring them to remembrance. The gospels, however, mention no instance of Christ's ignorance excepting that respecting the day of judgment: supposing this to be an instance of ignorance (see p. 622 n.).

The difficult subject of the ignorance of Christ and his growth in wisdom and knowledge has light thrown upon it by distinguishing between the existence of the Logos in Christ's person and the manifestation of this existence. This is the key to the doctrine of the kenosis. The Logos constantly existed in Jesus Christ, but did not constantly act through his human soul and body. He did not work miracles continually; nor did he impart to the human soul of Christ the whole of his own infinite knowledge.

Compare the infancy of Jesus Christ with his manhood. When Christ lay in the manger at Bethlehem, the eternal Logos was the root and base of his person as much and as really as it was when he appeared at the age of thirty on the banks of the Jordan and was inaugurated to his office. Christ in the manger was called the messianic King and was worshiped as such by the Magi. Even the theanthropic embryo (to gennōmenon) is denominated the "Son of God" (Luke 1:35). In Heber's hymn, the "infant Redeemer" is styled "maker and monarch and Savior of all." But the Logos, though present, could not properly and fittingly make such a manifestation of knowledge through that infant body and infant soul, as he could through a child's body and a child's soul and still more through a man's body and a man's soul. It would have been unnatural if the Logos had empowered the infant Jesus to work a miracle or deliver the Sermon on the Mount. The repulsive and unnatural character of the apocryphal gospels, compared with the natural beauty of the canonical gospels, arises from attributing to the infant and the child Jesus acts that were befitting only a mature humanity.

During all these infantile years of the immature and undeveloped human nature, the Logos, though present, was in eclipse in the person of Jesus Christ. By this is meant that the Logos made no manifestation of his power through the human nature he had assumed, because this human nature was still infantine. When the infant Jesus lay in the manger, the Logos was present and united with the human nature as really and completely as he is this instant, but he made no exhibition of himself. There was no more thinking going on in the infant human mind of Jesus than in the case of any other infant. The babe lay in the manger unconscious and inactive. Yet the eternal Logos was personally united with this infant. There was a God-man in the manger as truly as there was upon the cross.

It will not follow, however, that because there was no thinking going on in the human mind of the infant Jesus, there was none going on in the Logos. For it must be remembered that though the Logos has condescended to take "the form of a servant," he has not ceased to exist in "the form of God." While he voluntarily submits to the limitations of human infancy and will do no more in the sphere of the finite infant with the feeble instrument which he has condescended to employ than that instrument is fitted to perform, yet in the other infinite sphere of the Godhead he is still the same omniscient and omnipotent person that he always was. The Son of Man was on earth and in heaven at one and the same instant (John 3:13). Because the Logos was localized and limited by a human body on the earth, it does not follow that he did not continue to exist and act in heaven. And because the Logos did not think in and by the mind of the infant Jesus, it does not follow that he did not think in and by his own infinite mind. The humanity of Jesus Christ, then, knew as much and only as much as the Logos pleased to disclose and manifest through a human mind. Says Beza: "The very fullness of the Godhead (theotētos) itself penetrated the assumed humanity just as and as much as it wished." Grotius (on Mark 13:32) says: "It seems to me that it is not impious to explain this passage in this way: that we might say that divine wisdom impressed its effects on the human mind of Christ according to the manner of the times." Says Tillotson: "It is not unreasonable to suppose that divine wisdom, which dwelled in our Savior, did communicate itself to his human soul according to his pleasure, and so his human nature might at some time not know some things." Christ's knowledge was, and ever is, dependent upon the amount of information vouchsafed by the deity in his person. He did not know the time of the day of judgment "because the Word had not revealed this to him," says Turretin (13.13.5).18 He could therefore "increase in wisdom" (Luke 2:52) as a child and a youth, because from the unfathomable and infinite fountain of the divine nature of the Logos there was inflowing into the human understanding united with it a steady and increasing stream. But that infinite fountain was never emptied. The human nature is not sufficiently capacious to contain the whole fullness of God.

The ignorance of Jesus Christ may still further be illustrated by the forgetfulness of an ordinary man. No man, at each and every instant, holds in immediate consciousness all that he has ever been conscious of in the past. He is relatively ignorant of much which he has previously known and experienced. But this forgetting is not absolute and total ignorance. This part of his consciousness may reappear here upon earth and will all of it reappear in the day of judgment. But he cannot recall it just at this instant. He is ignorant and must say: "I do not know." Similarly, if we suppose that Christ when he spoke these words to his disciples was ignorant of the time of the judgment, he may subsequently have come to know it as his human nature increased in knowledge through the illumination of the divine. Says Bengel, "The stress in Matt. 24:36 is on the present tense, 'No man knows.' In those days, no man did know, not even the Son. But afterward he knew it, for he revealed it in the Apocalypse." Christ was relatively ignorant, not absolutely, if he was destined subsequently to know the time of the judgment day. It is more probable that the glorified human mind of Christ on the mediatorial throne now knows the time of the day of judgment, than that it is ignorant of it.

The dawning of Christ's messianic consciousness, as seen in the incident of the youth in the temple with the doctors, illustrates the gradual illumination and instruction of the humanity by the divinity in his person. It is not necessary in order to explain this occurrence to suppose that the virgin mother had informed Jesus respecting his miraculous conception. On the contrary, as she did not feel authorized to inform her husband of the fact but left its disclosure to God, so neither did she feel authorized to inform her child of it. Christ's self-consciousness of his theanthropic person and mediatorial office was formed gradually as he passed from youth to manhood by the increasing illumination of the humanity by the divinity, similarly as in an ordinary human person, the self-consciousness gradually forms and increases by the interpenetration of the lower sensuous nature by the higher rational.

That the divinity is the dominant factor in Christ's complex person is proved by the fact that the degree of his happiness was determined by it. The human nature had no more enjoyment than the divine permitted. The desertion of the humanity by the divinity is implied in the cry: "My God, why have you forsaken me?" The Logos at this moment did not support and comfort the human soul and body of Jesus. This may be regarded equally as desertion by the Father or by the Logos, because of the unity of essence. In the promise "if you shall ask anything in my name I will do it" (John 14:14), the official work of the first person is attributed to the second. As God the Father raised Christ from the dead and Christ also raised himself from the dead, so also God the Father deserted the human nature and God the Logos also deserted it.

That the foundation of Christ's complex personality is the divine nature is proved by his immutability: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Heb. 13:8). What has been said concerning the effect of the crucifixion upon the theanthropic personality will apply here. Christ is immutably the God-man, notwithstanding the temporary separation between his human soul and body.

Beginning and Continuation of Christ's Theanthropic Personality

The theanthropic personality of the Redeemer began in time. The God-man was a new person as well as a unique one. There was no God-man until the moment when the incarnation began. This beginning is to be placed at the instant of the miraculous conception, and this at the instant of the salutation, when the angel Gabriel uttered the words: "Hail you that are highly favored, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women" (Luke 1:28). At this punctum temporis, the eternal Logos united with a portion of human nature in the virgin Mary. The union was embryonic in its first form. Previous to this instant, the only person existing was the second trinitarian person: the human nature existing in the virgin Mary being yet unpersonalized. This trinitarian person was not complex but simple: God the Son but not God-man; the unincarnate Logos (logos asarkos) not the incarnate Logos (logos ensarkos). Jesus Christ is not the proper name of the unincarnate second person of the Trinity but of the second person incarnate: "You shall conceive and bring forth a son and shall call his name Jesus" (1:31). Prior to the incarnation the Trinity consisted of the Father, the unincarnate Son, and the Holy Spirit; subsequent to the incarnation it consists of the Father, the incarnate Son, and the Holy Spirit. Yet it would not be proper to alter the baptismal formula and baptize "in the name of the Father and of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit" because the incarnate Christ is the mediator between the triune God and sinful man, so that the primary trinitarian designation Son, not the secondary mediatorial designation Christ, is the fitting term in the baptismal formula.

Though beginning in time, the theanthropic personality of the Redeemer continues forever. This is taught in the following: "Of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all God blessed forever" (Rom. 9:5); "in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (Col. 2:9); "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Heb. 13:8); "believers sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:6); "we have a great high priest who has passed into the heavens" (Heb. 4:14–15).

Incarnation and Divine Immutability

The incarnation makes no change in the constitution of the Trinity. It leaves in the Godhead, as it finds in it, only three persons. For the addition of a human nature to the person of the Logos is not the addition of another person to him. The second trinitarian person, though so much modified by the incarnation as to become a God-man, is not so much modified as to lose his proper trinitarian personality, because incarnation is not the juxtaposition of a human person with a divine person, but the assumption of a human nature to a divine person. The incarnation produces a change in the humanity that is assumed by exalting and glorifying it, but no change in the deity that assumes. "Divine nature," says Bull (Concerning Subordination 4.4.14), "flows through (immeat) the human nature, but the human nature does not flow through the divine." If the Logos had united himself with a distinct and separate individual, the modification of the Logos by incarnation would have been essential, and a fourth person, namely, a human person, would have thereby entered into the Godhead, which would have been an alteration in the constitution of the Trinity, making it to consist of four persons instead of three. Says Ussher (Incarnation in Works 1.580):

We must consider that divine nature did not assume a human person, but the divine person did assume a human nature; and that of the three divine persons, it was neither the first nor the third that did assume this nature, but it was the middle person who was to be the middle one that must undertake the mediation between God and us. For if the fullness of the Godhead should have thus dwelled in any human person, there should have been added to the Godhead a fourth kind of person; and if any of the three persons besides the second had been born of a woman, there should have been two Sons in the Trinity. Whereas, now, the Son of God and the Son of the blessed virgin, being but one person, is consequently but one Son; and so, no alteration at all made in the relations of the persons of the Trinity (see Hooker 5.54). (supplement 5.1.5.)

The Logos, by his incarnation and exaltation, marvelous as it seems, took a human nature with him into the depths of the Godhead. A finite glorified human nature is now eternally united with the second trinitarian person, and a God-man is now the middle person of the Trinity:

No Paean there, no Bacchic song they raise;

But the three persons of the Trinity,

And the two natures joined in one they praise.

—Dante, Paradise 13.25–27

Yet the Trinity itself is not altered or modified by the incarnation. Only the second person is modified. The Trinity is not divine-human, nor is the Father nor is the Holy Spirit. But the eternal Son is. For this reason, the Son stands in a nearer relation to redeemed man than either the Father or the Spirit can. Neither of them is the "elder brother" of the redeemed. Neither of them is the "head" of which the church is the "body." Neither of them is the divine person of whom it can be said, "We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones" (Eph. 5:30).

The union of the Logos with a human nature does not disturb either the trinitarian relation of the Logos or his relation to the created universe. When the Logos consents to unite with a human nature, he consents to exist and act in "the form of a servant." But, as previously remarked, this does not imply that he ceases to exist and act "in a form of God." Incarnation is not transubstantiation. Consequently, when incarnate, the Logos is capable of a twofold mode of existence, consciousness, and agency. Possessing a divine nature, he can still exist and act as a divine being, and he so exists and acts within the sphere of the infinite and eternal Godhead without any limitation. Possessing a human nature, he can also exist and act as a human being, and he so exists and acts within the sphere of finite and temporal humanity and under its limitations. The Son of Man was in heaven and upon earth simultaneously (John 3:13). In heaven he was in glory; on earth he was in sorrow and death. The God-man is both unlimited and limited, illocal and local. He has consequently a twofold consciousness: infinite and finite. He thinks like God; and he thinks like man. He has the eternal, all-comprehending, and successionless consciousness of God; and he has the imperfect, gradual, and sequacious consciousness of man. In this way, the trinitarian relations of the second person remain unchanged by his incarnation. Divine nature, though it condescends to exist and act in and through a human soul and body and to be trammeled by it, at the same time is existing and acting in an untrammeled manner throughout the universe of finite being and in the immensity of the Godhead.

Consider, for illustration, Christ's relations to space. He lived a double life in this reference when he lived in Palestine eighteen centuries ago. He subsisted in both forms—that of God and that of a servant—at one and the same moment. He was simultaneously the absolute and eternal Spirit, unlocalized, filling immensity; and he was also that same Spirit localized, dwelling in and confined to the soul and body of Jesus of Nazareth. Because the Logos voluntarily confined and limited himself to the latter, it does not follow that he could not also continue to be unconfined and unlimited God. Because the sun is shining in and through a cloud, it does not follow that it cannot at the same time be shining through the remainder of universal space unobscured by any vapor whatever. The omnipresence of the Logos is that of the infinite Spirit. Consequently, he is all in every place and at every point. He is all in the human soul and body of Jesus of Nazareth, and simultaneously he is all at every other point of space. His total presence in the man Christ Jesus did not prevent his total presence throughout the universe. He was therefore both omnipresent and locally present. Says Calvin (2.15, "Although the infinite essence of the Logos is united in one person with the nature of man, yet we have no thought of its incarceration or confinement. For the Son of God miraculously descended from heaven, yet in such a manner that he never left heaven: he chose to be miraculously conceived in the womb of the virgin, to live on earth, and to be suspended on the cross; and yet he never ceased to fill the universe in the same manner as from the beginning." "Who will say," says Paraeus (Upon Hunnius, 21), "that the deity of the Word was only where his body was, say, in the mother's womb, in the temple, on the cross, in the sepulcher, and was absent in other places where his body was not? Who will say that he did not fill heaven and earth; that he was not at Rome, at Athens, and everywhere outside of Judea, at the same time when his body was within the limits of Judea alone?" "The word of God," says Augustine (Letter 137 to Volusianus), "did so assume a body from the virgin and manifest himself with mortal senses, as neither to destroy his own immortality nor to change his eternity nor to diminish his power nor to relinquish the government of the world nor to withdraw from the bosom of the Father, that is from the secret place where he is with him and in him." Says Aquinas (3.5.2), "Christ is said to have descended from heaven from the standpoint of his divine nature—not in such a way that the divine nature ceased to be in heaven, but because he began to be here below in a new way, namely, according to the nature he assumed." (supplement 5.1.6.)

As the inspiration of a prophet by the Holy Spirit or his indwelling in a believer does not interfere with the trinitarian relations of the third person, so neither does the incarnation interfere with those of the second. The Holy Spirit makes intercessions that cannot be uttered and thereby unites himself to a certain degree to a particular man, but is still the same distinct person in the Trinity. Moreover, this intercession of the Holy Spirit in the soul of the believer does not disturb or prevent the single self-consciousness of the believer. Here are two distinct persons, confessedly, and yet only one self-consciousness in the believer. But if a single self-consciousness is not dualized and destroyed in the instance when the divine nature and the human, the Holy Spirit and the believer, do not constitute a God-man, still less need it be when they do. The two different modes or forms of consciousness—the divine and the human—in the God-man do not constitute two self-consciousnesses or two persons, any more than two or more different forms of consciousness in a man constitute two or more self-consciousnesses or persons. A man at one moment has a sensuous form of consciousness and at another moment a spiritual form; but he is one and the same person in both instances and has but a single self-consciousness.

Incarnation as the Assumption of a Nature, Not a Person

In the incarnation, the Logos does not unite himself with a human person, but with a human nature. This is taught in Scripture. Christ "took upon him the seed (sperma) of Abraham" (Heb. 2:16); Christ "was made of the seed of David" (Rom. 1:3); in the first promise the Redeemer is denominated the "seed of the woman" (Gen. 3:15); "forasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same" (Heb. 2:14).

The terms seed and flesh and blood imply that the humanity which the Logos laid hold upon and assumed into personal union with himself was not yet personalized. At the instant when it was assumed, it was human nature unindividualized, not a distinct individual person. This is the interpretation of the scriptural statement which is found in the creeds generally. More particular attention was turned to the distinction between a nature and a person by the Nestorian controversy, and ever since that time the creeds have been careful to state that the Logos united a human nature—but not a human person—with himself.

The orthodox statement in the patristic church is made in the following extract from John of Damascus (Concerning the Orthodox Faith 3.2): "The Logos was not united with a flesh which previously existed by itself as an individual man, but, in and by his own infinite person dwelling in the womb of the holy virgin, he personalized (hypestēsato) of the chaste blood of the ever-virgin a flesh enlivened with a rational and intellectual soul; the Logos thereby assuming the firstfruits of the human lump and becoming a person in the flesh."

Westminster Confession 8.2 accords with ancient, medieval, and Reformed Christology in its statement that "the Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, did take upon him man's nature with all the essential properties thereof; so that the two whole perfect and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person." Athanasian Creed 31 denominates Christ "a man born in the world from the substance of his mother" In the theological nomenclature, "nature" is designated by "substance," and person by "subsistence."27

Hooker (5.52) enunciates the doctrine in the following language: "The Son of God did not assume a man's person into his own person, but a man's nature to his own person; and therefore he took semen, the seed of Abraham, the very first original element of our nature before it was come to have any personal human subsistence." In similar terms, Owen (Holy Spirit 2.3) expresses himself. He remarks that the Son of God took the nature formed and prepared for him in the womb of the virgin by the operation of the Holy Spirit "to be his own, in the instant of its formation, thereby preventing the singular and individual subsistence of that nature in and by itself." Again he says that "as it is probable that the miraculous conception was immediate upon the angelic salutation, so it was necessary that nothing of the human nature of Christ should exist of itself antecedently unto its union with the Son of God." By the phrase exist of itself, Owen here means "exist by itself" as constituted and formed into a distinct and separate individual person. That the human nature as bare nature existed antecedently to its union with the Logos, Owen abundantly teaches in all that he says of the work of the Holy Spirit in preparing and forming the human nature as it existed in the virgin mother. In another passage (Trinity Vindicated), Owen is still more explicit: "The person of the Son of God, in his assuming human nature to be his own, did not take an individual person of anyone into a near conjunction with himself, but preventing the personal subsistence of human nature in that flesh which he assumed, he gave it its subsistence (i.e., its personality) in his own person, whence it has its individuation and distinction from all other persons whatever. This is the personal union." Again, Owen (Vindication of the Gospel, 19) says: "Jesus Christ the mediator, theanthrōpos, God and man, the Son of God, having assumed hagion to gennōmenon (Luke 1:35) that holy thing that was born of the virgin, anypostaton, having no subsistence of its own, into personal subsistence with himself, is to be worshiped with divine religious worship, even as the Father" (see Owen, Person of Christ, chap. 18). Says Charnock (Wisdom of God):

Christ did not take the person of man, but the nature of man into subsistence with himself. The body and soul of Christ were not united in themselves, had no subsistence in themselves, till they were united to theperson of the Son of God. If the person of a man were united to him, the human nature would have been the nature of the person so united to him, and not the nature of the Son of God according to Heb. 2:14, 16. TheSon of God took "flesh and blood"to be his own nature, perpetually to subsist in the person of the Logos; which must be by a personal union, or no way: the deity united to the humanity, and both natures to be one person.

Turretin (13.6.18) says:

Although the human nature of Christ is a spiritual and intelligent substance and perfect in respect to the existence and properties of such a substance, yet it is not at first (statim) a person; because it has not that peculiar incommunicable property which constitutes a subsistence as distinguished from a substance. Just as soul (anima) taken by itself is a particular intelligent substance, yet not a person, because it is an incomplete part of a greater whole. It requires to be joined to a body, before there can be an individual man. It does not derogate from the reality and perfection of Christ's human nature to say that before it was assumed into union with the Logos it was destitute of personality, because we measure the reality and dignity of a human nature by the essential properties of the nature and not by the characteristic of individuality subsequently added to it. These essential properties belong to it by creation, but the individual form is superinduced after creation by generation. The definition of substance or nature, consequently, differs from the definition of subsistence or person. Personality is not an integral and essential part of a nature, but is, as it were, the terminus to which it tends (nec pars integralis nec essentialis naturae, sed quasi terminus); and Christ's human nature acquired a more exalted and perfect personality by subsisting in the Logos, than it would had it acquired personality by ordinary generation.

Similarly, Quenstedt (Hase, Hutterus, 233) asserts that "subsistence does not apply to the essence of man, but to the terminus (terminationem) of humanity." He also remarks (Hase, Hutterus, 232), "For it was not a person but a human nature, lacking its own personality, that was assumed. Otherwise there would be two persons in Christ." Calovius teaches that Christ as man was "born from the seminal mass";35 Hollaz says "animated from the seed"; Baier says "from the bloodline of the virgin."37

An American theologian, Samuel Hopkins (1.283), adopts the Catholic Christology:

The personality of Jesus Christ is in his divine nature and not in the human. Jesus Christ existed a distinct, divine person from eternity, the second person in the adorable Trinity. The human nature which this divine person, the Word, assumed into a personal union with himself is not and never was a distinct person by itself, and personality cannot be ascribed to it and does not belong to it, any otherwise than as united to the Logos, the word of God. The Word assumed the human nature, not a human person, into a personal union with himself, by which the complex person exists, God-man. Hence, when Jesus Christ is spoken of as being a man, "the Son of Man, the man Christ Jesus," etc., these terms do not express the personality of the manhood or of the human nature of Jesus Christ; but these personal terms are used with respect to the human nature as united to a divine person and not as a mere man. For the personal terms he, I, and you cannot with propriety or truth be used by or of the human nature considered as distinct from the divine nature of Jesus Christ.

In a similar manner, Hodge explains the subject. After remarking (Theology 2.391) that "though realism may not be a correct philosophy, the fact of its wide and long-continued prevalence may be taken as a proof that it does not involve any palpable contradiction," he proceeds to make use of realism in the statement that "human nature although endowed with intelligence and will may be, and in fact is, in the person of Christ, impersonal. That it is so, is the plain doctrine of Scripture, for the Son of God, a divine person, assumed a perfect human nature and nevertheless remains one person."

Van Mastricht (Theology 5.4.7) defines the hypostatic union as "a certain ineffable relation of the divine person to the human nature through which this human nature is peculiarly the human nature of the second person of the deity." Wollebius (1.16) says that "Christ assumed not man, but the humanity; not the person, but the nature." John Bunyan (On Imputed Righteousness) says that "the Son of God took not upon him a particular person, though he took to him a human body and soul; but that which he took was, as I may call it, a lump of the common nature of man. 'For verily he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham.' " (supplement 5.1.7.)

Since much depends in Christology upon the important distinction between "nature" and "person" or between "substance" and "subsistence," we shall enlarge somewhat upon it.

When we speak of a human nature, a real substance having physical, rational, moral, and spiritual properties is meant. This human nature or substance is capable of becoming a human person, but as yet is not one. It requires to be personalized in order to be a self-conscious individual man. A human person is a fractional part of a specific human nature or substance which has been separated from the common mass and formed into a distinct and separate individual by the process of generation. Prior to this separation and formation, this fractional portion of the common human nature has all the qualities of the common mass of which it is a part, but it is not yet individualized. It is potentially, not actually personal. It has all the properties that subsequently appear in the particular individual formed of it, such as spirituality, rationality, voluntariness—viewing the nature upon the psychical side of it—and sensuousness with general adaptation to a visible and material world—viewing the nature upon the physical side.

Accordingly, Westminster Confession 8.2 affirms that "the second person in the Trinity did take upon him man's nature with all the essential properties thereof." It does not say "with the individual form thereof." The fact that the nature has all the properties of man, though it has not as yet the form of an individual man, is sufficient to make it human nature. A brute's nature does not have all the properties of human nature; and neither does an angel's nature. Therefore, the Logos "took not upon him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed (sperma) of Abraham" (Heb. 2:16).

Saint Paul's figure of the potter's clay and the vessels to be shaped from it may be employed in illustration. A lump of clay has all the properties of matter that belong to the vessel of honor or dishonor. But it has not as yet the individual form of the vessel. An act of the potter must intervene, whereby a piece of clay is separated from the lump and molded into a particular vase having its own peculiar shape and figure. In like manner, human nature as an entire whole existing in Adam possessed all the elementary properties that are requisite to personality, though it was not yet personalized. And in like manner, any portion of this entire human nature, when transmitted from Adam and existing in nearer or remote ancestors, is also possessed of all the properties requisite to personality, though it is not yet, in Owen's phrase, "individuated" or transformed from a nature to a person. The difference, then, between nature and person is virtually that between substance and form. As a material substance may exist without being shaped in a particular manner, so a human nature may exist without being individualized (see pp. 469–70).

Thus it appears that although a human nature is not actually personal, that is, a distinct person, it is nevertheless potentially personal, that is, it is capable of becoming a separate self-conscious individual man. Every individual of Adam's posterity has precisely the same properties or qualities in his person that there are in the specific nature of which he is a part and portion. He is physical, rational, intelligent, and voluntary, only because the human nature out of which he is formed is a physical, rational, intelligent, and voluntary substance created by God on the sixth day when he created the species man. It is the properties of a substance that make it what it is, not the particular individual form which it may assume. As Turretin says, in the extract previously quoted, "We measure the reality and dignity of a human nature by the essential properties of the nature, not by the characteristic of individuality subsequently added to it. Personality is not an integral and necessary part of a nature, but, as it were, the terminus to which it tends."

It is evident, then, from this discussion, that the term nature is a more impersonal term than the term person. A human nature, though not absolutely impersonal like a brute nature or like inorganic matter, is yet less personal than a human person. This may be illustrated by considering the divine nature and the trinitarian persons. In the discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity, we have seen that if we abstract trinality from the divine essence we have nothing left but the impersonal substance of pantheism or the unreflecting unit of deism. It is only when the divine nature is contemplated, as it is in Scripture, as "subsisting" or "modified" or, if we may so speak, metamorphosed in the eternal three—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—that we have full and clear personality. This is what is meant in Phil. 2:6 by morphē theou. This is not the same in every respect with ousia theou45 or physis theou. It is a personal form of the ousia47 or physis theou. God is self-conscious, self-knowing, and self-communing—in other words is personal—because he subsists in three individual distinctions. As an untrinalized nature merely and only, he is the impersonal unit of deism or pantheism; but as a nature in three persons, or a nature personalized by trinality, he is a unity: the self-conscious and "living" God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The eternal trinitarian processes of generation and spiration personalize the divine nature, as ordinary generation analogously individualizes the human nature. The one human nature or species is personalized gradually in time by division into millions of human individuals; and the one divine nature is personalized simultaneously in eternity by subsisting indivisibly and wholly in three divine hypostases. If the human nature were never individualized by ordinary generation, if it remained a mere nature in Adam though it would be human nature still and not brutal nature or inorganic matter, yet it would be impersonal for our minds. It would have no history and none of the interest and impression of individuality. And if the divine nature had no trinality in it—if there were no Father, Son, and Holy Spirit but only the one substance of pantheism or deism—the deity would present no personal characteristics appealing to man's personal feelings and wants.

To apply all this to the subject of Christ's theanthropic person, we say that in the act of incarnation the Logos, who is already a conscious trinitarian person, takes into personal union with himself a human nature—what the Scriptures denominate the "seed of David," the "seed of Abraham," the "seed of a woman," the "flesh and blood" of man. This human nature previous to this assumption is not a person ("for the personal being which the Son of God already had suffered not the substance which he took to be a person," says Hooker), yet it is capable of being personalized and becoming an individual man. It is actually personalized and made to have an individual life and history by being miraculously quickened, formed, and sanctified by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the virgin mother and assumed by the eternal Logos into union with himself. Hence Athanasius (Against the Arians 3.51) defines Christ as "a man impersonated into God" and describes Christ's human body and soul as an instrument which the Logos appropriates personally (organon enypostaton idiopoiēse) (Witsius, Apostles' Creed, diss.16). The human nature thus becomes an integrant constituent of one complex person, the God-man, Jesus Christ. In the phraseology of Owen (Person of Christ, 18), "Assumption is unto personality; it is that act whereby the Son of God and our nature become one person." Francis Junius (Theological Theses, 27) similarly remarks: "His human nature, previously anhypostatic (anypostatos), was assumed in the unity of his person by the Logos (logō) and was made enhypostatic (enypostatos)." Aquinas (3.2.2) contends that the human nature of Christ, by being personalized through assumption into union with a trinitarian person, obtained a more exalted personality in this way than it would have obtained by being personalized by ordinary generation; just as the animal soul, when personalized by its union with a rational soul, in the case of a man, is more excellent than when, as in the case of a dog or any mere animal, it is not personalized at all by union with a rational soul.

Still another point of difference between a "nature" and a "person" is the fact that a nature cannot be distinguished from another nature, but a person can be from another person. One fractional portion of human substance has no marks by which it can be discriminated from another portion. It is not until it has been individualized by generation that it has a personal peculiarity of its own that differentiates it. When human "flesh and blood" has acquired personal characteristics, it can then be distinguished from the parents and from the species. "Human nature," says Owen (Person of Christ, 18), "in itself is anypostatos: that which has not a subsistence of its own which should give it individuation and distinction from the same nature in any other person." Says Hooker (5.52), "We cannot say, properly, that the virgin bore, or John did baptize, or Pilate condemn, or the Jews crucify, the nature of man; because these are all personal attributes. Christ's person is the subject which receives them, his nature that which makes his person capable or apt to receive."

In the case of an ordinary human person, the body or the material nature is personalized by the soul or the spiritual nature within it. The body as a mere corpse, and separate from the soul, is impersonal. Similarly, the human nature of Christ considered as the substance of the virgin is personalized by the Logos uniting with it: "His human nature, as John of Damascus says, has its personality in Christ" (Aquinas, Summa 3.2.3). Viewed merely as the substance, the "blood" and "seed" of the virgin prior to its assumption, it was impersonal. It could not be distinguished as the particular individual man Jesus of Nazareth until the miraculous conception had individualized it. As the mere "substance" and "seed" of the virgin, it had nothing to distinguish it from the "substance" and "seed" of any other woman or from other "substance" of Mary herself, who could have conceived still other sons by ordinary generation.

In the incarnation, the Logos did not unite himself with the whole human nature, but with only a part of it. The term human nature may signify the entire human species as it existed in Adam or only a part of it as it exists in near or remote ancestors. In the first case, it is the human nature; in the second, it is a human nature. The proper statement is that the Logos united himself with a human nature, not with the human nature. Whenever there is any conception of human nature, either ordinary or miraculous, there is abscission of substance. Turretin (13.11.10) speaks of Christ's humanity as "material taken from the substance of the most blessed virgin." The union between God and man in the incarnation is not a union with the human species as an entirety. At the time of the incarnation of the Logos, the human nature considered as an entire whole had been in the process of generation and individualization for four thousand years, and millions of separate and distinct individuals had been formed out of it. The Logos did not unite himself with this already propagated part of the human nature or species. Neither did he unite with that whole remainder of the common nature which had not yet been individualized by generation. This latter was latent and unindividualized in the population existing at the time of the incarnation. The Logos united with only a fraction of this remainder, namely, with that particular portion of human nature which he assumed from the virgin mother. The eternal Word took into a personal union with himself, not the whole human nature both distributed and undistributed, individualized and unindividualized, but only a transmitted fractional part of the undistributed remainder of it, as this existed in the virgin Mary.54

That theory of universal redemption which rests upon the hypothesis of a union of the Logos with the whole human species finds no support in Scripture, and we may add in reason or the nature of the case. The humanity of Christ was not a specific whole, but only a part of a specific whole: "It should be stated that the word of God did not assume human nature in general (in universali) but in an individual (in atomo), that is, individually (individuo), just as John of Damascus says (Orthodox Faith 3.7). Otherwise, any man whatever is the word of God, just as Christ is" (Aquinas, Summa 3.2.2).

Sanctification of Christ's Human Nature

The human nature assumed into union with the Logos was miraculously sanctified, so as to be sinless and perfect: "The Word was made flesh and dwelled among us full of grace and truth" (John 1:14); "God gives not the Spirit by measure unto him" (3:34); "the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of council and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord" (Isa. 11:2); "Christ was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:15); "such a high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners" (7:26); "that holy thing which shall be born " (Luke 1:35); "butter and honey shall Immanuel eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good" (Isa. 7:14–15); "a body have you prepared for me" (Heb. 10:5); "this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased" (Matt. 3:17); "in him is no sin" (1 John 3:5).

In accordance with these texts, the creeds affirm the perfect sanctification of the human nature in and by the incarnation. Westminster Larger Catechism Q.37 teaches that "the Son of God became man by being conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the virgin Mary, of her substance and born of her, yet without sin." The Formula of Concord ("Concerning Original Sin"; Hase, 574), after saying that the Son of God assumed the "seed of Abraham," adds: "Christ redeemed our same human nature (namely, his own work), he sanctifies this same human nature (which is his work), he raises this same nature from the dead, and he adorns it with enormous glory (which is his own work)" (cf. Augustine, Enchiridion 36).

With these statements of the creeds, the theologians agree. They assert the sinfulness of the virgin Mary, the consequent sinfulness of human nature as transmitted by her, and the necessity of its being redeemed and sanctified, in order to be fitted for a personal union with the Logos. Says Augustine (Letter 164)

If the soul of Christ be derived from Adam's soul, he, in assuming it to himself, cleansed it so that when he came into this world he was born of the virgin perfectly free from sin either actual or transmitted. If, however, the souls of men are not derived from that one soul, and it is only by the flesh that original sin is transmitted from Adam, the Son of God created a soul for himself, as he creates souls for all other men, but he united it not to sinful flesh, but to the "likeness of sinful flesh" (Rom. 8:3). For he took, indeed, from the virgin the true substance of flesh; not however "sinful flesh," for it was neither begotten nor conceived through carnal concupiscence, but was mortal and capable of change in the successive stages of life, as being like unto sinful flesh in all points, sin excepted (see also Enchiridion 36–37).

Athanasius (Against the Arians 2.61) explains the clause firstborn of every creature (Col. 1:5) as meaning the same as "firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29) and adds that Christ "is the firstborn of us in this respect, that the whole posterity of Adam lying in a state of perdition by the sin of Adam, the human nature of Christ was first redeemed and sanctified (esōthē kai ēleutherōthē) and so became the means of our regeneration, redemption, and sanctification, in consequence of the community of nature between him and us." John of Damascus (Concerning the Faith 3.2) teaches the same doctrine. Says Anselm (Why the God-Man? 2.17), "Christ's mother was purified by the power of his death. The virgin of whom he was born could be pure only by true faith in his death." Anselm supposes that the virgin mother was perfectly sanctified, but does not hold the later dogma of the immaculate conception of the virgin. Yet he prepares the way for it by teaching her immaculateness by regeneration. Says Paraeus (Body of Doctrine Q.35):

It was not fitting for the Logos, the Son of God, to assume a nature polluted by sin. For whatever is born of flesh—that is, from a sinful, unsanctified woman—is flesh, falsehood, and worthlessness. The Holy Spirit well knew how to separate sin from the nature of man, the substance from the accident. For sin is not of the nature of man but was added to the nature from somewhere else, by the devil. The Holy Spirit separated from the fetus all impurity and infection of original sin.

Says Ursinus (Christian Religion Q.35), "Mary was a sinner; but the mass of flesh which was taken out of her substance was, by the operation of the Holy Spirit, at the same instant sanctified when it was taken." Says Pearson (On the Creed, art.3):

The original and total sanctification of the human nature was first necessary to fit it for the personal union with the Word, who out of his infinite love humbled himself to become flesh and at the same time out of his infinite purity could not defile himself by becoming sinful flesh. Therefore the human nature, in its first original, without any precedent merit, was formed by the Spirit, and in its formation sanctified, and in its sanctification united to the Word; so that grace was coexistent and in a manner conatural with it.

Says Owen (Holy Spirit 2.4), "The human nature of Christ, being thus formed in the womb by a creating act of the Holy Spirit, was in the instant of its conception sanctified and filled with grace according to the measure of its receptivity." Owen adds that the human nature, "being not begotten by natural generation, derived no taint of original sin or corruption from Adam, that being the only way or means of its propagation." Says Quenstedt (3.3), "The same Spirit, in his most extraordinary presence and power, made Mary, ever virgin, fruitful for conceiving the Savior of the world. He extracted fecund (prolificum) seed from her chaste blood, purged it from all inherent sin, and provided the power to Mary by which she would conceive the very Son of God."

Ussher (Incarnation in Works 4.583) speaks of the effect of the incarnation upon the human nature of Christ, not merely in sanctifying it, but in preserving it from certain innocent defects: "As the Son of God took upon him not a human person but a human nature, so it was not requisite that he should take upon him any personal infirmities such as madness, blindness, lameness, and particular kinds of diseases which are incidental to some individuals only and not to all men generally; but those infirmities which do accompany the whole nature of manhood, such as are hungering, thirsting, weariness, grief, pain, mortality." Says Gill (Divinity, 165), "Christ was made of a woman, took flesh of a sinful woman, though the flesh he took of her was not sinful, being sanctified by the Spirit of God, the former of Christ's human nature." Turretin (13.11.10), describing the operation of the Holy Spirit in respect to the incarnation, remarks that

the Holy Spirit must prepare the substance abscised from the substance of the blessed virgin by a suitable sanctification, not only by endowing it with life and elevating it to that degree of energy which is sufficient for generation without sexual connection, but also by purifying it from all stain of sin (ab omni peccati labe) so that it shall be harmless and undefiled, and thus that Christ may be born without sin. Hence there is no need of having recourse to the doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary. For although there is no created power which can bring a clean thing from an unclean (Job 14:4), yet the divine power is not to be so limited. To this there is nothing impossible. This calls things which are not, as if they were.

Wollebius (1.16) says that "the material cause of Christ's conception was the blood of the blessed virgin. The formal cause of Christ's conception consists in the preparing and sanctifying of the virgin's blood by the virtue of the Holy Spirit." Edwards (Excellency of Christ) remarks that "though Christ was conceived in the womb of one of the corrupt race of mankind, yet he was conceived without sin."

Marck (Person of Christ 11.14) teaches that the virgin's substance was preserved from original sin. After saying that "Christ had his human flesh from the substance of the virgin Mary, since he is called her son in Luke 11:7, and Gal. 4:5 states that he was made of a woman," he adds respecting the miraculous conception: "The action of the Spirit was exactly threefold: making the virgin's seed fruitful, the formation of the human nature, and the preservation from every stain. From these facts it can well be concluded that Christ, supernaturally generated, was not bound (tenetur) by Adamic guilt and consequently could not be tainted with Adam's stain." Here nothing is said respecting positive sanctification, but only of preservation from corruption. De Moor, however, in his commentary upon Marck (19.14), adopts the statement of Alting in the following terms:

Alting observes that "that seed from which the body of Christ was formed, since it was taken from a sinful woman (peccatrice), was therefore infected with sin, at least as far as the disposition. But the Holy Spirit in preparing it purged it from every stain inhering in it. And so he separated from lawlessness and disorder (anomia kai ataxia) even the foundations of weaknesses, common to the entire species, which remained."

Van Mastricht tends to the Semipelagian anthropology in asserting that the virgin's seed was cleansed from physical not from moral corruption. In 4.10.5–6 he remarks that the Holy Spirit …

cleansed, as it were (quasi), that virgin seed—not, indeed, from moral impurity or sin, seeing as how the seed, not yet animated, was not liable to it. But he cleansed it from an intemperate physical constitution (intemperie physica), from which, in its own time, sin could have resulted. At all events, he preserved the birth from every impurity, so that what would be born would be holy (Luke 1:35).

In 4.10.6 he says:

Moreover, that seed, although it was propagated through sinners to Mary, nevertheless was not liable to sin or to moral wickedness, since that wickedness would not fall on an inanimate and irrational thing. Nevertheless, the seed could have a natural intemperance, which soon could provide the occasion for sin. Consequently, we said that this intemperance was removed from Mary's seed through the Holy Spirit.

That the human nature derived from Mary in itself and apart from the agency of the Holy Spirit in the incarnation was corrupt is proved by Rom. 8:3: "God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh." This means that the "flesh" as it existed in the mother and before its sanctification in the womb was sinful. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh" (John 3:6); "who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one" (Job 14:4); "how can he be clean that is born of a woman?" (25:4). The Formula of Concord ("Concerning Original Sin"; Hase, 644) says that "in the first moment of our conception, that seed from which a man is formed is contaminated and corrupted by sin." It also condemns the Anabaptists who asserted "that Christ did not assume his flesh and blood from the virgin Mary,69 but brought them with him from heaven."

In the adoption controversy in the eighth century, Felix of Urgellis maintained that the Logos united with a human nature that was unsanctified, that Christ had a corrupted nature though he never committed actual transgression. He thought this to be necessary in order that Christ might be tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin. But this implies that corruption of nature is not sin. He was opposed by Alcuin (see Güricke, Church History §107). The theory was revived about 1830 in Germany by Menken and in Great Britain by Irving. Schleiermacher (Doctrine §97) departs from the Catholic doctrine in holding that Christ had an earthly father, but that by a supernatural operation on the embryo it was cleansed from original sin.

The possibility of a perfect sanctification of the human nature of Christ appears from considering the mode of his conception and comparing it with that of an ordinary man. The individualizing of a portion of human nature is that process by which it becomes a distinct and separate person and no longer an indistinguishable part of the common species. A part of human nature becomes a human person by generation. In all instances but that of Jesus Christ, the individualization of a portion of human substance is accomplished through the medium of the sexes and is accompanied with sensual appetite. By ordinary generation, human nature is transmitted and individualized without any change of its characteristics, either physical or moral. The individual has all the qualities both of soul and body which fallen Adam had. There is no sanctification of the nature possible by this mode. Ordinary generation transmits sin: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh." But in the instance of the conception of Jesus Christ, the God-man, there was no union of the sexes and no sensual appetite. The quickening of a portion of human nature in the virgin mother was by the creative energy of God the Holy Spirit. This miraculous conception, consequently, was as pure from all sensuous quality as the original creation of Adam's body from the dust of the ground or of Eve's body from the rib of Adam. As the dust of the ground was enlivened by a miraculous act and the result was the individual body of Adam, so the substance of Mary was quickened and sanctified by a miraculous act and the result was the human soul and body of Jesus Christ.

The miraculous quickening of the substance of the virgin mother is not sufficient, alone and by itself, to account for its sanctification. As her substance, it was a part of the fallen and corrupt human species. Merely to quicken or vitalize it, even though miraculously, would not change its moral quality. Hence we must postulate a renewing and sanctifying operation of the Holy Spirit in connection with his quickening energy. Witsius (Covenants 2.4.11) quotes Cloppenburg as saying "that the miraculous impregnation of the virgin's womb, of itself alone, could not secure, in the least, an exemption to the flesh of Christ from the inheritance of sin; for the origin of sin is not derived from the male sex alone, or male seed; nor did the apostle in Rom. 5 so understand one man Adam as to exclude Eve: which is the leading error of some." Similarly, Calvin (2.13.4) remarks that

they betray their ignorance in arguing that if Christ is perfectly immaculate and was begotten of the seed of Mary by the secret operation of the Spirit, then it follows that there is no impurity in the seed of women, but only in that of men. For we do not represent Christ as perfectly immaculate merely because he was born of the seed of a woman unconnected with any man, but because he was sanctified by the Spirit, so that his generation was pure and holy, such as it would have been before the fall of Adam.

The doctrine of the sinlessness of Christ is, thus, necessarily connected with the doctrine of the miraculous conception by the Holy Spirit. The one stands or falls with the other. Says Howe (Oracles 2.37):

It is a mighty confirmation of the natural descent of sin with the nature of man in the ordinary way, that when God designed the incarnation of his own Son, to avoid the corruption of nature descending to him, he then steps out of the ordinary course; a consideration that has that weight with it, that if anyone allow himself to think, it must overbear his mind, in that matter, that surely there is some secret profound reason in the counsel of God, whether obvious to our view or not obvious, that the descent of corrupt nature was in the ordinary way unavoidable: that when God had a design to incarnate his own Son, when it was intended God should be manifested in the flesh, to avoid that contagion and corruption which in the ordinary course is transmitted, he does in this single instance recede and go off from the ordinary natural course. Because the human nature had been corrupted if it had descended in the ordinary way, therefore the ordinary course of procreation is declined and avoided: a most pregnant demonstration that in the ordinary course sin is always naturally transmitted.

Although the human nature of Christ was individualized and personalized by a miraculous conception and not by ordinary generation, yet this was as really and truly a conception and birth as if it had been by ordinary generation. Jesus Christ was really and truly the Son of Mary. He was bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh. He was of her substance and of her blood. He was consubstantial with her, in as full a sense as an ordinary child is consubstantial with an ordinary mother. And she was the mother of his human soul, as well as of his human body. All the stages in the process of generation and growth are to be found, from the embryo up to the mature man. The union of deity with humanity was first embryonic, then fetal, then infantine, then that of childhood, then that of youth, and last that of manhood. The God-man was conceived in the womb, grew in the womb, was an infant, a child, a youth, and a mature man.

Self-Consciousness of the God-man

Contemplating the mystery of the God-man in this way, as pointed out in Scripture, it is easier to see how only one person and one self-consciousness shall result. If we do not distinguish between nature and person—if we assume that there is no such reality as an unindividualized or nonindividualized nature and that we must think of a distinct individual or we must think of nothing—then we must say that the Logos united with a human person. This person must be a self-conscious ego and when united with the second person of the Godhead, which is likewise a self-conscious ego, must still have its own distinct self-consciousness. The God-man, consequently, must be two persons with two self-consciousnesses.

But when it is said that the trinitarian person of the Logos assumes into union with himself a portion of human nature, which portion is not yet a distinct ego, but is capable by reason of its properties of becoming one, then the problem of the single self-consciousness of the God-man becomes much easier of solution. The human nature possessing on the psychical side all the properties requisite to personality, such as spirituality, rationality, and voluntariness, upon being assumed into union with the eternal Son is thereby personalized, that is to say, individualized. The properties of finite reason and finite will, potential in the human nature, now manifest themselves actively in the single self-consciousness of the God-man. He reasons like a man, thinks like a man, feels like a man, and wills like a man. These are truly personal acts and operations of Jesus Christ. But, unlike the case of an ordinary man, these are not the whole of his personal acts and operations. Over and besides these, there is in his complex theanthropic person another and higher series of acts and operations which spring from another and higher nature in his person. He thinks and feels and wills like God. And these are also and equally with the others the personal acts of Jesus Christ.

In the one person of Jesus Christ, consequently, there are two different kinds of consciousness or experience: one divine and one human. But these two kinds of consciousness do not constitute two persons any more than the two kinds of experience or consciousness—the sensuous and the mental—in a man constitute him two persons. There can be two general forms or modes of conscious experience in one and the same person, provided there enter into the constitution of the person two natures that are sufficiently different from each other to yield the materials of such a twofold variety. This was the case with the God-man. If he had had only one nature, as was the case previous to the incarnation, then he could have had only one general form of consciousness: the divine. But having two natures, he could have two corresponding forms of consciousness. He could experience either divine feeling or human feeling, divine perception or human perception. A God-man has a twofold variety of consciousness or experience, with only one self-consciousness. When he says "I thirst" and "I and my Father are one," it is one theanthropic ego with a finite human consciousness in the first instance and an infinite divine consciousness in the second.

A man can have two forms of consciousness, yet with only one self-consciousness. He can feel cold with his body, while he prays to God with his mind. These two forms of conscious experience are wholly diverse and distinct. He does not pray with his body or feel cold with his mind. Yet this doubleness and distinctness in the consciousness does not destroy the unity of his self-consciousness. So, also, Jesus Christ as a theanthropic person was constituted of a divine nature and a human nature. Divine nature had its own form of experience, like the mind in an ordinary human person; and the human nature had its own form of experience, like the body in a common man. The experiences of divine nature were as diverse from those of the human nature as those of the human mind are from those of the human body. Yet there was but one person who was the subject-ego of both of these experiences. At the very time when Christ was conscious of weariness and thirst by the well of Samaria, he also was conscious that he was the eternal and only begotten Son of God, the second person in the Trinity. This is proved by his words to the Samaritan woman: "Whosoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. I that speak unto you am the Messiah." The first-mentioned consciousness of fatigue and thirst came through the human nature in his person; the second-mentioned consciousness of omnipotence and supremacy came through divine nature in his person. If he had not had a human nature, he could not have had the former consciousness; and if he had not had a divine nature, he could not have had the latter. Because he had both natures in one person he could have both. (supplement 5.1.8.)

SUPPLEMENTS

5.1.1 (see p. 615). God the Son can assume a human nature without thereby incarnating the Trinity, because he assumes a human nature into the unity only of his single person, not into the unity of the three persons. He has the essence only in one mode; and the humanity is united with the essence in this one mode to the exclusion of the essence in the other two modes of the Father and the Spirit. Only the second trinitarian person is humanized; the first and third are not. It is the simple hypostatic personality, not the complex trinal personality, that "becomes flesh and dwells among us, full of grace and truth." The simple hypostatic person is the Son or Word; this assumes human nature by the miraculous conception. The complex trinal person is the Trinity or Godhead: this did not assume human nature. Three simple hypostatic persons make one complex trinal person, and three simple hypostatic consciousnesses make one complex self-consciousness. A hypostatic consciousness is not trinal and complex, but single and simple. God the Father's hypostatic consciousness is only the consciousness of being the Father; God the Son's hypostatic consciousness is only the consciousness of being the Son; God the Spirit's hypostatic consciousness is only the consciousness of being the Spirit. There is no complexity of self-beholding, self-cognizing, and self-communing in the hypostatic consciousness. But the self-consciousness of the triune Godhead is trinal and complex. It results from the whole essence in one mode contemplating the whole essence in another mode, and the whole essence in still another mode perceiving the identity in essence of the other two. There is no trinalizing of a mode or person of the essence, but only of the essence. No one of the divine persons repeats the trinalizing process. The Father does not contemplate himself as Father and then reunite the duality in the second act. He contemplates himself in the Son. And so with the Son and the Spirit. The divine persons see themselves in each other, not in themselves.

5.1.2 (see p. 618). "The incarnation was not necessary in order that the trinitarian Son of God might be self-conscious." "Self-conscious" here denotes only the hypostatic consciousness of a single divine person, not the self-consciousness of the Godhead as triune. No single trinitarian person can have self-consciousness in this latter sense, because this requires all three distinctions. Self-consciousness in the comprehensive sense is the resultant of the three hypostatic consciousnesses. Still, this hypostatic consciousness may, in a secondary sense, be denominated "self-consciousness" because it is that consciousness which one trinitarian person has of himself as distinct from the other two. This remark applies also to the statement on p. 640: "This person must be a self-conscious ego.…"

5.1.3 (see p. 619). Kidd (Eternal Sonship of Christ, chap. 11) thus describes the passive relation of Christ's humanity to his divinity and the fact that the latter is omnipotently controlling in his person: "As the humanity of our Lord was formed for the express purpose of existing in his divinity, it was formed, in an especial manner, to assume the appearances and subjection consonant to the designs of divinity. It had no will of its own to assume any state; it could only exist according to the volition of divinity founded on the divine constitution. The subjection in its humiliation was therefore of two kinds: A necessary subjection to the Godhead in whatever condition it existed; and a peculiar subjection indicated by its sufferings in that particular state of humiliation. In relation to God this subjection was a devotion to the divine will and a particular devotion to that divine person in whom it subsisted. This devotion was essential to its very nature and was communicated in its original conformation. While its actions on earth were really those of humanity, they were those of a humanity whose procedure was in union with a divine person. They flowed from that person and were really his; yet they were not the actions of his divinity, but of his humanity subsisting in his divine nature. The Son of God could not suffer in his essential divine nature; yet his assumed human nature was humbled, was 'made a curse for us, for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree.' But while the Messiah experienced this temporary humiliation, the inherent glory of his person was not and could not be lost. This humiliation was not natural to him, but was submitted to, that the glory which was natural to a man received into personal union by one of the persons of the Godhead might afterward be exhibited. When therefore the eclipse of the Messiah's human nature was past, it appeared, when he 'ascended up on high,' in that splendor which was peculiar to its exalted state of existence as united with deity."

5.1.4 (see p. 621 n.). The later Lutheran doctrine of the exinanition of the divine nature differs from the Reformed in that it is a preparation for the union with the human nature, instead of being this union itself. The divine first "empties" itself before it assumes the humanity. According to the Reformed view, the assumption of the humanity is immediate, without any preparation, or kenosis, on the part of the divinity, and the union and incarnation is the kenosis. According to the Lutheran view, the Logos "took upon him the form of a servant" before, and in order to, being "made in the likeness of men." According to the Reformed, "taking the form of a servant" was the same thing as being "made in the likeness of men." Hilary, according to Dorner (Person of Christ 1.1046–47), seems to have held this view. According to him the Logos, prior to the incarnation, and in order to it, put off "the form of God" and put on "the form of a servant." This forma is the facies (face) or countenance—that which appears to a beholder. The Logos emptied himself of the glorious form which belonged to him in the Trinity and assumed an inglorious form in order that he might then assume a human nature into union. Hilary supposes that the original resplendent "form of God" could not directly make such an assumption. According to the Reformed view, on the contrary, it could; and there is no need of an exinanition prior to the incarnation.

In Hilary's theory, also, the incarnation is not complete until the exaltation of Christ has occurred, that is, not until the human nature is united with the original resplendent form of God as well as with the humbled "form of a servant." But this cannot take place until Christ passes from the estate of humiliation into the heavenly glory. In the Reformed theory the incarnation is complete the instant the human nature is united by the miraculous conception with the Logos in his original resplendent form of God, which by this union then becomes temporarily "emptied" and humbled and loses its full resplendence, until at the ascension it is exalted and glorified as at first.

5.1.5 (see p. 624). Owen (Person of Christ, chap. 19) compares the influence of the divine nature upon the human, in the complex person of Christ, to that of the soul upon the body, in the case of man's complex person: "As to the way of the communications between the divine and human nature in the personal union between the Logos and his humanity, we know it not. The glorious immediate emanations of virtue from the divine unto the human nature of Christ, we understand not. Indeed, the actings of natures of difference kinds, where both are finite in the same person, one toward the other, is a difficult apprehension. Who knows how directive power and efficacy proceeds from the soul and is communicated unto the body, unto every the least minute action in every member of it; so as that there is no distance between the direction and the action or the accomplishment of it; or how, on the other hand, the soul is affected with sorrow or trouble in the moment wherein the body feels pain, so as that no distinction can be made between the body's sufferings and the soul's sorrow? How much more is this mutual communication in the same person of divers natures above our comprehension, where one of them is absolutely infinite!"

5.1.6 (see p. 626). Ursinus (Christian Religion Q.48) thus reasons respecting the Lutheran doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ's humanity: "The Ubiquitaries object, (1) in Christ's person the two natures are found in an inseparable union, therefore, wheresoever Christ's deity is, there also must his humanity needs be. Answer: These two natures remain in such sort joined and united that their property remains distinct, and neither is turned into the other; which would happen if each nature were infinite and everywhere. Objection (2): Those two natures, whereof one is not where the other is, are sundered, neither remain personally united, but are separated. In Christ are two natures, whereof one, which is his humanity, is not where is the other, which is his deity; therefore the two natures in Christ are not united, but separated. Answer: The major is true, if it be understood of two equal natures, that is, either both finite or both infinite; but false of unequal natures, that is, one finite and one infinite. For the finite nature cannot be at once in more places than one; but the infinite nature may be at once both whole in the finite nature and whole without it. Christ's human nature, which is finite, is but in one place; but his divine nature, which is infinite, is both in Christ's human nature and without it and everywhere."

5.1.7 (see p. 629). Dorner follows Schleiermacher, who (Glaubenslehre §97) denies the impersonality of Christ's human nature prior to its assumption by the Logos. Schleiermacher does not recognize the distinction between specific and individual human nature. Human nature, he contends is only individual and objects that if the human nature of Christ prior to it assumption was impersonal, "it was different from and inferior to that of the rest of mankind." The church doctrine on this point he describes as an error of Scholasticism: "The position that the human nature of Christ in and for itself is impersonal, or has nosubsistence of its own, but subsists only through the divine, in this Scholastic drapery is very obscure and embarrassing."

In connection with the denial of this tenet, which enters into all the church Christology, Schleiermacher (§97) also denies that Christ was born of a virgin. His view is that Christ must have been born in the ordinary manner by the union of both sexes in order to be a real man like other men; and also that in connection with this ordinary generation there must also have been a creative energy of God in order to cleanse away the original sin which would naturally accompany it. If Christ's conception in the womb of Mary, he argues, took place without cohabitation with Joseph, this would not preclude sinfulness, because this would naturally issue from his mother, who was sinful. And the creative energy of God could as easily purge away a sinfulness that was derived from both father and mother as that derived from the mother alone. This is true; but the question is not what God could do, but what he did do. And this can be known only from the gospel account of the subject. This account, given by Matthew and Luke, Schleiermacher declares to be legendary and not historically credible. It is one of the inventions of the primitive church. For proof of this we have only his assertion, as is commonly the case when the received manuscript text of the New Testament is declared to be untrustworthy.

Schleiermacher exhibits the same arbitrariness of assertion in declaring that the creeds of the church, both ancient and modern, "are so phrased that they have no dogmatic aim" and do not warrant the deduction of an ecclesiastical doctrine from them. He cites only the ancient Roman and Constantinopolitan creeds and the modern Augsburg, Helvetic, Gallican, Anglican, and Belgic confessions which do not bear out his assertion: each and all being of a very positive dogmatic character. An examination of the individual and conciliar creeds of the ancient church will convince any unbiased mind that the doctrine of the virginal birth of Christ, which constitutes one of the principal articles of the Apostles' Creed, has an ecclesiastical support as strong as any of the doctrines of the Christian faith. The following creeds, to none of which does Schleiermacher allude, contain explicit affirmation of it: Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Epiphanius, Basil, Constantinople, Aquileia, Augustine, Maximus Taurinensis, Eusebius Gallicani, Cassian, Chrysologus, Venatius, Alcuin, Etherius. The views of Schleiermacher respecting the virginal birth of Christ have recently been revived by Harnack, whose argument is substantially the same as his (cf. Shedd, Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, 154–61). Coleridge also (Works 5.76,78–79, 532) takes the same view of the Christopedia in Matthew's and Luke's gospels.

There is no better account of this subject than that given by Charnock (Power of God): "Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the virgin (Luke 1:35): 'The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the highest shall overshadow you'; which act is described to be the effect of the infinite power of God. And it describes the supernatural manner of forming the humanity of our Savior and signifies not the divine nature of Christ infusing itself into the womb of the virgin; for the angel refers it to the manner of the operation of the Holy Spirit in the producing the human nature of Christ and not to the nature assuming that humanity into union with itself. The Holy Spirit, or the third person in the Trinity, overshadowed the virgin and by a creative act framed the humanity of Christ and united it to the divinity. It is, therefore, expressed by a word of the same import with that used in Gen. 1:2: 'The Spirit moved upon the face of the waters,' which signifies a brooding upon the chaos, shadowing it with his wings, as hens sit upon their eggs to form them and hatch them into animals; or else it is an allusion to the 'cloud which covered the tent of the congregation when the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle' (Exod. 40:34). It was not such a creative act as we call immediate, which is a production out of nothing; but a mediate creation, such as God's bringing things into form out of the first matter, which had nothing but an obediential or passive disposition to whatever stamp the powerful wisdom of God should imprint upon it. So the substance of the virgin had no active, but only a passive disposition to this work; the matter of the body was earthly, the substance of the virgin; the forming of it was heavenly, the Holy Spirit working upon that matter. And therefore when it is said that 'she was found with child of the Holy Spirit,' it is to be understood of the efficacy of the Holy Spirit, not of the substance of the Holy Spirit. The matter was natural, but the manner of conceiving was in a supernatural way, above the methods of nature. That part of the flesh of the virgin whereof the human nature of Christ was made was refined and purified from corruption by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. Our Savior is therefore called 'that holy thing,' though born of the virgin. He was necessarily in some way to descend from Adam. God, indeed, might have created his body out of nothing or have formed it, as he did Adam's, out of the dust of the ground; but had he been thus extraordinarily formed and not propagated from Adam, though he had been a man like one of us, yet he would not have been of kin to us, because it would not have been a nature derived from Adam, the common parent of us all. But now, by this way of producing the humanity of Christ of the substance of the virgin, he is of the same nature that had sinned, and so what he did and suffered may be imputed to us, which, had he been created as Adam was, could not be claimed in a legal and judicial way.

"It was not fitting, however, that he should be propagated and born in the common order of nature of father and mother; for whatsoever is so born is polluted: 'A clean thing cannot be brought out of an unclean' (Job 14:4). And our Savior had been incapable of being a Redeemer had he been tainted with the least spot of our corrupt nature, but would have stood in need of redemption himself. Besides, it had been inconsistent with the holiness of the divine nature to have assumed a tainted and defiled body . He that was the fountain of blessedness to all nations was not to be subject to the curse of the law for himself, which he would have been had he been conceived in the ordinary way. Again, supposing that almighty God by his divine power had so perfectly sanctified an earthly father and mother from all original spot, that the human nature might have been transmitted immaculate to him, as well as the Holy Spirit did purge that part of the flesh of the virgin of which the body of Christ was made, yet it was not fitting that that person, who was 'God blessed forever' as well as man, partaking of our nature, should have a conception in the same manner as ours, but different, and in some measure conformable to the infinite dignity of his person; which could not have been had not a supernatural power and a divine person been concerned as an active principle in it; besides, such a birth had not been agreeable to the first promise, which calls him 'the seed of the woman,' not of the man; and so the veracity of God had suffered some detriment: the seed of the woman only is set in opposition to the seed of the serpent.

"By this manner of conception the holiness of Christ's human nature is secured, and his fitness for his office is assured to us. It is now a pure and unpolluted humanity that is the temple and tabernacle of the divinity; the fullness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily and dwells in him holily. Though we read of some men sanctified from the womb, it was not a pure and perfect holiness; it was like the light of fire mixed with smoke, an infused holiness accompanied with a natural taint; but the holiness of the Redeemer by this conception is like the light of the sun, pure and without spot: the Spirit of holiness supplying the place of a father in a way of creation. His fitness for his office is also assured to us; for being born of the virgin, one of our nature, but conceived by the Spirit, a divine person, the guilt of our sins may be imputed to him, because our nature in him is without the stain of inherent sin; because, by reason of his supernatural conception, he is capable, as one of kin to us, to bear our curse without being touched by our taint. By this means our sinful nature is assumed without sin in that nature which was assumed by him: flesh he has, but not sinful flesh (Rom. 8:3)." Paul here says that Christ "condemned sin in his flesh," not in his "sinful flesh."

Augustine (Forgiveness and Baptism 2.38) thus describes the human nature of Christ as it was first in the virgin mother and as it was afterward when completely sanctified in the God-man: "The Word, which became flesh, was in the beginning and was with God (John 1:1). But at the same time his participation in our inferior condition, in order to our participation in his higher state, held a kind of medium between the two in his birth in the flesh. We were born in sinful flesh, but he was born in the likeness of sinful flesh; we were born not only of flesh and blood, but also of the will of man and of the will of the flesh; but he was born only of flesh and blood, not of the will of man nor of the will of the flesh, but of God. He, therefore, having become man, but still continuing to be God, never had any sin, nor did he assume a flesh of sin though born of a material flesh of sin. For what he then took of flesh he either cleansed, in order to take it, or cleansed by taking it. His virgin mother, therefore, whose conception of him was not according to the law of sinful flesh, in other words, not by the excitement of carnal concupiscence, he formed in order to choose her and chose her in order to be formed from her."

5.1.8 (see p. 641). The principal difference between the Reformed and the later Lutheran Christology lies in the difference between union and transmutation. The former affirms that Jesus Christ is constituted of two divers natures, united together without any change in the properties of either; the latter, that he is constituted of two diverse natures, one of which when the union takes place changes the other. The Lutheran asserts that divine nature communicates some of its properties, such as omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience, to the human nature, thereby expelling the finite properties of confinement to locality, weakness, and ignorance; the Reformed denies this. And this substitution or transmutation of natures for union of natures arose from an erroneous conception of personality. The Lutheran assumed that if there is to be only one person there must be only one nature. Hence his conversion of the two natures into a third single one. This was also the erroneous opinion of the ancient monophysitism. If two natures, then two persons; if one nature, then one person. This was the assumption. But a self-conscious person may be simple or complex in his constitution; he may have one nature or two natures or three natures. A trinitarian person, for example, is constituted of only one nature, namely, the divine. He is wholly spiritual, immaterial, and infinite. The second person in the Godhead, prior to his incarnation, is the divine essence in a particular mode or form of subsistence. He is pure spirit without body, parts, or passions. A human person, again, is constituted of two natures: an immaterial soul and a material body. A man is not, like the unincarnate Son of God, purely and only spirit. He is composed of two substances or natures as diverse as mind and matter. And yet there is only one self, only one self-consciousness, only one person. One and the same man is conscious of the spiritual feelings of his soul and of the physical sensations of his body. The former issue out of his immaterial nature, the latter out of his material; and both are equally and alike the experience of but one person. Having double natures he has a double form of consciousness or experience, with only a single self-consciousness. In this respect a human person differs from a trinitarian person. The latter can have only one form or mode of consciousness, namely, a spiritual. The former can have two; one spiritual and one sensuous and physical. A divine person has one mode of consciousness and one self-consciousness; a human person has two modes of consciousness and one self-consciousness.

And yet even a human person, like a trinitarian person, may for a time have self-consciousness or personality with only one nature. When, for example, the human body is separated from the human soul at death, the self-consciousness continues, but only one form of conscious experience is now possible. The soul without the body cannot feel physical sensations. The experience or consciousness of the disembodied state must be wholly mental and spiritual. There can be no sensuous elements in it, because the body with the five senses is temporarily separated from the soul. The man must now get all of his conscious experience through his immaterial nature. There may be, and is, a memory of past sensuous experiences, but no present actual sensation through the bodily senses. Not until the resurrection of the body and its reunion with the soul can both modes of consciousness—the physical and the mental—be experienced again together. This proves that a single self-consciousness or personality is possible either with one or with two natures; only the elements in it will not be so various in one case as in the other.

A theanthropic person, again, is yet more complex than a human person. He has three diverse natures, each yielding their diverse experiences or modes of consciousness, and yet only a single self-consciousness. The Lord Jesus Christ is constituted of three substances, distinct and different in kind from each other. He is constituted of one infinite spirit, one finite spirit, and one finite body. The God-man is composed of the divine essence in its filial form (Phil. 2:6), a rational human soul, and a human body. Why should such a diversity in the components of the one theanthropic person be thought to be incompatible with a single self-consciousness? If two natures or substances, as different in kind from each other as a man's immaterial spirit and his material body, can constitute only one person and yield a single self-consciousness with its doubleness of experiences or consciousnesses, why is it so difficult, as the later Lutheran asserts it is, to believe that three natures or substances as diverse as the divine essence, a man's spirit, and a man's body should likewise constitute only a single person and yield only a single self-consciousness with its threefoldness of experiences or consciousnesses, namely, those of the divine essence, of a rational soul, and of a sensuous body? If it is not necessary to assume that spirit is transmuted into body, or body into spirit, in order to account for a single self-conscious personality in the instance of a man, why is it necessary to assume that the human nature must be transmuted into the divine in order that there may be a single self-conscious personality in the instance of a God-man? If complexity of natures is not incompatible with self-consciousness in human psychology, why is it in theanthropic psychology? Had more attention been given to the complexity and diversity of natures found in ordinary human personality, the assumption that began in Apollinarianism and has run through the whole kenotic controversy, namely, that personality necessarily implies simplicity of structure and singleness of nature and is incompatible with complexity of structure and duality and trinality of natures, would have been invalidated more readily. If two points are kept in view, namely, that the divine and human natures in Christ's theanthropic person are united but not transmuted and that the human nature is assumed into union in its unindividualized state, there need be no logical difficulty in the construction of Christ's single personality and self-consciousness. The fathers at Chalcedon did this, and so did leading Schoolmen like Aquinas. The Reformed theologians did the same; while some of the later Lutheran divines showed a tendency toward the ancient monophysitism, a tendency which in some of their latest speculations has gone to even a greater extreme than those of Apollinaris and Eutyches. And finally, if the important distinction between consciousness and self-consciousness had been perceived and employed, the conscious experience of the person at a particular moment, such as a physical sensation or a mental emotion, which is transient and gives place to a multitude of similar experiences like it, would not have been mistaken for the permanent and immutable ego whose self-consciousness lies under all this stream of consciousness or experiences and combines them into the unity of a person.

2 Christ's Divinity

The subject of the divinity of Christ has been examined under the head of theology (doctrine of God) (see pp. 257–62). All scriptural texts and data prove the deity of Christ that prove his trinitarian position and relations. The act and process of incarnation makes no essential change in the Logos. The incarnate Word has all the properties of the unincarnate Word. To the God-man are ascribed in Scripture divine names, attributes, works, and adorableness.

There is a class of texts which taken by themselves would imply in Jesus of Nazareth an inferiority to God. They are such as describe his acts and experiences from the side of the humanity in his person and of his estate of mediatorial humiliation. This inferiority may run all the way from the comparatively exalted view of the Semiarian to the low humanitarian view of the Socinian. All of these parties really contemplate Jesus Christ only kata sarka, omitting that aspect of him presented in the other class of passages that describe him kata pneuma hagiōsynēs2 (Rom. 1:4), ho ōn epi pantōn (9:5), en morphē theou hyparchōn (Phil. 2:6), and theos (John 1:1).

Strictly speaking, none of these parties accept the theanthropic personality of Christ. Divine nature is left out in the constitution of his person, so that it is really only anthropic. For although the Semiarian conceded a complex personality in Christ composed of two natures, one of which was immensely higher than the other, and in reference to which he cherished a feeling akin to adoration, yet since there is no true mean between the infinite and finite, the Creator and the creature, this exalted higher nature must fall into the same finite class with the lower one. Such a Christology cannot be harmonized with the scriptural representations except by omitting those passages which attribute to Jesus of Nazareth a nature to which divine titles, attributes, and works are ascribed and which is the object of worship both in heaven and on earth.

3 Christ's Humanity

Christ's humanity is undisputed, being demonstrable from all the descriptions of him given in the gospels. Some of the more important of the numerous texts are "the seed of the woman" (Gen. 3:15); "the Son of Man" (Matt. 13:37); "a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel" (Isa. 7:14); "God shall give unto him the throne of his father David" (Luke 1:32); Christ was "the son of David, of Abraham, and of Adam" (3:23–38); Christ was "made of a woman" (Gal. 4:4); "Jesus Christ concerning the flesh was made of the seed of David" (Rom. 1:3); "the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5). Christ was born and died, hungered and thirsted, grew from infancy to childhood and manhood, was subject to the alternations of pleasure and pain, was tempted and struggled with temptation—in short, had all the experiences of man excepting those which involve sin (Luke 2:52; 24:36–44; Matt. 4:1; John 11:33, 35; 13:23; Heb. 4:15; 5:8; Phil. 2:7–8).

What is implied in humanity has never been a dispute within the church; but as some heretical parties have asserted a defective or mutilated humanity in Christ, the church has specified particulars:

1. Christ had "a true body" (Westminster Larger Catechism 37). This was maintained in opposition to the Docetists (dokein), who asserted that Christ's body was seeming only, and spectral, a phantom of ghostlike appearance and not solid flesh and blood. This heresy is refuted by the following: "A spirit has not flesh and bones, as you see me have" (Luke 24:39); "reach hither your hand and thrust it into my side" (John 20:27); "he did eat before them" (Luke 24:43).

2. Christ had "a rational soul" (Westminster Larger Catechism 37). This was held in opposition to Apollinarianism, which would find the rational element for the human nature in the eternal reason of the Logos. Apollinaris at first asserted that the Logos united with a human body only. Afterward he modified this by asserting that he united with a body and an irrational animal soul (Socrates, History 2.66). Texts that disprove this are "my soul is sorrowful" (Matt. 26:38) and Jesus "marveled" (Mark 6:6; Matt. 8:10; Luke 7:9). Sorrow and wonder are rational emotions, proper to man, but not to God. Apollinaris, from the account given of him by Gregory of Nyssa (Against the Apollinarians), seems to have blended and confused the human and divine natures even in the Godhead, for he asserted a human element in the divine essence itself. The divine, he contended, is also essentially and eternally human. There is, thus, an eternal humanity. Divine nature necessarily tends to the human form, inherently yearns to become man, and is unsatisfied until it is incarnate. This is the worst feature in Apollinaris's scheme, who was nevertheless a strong advocate of the Athanasian trinitarianism against the Arians. Apollinaris also held that the mental suffering of Christ was the suffering of divine nature; otherwise it could not be a real atonement (see Dorner, Person of Christ). The rational objections to Apollinarianism are the following: (a) A human nature destitute of finite reason would be either idiotic or brutal. If the Logos assumed into union only the body and the animal soul—the sōma and psychē3 and not the pneuma in St. Paul's classification in 1 Thess. 5:23—he did not unite himself with a rational nature. (b) In this case, also, he did not unite with a complete, but a defective humanity. Some of the essential properties of human nature, namely, rationality and voluntariness, would have been wanting. (c) In this case, none of Christ's mental processes could have been of a finite kind. Nothing but infinite and divine reason could have been manifested in his self-consciousness. The same would be true of his voluntary action. This must have been infinite only. There could have been no exhibition of finite human will or of finite human reason in his earthly life.

3. Christ "continues to be God and man in two distinct natures" (Westminster Larger Catechism 36). This statement is in opposition to Eutychianism, which asserts that the union of the Logos with a human nature results in a single nature of a third species, which nature is neither divine nor human, but theanthropic. Eutychianism is contradicted by Rom. 1:3–4, which describes Christ kata sarka and kata pneuma hagiōsynēs, and by 9:5, which describes him kata sarka and epi pantōn theos. Christ, in these and similar passages, is represented as having two natures, not one only. A nature is necessarily incomplex and simple. A person may be incomplex, like a trinitarian person who has only one nature, or complex, like a human person who has two natures and a theanthropic person who has three natures. A person may have two or more heterogeneous natures, but a nature cannot have two or more classes of heterogeneous properties. A substance or nature is homogeneous as to its qualities. A theanthropic nature, therefore, such as Eutyches supposed, having two classes of heterogeneous properties, divine and human, is inconceivable. We cannot think of a substance composed of both immaterial and material properties, a substance which is both mind and matter. This is Spinoza's error. But we can think of a person so composed. We cannot logically conceive of a divine-human nature. It would be like an immaterial-material nature. But a person may be immaterial-material. Man is such.9

4 Christ's Unipersonality

Biblical Evidence for Christ's Unipersonality

That the two natures, divine and human, constitute only one person is proved by the following scriptural texts. In Rom. 1:3 the one person called "Jesus Christ our Lord" is said to be "made of the seed of David according to the flesh" and "declared to be the Son of God according to the spirit of holiness." This latter phrase, being antithetic to the phrase according to the flesh, means "according to the divinity" (Shedd on Rom. 1:4). Christ is described by St. Paul kata sarka and kata pneuma hagiōsynēs, the first denoting the human nature, the last the divine. In 9:5 Christ is represented as "God over all, blessed forever," and as having also a descent from the fathers of the Jewish nation (Phil. 2:6–11; 1 Tim. 3:16; Heb. 1:6–9 compared with 2:14; John 1:14; 1 John 1:1–3; 4:3; Gal. 4:4). Ussher (Incarnation in Works 4.580) combines the scriptural data as follows:

He "in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" is the person; that fullness which so does dwell in him is the natures. Now, there dwells in him not only the fullness of the Godhead, but the fullness of the manhood also. For we believe him to be both perfect God, begotten of the substance of his Father before all worlds, and perfect man made of the substance of his mother in the fullness of time. And therefore we must hold that there are two distinct natures in him; and two so distinct that they do not make one compounded nature; but still remain uncompounded and unconfounded together. But he in whom the fullness of the manhood dwells is not one person, and he in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwells, another person; but he in whom the fullness of both these natures dwells is one and the same Immanuel, and consequently it must be believed as firmly that he is but one person.

That the two natures constitute only one person, is also proved by the fact that in Scripture human attributes are ascribed to the person designated by a divine title; and divine attributes are ascribed to the person designated by a human title. This interchange of titles and of attributes in respect to one and the same person proves that there are not two different persons, each having its own particular nature and attributes, but only one person having two natures and two classes of attributes in common.

Passages in which human attributes are ascribed to the person designated by a divine title are "blood of God" (Acts 20:28); "God spared not his own son (idiou huiou)" (Rom. 8:32); "they crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Cor. 2:8); "redemption through the blood tou huiou tēs agapēs autou" (Col. 1:13–14); "a virgin shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel" (Matt. 1:23); and "the Son of the Highest is conceived in the womb" (Luke 1:31–32).

Passages in which divine attributes are ascribed to the person designated by a human title are "no man has ascended up to heaven, but the Son of Man which is in heaven" (John 3:13); "what and if you shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before?" (6:62); "as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is God over all" (Rom. 9:5); and "worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power" (Rev. 5:12).

Predication of Divine and Human Qualities to the God-man

From these biblical representations, therefore, it follows that both human and divine qualities and acts may be attributed to the God-man under any of his names. If the God-man be called Jesus Christ, then it is proper to say that Jesus Christ raised the dead and Jesus Christ died; that Jesus Christ is God and Jesus Christ is man. If the God-man be called the Redeemer, then it is proper to say that the Redeemer created all things and the Redeemer hungered and thirsted; that the Redeemer existed before Abraham and the Redeemer was born eighteen centuries after Abraham. If the God-man be called Messiah, then it is proper to say that Messiah is seated upon the eternal throne and Messiah was crucified, dead, and buried. In 1 Cor. 15 the God-man is called," the "second man," and the "last Adam" and divine acts are attributed: "By man came also the resurrection of the dead"; "the second man is the Lord from heaven"; "the last Adam was made a quickening spirit." It would be correct to say: "The last Adam groaned and wept: and the last Adam will judge the world." In Acts 20:28 the God-man is called "God," and human characteristics are attributed, namely, blood and the pains of death. "Feed the church of God, which he has purchased with his own blood." The term God here denotes incarnate God: a complex person, not an incomplex nature. In this use, the ecclesiastical phrase God's blood is proper. So also is the expression God the mighty maker died because "God" here designates the theanthropic person having two natures—God in the flesh—not the one abstract divine nature. It would be improper to say "God's nature died" because this can have but one meaning. But it is proper to say "God died" because this may mean either "God's nature" or the "God-man"—either unincarnate or incarnate God, either the Logos or Jesus Christ. It would be proper to speak of the blood of Immanuel. But Immanuel means "God with us."

The humanity assumed by the Logos is the Logos's or God's humanity; just as the body is the soul's body. When, therefore, the humanity suffers, it is as proper to say that it is "God's suffering" as it is when the body suffers to say that is the "soul's suffering"—not meaning, thereby, the suffering of the soul considered separately as an immaterial substance, but of the soul as put for the total person. We speak of "the blood of souls" because the soul is united with a body that bleeds. Similarly, Scripture speaks of "the blood of God" because God is united with a humanity that has blood:

The matter of which the human body is composed does not subsist by itself, is not under all those laws of motion to which it would be subject if it were mere inanimated matter; but by the indwelling and actuation of the soul it has another spring within it and has another course of operations. According to this then, to "subsist by another" is when a being is acting according to its natural properties but yet in a constant dependence upon another being; so our bodies subsist by the subsistence of our souls. This may help us to apprehend how that as a body is still a body and operates as a body, though it subsists by the indwelling and actuation of the soul, so in the person of Jesus Christ, the human nature was entire and still acting according to its own character, yet there was such a union and inhabitation of the eternal Word in it, that there did arise out of that such a communication of names and characters as we find in the Scriptures. A man is called tall, fair, and healthy, from the state of his body; and learned, wise, and good, from the qualities of his mind; so Christ is called holy, harmless, and undefiled, is said to have died, risen, and ascended up into heaven, with relation to his human nature. He is also said to be in the form of God, to have created all things, to be the brightness of the Father's glory, with relation to the divine nature. (Burnet, Thirty-nine Articles, art.2)

Christ's Twofold Consciousness

In accordance with this complex constitution of Christ's person, we find that his consciousness, as expressed in language, is sometimes divine and sometimes human. When he spoke the words "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30), the form of his consciousness at that instant was divine. Divine nature yielded the elements in this particular experience. When he spoke the words "I thirst" (19:28), the form of his consciousness at that instant was human or an experience whose elements were furnished by the human nature. When he said: "Now, O Father, glorify me with your own self, with the glory which I had with you before the world was" (17:5), his mode of consciousness at that instant was that of the eternal Word who was in the beginning with God. When he said: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46), his mode of consciousness was that of a finite creature deserted of his Creator.

In each of these instances, it was one and the same person, namely, Jesus Christ, who possessed the consciousness. The ego denoted by I in the phrase which I had with you before the world was is the very same ego denoted by I in the phrase I thirst. There is no alteration in the person, but there is in the form of the consciousness. And this alteration arises from the fact that there are two natures in the person which furnish the materials of consciousness. Had Christ possessed, like an ordinary man, only a human nature, there could not have been this variety in the modes of his consciousness. A brute can have some of the forms of human consciousness. He can feel hunger and thirst and physical pain, like a man, because he has a physical nature like that of man. But he cannot experience religious emotions like joy in God or esthetic emotions like delight in beauty or rational perceptions like the intuitions of geometry, because he has no rational nature like man. These modes of consciousness are precluded in his case because there does not belong to his constitution that rational, esthetic, and moral nature which alone can furnish the materials of such a consciousness. Man has two general forms of consciousness, the animal and the rational, because he is complex in his constitution; but the brute has only one form of consciousness, the animal, because he is simple in his constitution.

Similarly, there arise in the person of the God-man two general forms of consciousness, divine and human, because there are two distinct and specific natures in his person. When the human nature yields the matter of consciousness, Jesus Christ hungers, thirsts, sorrows, rejoices, and expresses his consciousness accordingly. When divine nature yields the matter of consciousness, the very same Jesus Christ commands the raging sea to be still and it obeys; commands the dead Lazarus to rise and he obeys; says, "My Father works hitherto and I work"; "before Abraham was, I am"; "I say unto you, that in this place is one greater than the temple."

This fluctuation of consciousness in the identity of a person is occurring continually in the sphere of human life. When a man says "I am thirsty," the elements and form of his consciousness, at this particular instant, are furnished from his material and physical nature. When the same man says, with David, "I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my supplications" (Ps. 116:1), the elements and form of his consciousness issue from his mental and spiritual nature. The difference between these two modes of consciousness, the sensuous and the spiritual, is as real and marked, though it is not as great, as between divine and human consciousness in the person of the God-man. And yet there is no schism in the person or duplication of the person. It is the very same individual man who says "I thirst" and "I love God."

These varying modes and forms of consciousness chase each other over the field of human personality like the shadows of the clouds over a landscape. At one moment, the man's experience is sensuous. At another, perhaps the very next moment, it is intensely spiritual. If the nature of the individual person should be inferred from the sensuous consciousness in him, we should say that he is nothing but an animal; if only from the spiritual consciousness in him, we should say that he is nothing but a spirit. Putting the two together, we say that the person who has these different modes of conscious experience is "human." We do not say, using terms strictly, that he is a sensuous person, though he has a sensuous nature. We do not say that he is a spiritual person, though he has a spiritual nature. "Human" is the proper denomination of the person.

In like manner, in the complex person of Christ there was a continual fluctuation of consciousness, according as divine or human nature was uppermost, so to speak, in the self-consciousness. At one moment, he felt and spoke as a weak, dependent, and finite creature; at the next instant, he felt and spoke as an almighty, self-existent, and infinite being. Finite and infinite, man and God, creature and Creator, time and eternity, met and mingled in that wonderful person who was not divine solely or human solely, but divine-human. Says Bengel (on Mark 13:32):

There is an admirable variety in the motions of the soul of Christ. Sometimes he had an elevated feeling, so as hardly to seem to remember that he was a man walking on the earth; sometimes he had a lowly feeling, so that he might almost have seemed to forget that he was the Lord from heaven. And he was wont always to express himself according to his mental feeling for the time being; at one time, as he who was one with the Father; at another time, again, in such a manner as if he were only of that condition in which are all ordinary and human saints. Often, these two are blended together in wonderful variety. (supplement 5.4.1.)

At this point, it is proper to notice the effect of Christ's exaltation upon his humanity. When the humiliation of Christ ends and his exaltation begins, the human nature, though still unchanged in its essential properties, no longer yields certain elements of consciousness which it previously yielded. Christ on the mediatorial throne hungers no more and suffers no more. Certain accidental properties are left behind, but all essential properties of humanity are retained. The exalted human nature still keeps its finiteness. It is not invested with infinite properties. It does not acquire omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence by Christ's exaltation. It is man's nature still. The change which occurs in the instance of the perfected nature of a redeemed man illustrates the alteration in Christ's human nature. "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God," and yet the redeemed are as really and truly men as they ever were. But there will be certain modes of consciousness which the redeemed experienced when upon earth that will be impossible to them in heaven. Not because they are different persons in heaven from what they were upon earth, but because there has been a change wrought in their physical nature by the resurrection and glorification of their bodies, so that this nature, though human and physical still, does not need meat and drink as it did while upon earth and is not liable to sickness, suffering, and death as it was here below. Those modes of consciousness which involved pain and suffering, which man was capable of here upon earth by reason of the state and condition of his body while here upon earth, are no longer possible to him as redeemed and glorified in heaven. And so, likewise, those experiences of earthly suffering and sorrow which Christ passed through in his state of humiliation will constitute no part of his self-consciousness in his state of exaltation.

Lutheran Doctrine of "Communication of Properties"

While, in this way, the acts and qualities of either nature may be attributed to the one theanthropic person, the acts and qualities of one nature may not be attributed to the other nature. It would be erroneous to say that divine nature suffered or that the human nature raised the dead; as it would be erroneous to say that the human body thinks or that the human soul walks. The man or "person" whose is the body and whose is the soul both thinks and walks; but the natures by whose instrumentality he performs these acts do not both of them think and walk. One thinks, and the other walks.

Properties belong to a nature and are confined to it. Hence properties are always homogeneous. A material nature or substance can have only material properties. It cannot be marked partly by material and partly by immaterial properties. Natures, on the other hand, belong to a person and may be heterogeneous. A nature must be composed wholly of material or wholly of immaterial properties; but a person may be composed partly of a material and partly of an immaterial nature. Hence two or even three kinds of natures may be ascribed to a person, but only one kind of properties may be attributed to a nature.

By overlooking the difference between person and nature, the later Lutherans have partially revived the ancient error of Eutyches of confounding or mixing the natures in Christ's person. They distinguish three kinds of communicatio idiomatum or communication of properties, namely, genus idiomaticum—the attribution of the properties of either nature to the person; genus apotelesmaticum—the attribution of the mediatorial acts to either nature; and genus majestaticum. The last of these is of such an exalted species as to amount to a communication of the properties of one nature to the other. It is founded upon those texts in which, according to Hase's definition of this genus, the Scriptures speak of "the human nature as exalted by divine attributes: quibus natura humana attributis divinis effertur" (Hutterus, 238). The texts in which this is supposed to be done are "the Son of Man is in heaven" (John 3:13); "the Son of Man has authority to execute judgment" (5:27); "all power is given unto me … I am with you always" (Matt. 28:18, 20); "concerning the flesh, Christ is God over all, blessed forever" (Rom. 9:5); "at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow" (Phil. 2:10). In these passages, the titles "Son of Man," "Jesus," and "Christ," according to the advocate of the genus majestaticum, denote, not the theanthropic person, but the human nature; and this human nature is exalted by divine attributes of omnipresence—being upon earth and in heaven simultaneously; of sovereignty—being the judge of mankind; of omnipotence—having all power in heaven and earth; of absolute deity—being God over all. (supplement 5.4.2.)

The foundation for this view is laid in the Formula of Concord, though this creed is somewhat wavering and contradictory and not so pronounced as later individual theologians. It affirms that by the glorification of the human nature, after Christ's resurrection, this human nature received, in addition to its own natural essential properties, certain "supernatural, inscrutable, ineffable, and celestial prerogatives of majesty, glory, virtue, and power above everything that is named in time or eternity" (Hase, Symbolical Books, 774). This, however, is guarded by the affirmations that "these two natures in the person of Christ are never confounded or changed the one into the other" (Hase, Symbolical Books, 762); that "the essential properties of one nature never become the essential properties of the other nature" (Hase, Symbolical Books, 763); that "in this union, each nature retains its essence and properties" (Hase, Symbolical Books, 765). But these statements, again, are modified and seemingly contradicted by the affirmations that Christ "not only as God, but even as man, is everywhere present and rules and reigns from sea to sea, even to the ends of the earth" and that Christ's promise to be continually with his apostles, cooperating with them and confirming their word with attending miraculous signs, was fulfilled "not in an earthly manner (non terreno modo), but as Luther was wont to say, after the manner and method of God's right hand: which certainly does not mean a certain circumscribed locality in heaven, as the Sacramentarians claim, but denotes the omnipotent energy (virtus) of God, which fills heaven and earth, into possession of which Christ according to his humanity (juxta humanitatem suam) really and truly came, yet without any confusion or equalizing of the natures" (Hase, Symbolical Books, 768). This last clause is contradictory to preceding statements in the creed, unless it can be shown that Christ's human nature can have the attributes of omnipresence and omnipotence without any equalizing of the natures and without causing any essential property of divine nature to become a property of the human nature. In a similar contradictory manner, Brentz (Concerning the Incarnation of Christ, 1001) affirms that the humanity of Christ is omnipotent and omnipresent, and yet is not omnipotence itself (quoted by Bruce, Humiliation of Christ, 113).

Later Lutheran theologians are more explicit and self-consistent than the Formula of Concord. Hollaz defines the genus majestaticum as that mode "in which the Son of God, on account of the personal union, truly and really communicated the attributes (idiomata) of his divine nature to his human nature, unto a common possession, use, and designation" (Hase, Hutterus, 238). He asserts that "the subject, to which divine majesty is given, is Christ according to his human nature, or, what is the same thing, the human nature assumed into the hypostasis of the Word (hypostasin tou logou)" (Hase, Hutterus, 238). He defines the communicatio idiomatum in the following terms: "The communication of the natures in the person of Christ is a mutual participation of the divine and human nature of Christ, through which the divine nature of the Word (tou logou)—made a partaker of the human nature—permeates, perfects, inhabits, and appropriates it to itself. But the human nature—made a partaker of divine nature—is permeated, perfected, and inhabited by it" (Hase, Hutterus, 234). According to this Lutheran definition, the "communication of idioms" or of properties means far more than the Reformed divines meant by it. The latter intended by it only the communication of the properties of both natures to the person constituted of them. In the Lutheran use, it denotes the communication of the properties of one nature to the other nature. It is thus the communication of a nature to a nature, rather than of properties to a person. Similarly, Hahn (Hase, Hutterus, 238) says: "The genus majestaticum includes the propositions in which the attributes (idiomata) of divine nature are predicated of human nature." Gerhard (Loci 4.12) says: "We teach that the soul of Jesus in the very first moment of the incarnation was personally enriched, as with other excellences, so also with the proper omniscience of the Logos, through, and in virtue of, the intimate union and communion with the Logos. But as he did not always use his other excellences in the state of exinanition, so also the omniscience personally communicated to him he did not always exercise" (quoted by Bruce, Humiliation of Christ, 143).

The principal motive for the Lutheran tenet of the ubiquity of Christ's humanity is to explain the presence of the entire Christ. The God-man promises to be with his disciples upon earth, "always, even unto the end of the world" (Matt. 28:20). The Reformed explanation is by the conjunction and union of the limited and local humanity with the illocal and omnipresent divinity. "Presence by way of conjunction is in some sort presence," says Hooker (5.55). The divine nature of Christ is present with his human nature wherever the latter may be, though his human nature is not, as the Lutheran contends, present with his divine nature wherever the latter may be. But this continual presence of the deity with the humanity is equivalent to the presence of the humanity with the deity. The humanity is in effect ubiquitous, because of its personal connection with an omnipresent nature and not because it is in itself so immense as to be ubiquitous. Christ's deity never is present anywhere in isolation and separation from his humanity, but always as united with and modified by his humanity. But in order to this union and modification, it is not necessary that his humanity should be locally present wherever his deity is. Distance in space is no bar to the personal union between the Logos and his human nature. Suppose, for illustration, the presence of the divine nature of Christ in the soul of a believer while partaking of the sacrament in London. This divine nature is at the same moment conjoined with and present to and modified by the human nature of Christ which is in heaven and not in London. This conjunction between both is equivalent to the presence of both. The whole Christ is present in this London believer's soul, because, though the human nature is in heaven and not in London, it is yet personally united with the divine nature which is both in heaven and in London. There is no separation between the two natures; so that whatever influence or effect the divine nature exerts in the believer's soul as he receives the sacrament is a divine-human influence—an influence proceeding from the union of the divine with the human in Jesus Christ.

Hypostatic Union and the Two Wills in Christ

The union of the two natures in Christ's person is denominated hypostatic, that is, personal. The two natures or substances (ousiai) constitute one personal subsistence (hypostasis). A common illustration employed by the Chalcedon and later fathers is the union of the human soul and body in one person or the union of heat and iron, neither of which loses its own properties (Formula of Concord; Hase, Symbolical Books, 765). (supplement 5.4.3.)

The doctrine of the two natures implies the doctrine of two wills in Christ. Either nature would be incomplete and defective without the voluntary quality of property in it. Each nature, in order to be whole and entire, must have all of its essential elements. A human nature without voluntariness would be as defective as it would be without rationality.

The monothelite party regarded the two natures as having only one theanthropic will between them: mia theandrikē enargeia. From the union of the two natures there resulted a will that was not divine solely nor human solely, but divine-human. The Monothelite contention was that "the one Christ works that which is divine, and that which is human, by one divine-human mode of agency" (Neander, History 3.177). This was in reality a conversion of the two natures, so far as the voluntary property in the nature is concerned, into a third species which is neither divine nor human. It was thus a modified Eutychianism.

In opposition to this error, the Catholic theologians asserted two wills in order to the completeness of each nature and met the objection of the monothelites that there must then be two persons, by affirming that by reason of the intimate personal union of the two natures neither will works without the other's participation in the efficiency. If the human will acts, the divine will submits and coacts. This is the humiliation of the divine. If the divine will acts, the human will submits and coacts. This is the exaltation of the human. One and the same Christ, therefore, performs the divine or the human action, as the case may be, although each action is wrought in accordance with the distinctive qualities of the will that corresponds with it and takes the lead in it. Moreover, as the human will in Christ was sinless, there was no antagonism between it and the will of the Logos. This is taught in the words nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done (Luke 22:42). Thus, in any agency of the God-man, although there are two wills concerned in it, a divine and a human, there is but one resulting action. Two wills are not incompatible with a single self-consciousness, even when they are not hypostaticly united in one person. The divine will works in the regenerate will "to will and to do," and yet there is not duality in the self-consciousness of the regenerate man.

We have already observed that the personalizing of the human nature by its union with the Logos is seen in the fact that the activities of the human nature appear as factors in the single self-consciousness of the God-man. He is conscious of finite inclination and finite volitions; this proves that there is voluntariness in the human nature that has been individualized. He is conscious also of finite and limited perceptions, judgments, and conclusions; this proves that there is rationality in the human nature that has been individualized. These two elements or properties of human nature, the rational and the voluntary, are no longer dormant, as they are in all nonindividualized human nature, but are active and effective in the one self-conscious person Jesus Christ. And one of them is as necessary as the other to the wholeness and completeness of the human nature. To omit the will from the humanity is as truly an error as to omit the reason; and therefore the Monothelites deviated from the true doctrine as really as did the Apollinarians.

SUPPLEMENTS

5.4.1 (see p. 653). The alternation in the self-consciousness of Christ, according as the human and divine natures advanced or retreated, explains how it was possible for him to have his desires unrealized and his endeavors thwarted. The question naturally arises how Christ could consistently and sincerely say, "How often would I have gathered your children, and you would not," when as incarnate deity he could have inclined them to come to him. How could he have wept genuine tears over refusing Jerusalem, when he might, by the irresistible energy of the Holy Spirit, have overcome the opposition that caused his tears? The answer is that though he was God incarnate, it was a part of his humiliation to be "emptied," for most of the time while here upon earth, of his divine power—that is, not to employ it continually and invariably as he did in his preexistent state. This exinanition made him like an ordinary man, who cannot prevail upon men except in the ordinary way of argument, entreaty, and persuasion, all of which might fail to move them. Though God incarnate, yet the nature of his mediatorial office while on earth, as one of humiliation, prohibited the constant use of his omnipotence. He was therefore in this low estate subject to the disappointment and grief which any one of his own ministers is subject to, when he sees no fruit of his labors and grieves over the perversity and obstinacy of men.

5.4.2 (see p. 654). Ursinus (Christian Religion Q.37) thus explains the communicatio idiomatum or communication of properties: "The communicating of the properties is to attribute that to the whole person which is proper unto one nature; and this is attributed in a concrete term, not in an abstract; because the concrete term signifies the whole person in which are both natures, and, consequently, the properties of that particular nature whereof something is affirmed. But the abstract term signifies only the nature which is in the whole person, but not the whole person. And therefore it is that nothing hinders why that which is proper to one nature only may not be affirmed of the whole person, so that this property itself may be in and of the person; but contrariwise of the abstract term, only the properties of that nature designated by it are affirmed unto it. As, for example, of the Godhood, which is the abstract impersonal term, no property of the manhood may be affirmed, but only the properties of the Godhood, because Godhood signifies not the whole person who has both natures, but only the divine nature itself. But of God, which is the concrete or personal term, the properties not of the Godhood only, but of the manhood also may be affirmed; because incarnate God signifies not the divine nature merely and only, but the person who has both the divine nature and the human."

5.4.3 (see p. 657). Charnock's (Power of God) account of the hypostatic union of the two natures of Christ in one person is as follows: "(1) There is in this redeeming person a union of two natures. He is God and man in one person: 'Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; God, even your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows' (Heb. 1:8–9). The Son is called God, having a throne forever and ever, and the unction speaks him man: the Godhead cannot be anointed, nor has any fellows. Humanity and divinity are ascribed to him in Rom. 1:3–4: 'He was of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the son of God by the resurrection from the dead.' The divinity and humanity are both prophetically joined in Joel 2:29: 'I will pour out my Spirit'; the pouring forth of the Spirit is an act only of divine grace and power. 'And they shall look upon me, whom they have pierced'; the same person pours forth the Spirit of God and is pierced as man. 'The Word was made flesh' (John 1:14). Word from eternity was made flesh in time; word and flesh in one person; a great God and a little infant. (2) The terms of this union were infinitely distant from each other. What greater distance can there be than between the deity and humanity, between the Creator and a creature? A God of unmixed blessedness is linked personally with a man of perpetual sorrows; infinite purity with a reputed sinner; eternal blessedness with a cursed nature; almightiness with weakness; omniscience with ignorance; immutability with changeableness; incomprehensibleness with comprehensibility; a holiness incapable of sinning made sin; a person possessed of all the perfections of the Godhead inheriting all the imperfections of the manhood in one person, sin only excepted. (3) This union is strait. It is not such a union as is between a man and his house he dwells in; nor such a union as is between a man and his garment; nor such a union as one friend has with another. The straitness of this union may be somewhat conceived by the union of fire with iron; fire pierces through all the parts of iron, it unites itself with every particle, bestows a light, heat, purity upon all of it; you cannot distinguish the iron from the fire, or the fire from the iron, yet they are distinct natures; so the deity is united to the whole humanity, seasons it, and bestows an excellency upon it, yet the natures still remain distinct. As during that union of fire with iron, the iron is incapable of rust or blackness, so is the humanity as united with the deity incapable of sin; and as the operation of fire is attributed to the red-hot iron (as the iron may be said to heat and burn, and the fire may be said to cut and pierce), yet the imperfections of the iron do not affect the fire, so in this mystery those things which belong to the divinity are ascribed to the humanity, and those things which belong to the humanity are ascribed to the divinity, in regard to the person in whom these natures are united. The divinity of Christ is as really united with the humanity as the soul with the body; so united that the sufferings of the human nature were the sufferings of that 'person, and the dignity of the divine was imputed to the human by reason of that unity of both in one person; hence the blood of the human nature is said to be the blood of God' (Acts 20:28)."

5 Christ's Impeccability

The doctrine of Christ's person is not complete without considering the subject of his impeccability. That he was sinless is generally acknowledged. But the holiness of the God-man is more than sinlessness. The last Adam differs from the first Adam by reason of his impeccability. He was characterized not only by the posse non peccare, but by the non posse peccare. He was not only able to overcome temptation, but he was unable to be overcome by it.

An impeccable will is one that is so mighty in its self-determination to good that it cannot be conquered by any temptation to evil, however great. A will may be positively holy and able to overcome temptation, and yet not be so omnipotent in its holy energy that it cannot be overcome. The angels who fell could have repelled temptation with that degree of power given them by creation, and so might Adam. But in neither case was it infallibly certain that they would repel it. Though they were holy, they were not impeccable. Their will could be overcome because it was not omnipotent, and their perseverance was left to themselves and not made sure by extraordinary grace. The case of Jesus Christ, the second Adam, was different, in that he was not only able to resist temptation, but it was infallibly certain that he would resist it. The holy energy of his will was not only sufficiently strong to overcome, but was so additionally strong that it could not be overcome. (supplement 5.5.1.)

Christ's Impeccability Proven from Scripture

The scriptural proof of Christ's impeccability is the following.

The immutability of Christ taught in Heb. 13:8 pertains to all the characteristics of his person. His holiness is one of the most important of these. If the God-man, like Adam, had had a holiness that was mutable and might be lost, it would be improper to speak of him in terms that are applicable only to the unchangeable holiness of God. He would not be "holy, harmless, and undefiled, yesterday, today, and forever."

A mutable holiness would be incompatible with other divine attributes ascribed to the God-man. (a) The possibility of being overcome by temptation is inconsistent with the omnipotence of Christ. It implies that a finite power can overcome an infinite one. All temptation to sin must proceed from a created being: either man or fallen angel. Temptation proper, in distinction from God's paternal trial, must always be finite. God tempts no man, in the strict sense of the term (James 1:13). But if a finite temptation is met by an infinite power of resistance, the result must be the failure of the temptation, and not the defeat of the tempted person. (b) The success of temptation depends, in part, upon deceiving the person tempted: "Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression" (1 Tim. 2:14). A finite intelligence may be deceived, but an infinite intelligence cannot be. Therefore, the omniscience which characterizes the God-man made his apostasy from good impossible. (supplement 5.5.2.)

A mutable holiness is irreconcilable with the fact that the God-man is the author of holiness. He is the "author and finisher of our faith" (Heb. 12:2). He is denominated the "last Adam" in distinction from the first, and as such he is "a quickening spirit" (1 Cor. 15:45). This means that unlike the first Adam he is the fountain of spiritual and holy life for others; and this implies the unchangeable nature of his own holiness. In Rom. 1:4 the divine nature of Christ is described as "a spirit of holiness." The genitive, here, is not equivalent to an adjective, but denotes that the noun which it limits is a source of the quality spoken of.

In accordance with these statements of Scripture respecting the person of Christ, the creeds and theologians have generally affirmed his impeccability. Augustine and Anselm attribute this characteristic to him (Neander, History 4.495–96; Athanasius, Against the Arians 1.35).

Christ's Impeccability Proven from the Constitution of His Person

The truth and self-consistence of the doctrine of Christ's impeccability appear, also, from a consideration of the constitution of his person.

Christ's person is constituted of two natures: one divine and the other human. Divine nature is both intemptable and impeccable: "God cannot be tempted with evil" (James 1:13); "it is impossible for God to lie" (Heb. 6:18). Human nature, on the contrary, is both temptable and peccable. When these two natures are united in one theanthropic person, as they are in the incarnation, the divine determines and controls the human, not the human the divine (see pp. 617–18). The amount of energy, therefore, which the total complex person possesses to resist temptation, must be measured not by the human nature but by the divine; and the amount of energy to resist temptation determines the peccability or impeccability of the person. Jesus Christ, consequently, is as mighty to overcome Satan and sin, as his mightiest nature is. His strength to prevent a lapse from holiness is to be estimated by his divinity, not by his humanity, because the former and not the latter is the base of his personality and dominates the whole complex person.

Consequently, what might be done by the human nature if alone and by itself cannot be done by it in this union with omnipotent holiness. An iron wire by itself can be bent and broken in a man's hand; but when the wire is welded into an iron bar, it can no longer be so bent and broken. And yet iron, whether in a bar or in a wire, is a ductile and flexible metal; and human nature, whether in a God-man or a mere man, is a temptable and fallible nature. A mere man can be overcome by temptation, but a God-man cannot be. When, therefore, it is asked if the person named Jesus Christ and constituted of two natures was peccable, the answer must be in the negative. For in this case divine nature comes into the account. As this is confessedly omnipotent, it imparts to the person Jesus Christ this divine characteristic. The omnipotence of the Logos preserves the finite human nature from falling, however great may be the stress of temptation to which this finite nature is exposed. Consequently, Christ while having a peccable human nature in his constitution, was an impeccable person. Impeccability characterizes the God-man as a totality, while peccability is a property of his humanity.

But it may be asked: If the properties of either nature may be attributed to the person of the God-man, why may not both peccability and impeccability be attributed to the person of the God-man? We say that Jesus Christ is both finite and infinite, passible and impassible, impotent and omnipotent, ignorant and omniscient, why may we not also say that he is both peccable and impeccable? If the union in one person of the two natures allows the attribution of contrary characteristics to the one God-man in these former instances, why not also in this latter?

Because, in this latter instance, divine nature cannot innocently and righteously leave human nature to its own finiteness without any support from the divine, as it can in the other instances. When the Logos goes into union with a human nature, so as to constitute a single person with it, he becomes responsible for all that this person does through the instrumentality of this nature. The glory or the shame, the merit or the blame, as the case may be, is attributable to this one person of the God-man. If, therefore, the Logos should make no resistance to the temptation with which Satan assailed the human nature in the wilderness and should permit the humanity to yield to it and commit sin, he would be implicated in the apostasy and sin. The guilt would not be confined to the human nature. It would attach to the whole theanthropic person. And since the Logos is the root and base of the person, it would attach to him in an eminent manner. Should Jesus Christ sin, incarnate God would sin, as incarnate God suffered when Jesus Christ suffered.

In reference, therefore, to such a characteristic as sin, the divine nature may not desert the human nature and leave it to itself. In reference to all other characteristics, it may. Divine nature may leave human nature alone, so that there shall be ignorance of the day of judgment, so that there shall be physical weakness and pain, so that there shall be mental limitation and sorrow, so that there shall be desertion by God and the pangs of death. There is no sin or guilt in any of these. These characteristics may all attach to the total person of the God-man without any aspersion upon his infinite purity and holiness. They do, indeed, imply the humiliation of the Logos, but not his culpability. Suffering is humiliation, but not degradation or wickedness. The Logos could consent to suffer in a human nature, but not to sin in a human nature. The God-man was commissioned to suffer (John 10:18), but was not commissioned to sin.

Consequently, all the innocent defects and limitations of the finite may be attributed to Jesus Christ, but not its culpable defects and limitations. The God-man may be weak or sorrowful or hungry or weary; he may be crucified, dead, and buried; but he may not be sinful and guilty. For this reason, divine nature constantly supports human nature under all the temptations to sin that are presented to it. It never deserts it in this case. It empowers it with an energy of resistance that renders it triumphant over the subtlest and strongest solicitations to transgress the law of God. It deserts the humanity so that it may suffer for the atonement of sin, but it never deserts the humanity so that it may fall into sin itself. When Christ cried, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" the desertion of the finite by the infinite nature occurred in order that there might be suffering, not that there might be sin. Divine nature, at the very moment of this agony and passion, was sustaining human nature so that it should not sinfully yield to what was the most powerful temptation ever addressed to a human nature, namely, the temptation to flee from and escape the immense atoning agony, which the God-man had covenanted with the Father to undergo. This is implied in Christ's words: "If it be possible, let this cup pass; nevertheless, not my will but yours be done. The cup that my Father gives me, shall I not drink it?"

Again, the impeccability of Christ is proved by the relation of the two wills in his person to each other. Each nature, in order to be complete, entire, and wanting nothing, has its own will; but the finite will never antagonizes the infinite will, but obeys it invariably and perfectly. If this should for an instant cease to be the case, there would be a conflict in the self-consciousness of Jesus Christ similar to that in the self-consciousness of his Apostle Paul. He too would say, "The good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?" (Rom. 7:19–20, 24). But there is no such utterance as this from the lips of the God-man. On the contrary, there is the calm inquiry of Christ: "Which of you convinces me of sin?" (John 8:46); and the confident affirmation of St. John: "In him was no sin" (1 John 3:5). There is an utter absence of personal confession of sin, in any form whatever, either in the conversation or the prayers of Jesus Christ. There is no sense of indwelling sin. He could not describe his religious experience as his apostle does and his people do: "The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh" (Gal. 5:17).

Impeccability Consistent with Temptability

It is objected to the doctrine of Christ's impeccability that it is inconsistent with his temptability. A person who cannot sin, it is said, cannot be tempted to sin.

This is not correct; any more than it would be correct to say that because an army cannot be conquered, it cannot be attacked. Temptability depends upon the constitutional susceptibility, while impeccability depends upon the will. So far as his natural susceptibility, both physical and mental, was concerned, Jesus Christ was open to all forms of human temptation excepting those that spring out of lust or corruption of nature. But his peccability, or the possibility of being overcome by these temptations, would depend upon the amount of voluntary resistance which he was able to bring to bear against them. Those temptations were very strong, but if the self-determination of his holy will was stronger than they, then they could not induce him to sin, and he would be impeccable. And yet plainly he would be temptable.

That an impeccable being can be tempted is proved by the instance of the elect angels. Having "kept their first estate," they are now impeccable, not by their own inherent power, but by the power of God bestowed upon them. But they might be tempted still, though we have reason to believe that they are not. Temptability is one of the necessary limitations of the finite spirit. No creature is beyond the possibility of temptation, though he may, by grace, be beyond the possibility of yielding to temptation. The only being who cannot be tempted is God: ho gar theos apeirastos (James 1:13). And this, from the nature of an infinite being. Ambition of some sort is the motive at the bottom of all temptation. When the creature is tempted, it is suggested to him to endeavor to "be as gods." He is incited to strive for a higher place in the grade of being than he now occupies. But this, of course, cannot apply to the Supreme Being. He is already God over all and blessed forever. He, therefore, is absolutely intemptable.

Again, redeemed men in heaven are impeccable through the grace and power of Christ their head. Yet they are still temptable, though not exposed to temptation. Redemption, while it secures from the possibility of a second apostasy, does not alter the finite nature of man. He is still a temptable creature.

And, in like manner, Christ the God-man was temptable, though impeccable. But his impeccability, unlike that of the elect angels and redeemed men, is due not to grace but to the omnipotent and immutable holiness of the Logos in his person. One of the reasons mentioned in Scripture (Heb. 2:14–18) for the assumption of a human nature into union with the second person of the Trinity is that this person might be tempted. The Logos previous to the incarnation could not be tempted. The human nature was the avenue to temptation; but the divine nature so empowered and actuated the human, the divine will so strengthened the human will, that no conceivable stress of temptation could overcome Jesus Christ and bring about the apostasy of the second Adam.

The temptability of Christ through his human nature may be illustrated by the temptability of a man through his sensuous nature. A man's body is the avenue of sensual solicitation to his soul. A certain class of human temptations are wholly physical. They could not present themselves through the mental or immaterial part of man. Take away the body, and the man could not be assailed by this class of temptations. These, it is true, do not constitute the whole of human temptations. Fallen man is tempted through his soul as well as through his body. But we can distinguish between the two inlets of temptation. Now, as the mind of man, which may be called his higher nature, is approached by temptation through the body, which is his lower nature; so the divinity of Christ, which is his higher nature, was approached by temptation through his humanity, which is his lower nature. The God-man was temptable through his human nature, not through his divine; and he was impeccable because of his divine nature, not because of his human.

Temptability and peccability may be in inverse proportion to each other, and this proves that the two things are entirely distinct and diverse. There may be a great temptation with little possibility of its succeeding, owing to the great strength of character and the great voluntary resistance that is made. Here, there is great temptability and little peccability. A very strong temptation is required to overcome a very virtuous person. The God-fearing man must be plied with far more solicitation than the irreligious man in order to bring about a fall into sin. Some saintly men repel a species and stress of solicitation, which, if it were applied to some vicious men, would cause them to sin immediately. To such apply the lines of Watts:

Nor can a bold temptation draw

His steady soul aside.

The patriarch Joseph was as strongly tempted as ever Charles II was, but there was less possibility of yielding to temptation, that is, less peccability. A godly poor man with a suffering family whom he tenderly loves may be as strongly tempted to steal or embezzle for the sake of his family as an ungodly poor man in a similar case, but the peccability of the former is less than that of the latter. And for the reason that has been mentioned, namely, that the temptability is in the susceptibility, but the peccability is in the will. And while the susceptibility, or sensibility to the solicitation, may be the same in two men, the wills of the two men have become very different from each other. The will of one has been renewed and endowed with a divine energy of resistance, while the other possesses only the power of a self-enslaved faculty.

Upon the same principle, there may be the very greatest degree of temptation where there is no possibility at all of its succeeding; there may be the highest temptability and absolute impeccability. Such we suppose to have been the case of the God-man. He had a perfectly pure human nature which was exceedingly sensitive, because of this purity, to all innocent desires and cravings. No human being ever felt the gnawings of hunger as he experienced them after the forty-day fast, during which he was miraculously kept alive "and was afterward hungry" (Matt. 3:4). No human being ever felt a deeper sorrow under bereavement than he felt at the death of Lazarus, when the God-man wept. No human soul was ever filled with such an awful agony of pain as that which expressed itself in the words my God, why have you forsaken me? and which had previously forced the globules of blood through the pores of the flesh: "The Lord Jesus endured most grievous torments immediately in his soul and most painful sufferings in his body" (Westminster Confession 8.4). It is to this extreme sensibility and susceptibility and temptability that our Lord alludes when he says (Luke 22:28–29): "You are they which have continued with me in my temptations. And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father has appointed unto me, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." And when he says (Matt. 26:41) with the deepest emphasis, because of the experience he had just passed through, and of the experience which he knew he was yet to have: "Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak." And when, in reference to this whole subject, he both permits and commands tempted man to pray: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."

The fact is that as there may be the most violent attack upon a strategic point where there is an invincible power of resistance, so there may be the most extreme and powerful of temptations addressed to a person in whom there is absolute impeccability. A holy God-man who can meet Satan's solicitation with an almighty energy of opposition will be assailed by a fiercer trial than an irresolute sinful man would experience. A far heavier ordnance will be brought to bear upon Gibraltar than upon a packet boat. Christ was exposed to a severer test and trial than the first Adam was. And this, for the very reason that his resistance was so steady and so mighty. Had he showed signs of yielding or had he succumbed in the outset, the stress of the temptation would have been far less than it actually was. Had the first temptation in the wilderness succeeded, it would not have been followed by the second and third. But the more the God-man baffled the tempter, the more the tempter returned to the charge and intensified his attack.

Neither let it be supposed that our Lord's temptations were slight because they were sinless. An innocent temptation may be greater in its force than a sinful one. Christ was solicited by sinless temptation more strongly than any man ever was by sinful temptation. No drunkard or sensualist was ever allured by vicious appetite so fiercely as Christ was by innocent appetite, when after the forty days "he was a hungered." For the stress of the appetite was supernaturally heightened in this instance. A natural appetite may be stronger and more difficult to control than an unnatural and vicious one. The craving of the glutton for artificial sauces and highly seasoned food is not so intense as the hunger of the traveler in the desert who is upon the brink of starvation. The thirst of the inebriate, great as it is, is not so dreadful and overpowering as that of an English soldier in the Black Hole of Calcutta or of a Negro slave in the middle passage.

Furthermore, the innocent temptations of Christ were made more stringent and powerful by reason of the steady resistance which he offered to them. Temptations that are accompanied with struggle and opposition against them are fiercer than those that are not so accompanied. The good man, in this way, often feels the distress of temptation far more than the bad man. The latter yields supinely and making no opposition does not experience the anguish of a struggle. The former is greatly wearied and strained by his temptation, though he is not conquered by it. Christ "resisted unto blood, striving against sin, and offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death." But his people "have not so resisted" (Heb. 12:4; 5:7).

Sinful vs. Innocent Temptations

At this point, it is necessary to notice the difference between the temptability of Christ and that of a fallen man; for while there is a resemblance, there is also a dissimilarity between them. Christ's temptations were all of them sinless, but very many of the temptations of a fallen man are sinful: that is, they are the hankering and solicitation of forbidden and wicked desire. The desire to steal, to commit adultery, to murder, is sinful, and whoever is tempted by it to the act of theft or adultery or murder is sinfully tempted. St. James (1:14) refers to this species of temptation when he says that "a man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed." The epithymia spoken of is the same which St. Paul mentions in Rom. 7:7 as the equivalent of hamartia. It is also the same thing that is forbidden in the tenth commandment: "You shall not lust"—which Luther (ed. von Gerlach 5.25) renders: Du sollst nicht böse Begierden haben. St. James (1:2–3) bids the believer to "count it all joy when he falls into divers temptations" by the will and providence of God, "knowing this, that the trial of his faith works patience," but he does not bid him to count it all joy when he is tempted and drawn away by his own lust.

A man, for illustration, is sinfully tempted when he is solicited to perform a certain outward act, say to preach a sermon, by the craving of pride or ambition. This craving or inward lust after human applause is itself sin (John 5:44; 12:43; Rom. 1:25), and to be tempted by it is to be sinfully tempted. It is idolatry or creature worship in the heart. Even if he does not perform the outward act to which his pride or ambition tempted and urged him, he must repent of his wicked lust or pride of heart and obtain forgiveness for it. This is taught in Acts 8:21–22: "Your heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent, therefore, of this your wickedness, and pray God if peradventure the thought (epinoia) of your heart may be forgiven you." Simon Magus's particular lust was avarice; it was wickedness (kakia) and needed the exercise of mercy. Had it been an innocent desire, he might have continued to have it and needed not to repent of it.

When, again, a man is solicited by the lust of gluttony to perform the external act of intemperate eating of food for the sake of the sensual pleasure of eating, he is not innocently but sinfully tempted. This is wholly different from the solicitation of the natural and innocent appetite for food, such as a famishing sailor on a wreck experiences; such as our Lord felt when having "fasted forty days and forty nights he was afterward a hungered." The craving of gluttony is vicious, and whoever is tempted by it is sinfully tempted. Gluttony is not merely and only physical appetite, but contains also a mental and voluntary element. It thinks of eating as enjoyment and calculates for this. Hunger, pure and simple, on the contrary, is physical merely, not mental and voluntary. Gluttony is a part of original sin; it is the corruption of human nature as respects the body.

Now our Lord was not tempted by the sinful lusts of pride, ambition, envy, malice, hatred, anger, jealousy, avarice, gluttony, voluptuousness, drunkenness; in short by evil desire or "concupiscence" of any kind. He never felt the hankering of pride and vainglory so common to man, but was always in his inmost spirit meek and lowly. The appeal of Satan, in the last of the three temptations, to a supposed pride and ambition in Christ was met with the avaunt: "Get you hence, Satan." Christ had no sinful lust of any sort. This is taught in Christ's own words: "The prince of this world comes and has nothing in me" (John 14:30). It is also taught in Heb. 4:15: "We have a high priest who was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." This text teaches that the temptations of Christ were "without sin" in their source and nature and not merely, as the passage is sometimes explained, that they were "without sin" in their result. The meaning is not that our Lord was tempted in every respect exactly as fallen man is—by inward lust as well as by other temptations—only he did not outwardly yield to any temptation; but that he was tempted in every way that man is, excepting by that class of temptations that are sinful because originating in evil and forbidden desire. This is evident, because, in the original chōris hamartias12 qualifies pepeirasmenon. Christ was tempted without sin, or sinlessly, "in all points like as we are."14

Temptations from evil desire have a different moral quality from those presented through innocent desire. The former are di' hamartias or ex hamartias, not chōris hamartias. A temptation from pride, envy, or malice is plainly different in its nature from the temptation from hunger experienced by our Lord in the wilderness or from the desire to be acknowledged as the Messiah or from the dread of suffering experienced by him in the garden of Gethsemane. Says Owen (Indwelling Sin, 6):

When a temptation comes from without it is unto the soul an indifferent thing, neither good nor evil, unless it be consented to. But the very proposal from within, it being the soul's own act, is its sin. Christ had more temptations from Satan and the world than ever had any of the sons of men; and yet in all of them he had to do with that which came from without. But let a temptation be proposed to a man, and immediately he has not only to do with the temptation as outwardly proposed, but also with his own heart about it.

Again he remarks (Holy Spirit 2.3):

Although Christ took on him those infirmities which belong unto our human nature as such and are inseparable from it until it be glorified, yet he took none of our particular infirmities which cleave unto our persons, occasioned either by the vice of our constitutions or irregularity in the case of our bodies. Those natural passions of our minds which are capable of being the means of affliction and trouble, as grief, sorrow, and the like, he took upon him; and also those infirmities of nature which are troublesome to the body, as hunger, thirst, weariness, and pain. Yea, the purity of his holy constitution made him more highly sensible of these things than any of the children of men. But as to our bodily diseases and distempers, which personally adhere unto us upon the disorder and vice of our constitutions, he was absolutely free from them.

If Christ, like fallen man, were subject to that class of forbidden appetences and selfish desires mentioned in Gal. 5:19, 21, namely, "idolatry, hatred, emulation, envyings, murder, wrath, uncleanness, drunkenness, and such like," the dignity and perfection of his character would be gone, and he could not be looked up to with the reverence that he is. The words of the dead kings to the fallen king of Babylon would apply: "Are you also become weak, as we? Are you become like unto us?" (Isa. 14:10). (supplement 5.5.3.)

Reasons for Christ's Temptations

The reasons why Christ was tempted are the following: (1) The suffering involved in his temptations was a part of his humiliation and satisfaction for sin. A tempted being is, insofar, a sufferer. Hence we have reason to believe that no temptation is experienced in the heavenly world. (2) In submitting to temptation, Christ sets an example to his disciples of constancy in obedience and resistance to evil. Believers are bidden to "look unto Jesus, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despising the shame," and to "consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself lest they be wearied and faint in their minds" (Heb. 12:2–3).

The fact that Christ was almighty and victorious in his resistance does not unfit him to be an example for imitation to a weak and sorely tempted believer. Because our Lord overcame his temptations, it does not follow that his conflict and success was an easy one for him. His victory cost him tears and blood: "His visage was so marred more than any man" (Isa. 52:14). There was "the travail of his soul" (52:14). In the struggle he cried, "O my Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me!" (Matt. 26:39). Because an army is victorious, it by no means follows that the victory was a cheap one. "One more such victory," said Pyrrhus after the battle of Asculum, "will ruin me." The physical agony of the martyr is not diminished in the least by the strength imparted to him by God to endure it. The fire is as hot and the pain as great in his case as in that of an unbeliever. Divine grace does not operate like chloroform and deaden pain. The bereavement of a believer by the death of a beloved object is nonetheless sore and heavy, because of the grace which helps him to bear it. The promise is "cast your burden on the Lord and he shall sustain you"—not the burden. Such facts show that victory over a temptation does not imply that the temptation is a slight one; that because Christ could not be overcome by temptation, therefore his temptation must have been less severe than that of his people.

On the contrary, Christ's human nature, while it was supported and strengthened by the divine, was for this very reason subjected to a severer strain than an ordinary human nature is. Suppose that an additional engine should be put into a vessel that is adapted to carry only one and that a safe passage is guaranteed to it. When it comes into port after boring through three thousand miles of billows, it will show marks of the strain such as an ordinary ship, under ordinary pressure, will not. "The small boat groaned under the burden" (Aeneid 6.413). The traditions of the church and the representations of the old painters founded upon the scriptural statements present Christ's humanity as weighed down and worn by the awful burden of that heavy cross which the finite nature supported by the infinite was compelled to bear and which without that support it could not have borne. For "it was requisite that the mediator should be God, that he might sustain and keep the human nature from sinking under the infinite wrath of God and the power of death" (Westminster Larger Catechism 38).

By this almighty and victorious resistance of temptation, Christ evinced his power to succor those that are tempted and to carry them through all temptation. He showed that he is Lord and conqueror of Satan and his kingdom: "Having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them" (Col. 2:15); "the kings of the earth set themselves against the Lord's anointed; he that sits in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision" (Ps. 2:2, 4); "he must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet" (1 Cor. 15:25); "it became him for whom are all things, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings" (Heb. 2:10). The "perfection" spoken of here is not sanctification from sin; but a suitable preparation and accomplishment for his mediatorial office and work by trial and grief, whereby he is able to sympathize with those that are tempted. Hence teliōsai and not hagiazein20 is the word employed.

In the first place, then, the Redeemer of sinful men must be truly human not weakly human, unfallen man not fallen, the ideal man not the actual, temptable not peccable. He must be truly human in order to be assailable by temptation and thereby able to sympathize with every tempted man. In order to sympathize with a person, it is not necessary to have had exactly the same affliction that he has. It is only necessary to have been afflicted. A different kind of affliction may make a man all the more sympathetic. Because Christ was sinlessly tempted, he feels a deeper and more tender sympathy with sinfully tempted man than he would had he been lustfully and viciously tempted. And this, for three reasons: (a) lustful desire deadens the sensibility and blunts the tenderness and delicacy of the nature; (b) there is much selfishness in the sympathy of vice with vice, of one drunkard with another ("misery loves company"), but the sympathy of a benevolent temperate man for a drunkard is disinterested; (c) the strength and reality of sympathy are seen in the amount of self-sacrifice that one is willing to make for the miserable, rather than in the mere fact that one has felt precisely the same misery himself. Tested by this, Christ has infinitely more sympathy for man than any man has had or can have: "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). One man may know very vividly from personal experience how another man feels and yet not be willing to undergo any suffering for him, for the purpose of delivering him from suffering. Drunkards have a common feeling of misery, but they do not make sacrifices for one another. On the contrary, they "bite and devour one another" (Gal. 5:15). Satan well knows from personal experience what remorse is and how his fellow angels suffer from remorse, but he has no disposition to help them at his own expense.

Second, the Redeemer of man must not be weakly and peccably human, because he must be "mighty to save, traveling in the greatness of his strength" (Isa. 63:1). He must have power to overcome all temptation when it assails himself personally in order that he may be able "to succor them that are tempted" (Heb. 2:18). Fallen and helpless man cannot trust himself to one who is himself liable to fall from God. The second Adam must be mightier to repel temptation than the first Adam. And certainly if good and evil were so proportioned to each other in Christ that they trembled in the balance, as they sometimes do in his disciples, no fallen man could go to him with confidence of victory over evil. After the cry "O wretched man that I am: who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" there would not be the exulting shout, "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." If Christ could meet all the temptations that approached him through his innocent and sinless human nature, from the wiles of Satan, and from suffering positively inflicted by eternal justice upon the sinner's voluntary substitute, if Christ could meet this vast amount of temptation with only a feeble finite will not reinforced and strengthened by an infinite will, he would not be "mighty to save," nor would he "travel in the greatness of his strength." The monophysite error, which makes Christ to be nothing but God, is not so great and discouraging as the Socinian, which makes him to be nothing but man. For it would be possible for a helpless sinner fainting in the conflict with sin and death to trust in a merely infinite person, but not in a merely finite one.

SUPPLEMENTS

5.5.1 (see p. 659). Edersheim (Life of Jesus 1.298) thus explains the impeccability of the God-man: "The passage of Scripture in which Christ's equality with us as regards all temptation is expressed, also emphatically excepts from it this one particular, sin (Heb. 4:15; James 1:14); not only in the sense that Christ actually did not sin, nor merely in this, that 'our concupiscence' had no part in his temptations, but emphatically in this also, that the notion of sin has to be wholly excluded from our thoughts of Christ's temptations.

"To obtain, if we can, a clearer understanding of this subject, two points must be kept in view. Christ's was real, though unfallen human nature; and Christ's human nature was in inseparable union with his divine nature. Now it is clear that human nature, that of Adam before his fall, was created both sinless and peccable. If Christ's human nature was not sinful like ours, but morally like that of Adam before his fall, then must it likewise have been both sinless and in itself peccable. We say, in itself—for there is a great difference between the statement that human nature, as Adam and Christ had it, was capable of sinning and the statement that Christ was peccable. From the latter the Christian mind instinctively recoils, even as it is metaphysically impossible to imagine the Son of God peccable. Jesus voluntarily took upon himself human nature, with all its infirmities and weaknesses, but without the moral taint of the fall: without sin. It was human nature in itself capable of sinning, but not having sinned. The position of the first Adam was that of being capable of not sinning, not that of being incapable of sinning. The second Adam also had a human nature capable of not sinning, but not incapable of sinning. This explains the possibility of temptation or assault upon him, just as Adam could be tempted before there was any inward consensus to it. The first Adam would have been 'perfected,' or passed from the capability of not sinning to the incapability of sinning, by obedience. That obedience, or submission to the will of God, was the grand characteristic of Christ's work; but it was so because he was not only the unsinning, unfallen man, but also the Son of God. With a peccable human nature he himself was impeccable; not because he obeyed, but being impeccable he so obeyed because his human nature was inseparably united with his divine nature. To keep this inseparable union of the two natures out of view would be Nestorianism. To sum up: The second Adam, morally unfallen, though voluntarily subject to all the conditions of our nature, was, with a peccable human nature, absolutely impeccable, as being also the Son of God—a peccable nature, yet an impeccable person: the God-man 'tempted in regard to all (things) in like manner (as we), without (excepting) sin.' "

Edwards (Will 3.2) argues the impeccability of Christ from the promises made to him and the operation of the Holy Spirit in him, not from the constitution of his person. The following are some of the principal points: "It was impossible that the acts of the will of the human soul of Christ should, in any instance, degree, or circumstance, be otherwise than holy, because: (1) God had promised so effectually to preserve and uphold him by his Spirit, under all his temptations, that he could not fail of reaching the end for which he came into the world (Isa. 43:1–4; 49:7–9; 50:5–9). (2) The same thing is evident from all the promises which God made to the Messiah himself, of his future glory, kingdom, and success in his office and character as a mediator; which glory could not have been obtained if his holiness had failed and he had been guilty of sin (Ps. 110:4; 2:7–8; Isa. 52:13–15; 53:10–12). (3) God promised to the church of God of old to give them a righteous, sinless Savior 'in whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed' (Jer. 23:5–6; 33:15; Isa. 9:6–7; Luke 24:44; Heb. 6:17–18; Ps. 89:3–4). (4) God promised the virgin Mary that her Son should 'save his people from their sins' and that he 'would give him the throne of his father David, that he should reign over the house of Jacob forever and that of his kingdom there should be no end' (Luke 1:45). (5) If it was possible for Christ to have failed of doing the will of his Father and so to have failed of effectually working out redemption for sinners, then the salvation of all the saints who were saved from the beginning of the world to the death of Christ was not built upon a firm foundation."

5.5.2 (see p. 660). Calvin (3.20.46) thus discriminates between temptation by God and temptation from concupiscence or inward lust: "The forms of temptations are many and various. For the corrupt imaginations of the mind provoking us to transgressions of the law, whether suggested by our own concupiscence or excited by the devil, are temptations. And these temptations are either from prosperous or adverse events. From prosperous ones, as riches, power, honors, which generally dazzle men's eyes by their glitter and ensnare them with their blandishments, so that caught with such delusions they forget God. From unpropitious ones, as poverty, reproaches, contempt, afflictions; overcome by the bitterness of which they fall into despondency, cast away faith and hope, and at length become altogether alienated from God. To both of these kinds of temptations we pray our heavenly Father not to permit us to yield, but rather to sustain us, that, strong in might, we may be able to stand firm against all the assaults of our malignant enemy.

"The temptations of God are widely different from those of Satan. Satan tempts to overthrow, condemn, confound, and destroy. But God, that, by proving his people, he may make a trial of their sincerity, to confirm their strength by exercising it, to mortify, purify, and refine their flesh, which without such restraints would run into the greatest excesses. Besides, Satan attacks persons unarmed and unprepared, to overwhelm the unwary. 'God, with the temptation, always makes a way to escape, that they may be able to bear' whatever he brings upon them (1 Cor. 10:13). To some there appears a difficulty in our petition to God that he will not lead us into temptation, whereas, according to James, it is contrary to his nature for him to tempt us (James 1:13–). But this objection has already been partly answered, because our own lust is properly the cause of all the temptations that seduce and overcome us. Nor does James intend any other than to assert the injustice of transferring to God the tempting concupiscence which we are bound to impute to ourselves because we are conscious of being guilty of it. But notwithstanding this, God may when he sees fit deliver us to Satan, abandon us to a reprobate mind and lustful concupiscence, and in this manner 'lead us into temptation' by a righteous judgment as a punishment of our sinful self-indulgence (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28)."

5.5.3 (see p. 668). There is a difference between trial and seduction, yet both are brought under the term temptation in James 1:14: "Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed." So, also, are they in Gal. 6:1: "Considering yourself lest you also be tempted." The preceding context shows that the term here denotes seduction or "being overtaken in a fault." Mere trial without seduction is denoted in James 1:2, 12. Seduction is temptation with sin or sinful temptation. Trial is temptation "without sin" or innocent temptation. Ebrard (on Heb. 4:15) explains the difference as follows: "Whoever is seduced does not hold a mere passive relation to the seducer, but his own will harmonizes with his; whoever is tried is purely passive. But it is not merely physical passivity; headache is not peirasmos. To get the full meaning of innocent and passive temptation we must mark the difference between nature and spirit, involuntary psychical life and free self-conscious life, innate affections and temperaments and personal character. Our Lord as a real man led a truly human psychical life; he experienced the feelings of pleasure and pain, of hope, fear, and anxiety as we do. He enjoyed life and recoiled from death. In brief, within the sphere of natural involuntary psychical life he was passively excitable as we are. But duty requires of every man that he rule, and not be ruled by, these instinctive natural affections which are not sinful in themselves. The temperaments illustrate this: That a person is of a sanguine temperament is not sinful; but if he suffers himself to be carried away through this temperament to anger, this is sin. A phlegmatic temperament is not sinful; but if it is permitted by the person's will and character to become sloth, this is sin. In this way every innocent temperament involves temptation in the sense of trial, but not in the sense of seduction. The same is true of the natural and instinctive feelings or affections. That I take pleasure in an undisturbed and comfortable life is not sinful; but if I am placed by providence where duty requires me to enter upon a severe experience and a life full of discomfort, and I refuse, this is sin. I ought to sacrifice my innocent love of comfort to the divine command." Our Lord's instinctive and sinless recoil from agony and death was a temptation in the sense of a trial to him, but not seduction. It was a temptation "without sin" or lust after ease and comfort.

Part 6

Soteriology

1 Christ's Mediatorial Offices

Soteriology (sōtērias logos) treats the work of the God-man and its application to individuals by the Holy Spirit.

When we pass from the complex constitution of Christ's person to the work which he wrought for man's redemption, we find him represented in Scripture as a mediator: "There is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5). In this passage, the term man denotes the entire theanthropic person Jesus Christ, not the human nature. The human nature is not the mediator. Man, here, designates the God-man under a human title and is like the title "Son of Man" or "last Adam" (1 Cor. 15:45) or "second man" (15:47). Again, the God-man is described in Scripture as being appointed and consecrated to the work of human redemption by God the Father as the representative of the Trinity. Hence the incarnate Word is also denominated the Messiah, the Anointed One (Dan. 9:25; Ps. 2:2; 45:7).

Speaking generally, Messiah is the Old Testament term for the Redeemer, and Mediator is the New Testament term. The word Christ which translates Messiah is generally a proper name in the New Testament, not an official title. Sometimes, however, the God-man is denominated Jesus "the Christ" or "that Christ" (Matt. 16:20; Luke 9:20; John 1:25; 6:29). The Christian church prefers the New Testament designation mediator to the Old Testament designation Messiah. Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 36 denominates Christ "the only mediator of the covenant of grace."

Some Characteristics of Christ as Mediator

Several characteristics of Christ as the mediator must be carefully noted in order to avoid misconception.

The mediator between God and man cannot be God only or man only. This is taught in Gal. 3:20: "A mediator is not of one, but God is one." A mediator supposes two parties between whom he intervenes; but God is only one party. Consequently, the mediator between God and man must be related to both and the equal of either. He cannot be simply God, who is only one of the parties and has only one nature. Therefore the eternal Word must take man's nature into union with himself, if he would be a mediator between God and man. As a trinitarian person merely, he is not qualified to mediate between them. The same truth is taught in the following: "For if one man sin against another, the judge shall judge him; but if a man sin against the Lord, who shall entreat for him?" (1 Sam. 2:25); "there is not any daysman between us, to lay his hand upon us both" (Job 9:33); and "therefore when he comes into the world, he says, A body have you prepared for me" (Heb. 10:5).

Second, the office of a mediator between God and man is one of condescension and humiliation:

1. Because it involves the assumption of a human nature by a divine person. This is taught in Phil. 2:5, 8: "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant." To unite the finite with the infinite is to humble the infinite. Incarnate deity is a step down from unincarnate deity. The latter is wholly unconditioned; the former is conditioned by the inferior nature which it has assumed.

2. Because to be a mediator between God and man implies a condition of dependence. When the second person in the Trinity agrees to take the place of a mediator between the Trinity and rebellious man, he agrees to be commissioned and sent upon a lowly errand. He consents to take a secondary place. A king who volunteers to become an ambassador to his own subjects condescends and humbles himself. The office of a commissioner sent to offer terms to rebels is inferior to that of the king. This is taught in many passages of Scripture: "All things are given me of my Father" (Matt. 11:27); "all power is given to me in heaven and in earth" (28:18); "you has given unto him power over all flesh" (John 17:2); "it pleased the Father that in him all fullness should dwell" (Col. 1:19); "the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him to show unto his servants" (Rev. 1:1); "he became obedient unto death" (Phil. 2:8); the Son of God "was made under the law" (Gal. 4:4); "he put all things under his feet and gave him to be head over all things" (Eph. 1:22–23). This class of texts is cited by Socinus to disprove the doctrine of Christ's original deity. But it has reference to Christ in his capacity and office of mediator, which is an assumed not an original office. These texts do not describe the Logos prior to his incarnation, but subsequent to it. When Christ speaks of his preexistent and eternal place in the Trinity, he does not employ such phraseology. He says, "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30); "glorify me with the glory which I had with you before the world was" (17:5); "before Abraham was I am" (8:58); "my Father works hitherto, and I work" (5:17); "the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath" (Luke 6:5); "I am the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25); "I am the living bread which came down from heaven" (6:51); "whoso eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life" (6:54). But when Christ refers to his incarnate and mediatorial position, he says, "My Father is greater than I" (14:28); "say of him whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world, you blaspheme: because I said, I am the Son of God?" (10:36); "I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me" (6:38); "I have finished the work wk which you gave me to do" (17:4); "then shall the Son be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28). Accordingly, Westminster Confession 8.3, speaking of Christ's office of mediator, says that "this office he took not unto himself, but was thereunto called by his Father; who put all power and judgment into his hand and gave him commandment to execute the same."

3. Because the office of mediator is temporary. It begins to be exercised in time, and a time will come when it will cease to be exercised. This is taught in 1 Cor. 15:24, 28: "Then comes the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that did put all things under him, that God may be all in all." As there was once a time when there was no mediatorial work of salvation going on, so there will be a time when there will be none. The Logos was not actually and historically a mediator until he assumed human nature. It is true that in the Old Testament church the second trinitarian person discharged the office of a mediator by anticipation, and men were saved by his mediatorial work; but it was in view of his future advent and future performance of that work. Types and symbols stood in the place of the incarnate Word. Not however until the miraculous conception was there actually a God-man; and not until then was there an actual historical mediator. And although there will now always be a God-man, yet there will not always be a mediatorial work going on. The God-man will one day cease to redeem sinners. St. Paul is explicit in saying that a day will come when Christ will deliver up and return his mediatorial commission to the Father, from whom as the representative of the Trinity he received it. There will then "remain no more sacrifice for sin" (Heb. 10:26); and there will be no longer an access to a holy God for sinful men through Christ's blood. Hence it is said: "Now is the accepted time, and now is the day of salvation"; "today if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts"; "he limits a certain day, saying, Today if you will hear his voice" (3:13, 15, 18; 4:1, 7). But a function that begins in time and ends in time, when discharged by a divine person, is evidently one of condescension and secondary nature. The second person of the Trinity as a Creator holds no position of condescension and humiliation and performs no function that is secondary and temporary in its nature. He is a Creator by reason of his absolute and eternal deity and is so from everlasting to everlasting. There never was a time when he was not a Creator, and there never will be a time when he will cease to be a Creator. He never was commissioned to the office of Creator; he never assumed this office; and he will never lay it down. It belongs to him by virtue of his divinity. Creation is a primary, not a secondary function. But the second person as mediator assumes an office and takes a position which is not necessarily implied in his deity. He might be God the Son without being God the mediator; but he could not be God the Son without being God the Creator.

4. Because the office of mediator is one of reward. The condescension and humiliation of the Logos in assuming a finite nature and executing a commission is to be recompensed. It is a self-sacrifice that merits a return from the person who commissioned and sent the mediator upon this service. This is taught in Phil. 2:5–11: "Christ Jesus took upon him the form of a servant; wherefore God also has highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." This is not a reward for that which the Logos was and did as unincarnate and as the second person of the Trinity, but of what he was and did as the incarnate Logos and as the commissioned mediator between God and man. A divine person, as such, cannot be either exalted or rewarded. This phraseology of St. Paul refers not to the eternal and preexistent state and position of Jesus Christ, but to his postexistent state and condition. It does not relate to the "form of God" which he had originally and from all eternity, but to the "form of a servant" which he assumed in time and which he retains forever. The same truth is taught in Heb. 2:9: "We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor"; and in Rev. 3:21: "To him that overcomes will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame and am set down with my Father in his throne."

5. Because the Son of God enters into a covenant with the Father to take a mediatorial office and position. But if he were originally in a subordinate position, he could not covenant or agree to become subordinate. (supplement 6.1.1.)

Jesus Christ is represented in Scripture as the mediator of a covenant: "Jesus the mediator of the new covenant" (Heb. 12:24); "he is the mediator of a better covenant" (8:6); "the Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant" (Mal. 3:1); "this cup is the new covenant (diathēkē) in my blood" (Luke 22:20; cf. Matt. 14:24; 26:28). Accordingly, the creeds so represent him: "The only mediator of the covenant of grace is the Lord Jesus Christ" (Westminster Larger Catechism 36).

A difference in the scriptural representations has given rise to a distinction between the covenant of grace and the covenant of redemption. The covenant of grace is made between the Father and the elect. This is taught in those passages which speak of Christ as the mediator of the covenant: "For this cause, he is the mediator of the new covenant" (Heb. 9:15); "he is the mediator of a better covenant" (8:6). This implies that the promises of the covenant are made by God the Father to his people and that Christ stands between the two parties. The same is taught in Gal. 3:16: "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He says not, And to seeds, as of many; but as to one, And to your seed, which is Christ." The contracting parties here are the Father and the elect "seed." This also has its type in the Sinaitic theocratic covenant between Jehovah and the Hebrews as a chosen nation, of which national covenant Moses was the mediator: "The law was ordained by angels in the hands of a mediator" (3:19). The following passages mention the covenant of God the Father with the elect church: "Fear not, O Israel, for I have redeemed you: you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you" (Isa. 43:1–6); "this is my covenant with them, says the Lord: My spirit that is upon you and my words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart out of your mouth nor out of the mouth of your seed, says the Lord, from henceforth and forever" (59:21).

The covenant of redemption is made between the Father and the Son. The contracting parties here are the first and second persons of the Trinity; the first of whom promises a kingdom, a glory, and a reward, upon condition that the second performs a work of atonement and redemption. The following are passages in which it is spoken of: "Behold my servant whom I uphold. He shall not cry nor lift up nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. I the Lord have called you and will hold your hand and will keep you and will give you for a light of the Gentiles, to open the blind eyes" (Isa. 42:1–6); "I appoint (diatithemai) unto you a kingdom, as my father has appointed unto me" (Luke 22:29); "when you shall make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed" (Isa. 53:10–12); "I will give you for a light to the Gentiles, that you may be my salvation unto the ends of the earth" (49:6); "my covenant will I not break; once have I sworn, that I will not lie unto David; his seed shall endure forever" (Ps. 89:34–36); "ask of me, and I will give you the heathen for your inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for your possession" (2:8).

Though this distinction is favored by the scriptural statements, it does not follow that there are two separate and independent covenants antithetic to the covenant of works. The covenant of grace and that of redemption are two modes or phases of the one evangelical covenant of mercy. The distinction is only a secondary or subdistinction. For when, as in Isa. 43:1–6, the elect are spoken of as the party with whom God the Father makes a covenant, they are viewed as in Christ and one with him. The covenant is not made with them as alone and apart from Christ. This is taught in Gal. 3:16: "To Abraham and his seed were the promises made"; but this seed "is Christ." The elect are here (as also in 1 Cor. 12:12) called "Christ," because of the union between Christ and the elect. And in like manner, when Christ, as in Isa. 42:1–6, is spoken of as the party with whom the Father covenants, the elect are to be viewed as in him. As united and one with him, his atoning suffering is looked upon as their atoning suffering: "I am crucified with Christ" (Gal. 2:20); his resurrection involves their resurrection: "Grown together in the likeness of his resurrection" (Rom. 6:5); his exaltation brings their exaltation: "You shall sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (Matt. 19:28); "we shall judge angels" (1 Cor. 6:3). The covenant of redemption is not made with Christ in isolation and apart from his people. It is with the head and the members: "He gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that fills all in all" (Eph. 1:22–23).

The following statement, then, comprises the facts. There are only two general covenants—the legal and the evangelical: "These are the two covenants, the one from Mount Sinai which genders to bondage" (Gal. 4:24). The first in order is the legal covenant of works, founded upon the attribute of justice. Its promise is "do this and you shall live." This covenant failed upon the part of man in the fall of Adam. The second is the evangelical covenant, founded upon the attribute of mercy. Its promise is twofold: (a) To the mediator: "Make your soul an offering for sin, and I will give you the heathen for your inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for your possession" (Isa. 53:10; Ps. 2:8); and (b) to the elect: "Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you" (Isa. 43:1–2); "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, and your house" (Acts 16:31). The evangelical covenant, as opposite to the legal covenant, may therefore be called (a) the covenant of redemption when Christ and his offices are the principal thing in view and (b) the covenant of grace when the elect and their faith and obedience are the principal thing under consideration.

Respecting the validity of the distinction, there is some difference of opinion, though the weight of authority is in favor of it. Turretin (12.2.12) adopts it; also Witsius (Covenants 2.2.1) and Hodge (Theology 2.358). Fisher (On the Catechism Q. 20 §57) asserts that the Westminster "standards make no distinction between a covenant of redemption and a covenant of grace." The phrase covenant of redemption is not found in them. In Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 31 it is said that "the covenant of grace was made with Christ and in him with all the elect." This would be the covenant of redemption. In Westminster Confession 7.3 it is stated that "the Lord was pleased to make a second covenant, commonly called the covenant of grace, wherein he freely offers unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in him that they may be saved and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe." Here the covenant is made with the elect. The phraseology in Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 20 is somewhat ambiguous: "God, having elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace, to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer." Whether the "covenant" mentioned is made with the elect or with the mediator is not to be indisputably determined from the wording of the statement.

The evangelical covenant, as the opposite of the legal covenant, is essentially one and the same under the old dispensation and the new. The difference is only in the mode of administration. In the old dispensation, comprising the patriarchal and Jewish churches, it was administered through animal sacrifices and visible types and symbols; in the new dispensation, by the advent and sacrifice of Christ. The old administration was ceremonial and national; the new is spiritual and universal. This difference is mentioned in 2 Cor. 3:14: "Moses put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished; but their minds were blinded; for until this day, remains the same veil untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which veil is taken away in Christ." In Heb. 8:6–13 the "first covenant" is the covenant of grace made "with their fathers when God took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt," administered by types and symbols; and the "second covenant" is the covenant of grace under the administration of Christ personally, who is "the mediator of a better covenant." Hebrews 9:15 speaks of the "new covenant" in distinction from the "first covenant" (which had "ordinances of divine service and an earthly sanctuary") and of the "redemption of transgressions under the first covenant." This shows that the "first covenant" was a gracious one.

Threefold Office

Christ the God-man, as the mediator of the evangelical covenant, discharges three offices: those of prophet, priest, and king: "Our mediator was called Christ, because he was anointed with the Holy Spirit above measure; and so set apart and fully furnished with all authority and ability, to execute the offices of prophet, priest, and king of his church, in the estate both of his humiliation and exaltation" (Westminster Larger Catechism 42). His prophetic office is taught in the following: "The Lord your God will raise up unto you a prophet from among you, of your brethren, like unto me" (Deut. 18:15, 18; Acts 3:22); "the spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings" (Isa. 16:1; Luke 4:18). His priestly office is taught in the following: "You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek" (Ps. 110:4; Heb. 5:5–6); "we have a great high priest that is passed into the heavens" (Heb. 4:14–15). His kingly office is taught in the following: "He shall be called the prince of peace" (Isa. 9:6–7); "I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion" (Ps. 2:6).

These offices were each and all of them executed by the mediator before, as well as after his advent (Westminster Confession 7.5; 8.6). This is proved by the following: "The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8); "the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head" (Gen. 3:15); "to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past" (Rom. 3:25); "he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance" (Heb. 9:15; Gal. 3:8, 14, 16–18 compared with Gen. 17:7; 22:18); "we believe that through the grace of Christ we shall be saved even as they" (Acts 15:11); "to him give all the prophets witness that through his name whosoever believes in him shall receive remission of sins" (10:43); "for the law having a shadow of good things to come" (Heb. 10:1–10); the Jewish ordinances "are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ" (Col. 2:17; Isa. 53); "I the Lord have called you and will give you for a light of the Gentiles" (Isa. 42:6); "unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them" (Heb. 4:2).

Faith in the mediator was the unmeritorious but indispensable condition of salvation before the advent as well as after it: "The just shall live by faith" (Hab. 2:4, quoted by St. Paul in Rom. 1:17); "blessed are all they that put their trust in him" (Ps. 2:12); "Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness" (Rom. 4:3); "David says, Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin" (4:8); "these all died in faith" (Heb. 11:13); Enoch "pleased God" by his faith" (11:5); "the Old Testament is not contrary to the New: for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only mediator between God and Man" (Thirty-nine Articles 7). Says Calvin (on Gal. 4:1–7):

We learn from this passage that the fathers under the Old Testament had the same hope of the inheritance which we have at the present day, because they were partakers of the same adoption. Notwithstanding their outward servitude, their consciences were still free. Though bearing the yoke of the law upon their shoulders, they nevertheless with a free spirit worshiped God. More particularly, having been instructed concerning the free pardon of sin, their consciences were delivered from the tyranny of sin and death. They held the same doctrine, were joined with us in the true unity of faith, placed reliance on one mediator, called on God as their Father, and were led by the same Spirit. Hence it appears that the difference between us and these ancient fathers lies not in substance, but in accidents or circumstantials.

The Old Testament believer had both the penitent consciousness of sin and the remission of sin. The account of the religious experience of Abraham, Moses, David, and Isaiah discloses a contrite spirit before the absolute holiness of God. The Old Testament saint cast himself upon divine mercy (Ps. 32:1–11; 51; 103:2–3). And this mercy he expected through the promised "seed of the woman," the Messiah, and through an atonement typified by the levitical sacrifices. The forgiveness of sin was both promised and received under the old dispensation.

Christ's Prophetic Office

The prophetic office of Christ is thus described in Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 43: "Christ executes the office of a prophet in revealing to the church, in all ages, by his Spirit and word, the whole will of God in all things concerning edification and salvation." The prophetic function of Christ is not confined to the prediction of future events. The idea is wider than that of mere vaticination, though it includes this. Christ, as "that prophet that should come into the world" (John 6:14; 1:21; Luke 24:19), is the source and teacher of truth—and particularly of that truth which relates to human redemption. This is implied in the names that are given to him in Scripture. He is called counselor (Isa. 9:6), witness (55:4), interpreter (Job 33:23), apostle (Heb. 3:1), word (John 1:1), truth (14:6), and wisdom (Prov. 8). In the Logos doctrine of St. John, all the previous statements respecting the prophetic or teaching function of the mediator are summed up and more fully unfolded: He is "the light of men" (1:4), the "light of the world" (9:5), the "true light which coming into the world lights every man" (1:9), "the light to lighten the Gentiles" (Luke 2:32; Isa. 60:3), "the Word dwelling among us full of truth" (John 1:14), and the "Christ in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:3). Hence the voice from heaven to mankind: "This is my beloved Son, hear him" (Matt. 17:5).

The great characteristic of Christ as a prophet is his consciousness of infallibility: "He spoke as one having authority and not as the scribes" (Mark 1:22); "but I say unto you" (Matt. 5:34). Merely human prophets, like Isaiah (see Isa. 6), are abashed in the presence of deity when receiving communications from him. Christ never shows the least trace of such a feeling: "No man knows the Father but the Son, and no one knows the Son but the Father" (Matt. 11:27). This implies coequality with the Father in the knowledge of the mystery of the Trinity. Christ speaks out of the fullness of his own immediate intuition. He never says, "The word of the Lord came unto me." From the omniscience of his own divine nature he draws all his teachings, as a prophet: "In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (Col. 2:9). He is the source to others of prophetic knowledge: He "opened the understanding of his disciples that they might understand the Scriptures" (Luke 24:45). The Old Testament prophets "prophesied of the grace that should come, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow" (1 Pet. 1:10–11).

Christ executes the office of prophet personally and directly. This he did (a) in all the theophanies of the Old Testament: The appearances of Jehovah to individuals before the flood, to the patriarchs and Moses after the flood, to the prophets of Israel and Judah, were a discharge of the prophetic function of the mediator. These were all harbingers and adumbrations of his incarnation. And he also did this (b) in his incarnation itself: This was as direct and personal teaching as is possible. The second person of the Trinity when incarnate upon earth spoke as never man spoke and spoke face to face to man. And his teaching was not confined to his words, though most of his instruction was so conveyed. The works of Christ as well as his words, and especially his miraculous works, taught man: "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though you believe not me, believe the works" (John 10:37–38). His disciples describe him as "a prophet mighty in deed and word before the people" (Luke 24:19). This prophetic office continues to be discharged personally by the incarnate Word, in his state of exaltation. In the description of the heavenly world, the "Lamb" is said to be "the light thereof" (Rev. 21:23).

Christ executes the office of prophet mediately (a) through the Holy Spirit. All the truth that was conveyed previous to the advent through the inspired prophets of the Old Testament and subsequent to it through the apostles of the New Testament comes to man in the discharge of the prophetic function of the mediator. Hence it is said (1 Pet. 1:10–12) that it was "the Spirit of Christ" that was in the prophets "who prophesied of the grace that should come" and who "testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ." By this same Holy Spirit, Christ "preached unto those that were disobedient in the days of Noah" and who are now and forevermore "in prison" for their disobedience (1 Pet. 3:19–20; see p. 841). Christ as prophet is thus the source of all revelation, unwritten and written. The truths of natural religion come to man through him. He is the "light of men" in the sense that what "may be known of God" is an unwritten and internal revelation to them (Rom. 1:19). And he is the "light of the world" in the sense that all that higher and more perfect knowledge respecting God and human salvation which constitutes the written word has him for its author: "The only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him" (John 1:18). Christ also executes the office of prophet mediately (b) through the instrumentality of the Christian ministry and church. Christ, in the first place, commissioned his apostles as inspired agents both to teach and to preach the gospel. Their writings are the infallible documents by which the church is to be instructed and guided: "Go and teach all nations" (Matt. 28:19–20); "the Spirit of truth will guide you into all truth; he shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine and show it unto you" (John 15:13–14). Again, second, Christ provided for successors to the apostles considered as preachers and ministers of the word, and through this ministry he instrumentally executes his prophetic office. The supernatural gifts of inspiration and miracles which the apostles possessed were not continued to their ministerial successors, because they were no longer necessary. All the doctrines of Christianity had been revealed to the apostles and had been delivered to the church in a written form. There was no further need of an infallible inspiration. And the credentials and authority given to the first preachers of Christianity in miraculous acts did not need continual repetition from age to age. One age of miracles well authenticated is sufficient to establish the divine origin of the gospel. In a human court, an indefinite series of witnesses is not required. "By the mouth of two or three witnesses" the facts are established. The case once decided is not reopened. With the exception, therefore, of the two supernatural gifts of inspiration and miracles, the ministry who took up the work of preaching the word had the same preparation for the work that the apostles had. They were like them regenerated, sanctified, and enlightened by the Holy Spirit. This is taught in Eph. 4:11–12: Having "ascended far above all heavens" and being seated upon the mediatorial throne, the mediator "gave some to be apostles and some to be prophets and some to be evangelists and some to be pastors and teachers: for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." Accordingly, the preaching of the gospel by his ministers is called Christ's preaching: "Then the deputy Sergius Paulus, when he saw what was done to Elymas the sorcerer, believed, being astonished at the doctrine of the Lord" (Acts 13:12). In 1 Cor. 1:6 and Rev. 1:2 the preaching of the gospel is denominated "the testimony of Christ." In 2 Cor. 5:20 Paul represents himself and his colaborers as ambassadors for Christ and beseeches men in Christ's stead to be reconciled to God. In 1 Pet. 3:19 and Eph. 2:17 the preaching of Noah and the apostles is called Christ's preaching.

Again, the mass of the church, as well as the Christian ministry, are represented as an agency by which the mediator executes his prophetic office. After the death of Stephen, all the church "excepting the apostles" were scattered by persecution and "went everywhere preaching the word" (Acts 8:4). The church is represented as "a chosen generation, a royal priesthood," to "show forth the praises of him who has called it out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Pet. 2:9). The Holy Spirit dwelling in the church, in all the fullness of his graces and gifts, enriches it with wisdom and knowledge, so that it is capable both by word and example of proclaiming Christ crucified to the sinful world of which it is said to be the light (Matt. 5:14–16). The superiority of the church to the secular world, in regard to the comprehension of religious truth and of everything relating to the eternal destiny of mankind, is boldly and strongly asserted by St. Paul: "We speak wisdom among them that are perfect; even the hidden wisdom of God which none of the princes of this world knew. The natural man cannot know the things of the Spirit of God, because they are spiritually discerned. He that is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is judged of no man" (1 Cor. 2:6–15). The Christian mind is qualified to be a critic of secular knowledge; but the secular mind is not qualified to be a critic of Christianity. Christ crucified is foolishness to the Greek; yet this foolishness of God is wiser than men (1:23, 25).

Christ's Priestly Office

The priestly office of Christ is thus defined in Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 44: "Christ executes the office of a priest, in his once offering himself a sacrifice without spot to God, to be a reconciliation for the sins of his people; and in making continual intercession for them." The function of a priest is described in Heb. 5:1: "Every high priest is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins." The priest is a mediator in religion, as an ambassador is one in politics. He is appointed to officiate between God and man in religious matters. And since the fact of sin is a cardinal fact in the case of man, the function of a mediating priest for man must be mainly expiatory and reconciling. Since "every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices, it is of necessity that Jesus Christ have somewhat to offer" (8:3).

Accordingly, we find the expiatory priest in existence long before the Mosaic institute. Noah, at the cessation of the deluge, nearly a thousand years before the exodus of the Israelites, officiated as the priest of his household: "Noah built an altar unto the Lord and took of every clean beast and of every clean fowl and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And Jehovah smelled a sweet savor" (Gen. 8:20). This implies that the system of sacrifices was then in existence. There was an altar and a victim. The distinction between clean and unclean beasts and birds was made, a distinction which has its principal significance in reference to a piacular offering. Not any and everything may be offered as an atonement, but only that which is specified.

Still more than this, there is evidence in the first chapters of Genesis that atoning sacrifices and an officiating priest to offer them were instituted immediately after the apostasy and in connection with the promise of a mediator. It was a common Jewish opinion that Adam was the first human priest. The correctness of this opinion is favored by the following considerations. The permission to eat vegetable food is given to Adam in Gen. 1:29, but nothing is said of animal food. The permission to eat both vegetable and animal food is given to Noah in 9:3. Yet animals were slain by Adam; for "the Lord God made coats of skins and clothed both Adam and Eve" (3:21). It is a natural explanation of this fact to suppose that animals had been killed and offered in sacrifice by Adam. For even if it be assumed that animal food was permitted to Adam, the narrative respecting the coats of skins implies that more animals were slain than would be required for the food of Adam and Eve. Again, in 4:3–4 both Cain and Abel are represented as offering sacrifices; the former, the bloodless eucharistic offering of the fruit of the ground; the latter, the bloody expiatory offering of the firstlings of the flock. They are described as "bringing" their offering (4:3–4) to a locality which is described as the "face of the Lord" and the "presence of the Lord" (4:14, 16). This looks like a sacred place appointed for the offering of sacrifice and a sacred person to officiate, namely, Adam the head and priest of his family, as Noah was of his. The words of God to Cain (4:7) teach that a piacular offering for sin had been appointed: "If you do not well, sin lies at the door." Subsequently, the lamb or goat was to be brought "to the door of the tabernacle." Again, the prohibition in 9:4, 16 to eat blood, given to Noah, is the same that is afterward given to the Israelites in Lev. 17:10, 12; and the reason assigned when the command is laid upon the Israelites is that the blood is the life of the flesh and is to be poured upon the altar "to make atonement for your souls." From this it follows with great probability that the statute as given to Moses was only a reenactment of the statute as given to Noah and given for the same reason, namely, that the blood of animals must be used only for piacular purposes. Even under the levitical law, the use of animal food was considerably restricted. The blood and fat were interdicted in all cases. The sin offering and trespass offering were to be eaten only by the priests; and the more solemn sin offerings could not be eaten even by them. The burnt offerings, the most numerous of all, were wholly consumed.

Similar proofs of the institution of an expiatory sacrifice and an officiating priest are found in the history of Abraham and the other patriarchs. On first entering Canaan, Abram "built an altar and called upon the name of the Lord" (Gen. 12:7–8). When he returned from his victory over the kings, he is congratulated and blessed by Melchizedek the Canaanite king of Salem, who is called "the priest of the most high God" (14:18–19). Isaac builds an altar (26:25). Jacob offers sacrifice (31:54).

The indications of a priest and a sacrifice are plain in the Book of Job. It was the "continual" custom of this patriarch, who probably lived between the deluge and Abraham, as the head of his family to "offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all" (Job 1:5). The Septuagint rendering of 12:19 is "he leads priests away spoiled." In 33:23–24 the idea of one who furnishes a ransom is presented. The rite of sacrifice under the Old Testament taught that God is both just and merciful: just, in that his law requires death for sin; merciful, in that he permits and provides a vicarious death for sin. In this way it deepened fear and inspired hope—fear of divine holiness and hope in divine mercy.

The priestly office of the mediator, unlike his prophetic, is not administered mediately but directly. The priests of the old dispensation, both patriarchal and Mosaic, were types of Christ, not his agents or delegates. The human priests "were many, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death"; but the divine high priest is one and alone, "because he continues ever and has an unchangeable priesthood" (Heb. 7:23–24). And because he constantly discharges his priestly office, he does not delegate it to others. This unique and solitary character of Christ's priesthood is taught in the comparison of him to Melchizedek in Heb. 7. The king of Salem was the only one of his class. He was "without father, without mother, without descent (agenealogētos), having neither beginning of days nor end of life." That is, he was not one of a line of priests having predecessors and successors. In this respect he was like the Son of God, who was also alone and solitary in his priesthood.

The Romish theory of an ecclesiastical priesthood acting, since Christ's ascension, as the delegates and agents of the great high priest has no support in Scripture. Had Christ intended to discharge his sacerdotal office through a class of persons in his church, he would have appointed and commissioned such a class and provided for its continuation. He did this in regard to his prophetic office. He appointed "apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints and the work of the ministry" (Eph. 4:11–12). But he did not appoint any to be priests to "offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins" (Heb. 5:1). On the contrary, he abolished the earthly priesthood when he formally assumed his own priestly office. The substance having appeared, the shadow disappeared. The antitype makes the type useless (9:23–26). The earthly sacrifice was done away, and the earthly priest with it.

The two parts of Christ's priestly work are atonement and intercession. (a) Atonement: "How much more shall the blood of Christ purge your conscience" (Heb. 9:14, 28); Christ "was once offered to bear the sins of many"; "the lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29); "a merciful and faithful high priest to make reconciliation for the sins of the people" (Heb. 2:17); "a ransom for many" (Matt. 20:28); "my blood is shed for you" (Luke 22:19); "he made him to be sin for us" (2 Cor. 5:21); "Christ was made a curse for us" (Gal. 3:13); "Christ suffered for our sins the just for the unjust" (1 Pet. 3:18); "he is the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 2:2); "he made his soul an offering for sin" (Isa. 53:10); "he spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us" (Rom. 8:32); "by him we have received the atonement" (5:11); "Christ died for us; scarcely for a righteous man will one die" (5:6–7); "Christ has loved us and given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God" (Eph. 5:2). (b) Intercession: "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (1 John 2:1); "wherefore he is able to save them to the uttermost, seeing he ever lives to make intercession for them" (Heb. 7:25); "I pray for them which you have given me; neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word" (John 17:9, 20).

The intercession of Christ is intimately connected with his atoning work. Westminster Confession 8.8, after saying that Christ "effectually applies and communicates redemption to those for whom he has purchased it," adds that "he makes intercession for them" (cf. Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 44). This is in accordance with the Scriptures. The Apostle John asserts that "if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father" (1 John 2:1–2) and adduces as the ground of his success as an advocate two facts: that he is "Jesus Christ the righteous" and is "the propitiation for our sins." The Apostle Paul in Rom. 8:34 states that Christ is "at the right hand of God making intercession for us" and mentions as the reason why he is fitted for this work the fact that he "died and is risen again." In Heb. 4:14–16 believers are encouraged to "come boldly unto the throne of grace" because they "have a great high priest who is passed into the heavens and is touched with the feeling of their infirmities." Again, in 7:24–25 Christians are assured that because Christ has an "unchangeable priesthood, he is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever lives to make intercession for them." In 9:7–12 the writer reminds the reader that the Jewish "high priest went alone once every year into the second tabernacle, not without blood, which he offered for himself and the errors of the people"; and then he states that Christ, "a high priest of good things to come, by his own blood entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us."

Still further proof of the close connection of Christ's intercessory work with his atoning work is found in that class of texts which represent the gracious influence of the Holy Spirit as being procured by Christ's intercession. These teach that that plenary effusion of the Holy Spirit which is the characteristic of the Christian economy is owing to the return of the mediator to the Father and his session upon the mediatorial throne: "I indeed baptize with water; he shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 3:11); "Jesus spoke this of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive, for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified" (John 7:39); "it is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart I will send him unto you" (16:7). In 14:16–26 and 15:26 Christ assures his disciples that after he has left them and returned to the Father "where he was before," he "will pray the Father, and he will give them another Comforter, that he may abide with them, even the Spirit of truth"; and furthermore that he will himself "send the Comforter unto them from the Father."

In accordance with these statements of Christ, we find Peter referring the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost to the mediatorial agency and intercession of Christ: "Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted and having received of the Father the gift of the Holy Spirit, he has shed forth this which you now see and hear" (Acts 2:33). And the whole Book of Acts contains frequent allusions and references to the person and work of the Holy Spirit, in a manner and to a degree which are not seen in the four gospels, showing that immediately after the ascension of Christ a more powerful agency and influence of the third trinitarian person began to be experienced in the church. This descent and gift of gracious operation and influence was directly connected with Christ's presence and intercession in heaven. And this intercession rested for its ground and reason of success upon that atoning work which he had performed upon earth.

The same connection between Christ's atonement and Christ's intercession is noticed in the epistles. Christ was "made a curse for us that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith" (Gal. 3:13–14). The Holy Spirit is "shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior" (Titus 3:5–6). When Christ "ascended up on high, he received gifts for men" (Eph. 4:8). The intercession of Christ relates (a) to the application of his own atonement to the individual and (b) to the bestowment of the Holy Spirit as enlightening and sanctifying the believer (cf. Smith, Theology, 481–90).

SUPPLEMENT

6.1.1 (see p. 678). Witsius (Apostles' Creed, diss. 10.42–44) thus explains Christ's divesting himself of the mediatorial commission and kingdom, as taught in 1 Cor. 15:24–28. "It is certain (1) that the divine, essential, and natural kingdom of Christ is eternal. (2) That the humanity of Christ will always remain personally united with the divinity and will on that account enjoy a glory very far surpassing the glory of all creatures. (3) Christ will always be the head, that is, by far the most noble member of the church and as such will be recognized, adored, and praised by the church. (4) The mediatorial kingdom itself will be eternal as to its glorious effects, as well in the head as in the members. Some of these effects are in Christ, the effulgence of divine majesty shining most brightly in his person as God-man; in the elect, complete liberty, the subjugation of all their enemies, the entire abolition of sin, and unutterable joy arising from intimate communion with God. In these respects the kingdom of Christ is eternal, and Paul is so far from opposing these sentiments that, on the contrary, he teaches them at great length.

"But after the day of the last judgment the exercise of Christ's kingly office and the form of his mediatorial kingdom will be widely different from what they now are. (1) The economic government of this kingdom, as now exercised by an ecclesiastical ministry and by civil authority as conducive to the protection of the church, will then cease, 'when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.' (2) After the last judgment Christ will render an account to God the Father of his whole mediatorial office, as perfectly accomplished in what relates not only to the purchase, but also to the full application of salvation to the whole church; presenting to him a truly glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. To this may be referred the expression he shall deliver up the kingdom, that is, the church, in her perfect state, 'to God, even the Father.' (3) This account having been rendered, the Godhead itself without the intervention of a mediator (for which there seems no more occasion, sin being removed) will hold communion immediately with the redeemed, in almost the same manner in which it holds fellowship with the angels; with this difference, however, that the redeemed will through eternity acknowledge themselves indebted to the merits of Christ for this immediate communication of the deity. This is what is intended by the expression that God may be all in all. (4) There, also, Christ, no longer discharging any part of the mediatorial office, will, with regard to his human nature, be subject unto God, as one of the brethren, possessing manifold and most excellent glory, without any diminution of the glory which he now enjoys. This seems to be intimated by these words: 'And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him.' (5) Thus far there 'shall be an end' of the mediatorial kingdom, the exercise of which supposes some imperfection in the church. It is an end of such a nature as brings all things to a state of complete and endless perfection."

Owen (Person of Christ, chap. 19) says on his subject: "For the discharge of this mediatorial work Christ has a sovereign power over all things in heaven and earth committed unto him. Herein he does and must reign. And so absolutely is it vested in him that upon the ceasing of the exercise of it he himself is said to be subject unto God. It is true that the Lord Christ, in his human nature, is always less than or inferior to God, even the Father. In this sense he is in subjection unto him now in heaven. But yet he has an actual exerciseof divine power, wherein he is absolute and supreme. When thisceases he shall be subject unto the Father in that nature, and only so. Wherefore when this work is perfectly fulfilled and ended, then shall all the mediatory actings of Christ cease forevermore. For God will then have completely finished the whole design of his wisdom and grace. Then will God 'be all in all.' "

Edward Irving (Christ's Kingly Office) remarks to the same effect: "To give up this superinduced power and return into the condition of his primeval equality, into the condition of the Son begotten from all eternity, this is what I understand St. Paul to mean when he says, 'Then shall the Son also be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all'; that is, the earth shall no longer be under mediatorial regiment, but under the same direct regiment of God in which the unfallen worlds are. And God—not God and a mediator, but God in his personalities and offices—shall be all in all."

2 Vicarious Atonement

Atonement as Substitutionary

The atonement of Christ is represented in Scripture as vicarious. The satisfaction of justice intended and accomplished by it is for others, not for himself. This is abundantly taught in Scripture: "The Son of Man came to give his life a ransom for (anti) many" (Matt. 20:28); "this is my body which is given for (anti) you" (Mark 10:45). In these two passages the preposition anti indisputably denotes substitution. Passages like "Archelaus reigned in the room (anti) of his father Herod" (Matt. 2:22), "an eye for an eye" (5:38), and "will he for a fish give him a serpent?" (Luke 11:11) prove this.

In the majority of the passages, however, which speak of Christ's sufferings and death, the preposition hyper is employed: "This cup is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for (hyper) you" (Luke 22:19–20); "the bread that I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world" (John 6:51); "greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (15:13); "Christ died for the ungodly; while we were yet sinners Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:6–8); "he delivered him up for us all" (8:32); "if one died for all then all died" (2 Cor. 5:14–15); "he made him to be sin for us" (5:21); "being made a curse for us" (Gal. 3:13); "Christ gave himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God" (Eph. 5:2, 25); "the man Christ Jesus gave himself a ransom for all" (1 Tim. 2:5–6); Christ "tasted death for every man" (Heb. 2:9); Christ "suffered the just for the unjust" (1 Pet. 3:18).

The preposition hyper, like the English preposition for, has two significations. It may denote advantage or benefit, or it may mean substitution. The mother dies for her child, and Pythias dies for Damon. The sense of "for" in these two propositions must be determined by the context and the different circumstances in each instance. Christ lays down the proposition: "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for (hyper) his friends" (John 15:13). The preposition hyper here may mean either "for the benefit of" or "instead of." In either case, the laying down of life would be the highest proof of affection. The idea of substitution, therefore, cannot be excluded by the mere fact that the preposition hyper10 is employed, because it has two meanings. In 2 Cor. 5:20–21 hyper is indisputably put for anti: "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us; we pray you in Christ's stead (hyper christou), be reconciled to God. For he has made him who knew no sin to be sin for us (hyper hēmōn)." In Philem. 13 hyper is clearly equivalent to anti: "Whom I would have retained with me, that in your stead (hyper sou) he might have ministered unto me." In 2 Cor. 5:14 it is said that "the love of Christ constrains us, because we thus judge that if one died for all (hyper pantōn), then all died (pantes apethanon)." Here, the notion of substitution is plain. If Christ died in the room and place of the "all," then the "all" are reckoned to have died. The vicarious atonement of Christ is regarded as the personal atonement of the believer. It would be nonsense to say that "if one died for the benefit of all, then all died."

There is also abundant proof from classical usage that hyper may be used in the sense of anti. Magee (Atonement, diss. 30) quotes the following: Xenophon (Anabasis 7.4) relates that the Thracian prince Seuthes asked Episthenes if he would be willing to die instead of the young lad who had been captured in war (ē kai ethelois an, hō episthenes, hyper toutou apothanein). The same use of hyper23 is seen in Xenophon's Hellenica and On Hunting; Plato's Symposium 180 and 207; Euripides' Alcestis 446, 540, 732 compared with 155–56, 698, 706, 715–17. In the first three lines anti is employed, and in the remainder hyper25 in respect to the same subject, showing that classical usage allows their being interchanged. Demosthenes (Concerning the Crown) says, "Ask these things, and surely I shall do them for (hyper) you." Winer (Grammar, 383) remarks that "hyper is sometimes nearly equivalent to anti" (see especially Euripides, Alcestis 700; Thucydides 1.141; Polybius 3.67; Philem. 13). De Wette on Rom. 5:7 says: "Hyper can signify 'in place of'; 2 Cor. 5:20." Baur (Paul the Apostle, 168) says: "Although in many passages the expression 'to die for' (apothanein hyper) means only 'to die for the benefit of another,' nevertheless, certainly in Rom. 4:25; Gal. 1:4; Rom. 8:3; 1 Cor. 15:3; 2 Cor. 5:14, the concept of substitution, at least in substance, ought not to be rejected."

The meaning, therefore, of hyper must be determined by the context. Since both classical and New Testament usage permit its being employed to signify either benefit or substitution, it is plain that it cannot be confined to either signification. It would be as erroneous to assert that it uniformly means "for the advantage of" as to assert that it uniformly means "in the place of." The remark of Magee (Atonement, diss. 30) is just:

The word for or the Greek words anti, hyper, dia, peri, of which it is the translation, admitting different senses, may of course be differently applied, according to the nature of the subject, and yet the doctrine remain unchanged. Thus it might be proper to say that Christ suffered instead of us (anti hēmōn), although it would be absurd to say that he suffered instead of our offenses (anti tōn hamartēmatōn hēmōn). It is sufficient if the different applications of the word carry a consistent meaning. To die "instead of us" and to die "on account of our offenses" perfectly agree.38 But this change of the expression necessarily arises from the change of the subject. And, accordingly, the same difficulty will be found to attach to the exposition proposed by these writers (Sykes and H. Taylor): since the word for, interpreted "on account of," i.e., "for the benefit of," cannot be applied in the same sense in all the texts. For although dying "for our benefit" is perfectly intelligible, dying "for the benefit of our offenses" is no less absurd than dying "instead of our offenses."

In the light of these facts, it is easy to see why the New Testament writers employ hyper so often, rather than anti, to denote the relation of Christ's death to man's salvation. The latter preposition excludes the idea of benefit or advantage and specifies only the idea of substitution. The former may include both ideas. Whenever, therefore, the sacred writer would express both together and at once, he selects the preposition hyper. In so doing, he teaches both that Christ died in the sinner's place and for the sinner's benefit.

Vicariousness implies substitution. A vicar is a person deputized to perform the function of another. In the case under consideration, the particular function to be performed is that of atoning for sin by suffering. Man the transgressor is the party who owes the atonement and who ought to discharge the office of an atoner; but Jesus Christ is the party who actually discharges the office and makes the atonement in his stead. The idea of vicariousness or substitution is, therefore, vital to a correct theory of Christ's priestly office. Man the transgressor would make his own atonement, if he should suffer the penalty affixed to transgression. So far as the penalty is concerned, retributive justice would be satisfied if the whole human race were punished forever. And if God had no attribute but retributive justice, this would have been the course that he would have taken. A deity strictly and simply just, but destitute of compassion for the guilty, would have inflicted the penalty of the violated law upon the actual transgressor. He would not have allowed a substituted satisfaction of justice, and still less would he have provided one. It is important to notice this fact, because it shows the senselessness of a common objection to the doctrine of vicarious atonement, namely, that it is incompatible with mercy. If God, it is asked, insists upon satisfying justice by allowing his Son to suffer in the place of sinners, where is his mercy? The ready answer is that it is mercy to the criminal to permit the substitution of penalty and still more to provide the substitute after the permission. If God had no compassionate feeling toward the sinner, he would compel the sinner himself to satisfy the demands of the law which he has transgressed. But in permitting and still more in providing a substitute to make that satisfaction which man is under obligation to make for himself, God manifests the greatest and strangest mercy that can be conceived of, for the vicarious atonement of Christ is the sovereign and the judge putting himself in the place of the criminal. (supplement 6.2.1.)

It is important, at this point, to mark the difference between personal and vicarious atonement. (a) Personal atonement is made by the offending party; vicarious atonement is made by the offended party. The former is made by the sinner; the latter is made by God: "our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13 Revised Version). If a citizen pays the fine appointed by the civil law, he satisfies justice for his own civil transgression. If the murderer is executed, he atones for his own crime before the human law, though not before the divine. And when a sinner suffers endless punishment, he personally satisfies eternal justice for his sin. (b) Personal atonement is given by the criminal, not received by him; but vicarious atonement is received by the criminal, not given by him. This is indicated in the scriptural phraseology. In Rom. 5:11 it is said that the believer "receives the atonement" vicariously made for him by Christ. If he had made an atonement for himself, he would have given to justice the atonement, not received it. (c) Personal atonement is incompatible with mercy, but vicarious atonement is the highest form of mercy. When the sinner satisfies the law by his own eternal death, he experiences justice without mercy; but when God satisfies the law for him, he experiences mercy in the wonderful form of God's self-sacrifice. (d) Personal atonement is incompatible with the eternal life of the sinner, but vicarious atonement obtains eternal life for him. When the sinner suffers the penalty due to his transgression, he is lost forever, but when God incarnate suffers the penalty for him, he is saved forever.

Vicarious atonement in the Christian system is made by the offended party. God is the party against whom sin is committed, and he is the party who atones for its commission. Vicarious atonement, consequently, is the highest conceivable exhibition of the attribute of mercy: "Herein is love, that God sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10). For God to remit penalty without inflicting suffering upon God incarnate would be infinitely less compassion than to remit it through such infliction. In one case, there is no self-sacrifice in the Godhead; in the other there is. The pardon in one case is inexpensive and cheap; in the other, costly and difficult of execution.

The Socinian objection that vicarious atonement is unmerciful because it involves the full and strict satisfaction of justice has no force from a trinitarian point of view. It is valid only from a Unitarian position. If the Son of God who suffers in the sinner's stead is not God but a creature, then of course God makes no self-sacrifice in saving man through vicarious atonement. In this case, it is not God the offended party who makes the atonement. The trinitarian holds that the Son of God is true and very God and that when he voluntarily becomes the sinner's substitute for atoning purposes, it is very God himself who satisfies God's justice. The penalty is not inflicted upon a mere creature whom God made from nothing and who is one of countless millions; but it is inflicted upon the incarnate Creator himself. The following extract from Channing (Unitarian Christianity) illustrates this misconception: "Unitarianism will not listen for a moment to the common errors by which this bright attribute of mercy is obscured. It will not hear of a vindictive wrath in God which must be quenched by blood or of a justice which binds his mercy with an iron chain, until its demands are satisfied to the full. It will not hear that God needs any foreign influence to awaken his mercy." The finger must be placed upon this word foreign. The trinitarian does not concede that the influence of Jesus Christ upon God's justice is an influence "foreign" to God. The propitiating and reconciling influence of Jesus Christ, according to the trinitarian, emanates from the depths of the Godhead; this suffering is the suffering of one of the divine persons incarnate. God is not propitiated (1 John 2:2; 4:10) by another being, when he is propitiated by the only begotten Son. The term foreign in the above extract is properly applicable only upon the Unitarian theory, that the Son of God is not God, but a being like man or angel alien to the divine essence.

This fallacy is still more apparent in the following illustration from the same writer: "Suppose that a creditor, through compassion to certain debtors, should persuade a benevolent and opulent man to pay in their stead? Would not the debtors see a greater mercy and feel a weightier obligation, if they were to receive a free gratuitous release?" (Unitarian Christianity). Here, the creditor and the debtors' substitute are entirely different parties. The creditor himself makes not the slightest self-sacrifice in the transaction, because he and the substitute are not one being, but two. Consequently, the sacrifice involved in the payment of the debt is confined wholly to the substitute. The creditor has no share in it. But if the creditor and the substitute were one and the same being, then the pecuniary loss incurred by the vicarious payment of the debt would be a common loss. Upon the Unitarian theory, God the Father and Jesus Christ are two beings as different from each other as two individual men. If this be the fact, then indeed vicarious atonement implies no mercy in God the Father. The mercy would lie wholly in Jesus Christ, because the self-sacrifice would be wholly in him. But if the trinitarian theory is the truth, and God the Father and Jesus Christ are two persons of one substance, being, and glory, then, the self-sacrifice that is made by Jesus Christ is not confined to him alone, but is a real self-sacrifice both on the part of God the Father and also of the entire Trinity. This is taught in Scripture: "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son" (John 3:16); "he spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all" (Rom. 8:32); "God commends his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (5:8).

Though it was God the Son and not God the Father who became incarnate and suffered and died, it by no means follows that the first person of the Trinity made no self-sacrifice in this humiliation and crucifixion of the incarnate second person. He gave up to agony and death, his "dear" and "beloved" son. He passed the sword, as Zech. 13:7 says, through "the man who was his fellow." Such Scriptures imply that the redemption of sinful man caused God the Father a species of sorrow: the sorrow of "bruising and putting to grief" (Isa. 53:10) the Son of his love; the Son who is "in the bosom of the Father" (John 1:18). The self-sacrifice, therefore, that is made by the Son in giving himself to die for sinners involves a self-sacrifice made by the Father in surrendering the Son for this purpose. No person of the Godhead, even when he works officially, works exclusively of the others. The unity of being and nature between Father and Son makes the act of self-sacrifice in the salvation of man common to both: "He that has seen me has seen the Father. I and my Father are one" (John 14:9; 10:30). "The mediator," says Augustine (On the Trinity 4.19), "was both the offerer and the offering; and he was also one with him to whom the offering was made" (see South, sermon 30).

And this does not conflict with the doctrine that the divine essence is incapable of suffering. Divine impassability means that the divine nature cannot be caused to suffer from any external cause. Nothing in the created universe can make God feel pain or misery. But it does not follow that God cannot himself do an act which he feels to be a sacrifice of feeling and affection and insofar an inward suffering. When God gave up to humiliation and death his only begotten Son, he was not utterly indifferent and unaffected by the act. It was as truly a sacrifice for the Father to surrender the beloved Son as it was for the Son to surrender himself. The Scriptures so represent the matter: "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son"; "God spared not his own Son, but freely gave him up." When the Father, in the phrase of the prophet, "awoke the sword against the man who was his fellow," he likewise pierced himself.

Vicarious atonement, unlike personal atonement, cannot be made by a creature: "None of them can by any means redeem his brother nor give to God a ransom for him" (Ps. 49:7); "shall I give my firstborn for my transgression?" (Mic. 6:7); "what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matt. 16:26). This is acknowledged in the province of human law. No provision is made in human legislation for the substitution of penalty. In the case of capital punishment, one citizen may not be substituted for another; in the case of civil penalty such as fine or imprisonment, the state cannot seize an innocent person and compel him to suffer for the guilty. And even if there should be a willingness upon the part of the innocent to suffer for the guilty, legislation makes no provision for the substitution. The state would refuse to hang an innocent man, however willing and urgent he might be to take the place of the murderer. The state will not fine or imprison any but the real culprit.

The reason for this is twofold. First, each citizen owes duties toward man that could not be performed if he should assume the obligations of another citizen. There are debts to the family, to society, and to the commonwealth, of which these would be defrauded, if the life or property of one person should be substituted for that of another. Second, each individual owes duties toward God which would be interfered with by the substitution of one man for another within the sphere of human relations. And the state has no right to legislate in a manner that interferes with God's claims upon his creatures.

The instances in pagan or Christian communities in which there seems to be substitution of penalty are exceptional and irregular. They are not recognized as legitimate by pagan authorities and still less by Christian jurists. When, as in the early Roman history, an individual citizen was allowed to devote himself to death for the welfare of the state, this was an impulse of the popular feeling. It was not regularly provided for and legitimated by the national legislature. It was no part of the legal code. And human sacrifices among savage nations cannot be regarded as parts of the common law of nations.

That vicarious atonement cannot be made by a created being within the province of divine law will be made evident when we come to consider the nature of Christ's substituted work. At this point, it is sufficient to observe that if within the lower sphere of human crimes and penalties one man cannot suffer for another it would be still more impossible in the higher sphere of man's relations to God. No crime against man is of so deep a guilt as is sin against God; and if the former cannot be expiated by a human substitute, still less can the latter be.

It should be remembered, however, that the reason why a creature cannot be substituted for a creature for purposes of atonement is not that substitution of penalty is inadmissible, but that the creature is not a proper subject to be substituted, for the reasons above mentioned. Substitution is sometimes allowed within the province of commercial law. One man may pay the pecuniary debt of another, if this can be done without infraction of any rights of other parties. If, however, it cannot be, then vicarious payment is inadmissible. A man would not be permitted to take money due to one person to pay the debt of another. A man is not allowed in the State of New York to leave all his property to benevolent purposes if he has a family dependent upon him.

Atonement as Suffering and Forgiveness as Its Result

The priestly office of Christ cannot be understood without a clear and accurate conception of the nature of atonement.

The idea and meaning of atonement is conveyed in the following statements in Lev. 6:2–7 and 4:13–20: "If a soul sin and commit a trespass against the Lord, he shall bring his trespass offering unto the Lord, a ram without blemish, and the priest shall make an atonement for him before the Lord, and it shall be forgiven him." This is individual atonement for individual transgression. "If the whole congregation of Israel sin and are guilty, then the congregation shall offer a young bullock for the sin, and the elders of the congregation shall lay their hands upon the head of the bullock, and the bullock shall be killed, and the priest shall make an atonement for them, and it shall be forgiven them." This is national atonement for national transgression. Two particulars are to be noticed in this account. (a) The essence of the atonement is in the suffering. The atoning bullock or ram must bleed, agonize, and die. And he who offers it must not get any enjoyment out of it. It must be a loss to him, and so far forth a suffering for him. He must not eat any of the trespass offering. The sin offering must be wholly burned: "skin, flesh, and dung" (Lev. 16:27). In harmony with this, our Lord lays stress upon his own suffering as the essential element in his atonement: "The Son of Man must suffer many things" (Luke 9:22; Matt. 16:21); "that Christ would suffer" (Acts 3:18; Luke 24:26). Christ refused the anodyne of "wine mingled with gall" that would have deadened his pain (Matt. 27:34). (b) The forgiveness is the noninfliction of suffering upon the transgressor. If the substituted victim suffers, then the criminal shall be released from suffering. In these and similar passages, Hebrew kāppar, which in the Piel48 is translated "to make an atonement," literally signifies "to cover over" so as not to be seen. And Hebrew sālaḥ, translated "to forgive," has for its primary idea that of "lightness, lifting up," perhaps "to be at rest or peace" (Gesenius in voce). (supplement 6.2.2.)

The connection of ideas in the Hebrew text appears, then, to be this: The suffering of the substituted bullock or ram has the effect to cover over the guilt of the real criminal and make it invisible to the eye of God the holy. This same thought is conveyed in the following: "Blot out my transgressions. Hide your face from my sins" (Ps. 51:19); "you have cast all my sins behind your back" (Isa. 38:17); "you will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea" (Mic. 7:19). When this covering over is done, the conscience of the transgressor is at rest.

These Hebrew words, however, are translated in the Septuagint by Greek words which introduce different ideas from "covering" and "resting." The word kāppar is rendered by exilaskomai51 (to propitiate or appease), and the word sālaḥ is translated by aphiēmi53 (to release or let go). The connection of ideas in the Greek translation appears, therefore, to be this: By the suffering of the sinner's atoning substitute, divine wrath at sin is propitiated, and as a consequence of this propitiation the punishment due to sin is released or not inflicted upon the transgressor. This release or noninfliction of penalty is "forgiveness" in the biblical representation. This is conceded by the opponents of the evangelical system. Says Wegscheider (Institutes §140): "Forgiveness or pardon of sins, in the common and biblical usage, is the abolition of the penalty contracted for sins and the restoration of divine benevolence toward the sinner." In the Lord's prayer, the petition for forgiveness is aphes hēmin ta opheilēmata hēmōn55 (Matt. 6:12). Christ assures the paralytic that his sins are forgiven, in the words apheōntai soi hai hamartiai sou (9:2). The preaching of the gospel is the preaching of the "release of sins" (aphesis hamartiōn; Acts 13:38).

It is highly important to notice that in the biblical representation "forgiveness" is inseparably connected with "atonement," and "remission" with "propitiation." The former stands to the latter in the relation of effect to cause. The Scriptures know nothing of forgiveness or remission of penalty in isolation. It always has a foregoing cause or reason. It is because the priest has offered the ram that the individual transgression is "forgiven," that is, not punished in the person of the individual. It is because the priest has offered the bullock upon whose head the elders have laid their hands that the national sin is "forgiven," that is, not visited upon the nation. Without this vicarious shedding of blood, there would be no remission or release of penalty (Heb. 9:22). Not until the transgression has been "covered over" by a sacrifice can there be "peace" in the conscience of the transgressor. Not until the Holy One has been "propitiated" by an atonement can the penalty be "released." Neither of these effects can exist without the antecedent cause. The Bible knows nothing of the remission of punishment arbitrarily, that is, without a ground or reason. Penal suffering in Scripture is released or not inflicted upon the guilty because it has been endured by a substitute. If penalty were remitted by sovereignty merely without any judicial ground or reason whatever, if it were inflicted neither upon the sinner nor his substitute, this would be the abolition of penalty, not the remission of it.

According to the biblical view, divine mercy is seen more in the cause than in the effect, more in the "atonement" for sin than in the "remission" of sin, more in "expiation" than in "forgiveness," more in the vicarious infliction than in the personal noninfliction. After the foundation has been laid for the release of penalty, it is easy to release it. When a sufficient reason has been established why sin should be pardoned, it is easy to pardon. It is the first step that costs. This is taught by St. Paul in Rom. 5:10: "If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more being reconciled we shall be saved by his life." The greater includes the less. If God's mercy is great enough to move him to make a vicarious atonement for man's sin, it is certainly great enough to move him to secure the consequences of such an act. If God's compassion is great enough to induce him to lay man's punishment upon his own Son, it is surely great enough to induce him not to lay it upon the believer. If God so loves the world as to atone vicariously for its sin, he certainly so loves it as to remit its sin.

In looking, therefore, for the inmost seat and center of divine compassion, we should seek it rather in the work of atonement than in the act of forgiveness, rather in the cause than in the effect. That covenant transaction in the depths of the Trinity, in which God the Father commissioned and gave up the only begotten as a piacular oblation for man's sin and in which the only begotten voluntarily accepted the commission, is a greater proof and manifestation of divine pity than that other and subsequent transaction in the depths of a believer's soul in which God says, "Son, be of good cheer, your sin is forgiven you." The latter transaction is easy enough, after the former has occurred. But the former transaction cost the infinite and adorable Trinity an effort and a sacrifice that is inconceivable and unutterable. This is the mystery which the angels desire to look into. That a just God should release from penalty after an ample atonement has been made is easy to understand and believe. But that he should himself make the atonement is the wonder and the mystery: "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us" (1 John 3:16).

Atonement as Objective

It follows from this discussion that atonement is objective in its essential nature. An atonement makes its primary impression upon the party to whom it is made, not upon the party by whom it is made. When a man does a wrong to a fellow man and renders satisfaction for the wrong, this satisfaction is intended to influence the object not the subject, to produce an effect upon the man who has suffered the wrong not the man who did the wrong. Subjective atonement is a contradiction. Atoning to oneself is like lifting oneself. The objective nature of atonement is wrought into the very phraseology of Scripture, as the analysis of the biblical terms just made clearly shows. To "cover" sin is to cover it from the sight of God, not of the sinner. To "propitiate" is to propitiate God, not man.

The Septuagint idea of "propitiation," rather than the Hebrew idea of "covering over," is prominent in the New Testament and consequently passed into the soteriology of the primitive church and from this into both the Romish and the Protestant soteriology. The difference between the two is not essential, since both terms are objective; but there is a difference. Hebrew kāppar denotes that the sacrificial victim produces an effect upon sin. It covers it up. But the corresponding Septuagint term hilaskomai60 denotes that the sacrificial victim produces an effect upon God. It propitiates his holy displeasure. When St. John (1 John 2:2; 4:10) asserts that "Jesus Christ the righteous is the propitiation (hilasmos) for our sins" and that God "sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins," the implication is that the divine nature is capable of being conciliated by some propitiating act. This propitiating act under the old dispensation was, typically and provisionally, the offering of a lamb or goat as emblematic of the future offering of the Lamb of God; and under the new dispensation it is the actual offering of the body of Jesus Christ, who takes the sinner's place and performs for him the propitiating and reconciling act.

The objective nature of atonement appears, again, in the New Testament term katallagē and the verb katallassein. These two words occur nine times in the New Testament with reference to Christ's atoning work (Rom. 5:10–11, 15; 2 Cor. 5:18–20). In the Authorized Version, katallagē is translated "atonement" in Rom. 5:11; but in the other instances "reconciliation" and "reconcile" are the terms employed. The verb katallassein primarily signifies "to pay the exchange or difference" and secondarily "to conciliate or appease." The following from Athenaeus (10.33) brings to view both meanings of the word: "Why do we say that a tetradrachma katallattetai, when we never speak of its getting into a passion?" A coin is "exchanged" in the primary signification; and a man is "reconciled" in the secondary. Two parties in a bargain settle their difference or are "reconciled" by one paying the exchange or balance to the other. In like manner two parties at enmity settle their difference or are "reconciled" by one making a satisfaction to the other. In each instance the transaction is called in Greek katallagē. The same usage is found in the Anglo-Saxon language. Saxon bot, from which comes the modern boot, denotes, first, a compensation paid to the offended party by the offender; then, second, the reconciling effect produced by such compensation; and, last, it signifies the state of mind which prompted the boot or compensation, namely, repentance itself (Bosworth, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary).

The term reconciliation is objective in its signification. Reconciliation terminates upon the object, not upon the subject. The offender reconciles not himself but the person whom he has offended, by undergoing some loss and thereby making amends. This is clearly taught in Matt. 5:24: "First, be reconciled to your brother (diallagēthi tō adelphō)." Here, the brother who has done the injury is the one who is to make up the difference. He is to propitiate or reconcile his brother to himself by a compensation of some kind. Reconciliation, here, does not denote a process in the mind of the offender, but of the offended. The meaning is not: "First conciliate your own displeasure toward your brother," but, "First conciliate your brother's displeasure toward you." In the Episcopalian order for the holy communion, it is said: "If you shall perceive your offenses to be such as are not only against God, but also against your neighbors; then you shall reconcile yourselves unto them: being ready to make restitution and satisfaction, according to the uttermost of your powers, for all injuries and wrongs done by you to any other." The biblical phrase be reconciled to your brother agrees with that of common life in describing reconciliation from the side of the offending party, rather than of the offended. We say of the settlement of a rebellion that "the subjects are reconciled to their sovereign," rather than that "the sovereign is reconciled to the subjects"; though the latter is the more strictly accurate, because it is the sovereign who is reconciled by a satisfaction made to him by the subjects who have rebelled. In Rom. 5:10 believers are said to be "reconciled to God by the death of his Son." Here the reconciliation is described from the side of the offending party; man is said to be reconciled. Yet this does not mean the subjective reconciliation of the sinner toward God, but the objective reconciliation of God toward the sinner. For the preceding verse speaks of God as a being from whose "wrath" the believer is saved by the death of Christ. This shows that the reconciliation effected by Christ's atoning death is that of divine anger against sin. Upon this text, Meyer remarks that "the death of Christ does not remove the wrath of man toward God, but it removes God's displeasure toward man." Similarly, De Wette remarks that "the reconciliation must mean the removal of the wrath of God; it is that reconciliation of God to man which not only here, but in Rom. 3:25; 2 Cor. 5:18–19; Col. 1:21; Eph. 2:16 is referred to the atoning death of Christ."

The priestly work of Christ is also represented in Scripture under the figure of a price or ransom. This, also, is an objective term. The price is paid by the subject to the object: "The Son of Man is come to give his life a ransom (lytron) for (anti) many" (Matt. 20:28); "the church of God which he has purchased (peripoiēsato) with his own blood" (Acts 20:28); "the redemption (apolytrōsis) that is in Jesus Christ" (Rom. 3:24); "you are bought (ēgorasthēte) with a price" (1 Cor. 6:20); "Christ has redeemed (exēgorasen) us from the curse" (Gal. 3:13); "redemption through his blood" (Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14); "who gave himself a ransom (antilytron) for all" (1 Tim. 2:6). The allusion in the figure is sometimes to the payment of a debt and sometimes to the liberation of a captive. In either case, it is not Satan but God who holds the claim. Man has not transgressed against Satan, but against God. The debt that requires canceling is due to a divine attribute, not to the rebel archangel. The ransom that must be paid is for the purpose of delivering the sinner from the demands of justice, not of the devil. Satan cannot acquire or establish legal claims upon any being whatever.

Some of the early fathers misinterpreted this doctrine of a "ransom" and introduced a vitiating element into the patristic soteriology, which however was soon eliminated and has never reappeared. They explained certain texts which refer to sanctification as referring to justification. In 2 Tim. 2:26 sinful men are said to be "taken captive by the devil at his will." In 1 Tim. 1:20 Hymenaeus and Alexander are "delivered unto Satan." In 1 Cor. 5:5 St. Paul commands the church to "deliver over" the incestuous member "to Satan for the destruction of the flesh." In these passages, reference is had to the power which Satan has over the creature who has voluntarily subjected himself to him. The sinner is Satan's captive upon the principle mentioned by Christ in John 8:34: "Whosoever commits sin is the servant (doulos) of sin"; and by St. Paul in Rom. 6:16: "Know not that to whom you yield yourselves servants (doulous) to obey, his servants you are to whom you obey; whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness?" There is in these passages no reference to any legal or rightful claim which the devil has over the transgressor, but only to the strong and tyrannical grasp which he has upon him. This captivity to Satan is related to the work of the Holy Spirit, more than to the atoning efficacy of Christ's blood; and deliverance from it makes a part of the work of sanctification, rather than of justification. This deliverance is preceded by another. In the order of nature, it is not until man has been first redeemed by the atoning blood from the claims of justice, that he is redeemed by the indwelling Spirit from the captivity and bondage of sin and Satan.

When, therefore, the efficacy of Christ's death is represented as the payment of a ransom price, the same objective reference of Christ's work is intended as in the previous instances of "propitiation" and "reconciliation." By Christ's death, man is ransomed from the righteous claims of another being than himself. That being is not Satan, but God the holy and just. And these claims are vicariously met. God satisfies God's claims in man's place. God's mercy ransoms man from God's justice.

We have thus seen from this examination of the scriptural representations that Christ's priestly work has an objective reference, namely, that it affects and influences the divine being. Christ's atonement "covers sin" from God's sight. It "propitiates" God's wrath against sin. It "reconciles" God's justice toward the sinner. It "pays a ransom" to God for the sinner. None of these acts terminate upon man the subject, but all terminate upon God the object. Christ does not "cover sin" from the sinner's sight. He does not "propitiate" the sinner's wrath. He does not "reconcile" the sinner to the sinner. He does not "pay a ransom" to the sinner. These acts are each and all of them outward and transitive in their aim and reference. They are directed toward the infinite, not the finite; toward the Creator, not the creature. Whatever be the effect wrought by the vicarious death of the Son of God, it is wrought upon the divine nature. If it appeases, it appeases that nature; if it propitiates, it propitiates that nature; if it satisfies, it satisfies that nature; if it reconciles, it reconciles that nature. It is impossible to put any other interpretation upon the scriptural ideas and representations. A merely subjective reference, which would find all the meaning of them within the soul of man, requires a forced and violent exegesis of Scripture and a self-contradictory use of the word atonement.

At the same time, revelation plainly teaches that the author of this atoning influence and effect upon the divine being is the divine being himself. God propitiates, appeases, satisfies, and reconciles God. None of these are the acts of the creature. In all this work of propitiation, reconciliation, and redemption, God himself is the originating and active agent. He is therefore both active and passive, both agent and patient. God is the being who is angry at sin, and God is the being who propitiates this anger. God is the offended party, and he is the one who reconciles the offended party. It is divine justice that demands satisfaction, and it is divine compassion that makes the satisfaction. God is the one who holds man in a righteous captivity, and he is the one who pays the ransom that frees him from it. God is the holy judge of man who requires satisfaction for sin, and God is the merciful Father of man who provides it for him. This fact relieves the doctrine of vicarious atonement of all appearance of severity and evinces it to be the height of mercy and compassion. If it were man and not God who provided the atonement, the case would be otherwise. This peculiarity of the case is taught in Scripture. In 2 Cor. 5:18–19 it is said that "God has reconciled us to himself (heautō) by Jesus Christ" and that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself (heautō)." The statement is repeated in Col. 1:20: "It pleased the Father through the blood of Christ's cross to reconcile all things unto himself." According to this, in the work of vicarious atonement God is both subject and object, active and passive. He exerts a propitiating influence when he makes this atonement, and he receives a propitiating influence when he accepts it. He performs an atoning work, and his own attribute of justice feels the effect of it. Says Augustine (On the Trinity 4.14.19): "The same one and true mediator reconciles us to God by the atoning sacrifice, remains one with God to whom he offers it, makes those one in himself for whom he offers it, and is himself both the offerer and the offering." Similarly, Frank (Christian Certainty, 352) remarks that "freedom from guilt is possible for man, because it has been provided for by God, and this provision rests upon a transaction of God with himself, whereby as other he has made satisfaction to the claims of his own justice upon the sinner."

This doctrine of Scripture has passed into the creeds and litanies of the church. In the English litany there is the petition: "From your wrath and from everlasting damnation, Good Lord, deliver us." Here, the very same being who is displeased is asked to save from the displeasure. The very same holy God who is angry at sin is implored by the sinner to deliver him from the effects of this anger. And this is justified by the example of David, who cries, "O Lord, rebuke me not in your wrath, neither chasten me in your hot displeasure" (Ps. 38:1); and by the words of God himself addressed to his people through the prophet, "In my wrath I smote you, but in my favor have I had mercy upon you" (Isa. 60:10). The prophet Hosea (6:1) says to the unfaithful church: "Come and let us return unto the Lord: for he has torn, and he will heal us; he has smitten, and he will bind us up." In Zech. 1:2–4 Jehovah is described as "sore displeased" and yet at the same time as exhibiting clemency toward those with whom he is displeased: "The Lord has been sore displeased with your fathers. Therefore say unto them, Thus says the Lord of hosts, Turn unto me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will turn unto you, says the Lord of hosts." "The Lord said to Eliphaz, My wrath is kindled against you, and against your two friends. Therefore take unto you seven bullocks and seven rams and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering, lest I deal with you after your folly" (Job 42:7–8). Here, the very same God who was displeased with Job's friends devises for them a method whereby they may avert the displeasure. Upon a larger scale, God is displeased with every sinful man, yet he himself provides a method whereby sinful man may avert this displeasure. This is eminently the case with the believer. "When," says Calvin (3.2.21), "the saints seem to themselves to feel most the anger of God, they still confide their complaints to him; and when there is no appearance of his hearing them, they still continue to call upon him." Says Anselm (Meditation 2), "Take heart, O sinner, take heart! Do not despair; hope in him whom you fear. Flee to him from whom you have fled. Boldly call on him whom you have haughtily provoked."

The doctrine of vicarious atonement, consequently, implies that in God there exist simultaneously both wrath and compassion. In this fact is seen the infinite difference between divine and human anger. When God is displeased with the sinner, he compassionately desires that the sinner may escape the displeasure and invents a way of escaping it. But when man is displeased with his fellowman, he does not desire that his fellowman may escape the displeasure and devises no way of escape. Divine wrath issues from the constitutional and necessary antagonism between divine holiness and moral evil. Divine compassion springs from the benevolent interest which God feels in the work of his hands. The compassion is founded in God's paternal relation to man; the wrath is founded in his judicial relation to him. God as a Creator and Father pities the sinner; as a judge he is displeased with him. Wrath against sin must be both felt and manifested by God; compassion toward the sinner must be felt, but may or may not be manifested by him. Justice is necessary in its exercise, but mercy is optional. The righteous feeling of wrath toward sin is immutable and eternal in God, but it may be propitiated by the gracious feeling of compassion toward the sinner, which is also immutable and eternal in God. God the father of men may reconcile God the judge of men. Whether this shall be done depends upon the sovereign pleasure of God. He is not obliged and necessitated to propitiate his own wrath for the sinner, as he is to punish sin; but he has mercifully determined to do this and has done it by the atonement of Jesus Christ. By the method of vicarious substitution of penalty, God satisfies his own justice and reconciles his own displeasure toward the transgressor. That moral emotion in the divine essence which from the nature and necessity of the case is incensed against sin, God himself placates by a self-sacrifice that inures to the benefit of the guilty creature. Here, the compassion and benevolent love of God propitiate the wrath and holy justice of God. The two feelings exist together in one and the same being. The propitiation is no oblation ab extra: no device of a third party or even of sinful man himself to render God placable toward man. It is wholly ab intra: a self-oblation upon the part of the deity himself, in the exercise of his benevolence toward the guilty, by which to satisfy those constitutional imperatives of the divine nature which without it must find their satisfaction in the personal punishment of the transgressor or else be outraged by arbitrary omnipotence.

Upon this point, Augustine (Tractates on the Gospel of John, ex. 6), remarks:

It is written, "God commends his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." He loved us, therefore, even when in the exercise of enmity toward him we were working iniquity. And yet it is said with perfect truth, "You hate, O Lord, all workers of iniquity." Wherefore, in a wonderful and divine manner, he both hated and loved us at the same time. He hated us, as being different from what he had made us; but as our iniquity had not entirely destroyed his work in us, he could at the same time, in everyone of us, hate what we had done and love what he had created. In every instance it is truly said of God "You hate nothing which you have made; for never would you have made anything, if you had hated it."

Calvin, after quoting the above from Augustine, remarks (2.16.3) that

God who is the perfection of righteousness cannot love iniquity, which he beholds in us all. We all, therefore, have in us that which deserves God's hatred. Wherefore, in respect to our corrupt nature and the consequent depravity of our lives, we are all really offensive to God, guilty in his sight, and born to the damnation of hell. But because God is unwilling to lose that in us which is his own, he still finds something in us which his benevolence (benignitas) can love. For notwithstanding that we are sinners by our own fault, we are yet his creatures; though we have brought death upon ourselves yet he had created us for life.

Turretin (Concerning the Truth of Christ's Satisfaction 1.1) distinguishes between "compassion" and "reconciliation." Because God is compassionate in his own excellent and perfect nature, he can become reconciled toward a transgressor of his law. If he were inherently destitute of compassion, he would be incapable of reconciliation. Compassion is a feeling, reconciliation is an act resulting from it. The former is inherent and necessary; the latter is optional and sovereign. If God were not compassionate and placable, he could not be propitiated by the sacrifice of Christ. An implacable and merciless being could not be conciliated and would do nothing to effect a reconciliation. God is moved by a feeling of compassion and a benevolent affection toward sinners, prior to and irrespective of the death of Christ: "When we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). The death of Christ did not make God compassionate and merciful. He is always and eternally so. But God's holy justice is not reconciled to sinners unless Christ die for their sin. The compassion is prior in the order of nature to the death of Christ; the reconciliation of justice is subsequent to it: "Before the death of Christ, God was already compassionate (misericors) and placable. This moved him to provide salvation and redemption for man. But he was actually reconciled and propitiated, only upon the condition and supposition of that death of Christ which was required by eternal justice."

In this manner, compassion and wrath coexist in God. Says Turretin (as above):

To us indeed it seems difficult to conceive that the same person who is offended with us should also love us; because, when any feeling takes possession of us we are apt to be wholly engrossed with it. Thus if our anger is inflamed against anyone, there is usually no room in us for favor toward him; and on the other hand, if we regard him with favor, there is often connected with it the most unrighteous indulgence. But if we could cast off the disorders of passion and clothe ourselves in the garments of righteousness, we might easily harmonize these things with one another. A father offended with the viciousness of his son loves him as a son, yet is angry with him as being vicious. A judge, in like manner, may be angry and moved to punish, yet not the less on this account inclined by compassion to pardon the offender, if only someone would stand forth and satisfy the claims of justice for him. Why then, should not God, who is most righteous and benevolent, at once by reason of his justice demand penalty and by reason of his compassion provide satisfaction for us?

Turretin quotes in proof of this view the following from Aquinas (3.49.4): "We are not said to have been reconciled as if God began to love us anew (de novo), for he loved us with an eternal love. Rather, we are said to have been reconciled because through this reconciliation every cause of hatred was removed, on the one hand through the cleansing of sin, and on the other hand through the compensation of a more acceptable good (acceptabilioris boni)." He also remarks: "The Scholastics say that God loved the human race insofar as he himself made that nature, but he hates it insofar as men have brought guilt on themselves."85

In all that is said, consequently, respecting the wrath of God, in Christian theology, it is of the utmost importance to keep in view the fact that this wrath is compatible with benevolence and compassion. This is the infinite difference in kind between divine and human anger. At the very moment when God is displeased, he is capable of devising kind things for the object of his displeasure: "While we were yet sinners Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). And at the very instant when guilty man is conscious that divine wrath is resting upon him, he may address his supplication for a blessing to the very being who is angry with his sin and may pray: "From your wrath, good Lord, deliver me." And the great and ample warrant and encouragement for men to do this is found in the sacrifice of the Son of God. For in and by this atoning oblation, divine compassion conciliates divine wrath against sin. In the death of the God-man, "righteousness and peace, justice and mercy, kiss each other" (Ps. 85:10). The mercy vicariously satisfies the justice; divine compassion in the sinner's stead receives upon itself the stroke of divine wrath; God the Father smites God the Son, in the transgressor's place: "Awake, O sword, against the man that is my fellow, says the Lord of hosts" (Zech. 13:7).

This subject is elucidated still further by noticing the difference between the holy wrath of God and the wicked wrath of man: "The wrath of man works not the righteousness of God" (James 1:20). When man is angry at man, this feeling is absolutely incompatible with the feeling of compassion and benevolent love. Selfish human anger and benevolence cannot be simultaneous. They cannot possibly coexist. When a man, under the impulse of sinful displeasure, says to his brother "Raca" or "you fool" (Matt. 5:22), when he feels passionate and selfish wrath, he cannot devise good things for his brother man. On the contrary, he devises only evil things. He plots his neighbor's destruction. The wrath of the human heart is not only incompatible with benevolence, but is often intensely malignant. It is even increased by the moral excellence that is in the object of it. Holiness in a fellow creature sometimes makes wicked human anger hotter and more deadly. The Jews gnashed their teeth in rage at the meekness and innocence of Christ. "The hatred of the wicked," says Rousseau (Confessions 9), "is only roused the more from the impossibility of finding any just grounds on which it can rest; and the very consciousness of their own injustice is only a grievance the more against him who is the object of it." "They hated the one whom they injured," says Tacitus. This kind of wrath requires complete eradication before compassion can exist. "Better it were," says Luther (Table Talk: Of God's Works), "that God should be angry with us than that we be angry with God, for he can soon be at a union with us again, because he is merciful; but when we are angry with him, then the case is not to be helped."

Still further elucidation of this subject is found in the resemblance between the holy wrath of God and the righteous anger of the human conscience. The sinful feeling of passionate anger to which we have just alluded is an emotion of the heart; but the righteous feeling of dispassionate anger to which we now allude is in the conscience. This is a different faculty from the heart. Its temper toward sin is unselfish and impartial, like the wrath of God. And this feeling can exist simultaneously with that of benevolence. When a man's own conscience is displacent and remorseful over his own sin, there is no malice toward the man himself, "for no man ever yet hated his own flesh" (Eph. 5:29). At the very moment when a just and righteous man's conscience is offended and incensed at the wickedness of a fellowman, he can and often does devise good things toward him. The most self-sacrificing philanthropists are those whose conscience is the most sensitive toward the moral evil which they endeavor to remove and whose moral displeasure against sin is the most vivid and emphatic. It is not the sentimental Rousseau, but the righteous Calvin who would willingly lay down his life, if thereby he could save men from eternal retribution. The conscience of Rousseau was dull and torpid, compared with the keen and energetic conscience of Calvin; but the desire of the latter for the spiritual and eternal welfare of sinful men was a thousand times greater than that of the former, supposing that there was in Rousseau any desire at all for the spiritual and eternal welfare of man. When St. Paul says respecting Alexander the coppersmith, "The Lord reward him according to his works" (2 Tim. 4:14), he gives expression to the righteous displeasure of a pure conscience toward one who was opposing the gospel of Christ and the progress of God's kingdom in the earth. It was not any personal injury to the apostle that awakened the desire for divine retribution in the case, but a zeal for the glory of God and the welfare of man. Could St. Paul by any self-sacrifice on his own part have produced repentance and reformation in Alexander, he would gladly have made it. As in the instance of his unbelieving Jewish kindred, he would have been willing to be "accursed from Christ" for this purpose (Rom. 9:3). But when a profane man angrily says to his fellowman: "God damn you," this is the malignant utterance of the selfish passion of the human heart and is incompatible with any benevolent feeling.

We find, then, that in the exercise of Christ's priestly office the agency is wholly within the divine nature itself. The justice and the mercy, the wrath and the compassion, are qualities of one and the same eternal being. It follows, consequently, that the explanation of the great subject of divine reconciliation lies in the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine of vicarious atonement stands or falls with that of the triune God. If God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct persons, each one of them really objective to the others, then one of them can do a personal work not done by the others that shall have an effect upon the Godhead. And if God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are also one undivided being in nature and essence, then this effect, whatever it be, is not limited and confined to any one of the persons exclusive of the others, but is experienced by the one whole undivided nature and essence itself. The Godhead, and not merely God the Father or God the Son or God the Spirit, is reconciled to guilty man by the judicial suffering of one of the persons of the Godhead incarnate. The Son of God is a person distinct from and objective to the Father and the Spirit. Hence, he can do a work which neither of them does. He becomes incarnate, not they. He suffers and dies for man, not they. And yet the efficacy of this work, which is his work as a trinitarian person, can terminate upon that entire divine nature which is all in God the Father and all in God the Spirit, as it is all in God the Son. "Christ," says Frank (Christian Certainty, 366), "experienced as a sinner both subjection to God and rejection by God; but yet as one who can call the God who has rejected him, his God, and who while the wrath of God goes forth upon him and delivers him up to the punitive infliction, nevertheless can pray: 'Not my will, but yours be done.' "

Atonement as Subjective

Before leaving the subject of vicarious atonement, it is in place here to notice its relation to the soul of man. For, while Christ's atonement has primarily this objective relation to the divine nature, it has also a secondary subjective relation to the nature of the guilty creature for whom it is made. The objective atonement is intended to be subjectively appropriated by the act of faith in it.

In the first place, the priestly work of Christ has an influence upon the human conscience similar to that which it has upon divine justice. Man's moral sense is pacified by Christ's atonement. Peace is everywhere in Scripture represented as the particular effect produced by faith in Christ's blood: "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God" (Rom. 5:1); "we are made nigh to God by the blood of Christ, for he is our peace" (Eph. 2:13–14); "having made peace through the blood of his cross" (Col. 1:20); "peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you" (John 14:27); "the peace of God passes all understanding" (Phil. 4:7).

The human conscience is the mirror and of the divine attribute of justice. The two are correlated. What therefore God's justice demands, man's conscience demands. "Nothing," says Matthew Henry, "can pacify an offended conscience but that which satisfied an offended God." The peace which the believer in Christ's atonement enjoys, and which is promised by the Redeemer to the believer, is the subjective experience in man that corresponds to the objective reconciliation in God. The pacification of the human conscience is the consequence of the satisfaction of divine justice. God's justice is completely satisfied for the sin of man by the death of Christ. This is an accomplished fact: "Jesus Christ the righteous is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2). The instant any individual man of this world of mankind believes that divine justice is thus satisfied, his conscience is at rest. The belief of a fact is always needed in order to a personal benefit from it. Belief is not needed in order to establish the fact. Whether a sinner believes Christ died for sin or not will make no difference with the fact, though it will make a vast difference with him: "If we believe not, yet he abides faithful: he cannot deny himself" (2 Tim. 2:13). Unbelief cannot destroy a fact. Should not a soul henceforth believe on the Son of God, it would nevertheless be a fact that he died an atoning death on Calvary and that this death is an ample oblation for the sin of the world. But it must be remembered that the kind of belief by which a man obtains a personal benefit from the fact of Christ's death is experimental, not historical or hearsay. A man may believe from common rumor that the death of Christ satisfies divine justice for the sin of the world and yet experience no benefit and no peace from his belief, even as a blind man may believe from common rumor that there is a mountain in front of him and yet have none of the pleasing sensations and personal benefits that accompany the vision of it. The blind man may have no doubt of the fact that there is a mountain before him; he may even argue to prove its existence and still have all the wretched sensations of blindness and obtain no personal advantage from his hearsay belief. And a sinful man may have no skeptical doubt that the death of Christ on Mount Calvary has completely expiated human guilt and may even construct a strong argument in proof of the fact and still have all the miserable experience of an unforgiven sinner, may still have remorse and the fear of death and the damnation of hell. The belief by which men obtain personal benefit, namely, mental peace and blessedness, from the fact of Christ's atonement involves trust and reliance upon Christ. A man may believe Christ and yet not believe on him. Christ himself marks the difference between historical or hearsay belief and experimental faith in Matt. 13:13–15: "Seeing, they see not; and hearing, they hear not, neither do they understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which says, By hearing you shall hear and shall not understand; and seeing you shall see and shall not perceive." Whenever there is an experimental belief of the actual and accomplished fact of Christ's atonement, there is a subjective pacification of the conscience corresponding to the objective reconciliation of divine justice. But this subjective effect of Christ's death is neither the primary nor the whole effect of it. It presupposes the objective satisfaction or propitiation. In this instance, as in all others, the object is prior to the subject and determines its consciousness.

Second, the subjective appropriation of Christ's atonement is the evidence and test of genuine repentance. An unselfish godly sorrow for sin is shown by a willingness to suffer personally for sin. In Lev. 26:41, 43 the truly penitent are described as "accepting the punishment of their iniquity." The criminal who complains of punishment or resists it or endeavors to escape from it evinces by this fact that he cares more for his own happiness than he does for the evil and wickedness of his act. If he were certain of not being punished, he would repeat his transgression. There is of course no genuine sorrow for sin in such a temper. If, on the contrary, a wrongdoer approves of and accepts the punishment denounced against his crime and voluntarily gives himself up to suffer for his transgression, he furnishes the highest proof of true sorrow. He does not make his own happiness the first thing, but the maintenance of justice. With Angelo (Measure for Measure 5.1), he says:

So deep sticks it in my penitent heart,

That I crave death more willingly than mercy;

'Tis my deserving, and I do entreat it.

With the penitent thief, he says, "We are in this condemnation justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds" (Luke 23:41). Says Dorner (Christian Doctrine 1.302):

No one can deny that true penitence includes the candid acknowledgment of actual desert of punishment and that the denial of this desert and the unwillingness to suffer punishment and to surrender to the disgrace of justice is the most certain proof of a mere semblance of penitence. And it is not essentially different, when repentance and the resolution to live a better life are put in the place of that suffering which constitutes satisfying atonement and gives a title to remission of sin. Such views are a poisoning of penitence, which, in order to be genuine, must stand the test of being ready to suffer punishment and approve of the retribution of justice.

The first impulse consequently of true penitence is to make a personal atonement. This distinguishes penitence from remorse, the godly sorrow from the sorrow of the world (2 Cor. 7:10). Mere remorse has no desire or impulse to suffer and make amends for what has been done. Its impulse and desire is wholly selfish, namely, to escape suffering. Remorse leads to suicide, penitence never. The suicide's motive is to put an end to his misery. He supposes that he will be happier by dying than by continuing to live. This was the motive of the impenitent Judas. But the broken and contrite heart is willing to do and to suffer anything that would really satisfy God's holy law. This is taught in Ps. 51:16: David in his genuine sorrow for his great transgression says: "You desire not sacrifice, else would I give it." He perceives that any expiation which he could make for his sin would be unequal to what justice requires; but this does not render him any the less ready to make it if he could. And when the true penitent perceives that another competent person, divinely appointed, has performed that atoning work for him which he is unable to perform for himself, he welcomes the substitution with joy and gratitude. Any aversion, therefore, to Christ's vicarious atonement evinces that there is a defect in the supposed sorrow for sin. The lust of self is in the experience. The individual's happiness is in the foreground, and divine holiness is in the background. And the positive and deliberate rejection of Christ's atonement, upon the same principle, is absolute and utter impenitence. A hostile and polemic attitude toward the blood of Christ as atoning for human guilt is fatal hardness of heart. Christ refers to it in his awful words to the Pharisees: "If you believe not that I am he, you shall die in your sins" (John 8:24). Impenitence shows itself both in unwillingness to make a personal atonement for sin and to trust in a vicarious atonement for it. (supplement 6.2.3.)

Christ's Sufferings as Penal Substitution

It becomes necessary now to consider the question how the suffering of Christ meets the requisitions involved in the case of substitution of penalty or vicarious atonement. We have seen that suffering is the inmost essence of an atonement. The sacrificial victim must agonize and die. Without shedding of blood there is no remission of penalty. Even in cases where physical suffering does not take place, a suffering of another kind does. A citizen within the province of civil law is said to make amends for his fault when he pays a fine and suffers a loss of money as the compensation to civil justice. What, then, is suffering?

Suffering is of three kinds: (1) calamity, (2) chastisement, and (3) punishment or penalty.

Calamity does not refer to sin and guilt. It is a kind of suffering that befalls man by the providence of God for other reasons than disciplinary or judicial. Calamitous suffering, however, it should be noticed, occurs only in a sinful world. Consequently, it is never found isolated and by itself alone. It is associated either with chastisement (as when a calamity falls upon a child of God) or with punishment (as when it falls upon the impenitent sinner). Calamity is therefore rather an element in suffering than the whole of the suffering. When, for illustration, some of the Galileans had been cruelly put to death by Pilate (Luke 13:1–5), our Lord distinctly told those who informed him of this fact that these Galileans "were not sinners above all the Galileans because they suffered such things." They were sinners, but not the worst of sinners. In other words, he taught them that the whole of this suffering was not penal. As sinners, they deserved to suffer; and some of this suffering was for their sins. But as they were not greater sinners than other Galileans, they did not deserve a suffering that was so much greater than that of the Galilean people as a whole. A part of this extraordinary suffering, therefore, was calamity, not punishment. As such, it had no reference to the guilt of the Galileans. If it had, it would have been a proof that they "were sinners above all the Galileans." Our Lord then repeats and emphasizes the same truth by an allusion to the fall of the tower in Siloam upon some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. This event did not prove that these few persons were sinners "above all men that dwelled in Jerusalem." There was, therefore, a calamitous as well as a penal element in this fall of the tower. The same doctrine is taught by the extraordinary sufferings of the patriarch Job. Job's friends contended that these were all and wholly penal. They inferred that Job had been guilty of some extraordinary sin which merited this extraordinary punishment, and they urged him to confess it. The patriarch, though acknowledging himself to be a sinner and deserving to suffer for sin (Job 42:5–6), was not conscious of any such extraordinary act of transgression as his friends supposed he must have committed and cannot understand why he should have been visited with such enormous afflictions. Both he and they are finally informed by God himself, out of the whirlwind, that the extraordinariness of the suffering is due to the will of God; that it is of the nature of calamity, not of penalty. Jehovah resolves the mystery in the uncommon treatment of Job into an act of almighty power by an infinitely wise being who gives no reason for his procedure in this instance (Job 38–41). Elihu, the youngest of the speakers, seems to have had an intimation in his own mind that this was the true explanation of the dark problem: "I will answer you that God is greater than man. Why do you strive against him? For he gives not account of any of his matters" (33:12–13).

The second species of suffering is chastisement. This is spoken of in Heb. 12:6: "For whom the Lord loves, he chastens (paideuei)." Chastisement and punishment are distinguished from each other in 1 Cor. 11:32: "When we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world." The purpose of chastisement is discipline and moral improvement. The reason for it is not secret and unknown, as in the case of calamity. It is adapted to reform. It is administered by parental affection, not by judicial severity. It is the form which suffering assumes within the family. The parent does not cause the child to feel pain for the satisfaction of justice, but for personal improvement. The suffering does indeed remind the child of his guilt and is suggestive of penalty, but it is not itself penal. Family discipline is not of the nature of retribution.

Hence analogies drawn from the family do not apply to the civil government and still less to divine government, when guilt and retribution are the subjects under consideration. Guilt and retribution are not res domi; they are not family affairs. The family was not established for the purpose of punishing criminals, but of educating children. Because a human father may forgive a child, that is, may forego the infliction of suffering for an offense, without any satisfaction being rendered for him by a substitute and without any reference to the claims of law, it does not follow that the state can do this or that the supreme ruler can. Within the sphere of family life, there is nothing judicial and retributive. There is, therefore, no analogy between the two spheres. There can be no legitimate arguing from a sphere in which the retributive element is altogether excluded, such as that of the father and the child, over into a sphere in which the retributive is the prime element, such as that of God the just and man the guilty. It is metabasis eis allo genos. A parent is at liberty in case he judges that in a particular instance the child will be morally the better for so doing to forego chastisement altogether. He can pass by the transgression without inflicting any pain at all upon the child. But the magistrate has no right to do this in the instance of crime against the state. He must cause each and every transgression to receive the penalty prescribed by the statute. Furthermore, since chastisement has no reference to crime, it is not graduated by justice and the degree of the offense, but by expediency and the aim to reform. Sometimes a small fault in a child may be chastised with a severe infliction, and a great fault with a mild one. The object not being to weigh out penalty in exact proportion to crime, but to discipline and reform the character, the amount of suffering inflicted is measured by this aim and object. A very slight offense, if there is a tendency frequently to repeat it on the part of the child, may require a heavy chastisement, so that the habit may be broken up. And on the other hand, a very grave offense which is exceptional in its nature and to which there is no habitual tendency on the part of the child, may be best managed with a slight infliction of pain or even with none at all. A rebuke merely may be better adapted to promote the reformation of the offender. All this is illustrated in God's dealings with his own children. A Christian of uncommon excellence to human view sometimes experiences a great affliction, while one of less devoutness, apparently, is only slightly afflicted or perhaps not at all. This difference is not caused by the degree of demerit in each instance, but by what the divine eye sees to be required in each case in order to the best development of character.

Now the relation of a believer to God is like that of the child to the earthly father. Man enters into God's heavenly family by the act of faith in Christ. All the suffering that befalls him in this sphere is therefore of the nature of chastisement, not of punishment or retribution. It is not intrinsically endless and hopeless, as divine retribution is: "I will visit their transgression with the rod; nevertheless my loving-kindness I will not utterly take from him"; "he will not always chide; neither will he keep his anger forever" (Ps. 89:31–34; 103:9; Jer. 10:24). The penalty due to the believer's sin has been endured for him by his Redeemer, and therefore there is no need of his enduring it. Justice does not exact penalty twice over. Consequently, whenever the believer suffers pain from any cause or source whatever, he is not suffering retributive punishment for purposes of law and justice, but corrective chastisement for purposes of self-discipline and spiritual improvement: epi to sympheron (Heb. 12:10). This suffering, though for the present moment not joyous but grievous, yet after it has been submissively endured, works out the peaceable fruit of righteousness (12:11). Even death itself, which is the climax of suffering, is not penal for a believer. Its sting, that is, its retributive quality, is extracted (1 Cor. 15:55–56). Suffering is penal when it is intended and felt to be such and is chastisement when it is not so intended and felt. God intends a benefit, not a punishment, when he causes a believer in Christ to suffer the pains of dissolution; and the believer so understands it. He feels that it is fatherly discipline. When a penitent believer dies, God supports and comforts the departing soul; but when an impenitent unbeliever dies, the soul is left to itself without support and comfort from God. The tranquilizing presence of God converts death into chastisement; the absence of such a presence makes it penalty. (supplement 6.2.4.)

The relation of a rebellious and unbelieving man to God is like that of a rebellious citizen to the state. All that such a citizen can expect from the government under which he lives is justice, the due reward of his disobedience. The state is not the family, and what is peculiar to the one is not to the other. The disobedient citizen cannot expect from the magistrate the patient forbearance and affectionate tuition which the disobedient child meets with from a parent with a view to his discipline and moral improvement. The citizen is entitled only to justice, and if he gets it in the form of the righteous punishment of his crime he must be silent. No man may complain of justice or quarrel with it. To do so is an absurdity, as well as a fault. By creation, man was within the circle both of divine government and the divine family. Holy Adam was at once a subject and a child. By apostasy and rebellion, he threw himself out of the circle of God's family, but not out of the circle of God's government. Sinful man is invited and even commanded to reenter the divine family when he is invited and commanded to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of his sins. But so long as he is an unbeliever, he has not reentered it and is not an affectionate or "dear" child of God. The phraseology in Jer. 31:20 (Ephraim is "my dear son"); Eph. 5:1 ("be followers of God as dear children"); Rom. 8:16–17 ("the Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children then heirs"); Gal. 3:26 ("you are the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus"); and Matt. 5:9 ("the peacemakers shall be called the children of God") is not applicable to men indiscriminately, but only to believers. The childhood and the fatherhood in this case is special, because it is founded in redemption.

There is a providential fatherhood and childhood spoken of in Scripture which is not sufficient to constitute fallen man a member of God's heavenly family. In Acts 17:28 all men are called the "offspring" of God; and in Mal. 2:10 the question is asked: "Have we not all one father?" This providential fatherhood and childhood is founded in creation. This is proved by a second question in 2:10, which follows the one already cited and explains it: "Has not one God created us?" And in Acts 17:26 the reason given why all nations are the offspring of God is that they are "made of one blood" by their Creator. Creation is a kind of paternity. In Job 38:28–29 this is extended even to the inanimate creation: "Has the rain a father? Or who has begotten the drops of the dew? Out of whose womb came the ice? And the hoary frost of heaven, who has gendered it?" In Deut. 2:27 idolatrous Israel is represented as "saying to a stock, You are my father; and to a stone, You have brought me forth." In acknowledging a false God to be their maker, they acknowledged him to be their providential father. In accordance with this, God says to a wicked generation "whose spot is not the spot of his children," who are not "dear" children in the special sense: "Do you thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? Is not he your father that bought you? Has he not made you and established you?" (Deut. 32:6). Our Lord teaches (Matt. 7:11) that "evil" men have a "father in heaven" and explains this fatherhood by God's readiness to bestow "good things" in his general providence. This association of paternity with creation and providence is found also in secular literature. Plato (Timaeus 9) says that "to discover the Creator and Father of this universe is indeed difficult." Horace (Odes 1.12) speaks of "the Father of all, who governs the affairs of men and gods." Creation, together with providence and government which are necessarily associated with creation, is a solid basis for this kind of paternity. It implies benevolent care and kindness toward its objects, and these are paternal qualities. God's providential and governmental goodness toward all his rational creatures is often referred to in Scripture: "Your Father which is in heaven makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain upon the just and the unjust" (Matt. 5:45); "he left not himself without witness, in that he did good and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness" (Acts 14:17).

The fact, then, that God creates man after his own image a rational and immortal being, that he continually upholds him and extends to him the blessings of a kind and watchful providence, and still more that he compassionates him in his sinful and guilty condition and provides for him a way of salvation—all this justifies the use of the term father in reference to God and the term child in reference to man. But the fatherhood and childhood, in this case, are different from those of redemption and adoption. The former may exist without the latter. God as the universal parent, while showing providential benevolence and kindness to an impenitent sinner, "filling his mouth with food and gladness" all the days of his earthly existence, may finally punish him forever for his ungrateful abuse of paternal goodness, for his transgression of moral law, and especially for his rejection of the offer of forgiveness in Christ. And this lost man is still, even in his lost condition, one of God's "offspring." Abraham, speaking in the place of God, calls Dives in hell a child of the universal parent: "Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things" (Luke 16:25). And Dives recognizes the relationship when he says, "Father Abraham, have mercy on me" (16:24). The providential fatherhood of God is thus shown to be consistent with the punishment of a rebellious son. It is also consistent with the refusal to abate the merited punishment. Dives asks for a drop of water to cool his tongue and is refused. Dives was an impenitent man. He did not confess his sin or implore its forgiveness. He only asked for deliverance from suffering. He lacked the spirit of the prodigal son and of the penitent thief. He did not say, "Father, I have sinned and am no more worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired servants. I am in this condemnation justly. I am receiving the due reward of my deeds."

The universal fatherhood and childhood may exist without the special, but not the special without the universal. There may be creation, providence, and government without redemption, but not redemption without the former. A man may experience all the blessings of God's general paternity without those of his special, but not the blessings of God's special fatherhood without those of his general. Christ speaks of those who are not God's children in the special sense, when he says, in reply to the assertion of the Jews that "we have one Father, even God": "If God were your Father, you would love me. You are of your father, the devil" (John 8:41–44). St. John refers to the same class in the words "in this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil" (1 John 3:10).

When men universally are commanded to say "our Father who is in heaven," they are commanded to do so with the heart, not with the lips merely. They have no permission to employ the terms of the family from the position of a rebel. Says Christ, "Why call me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?" (Luke 6:46). In like manner God says, "A son honors his father: If I be a father, where is my honor?" (Mal. 1:6). The fact of the providential fatherhood, as previously remarked, is not sufficient to constitute fallen men members of God's heavenly family. Unfallen man was a member of the heavenly family merely by the fatherhood of creation and providence; but after his rebellion and apostasy this ceased to be the case. Redemption was needed in order to restore him to membership. The whole human family is not now God's heavenly family. Only a part of it are the dear children of God. Those only are members of God's family who are members of Christ, "of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named" (Eph. 3:15). All others "are bastards and not sons" (Heb. 12:8).

The third species of suffering is punishment. This is pain inflicted because of guilt. The intention of it is the satisfaction of justice. Retributive justice is expressed in the saying "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." This is the lex talionis or law of requital.97 Our Lord, in the Sermon on the Mount, did not abolish this law, but placed its execution upon the proper basis. "That which was addressed to the judges," says Calvin (Henry, Life 1.287), "private individuals applied to themselves, and it was this abuse which our Lord Jesus Christ would correct." The private person may not put out the eye of him who has put out an eye, but the government may. Retribution is not the function of the individual. It belongs to God and to the government, which is ordained of God: "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves; for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord" (Rom. 12:19). This retributive function is delegated by God to the magistrate: "For he is the minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that does evil" (13:4). When the private individual takes the lex talionis into his own hands, it is revenge. Christ forbade this. When God or the government administers it, it is vengeance. Christ did not forbid this. The former is selfish and wrong; the latter is dispassionate and right.

That particular amount and kind of suffering which is required by the law of requital is punishment. Its primary aim is the satisfaction of justice, not utility to the criminal. The criminal is sacrificed to justice. His private interest is subservient to that of law and government, because the latter is of more importance than the former. Even if he derives no personal benefit from the retribution which he experiences, the one sufficient reason for it still holds good, namely, that he has voluntarily transgressed and deserves to suffer for it. Both the quantity and the quality of the suffering must be considered, in order to penalty. In the first place, the amount of the suffering must be proportionate to the offense. To take human life for a petty larceny would be unjust. To take money as an offset for murder would be unjust. In the second place, suffering must be intended as penal and felt to be penal in order to be penal. It must have this retributive quality. Two men might suffer from God precisely the same amount of suffering, and in one case it might be retribution and in the other chastisement, because in the one case his intention was the satisfaction of law, in the other the correction of his child. Physical death in the case of a wicked man is penal evil, because it is designed as a punishment on the part of God and is felt to be such by the man. God grants no comfort to the wicked in his death; the sting is not extracted, and death is remorseful and punitive. But the very same event of death and the same suffering in amount is chastisement and not punishment for a believer, because it is accompanied with inward strength from God to endure it and is known to be the means of entrance into heaven.

The sufferings of Christ the mediator were vicariously penal or atoning because the intention, both on the part of the Father and the Son, was that they should satisfy justice for the sin of man. They were not calamity, for their object is known. The reason for calamitous suffering is secret. And they were not disciplinary, because Christ having no sin could not pass through a process of progressive sanctification. Scripture plainly teaches that our Lord's sufferings were vicariously retributive; that is, they were endured for the purpose of satisfying justice in the place of the actual transgressor: "Christ has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust" (1 Pet. 3:18); "Christ was made a curse for us" (Gal. 3:13); "Immanuel was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities" (Isa. 53:5); "Jesus our Lord was delivered for our offenses" (Rom. 4:25); "he has made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21); "he is the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 2:2); "behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world" (John 1:29); "he spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all" (Rom. 8:32). With this, compare 2 Pet. 2:4: "He spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell." Penalty in the case of Christ was vicarious; in that of the fallen angels was personal.

The penal and atoning sufferings of Christ were twofold: ordinary and extraordinary. The first came upon him by virtue of his human nature. He hungered, thirsted, was weary in body, was sad and grieved in mind, by the operation of the natural laws of matter and mind. All that Christ endured by virtue of his being born of a woman, being made under the law, living a human life, and dying a violent death belongs to this class. The extraordinary sufferings in Christ's experience came upon him by virtue of a positive act and infliction on the part of God. To these belong, also, all those temptations by Satan which exceeded in their force the common temptations incident to ordinary human life. Through these Christ was caused to suffer more severely than any of his disciples have. And that this was an intentional and preconceived infliction on the part of God, for the purpose of causing the sinner's substitute to endure a judicial suffering, is proved by the statement that "Jesus was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil" (Matt. 4:1). These severe temptations from Satan occurred more than once: "The devil departed from him for a season" (Luke 4:13). But still more extraordinary was that suffering which was caused in the soul of Christ by the immediate agency of God in the garden and on the cross. That agony which forced the blood through the pores of the skin and wrung from the patient and mighty heart of the God-man the cry, "My God, why have you forsaken me!" cannot be explained by the operation of natural laws. There was positive desertion and infliction on the part of God. The human nature was forsaken, as the words of Christ imply. That support and comfort which the humanity had enjoyed, in greater or less degree, during the life of the God-man upon earth was now withdrawn utterly and entirely. One consequence of this was that the physical suffering involved in the crucifixion was unmitigated. Christ had no such support as his confessors have always had in the hour of martyrdom. But this was the least severe part of Christ's extraordinary suffering. The pain from the death of crucifixion was physical only. There was over and above this a mental distress that was far greater. This is indicated in the terms employed to describe the spiritual condition of Christ's soul, in the so-called agony in the garden: "He began to be sore amazed and to be very heavy and says unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death" (Mark 14:33–34). The words ekthambeisthai and adēmonein100 imply a species of mental distress that stuns and bewilders. This mental suffering cannot be explained upon ordinary psychological principles, but must be referred to a positive act of God. Christ was sinless and perfect. His inward distress did not result from the workings of a guilty conscience. The agony in the garden and on the cross was not that of remorse; though it was equal to it. Neither was it the agony of despair; though it was equal to it.

The positive agency of God, in causing a particular kind of suffering to befall the mediator which could not have befallen him by the operation of natural causes, is spoken of in Isa. 53:5–6, 10: "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. It pleased the Lord to bruise him." And again in Zech. 13:7: "Awake, O sword, against my shepherd and against the man that is my fellow, says the Lord of hosts; smite the shepherd." This language teaches that the incarnate second person of the Trinity received upon himself a stroke inflicted by the positive act of another divine person. The Son of God was bruised, wounded, and smitten by God the Father, as the officer and agent of divine justice; and the effects of it appear in that extraordinary mental distress which the mediator exhibited, particularly during the last hours of his earthly life: "While he was buffeted, scourged, and nailed to the cross, we hear nothing from him; but like a lamb before the shearers, he was mute. But when God reached forth his hand and darted his immediate rebukes into his very soul and spirit, then he cries out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!"

The nature of this suffering is inexplicable, because it has no parallel in human consciousness. The other forms of Christ's suffering are intelligible, because they were like those of men. Thirst, hunger, weariness, grief at the death of a friend, were the same in Christ that they are in us. But that strange and unique experience which uttered itself in the cry "My God, why have you forsaken me?" belongs to the consciousness of the God-man. Only he who occupied the actual position of the sinner's substitute can experience such a judicial stroke from eternal justice, and only he can know the peculiarity of the suffering which it produces. Suffering is a form of consciousness, and consciousness can be known only by the possessor of it. (supplement 6.2.5.)

There are some particulars respecting this positive infliction upon the mediator which must be carefully noted. Though the Father "smote," "wounded," and "bruised" the Son, he felt no emotional anger toward the person of the Son. The emotional wrath of God is revealed only against personal unrighteousness, and Christ was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. The Father smote his "beloved Son, in whom he was well pleased" (Matt. 3:17). At the very instant when the Father forsook the Son, he loved him emotionally and personally with the same infinite affection with which he had loved him "before the world was." When it is said that Christ experienced the "wrath of God," the meaning is that he experienced a judicial suffering caused by God. The "wrath" of God in this instance is not a divine emotion, but a divine act by which God the Father caused pain in Jesus Christ for a particular purpose. This purpose is judicial and penal, and therefore the act may be called an act of wrath. "The wrath of God is his will to punish" (Anselm, Why the God-Man? 1.6). In Rom. 13:4 the infliction of suffering by the magistrate upon the criminal is denominated an act of "wrath": "He is the minister of wrath." But the magistrate has no emotional anger toward the criminal. God the Father could love the Son, therefore, at the very instant when he visited him with this punitive act. His emotion might be love, while his act was wrath. Nay, his love might be drawn forth by this very willingness of the Son to suffer vicariously for the salvation of man. "We do not admit," says Calvin (2.16.11), "that God was ever hostile or angry with him. For how could he be angry with his beloved Son in whom his soul delighted? or how could Christ by his intercession appease the Father for others, if the Father were incensed against him? But we affirm that he sustained the weight of divine severity; since being smitten and afflicted of God, he experienced from God all the tokens of wrath and vengeance." Says Witsius (Covenants 2.6.38):

To be the beloved Son of God and at the same time to suffer the wrath of God are not such contrary things as that they cannot stand together. For, as Son, as the Holy One, while obeying the Father in all things, he was always the beloved; and indeed most of all when obedient to the death of the cross; for that was so pleasing to the Father that on account of it he raised him to the highest pitch of exaltation (Phil. 2:9); though as charged with our sins he felt the wrath of God burning not against himself, but against our sins which he took upon himself.

Second, the Son of God understands the judicial infliction which he undergoes, in this sense. God the Son knows that the blow which he experiences from God the Father is not for sin which he has himself committed. The transaction between the two divine persons is of the nature of a covenant between them. The Son agrees to submit his person, incarnate, to a penal infliction that is required by the attribute of justice. But this attribute is as much an attribute of the Son as it is of the Father. The second trinitarian person is as much concerned for the maintenance of law as is the first. The Son of God is not seized an unwilling victim and offered to justice by the Father. The Son himself is willing and desires to suffer. "I have," he says, "a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished" (Luke 12:50). This explains the fact that Christ everywhere represents himself as voluntarily giving up his life: "No man takes my life from me; I lay it down of myself" (John 10:18). In some instances he employs his miraculous power to prevent his life from being taken because "his hour was not yet come." But when the hour had come, though in the full consciousness that "twelve legions of angels" were at his command, he suffers himself to be seized by a handful of men, to be bound, and to be nailed to a cross. So far as the feature of mere voluntariness is concerned, no suicide was ever more voluntary in the manner of his death than was Jesus Christ.

Christ's Active and Passive Obedience

A distinction is made between Christ's active and passive obedience. The latter denotes Christ's sufferings of every kind—the sum total of the sorrow and pain which he endured in his estate of humiliation. The term passive is used etymologically. His suffering is denominated "obedience" because it came by reason of his submission to the conditions under which he voluntarily placed himself when he consented to be the sinner's substitute. He vicariously submitted to the sentence "the soul that sins, it shall die" and was "obedient unto death" (Phil. 2:8).

Christ's passive or suffering obedience is not to be confined to what he experienced in the garden and on the cross. This suffering was the culmination of his piacular sorrow, but not the whole of it. Everything in his human and earthly career that was distressing belongs to his passive obedience. It is a true remark of Edwards that the blood of Christ's circumcision was as really a part of his vicarious atonement as the blood that flowed from his pierced side. And not only his suffering proper, but his humiliation, also, was expiatory, because this was a kind of suffering. Says Edwards (Redemption 2.1.2):

The satisfaction or propitiation of Christ consists either in his suffering evil or his being subject to abasement. Thus Christ made satisfaction for sin by continuing under the power of death while he lay buried in the grave, though neither his body nor soul properly endured any suffering after he was dead. Whatever Christ was subject to that was the judicial fruit of sin had the nature of satisfaction for sin. But not only proper suffering, but all abasement and depression of the state and circumstances of mankind below its primitive honor and dignity, such as his body remaining under death, and body and soul remaining separate, and other things that might be mentioned, are the judicial fruits of sin.

Christ's active obedience is his perfect performance of the requirements of the moral law. He obeyed this law in heart and in conduct, without a single slip or failure. He was "holy, harmless, and undefiled" (Heb. 7:26). Some theologians confine Christ's atonement to his passive obedience, in such sense that his active obedience does not enter into it and make a part of it. Since atonement consists in suffering and since obedience of the divine law is not suffering but happiness, they contend that Christ's active obedience cannot contribute anything that is strictly piacular or atoning. This would be true in reference to the active obedience of a mere creature, but not in reference to the active obedience of the God-man. It is no humiliation for a created being to be a citizen of divine government, to be made under the law, and to be required to obey it. But it is humiliation for the Son of God to be so made and to be so required to obey. It is stooping down when the Ruler of the universe becomes a subject and renders obedience to a superior. Insofar as Christ's active obedience was an element in his humiliation, it was an element also in his expiation. Consequently, we must say that both the active and the passive obedience enter into the sum total of Christ's atoning work. Christ's humiliation confessedly was atoning, and his obedience of the law was a part of his humiliation. The two forms of Christ's obedience cannot therefore be so entirely separated from each other as is implied in this theory which confines the piacular agency of the mediator to his passive obedience.

But while there is this atoning element in Christ's active obedience, it is yet true that the principal reference of the active obedience is to the law as precept, rather than to the law as penalty. It is more meritorious of reward than it is piacular of guilt. The chief function of Christ's obedience of the moral law is to earn a title for the believer to the rewards of heaven. This part of Christ's agency is necessary, because merely to atone for past transgression would not be a complete salvation. It would, indeed, save man from hell, but it would not introduce him into heaven. He would be delivered from the law's punishment, but would not be entitled to the law's reward: "The man which does the things of the law shall live by them" (Rom. 10:5). Mere innocence is not entitled to a reward. Obedience is requisite in order to this. Adam was not meritorious until he had obeyed the commandment, "Do this." Before he could "enter into life," he must "keep the commandment," like every subject of divine government and candidate for heavenly reward. The mediator, therefore, must not only suffer for man, but must obey for him, if he would do for man everything that the law requires. Accordingly, Christ is said to be made of God unto the believer "wisdom" and "sanctification" as well as "righteousness" and "redemption" (1 Cor. 1:30). Believers are described as "complete" in Christ (Col. 1:10); that is, they are entitled to eternal blessedness as well as delivered from eternal misery. Christ is said to be "the end (telos) of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes" (Rom. 10:4). This means that Christ completely fulfills the law for the believer; but the law requires obedience to its precept as well as endurance of its penalty. Complete righteousness is conformity to the law in both respects: "By his obedience shall many be made righteous" (Rom. 5:19); "by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many" (Isa. 53:11); "the Lord our righteousness" (Jer. 23:6); "in the Lord have I righteousness" (45:24; Rom. 8:4; Phil. 3:9; 2 Cor. 5:21).

The imputation of Christ's active obedience is necessary, also, in order to hope and confidence respecting the endless future. If the believer founds his expectation of an eternity of blessedness upon the amount of obedience which he has himself rendered to the law and the degree of holiness which he has personally attained here upon earth, he is filled with doubt and fear respecting the final recompense. He knows that he has not, by his own work, earned and merited such an infinite reward as "glory, honor, and immortality": "We cannot by our best works merit eternal life at the hand of God, by reason of the great disproportion between them and the glory to come" (Westminster Confession 16.5). But if he founds his title to eternal life and his expectation of it upon the obedience of Christ for him, his anxiety disappears. (supplement 6.2.6.)

A distinction is made by some theologians between "satisfaction" and "atonement." Christ's satisfaction is his fulfilling the law both as precept and penalty. Christ's atonement, as antithetic to satisfaction, includes only what Christ does to fulfill the law as penalty. According to this distinction, Christ's atonement would be a part of his satisfaction. The objections to this mode of distinguishing are that (a) satisfaction is better fitted to denote Christ's piacular work than his whole work of redemption; in theological literature, it is more commonly the synonym of atonement; (b) by this distinction, atonement may be made to rest upon the passive obedience alone to the exclusion of the active. This will depend upon whether "obedience" is employed in the comprehensive sense of including all that Christ underwent in his estate of humiliation, both in obeying and suffering.

Another distinction is made by some between "satisfaction" and "merit." In this case, "satisfaction" is employed in a restricted signification. It denotes the satisfaction of retributive justice and has respect to the law as penalty. Thus employed, the term is equivalent to "atonement." "Merit" as antithetic to "satisfaction" has respect to the law as precept and is founded upon Christ's active obedience. Christ vicariously obeys the law and so vicariously merits for the believer the reward of eternal life. Respecting this distinction, Turretin (14.13.12) remarks that

the two things are not to be separated from each other. We are not to say as some do that the "satisfaction" is by the passive work of Christ alone and that the "merit" is by the active work alone. The satisfaction and the merit are not to be thus viewed in isolation, each by itself, because the benefit in each depends upon the total work of Christ. For sin cannot be expiated until the law as precept has been perfectly fulfilled; nor can a title to eternal life be merited before the guilt of sin has been atoned for. Meruit ergo satisfaciendo, et merendo satisfecit.

There is some ambiguity in this distinction, also. The term merit is often applied to Christ's passive obedience as well as to his active. The "merit of Christ's blood" is a familiar phrase. The mediator was meritorious in reference to the law's penalty as well as to the law's precept.

Atonement and Its Necessity in Relation to Divine Justice

Having thus considered the nature of atonement and the sufferings of the mediator as constituting it, we proceed to notice some further characteristics of it.

In the first place, atonement is correlated to justice, not to benevolence. Some have maintained that retributive justice is a phase of benevolence. They would ultimately reduce all the moral attributes to one, namely, divine love. This theory is built upon the text "God is love." But there are texts affirming that "God is light" (1 John 1:5) and that "God is a consuming fire" (Heb. 12:29). The affirmation "holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts" (Isa. 6:3) is equivalent to "God is holiness." Upon the strength of these texts, it might be contended that all divine attributes may be reduced to that of wisdom or of justice or of holiness. The true view is that each of the attributes stands side by side with all the others and cannot be merged and lost in any other. Justice is no more a phase of benevolence than benevolence is a phase of justice. Each attribute has a certain distinctive characteristic which does not belong to the others and by which it is a different attribute. The fact that one divine attribute affects and influences another does not convert one into another. Omnipotence acts wisely, but this does not prove that omnipotence is a mode of wisdom. God's justice acts benevolently, not malevolently, but this does not prove that justice is a mode of benevolence. God's benevolence acts justly, not unjustly, but this does not prove that benevolence is a mode of justice. Divine attributes do not find a center of unity in any one of their own number, but in the divine essence. It is the divine nature itself, not the divine attribute of love or any other attribute, in which they all inhere.

Accordingly, the atoning sufferings and death of Christ are related to the attribute of justice rather than to any other one of the divine attributes. They manifest and exhibit other attributes, such as wisdom, omnipotence, benevolence, and compassion, nay, all the other attributes, but they are an atonement only for retributive justice. Christ's death does not propitiate or satisfy God's benevolence nor his wisdom nor his omnipotence; but it satisfies his justice. Atonement cannot be correlated to benevolence, any more than creation can be correlated to omniscience. It is true that the creation of the world supposes omniscience, but creation is an act of power rather than of knowledge and is therefore referred to omnipotence, rather than to omniscience. In like manner, Christ's atonement supposes benevolence in God, but benevolence is not the particular attribute that requires the atonement. It is retributive justice that demands the punishment of sin. If there were in God mere and isolated benevolence, there would be neither personal nor vicarious punishment; just as there would be no creation if there were in God mere and isolated omniscience. Benevolence alone and wholly disconnected from justice would not cause pain but pleasure. It would relieve from suffering instead of inflicting it. St. Paul in Rom. 5:7 teaches the diversity between the attribute of justice and that of benevolence, in saying that "scarcely for a just man will one die; yet peradventure for a benevolent man some would even dare to die."

Second, an atonement for sin of one kind or the other, if not personal then vicarious, is necessary, not optional. The transgressor must either die himself, or someone must die for him. This arises from the nature of that divine attribute to which atonement is a correlate. Retributive justice, we have seen (pp. 297–302), is necessary in its operation. The claim of law upon the transgressor for punishment is absolute and indefeasible. The eternal judge may or may not exercise mercy, but he must exercise justice. He can neither waive the claims of law in part nor abolish them altogether. The only possible mode, consequently, of delivering a creature who is obnoxious to the demands of retributive justice is to satisfy them for him. The claims themselves must be met and extinguished, either personally or by substitution: "Let justice fall from heaven." And this necessity of an atonement is absolute, not relative. It is not made necessary by divine decision in the sense that the divine decision might have been otherwise. It is not correct to say that God might have saved man without a vicarious atonement had he been pleased so to do. For this is equivalent to saying that God might have abolished the claims of law and justice had he been pleased to do so.

In the third place, atonement, either personal or vicarious, naturally and necessarily cancels legal claims. This means that there is such a natural and necessary correlation between vicarious atonement and justice that the former supplies all that is required by the latter. It does not mean that Christ's vicarious atonement naturally and necessarily saves every man; because the relation of Christ's atonement to divine justice is one thing, but the relation of a particular person to Christ's atonement is a very different thing. Christ's death as related to the claims of the law upon all mankind cancels those claims wholly. It is an infinite "propitiation for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2). But the relation of an impenitent person to this atonement is that of unbelief and rejection of it. Consequently, what the atonement has effected objectively in reference to the attribute of divine justice is not effected subjectively in the conscience of the individual. There is an infinite satisfaction that naturally and necessarily cancels legal claims, but unbelief derives no benefit from the fact.

In like manner, a personal atonement naturally and necessarily cancels legal claims. When the prescribed human penalty has been personally endured by the criminal, human justice is satisfied, and there are no more outstanding claims upon him. And this, by reason of the essential nature of justice. Justice insists upon nothing but what is due, and when it obtains this, it shows its righteousness in not requiring anything further, as it does in not accepting anything less. Consequently, personal atonement operates inevitably and, we might almost say, mechanically. If a criminal suffers the penalty affixed to his crime, he owes nothing more in the way of penalty to the law. He cannot be punished a second time. Law and justice cannot now touch him, so far as this particular crime and this particular penalty are concerned. It would be unjust to cause him the least jot or tittle of further retributive suffering for that crime which by the supposition he has personally atoned for. The law now owes him immunity from suffering anything more. It is not grace in the law not to punish him any further, but it is debt. The law itself is under obligation not to punish a criminal who has once been punished. St. Paul says respecting grace and debt in the case of active obedience that "to him that works is the reward not reckoned of grace but of debt; otherwise work is no more work" (Rom. 4:4; 11:6). In like manner, it may be said that "to him who atones for sin, the legal consequence of atonement is not reckoned of grace but of debt; otherwise atonement is no more atonement."

This reasoning applies to vicarious atonement equally with personal. Justice does not require a second sacrifice from Christ in addition to the first: "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many" (Heb. 9:28). This one offering expiated "the sins of the whole world," and justice is completely satisfied in reference to them. The death of the God-man naturally and necessarily canceled all legal claims. When a particular person trusts in this infinite atonement and it is imputed to him by God, it then becomes his atonement for judicial purposes as really as if he had made it himself, and then it naturally and necessarily cancels his personal guilt, and he has the testimony that it does in his peace of conscience. Divine justice does not, in this case, require an additional atonement from the believer. It does not demand penal suffering from a person for whom a divine substitute has rendered a full satisfaction, which justice itself has accepted in reference to this very person. By accepting a vicarious atonement for a particular individual, divine justice precludes itself from requiring a personal atonement from him. Accordingly, Scripture represents the noninfliction of penalty upon the believer in Christ's atonement as an act of justice to Christ and also to the believer viewed as one with Christ: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins" (1 John 1:9); "who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? Who is he that condemns? It is Christ that died" (Rom. 8:33–34). The atoning mediator can demand upon principles of strict justice the release from penalty of any sinful man in respect to whom he makes the demand. And if in such a case we should suppose the demand to be refused by eternal justice, we should suppose a case in which eternal justice is unjust. For, by the supposition, justice has inflicted upon the mediator the full penalty due to this sinner and then refuses to the mediator that release of this sinner from penalty which the mediator has earned by his own suffering and which is now absolutely due to him as the reward of his suffering. Says Edwards (Wisdom in Salvation in Works 4.150):

It is so ordered now that the glory of the attribute of divine justice requires the salvation of those that believe. The justice of God that required man's damnation and seemed inconsistent with his salvation nowas much requires the salvation of those that believe in Christ, as ever before it required their damnation. Salvation is an absolute debt to the believer from God, so that he may in justice demand it on the ground of what his surety has done. (see also Edwards, God's Sovereignty in Works 4.552)

Similarly Anselm (Why the God-Man? 2.20) asks, "Can anything be more just than for God to remit all debt, when in the sufferings of the God-man he receives a satisfaction greater than all the debt?" Says Ezekiel Hopkins (Exposition of the Lord's Prayer):

The pardon of sin is not merely an act of mercy, but also an act of justice. What abundant cause of comfort may this be to all believers that God's justice as well as his mercy shall acquit them; that that attribute of God at the apprehension of which they are wont to tremble should interpose in their behalf and plead for them! And yet, through the all-sufficient expiation and atonement that Christ has made for our sins, this mystery is affected and justice itself brought over from being a formidable adversary to be of our party and to plead for us. (Shedd, Theological Essays, 310–16)

It may be asked: If atonement naturally and necessarily cancels guilt, why does not the vicarious atonement of Christ save all men indiscriminately, as the universalist contends? The substituted suffering of Christ being infinite is equal in value to the personal suffering of all mankind; why then are not all men upon the same footing and in the class of the saved, by virtue of it? The answer is because it is a natural impossibility. Vicarious atonement without faith in it is powerless to save. It is not the making of this atonement, but the trusting in it, that saves the sinner: "By faith are you saved" (Eph. 2:8); "he that believes shall be saved" (Mark 16:16). The making of this atonement merely satisfies the legal claims, and this is all that it does. If it were made but never imputed and appropriated, it would result in no salvation. A substituted satisfaction of justice without an act of trust in it would be useless to sinners. It is as naturally impossible that Christ's death should save from punishment one who does not confide in it as that a loaf of bread should save from starvation a man who does not eat it. The assertion that because the atonement of Christ is sufficient for all men therefore no men are lost is as absurd as the assertion that because the grain produced in the year 1880 was sufficient to support the life of all men on the globe therefore no men died of starvation during that year. The mere fact that Jesus Christ made satisfaction for human sin, alone and of itself, will save no soul. Christ, conceivably, might have died precisely as he did and his death have been just as valuable for expiatory purposes as it is, but if his death had not been followed with the work of the Holy Spirit and the act of faith on the part of individual men, he would have died in vain. Unless his objective work is subjectively appropriated, it is useless so far as personal salvation is concerned. Christ's suffering is sufficient to cancel the guilt of all men and in its own nature completely satisfies the broken law. But all men do not make it their own atonement by faith in it by pleading the merit of it in prayer and mentioning it as the reason and ground of their pardon. They do not regard and use it as their own possession and blessing. It is nothing for them but a historical fact. In this state of things, the atonement of Christ is powerless to save. It remains in the possession of Christ who made it and has not been transferred to the individual. In the scriptural phrase, it has not been "imputed." There may be a sum of money in the hands of a rich man that is sufficient in amount to pay the debts of a million debtors; but unless they individually take money from his hands into their own, they cannot pay their debts with it. There must be a personal act of each debtor in order that this sum of money on deposit may actually extinguish individual indebtedness. Should one of the debtors, when payment is demanded of him, merely say that there is an abundance of money on deposit, but take no steps himself to get it and pay it to his creditor, he would be told that an undrawn deposit is not a payment of a debt. "The act of God," says Owen (Justification, chap. 10), "in laying our sins on Christ, conveyed no title to us to what Christ did and suffered. This doing and suffering is not immediately by virtue thereof ours or esteemed ours; because God has appointed something else not only antecedent thereto, but as the means of it." (supplement 6.2.7.)

The supposition that the objective satisfaction of justice by Christ saves of and by itself, without any application of it by the Holy Spirit and without any trust in it by the individual man, overlooks the fact that while sin has a resemblance to a pecuniary debt, as is taught in the petition "forgive us our debts," it differs from it in two important particulars. In the instance of pecuniary indebtedness, there is no need of a consent and arrangement on the part of the creditor when there is a vicarious payment. Any person may step up and discharge a money obligation for a debtor, and the obligation ceases ipso facto. But in the instance of moral indebtedness to justice or guilt, there must be a consent of the creditor, namely, the judge, before there can be a substitution of payment. Should the Supreme Judge refuse to permit another person to suffer for the sinner and compel him to suffer for his own sin, this would be just. Consequently, substitution in the case of moral penalty requires a consent and covenant on the part of God, with conditions and limitations, while substitution in the case of a pecuniary debt requires no consent, covenant, or limitations. Second, after the vicarious atonement has been permitted and provided, there is still another condition in the case, namely, that the sinner shall confess and repent of the sin for which the atonement was made and trust in the atonement itself.

Another error underlying the varieties of universalism is the assumption that because an atonement sufficient for all men has been made, all men are entitled to the benefits of it. This would be true if all men had made this atonement. But inasmuch as they had nothing to do with the making of it, they have not the slightest right or title to it. No sinner has a claim upon the expiatory oblation of Jesus Christ. It belongs entirely to the maker, and he may do what he will with his own. He may impute it to any man whom he pleases or not impute it to any man whom he pleases (Rom. 9:18). Even the act of faith does not by its intrinsic merit entitle the believer to the benefits of Christ's satisfaction. This would make salvation a debt which the Redeemer owes because of an act of the believer. It is only because Christ has promised and thereby bound himself to bestow the benefits of redemption upon everyone that believes that salvation is certain to faith.

It is objected that it is unjust to exact personal penalty from any individuals of the human race if a vicarious penalty equal in value to that due from the whole race has been paid to justice. The injustice alleged in this objection may mean injustice toward the individual unbeliever who is personally punished; or it may mean injustice in regard to what the divine law is entitled to on account of man's sin. An examination will show that there is no injustice done in either respect. When an individual unbeliever is personally punished for his own sins, he receives what he deserves; and there is no injustice in this. The fact that a vicarious atonement has been made that is sufficient to expiate his sins does not stop justice from punishing him personally for them, unless it can be shown that he is the author of the vicarious atonement. If this were so, then indeed he might complain of the personal satisfaction that is required of him. In this case, one and the same party would make two satisfactions for one and the same sin: one vicarious and one personal. When therefore an individual unbeliever suffers for his own sin, he "receives the due reward of his deeds" (Luke 23:24). And since he did not make the vicarious atonement "for the sins of the whole world" and therefore has no more right or title to it or any of its benefits than an inhabitant of Saturn, he cannot claim exemption from personal penalty on the ground of it. Says Owen (Satisfaction of Christ):

The satisfaction of Christ made for sin, being not made by the sinner, there must of necessity be a rule, order, and law constitution how the sinner may come to be interested in it and made partaker of it. For the consequent of the freedom of one by the sacrifice of another is not natural or necessary, but must proceed and arise from a law constitution, compact, and agreement. Now the way constituted and appointed is that of faith, as explained in the Scriptures. If men believe not, they are no less liable to the punishment due to their sins, than if no satisfaction at all were made for sinners.

The other injustice alleged in the objection relates to the divine law and government. It is urged that when the unbeliever is personally punished, after an infinite vicarious satisfaction for human sin has been made, justice, in this case, gets more than its dues, which is as unjust as to get less. This is a mathematical objection and must receive a mathematical answer. The alleged excess in the case is like the addition of a finite number to infinity, which is no increase. The everlasting suffering of all mankind, and still more of only a part, is a finite suffering. Neither the sufferer nor the duration is mathematically infinite, for the duration begins, though it does not end. But the suffering of the God-man is mathematically infinite because his person is absolutely infinite. When, therefore, any amount of finite human suffering is added to the infinite suffering of the God-man, it is no increase of value. Justice, mathematically, gets no more penalty when the suffering of lost men is added to that of Jesus Christ than it would without this addition. The law is more magnified and honored by the suffering of incarnate God than it would be by the suffering of all men individually, because its demand for a strictly infinite satisfaction for a strictly infinite evil is more completely met. In this sense, "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound" (Rom. 5:20).

It is for this reason, that finite numbers, small or great, are of no consequence when the value of Christ's oblation is under consideration. One sinner needs the whole infinite Christ and his whole sacrifice because of the infinite guilt of his sin. And a million sinners need the same sacrifice and no more. The guilt of one man in relation to God is infinite; and the infinite sacrifice of Christ cancels it. The guilt of a million men is infinite—not, however, because a million is a larger number than one, but because of the relation of sin to God—and the one infinite sacrifice of Christ cancels it. If only one man were to be saved, Christ must suffer and die precisely as he has; and if the human race were tenfold more numerous than it is, his death would be ample for their salvation. An infinite satisfaction meets and cancels infinite guilt, whether there be one man or millions.

Atonement in Its Relation to Divine Mercy

Fourth, the vicarious satisfaction of justice is a mode or form of mercy. It is so because it unites and harmonizes the two attributes in one divine act, namely, the suffering of incarnate deity for human guilt. When the Supreme Judge substitutes himself for the criminal, his own mercy satisfies his own justice for the transgressor. This single act is, therefore, both an exercise of mercy and an exercise of justice. It is certainly mercy to suffer for the sinner; and it is certainly justice to suffer the full penalty which he deserves. The personal satisfaction of justice, on the contrary, is not a mode or form of mercy, because in this case the Supreme Judge inflicts the suffering required by the violated law upon the criminal himself. Personal satisfaction of justice is justice without mercy. It is the "severity" spoken of by St. Paul in Rom. 11:22.

Vicarious atonement is both evangelical and legal—gospel with law; personal atonement is merely legal—law without gospel. The former is complex: both merciful and just; the latter is simple: just, not merciful. In the legal sphere of ethics and natural religion, where personal satisfaction rules, justice and mercy are entirely separated attributes, unblended and unharmonized. Justice obstructs the exercise of mercy by presenting its unsatisfied claims, and "mercy stands silent by." There is "no eye to pity, and no arm to save" (Isa. 59:16; 63:5). But in the evangelical sphere of revealed religion, the two attributes are united and harmonized: "Mercy and truth meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other" (Ps. 85:10). Divine mercy now satisfies divine justice, and divine justice accepts the satisfaction. The mercy is now infinitely just, and the justice is now infinitely merciful. The two coordinate and distinct attributes, which outside of the gospel and apart from the incarnation are separate—the one forbidding the exercise of the other—are now blended; the one meeting all the demands of the other, and both concurring in the salvation of the guilty sinner, for whose advantage all this costly sacrifice is made by the adorable Trinity. (supplement 6.2.8.)

Fifth, the vicarious satisfaction of justice is the highest mode or form of mercy because it is mercy in the form of self-sacrifice. A comparison of the different modes of divine mercy will show this. When the Creator bestows temporal blessings in his providence upon the sinner; when he makes his rain to fall and his sun to shine upon him; this is a form of mercy greatly inferior to that shown in Christ's atonement. There is no loss on the part of the giver involved in the gifts of providence. They do not cost the deity any sacrifice. Again, should we conceive it possible for God to waive the claims of law by a word and to inflict no penal suffering upon either the sinner or a substitute, this would be a lower form of mercy than that of vicarious atonement, for the same reason as in the previous instance. There is no suffering and no death undergone in the manifestation of such a species of compassion. This would be the easiest and cheapest of all methods of deliverance from punishment. Again, should we conceive of God, in the exercise of ownership and sovereignty, as taking one of his creatures, say an archangel, and making him a vicarious substitute for man, this too would be a low species of mercy, and for the same reason as in the previous cases. It involves no self-sacrifice upon the part of God. The transaction does not affect anything in the divine essence. There is no humiliation and no suffering of God incarnate. But when justice is satisfied for man by the extraordinary method of substituting God for man, by the method of incarnating, humiliating, and crucifying a person of the Trinity, we see the highest conceivable form of divine compassion and pity. It is so strange and stupendous that it requires very high testimony and proof to make it credible.

The vicarious satisfaction of justice is then the highest form of mercy because (a) the offended party permits a substitution of penalty, (b) the offended party provides the substitute, and (c) the offended party substitutes himself for the offender. The infinite and eternal judge allows, prepares, and is a substitute for the criminal. "How have you loved us," says Augustine (Confessions 10.43), "for whom he that thought it no robbery to be equal with you was made subject even to the death of the cross; for us, both victor and victim, and victor because victim; for us, both priest and sacrifice, and priest because sacrifice." Aquinas (1.21.3) remarks of the self-sacrificing pity of God: "Mercy did not abolish justice, but is a certain fullness of justice." Similarly, Wessel (Concerning the Causes of the Incarnation, 17) describes the vicarious atonement: "God himself, the priest himself, the victim himself, made satisfaction for himself, from himself, to himself." Pascal (Thoughts) expresses the same truth in the remark that in the Christian redemption "the judge himself is the sacrifice." And Livingstone (Last Journal, 5 Aug. 1872) cries from the heart of Africa: "What is the atonement of Christ? It is himself: it is the inherent and everlasting mercy of God made apparent to human eyes and ears. The everlasting love was disclosed by our Lord's life and death. It shows that God forgives because he loves to forgive. He works by smiles if possible; if not by frowns; pain is only a means of enforcing love."

In this fact that the vicarious satisfaction of justice is self-sacrificing mercy, we have the answer to the objection that if justice is satisfied there is no exhibition of mercy. There would be none if the satisfaction were made personally by the sinner. But when it is made vicariously by the eternal judge himself, it is the acme of mercy and compassion. Says Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 71: "Although Christ by his obedience and death did make a full satisfaction to God's justice in the behalf of them that are justified, yet inasmuch as God accepts the satisfaction from a surety which he might have demanded of them and did provide this surety, their justification is to them of free grace."

This truth is made still more evident by remarking the distinction between mercy and indulgence. The first is founded in principle; the latter is unprincipled. Mercy has a moral basis; it is good ethics. Indulgence has no moral foundation; it is bad ethics. Indulgence is foolish good nature. It releases from punishment without making any provision for the claims of law. Its motive is sensuous, not rational. It suffers, itself, from the sight of suffering, and this is the reason why it does not inflict it. It costs an effort to be just, and it does not like to put forth an effort. Indulgence, in the last analysis, is intensely selfish. Mere happiness in the sense of freedom from discomfort or pain is the final end which it has in view. Consequently, the action of indulgence as distinguished from mercy is high-handed. It is the exercise of bare power in snatching the criminal away from merited suffering. It is might, not right. A mob exercises indulgence when it breaks open a prison and drags away the criminal merely because the criminal is suffering. No member of this mob would take the criminal's place and suffer in his stead. This would be real mercy, and mercy in its highest form of vicarious satisfaction. Should God deliver man from the claims of law without the substitution of penalty, it would be a procedure the same in principle with that of the mob in the case supposed. It would be indulgence, not mercy.

In Rom. 3:25 indulgence in distinction from mercy is referred to. St. Paul mentions as a secondary reason why Christ was set forth as a propitiation for sin the fact that in the history of the sinful world of mankind God had been indulgent toward those who deserved immediate and swift retribution. He had "passed by" and omitted to punish. Instead of inflicting penalty, he had bestowed "rain and fruitful seasons" upon rebellious men and had "filled their hearts with food and gladness." He had "suffered (eiase) all nations to walk in their own ways" and had "winked at," that is, overlooked (hyperidōn), "the times of this ignorance" (Acts 14:16–17; 17:30). St. Paul does not designate this indulgent treatment of sinful men by charis, the usual and proper term for forgiving mercy, but by anochē. It is not mercy, but "forbearance." It is in itself irregular and requires to be legitimated. And it is explained and set right by the piacular offering of the Son of God. Because the vicarious atonement of Christ is sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world, therefore it is that the sins of the whole world experience the forbearance of the Holy One; therefore it is that the whole world receives many temporal blessings instead of swift retribution; therefore it is that God "overlooks" the times of guilty ignorance and disobedience and delays punishment.119

This "pretermission" of transgressions differs from their "remission" in being only temporary. This forbearance, even though explained and legitimated by the propitiation of Christ, is not to be eternal. Justice will finally assert its claims, and those whose unrepented transgressions have met with this temporary indulgence and delay of punishment, on account of Christ's atonement, will in the end receive the just punishment of sin. St. Paul, in this passage, does not say that these sins had been eternally pardoned by divine grace (charis), but had been only temporarily passed by through divine forbearance (anochē).

In the sixth place, the vicarious satisfaction of justice is the only mode of exercising mercy that is possible to a just being. This follows from the nature of justice and its relation to other divine attributes. If it be conceded that legal claims must be met at all hazards and cannot be either waived in part or abolished altogether, then it is evident that the great problem before divine mercy is how to meet these claims in behalf of the object of mercy. The problem is not how to trample upon justice in behalf of the criminal, but how to satisfy justice for him. And if this problem cannot be solved, then there can be no manifestation of mercy at all by a just being. The penalty must be endured by the actual criminal, and the matter end here. God is a perfectly just being and therefore cannot forever exercise mere forbearance and indulgence toward a transgressor. The mercy of the Supreme Being must be ethical, that is, must stand the test and scrutiny of moral principle and righteousness. If therefore the merciful God desires to release a transgressor from the suffering which he deserves, he must find someone who is fitted and willing to undergo this suffering in his place. And there is in the whole universe no being who is both fitted and willing to do this but God himself. A creature might be willing, but he is unfit for the office of substitute. The language of Milton (Paradise Lost 3.209–12) respecting the transgressor is theology as well as poetry:

Die he, or justice must, unless for him

Some other able, and as willing, pay

The rigid satisfaction, death for death.

Possibility of Substitution

Respecting the possibility of the substitution of penalty, it is to be observed in the first place that the punishment inflicted by justice is aimed, strictly speaking, not at the person of the transgressor, but at his sin. The wrath of God falls upon the human soul considered as an agent, not as a substance. The spiritual essence or nature of man is God's own work, and he is not angry at his own work and does not hate anything which he has created from nothing. Man's substance is not sin. Sin is the activity of this substance; and this is man's work. God is displeased with this activity and visits it with retribution. Consequently, justice punishes the sin rather than the sinner, the agency rather than the agent, the act rather than the person. It does not fix its eye upon the transgressor as this particular entity and insist that this very entity shall suffer and prohibit any other entity from suffering for him. Justice, it is true, is not obliged to allow substitution, but neither is it obliged to forbid it. If it were true that the penalty must be inflicted upon the transgressor's very substance and person itself as well as upon the sin in his person, then there could be no substitution. The very identical personal essence that had sinned must suffer, and justice would be the only attribute which God could manifest toward a sinner.

Second, justice is dispassionate and unselfish. It bears no malice toward the criminal. It is not seeking to gratify a grudge against him personally, but only to maintain law and righteousness. It inflicts pain not for the sake of inflicting it upon a particular individual, but for the sake of a moral principle. Hence if the sin can be punished in another way than by causing the sinner to be punished; if the claims of law can be really and truly satisfied by a vicarious method; there is nothing in the spirit and temper of justice toward the sinner's person or soul to forbid this. "The aspect of the law upon a sinner," says Bates (On Forgiveness), "being without passion, it admits satisfaction by the sufferings of another." And the same truth is condensed in the Schoolman's dictum: "It is necessary that punishment be inflicted impersonally on every sin, but not personally on every sinner."

Third, the substitution of penalty is implied in divine sovereignty in administering government. If God from his very nature could not permit a proper person to take the place of a criminal, but were necessitated in every single instance to inflict the penalty upon the actual transgressor, his government would be just, but not sovereign. He could make no changes in the mode of its administration—which is what is meant by a sovereign government. But God may vary the mode of administering justice, provided the mode adopted really satisfies justice and there be no special reason in his own mind why in a particular instance the variation may not be permitted. There were such special reasons, apparently, in the case of the fallen angels, but not in the case of fallen men. This exercise of sovereignty in permitting substitution of penalty is by some Calvinistic theologians called a "relaxation" of justice, not in respect to the penalty demanded, but to the person enduring it. Justice relaxes its demands to the degree of permitting a vicar to suffer for the actual criminal, but not to the degree of abating the amount of the suffering. The vicar must pay the debt to the uttermost farthing. Owen uses the term relaxation in the sense of substitution, but describes our Lord's suffering as the strict and full satisfaction of retributive justice (Communion with the Trinity 1.2):

To see him who is the wisdom of God and the power of God, always beloved of the Father; to see him, I say, fear and tremble and bow and sweat and pray and die; to see him lifted up upon the cross, the earth trembling under him, as if unable to bear his weight, and the heavens darkened over him, as if shut against his cry, and himself hanging between both, as if refused by both, and all this because our sins did meet upon him; this of all things does most abundantly manifest the severity of God's vindictive justice. Here, or nowhere, is it to be learned.

This is very different from Scotus's and Grotius's "relaxation." The latter is a relaxation in respect to the amount of the penalty, as well as the person enduring it.

In case the administrative sovereignty of God decides to permit and provide a substituted penalty, the following conditions are indispensable, not by reason of any external necessity, but by reason of an internal necessity springing from the divine nature and attributes. First, the suffering substituted must be penal in its nature and purpose and of equal value with the original penalty. The theory of Duns Scotus, afterward perfected by Grotius, according to which God's administrative sovereignty is so extended that he can by a volitionary decision accept a substituted penalty of inferior value, is the same in principle with the later theory of Socinus. This scheme, denominated "acceptilation" from a term of the Roman law, logically carried out is fatal to the doctrine of vicarious atonement. For the same arbitrary sovereignty which compels justice to be content with less than its dues can compel it to be content with none at all. If a government has power and authority to say that fifty cents shall pay a debt of a dollar, it has the power to extinguish debts entirely by a positive decision of the same kind. The principle of justice being surrendered in part is surrendered altogether.

An illustration sometimes employed, taken from the instance of Zaleucus and his son, contains the false ethics of the theory of acceptilation. This Locrian lawgiver had decreed that a person guilty of adultery should be made blind. His own son was proved to be an adulterer. He ordered one of his son's eyes and one of his own to be put out (Aelian, Historical Miscellany 13.24). This was an evasion, not a satisfaction of the law. The penalty threatened and intended to be threatened against adultery was total blindness. In a substitution of this kind, no one was made blind. Two eyes were put out, but not the two eyes of one man. Had Zaleucus ordered both of his own eyes to be put out, the case would have been a proper illustration of Christ's vicarious atonement. As the case actually stood, the lawgiver had principle enough to acknowledge the claims of justice, but not principle enough to completely satisfy them. That he was willing to lose one eye proves that he felt the claims of law; but that he was unwilling to make himself totally blind in the place of his son shows that he preferred to sacrifice justice to self rather than self to justice.

In saying that the suffering substituted for that of the actual criminal must be of equal value, it is not said that it must be identical suffering. A substituted penalty cannot be an identical penalty, because identical means the same in every respect. Identity is inconsistent with any exchange whatever. To speak of substituting an identical penalty is a contradiction in terms. The identical punishment required by the moral law is personal punishment, involving personal remorse; and remorse can be experienced only by the actual criminal. If, in commercial law, a substituted payment could be prevented, a pecuniary debtor would be compelled to make an identical payment. In this case, he must pay in person and wholly from his own resources. Furthermore, he could not pay silver for gold, but gold for gold; and not only this, but he must pay back exactly the same pieces of gold, the ipsissima pecunia, which he had received. Identical penalty implies sameness without a difference in any particular. Not only is the quantity the same, but the quality is the same. But substituted penalty implies sameness with a difference in some particular. And in the case before us, that of Christ's satisfaction, the difference is in the quality, the quantity being unchanged. The vicarious suffering of Christ is of equal value with that of all mankind but is not the same in kind.

Equivalency, not identity, is the characteristic, therefore, of vicarious penalty. The exchange implied in the term substitution is of quality not of quantity. One kind of judicial suffering—that is, suffering endured for the purpose of satisfying justice—is substituted for another kind. Christ's sufferings were of a different nature or quality from those of a lost man. But there was no difference in quantity or value. A less degree of suffering was not exchanged for a greater degree. The sufferings of the mediator were equal in amount and worth to those whose place they took. Vicarious penalty then is the substitution of an equal quantity, but a different quality of suffering. The mediator suffers differently from the lost world of sinners, but he suffers equally.

Equivalency satisfies justice as completely as identity. One hundred dollars in gold extinguishes a debt of one hundred dollars as completely as does one hundred dollars in silver. If the sufferings of the mediator between God and man are of equal value with those of the world of mankind, they are as complete a satisfaction of justice as the eternal death of mankind would be, although they do not, in their nature or quality, involve any of that sense of personal wickedness and remorse of conscience which enters into the punishment of a lost man. They get their value from the nature of the God-man, and it is the value of what is substituted which justice looks at.

The following extract from Samuel Hopkins (System of Doctrine in Works 1.321) enforces this truth:

The mediator did not suffer precisely the same kind of pain, in all respects, which the sinner suffers when the curse is executed on him. He did not suffer that particular kind of pain which is the necessary attendant or natural consequence of being a sinner and which none but the sinner can suffer. But this is only a circumstance of the punishment of sin and not of the essence of it. The whole penalty of the law may be suffered, and the evil may be as much and as great, without suffering that particular sort of pain. Therefore, Christ, though without sin, might suffer the whole penalty, that is, as much and as great evil as the law denounces against transgression.

Second, the penalty substituted must be endured by a person who is not himself already indebted to justice and who is not a subject of the government under which the substitution takes place. If he be himself a criminal, he cannot of course be a substitute for a criminal. And if he be an innocent person, yet owes all his own service to the government, he cannot do a work of supererogation such as is implied in vicarious satisfaction. An earthly state could not righteously allow an innocent citizen to die for another, even if he were willing so to die, because there are claims upon the person and life of every citizen which must go undischarged if his life should be taken. These are the claims of family, of society, of the commonwealth, and of God. Says Owen (Person of Christ, 16):

It is impossible that by anything a man can do well he should make satisfaction for anything he has done ill. For what he so does is due in and for itself. And to suppose that satisfaction can be made for a former fault, by that whose omission would have been another fault had the former never been committed, is madness. An old debt cannot be discharged with ready money for new commodities; nor can past injuries be compensated by present duties which we are anew obliged unto.

Says Anselm (Why the God-Man? 1.20), "When you pay back something that you owe to God you ought not to reckon this as counting toward the debt that you owe for sin. For you owe everything to God." The words of the Jewish elders to Christ respecting the Roman centurion illustrate the point under consideration. They besought Christ to heal his servant, saying that the centurion was worthy of such a favor: "For he loves our nation, and he has built us a synagogue" (Luke 7:5). The centurion had acquired merit, because as a Roman citizen he was under no obligation to build a Jewish synagogue.

The sufferings of Christ meet all these conditions. First, they were penal in their nature and intent, since they were neither calamitous nor disciplinary. They were a judicial infliction voluntarily endured by Christ for the purpose of satisfying the claims of law due from man; and this purpose makes them penal: "It pleased the Lord to bruise him. He was wounded for our transgressions" (Isa. 53:5, 10); "Christ was made a curse for us" (Gal. 2:13); "no man takes my life from me, but I lay it down of myself" (John 10:17–18).

Some writers, while defending the doctrine of vicarious atonement, object to applying the terms penal and penalty to Christ's sufferings. Magee (Atonement, diss. 13) does so:

The idea of punishment cannot be abstracted from guilt. Christ's sufferings are a judicial infliction and may perhaps be figuratively denominated punishment, if thereby be implied a reference to the actual transgressor and be understood that suffering which was due to the offender himself and which if inflicted upon him would then take the name of punishment. In no other sense can the suffering inflicted on account of the transgressions of another be called a punishment.

Ebrard (quoted by Van Oosterzee 2.603, who agrees with Ebrard) says: "If I endure the infliction due to another instead of him, this suffering which for him would have had the moral quality of a punishment has not the moral quality of a punishment for me, because I am an innocent person. For the idea of a punishment contains, besides the objective element of suffering inflicted by the judge, also in addition the subjective element of the sense of guilt or an evil conscience possessed by the guilty." This last assertion is the point in dispute. Does the idea of a punishment "contain, besides the objective element of suffering inflicted by the judge, also the subjective element of the sense of guilt?" The question is whether the simple purpose and aim of the suffering in a given instance is sufficient to constitute it punishment. If a person suffers with a view to satisfy the claims of law, be he guilty himself or not, is this a "penal" suffering? Is such a "judicial infliction," as Magee calls it, properly denominated "penalty?" Does the existence of the objective element alone, apart from the subjective element, in the case of suffering for the purpose of atonement for sin, warrant the use of the terms penal and penalty? There are three reasons why it does. (a) There is no other term but this by which to designate a suffering that is endured for the sole purpose of satisfying justice. It cannot be denominated either calamity or chastisement. (b) When a commercial debt is vicariously paid by a friend of the debtor, it is as truly a "payment" as if paid personally, and the term payment is applied to it in the strict sense of the word. But if there is no valid objection to denominating the vicarious satisfaction of a pecuniary claim a "payment," there is none to denominating the vicarious satisfaction of a moral claim a "punishment." (c) A third reason for the use of the term punishment or penalty in this connection is found in the use of the corresponding term atonement. No objection is made to calling Christ's suffering an atonement. But atonement and punishment are kindred in meaning. Both alike denote judicial suffering. There is, consequently, no more reason for insisting that the term punishment be restricted to personal endurance of suffering for personal transgression than there would be in insisting that the term atonement be restricted to personal satisfaction for personal sin. But the vicarious sufferings of Christ are as truly an atonement for sin as would be the personal sufferings of the sinner himself and are as freely called so. It is as proper, therefore, to denominate Christ's suffering a vicarious punishment as to denominate it a vicarious atonement. The objection of Magee and Ebrard is met by the qualifying term vicarious, invariably joined with the term punishment when Christ's sufferings are denominated a punishment. No one asserts that they were a "personal" punishment. Anselm (Why the God-Man? 1.15) marks the difference by denominating the infliction when laid upon the sinner poena129 and when laid upon the substitute satisfactio.

Second, the vicarious sufferings of Christ were infinite in value. In the substitution, the amount is fully equal to that of the original penalty. A smaller suffering, an inferior atonement, was not put in the place of a greater and superior. The worth of any suffering is determined by the total subject who suffers, not by the particular nature in the subject which is the seat of the suffering. Physical suffering in a brute is not so valuable as it is in a man, because a brute has only an animal nature, while a man has an animal united with a rational nature. Yet the nature which is the sensorium or seat of the physical pain is the same in both cases. But one hour of human suffering through the physical sentiency is worth more than days of brutal suffering through the physical sentiency, as "one hour of Europe is worth a cycle of Cathay." When animal life and organization suffer in a man's person, the agony is human and rational. It is high up the scale. It has the dignity and greatness of degree which pertain to man. But when animal life and organization suffer in an ox or a dog, the agony is brutal and irrational. It is low down the scale. It has nothing of the worth and dignity that belong to the physical agony of the martyr and confessor. To apply this reasoning to the case before us: When a human nature suffers in an ordinary human person, the suffering is human and rational but finite. No mere man's suffering can be infinite in value because the total subject or person is finite. Whatever a man suffers in either of his natures, body or mind, gets its value from his personality. Measured by this, it is limited suffering. But when a human nature suffers in a theanthropic person, the suffering is divine and infinite because of the divinity and infinity of such a person. The suffering of the human nature, in this instance, is elevated and dignified by the union of the human nature with the divine, just as the suffering of an animal nature in an ordinary man is elevated and dignified by the union of the animal nature with the rational. The suffering of a mere man is human; but the suffering of a God-man is divine. Yet the divine nature is not the sensorium or seat of the suffering in the instance of the God-man, any more than the rational nature is the sensorium or seat of the suffering in the instance of physical suffering in the man. A man's immaterial soul is not burned when he suffers human agony in martyrdom, and the impassible essence of God was not bruised and wounded when Jesus Christ suffered the divine agony. Hence it is said that Christ "suffered in the flesh," that is, in his human nature (1 Pet. 4:1).

It has been objected that the sufferings of Christ, not being endless, cannot be of equal value with those of all mankind. But when carefully examined and strictly computed, they will be found to exceed in value and dignity the sufferings for which they were substituted. The suffering of the God-man during a section of time is more exactly and mathematically infinite than would be the suffering of the human race in endless time. The so-called infinitude of human suffering is derived from the length of its duration, not from the dignity of the sufferer. It is the suffering of a finite creature in a duration that is eternal only a parte post. This would not yield strict eternity. The suffering of the whole human race in an endless duration would, consequently, be only relatively infinite. But the vicarious suffering of the God-man obtains its element of infinitude from the person, not from the duration. And this person is absolutely, not relatively infinite. The suffering of an absolutely infinite person in a finite duration is, therefore, a greater suffering in degree and dignity than is the suffering of a multitude of finite persons in an endless but not strictly infinite time. God incarnate is a greater being and a greater sufferer than all mankind collectively; and his crucifixion involved a greater guilt upon the part of the perpetrators and a more stupendous sacrifice than would the crucifixion of the entire human family. "If," inquires Anselm (Why the God-Man? 2.14) of his pupil Boso, "that God-man were here present before you, and (you having a full knowledge of his nature and character) it should be said, Unless you slay that person, the whole world and the whole created universe will perish, would you put him to death in order to preserve the whole creation?" To this question the pupil makes answer, "I would not, even if an infinite number of worlds were spread out before me."

Another proof that the vicarious work of Christ is of greater value in satisfying the claims of the divine law than would be the endless punishment of the whole human race is the fact that Christ not only suffered the penalty but obeyed the precept of the law. In this case, law and justice get their whole dues. But when lost man only suffers the penalty but does not obey the precept, the law is defrauded of a part of its dues. No law is completely obeyed if only its penalty is endured. The law does not give its subjects an option either to obey or to suffer punishment. It does not say to them, "If you will endure the penalty, you need not keep the precept." It requires obedience primarily and principally; and then it also requires suffering in case of disobedience. But this suffering does not release from the primary obligation to obey. The law still has its original and indefeasible claim on the transgressor for a sinless obedience, at the very time that it is exacting the penalty of disobedience from him. Consequently, a sinner can never completely and exhaustively satisfy the divine law, however much or long he may suffer, because he cannot at one and the same time endure the penalty and obey the precept. He "owes ten thousand talents and has nothing wherewith to pay" (Matt. 18:24). But Christ did both; and therefore he "magnified the law and made in honorable" (Isa. 42:21) in an infinitely higher degree than the whole human family would have done, had they all personally suffered for their sins (cf. Edwards, Redemption in Works 1.406).

Third, the vicarious sufferings of Christ were not due from him as from a guilty person. He was innocent, and retributive justice had no claims upon him. What he voluntarily suffered could, therefore, inure to the benefit of another than himself. The active obedience of Christ was also a work of supererogation, as well as his passive obedience. For although his human nature as such owed obedience, yet it owed only a human and finite obedience. But the obedience which the mediator actually rendered to the moral law was not that of a mere man, but of a God-man. It was theanthropic obedience, not merely human. As such, it was divine and infinite. It could, therefore, like the passive obedience of an innocent person, inure to the benefit of another and earn for him a title to eternal life and reward. And, last, the God-man, not being a mere creature, but also the Creator and Lord of all things, could rightfully dispose of himself and his agency as he pleased. He asserted this sovereign lordship over himself: "No man takes my life from me, but I lay it down of myself: I have power and authority (exousian) to lay it down, and I have power to take it again" (John 10:18).

The above-mentioned grounds and reasons for the substitution of penalty abundantly demonstrate its harmony with the principles of law and justice; but should they still be disputed, the whole question may be quickly disposed of by asking, Who objects? Objections to any method of administering a government can be urged only by some party whose rights and claims have been disregarded or trampled upon. In the instance of the vicarious atonement of the Son of God, no objection is raised by God the Father, for he officially proposed and planned the method. No objection is raised by God the Son, for he not only consents to be a party in the transaction, but to be the sacrificial victim required by it. And no objection is raised by God the Spirit, for he likewise is a party in the transaction and cooperates in its execution and application. This substitution of penalty is, therefore, a method devised and authorized by the entire Godhead. It is a trinitarian transaction. Nothing is urged against it from this quarter.

And when we pass from the divine being to angels and men and ask for objections from one having real grounds of complaint, there must be of course a dead silence. No angelic or human rights have been interfered with. Objections to the method of vicarious atonement from the world of mankind especially would be not merely unthankful but absurd. That the criminal, who has no claims at all before the law which he has transgressed and under whose eternal condemnation he lies in utter helplessness, that the criminal in whose behalf eternal pity has laid down its own life should object to the method, would deserve not only no reply, but everlasting shame and contempt.

Extent of the Atonement

Having considered the nature and value of Christ's atonement, we are prepared to consider its extent.

Some controversy would have been avoided upon this subject had there always been a distinct understanding as to the meaning of words. We shall therefore first of all consider this point. The term extent has two senses in English usage. It has a passive meaning and is equivalent to value. The "extent" of a man's farm means the number of acres which it contains. The "extent" of a man's resources denotes the amount of property which he owns. In this signification of the word, the "extent" of Christ's atonement would be the intrinsic and real value of it for purposes of judicial satisfaction. In this use of the term, all parties who hold the atonement in any evangelical meaning would concede that the "extent" of the atonement is unlimited. Christ's death is sufficient in value to satisfy eternal justice for the sins of all mankind. If this were the only meaning of "extent," we should not be called upon to discuss it any further. For all that has been said under the head of the nature and value of the atonement would answer the question is the extent of the atonement?" Being an infinite atonement, it has an infinite value.

The word also has an active signification. It denotes the act of extending. The "extent" of the atonement, in this sense, means its personal application to individuals by the Holy Spirit. The extent is now the intent. The question "what is the extent of the atonement?" now means: To whom is the atonement effectually extended? The inquiry now is not: What is the value of the atonement? but: To whom does God purpose to apply its benefits?

The active signification is the earlier meaning of the word in English literature. The following are a few out of many instances in which "extent" means extending or putting to use:

Let my officers of such a nature,

Make an extent upon his house and lands.

—Shakespeare, As You Like It 3.1

Let thy fair wisdom, not thy passion, sway

In this uncivil and unjust extent

Against thy peace.

—Shakespeare, Twelfth Night 4.1

But both his hands, most filthy feculent,

Above the water were on high extent,

And fayned to wash themselves incessantly;

Yet nothing cleaner were for such intent.

—Spenser, Faery Queen 2.7

Second him

In his dishonest practices; but when

This manor is extended to my use,

You'll speak in an humble way and sue for favor.

—Massinger, New Way to Pay Old Debts 4.1

The rule of Solon, concerning the territory of Athens is not extendible unto all; allowing the distance of six foot unto common trees, and nine for the fig and olive.

—Browne, Cyrus's Garden 4

The following are examples of the use of the term in the active signification in the older theologians and doctrinal statements:

The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extends or withholds mercy as he pleases, to pass by. (Westminster Confession 3.7)

According to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, God extends or withholds favor as he pleases. (Westminster Larger Catechism 13)

In these passages, to "extend" mercy means to effectually apply Christ's redemption, not merely to offer it, because in the latter sense God does not "withhold" mercy from any man. "Is grace impaired in its extent? We affirm it to be extended to everyone that is or was or ever shall be delivered from the pit" (Owen, Against Universal Redemption 4.7). Here, to "extend" grace is to actually save the soul by effectual calling.

In modern English, the term extent is so generally employed in the passive signification of value that the active signification has become virtually obsolete and requires explanation. Writers upon the "extent" of the atonement have sometimes neglected to consider the history of the word, and misunderstanding has arisen between disputants who were really in agreement with each other.

Accordingly, in answering the question as to the "extent" of Christ's atonement, it must first be settled whether "extent" means its intended application or its intrinsic value, whether the active or the passive signification of the word is in the mind of the inquirer. If the word means value, then the atonement is unlimited; if it means applying, then the atonement is limited.

The dispute also turns upon the meaning of the preposition for. One theologian asserts that Christ died "for" all men, and another denies that Christ died "for" all men. There may be a difference between the two that is reconcilable, and there may be an irreconcilable difference. The preposition for denotes an intention of some kind. If, in the case under consideration, the intention is understood to be the purpose on the part of God both to offer and apply the atonement by working faith and repentance in the sinner's heart, by the operation of the Holy Spirit, then he who affirms that Christ died "for" all men is in error, and he who denies that Christ died "for" all men holds the truth. These two parties are irreconcilable.

But he who asserts that Christ died "for" all men may understand the intention signified by the preposition to be the purpose on the part of God only to offer the atonement, leaving it to the sinner whether it shall be appropriated through faith and repentance. The intention, in this latter case, does not include so much as in the former, and the preposition is narrower in meaning. When the word for is thus defined, the difference between the two parties is reconcilable. The latter means by for "intended for offer or publication"; the former means "intended for application."

Again, the preposition for is sometimes understood to denote not intention, but value or sufficiency. To say that Christ died "for" all men then means that his death is sufficient to expiate the guilt of all men. Here, again, the difference is possibly reconcilable between the parties. The one who denies that Christ died "for" all men takes "for" in the sense of intention to effectually apply. The other who affirms that Christ died "for" all men takes "for" in the sense of value. As to the question "which is the most proper use of the word for?" it is plain that it more naturally conveys the notion of intention than of sufficiency or value. If it be said to a person, "This money is for you," he does not understand merely that it is sufficient in value to pay his debt, but that it actually inures to his benefit in paying it. In the scriptural statement that Christ "gave himself a ransom for all" (1 Tim. 2:6), if the word for be made to denote value, so that the text reads, Christ "gave himself a ransom sufficient for all," a circumlocution is introduced. The preposition for does not express the idea of sufficiency or value directly, but through an explanation; but it expresses the idea of intention immediately and without circumlocution. And this agrees better with the term ransom, which denotes subjective redemption rather than objective satisfaction. This remark applies to such a text as that Christ "tasted death for every man" (Heb. 2:9), which is explained by "many sons" in 2:10. If we interpolate and say that Christ tasted a death that is sufficient for every man, we indeed state a truth, but we inject into the preposition for a larger meaning than accords with the strictly idiomatic use of it.

The distinction between the "sufficiency" of the atonement and its "extent" in the sense of "intent" or effectual application is an old and well-established one. It is concisely expressed in the dictum that Christ died "sufficiently for all, but efficiently only for the elect." The following extracts from Owen (Against Universal Redemption 4.1) illustrate it:

It was the purpose and intention of God that his Son should offer a sacrifice of infinite worth, value, and dignity, sufficient in itself for the redeeming of all and every man, if it had pleased the Lord to employ it for that purpose; yea, and of other worlds, also, if the Lord should freely make them and would redeem them. Sufficient we say, then, was the sacrifice of Christ for the redemption of the whole world and for the expiation of all the sins of all and every man in the world. This is its own true internal perfection and sufficiency; that it should be applied unto any, made a price for them, and become beneficial to them, according to the worth that is in it, is external to it, does not arise from it, but merely depends upon the intention and will of God. It was in itself of infinite value and sufficiency to have been made a price to have bought and purchased all and every man in the world. That it did formally become a price for any is solely to be ascribed to the purpose of God intending their purchase and redemption by it. The intention of the offerer and acceptor that it should be for such, some, or any is that which gives the formality of a price unto it; this is external. But the value and fitness of it to be made a price arises from its own internal sufficiency.

In respect to the phrase ransom price for all (1 Tim. 2:6), Owen remarks that it must be understood to mean that Christ's blood was sufficient to be made a ransom for all, to be made a price for all; but that the terms ransom and ransom price more properly denote the application than the value of Christ's sacrifice. He adds that "the expression to die for any person holds out the intention of our Savior in the laying down of the price, to be their Redeemer."

Atonement must be distinguished from redemption. The latter term includes the application of the atonement. It is the term redemption, not atonement, that is found in those statements that speak of the work of Christ as limited by the decree of election. In Westminster Confession 8.8 it is said that "to all those for whom Christ has purchased redemption, he does certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same." In 8.5 it is stated that "the Lord Jesus has purchased not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father has given unto him." Since redemption includes reconciliation with God and inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, it implies something subjective in the soul: an appropriation by faith of the benefits of Christ's objective work of atonement. Reconciliation and inheritance of heaven are elements and parts of redemption and are limited to those who have believed; and those who have believed are those who have been called and chosen: "Faith is the gift of God" (Eph. 2:9); "you believed, even as the Lord gave to every man" (1 Cor. 3:5); "as many as were ordained to eternal life believed" (Acts 13:48). Accordingly the Scriptures limit redemption, as contradistinguished from atonement, to the church. Christ "makes reconciliation for the sins of his people" (Heb. 2:17). His work is called "the redemption of the purchased possession" (Eph. 1:14). He is "the mediator of the New Testament, that by means of his death they which are called might receive an eternal inheritance" (Heb. 9:15). He "has visited and redeemed his people" (Luke 1:68). David, addressing Jehovah, says, "Remember your congregation which you have purchased of old, the rod of your inheritance which you have redeemed" (Ps. 74:2). The elders of Ephesus are commanded to "feed the church of God which he has purchased with his own blood" (Acts 20:28). "He sent redemption unto his people" (Ps. 111:9). "O Israel, fear not; for I have redeemed you" (Isa. 43:1). "He shall save his people from their sins" (Matt. 1:21). Christ is "the Savior of his body the church" (Eph. 5:23). "He said, surely they are my people: so he was their Savior" (Isa. 63:8). "I will save my people from the east country and from the west country" (Zech. 8:7). See the Old Testament passages in which Jehovah is called the Savior of Israel and the New Testament passages in which God is called "our Savior," that is, of the church.

Since redemption implies the application of Christ's atonement, universal or unlimited redemption cannot logically be affirmed by any who hold that faith is wholly the gift of God and that saving grace is bestowed solely by election. The use of the term redemption, consequently, is attended with less ambiguity than that of "atonement," and it is the term most commonly employed in controversial theology. Atonement is unlimited, and redemption is limited. This statement includes all the scriptural texts: those which assert that Christ died for all men, and those which assert that he died for his people. He who asserts unlimited atonement and limited redemption cannot well be misconceived. He is understood to hold that the sacrifice of Christ is unlimited in its value, sufficiency, and publication, but limited in its effectual application. But he who asserts unlimited atonement and denies limited redemption might be understood to hold either of three views: (1) The doctrine of the universalist that Christ's atonement, per se, saves all mankind; (2) the doctrine of the Arminian that personal faith in Christ's atonement is necessary to salvation, but that faith depends partly upon the operation of the Holy Spirit and partly upon the decision of the sinful will; or (3) the doctrine of the school of Saumur (hypothetic universalism) that personal faith in Christ's atonement in the first arrangement of God depended in part upon the decision of the sinful will, but since this failed, by a second arrangement it now depends wholly upon the work of the Spirit, according to the purpose of election. (supplement 6.2.9.)

The tenet of limited redemption rests upon the tenet of election, and the tenet of election rests upon the tenet of the sinner's bondage and inability. Soteriology here runs back to theology, and theology runs back to anthropology. Everything in the series finally recurs to the state and condition of fallen man. The answer to the question "how is the atonement of Christ savingly appropriated?" depends upon the answer to the question "how much efficient power is there in the sinful will to savingly trust in it?" If the answer be that there is efficient power, either wholly or in part, in the sinful will itself to believe, then faith is either wholly or in part from the sinner himself and is not wholly the gift of God (which is contrary to Eph. 2:8) and justification does not depend wholly upon electing grace (which is contrary to 1 Pet. 1:2) and redemption is not limited. But if the answer be that there is not efficient power in the sinful will itself, either wholly or in part, to savingly believe, then faith is wholly the gift of God, is wholly dependent upon his electing grace, and redemption is limited by election, as is taught in 1 Cor. 3:5: "Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, by whom you believed, even as the Lord gave to every man"; and in Rom. 9:16: "It is not of him that wills nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy." (supplement 6.2.10.)

The difference between the Calvinist and the Arminian appears at this point. Both are evangelical in affirming that salvation is solely by faith in Christ's atoning blood. This differentiates them from the legal Socinian, who denies the doctrine of vicarious atonement and founds salvation from condemnation on personal character and good works. But they differ regarding the origin of faith. The Calvinist maintains that faith is wholly from God, being one of the effects of regeneration; the Arminian, that it is partly from God and partly from man. The Calvinist asserts that a sinner is unconditionally elected to the act of faith and that the Holy Spirit in regeneration inclines and enables him to the act, without cooperation and assistance from him. The Arminian asserts that a sinner is conditionally elected to the act of faith and that the Holy Spirit works faith in him with some assistance and cooperation from him. This cooperation consists in ceasing to resist and yielding to the operation of the Spirit. In this case, the Holy Spirit does not overcome a totally averse and resisting will, which is the Calvinistic view, but he influences a partially inclining will.

The Calvinist contends that unconditional election and total inability agree best with the scriptural representations and that the Arminian really adopts them when he sings with Charles Wesley:

Other refuge have I none,

Hangs my helpless soul on thee.

Conditional election is inconsistent with the biblical texts which describe God as independent and sovereign in bestowing faith and salvation. It is no sufficient reply to say that plenary ability to appropriate the atonement of Christ is not attributed to the fallen soul, but only a partial ability, that it is not contended that sinful man can exercise faith in the atonement without any aid at all from God, but only that he can and must contribute a certain degree of voluntary power which if united with that of God the Spirit will produce faith and that the exercise of this is the condition of election. This position of partial ability or synergism comes to the same result with that of plenary ability, so far as divine independence and sovereignty are concerned. For it is this decision of the sinner to contribute his quota, to "do his part" in the transaction, which conditions the result. It is indeed true, upon this theory, that if God does not assist the act of faith is impossible; but it is equally true, that if the sinner does not assist the act of faith is impossible. Neither party alone and by himself can originate faith in Christ's atonement. God is as dependent in this respect as man. In this case, therefore, it cannot be said that faith depends wholly upon the divine purpose or that redemption is regulated and limited by election.

The middle theory of partial ability and conditional election is found in the Greek anthropology and the Semipelagian fathers generally and is opposed by Calvin (3.24.1) as follows:

The proposition of Paul, "It is not of him that wills nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy," is not to be understood in the sense of those who divide saving power between the grace of God and the will and exertion of man; who indeed say that human desires and endeavors have no efficacy of themselves unless they are rendered successful by the grace of God, but also maintain that with the assistance of his blessing these things have their share in procuring salvation. To refute their views, I prefer Augustine's words to my own: "If the apostle only meant that it is not of him that wills or of him that runs, without the assistance of the merciful Lord, we may retort the converse proposition, that it is not of mercy alone without the assistance of willing and running. But it is certain that the apostle ascribes everything to the Lord's mercy and leaves nothing to our wills or exertions."

Again (3.24.13), Calvin marks the difference between Augustine and Chrysostom in the following terms:

Let us not hesitate to say with Augustine that God could convert to good the will of the wicked, because he is omnipotent. Why then does he not? Because he would not. Why he would not remains with himself. For we ought not to aim at more wisdom than becomes us. That would be much better than adopting the evasion of Chrysostom "that God draws those who are willing and who stretch out their hands for his aid," so that the difference may not appear to consist in the decree of God, but in the will of man.

Luther took the same ground with Calvin:

Some allege that the Holy Spirit works not in those that resist him, but only in such as are willing and give consent thereto, whence it follows that free will is a cause and helper of faith and that consequently the Holy Spirit does not alone work through the word, but that our will does something therein. But I say it is not so; the will of man works nothing at all in his conversion and justification; non est efficiens causa justificationis sed materialis tantum. It is the matter on which the Holy Spirit works (as a potter makes a pot out of clay), equally in those that resist and are averse, as in St. Paul. But after the Holy Spirit has wrought in the wills of such resistants, then he also manages that the will be consenting thereunto. (Table Talk: Of Free Will)

In saying that Christ's atonement is limited in its application and that redemption is particular not universal, it is meant that the number of persons to whom it is effectually applied is a fixed and definite number. The notion of definiteness, not of smallness, is intended. In common speech, if anything is "limited," it is little and insignificant in amount. This is not the idea when the redemptive work of Christ is denominated a "limited" work. The circle of election and redemption must indeed be a circumference, but not necessarily a small one. No man is redeemed outside of the circle. All the sheep must be within the fold. But the circle is that of the heavens, not of the earth. The fold is that of the Great Shepherd, not that of an undershepherd. The biblical representation is to this effect: "Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory" (Matt. 6:13); "Christ must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet" (1 Cor. 15:25); "the Lord has prepared his throne in the heavens and his kingdom rules over all" (Ps. 103:21); "the tabernacle of God is with men, and they shall be his people" (Rev. 21:3); "the angel having the everlasting gospel to preach to every nation, kindred, and tongue" (14:6); "the voice of a great multitude and as the voice of many waters" (19:6); the new Jerusalem "lies foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth" (21:16); "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound" (Rom. 5:20); chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands upon thousands" (Ps. 68:17).

Although Christ's atonement, in the discussion of its value and sufficiency, can be separated from the intention to apply it, yet in the divine mind and decree the two things are inseparable. The atonement and its application are parts of one covenant of redemption between the Father and Son. The sacrifice of Christ is offered with the intention that it shall actually be successful in saving human souls from death. It is not rational to suppose that God the Father merely determined that God the Son should die for the sin of the world, leaving it wholly or in part to the sinful world to determine all the result of this stupendous transaction, leaving it wholly or in part to the sinful world to decide how many or how few this death should actually save. Neither is it rational to suppose that the Son of God would lay down his life upon such a peradventure; for it might be that not a single human soul would trust in his sacrifice, and in this case he would have died in vain. On the contrary, it is most rational to suppose that in the covenant between the Father and Son, the making of an atonement was inseparably connected with the purpose to apply it: the purpose, namely, to accompany the atoning work of the Son with the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. The divine Father in giving the divine Son as a sacrifice for sin simultaneously determined that this sacrifice should be appropriated through faith by a definite number of the human family, so that it might be said that Christ died for this number with the distinct intention that they should be personally saved by this death.

This is taught in Scripture: "The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" (John 10:15); "greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (15:13); "being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation; and not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad" (11:51–52); "Christ loved the church and gave himself for it" (Eph. 5:25). The annunciation to Joseph respecting the miraculous conception described the Savior as one who "should save his people from their sins" (Matt. 1:21). Furthermore, in accordance with this fact of an intention to apply the atonement at the time when the atonement is provided, we find that believers are said to have been "chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world" (Eph. 1:4); that they have been given to Christ by the Father (John 10:29); that Christ knows them as so given (10:27); that he claims them as his sheep before they have actually believed and even before they have been born, saying, "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold, them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one flock (poimnē) and one shepherd" (10:16). And when Paul was at Corinth, Christ encouraged his apostle to continue his labors, notwithstanding that little success had thus far attended them, by saying, "I have much people in this city" (Acts 18:9).

That the atonement in the mind of God was inseparable from his purpose to apply it to individuals is proved by the following:

1. The fact that atonement in and by itself, separate from faith, saves no soul. Christ might have died precisely as he did, but if no one believed in him he would have died in vain. Hence it is said that "God has set forth Christ to be a propitiation through faith in his blood" (Rom. 3:25). It is only when the death of Christ has been actually confided in as an atonement that it is completely "set forth" as God's propitiation for sin. In like manner, Christ is said to have been "delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification" (4:25). If Christ had not risen from the dead, he could not have been believed in. A dead and buried Christ could not have been an object of personal trust and confidence. Consequently, although it was the suffering and death of Christ, and not his resurrection and exaltation, that properly constitutes the atoning sacrifice, yet this sacrifice in itself and apart from its vital appropriation is useless. In order therefore to man's justification, Christ must not only be delivered to death for offenses, but raised again from death so that he might be an object of faith. Says Owen (Justification, 9):

It cannot be said that Christ's satisfaction was made in such a way as to render it uncertain whether it should save or not. Such an arrangement might be just in pecuniary payments. A man may lay down a sum of money for the discharge of another, on such a condition as may never be fulfilled. For on the failure of the condition, his money may and ought to be returned to him; whereupon, he has received no injury or damage. But in penal suffering for crime and sin, there can be no righteous arrangement that shall make the event and efficacy of it to depend on a condition absolutely uncertain, and which may not be fulfilled. For if the condition fail, no recompense can be made to him that has suffered. Wherefore the application of the satisfaction of Christ unto them for whom it was made is sure and steadfast in the purpose of God.

2. If in the mind of God the death of Christ was separate from the intention to apply it, then it would be as true that Christ died for lost angels as for lost men; because his atonement, being infinite, is sufficient in value to atone for their sin as well as that of mankind. When it is said that Christ died for the sin of the world, it is implied that he did not die for any sin but that of man. The offer of Christ's atonement is confined to the human race and not made to the angelic world. Now as the divine intention accompanies the providing of an atonement in respect to the difference between angels and men, so it accompanies the application of the atonement in respect to the difference between elect and nonelect men. As the atonement of Christ is not intended to be offered to the angels though it is sufficient for them, so it is not intended to be applied to nonelect men though it is sufficient for them.

3. If in the mind of God the purpose that Christ should die had not been accompanied with the purpose that his death should be effective for individuals, the former purpose would have been an unproductive and useless one. It would have accomplished nothing, because of man's unbelief and rejection of the gospel offer. But no purpose of God is unproductive and useless.

4. The analogy of the typical atonement under the Mosaic economy shows that Christ's atonement is intended for application only to believers. The lamb offered by the officiating priest was offered for the particular person who brought it to the priest to be offered. Each man had his own lamb, and there was no lamb that belonged to no one in particular but to everyone indiscriminately.

5. The atoning work of Christ in its intended application is no wider than his intercessory work. He pleads the merit of his death for those to whom the Father purposed to impute it and only for those: "I pray not for the world, but for them which you have given me" (John 17:9). This was Christ's intercessory prayer. He here teaches that he does not discharge the particular office of intercessor for the nonelect (the "world") as distinguished from those whom the Father had given him. It is logical therefore to conclude that he does not discharge the particular office of priest for them.

There are biblical passages which are cited to teach unlimited redemption: Christ "tasted death for every man" (Heb. 2:9); Christ is the "propitiation not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2); Christ "gave himself a ransom for all" (1 Tim. 2:6); the lamb of God "takes away the sins of the world" (John 1:29); "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son" (3:16–17). Respecting this class of passages, the following particulars are to be noticed.

First, Scripture must be explained in harmony with Scripture. Texts that speak of the universal reference of Christ's death must, therefore, be interpreted in such a way as not to exclude its special reference: "God is the Savior of all men, specially of those that believe" (1 Tim. 4:10); Christ "makes reconciliation for the sins of his people" (Heb. 2:17); "Christ is the Savior of his body, the church" (Eph. 5:23); Christ "has visited and redeemed his people" (Luke 1:68); Christ "gives his life a ransom for many" (Matt. 20:28); "Jesus shall save his people from their sins" (1:21; cf. Ps. 74:2; 111:9; Isa. 63:8; Matt. 26:28; Heb. 9:28).

Second, the word world in Scripture frequently denotes a part of the world viewed as a collective whole and having a distinctive character, as we speak of the scientific or the religious world:

1. Sometimes it is the world of believers, the church. Examples of this use are "the bread of God is he which gives life to the world" (John 6:33, 51); Abraham is "the heir of the world" (Rom. 4:13); "if the fall of them be the riches of the world" (11:12); "if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world" (11:15). In these texts, "church" could be substituted for "world."

2. Sometimes the word world denotes the contrary of the church: "Men of the world" (Ps. 7:14); "the world knew him not" (John 1:10); "the world cannot hate you, but me it hates" (7:7); "I pray not for the world" (14:17, 22, 27; 15:18–19; 16:20, 33; 17:9, 14, 16, 25; 1 Cor. 2:12; 1 John 2:15–17; 3:1; 4:5; 5:4).

3. Sometimes the term world means all mankind, in distinction from the Jews: "This gospel shall be preached in the whole world" (Matt. 26:13); "the field is the world" (13:38); "God so loved the world" (John 3:16); "by wisdom the world knew not God" (1 Cor. 1:21); "reconciled the world unto himself" (2 Cor. 5:19); "propitiation for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2). These texts teach that redemption is intended for all races, classes, and ages of men.

Similarly the word all sometimes has a restricted signification, denoting all of a particular class: "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Cor. 15:22). The "all" in Adam is a larger aggregate than the "all" in Christ, because Scripture teaches that all men without exception are children of Adam and that not all without exception are believers in Christ: "If one died for all, than all died" (2 Cor. 5:14). The "all" here denotes the body of believers, because it is described as "the living" (hoi zōntes; v. 15). "As the judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so the free gift came upon all men unto justification" (Rom. 5:18). The "all" in one instance is described (v. 17) as "receiving abundance of grace," but not in the other.

In 1 Cor. 8:11 the phrase shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died? (and also Heb. 6:4–10; 10:26–30) is a supposition for the sake of argument of something that does not and cannot happen (like 1 Cor. 13:1–3; Gal. 1:8). The influence and natural tendency of the conduct spoken of is to spiritual death. It is not said that the actual result will be the death of the "weak brother." On the contrary, it is said that "God shall hold him up" (Rom. 14:4). In 2 Pet. 2:1 ("denying the Lord that bought them"), the "false teachers" are described according to their own profession, not as they are in the eye of God. They claim to have been bought by the blood of Christ, and yet by their damnable heresies nullify the atonement. Turretin explains the "purchase" in this case, as redemption from the errors of paganism. See verse 20: "Escaped the pollutions of the world." Only the outward call is meant. Turretin defends this by the use in the passage of despotēs instead of sōtēra144 and of agorazein instead of lytrousthai. In 2 Pet. 3:9 ("the Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance"), the will is that of decree, and the reference is to believers only. The Greek shows this: mē boulomenos tinas apolesthai—"not purposing that any should perish." The preceding clause, "long-suffering toward us (eis hēmas)," shows that tinas149 refers to God's children. The true rendering of eis metanoian chōrēsai is "should go on to repentance"—metanoian151 here denoting the process of sanctification or renewing (Eph. 4:23), and chōrēsai a progressive motion or advance (as in Matt. 15:17; 19:12). The passage "what could have been done more unto my vineyard?" (Isa. 5:4) does not teach that God could not realize his desire that all men should "turn and live." It is not the idea of power, but of patience and long-suffering, that is contained in this text. Calvin and Gesenius explain: "What more was there to be done, or was I bound to do?" (Alexander in loco).

Universal Offer of the Atonement

The question arises: If the atonement of Christ is not intended to be universally applied, why should it be universally offered?

The gospel offer is to be made to every man because …

1. It is the divine command (Mark 16:5). God has forbidden his ministers to except any man in the offer.

2. No offer of the atonement is possible but a universal offer. In order to be offered at all, Christ's sacrifice must be offered indiscriminately. A limited offer of the atonement to the elect only would require a revelation from God informing the preacher who they are. As there is no such revelation and the herald is in ignorance on this point, he cannot offer the gospel to some and refuse it to others. In this state of things there is no alternative but to preach Christ to everybody or to nobody.

3. The atonement is sufficient in value to expiate the sin of all men indiscriminately; and this fact should be stated because it is a fact. There are no claims of justice not yet satisfied; there is no sin of man for which an infinite atonement has not been provided: "All things are now ready." Therefore the call to "come" is universal. It is plain that the offer of the atonement should be regulated by its intrinsic nature and sufficiency, not by the obstacles that prevent its efficacy. The extent to which a medicine is offered is not limited by the number of persons favorably disposed to buy it and use it. Its adaptation to disease is the sole consideration in selling it, and consequently it is offered to everybody.

4. God opposes no obstacle to the efficacy of the atonement in the instance of the nonelect. (a) He exerts no direct efficiency to prevent the nonelect from trusting in the atonement. The decree of reprobation is permissive. God leaves the nonelect to do as he likes. (b) There is no compulsion from the external circumstances in which the providence of God has placed the nonelect. On the contrary, the outward circumstances, especially in Christendom, favor instead of hindering trust in Christ's atonement. And so, in a less degree, do the outward circumstances in heathendom: "The goodness, forbearance, and long-suffering of God lead to repentance" (Rom. 2:4; Acts 14:17; 17:26–30). (c) The special grace which God bestows upon the elect does not prevent the nonelect from believing; neither does it render faith any more difficult for him. The nonelect receives common grace, and common grace would incline the human will if it were not defeated by the human will. If the sinner should make no hostile opposition, common grace would be equivalent to saving grace: "You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you do always resist the Holy Spirit" (Acts 7:51); "as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also withstand the truth" (2 Tim. 3:8). See Howe's remarks on common grace (Oracles 2.2.5).

5. The atonement of Christ is to be offered indiscriminately because God desires that every man would believe in it. "God," says Turretin (4.17.33), "delights in the conversion and eternal life of the sinner, as a thing pleasing in itself and congruous with his infinitely compassionate nature, and therefore demands from man as a duty due from him (tanquam officium debitum) to turn if he would live." Substitute in this passage "faith and repentance" for "conversion and eternal life," and it is equally true. It is the divine delight in faith and repentance and the divine desire for its exercise that warrants the offer of the benefits of Christ's atonement to the nonelect. Plainly, the offer of the atonement ought to be regulated by divine desire and not by the aversion of the nonelect. God in offering his own atonement should be guided by his own feeling and not by that of sinful man. Because the nonelect does not take delight in faith and repentance is surely no reason why God, who does take delight in it, should be debarred from saying to him, "Turn, turn, for why will you die?" May not God express his sincere feeling and desire to any except those who are in sympathy with him and have the same species of feeling? If a man has a kind and compassionate nature, it is unreasonable to require that he suppress its promptings in case he sees a proud and surly person who is unwilling to accept a gift. The benevolent nature is unlimited in its desire. It wishes well-being to everybody, and hence its offers are universal. They may be made to a churlish and ill-natured man and be rejected, but they are good and kind offers nevertheless, and they are nonetheless sincere, though they accomplish nothing. (supplement 6.2.11.)

The universal offer of the benefits of Christ's atonement springs out of God's will of complacency: "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his evil way and live" (Ezek. 33:11). God may properly call upon the nonelect to do a thing that God delights in, simply because he does delight in it. Divine desire is not altered by the divine decree of preterition. Though God decides not to overcome by special grace the obstinate aversion which resists common grace, yet his delight in faith and repentance remains the same. His desire for the sinner's faith and repentance is not diminished in the least by the resistance which it meets from the nonelect nor by the fact that for reasons sufficient he does not decide to overcome this resistance.

6. It is the nonelect himself, not God, who prevents the efficacy of the atonement. For the real reason of the inefficacy of Christ's blood is impenitence and unbelief. Consequently, the author of impenitence and unbelief is the author of limited redemption. God is not the cause of a sinner's impenitence and unbelief, merely because he does not overcome his impenitence and unbelief. If a man flings himself into the water and drowns, a spectator upon the bank cannot be called the cause of that man's death. Nonprevention is not causation. The efficient and responsible cause of the suicide is the suicide's free will. In like manner, the nonelect himself, by his impenitence and unbelief, is the responsible cause of the inefficacy of Christ's expiation. God is blameless in respect to the limitation of redemption; man is guilty in respect to it. God is only the indirect and occasional cause of it; man is the immediate and efficient cause of it. This being the state of the case, there is nothing self-contradictory in the universal offer of the atonement upon the part of God. If any of the following suppositions were true, it would be fatal to the universal offer: (a) If at the time of offering Christ's atonement God was actively preventing the nonelect from believing, the offer would be inconsistent. (b) If at the time of offering it God were working upon the will of the nonelect to strengthen his aversion to the atonement, the offer would be inconsistent. (c) If God were the efficient author of that apostasy and sinfulness which enslaves the human will and renders it unable to believe in Christ without special grace, then the offer of the atonement unaccompanied with the offer of special grace would be inconsistent. But none of these suppositions are true.

7. The offer of the atonement is universal because, when God calls upon men universally to believe, he does not call upon them to believe that they are elected or that Christ died for them in particular. He calls upon them to believe that Christ died for sin, for sinners, for the world; that there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby they must be saved; that the blood of Christ cleanses from all sin; and that there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. The atonement is not offered to an individual either as an elect man or as a nonelect man; but as a man and a sinner, simply. Men are commanded to believe in the sufficiency of the atonement, not in its predestinated application to themselves as individuals. The belief that Christ died for the individual himself is the assurance of faith and is more than saving faith. It is the end, not the beginning of the process of salvation. God does not demand assurance of faith as the first act of faith: "Assurance of grace and salvation not being of the essence of faith, true believers may wait long before they obtain it" (Westminster Larger Catechism 81); "in whom, after you believed, you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise" (Eph. 1:13).

8. The atonement is to be offered to all because the preacher is to hope and expect from God the best and not the worst for every man. He is consequently to expect the election of his hearer, rather than his reprobation. The fact of the external call favors election, not reprobation. The external call embraces the following particulars: (a) hearing the word, (b) religious education by parents and friends, and (c) common grace, experienced in conviction of sin, fear of death and judgment, general anxiety, and dissatisfaction with this life. Upon such grounds as these, the individual is to be encouraged to believe that God's purpose is to elect him rather than to reprobate him. If a person fears that he is of the nonelect, he should be assured rather that he is mistaken in this fear than that he is correct in it; because God has done more for him that tends to his salvation than to his perdition.

9. The atonement is to be offered to all men because even those who shall prove in the day of judgment to be nonelect do yet receive benefits and blessings from it. Turretin (16.14.11) mentions the following benefits: (a) the preaching of the gospel, whereby paganism with its idolatry, superstition, and wretchedness is abolished; (b) the extremes of human depravity are restrained; (c) many temporal blessings and gifts of providence are bestowed (Rom. 2:4; Acts 14:17); (d) punishment is postponed and delayed (Acts 17:30; Rom. 3:25). Says Bates (Eternal Judgment, 2):

The grace of the Redeemer is so far universal that upon his account the indulgent providence of God invited the heathen to repentance. His renewed benefits that sweetened their lives (Rom. 2:4) and his powerful patience in forbearing so long to cut them off, when their impurities were so provoking, was a testimony of his inclination to clemency upon their reformation (Acts 14:17). And for their abusing his favors and resisting the methods of his goodness, they will be inexcusable to themselves, and their condemnation righteous to their own conscience. (supplement 6.2.12.)

The reasons for the universal offer of the atonement, thus far, have had reference to God's relation to the offer. They go to show that the act upon his part is neither self-contradictory nor insincere. But there is another class of reasons that have reference to man's relation to the offer. And these we now proceed to mention:

1. The atonement is to be offered to every man because it is the duty of every man to trust in it. The atonement is in this particular like the Decalogue. The moral law is to be preached to every man because it is every man's duty to obey it. The question whether every man will obey it has nothing to do with the universal proclamation of the law. It is a fact that the law will have been preached in vain to many persons, but this is no reason why it should not have been preached to them. They were under obligation to obey it, and this justified its proclamation to them. Still more than this, the moral law should be preached to every man even though no man is able to keep it perfectly in his own strength. The slavery of the human will to sin is no reason why the primary and original duty which the human will owes to God should not be stated and enjoined, because this slavery has been produced by man, not by God. In like manner faith in Christ's atonement should be required as a duty from every man, notwithstanding the fact that "no man can come unto Christ except the Father draw him" (John 6:44); that "faith is not of ourselves, but is the gift of God" (Eph. 2:8); and that Christ is "the author and finisher of faith" (Heb. 12:2). Man's inability without the grace of God to penitently trust in Christ's atonement, being self-caused like his inability to perfectly keep the moral law without the same grace, still leaves his duty in the case binding upon him. The purpose of God to bestow grace is not the measure of man's duty. Neither is the power that man has as fallen the measure of man's duty. Only the power that man had as unfallen and by creation is the measure of it.

2. The offer of Christ's atonement for sin should be universal because it is the most impressive mode of preaching the law. In exhibiting the nature of Christ's sacrifice and its sufficiency to atone for all sin, and especially in showing the necessity of it in order to the remission of any sin whatever, the spirituality and extent of the divine law are presented more powerfully than they can be in any other manner. The offer of the atonement is consequently a direct means of producing a sense of guilt and condemnation, without which faith in Christ is impossible.

3. The offer of the atonement to an unbeliever is adapted to disclose the aversion and obstinacy of his own will. This method of forgiving sin displeases him. It is humbling. If he were invited to make a personal atonement, this would fall in with his inclination. But to do no atoning work at all and simply to trust in the atoning work of another is the most unwelcome act that human pride can be summoned to perform. Belief in vicarious atonement is distasteful and repulsive to the natural man because he is a proud man. When, therefore, a man is informed that there is no forgiveness of sin but through Christ's atonement, that this atonement is ample for the forgiveness of every man, and that nothing but unbelief will prevent any man's forgiveness, his attention is immediately directed to his own disinclination to trust in this atonement and aversion to this method of forgiveness. But this experience is highly useful. It causes him to know his helplessness, even in respect to so fundamental an act as faith. The consequence is that he betakes himself to God in prayer that he may be inclined and enabled to believe (Westminster Larger Catechism 59, 67).

SUPPLEMENTS

6.2.1 (see p. 693). The attempt is sometimes made to illustrate vicarious suffering in grace by what is denominated "vicarious suffering in nature." But the analogy is defective. The two things are different in kind, not merely in degree. A mother's suffering for her child is not substitutionary and has no reference to retributive justice. The following points of difference are evidence: vicariousness in nature (a) is not expiatory, that is, satisfactory of law; (b) does not release another from the obligation to suffer penalty; (c) is sharing suffering with another (the mother suffers with her child; there are two sufferers); and (d) is helping another to bear suffering (the mother assists her child to endure). Vicariousness in grace (a) is expiatory, that is, satisfactory of law; (b) releases another from the obligation to penal suffering; (c) does not share suffering with another, but endures the whole of it (Christ does not suffer together with the sinner, but "treads the winepress alone"); and (d) does not assist the sinner to bear suffering, but suffers in his place. When Christians "bear one another's burdens, such "vicariousness" as this does not release one of them from bearing burdens. It is community and help in enduring a common burden. Neither is suffering because of another—as when poverty and disease are inherited by children from their parents—the same as suffering for another—that is, in his stead for judicial purposes.

6.2.2 (see p. 697). Calvin teaches that forgiveness is the noninfliction of penalty upon the transgressor. He says (3.4.30): "What would Christ have done for us if punishment for sins were still inflicted upon us? For when we say that he 'bore all our sins in his own body on the tree, we intend only that he sustained the punishment which was due to our sins. This is more significantly expressed by Isaiah, when he says that the 'chastisement or correction of our peace was upon him.' Now what is the correction (correctio) of our peace but the punishment due to sins and which we must have suffered before we could be reconciled to God, if he had not become our substitute? Thus we see clearly that Christ bore the punishment of sin that he might deliver his people from it. The passages cited above expressly signify that God receives us into favor on this condition, that in forgiving our guilt he remits all the punishment that we had deserved. And whenever David or the other prophets implore the pardon of their sins, they at the same time deprecate the punishment, and to this they are impelled by an apprehension of divine judgment. Again, when they promise mercy from the Lord, they almost always professedly speak of punishments and the remission of them."

To the same effect Leighton (Lord's Prayer) remarks: "Sin as it is called a debt is taken for the guiltiness of sin, which is to owe the suffering of punishment or an obligement to the curse which the law has pronounced against sin; and because this results immediately from sin, therefore sin is often put for the engagement to punishment; so the apostle's phrase (1 Cor. 15:56) may be taken. So, then, the debt of sin being the tie to punishment which follows upon it, the forgiving of sin can be no other than the acquitting of a man from that curse, setting him free from his debt or his engagement to suffer."

To a superficial glance the position that forgiveness of sin is the remission to the sinner of its penalty by means of its infliction upon Christ as the sinner's substitute seems to favor selfishness and a mechanical view of pardon. The person, it is objected, merely desires deliverance from judicial suffering, and when a vicarious satisfaction of justice is offered to him, he coldly accepts it without any real sorrow for his transgression. It is only a mercantile transaction, like that of the exchange and market generally, with no spiritual affection and gratitude toward God the suffering Redeemer. But this objection supposes that the sinner has no true conception of sin as related to law and justice and no personal interest in the vindication of their claims by penal satisfaction. For if he perceived that the inmost quality of sin is its guilt or desert of penalty, his sorrow over its commission would manifest itself in the desire that it might be punished and in a willingness to undergo the punishment personally, if this would meet the case. The penalty of sin is the righteous retribution of infinite holiness. This is a spiritual evil, and in praying for its remission or release from obligation to endure it, because it has been endured for him by his divine substitute, the penitent sinner has first of all in view the character of God and the nature of justice, and not his own self-interest as shown in a mere wish to escape pain. If he recognizes first of all the punitive demands of righteousness and holiness and is so desirous that they should be satisfied that he would willing meet them by his own suffering, if this were possible, this is the highest proof of the sincerity of his sorrow over his disobedience. When the sinner, in the scriptural phrase, "accepts the punishment of his iniquity" (Lev. 26:41), he acknowledges its desert of penalty, and then pardon is for him both "the merciful and the just" (Rom. 3:26; 1 John 1:9) release of penalty by means of the vicarious endurance of it by his incarnate and suffering Savior. This objection to the Old Testament idea of pardon arises from adopting different ideas of sin and justice from those of the Old Testament. If sin is not guilt or obligation to punishment and if the satisfaction of justice is not inexorably necessary, then mercy is not the vicarious endurance of punishment for the sinner and pardon is not the remission of penalty.

This subject has obtained from Pearson as clear and concise a statement as can be found in theological literature. It is given in his exposition of article 10 of the Apostles' Creed. Well would it have been if all parties and classes in the English church had adopted respecting the guilt of sin and its remission by means of Christ's vicarious satisfaction for it the explanation of the Bishop of Chester, of whom Burnet (History of His Own Times) remarks that "he was in all respects the greatest divine of his age; a man of great learning, strong reason, and of a clear judgment. His book on the creed is among the best that our church has produced." His explanation is as follows: "The second particular to be considered is the obligation of sin, which must be presupposed to the solution or remission of it. Now every sin does cause a guilt, and every sinner, by being such, becomes a guilty person; which guilt consists in a debt or obligation to suffer a punishment proportionable to the iniquity of the sin. This obligation to suffer penalty for sin is distinct from the commission of sin. The commission of sin ceases with the act, but the obligation to suffer for it never ceases. He who but once committed adultery, at that one time sins and at no time after can be said to commit that particular sin; but the guilt or obligation to suffer punishment for it remains on him still, and he may be said forever to be guilty of adultery, because he is forever liable to the wrath of God and obligated to suffer the punishment due to adultery. This obligation to punishment, which remains after the act of sin, is that reatus peccati of which the schools, and before them the fathers, spoke. The nature of this reatus is excellently declared by St. Augustine, when delivering the distinction between actual and original sin: 'In the case of those persons who are born again in Christ, when they receive an entire remission of all their sins, it is necessary, of course, that the guilt also of the still indwelling concupiscence should be remitted, in order that it should not be imputed to them for sin. For even as in the case of those actual sins which cannot be themselves permanent, since they pass away as soon as they are committed, the guilt or obligation to suffer penalty yet is permanent and if not remitted will remain forevermore; so when concupiscence is remitted, the guilt or obligation to suffer penalty is also taken away. For not to have sin means this, namely, not to be deemed guilty of sin, that is, bound to suffer punishment for it' (Augustine, On Marriage 1.26). This debt or obligation to punishment our blessed Savior thus taught to his disciples: 'Whosoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be liable (obnoxious or bound over) to the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be liable (obnoxious or bound over) to the council; but whosoever shall say, You fool, shall be liable (obnoxious or bound over) to hellfire' (Matt. 5:22). So says our Savior again: 'He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit has never forgiveness, but is in danger of (liable, obnoxious, or bound over to) eternal damnation' (Mark 3:28–29). From all this it appears that after the act of sin is committed and passed by, the guilt or obligation to suffer the affixed penalty resulting from that act remains; that is, the person who committed it continues still a debtor to the vindictive justice of God and is bound to endure the punishment due unto it.

"What, now, is the forgiveness of sin, or in what does remission of sin consist? The forgiveness contains in it a reconciliation of an offended God, without which God cannot be conceived to remit, and a satisfaction unto a just God, without which God is not reconciled. The first of these is taught in the following: 'We are justified gratuitously by his grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood' (Rom. 3:24–25); 'we have an advocate with the Father, and he is the propitiation for our sins' (1 John 2:1); 'God loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins' (4:10). This propitiation amounted to a reconciliation, that is, a kindness after wrath. We must conceive that God was angry with mankind before he determined to give our Savior; we cannot imagine that God, who is essentially just, should not abominate iniquity. The first affection, therefore, which we can conceive in him upon the lapse of man is wrath and indignation. God was most certainly holily angry with mankind before he determined to provide for them a Savior from this anger: 'God commends his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us'; 'when we were without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly'; 'when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son' (Rom. 5:6, 8, 10). Though it be most true that 'God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son' (John 3:16), yet there is no incongruity in this, that a father should be offended with that son whom he loves, and offended with him at the very time that he loves him. Notwithstanding, therefore, that God loved men whom he created, yet he was offended with them when they sinned and gave his Son to suffer for their sin in their stead, that through that Son's suffering he might be reconciled to them. This reconciliation of God is clearly delivered in the Scriptures as wrought by Christ: 'God has reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ' (2 Cor. 5:18); 'we were reconciled unto God by the death of his Son' (Rom. 5:10); 'by him reconciling all things unto himself' (Col. 1:20). In vain is it objected that the Scripture says our Savior reconciled man to God, but nowhere teaches that he reconciled God to man; for, in the language of Scripture, to 'reconcile a man to God' means to reconcile God to man, that is, to cause him who before was angry and offended with a person to be gracious and propitious to him. As the princes of the Philistines spoke of David, 'Wherewith should he reconcile himself unto the master? should it not be with the heads of these men?' (1 Sam. 29:4). Wherewith shall he reconcile Saul, who is highly offended with him; wherewith shall he make him gracious and favorable, but by betraying these men unto him? As our Savior advises, 'If you bring your gift before the altar and there remember that your brother has aught against you, leave there your gift before the altar and go your way, first be reconciled to your brother' (Matt. 5:23–24); that is, reconcile your brother to yourself, whom you have injured; render him by your submission favorable unto you, who has something against you and is offended at you. As the apostle advises the wife that 'departs from her husband to remain unmarried or to be reconciled to her husband' (1 Cor. 7:11), that is, to appease and get the favor of her husband. In the like manner we are said to be reconciled unto God when God is reconciled, appeased, and become gracious and favorable unto us; and Christ is said to reconcile us unto God when he has moved and obtained of God to be reconciled unto us; when he has appeased his holy displeasure and restored us unto his favor.

"Nor is it any wonder God should be thus reconciled to sinners by the death of Christ, who 'while we were yet sinners died for us,' because the punishment which Christ who was our surety endured was a full satisfaction to the justice of God: 'The Son of Man came to give his life a ransom for many' (Matt. 20:28). Now a ransom is a price given to redeem such as are in any way in captivity; anything laid down by way of compensation to take off a bond or obligation, whereby he who before was bound becomes free. All sinners were obligated to undergo such punishments as are proportionate to their sins and were by that obligation captivated and in bonds, and Christ did give his life a ransom for them, and that a proper ransom, if that his life were of any price and given as such. For a ransom is properly something of value given by way of redemption to purchase that which is detained or given for the releasing of that which is enthralled. But it is most evident that the life of Christ was laid down as a price; neither is it more certain that he died than that he bought us: 'You are bought with a price' (1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23). It is the 'Lord who bought us' (2 Pet. 2:1). The price which he paid was his blood; for 'we are not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ' (1 Pet. 1:18–19). Now as it was the blood of Christ, so it was a price given by way of compensation; and as that blood was precious, so was it a full and perfect satisfaction. For as the gravity of the offense and iniquity of the sin is augmented and increases according to the dignity of the person offended and injured by it, so the value, price, and dignity of that which is given by way of compensation is raised according to the dignity of the person making the satisfaction. God is of infinite majesty against whom we have sinned; and Christ is of the same divinity, who gave his life a ransom for sinners; for God 'has purchased his church with his own blood' (Acts 20:28). Although therefore God be said to remit our sins, by which we were bound and captivated to his justice, yet he is never said to remit the price, without which we had never been ransomed and redeemed; neither can he be said to have remitted it, because he did strictly require and receive it.

"If, then, we consider together on the side of man the nature and obligation of sin and on the side of Christ the satisfaction made and the reconciliation wrought, we shall easily perceive how God forgives sins and in what remission of them consists. Man being in all conditions under some law of God, who has sovereign power and dominion over him, and therefore owing absolute obedience to that law, whensoever in any way he transgresses that law or deviates from that rule, he becomes thereby a sinner and contracts a guilt which is an obligation to endure a punishment proportionable to his offense; and God, who is a lawgiver and sovereign, becoming now the party wronged and offended, has a most just right to punish man as an offender. But Christ, taking upon him the nature of man and offering himself a sacrifice for man's sin, gives that unto God for and instead of the eternal death of man, which is more valuable and acceptable to God than that death could be, and so makes a sufficient compensation and full satisfaction for the sins of man; which God accepting becomes reconciled unto us and for the punishment which Christ endured takes off our obligation to eternal punishment. Thus man, who by sinning violated the law of God and by that violation offended God and was thereby obligated to undergo the punishment due unto the sin and to be inflicted by the wrath of God, is by the price of the most precious blood of Christ given and accepted in full compensation and satisfaction for the punishment that was due, restored unto the favor of God, who being thus satisfied and upon such satisfaction reconciled is both 'faithful and just' (1 John 1:9) to take off all obligation to punishment from the sinner; and in this act consists the forgiveness of sins."

6.2.3 (see p. 711). The punishment for suicide, as affixed by Plato (Laws 873), is remarkably like that of the Christian church: "What shall he suffer who slays him who of all men is said to be nearest and dearest to him? I mean the suicide, who deprives himself by violence of his appointed share of life, not because the law of the state compels him nor yet under the compulsion of some painful and inevitable fortune which has come upon him nor because he has had to suffer from irremediable and intolerable shame, but who from indolence or cowardice imposes upon himself an unjust penalty. For him what ceremonies there are to be of purification and burial God knows, and about these the next of kin should inquire of the interpreters and of the laws and do according to their injunctions. Those who meet their death in this way should be buried alone, and none shall be laid by their side; they shall be buried ingloriously in the borders of the twelve portions of the land, in such places as are uncultivated and nameless, and no column or name shall mark the place of their interment."

6.2.4 (see p. 713). Calvin teaches that whenever the believer suffers pain from any cause or source whatever he is not suffering punishment for purposes of law and justice, but corrective chastisement for purposes of self-discipline and spiritual improvement. In 3.4.31–32 he says: "Since it highly concerns us to understand the design of those chastisements with which God corrects our sins, and how greatly they differ from the examples of his indignation pursuing the impious and reprobate, I conceive it will not be unseasonable to give a summary account of them. For the sake of perspicuity let us call one vengeance or vindictive judgment and the other chastisement or disciplinary judgment. In vindictive judgment God is to be contemplated as taking vengeance on his enemies, so as to exert his wrath against them. We consider it, therefore, strictly speaking, to be the vengeance of God when the punishment he inflicts is attended with indignation. In disciplinary judgment he is not so severe as to be angry; nor does he punish in order to destroy or precipitate into perdition. Wherefore it is not properly punishment or vengeance, but correction and admonition. The former is the act of a judge, the latter of a father. For a judge, when he punishes an offender, attends to the crime itself and inflicts punishment according to the nature and aggravations of it. When a father corrects his childwith severity, he does it not to take vengeance or satisfaction of justice, but rather to teach him and render him more cautious for the future. Wherever there is vindictive punishment there is also a manifestation of the curse and wrath of God, which he always withholds from believers. Chastisement, on the contrary, is, as the Scriptures teach, both a blessing of God and a testimony of his love."

6.2.5 (see p. 718). Edwards (Excellency of Christ) thus speaks of the relation of Christ's vicarious sufferings to divine justice and of their being also a manifestation of pity and compassion to the sinner: "Christ never in any act gave so great a manifestation of love to God and at the same time never so manifested his love toward those who were enemies to God as in the act of suffering and dying. The blood of Christ that was sweat out and fell in great drops to the ground in his agony was shed from love to God's enemies and his own. Never did Christ so eminently show his regard to God's honor as in offering up himself a victim to revenging justice to vindicate God's honor; and yet in this, above all, he manifested his love to them that dishonored God so as to bring such guilt upon themselves that nothing less than his blood could atone for it. Revenging justice then spent all its force upon him on account of our guilt that was laid upon him; he was not spared at all; and this was the way and means by which Christ stood up for the honor of God's justice. In this the diverse excellences that meet in the person of Christ appeared, namely, his infinite regard for divine justice and such compassionate love to those that had exposed themselves to it as induced him thus to yield himself a sacrifice to it."

6.2.6 (see p. 722). Paley (sermons on Heb. 9:26 and Rom. 6:1) thus remarks upon the impossibility of man's meriting heaven and of his need of obtaining it through the death of Christ: "Souls which are really laboring and endeavoring after salvation, and with sincerity, are every hour made deeply sensible of the deficiency and imperfection of their endeavors. Had they no ground, therefore, for hope, but merit, that is to say, could they look for nothing more than they should strictly deserve, their prospect would be very unhappy. I see not how they could look for heaven at all. They may form a conception of a virtue and obedience which might seem to be entitled to a high reward; but when they come to review their own performances and to compare them with that conception; when they see how short they have proved of what they ought to have been and how weak and broken were their best offices; they will be the first to confess that it is infinitely for their comfort that they have some other resource than their own righteousness. Their acts of piety and devotion toward God are defective in principle and debased by the mixture of impure motives. They are intermittent, cold, and languid. That heavenly mindedness which ought to be inseparable from religious exercises does not accompany theirs, at least not constantly. Their thankfulness is never what it ought to be, or anything like it. Formality is apt continually to steal upon them in their worship. No man reviews his services toward God but he perceives in them much to be forgiven, much to be excused. That such imperfect services, therefore, should be allowed and accepted is an act of abounding grace and goodness in God who accepts them; and we are taught in Scripture that this much needed grace and goodness abounds toward us through Jesus Christ and particularly through his sufferings and death.

"We shall better see the truth of this if we consider well what salvation is. It is nothing else than, after this life is ended, being placed in a state of happiness ineffably great, both in degree and duration; a state, concerning which the following things are said: 'The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed.' 'God has in store for us such things as pass man's understanding.' It is not simply escaping punishment, simply being excused or forgiven, simply a little compensation for the little good we do, but it is infinitely more. Heaven is infinitely greater than the small reward which natural religion leads the moral pagan to expect. What do the Scriptures call it? 'Glory, honor, immortality, eternal life.' Will anyone contend that salvation in this sense and to this extent; that heaven, namely, eternal life, glory, honor, immortality; that a happiness such as there is no way of describing it but by saying that it surpasses human comprehension; will anyone contend that this is no more than what human virtue deserves, which in its own proper nature and by its own merit it is entitled to look forward to and to receive? The greatest excellence that man ever attained has no such pretensions. The best good action that man ever performed has no claim to this extent or anything like it. It is out of all calculation and comparison and proportion, above and more than any human works can possibly deserve.

"To what, then, are we to ascribe it, that such imperfect endeavors after holiness should procure and that they will in fact procure to those who sincerely exert them, such an immense blessing as 'glory, honor, immortality, eternal life?' The Scriptures attribute it to the free will, the free gift, the love and mercy of God. This alone is the source and fountain and cause of salvation, the origin from which it springs and from which all our hopes of attaining it are derived. The cause is not in ourselves nor in anything we do or can do, but in God, in his goodwill and pleasure. It is in the graciousness of his original offer of mercy. Therefore, whatever shall have moved and excited and conciliated that goodwill and pleasure so as to have procured that offer to be made, or shall have formed any part or portion of the motive from which it was made, may most truly and properly be said to be efficacious in human salvation. And this efficacy is in Scripture attributed to the death of Christ. It is attributed in a variety of ways of expression, but this is the substance of them all. He is a sacrifice, an offering to God, a propitiation, the precious sacrifice foreordained, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, the Lamb which takes away the sin of the world; we are washed in his blood, we are justified by his blood, we are saved from wrath through him, he has once suffered for sins the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. All these terms, and many more that are used, assert in substance the same thing, namely, the efficacy of the death of Christ in the procuring of human salvation; and human salvation we have seen is not simply escaping punishment, but obtaining glory, honor, immortality, and a blessedness such as there is no way of describing it but by saying that it surpasses human comprehension."

Edwards (Justification by Faith Alone) teaches the same truth with Paley, but in more technical terms and in closer connection with systematic theology: "The opponents of the doctrine of the imputation of Christ's active righteousness suppose that there is an absurdity in it. They say that to suppose that God imputes Christ's obedience to us is to suppose that God is mistaken and thinks that we performed that obedience which Christ performed. But why cannot that righteousness be reckoned to our account and be accepted for us without any such absurdity? Why is there any more absurdity in supposing that Christ's obedience of the law is imputed to us than that his penal satisfaction of the law is imputed? If Christ has suffered the penalty of the law for us and in our stead, then it will follow that his suffering that penalty is imputed to us, that is, is accepted for us and in our stead and is reckoned to our account as though we had suffered it. But why may not his obeying the law of God be as rationally reckoned to our account as his suffering the penalty of the law? Why may not a price to bring into debt be as rationally transferred from one person's account to another as a price to pay a debt? There is the very same need of Christ's obeying the law in our stead in order to the reward, as of his suffering the penalty in our stead in order to our escaping the penalty; and the same reason why one should be accepted on our account as the other. One was as requisite to answer the law's demands as the other. The same law that fixes the curse of God as the penalty for not continuing in all things written in the law to do them has as much fixed the doing these things as the antecedent of living by them. There is, therefore, exactly the same need, from the law, of perfect obedience being fulfilled in order to our obtaining the law's reward, namely, heaven, as there is of death's being suffered in order to our escaping the law's punishment, namely, hell; or the same necessity, by the law, of perfect obedience preceding life, as there is of disobedience being succeeded by death."

6.2.7 (see p. 726). The expiation of sin is distinguishable from the pardon of it. The former, conceivably, might take place and the latter not. When Christ died on Calvary, the whole mass, so to speak, of human sin was expiated merely by that death; but the whole mass was not pardoned merely by that death. The claims of law and justice for the sins of the whole world were satisfied by the "offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Heb. 10:10); but the sins of every individual man were not forgiven and "blotted out" by this transaction. Still another transaction was requisite in order to this, namely, the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the sinner working faith in this expiatory offering and the declarative act of God saying "your sin is forgiven you." The Son of God, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, "sat down on the right hand of God" (10:12); but if the redeeming work of the Trinity had stopped at this point, not a soul of mankind would have been pardoned and justified, yet the expiatory value of the "one sacrifice" would have been just the same.

6.2.8 (see p. 729). The standing objection of the Socinian to the vicarious satisfaction of justice—that it presents God in the aspect of implacability and unpaternal severity toward the sinner—falls away when it is considered that vicarious satisfaction in distinction from personal is the satisfaction of one divine attribute by another divine attribute, of divine justice by divine mercy. In and by Christ's sufferings and death, God's mercy meets the righteous and necessary demands of God's justice and thereby releases the sinner from his own obligation to do this. Calvin (3.20.45) directs attention to this feature in redemption: "Sins are called debts in the Lord's prayer because we owe the penalty of them: a debt we are altogether incapable of discharging, unless we are released by this remission, which is a pardon flowing from God's gratuitous mercy when he freely cancels these debts without any payment from us, being satisfied by his own mercy in Christ, who has once given himself for our redemption. Those, therefore, who rely on God's being satisfied with their own merits or the merits of others and persuade themselves that remission of sins is purchased by these satisfactions, have no interest in this gratuitous forgiveness. In this way they do not implore God's mercy, but appeal to his justice."

6.2.9 (see p. 743). The Arminians did not carefully distinguish, as the elder Calvinists did, between atonement and redemption. Barrow, who is Arminian, has four sermons on "the doctrine of universal redemption asserted and explained." He employs the term Savior in his first sermon on 1 Tim. 4:10 in "the large acceptation of conferring any kind of good. Whence God is 'the Savior of all men' as the universal preserver and upholder of all things, as in the psalm: 'You, Lord, preserve man and beast' (Ps. 36:6). If our Lord be the Savior of all those to whom God's truth is declared and his mercy offered; or if he be the Savior of all the members of the visible church; particularly, if he be the Savior of those who among these, rejecting the overtures and means of grace or by disobedience abusing them, shall in the event fail of being saved, then he is the Savior of all men." According to this loose use of the term, Christ is the Savior of those to whom salvation is offered but not secured by regenerating grace and who are eternally lost. Turretin (14.14) explains "Savior" in the first part of this text in the sense of preserver quoting Ps. 36:6 and Acts 17:28 and citing Chrysostom, Oecumenius, Ambrose, and Aquinas in support of this. This explanation is favored by the phraseology we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, specially of those that believe. The "living God" refers more naturally to the Trinity than to the incarnate second person, showing that in the first part of the proposition the apostle has in mind the general providential relations of God to man and in the second part his special redemptive and actually saving relations. Turretin would not, with Barrow, denominate Christ "the Savior of all those to whom God's truth is declared and his mercy offered and who by disobedience abusing them fail of being saved."

6.2.10 (see p. 744). It is surprising that the denial that faith is the effect and not the cause of election and the new birth should have so much currency in the face of the numerous and explicit teachings of Scripture. Besides the passages quoted on p. 744, consider the following description by St. Paul (Eph. 1:19–20) of divine omnipotence exhibited in election to faith and regeneration: "The eyes of your understanding are enlightened that you may know what is the exceeding greatness of God's power to us-ward who believe according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and authority and dominion." Again, in his sacerdotal prayer (John 17:2), our Lord represents the whole result of his mediatorial work as dependent upon election: "You have given your Son power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him." He also emphasizes the discrimination between the elect and nonelect by saying (John 17:9): "I pray for them, I pray not for the world, but for them which you have given me." The Redeemer does not say that he never prayed for the whole sinful world of mankind; for he did this whenever he uttered the supplication "your kingdom come; your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven"; but on that particular occasion he confines his supplications to a part of the world, namely, the elect.

6.2.11 (see p. 751). It is important to show that the fault is man's, not God's, when common grace fails of success, because it evinces that although common grace is not the highest grade of mercy, it is nevertheless a grade of it. It is the exercise of compassion when nothing but justice and retribution are due. Instead of offering pardon and exerting a certain degree of restraining and softening influence upon the transgressor, which is described in Rom. 2:4, God might make no such offer to him and leave him to the wholly unrestrained workings of his free will. Common grace, in this way, has a real value which is not nullified by anything in its own nature but by the enmity and resistance of the sinful will. But in bringing out this fact, it is important not to nullify the distinction between common and special grace by combining common grace with the sinner's cooperation, whereby common is converted into special and regenerating grace by the sinner's agency. In addition to the remark on p. 751 n. 153, the following statement guards the subject still more: Again, to say that common grace would succeed if it were not resisted by the sinner is not the same as saying that common grace would succeed if it were yielded to by him. "To give up the contest" is one definition of "yield." Not contesting at all is wholly different from ceasing to contest by yielding. In the former case there is no resistance by the man; in the latter, there is a resistance which is put a stop to by him. This latter is never done except as the divine Spirit inclines and enables him.

Owen (Dominion of Sin and Grace in Works 14.411) thus describes the sinner's action under common grace, showing both his voluntary resistance of it and his guilt in frustrating it: "Men who live in sin do voluntarily wrest themselves from under the rule of the law of God and give themselves up to be slaves unto this tyrant. Could sin lay any just claim to this dominion, had it any title to plead, it were some alleviation of guilt in them that give themselves up to it. But men reject the righteous rule of God's law and choose this foreign and unjust yoke. Hence it follows that all men have a right in themselves to cast off the rule of sin and to vindicate themselves into liberty. They may, when they will, plead the right and title of the law of God unto the rule of their souls, to the utter exclusion of all pleas and pretenses of sin for its power. They have a right to say unto it, Get you hence, what have I to do any more with idols? All men, I say, have the right in themselves because of the natural allegiance they owe to the law of God; but by reason of their own act they have lost the power of themselves to execute this right and actually to cast off the yoke of sin. This is the work of grace. Sin's dominion is broke only by grace.

"But you will say then, Unto what end serves this right, if they have not the power in themselves to put it in execution? and how can it be charged as an aggravation of their sin that they do not use the right which they have, seeing they have not power so to do? Will you blame a man that has a right to an estate if he do not recover it when he has no means so to do?

"I answer briefly three things. No man living neglects the use of this right to cast off the yoke and dominion of sin because he cannot of himself make use of it, but merely because he will not. He does voluntarily choose to continue under the power of sin and looks on everything as his enemy that would deliver him: 'The carnal mind is enmity against God, it is not subject unto his law nor can it be' (Rom. 8:7). When the law comes at any time to claim its right and rule over the soul, a man under the power of sin looks on it as an enemy that has come to disturb his peace and fortifies his mind against it; and when the gospel comes and tenders the way and means for the soul's delivery, offering its aid and assistance to this end, this also is looked on as any enemy and is rejected, and all its offers, unto that end (see Prov. 1:20–25; John 3:19). This, then, is the condition of everyone that abides under the dominion of sin: he chooses so to do; he continues in that state of sin by an act of his own will; he avows an enmity unto everything which would give him deliverance; and this will be a sore aggravation of his condemnation at the last day.

"God may justly require that of any which it is in the power of the grace of the gospel to enable them to perform and comply with; for this is tendered unto them in the preaching of it every day. And although we know not the ways and means of the effectual communication of grace unto the souls of men, yet this is certain, that grace is so tendered in the preaching of the gospel that none go without it, none are destitute of its aids and assistances but those alone who by a free act of their own wills do refuse and reject it. This is that which the whole case depends upon, 'You will not come unto me, that you may have life'; and this all unbelievers have or may have experience of in themselves. They may know on a due examination of themselves that they do voluntarily refuse the assistance of the grace which is offered for their deliverance; therefore is their destruction of themselves.

"There is a time when men lose even the right also. He who gave up himself to have his ear bored lost all his claim unto future liberty; he was not to go out at the year of Jubilee. So there is a time when God judicially gives up men to the rule of sin, to abide under it forever; so that they lose all right to liberty. Thus he dealt with many of the idolatrous Gentiles of old (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28) and so continues to deal with the like profligate sinners; so he acts toward the generality of the antichristian world (2 Thess. 2:11–12) and with many despisers of the gospel (Isa. 6:9–10). When it comes to this, men are cast at law and have lost all right and title unto liberty from the dominion of sin. They may repine sometimes at the service of sin or the consequences of it in shame and pain, in the shameful distempers that will pursue many in their uncleanness; yet God having given them up judicially unto sin, they have not so much as a right to put up one prayer or petition for deliverance; nor will they do so, but are bound in the fetters either of presumption and indifference or of dreadful despair. See their work and ways described in Rom. 2:5–6.

"the signs or symptoms of the approach of such an irrecoverable condition are (1) a long continuance in the practice of any known sin. The long-suffering of God for a time waits for repentance (1 Pet. 3:20; 2 Pet. 3:9). But there is a time when it does only endure 'vessels of wrath fitted for destruction' (Rom. 9:22), which is commonly after long practice of known sin. (2) When convictions have been suppressed and warnings despised. God does not usually deal thus with men until they have rejected the means of their deliverance. (3) When men contract the guilt of such sins as seem to entrench on the unpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit; such as proud, contemptuous, malicious reproaches of the ways of God, of holiness, of the spirit of Christ and his gospel. (4) A voluntary relinquishment of the means of grace and conversion unto God, which men have heretofore enjoyed. (5) The resolved choice of wicked, profane, unclean, scoffing society."

The Synod of Dort ("Of Divine Predestination") directs attention to the responsibility and guilt of man in frustrating common grace: "The promise of the gospel is that whosoever believes in Christ crucified shall not perish but have everlasting life. This promise, together with the command to believe, ought to be declared and published to all nations and to all persons promiscuously and without distinction to whom God out of his good pleasure sends the gospel. And whereas many who are called by the gospel do not repent or believe in Christ but perish in unbelief, this is not owing to any defect or insufficiency in the sacrifice offered by Christ upon the cross, but is wholly to be imputed to themselves. The death of Christ is of infinite worth and value, abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world."

Bates (On Death, chap. 6) in the same manner describes man's resistance of common grace: "Suppose life be continued, yet sinners that delay repentance can have no rational hopes that they shall sincerely repent in time to come. For (1) saving repentance is the gift of God; and is it likely that those who have been insensible to the loud and earnest calls of the word, inflexible to the gracious methods of God's providence leading them to repentance, should at last obtain converting grace? The gales of the Spirit are very transient and blow when he pleases; and can it be expected that those who have willfully and often resisted him should by an exuberant favor receive afterward more powerful grace to overrule their stubborn wills and make them obedient? To expect divine grace and the powerful workings of the Spirit after long resisting his holy excitations is both unreasonable and unrevealed. It is written as with a sunbeam that God will graciously pardon repenting sinners that reform their lives; but it is nowhere promised that he will give saving repentance to those who securely continue in sin upon a corrupt confidence that they will repent at last. Our Savior threatens to him who neglects the improving of grace that is offered that 'that which he has shall be taken away'; yet men unwilling at present to forsake their sins of pleasure and profit vainly hope they shall obtain grace hereafter without any promise from God and against the tenor of his threatenings. God has threatened that his Spirit 'shall not always strive with rebellious sinners,' and then their state is remediless. This may be the case of many in this life who are insensible of their misery. As consumptive persons decline by degrees, lose their appetite, color, and strength, till at last they are hopeless, so the withdrawings of the Spirit are gradual, his motions are not so strong nor frequent, and upon the continued provocations of the disobedient he finally leaves them under the most fearful doom: 'He that is filthy, let him be filthy still; he that is unrighteous, let him be unrighteous still.' (2) Supposing the Holy Spirit be not totally withdrawn, yet by every day's continuance in sin the heart is more hardened against the impressions of grace, more averse from returning to God, and repentance is more difficult and hazardous. (3) It is uncertain whether God will at last hear the prayers of such as resist and insult his Spirit in the common operations of his grace. We are commanded to 'seek the Lord while he may be found and call upon him while he is near.' The limitation implies that if the season be neglected he will hide his face forever. Now in cases of great moment and hazard what diligence, what caution should be used."

Westminster Confession 5.6.6 sums up the subject of God's withdrawing common grace after the sinner's resistance and abuse of it as follows: "As for those wicked and ungodly men whom God as a righteous judge, for former sins, does blind and harden (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28; 11:7–8), from them he not only withholds his grace whereby they might have been enlightened in their understandings and wrought upon in their hearts (Deut. 29:4); but sometimes also withdraws the gifts which they had (Matt. 13:12) and exposes them to such objects as their corruption makes occasion of sin (2 Kings 8:12–13) and withal gives them over to their own lusts, the temptations of the world, and the power of Satan (Ps. 81:11–12; 2 Thess. 2:9, 10), whereby it comes to pass that they harden themselves even under those means which God uses for the softening of others (Exod. 8:15, 32; 2 Cor. 2:15–16)."

6.2.12 (see p. 753). Augustine distinguishes the common from the effectual call in the following passages: "God calls many predestinated children of his to make them members of his only predestinated Son, not with that calling with which they were called who would not come to the marriage, since with that calling were called also the Jews, to whom Christ crucified is an offense, and the Gentiles, to whom Christ crucified is foolishness; but with that calling he calls the predestinated which the apostle distinguished when he said that he preached Christ, the wisdom of God and the power of God to them that were called, Jews as well as Greeks. And it was this calling he meant when he said, 'Not of works, but of him that calls, it was said unto Rebecca, that the elder shall serve the younger.' Did he say, 'Not of works, but of him that believes'? Rather, he actually took this away from man that he might give the whole to God. Therefore he said, 'But of him that calls'; not with any sort of calling whatever, but with that calling wherewith a man is made a believer" (Predestination 32). "The vessels of mercy were not so called as not to be elected, in respect of which it is said, 'Many are called, but few are elected'; but because they were called according to God's purpose they are of a certainty also elected by the election of grace, as it is denominated, not of any precedent merits of theirs, because grace is all the merit they have" (Rebuke and Grace 13). "Whoever are elected are without doubt also called; but not whoever are called are also elected. Those are elected who are called according to God's purpose and who are also predestinated and foreknown" (Rebuke and Grace 14).

3 Regeneration

In Westminster Shorter Catechism QQ. 30–31 the application of redemption is attributed to a particular work of God denominated effectual calling: "The Spirit applies to us the redemption purchased by Christ, by working faith in us, and thereby uniting us to Christ in our effectual calling." This effectual calling is defined to be "the work of God's Spirit, whereby convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he does persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered to us in the gospel." According to this definition the effectual call produces (a) conviction of conscience, (b) illumination of the understanding, (c) renovation of the will, and (d) faith in Christ's atonement. Everything in redemption runs back, ultimately, to God: "His divine power has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness" (2 Pet. 1:3).

But such effects in the soul as conviction, illumination, renovation, and faith imply a great change within it. These are fruits and evidences of that spiritual transformation which in Scripture is denominated "new birth," "new creation," "resurrection from the dead," "death to sin and life to righteousness," "passage from darkness to light." Consequently, effectual calling includes and implies regeneration. Hence it is said in Westminster Confession 13.1 that "they who are effectually called and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created in them, are farther sanctified." In Westminster Confession 10.2 effectual calling is made to include regeneration, because man is said to be "altogether passive, until he is enabled to answer the call."

Various Uses of the Term Regeneration

The term regeneration has been used in a wide and in a restricted sense. It may signify the whole process of salvation, including the preparatory work of conviction and the concluding work of sanctification. Or it may denote only the imparting of spiritual life in the new birth, excluding the preparatory and concluding processes. The Romish church regards regeneration as comprehending everything in the transition from a state of condemnation on earth to a state of salvation in heaven and confounds justification with sanctification. The Lutheran doctrine, stated in the apology for the Augsburg Confession and in the Formula of Concord, employs regeneration in the wide meaning, but distinguishes carefully between justification and sanctification. In the Reformed church, the term regeneration was also employed in the wide signification. Like the Lutheran, while carefully distinguishing between justification and sanctification, the Reformed theologian brought under the term regeneration everything that pertains to the development as well as to the origination of the new spiritual life. Regeneration thus included not only the new birth, but all that issues from it. It comprised the converting acts of faith and repentance and also the whole struggle with indwelling sin in progressive sanctification. Thus Calvin (3.3.9) remarks: "I apprehend repentance (poenitentiam) to be regeneration (regenerationem), the end of which is the restoration of the divine image within us. In this regeneration, we are restored by the grace of Christ to the righteousness of God from which we fell in Adam. And this restoration is not accomplished in a single moment or day or year; but by continual, even tardy, advances the Lord destroys the carnal corruptions of his elect." Here, regeneration is employed to denote not merely the instantaneous act of imparting life to the spiritually dead, but also the processes of conversion and sanctification that result from it. (supplement 6.3.1.)

This wide use of the term passed into English theology. The divines of the seventeenth century very generally do not distinguish between regeneration and conversion, but employ the two as synonyms. Owen does this continually (On the Spirit 3.5), and Charnock likewise (Attributes, Practical Atheism). The Westminster Creed does not use the term regeneration. Instead of it, it employs the term vocation or effectual calling. This comprises the entire work of the Holy Spirit in the application of redemption. Under it belongs everything pertaining to the process of salvation, from the first step of conviction of sin to the act of saving faith in Jesus Christ (cf. Fisher, On the Catechism, 31–32).

The wide and somewhat vague use of the term regeneration was suggested by a few scriptural texts. The apostle gives the injunction: "Put off the old man," "put on the new man," and "be renewed (ananeousthai) in the spirit of your minds" (Eph. 4:22–25). He exhorts Christians to "be transformed by the renewing (anakainōsei) of their mind" (Rom. 12:2). In 2 Cor. 4:16 he says that the "inward man is renewed (anakainountai) day by day." In these instances, as the use of ananeoō5 and anakainoō instead of gennaō7 shows, the notion of molding or forming, rather than that of regenerating, is in St. Paul's mind. He is addressing those in whom the principle of the new life has been implanted—who have been born again—and now urges them to the exercise and nurture of the new life. Similarly, the prophet Ezekiel (18:31), addressing the house of Israel, the church of God, says: "Make you a new heart and a new spirit." Here, the return from backsliding and the reformation and culture of the spiritual life, not the actual regeneration of the soul, are what is demanded. Neither of these two texts refers to regeneration in the restricted signification of the term. God does not, in either of them, command man to quicken himself, to create life from the dead, to command the light to shine out of darkness, to call things that be not as though they were (2 Cor. 4:6; Rom. 4:17). In them both he exhorts regenerate but backsliding man, as he does the church at Ephesus, to "repent and do the first works" (Rev. 2:5). In the New Testament the renewing of regeneration is denoted by ktizein, gennaō, zōopoiein; and that of sanctification by ananeousthai11 (Eph. 4:23), anakainountai (2 Cor. 4:16), and anakainōsis (Rom. 12:2). (supplement 6.3.2.)

But this wide use of the term regeneration led to confusion of ideas and views. As there are two distinct words in the language, regeneration and conversion, there are also two distinct notions denoted by them. Consequently, there arose gradually a stricter use of the term regeneration and its discrimination from conversion. Turretin (15.4.13) defines two kinds of conversion, as the term was employed in his day. The first is "habitual" or "passive" conversion. It is the production of a habit or disposition in the soul: "Habitual or passive conversion occurs through the infusion of supernatural habits by the Holy Spirit." The second kind is "actual" or "active" conversion. It is the acting out in faith and repentance of this implanted habit or disposition: "Actual or active conversion occurs through the exercise of those good habits in which the acts of faith and repentance are both granted by God and called forth from man."15 After thus defining, Turretin remarks that the first kind of conversion is better denominated "regeneration" because it has reference to that new birth by which man is renewed in the image of his maker; and the second kind of conversion is better denominated "conversion" because it includes the operation and agency of man himself. De Moor on Marck (23.2), after distinguishing between conversio activa and passiva, says that the latter is synonymous with vocation.

We shall adopt this distinction between regeneration and conversion. Regeneration, accordingly, is an act; conversion is an activity or a process. Regeneration is the origination of life; conversion is the evolution and manifestation of life. Regeneration is wholly an act of God; conversion is wholly an activity of man. Regeneration is a cause; conversion is an effect. Regeneration is instantaneous; conversion is continuous.

The doctrine of regeneration was taught by Christ to Nicodemus: "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:3, 6); "the sons of God are born not of the will of man, but of God" (1:13). It had previously been taught in the Old Testament: "I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of your flesh and will give you a heart of flesh" (Ezek. 11:19); "a new heart will I give you" (36:26); "I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts" (Jer. 31:33). The vision of dry bones (Ezek. 37) taught the doctrine symbolically. Moses taught the doctrine in Deut. 30:6: "The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your seed to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul" (cf. Ps. 51:10).

Characteristics of Regeneration

Respecting regeneration, the following characteristics are to be noted. First, regeneration is solely the work of God. The terms employed in Scripture prove this: "creating anew" (Eph. 4:24), "fathering" (James 1:18), "quickening" (John 5:21; Eph. 2:5), "calling out of darkness into light" (1 Pet. 2:9), "commanding the light to shine out of darkness" (2 Cor. 4:6), "alive from the dead" (Rom. 6:13), "new creature" (2 Cor. 5:17), "born again" (John 3:3–7), "God's workmanship" (Eph. 2:10). These terms denote a work of omnipotent power. The origination of life is impossible to the creature. He can receive life; he can nurture life; and he can use and exert life. But he cannot create life.

Second, regeneration as the creative and life-giving act of God produces an effect on the human understanding. It is illumination: "enlightening the mind" (Westminster Larger Catechism 67); "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6; 1 Cor. 2:12–13); "the eyes of your understanding being enlightened" (Eph. 1:18; Phil. 1:9; Col. 3:10; 1 John 4:7; 5:20; 17:3; Ps. 19:7–8; 43:3–4). The distinguishing peculiarity of the knowledge produced by regeneration is that it is experimental. By this is meant that the cognition is that of immediate consciousness. This is the highest and clearest form of cognition. When, for example, the truth that God is merciful is stated in language, the natural man understands the language grammatically and logically, but nothing more. He has no accompanying consciousness of God's mercy. In common phrase, he does not feel that God is merciful. But a knowledge that is destitute of inward consciousness is an inferior species. It is a blind man's knowledge of color. The blind man understands the phraseology by which the color is described. It conveys logical and self-consistent notions to his understanding, but it is unattended with sensation. Such a knowledge of color is inadequate, in reality is ignorance, compared with that of a man possessed of vision. It is the knowledge of a sensuous object without any sensation. It is quasi knowledge, such as Christ refers to when he says of the natural man: "Seeing he sees not; and hearing he hears not."

Illumination or instruction by the Holy Spirit implies then the production of an experimental consciousness of religious truth. In this respect, it differs from human teaching. This is alluded to in John 6:63: "The words I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life," that is, they are spiritual life. Vital and conscious knowledge of religious truth is the effect of the operation of the Holy Spirit in the human understanding. One man can teach religious truth by grammatical propositions to another, but he cannot illumine his mind in respect to it. He can tell a man that God is holy, is love, that sin is hateful and virtue is lovely; but he cannot impart the consciousness that God is holy, that God is love, that sin is hateful, that virtue is lovely. The production of an experience upon such subjects is the prerogative of God.

Hence all the unexperimental knowledge of the natural man upon religious subjects is denominated "ignorance" in Scripture. Said Christ to the Jews, "You neither know me nor my Father" (John 8:19); to his disciples he said, "It is given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 13:11); "this is life eternal to know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3); "no man knows the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him" (Matt. 11:27). The books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are filled with the praise of a kind of knowledge which they represent sinful man to be destitute of and which is the gift of God. Christ the great high priest "has compassion upon the ignorant" (Heb. 5:2). Scoffers are "willingly ignorant" (2 Pet. 3:5). Unbelieving Jews were "ignorant of God's righteousness" (Rom. 10:3). Before regeneration, men fashion themselves "according to their lusts in ignorance" (1 Pet. 1:14). The sinful condition of the pagan world is called a "time of ignorance" which God in his forbearance temporarily overlooked" (Acts 17:30). Sin is often denominated folly. The psalmist mourning over the remainders of sin exclaims: "So foolish was I, and ignorant" (Ps. 73:22).

St. Paul explains the difference between the knowledge of the natural man and that of the regenerate in 1 Cor. 2:14: "The natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him." "There is a wide difference," says Owen (Holy Spirit 3.3), "between the mind's receiving doctrines notionally and its receiving the things taught in them really. The first, a natural man can do. It is done by all who, by the use of outward means, do know the doctrine of Scripture in distinction from human ignorance and error. Hence men unregenerate are said 'to know the way of righteousness' (2 Pet. 2:21)." This true and real reception of divine truth, according to Owen, denotes (a) an apprehension that these "spiritual things" agree with the divine attributes and express them; the doctrine of gratuitous justification, for example, when received by the regenerate mind is perceived to accord with all the attributes of God and thus to be a manifestation of the glory of God; and (b) an apprehension that the particular "spiritual thing" is suited to the end proposed; the death of Christ, for example, is adapted in every way to meet the demands of God's holy nature and of man's sinful nature. It is not "foolishness," but wisdom, or an adaptation of means to ends and is so perceived and understood by the spiritual man, but not by the natural. That there is this power of illuminating the understanding is proved by the fact that good men pray that it may be exercised: "Give me understanding, and I shall keep your law" (Ps. 119:34); "teach me your statutes" (119:68).

Third, regeneration with respect to the human will is "renewal." Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 67 describes one part of effectual calling as the "renewing and powerfully determining" of the will. Biblical texts that prove this are the following: "I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of their flesh and will give them a heart of flesh" (Ezek. 11:19; 36:26–27); "renew a right spirit within me" (Ps. 51:10); "may the God of peace make you perfect to do his will, working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight" (Heb. 13:21); "it is not of him that wills, but of God that show mercy" (Rom. 9:16); "God works in you to will" (Phil. 2:13); "your people shall be willing in the day of your power" (Ps. 110:3); "the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God" (2 Thess. 3:5). Those texts, also, which describe regeneration as a "quickening" prove that the will is renewed.

Recurring to the distinction which we have made between "inclination" and "volition" or "choice," regeneration is to be defined as the origination of a new inclination by the Holy Spirit, not as the exertion of a new volition or making a new choice by the sinner. Keeping this distinction in mind, we say that in regeneration God inclines man to holiness and disinclines him to sin. This change of the disposition of the will is attributable solely to the Holy Spirit. The sinner discovers, on making the attempt, that he is unable to reverse his determination to self and the creature. He cannot start a contrary disposition of his will. He is unable to incline himself to God as the chief end of his existence. He can choose the antecedents or preparatives to inclining, but cannot incline. By a volition he can read his Bible. This is a preparative or antecedent to supreme love of God, but it is not supreme love and cannot produce it. By volitions he can listen to preaching and can refrain from vicious actions. These also are preparatives or antecedents to a holy inclination of the will, but are not this inclination itself and cannot produce it. It is a fact of consciousness that while the sinner can put forth single volitions or particular choices that are favorable to a new voluntary disposition because they evince the need of it, he cannot begin the new disposition itself. He cannot incline himself by any volition whatsoever. "The will," says Edwards (Will 3.4), "in the time of a leading act or inclination that is opposite to the command of God, is not able to exert itself to the contrary. The sinful inclination is unable to change itself; and for this plain reason that it is unable to incline to change itself." To employ a phrase of Edwards, the unregenerate is "unable to be willing" in the direction of holiness. The reason and ground of this inability has been explained in anthropology. The inability is voluntary in the sense that it is the consequence of an act of self-determination, and this act was the sin in Adam by which the human will became sinfully inclined.

By the operation of the Holy Spirit in regeneration, the man is enabled to incline to holiness instead of sin. In the scriptural phraseology, he is "made willing" (Ps. 110:3). God "works in him to will" (Phil. 2:13). In the phraseology of Westminster Larger Catechism 67, he is "powerfully determined." By renewing the sinful and self-enslaved will, the Holy Spirit empowers it to self-determine or incline to God as the chief good and the supreme end. This new self-determination expels and takes the place of the old sinful self-determination. From this new self-determination or inclination or disposition or principle, holy volitions or choices proceed, and from the holy choices, holy actions.

That God the Spirit possesses the power to originate an inclination to holiness in the human will is proved by the biblical representations. David frequently asks God to exert this power: "Incline my heart unto your testimonies" (Ps. 119:36); "make me to go in the path of your commandments" (119:35); "turn away my eyes from beholding vanity" (119:37); "create in me a clean heart" (51:10); "open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth your praise" (51:15); "we are the clay, and you our potter" (Isa. 64:8); "the Lord opened the heart of Lydia, that she attended to the things which were spoken by Paul" (Acts 16:14). The assurance of Christ that the Holy Spirit shall be given to everyone that asks implies the power of the Spirit to incline the human will.

While the operation of the Holy Spirit upon the human will is inexplicable (John 3:8), yet certain particulars are clear. (a) The influence of the Spirit is distinguishable from that of the truth, from that of man upon man, and from that of any instrument or means whatever. His energy acts directly upon the human soul itself. It is the influence of spirit upon a spirit, of one of the trinitarian persons upon a human person. Neither the truth nor a fellowman can thus operate directly upon the essence of the soul itself. It is in this respect that theologians have defined the influence of the Holy Spirit upon the human will to be "physical." The physis18 or essence of the Holy Spirit operates upon the physis of the human spirit. In regeneration, there is immediate contact between God and man. Spiritual essence touches spiritual essence. Yet there is no mingling or confusion of substance. God and man are two distinct and different beings, yet in regeneration they approach closer to each other than they do either in creation or providence. This fact is supported by the metaphors which describe the intimacy of the union between the believer and Christ. The one is the head, and the other is a member of the same body. Christ is the very life of the regenerate soul. In two instances the church is called "Christ": "To your seed, which is Christ" (Gal. 3:16; 1 Cor. 12:12). Christ is "formed in the believer" (Gal. 4:19). It is also supported by the biblical statements respecting the working of the Holy Spirit in the soul: "The Spirit makes intercession" (Rom. 8:26–27). The operation of the Spirit is so intimate that his working cannot in consciousness be distinguished from that of the soul itself. The believer is a "temple" of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19). That the influence of the Holy Spirit is directly upon the human spirit and is independent even of the word itself is further proved by the fact that it is exerted in the case of infants without any employment of the truth. John the Baptist was "filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb" (Luke 1:15). (b) By reason of this peculiarity in the operation of the Holy Spirit, it does not force the human will. It is purely spiritual agency exerted upon a spiritual being. If matter could operate by contact and directly upon mind, the consequence would be compulsion. The two things are heterogeneous. But when God operates directly upon man, the two beings are homogeneous. It is a Scholastic maxim that "whatever is received, is received after the manner of the recipient."21 Sensuous organs alone are adapted to receive sensuous impressions from objects of sense; the immaterial spirit alone is adapted to receive an impression from the eternal Spirit. Man's body cannot experience spiritual influences, and his soul cannot be affected by matter. (c) The operation of the Holy Spirit is in the will; that of the truth, and of man upon man, is on the will. The more interior an influence is the farther is it from being compulsory. It is better able to work in accordance with the nature and constitution of that within which it works. If it were operating ab extra, it would be more apt to work across or against the constitutional structure: "It is a characteristic of God to move the will, especially by inclining it from within" (Aquinas, Summa 1.105.4). (supplement 6.3.3.)

Fourth, man is passive in regeneration. He cannot actively originate spiritual life. His relation to regeneration is that of a recipient. This is a part of the meaning of "passivity" in this connection. In that particular instant when the divine and holy life is implanted, the soul of man contributes no energy of efficiency of any kind. Being dead in sin, it cannot produce life to righteousness. A corpse cannot originate animal life. Lazarus was passive at that punctum temporis when his body was reanimated. The same is true of the soul of man in respect to regeneration. But since regeneration is instantaneous, the sinner's passivity is instantaneous also. Man is passive only for a moment, during the twinkling of an eye. God's regenerating act is like the sounding of the last trumpet. The resurrection of dead bodies is instantaneous, and the regeneration of dead souls is so likewise. The doctrine that the sinner is passive in regeneration does not imply that the passivity extends over a great length or even any length of time in his existence. On the contrary, it is only a punctum temporis25 in his history. Up to that point of time, he is active: active in enmity to God. After that point of time he is active: active in submission to God. The carnal mind is enmity; the spiritual mind is love. Enmity and love are activities of the soul. Between the carnal mind and the spiritual mind, there is nothing but the instant of regeneration. In this instant when the new life is imparted, the activity is solely that of God the Holy Spirit.

Fifth, man cannot cooperate in regeneration. This follows logically from the fact that he is passive in regeneration. A dead man cannot assist in his own resurrection. It also follows from the fact that cooperation implies some agreement between the parties. God and the sinner must harmonize before they can work together. Two forces cannot cooperate unless they are coordinate and coincident forces. But up to the instant of regeneration, man is hostile to God: "The carnal mind is enmity toward God" (Rom. 8:7). Enmity cannot cooperate with love. (supplement 6.3.4.)

Upon the Semipelagian, the Tridentine, and the Arminian theory of depravity, there may be cooperation, but not upon the Augustinian and Calvinistic. According to the former theories, there are slight remainders of holiness in the natural man which, though feeble, yet afford a point of contact and an element of force in his regeneration. Calvin (3.24.13) attributes synergism to Chrysostom and also to Bernard and Lombard (2.2.6):

Lombard, in order to establish the position that the human will performs its part in regeneration, informs us that two sorts of grace are necessary. One he calls operative, by which we efficaciously will what is good; the other cooperative, which attends as auxiliary to a goodwill. This division I dislike, because, while he attributes an efficacious desire of what is good to the grace of God, he insinuates that man has of his own nature antecedent though ineffectual desires after what is good; as Bernard asserts that a goodwill is the work of God, but yet allows that man is self-impelled to desire such a goodwill. But this is very remote from the meaning of Augustine, from whom, however, Lombard claims to have borrowed this distinction.

Synergism is enunciated in the canons of the Council of Trent (6.4). Regeneration is explained as taking place by some cooperation of the human will with the divine. The will is said to be "excited and assisted" by divine grace. Similarly, Limborch (Theology 4.14.21) says that "grace is not the solitary, yet it is the primary cause of salvation; for the cooperation of free will is due to grace as a primary cause; for unless the free will had been excited (excitatum) by prevenient grace, it would not be able to cooperate with grace." These are not the terms which the Scriptures employ. To excite and assist sinful man is not the same as to quicken and renew him. To excite the human will is to stimulate it, not to impart life. Excitement supposes some vitality which is in low tone and requires a tonic. Assistance implies that the will already has some force in the right direction which only needs to be added to. This is very different from the view presented in Ezek. 37:14: "I will put my spirit in you, and you shall live." If there be some spiritual life in the natural man, he can cooperate in regeneration. But if he is "dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2:11) he cannot. The truth upon this subject is well stated in Westminster Confession 10.2: "This effectual call is of God's free and special grace alone, not from anything at all foreseen in man, who is altogether passive therein, until being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to answer the call and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it." According to this statement, man is passive until he is quickened, after which divine act he is actively holy.

It is said by some that the sinful will has the power to cease self-determination to evil, though it has not the power to self-determine or incline to good. It can stop resistance to God, though it can do nothing more. But this would involve a cessation of all action in the will, both sinful and holy action, at the instant of regeneration, and this would make the will characterless at this instant. But in anthropology (pp. 496, 502, and 584–85) we have shown that the will cannot be inactive or destitute of an inclination, either good or evil. The will must be incessantly inclined in order to be a will, as the understanding must be incessantly intelligent in order to be an understanding. Consequently, the cessation of sinful inclination must be caused by the origination of holy inclination. Sin does not first stop, and then holiness come into the place of sin; but holiness positively expels sin. Darkness does not first cease, and then light enter; but light drives out darkness. Sin goes out, as Chalmers phrases it, by "the expulsion power of a new affection." Consequently, the regeneration of the will is the only way to stop the evil inclination of the will. Again, it is said that there is receptivity for holiness in the fallen will, though there is no energy to produce it. But receptivity is more than capacity. It is a faint desire or inclination. Hence St. Paul says that "the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him" (1 Cor. 2:14). There is repulsion, not recipiency, in the natural man. "The carnal mind (phronēma) is enmity against God" (Rom. 8:7). When Christ (Luke 18:42) said to the blind man "receive your sight," there was no receptivity in the eye, no favoring condition of the organ, that facilitated the restoration of sight. The causing of vision was wholly miraculous. Simultaneously with the words receive your sight, there was the exertion of creative power upon the sightless eye, enabling it to the act of vision. (supplement 6.3.5.)

Sixth, regeneration is a work of God in the human soul that is below consciousness. There is no internal sensation caused by it. No man was ever conscious of that instantaneous act of the Holy Spirit by which he was made a new creature in Christ Jesus. And since the work is that of God alone, there is no necessity that man should be conscious of it. This fact places the infant and the adult upon the same footing and makes infant regeneration as possible as that of adults. Infant regeneration is taught in Scripture: "He shall be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb" (Luke 1:15); "suffer little children to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of God" (18:15–16); "the promise is unto your children" (Acts 2:39); "now are your children holy" (1 Cor. 7:14). Infant regeneration is also taught symbolically (a) by infant circumcision in the Old Testament and (b) by infant baptism in the New Testament.

Seventh, regeneration is not effected by the use of means, in the strict signification of the term means. The Holy Spirit employs means in conviction, in conversion, and in sanctification, but not in regeneration. The appointed means of grace are the word, the sacraments, and prayer. None of these means are used in the instant of regeneration; first, because regeneration is instantaneous and there is not time to use them; second, because regeneration is a direct operation of the Holy Spirit upon the human spirit. It is the action of Spirit upon spirit, of a divine person upon a human person, whereby spiritual life is imparted. Nothing, therefore, of the nature of means or instruments can come between the Holy Spirit and the soul that is to be made alive. God did not employ an instrument or means when he infused physical life into the body of Adam. There were only two factors: the dust of the ground and the creative power of God which vivified that dust. Divine omnipotence and dead matter were brought into direct contact, with nothing intervening. The dust was not a means or instrument by which God originated life. So in regeneration there are only two factors: the human soul destitute of spiritual life and the Holy Spirit who quickens it. The dead soul is not an instrument by which spiritual life is originated, but the subject in which it is originated.

When Christ restored sight to the blind man, he did it by creative energy alone, without the use of means or instruments. The light of day was not a means. It contributed nothing to the result. Nor was the blind eye a means of originating vision. When Christ anointed the eyes of the blind man with clay mixed with spittle, the act was symbolical, probably; but certainly the spittle was not a means employed by him to work the miracle. In like manner, the word and truth of God, the most important of all the means of grace, is not a means of regeneration, as distinct from conviction, conversion, and sanctification. This is evident when it is remembered that it is the office of a means or instrument to excite or stimulate an already existing principle of life. Physical food is a means of physical growth; but it supposes physical vitality. If the body is dead, bread cannot be a means or instrument. Intellectual truth is a means of intellectual growth; but it supposes intellectual vitality. If the mind be idiotic, secular knowledge cannot be a means or instrument. Spiritual truth is a means of spiritual growth, in case there be spiritual vitality. But if the mind be dead to righteousness, spiritual truth cannot be a means or instrument. Truth certainly cannot be a means unless it is apprehended. But "the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14).

That regeneration is not effected by the use of means will appear from considering those cases in which means are employed. First, the word and truth of God are means of conviction, because there is in the human conscience a kind of vitality that responds to the truth as convicting and condemning. The apostasy did not kill the conscience stone-dead. If it had, no fallen man could feel remorse. Adam's fall has benumbed and stupefied the conscience, but there is still sufficient vitality left in it for it to be a distressing witness to man. Consequently, the Holy Spirit employs truth as a means of exciting and stimulating the human conscience, not of regenerating it in the strict sense of the term. The conscience is not "made alive from the dead" in the sense that the will is. It has not lost all sensibility to moral truth. It possesses some vitality that only needs to be stimulated and toned up. This is done in conviction and by the use of truth as an instrument. Second, the word and truth of God are means of conversion, because regeneration has preceded and has imparted spiritual life to the soul. There is now a spiritual vitality that can respond to the truth. The understanding having been enlightened by regeneration, when the particular truth that the blood of Christ cleanses from all sin is presented, it is apprehended. This truth is now spiritually understood and is no longer "foolishness" to the mind. And the will having been renewed and "powerfully determined" or inclined, this same cardinal truth is believed savingly. The doctrine of vicarious atonement thus becomes a means of faith in Christ, and faith in Christ works by sorrow for sin and love of holiness. Faith and repentance are converting acts. They are the substance of conversion and are brought about by the use of the appropriate means: by the presentation of evangelical truth to a soul in which the Holy Spirit has operated with regenerating grace. Third, the word and truth of God are means of sanctification, upon the same principle. Regeneration and conversion precede sanctification. By regeneration, spiritual life is originated; by conversion, spiritual life is put in action and manifested. Of course, then, the means of sanctification find a spiritual vitality in the soul, to which they are correlated. The Holy Spirit employs the word, sacraments, prayer, afflictions, and all the discipline of life as instruments by which he excites and induces the renewed man to struggle with indwelling sin and to endure unto the end.

But when we consider regeneration itself and look into the soul for a principle of life and power to be correlated to means or instruments of regeneration, we do not find any. The unenlightened understanding is unable to apprehend, and the unregenerate will is unable to believe. Vital force is lacking in these two principal faculties. What is needed at this point is life and force itself. Consequently, the author of spiritual life himself must operate directly, without the use of means or instruments, and outright give spiritual life and power from the dead, that is, ex nihilo. The new life is not implanted because man perceives the truth, but he perceives the truth because the new life is implanted. A man is not regenerated because he has first believed in Christ, but he believes in Christ because he has been regenerated. He is not regenerated because he first repents, but he repents because he has been regenerated.

Eighth, regeneration is the cause of conversion. The Holy Spirit acts in regeneration, and as a consequence the human spirit acts in conversion. And as the act of regeneration is not divisible between God and man, neither is the act of conversion. The converting activity of the regenerate soul moves in two principal directions: (a) faith, which is the converting or turning of the soul to Christ as the Redeemer from sin, and (b) repentance, which is the converting or turning of the soul to God as the supreme good. Regeneration is instantaneous, conversion is continuous. Faith is gradual and unceasing, and so is repentance; but regeneration is effected completely and once for all. (supplement 6.3.6.)

In connection with the doctrine that God is the sole author of regeneration, several particulars are to be noticed. The reason for expecting the regeneration of men is found in God's promise to bestow regeneration, not in man's power to produce it. In his discourse on the day of Pentecost, Peter assigns as a reason for "repenting and being baptized for the remission of sins" the fact that God "has promised remission to as many as he had called" (Acts 2:38–39). He expected to see men repent under his preaching because "God had exalted Jesus to be a prince and a Savior to give repentance" (5:31) and because "God also to the Gentiles had granted repentance unto life" (11:18). Similarly, Paul exhorts Timothy to "be gentle unto all men, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves, if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth" (2 Tim. 2:24). The preacher should confidently expect faith and repentance to follow from his preaching, because of God's purpose and promise to bestow regenerating grace in connection with preaching. In order to this expectation, it is not necessary that he should know who are the particular persons whom God has elected. It is enough to know that God has made an immense election, that he has formed a purpose to regenerate "a multitude which no man can number, out of all nations and kindreds and peoples and tongues" (Rev. 7:9). A second ground of hope and expectation that sinners will be regenerated is the fact that under the gospel dispensation God's regenerating grace is being continually exerted. The Holy Spirit actually accompanies the faithful preacher of the word. The prophets "preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven" (1 Pet. 1:12). The Holy Spirit as a regenerating spirit is actually poured out among mankind. There is not a moment in which he does not regenerate many souls. Men are being born spiritually all the time, as men are being born physically all the time. A third reason for the expectation that sinners will be regenerated is the fact that God has promised to pour out the regenerating Spirit in answer to the prayers of the church. The church can obtain the Holy Spirit for the sinful world: "Bring all the tithes into the storehouse and prove me, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing" (Mal. 3:10); "if you being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him" (Luke 11:13). The outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost was an answer to the prayer of the church.

Man's Agency in Regeneration

The question here arises: What is man's relation to regeneration? The answer is that his agency is not in regeneration itself, but in the work of conviction which is preparatory or antecedent to regeneration.

The term preparative as used by the Augustinian and Calvinist is very different from its use by the Semipelagian and Arminian. The former means by it conviction of sin, guilt, and helplessness. The latter employs it in the sense of a preparative disposition or a favoring state of heart. This is referred to in Westminster Confession 9.3: "A natural man is not able to convert himself or prepare himself thereto." The tenth of the Thirty-nine Articles also excludes the Semipelagian "preparatives" to regeneration: "We have no power to do good works acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us that we may have a goodwill and working with us when we have that goodwill." In Semipelagian use, a "preparative" denotes some faint desires and beginnings of holiness in the natural man upon which the Holy Spirit, according to the synergistic theory of regeneration, joins. Having this sense of the term in view, Witsius (Covenants 3.6.27) says: "Let none think it absurd that we now speak of means of regeneration, when but a little before (3.6.10, 12) we rejected all preparatives for it." Owen, on the other hand, denies "means" and asserts "preparatives" of regeneration. Yet Owen and Witsius agree in doctrine. In the Calvinistic system, a "preparative" to regeneration or a "means" of it is anything that demonstrates man's total lack of holy desire and his need of regeneration. It is consequently not a part of regeneration, but something prior and antecedent to it. There is a work performed in the soul previous to the instantaneous act of regeneration, as there is a work performed in the body previous to the instantaneous act of death. A man loses physical life in an instant, but he has been some time in coming to this instant. So man gains spiritual life in an instant, though he may have had days and months of a foregoing experience of conviction and sense of spiritual death. This is the ordinary divine method, except in the case of infants.

John the Baptist was sent to preach the law in order "to make ready a people prepared for the Lord" (Luke 1:17). Conviction of sin, in this instance, was an antecedent or preparative to the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, but no part of regeneration itself. There is a grace of God that goes before regenerating grace and makes the soul ready for it. It is common or prevenient grace. Man's work in respect to regeneration is connected with this. Moved and assisted by common or prevenient grace, the natural man is to perform the following duties in order to be convicted of sin and know his need of the new birth:

1. Reading and hearing the divine word: "Faith comes by hearing" (Rom. 10:17); "who has ears to hear, let him hear" (Matt. 13:9); "the Spirit of God makes the reading, but especially the preaching of the word, an effectual means of enlightening, convincing, and humbling sinners, of driving them out of themselves and drawing them unto Christ" (Westminster Larger Catechism 155).

2. Serious application of the mind and examination of the truth in order to understand and feel its force: "Take heed how you hear: for whosoever has to him shall be given" (Luke 8:18). Says Owen (Holy Spirit, 2), "Should men be as intent in their endeavors after knowledge in spiritual things as they are to skill in crafts, sciences, and other mysteries of secular life, it would be much otherwise with them." The use of these means of conviction under common grace produces (a) illumination in regard to the requirements of the law and failure to meet them (this is not the spiritual illumination of the regenerate mind in 1 Cor. 2:14, but the legal illumination referred to in 2 Cor. 7:10; (b) conviction and distress of conscience; and (c) reformation of the outward life.

3. Prayer for the gift of the Holy Spirit both as a convicting and a regenerating spirit, which is commanded by Christ in Luke 11:9, 13: "I say unto you, Ask and it shall be given you. If you being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him." That prayer for regenerating grace is a duty and a privilege for the unregenerate man is proved (a) by the fact that the Holy Spirit is promised generally under the gospel, as a regenerating spirit: "I will take you from among the heathen and gather you out of all countries, and I will put my Spirit within you. A new heart will I give you" (Ezek. 36:24, 27); "it shall come to pass that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. And whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be delivered" (Joel 2:28–32). This is quoted by Peter on the day of Pentecost. In accordance with these Scriptures, Westminster Confession 7.3 teaches that "God promises to give unto all those who are ordained to life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe." All men are to "call upon the name of the Lord" for the gift of the Holy Spirit thus promised, because no man has the right to assert that he is of the nonelect or to affirm this of another man. As Christ's atonement is offered indiscriminately, so the Holy Spirit is offered indiscriminately; and this warrants every man in asking for what is offered. Prayer for regenerating grace is also proved (b) By the fact that a man must obtain the gift of the Holy Spirit as a regenerating spirit before he can obtain it as a converting and sanctifying spirit. The Holy Spirit is not given as a converting and a sanctifying spirit until he has been given as a regenerating spirit. Regeneration is the very first saving work in the order, and this therefore is the very first blessing to be asked for: "Make the tree good, and his fruit good" (Matt. 12:33); "except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3). No man has any warrant or encouragement to pray either for conversion or for sanctification before he has prayed for regeneration. Whoever, therefore, forbids an unregenerate man to pray for regenerating grace forbids him to pray for any and all grace. In prohibiting him from asking God to create within him a clean heart, he prohibits him altogether from asking for the Holy Spirit. Prayer for regenerating grace is also proved (c) by the fact that the church is commanded to pray for the outpouring of the Spirit upon unregenerate sinners in order to their regeneration. It is not supposable that God would command the church to pray for a blessing upon sinners which sinners are forbidden to ask for themselves.

To recapitulate, then, we say that the sinner's agency in respect to regeneration is in the antecedent work of conviction, not in the act of regeneration itself. The Holy Spirit does not ordinarily regenerate a man until he is a convicted man, until, in the use of the means of conviction under common grace, he has become conscious of his need of regenerating grace. To the person who inquires: "How am I to obtain the new birth, and what particular thing am I to do respecting it?" the answer is: "Find out that you need it and that your self-enslaved will cannot originate it. And when you have found this out, cry unto God the Holy Spirit, 'Create in me a clean heart, and renew within me a right spirit.' " And this prayer must not cease until the answer comes, as Christ teaches in the parable of the widow and the unjust judge (Luke 18:1–8). When men are convicted of sin and utter helplessness, they are "a people prepared for the Lord" (1:17). A sense of guilt and danger is a "preparative" to deliverance from it. A convicted man is a fit subject for the new birth, but an unconvicted man is not. A person who denies that he is a guilty sinner before God or that sin deserves endless retribution or who has no fears of retribution is not "prepared" for the regenerating work of the Spirit. It is true that the Holy Spirit, "who is free to work with means, without means, above means, and against means" (Westminster Confession 5.2), can convict a sinner without his cooperation if he pleases. An utterly careless and thoughtless person is sometimes by the power of God the Spirit suddenly filled with remorse and terror on account of his sins. And sometimes a convicted person does his utmost to repress conviction and get rid of moral anxiety, and the divine Spirit will not permit him to succeed. But this is not to be counted upon. The sinner is commanded to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the work of conviction. "Quench not the Spirit" (1 Thess. 5:19) is enjoined upon him as well as upon the believer. He must endeavor to deepen, not to dissipate the sense of sin which has been produced in his conscience, or he is liable to be entirely deserted by the Spirit and left to his own will and be filled with his own devices. The sinner cannot cooperate in the work of regeneration, but he can in the work of conviction. This "preparative" of conviction does not make the sinner deserving of regeneration. God is not obliged to overcome the sinner's self-determination to sin because the sinner knows that he cannot overcome it himself. The sinner's helplessness does not make him meritorious of salvation, because it is self-produced; but it does make him a suitable subject for the exercise of God's unmerited compassion in regenerating grace.

One thing is important, therefore, in giving advice to an unregenerate person, namely, to remind him of the danger of legality and self-righteousness. He must not suppose that by the use of the means of conviction—reading and hearing the word of God, avoiding all associations and practices that dissipate seriousness and quench conviction, and prayer that God would apply the truth to his conscience—he is doing a meritorious work that obliges God to the regenerating act. He must not imagine that "by doing his own part," as it is sometimes said, he can necessitate God to do his. This would make regeneration a debt, not grace. It would make it depend upon the sinner's action and not, as St. Paul says, upon God's "purpose according to election" (Rom. 9:11). The sinner must not require beforehand an infallible certainty that he will be regenerated as the condition of his using the means of common grace in conviction. He must not say to the Most High: "I will do my part, provided you will do yours." He must proceed upon a probability, remembering all the while that he merits not and has no claim to the new birth. After his best endeavors, he must look up as the leper did, saying, "Lord, if you will, you can make me clean." He must do as the preacher does in regard to the regeneration of his hearers. The preacher does not say to the Lord, "I will preach your word, on condition that you will regenerate everyone to whom I preach." But he does as Paul bade Timothy: "In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance, to the acknowledging of the truth" (2 Tim. 2:25). And as the preacher has ample encouragement to preach, because of the general promise that God's "word shall not return to him void," so every convicted sinner has ample encouragement to look up for God's grace in Christ for the new heart and right spirit which come only from this source and which are promised generally under the gospel dispensation. (supplement 6.3.7.)

The language of Edwards (Pressing into the Kingdom in Works 4.392) accords with the scriptural representations:

Though God has not bound himself to anything that a person does while destitute of faith and out of Christ, there is great probability that in a way of hearkening to this counsel you will live; and that by pressing onward and persevering, you will at last, as it were by violence, take the kingdom of heaven. Those of you who have not only heard the directions given, but shall, through God's merciful assistance, practice according to them, are those that probably will overcome.

Of the same tenor is the following from Davies (Sermons 1.50; cf. Owen, Works 2.272–73):

Men say to us, "You teach us that faith is the gift of God and that we cannot believe of ourselves, why then do you exhort us to it? How can we be concerned to endeavor that which it is impossible for us to do?" I answer to this, I grant that the premises are true; and God forbid that I should so much as intimate that faith is the spontaneous growth of corrupt nature or that you can come to Christ without the Father's drawing you; but the conclusions you draw from these premises are very erroneous. I exhort and persuade you to believe in Jesus Christ because it is while such means are used with sinners, and by the use of them, that it pleases God to enable them to comply or to work faith in them. I would therefore use those means which God is pleased to bless to this end. I exhort you to believe, in order to set you upon the trial; for it is putting it to trial, and that only, which can fully convince you of your own inability to believe; and till you are convinced of this, you can never expect strength from God. I exhort you to believe, because sinful and enfeebled as you are, you are capable of using various preparatives to faith. You may attend upon prayer, preaching, and all the outward means of grace with natural seriousness; you may endeavor to get acquainted with your own helpless condition and as it were place yourself in the way of divine mercy; and though all these means cannot of themselves produce faith in you, yet it is only in the use of these means that you are to expect divine grace to work it in you; never was it yet produced in one soul while lying supine, lazy, and inactive.

The speculative difficulties connected with the doctrine of regeneration arise from the fact that men put their questions and make objections from the viewpoint and position of the unconvicted sinner. They deny that they are helpless sinners; or they deny that sin deserves endless punishment; or they deny that sin requires vicarious atonement in order to its remission. A mind that is speculatively in this state is not "prepared" for regenerating grace. These are not the antecedents of regeneration. Such opinions as these must be given up, and scriptural views must be adopted, before the Holy Spirit will create the new heart. Or even if there be no heterodoxy, yet if the orthodox truth be held in unrighteousness; if the person does not reflect upon the truth and makes no effort to know his guilt and danger, but lives on in thoughtlessness and pleasure; this state of things must be changed. By a serious application to his own case of the law of God, the person must become an anxious inquirer, as a "preparative" to regeneration. The questions about man's relation to regeneration will give no serious trouble to any convicted man, to anyone who honestly acknowledges that he is a guilty and helpless sinner and seeks deliverance from the guilt and bondage of sin. The questions will then answer themselves.

It is objected that the prayer of the unregenerate is sinful. This proves too much, because it would preclude any action whatever by the unregenerate man. The hearing of the word by the unregenerate is sinful. But the unregenerate is not forbidden to hear, upon this ground. The thinking of the wicked, like his plowing, is sin. All the acts of the unregenerate are sinful, because none of them spring from supreme love to God, yet some of them are better preparatives for or antecedents to God's work of regeneration than others. Attendance upon public worship is better adapted to advance a man in the knowledge of his spiritual needs than attendance upon the theater. Prayer is better adapted than prayerlessness to bring a blessing to the soul. "Behold he prays" was mentioned as a hopeful indication in the case of Saul of Tarsus. "An act," says Owen, "may be good as to the matter of it, though sinful as to the form: for example, hearing the word by the unregenerate. And an act may be bad both as to the matter and the form: for example, pleasure seeking on the Sabbath by the unregenerate. The former act is to be preferred, rather than the latter. The former act is positively commanded of God; the latter is positively forbidden." Westminster Confession 16.7 teaches that "works done by unregenerate men, although for the matter of them they may be things which God commands, yet because they do not proceed from faith are sinful and cannot please God. And yet, their neglect of them is more sinful and displeasing unto God." If the presence of sin in the soul is a reason why an unregenerate man may not pray for regenerating grace, then it is a reason why the regenerate man may not pray for sanctifying grace. A regenerate man's prayer is mixed with sin. If, then, a person may not pray until he is regenerated, neither may he pray until he is perfectly sanctified. If the existence of sin is a reason for not praying in one case, it is in the other.

It is objected, second, that only the prayer of faith is infallibly granted. But this is no reason why a prayer that will probably be granted should not be offered. Prayer for sanctification supposes previous regeneration. This is the prayer of faith and is heard in every instance. But it does not follow that the prayer for regeneration, which God is able to answer and which he encourages convicted sinners to hope that he will answer, should not be put up, because infallible certainty is not connected with the answer. Probability of an answer is good reason for asking for regenerating grace. The fact that the prayer of the unregenerate does not deserve an answer does not prove that God will not answer it. The prayer of the regenerate does not deserve an answer on the ground of merit.

The first reason why prayer for sanctification is infallibly certain to be granted, while that for regeneration is not, is that God has bound himself by a promise in the former case, but not in the latter. The former is connected with a covenant; the latter is not. God has promised to sanctify every believer without exception who asks for sanctification; but he has not promised to regenerate every convicted sinner without exception who asks for regeneration. Regeneration is according to the purpose of God in election; and election does not depend upon any act of the creature, be it prayer or any other act. Consequently, the convicted sinner's prayer cannot infallibly secure regeneration, as the believer's prayer can sanctification. Whenever regenerating grace is implored, the sovereignty of God in its bestowment must be recognized. The words of St. Paul apply here: "If God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth" (2 Tim. 2:25). The words of the prophets also: "Let every man cry mightily unto God; who can tell if God will turn and repent, that we perish not?" (Jon. 3:9); "rend your heart, and turn unto the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful. Who knows if he will return and repent and leave a blessing behind him?" (Joel 2:13–14). The words of the leper must always be a part of the prayer for regenerating grace: "If you will, you can make me clean" (Mark 1:40). When it is said that "whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved" (Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21; Rom. 10:13), the prayer of the convicted may be meant, and the general fact is that it will be answered. Or the prayer of the regenerate for sanctification may be meant. Whosoever shall believingly and penitently call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

A second reason why the answer to prayer for regeneration is optional and sovereign, while that for sanctification is not, is that in the latter instance it is a means to the end, while in the former it is not. The prayer for sanctification is a part of the process of sanctification, but the prayer for regeneration is not a part of regeneration. Prayer as a divinely appointed means infallibly secures its end; but prayer as an appointed antecedent and not a means is accompanied with probability, not absolute certainty.

Because God has not bound himself by a covenant to hear the prayer of every convicted sinner without exception, it by no means follows that he does not hear such a prayer and that it is useless for such a person to pray. He has heard the cry of multitudes of this class. It is his general rule under the gospel economy to hear this cry. The highest probability of success, therefore, attends the prayer of an anxious and convicted person for regenerating grace. And this is ample encouragement for him to call upon the merciful and mighty God for what he needs, namely, a heart of flesh in place of the stony heart. It is not true that God never granted the prayer of an unregenerate man. Such men in peril have called upon God to spare their lives and have been heard. This is taught in Ps. 107:10–14. Convicted men, from a sense of danger and the fear of the wrath to come, have prayed for the salvation of their souls from perdition, and God has saved them. In such cases, God has granted the petition, not because it was a holy one or because it merited to be granted, but because the blessing was needed and because of his mercy to sinners in Christ. Calvin (3.20.15) mentions the prayers of Jotham (Judg. 9:20) and of Samson (16:28) as instances in which "the Lord complied with some prayers, which, nevertheless, did not arise from a calm or well-regulated heart. Whence it appears that prayers not conformable to the rules of the divine word are nevertheless efficacious."

But in addition to the fact that the prayer of a convicted sinner may have an effect upon God and be answered favorably, it also has an effect on the person himself and prepares for the regenerating act of God. No man can study the divine word and receive legal illumination from it without having some sense of danger awakened and giving utterance to it in prayer. Even if the prayer be only the cry of fear and is not accompanied with filial trust and humble submission, it is of use. The prayer, by its very defects, prepares for the new birth by showing the person his need of it. The person in distress asks for a new heart. The answer does not come immediately. The heart is displeased, is perhaps made more bitter and rebellious. By this experience, the Holy Spirit discloses to the unregenerate man more and more of the enmity of the carnal mind and the impotence of the self-enslaved will. This goes toward preparing him for the instantaneous act of regeneration.

"It is," says Owen (Holy Spirit 4.3), "in no way inconsistent that faith should be required previously unto the receiving of the Spirit as a spirit of sanctification; though it be not so as he is the author of regeneration." And the reason he assigns is that in the instance of sanctification prayer is a means; while in the instance of regeneration prayer is not a means but a preparative. He discusses the point in the following manner:

May a person who is yet unregenerate pray for the Spirit of regeneration to effect that work in him? For whereas as such he is promised only to the elect, such a person not knowing his election seems to have no foundation to make such a request upon. Answer: (1) Election is no qualification on our part which we may consider and plead in our supplications, but is only the secret purpose on the part of God of what himself will do and is known to us only by its effects. (2) Persons convinced of sin and a state of sin may and ought to pray that God, by the effectual communications of his Spirit unto them, would deliver them from that condition. This is one way whereby we "flee from the wrath to come." (3) The especial object of their supplications herein is sovereign grace, goodness, and mercy as disclosed in and by Jesus Christ. Such persons cannot indeed plead any especial promise as made unto them. But they may plead for the grace and mercy declared in the promises as indefinitely proposed unto sinners. It may be that they can proceed no further in their expectations but unto that of the prophet, "Who knows if God will come and give a blessing?" (Joel 2:14). Yet is this a sufficient ground and encouragement to keep them waiting at the throne of grace. So Paul, after he had received his vision from heaven, continued in great distress of mind praying until he received the Holy Spirit (Acts 9:9, 17). (4) Persons under such convictions have really sometimes the seeds of regeneration communicated unto them, and then as they ought to so they will continue in their supplications for the increase and manifestation of it.

When our Lord (John 14:17) asserts that "the world cannot receive the Holy Spirit because it sees him not neither knows him," the reference is to the Holy Spirit as the spirit of sanctification. Christ is speaking of him as the "Comforter" who augments and strengthens already existing spiritual life. But if the "world," that is, the unregenerate, are incapable of receiving the Holy Spirit in his regenerating office, they cannot be regenerated.

There is the highest encouragement in the word of God to pray for the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit. It is a duty enjoined upon all men without exception, like that of hearing the word: "If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him" (Luke 11:14); "you, Lord, are plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon you" (Ps. 86:5); "the Lord is nigh to all them that call upon him" (145:18); "the Lord is rich unto all that call upon him" (Rom. 10:12); "seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near" (Isa. 55:6); "I will that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting" (1 Tim. 2:8); "behold he prays" (Acts 9:11); "you that hear prayer, unto you shall all flesh come" (Ps. 65:2). These and other similar texts relate to spiritual gifts. They invite and command men universally and indiscriminately to ask God for the Holy Spirit in any of his operations, as the first and best of his gifts: "Prayer, being one special part of religious worship, is required by God of all men" (Westminster Confession 21.3).

While regeneration is a sovereign act of God according to election, it is an encouraging fact both for the sinner and the preacher of the word that God's regenerating grace is commonly bestowed where the preparatory work is performed. This is the rule under the gospel dispensation. He who reads and meditates upon the word of God is ordinarily enlightened by the Holy Spirit, perhaps in the very act of reading or hearing or meditating: "While Peter yet spoke these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all them which heard the word" (Acts 10:44). He who asks for regenerating grace may be regenerated perhaps in the act of praying. God has appointed certain human acts whereby to make ready the heart of man for the divine act. Without attentive reading and hearing of the word and prayer, the soul is not a fit subject for regenerating grace. By "fitness" is not meant holiness or even the faintest desire for holiness, but a conviction of guilt and danger, a sense of sin and utter impotence to everything spiritually good. Such an experience as this "breaks up the fallow ground," to employ the scriptural metaphor (Jer. 4:3; Hos. 10:12). When the Holy Spirit finds this preparation, then he usually intervenes with his quickening agency. The effect of prevenient grace in conviction is commonly followed by special grace in regeneration; the fact of the outward call is a reason both for the sinner and the minister of the word for expecting the inward call. Yet regeneration, after all the preparation that has been made by conviction and legal illumination, depends upon the sovereign will of God: "The wind blows where it lists, so is everyone that is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8). Regeneration rests upon God's election and not upon man's preparative acts, upon special grace and not upon common grace.

It follows, consequently, that the unregenerate man should be extremely careful how he deals with common grace. If he suppresses conviction of sin and thus nullifies common grace, then God may withdraw all grace. This was the case with some of the Jews: "For they, being ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness, did not submit themselves to the righteousness of God. And because of unbelief were broken off" (Rom. 10:3; 11:20). The same is true of some nominal Christians. God has sovereignty and liberty in respect to regenerating grace. When a person has stifled conviction, God sometimes leaves him to his self-will forever. Yet observation shows that the Holy Spirit suffers long and is very patient and forbearing with convicted men, that he does not hastily leave them, even when they disobey his admonitions, but continues to strive with them and finally brings them to faith and repentance. (supplement 6.3.8.)

Upon this general fact in the economy of redemption—that the right use of common grace is followed by regenerating grace—both the sinner and the preacher should act. In this respect, both are like other men. The farmer has no stronger motive than that of probable success for sowing grain; the merchant, for sending out ships; the manufacturer, for erecting factories. Salvation is in the highest degree probable for any person who earnestly and diligently uses common grace and the means of common grace. It is to be confidently expected that a convicted man will be made a new man in Christ Jesus. Every lost man ought to be thankful for such an encouraging probability. But to insist beforehand upon infallible certainty—and especially a certainty that is to depend upon his own action—is both folly and sin. It is folly to suppose that so weak and fickle a faculty as the human will can make anything an infallible certainty. And it is sin to attempt to divide the glory of regenerating the human soul between the Holy Spirit and the soul itself. (supplement 6.3.9.)

Third, it is objected that to pray for regeneration is to delay faith and repentance. The sinner is commanded immediately to believe on Christ and turn from his sin with godly sorrow; but praying for regeneration is dallying with the use of means. It is an excuse for procrastination. To this it is to be replied: That prayer for regeneration is a prayer that God the Holy Spirit would work instantaneously upon the heart and would immediately renew and incline the will. There would be force in this objection if the sinner were taught that there are means of regeneration and were exhorted to supplicate God to regenerate him at some future time through his own use of these means. But he who truly prays for regenerating grace despairs of all agency in the use of means and precludes all procrastination by entreating an immediate and instantaneous act on the part of God by which he shall, this very instant, be delivered from the death and bondage of sin and be brought into the life and liberty of the gospel. He implores "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, to shine in his heart, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6). He asks the Son of God, "who quickens whom he will" (John 5:21), to enliven his spirit now "dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2:1). Consequently, prayer for regenerating grace is an evidence that the convicted person has come to know that the word, sacraments, and prayer—all the means of grace—are inadequate to reanimate the soul and make it alive to righteousness. It is not until he has discovered that legal conviction, legal illumination, resolutions to reform, external reformation, reading and hearing the word, and prayer itself cannot change the heart that he leaves all these behind him and begs God immediately and instantaneously to do this needed work in his soul. The prayer for regenerating grace is, in truth, the most energetic and pressing act that the sinner can perform. It is the farthest removed of any from procrastination. It is an immediate act on the part of the sinner, and it entreats God to do an instantaneous work within him.

In this manner, prayer for the instantaneous gift of regenerating grace harmonizes with the gospel call to immediate faith and repentance. Faith and repentance naturally and necessarily result from regeneration. Whoever is regenerated will believe and repent. To pray therefore for instantaneous regeneration is, virtually, to pray for instantaneous faith and repentance, and vice versa. He who prays "help my unbelief; take away the stony heart, and give the heart of flesh" prays that God would "renew and powerfully determine the will," which is the definition of regeneration. At the same time, prayer for regenerating grace must not be substituted for the act of faith and repentance. The direction is "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." This is the biblical answer to the question: What must I do to be saved? But when the convicted person discovers that the act of faith is hindered and prevented by the blindness of his understanding and the bondage of his will to sin and asks if he may implore the "enlightening and quickening energy of the Holy Spirit to persuade and enable him to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered in the gospel" (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 31), he is to be answered in the affirmative. In imploring the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, he is "striving to enter in at the strait gate"; he is endeavoring to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. The act of faith in the blood of Christ, in its own nature, is simple and easy: "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matt. 11:30). But considered in reference to the pride and self-righteousness of the natural heart, faith is impossible without regeneration. Hence the frequent statement in Calvinistic creeds that man needs to be persuaded and enabled to this act. (supplement 6.3.10.)

SUPPLEMENTS

6.3.1 (see p. 762). The two uses of "regeneration," in a wide and narrow sense, by the Reformers and seventeenth-century divines are different from those in the patristic church, which grew out of the patristic view of the sacraments. Augustine, for example, employs the term to denote both the apparently and professedly regenerate and the really such. The former are members of the visible church, but not of the invisible; the latter belong to the invisible church also. The former may therefore fall away, the latter may not. He remarks as follows in Perseverance 21: "Of two pious (piis) men, why to one should be given perseverance unto the end and to the other it should not be given is an unsearchable judgment of God. Yet to believers it ought to be a most certain fact that the former is of the predestinated, the latter is not. 'For if they had been of us,' says one of the predestinated who had drunk this secret from the breast of the Lord, 'certainly they would have continued with us.' " Again, in Rebuke and Grace 18, he says: "It is greatly to be wondered at that to some of his own children, whom he has regenerated in Christ and to whom he has given faith, hope, and love, God does not give perseverance also, when to the children of another he forgives their wickedness and by the bestowal of his grace makes them his own children. Moreover, it is not less marvelous that some of the children of his friends, that is, of regenerated and good believers, departing this life as infants without baptism, although he certainly might provide the grace of this layer if he so willed, he yet alienates from his kingdom into which he introduces their parents; and some children of his enemies he causes to come into the hands of Christians and by means of this laver introduces into the kingdom from which their parents are aliens. Of both of which things we may exclaim, How unsearchable are the judgments of God."

From the above extracts it will be seen that Augustine held (1) that baptism is indispensable to regeneration, (2) that there are some nonelect dying infants, and (3) that some whom he calls "regenerate" may not persevere. On the first point he differs from Calvin; on the second he agrees with him; on the third he seemingly differs, but not really, because he employs "regeneration" in two senses, while Calvin employs it only to denote the really renewed. By the "regenerate" who are not elected and do not persevere, Augustine means those adults who have been baptized and are members of the visible church, but not of the invisible. In his day baptism was denominated "regeneration." By the "regenerate" who are elected and persevere he means those adults who are members of the invisible church as well as the visible. Employing the term in this double sense, Augustine, unlike Calvin and the Reformed creeds, holds to a genuine "regeneration" that springs from election and predestination and to a spurious "regeneration" that does not. The omission to notice the two uses of the word has led to the assertion by most Roman Catholic and some Protestant writers that Augustine's doctrine of election and predestination differs from that of Calvin. Both alike affirm that the truly regenerate are predestinated to perseverance and never fall away: "Let it not disturb us that to some of his children God does not give this perseverance. But this is far from being so, however, in the case of those who are predestinated and called according to the promise. For the former, while they live piously are called the children of God; but because they are afterward to live wickedly and to die in wickedness, the foreknowledge of God does not call them God's children" (Rebuke and Grace 20). "Some of the children of perdition, who have not received the gift of perseverance to the end, beginto live in the faith that works by love and live for some time faithfully and righteously and afterward fall away and are not taken from this life before this happens to them. Unless this had happened to some, men would not have that wholesome fear by which the sin of presumption and self-security is kept down" (Rebuke and Grace 40; cf. 9, 11–12, 14, 16). Augustine maintains that all of the elect and predestinated are the subjects of true and spiritual regeneration and never fall away: "Says St. Paul, 'We know that God works all things for good to them that are called according to his purpose; because those whom he foreknew he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified.' Of these no one perishes, because all are elected. And they are elected because they were called according to the purpose: the purpose, however, of God, not their own" (Rebuke and Grace 14).

Owen (Saints' Perseverance, preface), after abundant citations from Augustine's treatises Predestination and Perseverance of the Saints in proof that he held that the elect and predestinated will infallibly persevere, remarks that "there are in Augustine and those that agreed with him sundry expressions commonly urged by the adversaries of the doctrine of the saints' perseverance, which grant that many who were 'saints,' 'believing' and 'regenerate,' fall away and perish forever. The reader will find them gathered to his hand in Vossius, Grotius, and Goodwin. The seeming contradiction in Augustine and his followers—Prosper, Hilary, and Fulgentius—will easily admit a reconciliation if they are allowed to be interpreters of their own meaning. What weight in those days was laid upon participation in the sacramental symbols of grace and what expressions are commonly used concerning those who had obtained that privilege is known to all. Hence all baptized persons continuing in the profession of the faith and communion of the church they called, counted, and esteemed regenerate and justified and spoke so of them; such as these they affirm might fall away into everlasting destruction; yet what their judgment was concerning their present state, even when they termed them 'regenerate' and 'believers,' in respect to the sacraments and a visible profession of faith, Augustine clearly delivers his thoughts, especially in his treatise on Rebuke and Grace. 'They were not,' says he, chap. 20, 'children, even when they were in the profession and name of children. Not because they deliberately simulated righteousness, but because they did not continue in it.' This righteousness he esteemed not to be merely feigned and hypocritical, but rather such as might truly entitle them to the state and condition of the children of God in the sense above expressed. These are the persons which Augustine and those of the same judgment with him do grant may fall away; such, namely, as upon account of their baptismal entrance into the church, their pious and devout lives, their profession of the faith of the gospel, they called and accounted 'regenerate' believers, whom yet they tell you, upon a thorough search into the nature and causes of holiness, grace, and walking with God, would be found not to be truly and really in that state and condition in which they were esteemed to be; of which they thought this a sufficient proof, that they did not persevere; which evinces that their judgment was that all who are truly, really, and in the sight of God believers, engrafted into Christ, and adopted into his family should certainly persevere."

The necessity of baptism by the church, in order to salvation, is the principal point of difference between Augustine and Calvin and explains the sacramentarianism, together with the double sense of regeneration, which are found in the system of the former but not in that of the latter. The following passages express it: "Take the case of any infant you please. If he is already in Christ, why is he baptized? If, however, he is baptized that he may be with Christ, it certainly follows that he who is not baptized is not with Christ; and because he is not 'with' Christ he is 'against' Christ" (Forgiveness and Baptism 1.55). Augustine did not hold the Romish doctrine that the mere application of water in the name of the Trinity regenerates the soul. His view of regeneration was spiritual; that it is the effect only of the direct operation of the Holy Spirit. But he believed that God has inseparably connected the gift of the Spirit to regenerate with the ordinance of baptism administered to infants within his church. "From the infant newly born to the old man bent with age, as there is none shut out from baptism, so there is none in baptism who does not die to sin. But infants die only to original sin; those who are older die also to all the sins which their evil lives have added to the sin which they inherited from Adam" (Enchiridion 43). "As in a certain manner the sacrament of Christ's body is Christ's body and the sacrament of Christ's blood is Christ's blood, in the same manner the sacrament of faith is faith. Now, believing is nothing else than having faith; and accordingly, when, on behalf of an infant as yet incapable of exercising faith, the answer is given that he believes, this answer means that he has faith because of the sacrament of faith and that he converts to God because of the sacrament of conversion. Therefore an infant, although he is not yet a believer in the sense of having that faith which includes the consenting will of those who exercise it, nevertheless becomes a believer through the sacrament of faith" (Letter 98.9–10 to Boniface, A.D. 408). "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believes not shall be damned. Now who is unaware that in the case of infants being baptized is to believe, and not being baptized is not to believe" (Forgiveness and Baptism 1.40). Augustine, in these passages, defines a sacrament as "that which has some point of real resemblance to the thing of which it is a sacrament." It is a symbol or sign resembling the thing signified. The sponsors answer that "the infant believes," has "some point of resemblance" to actual faith, and this is the "sacrament of faith." His answer, also, that the infant "turns to God," Augustine calls "the sacrament of conversion." In thus making baptism and the promises of the sponsors the indispensable condition of the regeneration of the infant by the Holy Spirit, Augustine prepared for the materialistic view of grace formulated at Trent. His own highly spiritual conception of the Holy Spirit's agency in regeneration as immediate and irresistible would logically exclude such a necessary dependence on an outward sign and ceremony. Calvin, a thousand years later, saw the inconsistency of the two things and modified Augustinianism by making salvation depend, as Augustine did, upon the new birth, but not by making, as Augustine did, the new birth to depend upon the baptism of the church. Baptism he held to be the appointed sign and seal of regeneration and is to be administered whenever it is possible because of the divine command; but when impossible its omission does not preclude regeneration by the Holy Spirit. Augustine's view leads to the position that salvation outside of the visible church is impossible; Calvin's view makes salvation outside of it a possibility.

The following extracts from Augustine are of the same tenor with those above cited: "If infants were hurt by no malady of original sin, how is it that they are carried to the physician Christ for the express purpose of receiving the sacrament of eternal salvation by the pious anxiety of those who run to him? Why rather is it not said to them by the church: Take hence these innocents; 'they that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick'; Christ 'came not to call the righteous but the sinners'? There never has been heard, there never is heard, there never will be heard in the church such a fiction concerning Christ" (Forgiveness and Baptism 1.23). "Our Lord himself, wishing to remove from the minds of wrong believers that vague and indefinite middle condition which some would attribute to unbaptized infants, as if by reason of innocence they were included in eternal life and yet because of their unbaptized state were not with Christ in his kingdom, uttered that definite sentence of his which shuts their mouths: 'He that is not with me is against me' " (Forgiveness and Baptism 1.55).

6.3.2 (see p. 763). Edwards (Works 1.141) explains the exhortations "make you a new heart" and "be renewed in the spirit of your minds" as referring to the sanctification of believers: "It is objected that the apostle sometimes exhorts those to whom he writes to 'put off the old man' and 'put on the new man' and to 'be renewed in the spirit of their minds,' as exhorting them to seek conversion. I answer that the meaning is manifestly only this: that they should mortify the remains of corruption or of the old man and turn more and more from sin unto God. Then he exhorts the Ephesians to be 'renewed in the spirit of their mind' (Eph. 4:22–23), whom yet he had before in the same epistle abundantly represented as savingly renewed already."

6.3.3 (see p. 768). Owen (Holy Spirit 3.5) describes the total operation of the Holy Spirit in adult regeneration as twofold: (1) moral suasion and (2) internal physical operation: "The Holy Spirit in the regeneration or conversion of all that are adult does make use of motives, arguments, reasons, and considerations proposed unto the mind by the preaching and reading of the word, which are adapted to influence the will and affections. There are none ordinarily converted who are not able to give some account by what considerations they were prevailed upon thereunto. But the whole of the work of the Holy Spirit in our conversion does not consist of this moral suasion. There is also a real physical work, whereby he infuses a gracious principle of spiritual life into all that are effectually converted and really regenerated and without which there is no deliverance from the state of sin and death. That the entire operation of the Holy Spirit in conversion does not consist in the presentation of motives and arguments, the ensuing reasons do sufficiently evince: (1) If the Holy Spirit works no otherwise on men in their regeneration or conversion but by proposing and urging upon them reasons, arguments, and motives, then after his whole work, and notwithstanding it, the will of man remains absolutely indifferent whether it will admit them or not, or whether it will convert itself unto God in view of them or not. For the whole of this work consists in proposing objects unto the will, with respect to which it is left undetermined whether it will choose and close with them or not. And this is what some plead for. For they say that in all men, at least all to whom the gospel is preached, there is such grace present with them that they are able to comply with the word if they please and so to believe, repent, or do any act of obedience unto God. And if they will, they can refuse and continue in sin. This view ascribes the glory of our regeneration to an act of our own will and not to the grace of God. It also leaves it absolutely uncertain, notwithstanding the purpose of God and the purchase of Christ, whether anyone in the world will be converted. And, finally, it is contrary to many express testimonies of Scripture wherein actual conversion to God is ascribed to his internal operation: 'God works in us to will and to do' (Phil. 2:13). The act therefore itself of willing in our conversion is of God's operation; and although we ourselves will, yet it is he who causes us to will by working in us to will. (2) Moral persuasion, however advanced or improved and supposed to be effectual, yet confers no new supernatural strength unto the soul. For when the Spirit of God works by reasons, motives, arguments, and objective considerations and no otherwise, he is able only to excite and draw out the strength which we have, delivering the mind and affections from prejudices and other moral impediments; real aid and internal spiritual strength neither is nor can be conferred thereby. And he who will acknowledge that there is any such internal spiritual strength communicated unto us must also acknowledge that there is another work of the Spirit of God in us and upon us than can be effected by these persuasions." Owen fortifies his positions by extracts from Augustine's antipelagian writings, in which this same distinction is made in opposition to the views of Coelestius and Pelagius, who resolved the whole work of the Spirit into moral suasion. He also cites from the Semipelagian fathers and Schoolmen, who indeed ascribed more to the inward operation of the Spirit than did the Pelagians, but when it came to the question whether the determination of the will to holiness in conversion is wholly or only partly the effect of divine grace, affirmed the latter.

6.3.4 (see p. 768). The agency of God and man in regeneration is different from that in sanctification. In the first instance there is the creative and enlivening energy of the Holy Spirit in the human spirit. In such agency there is no division of the work between the divine and the human. Man does not cooperate with God in it. The entire quickening and creating anew is the act of God alone. The proper phraseology for it is actuating, enabling, and inclining. In the second instance, that of sanctification, there is a union of the divine with the human energy and a division of the work between the two. The now regenerate will cooperates with the Holy Spirit. It "works out its salvation with fear and trembling, because God works also within it to will and to do" (Phil. 2:12–13). The proper phraseology for this is helping, assisting, and stimulating. When the Holy Spirit actuates and inclines the human will, he does the whole. But when he helps, excites, and assists it, he does a part. In actuating, enabling, and inclining, the parties are not coordinate, each working on its own basis and contributing a divine and a human factor to the common result, but one is subordinate and the other controlling. In regeneration God moves upon the human soul prior, in the order of nature, and the soul then moves in conversion (not regeneration) as a consequence. The agency of each, in this instance, is total and undivided, not partial and shared with the other. God quickens, actuates, enables, and inclines the human will without the will's assisting or helping in this because as ungenerate it sinfully resists; and the will, as the effect of this divine agency, converts, in the acts of faith and repentance, without God's sharing in this converting activity. As man does not participate and share in the regenerating and inclining of the will, so God does not participate and share in the believing and repenting of the will. God is the sole author of regeneration, and man is the sole actor in conversion, namely, in faith and repentance. Thus there is no cooperation between the divine and the human in either regeneration or conversion. God alone regenerates as the cause. There are not two causes of regeneration, one divine and one human. Man alone converts, that is, believes and repents as the effect of regeneration. There are not two faiths and repentances—one in God and the other in man. But in sanctification the case is different. Here the growth and increase of the principle of holiness is an effect of the union and cooperation of the agency of the Holy Spirit with that of the regenerate will.

The neglect to distinguish between creating anew, enabling, actuating, and inclining the human will and helping, assisting, and stimulating it has led to much error. Synergism in regeneration results from overlooking this distinction. What is true of sanctification alone is transferred to regeneration.

6.3.5 (see p. 770). If the affections, as in the elder Calvinism, are regarded as modes of the inclination of the will, we may speak also of the expulsive power of a new inclination. The regeneration of the will is the origination de novo of a new inclination to God as the ultimate end, and this expels the old inclination, inherited from Adam, to self and the creature. This expulsion, however, leaves some remainders of the old inclination, which act like the old inclination in every respect, excepting their degree. They have the same spontaneousness and self-motion, only less strength. They do not wholly dominate the man as the old inclination, or "old Adam" as St. Paul calls it, did. And they grow weaker, as the "old Adam" does not in the unregenerate. The regenerate man dies more and more to sin and lives more and more to holiness. The "new man" or new inclination is the stronger man within the house and has bound the "strong man" who still remains in it and keeps up a conflict that is severe and exhausting, but is a losing battle and a defeat in the end.

Now it is to be observed that in this process of progressive sanctification there is the freedom of self-determination, but not of optional choice. These remainders of original sin or of sinful inclination are a self-motion that antagonizes the self-motion of the new inclination. One self-determination is opposed to another. The two are "the flesh, which lusts against the spirit, and are contrary the one to the other, so that you cannot do the things that you would" (Gal. 5:17). These remainders of sinful self-determination cannot be removed by a power to the contrary inherent in themselves, but must be expelled by the superior energy of the new inclination to holiness. Sin must be driven out by holiness, not convert itself into holiness. This would be the casting out of Satan by Satan, which our Lord asserts to be a contradiction and impossibility. There is no evolution of holiness out of sin or transmutation of sin into holiness by the exercise of a power of contrary choice.

6.3.6 (see p. 772). Since regeneration precedes conversion in the order of nature, not of time, it precedes justification in the same order, because faith precedes justification, and faith is one of the acts of conversion. An unbeliever is not justified: "A man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the law" (Rom. 3:28). But it does not follow from this that regeneration is the cause or ground of justification, as Dorner asserts in objection to this statement (Christian Doctrine 4.206). One thing may be antecedent to another, and yet not the cause of it: post hoc, non ergo propter hoc. The cause or ground of justification is wholly objective, namely, the sacrifice and satisfaction of Christ. Nothing subjective (and both faith and repentance are subjective acts) enters into the cause or ground of justification. A sinner is not justified, that is, pardoned and accepted as righteous, because he is regenerated. The divine life implanted in regeneration cannot satisfy justice for sin nor merit eternal life for the sinner, both of which are requisite in order to justification. But the sinner cannot appropriate Christ's objective satisfaction but by the act of faith in it, and he cannot exercise this faith if the Holy Spirit does not incline and enable him to it. And this inclining and enabling is one consequence of the new birth and new life in the soul: "Whosoever believes is born of God" (1 John 5:1).

6.3.7 (see p. 776). Howe (Redeemer's Tears) thus speaks of the sinner's agency in respect to regeneration: "Here, perhaps, sinners will inquire, Is there anything, then, to be done by us, whereupon the grace of God may be expected certainly to follow? To which I answer: (1) That it is certain that nothing can be done by us to deserve it or for the merit of which we may expect it to follow. It were not grace if we had obliged or brought it under bonds to us by our deserts. (2) What if nothing can be done by us, upon which it may be certainly expected to follow? Is a certainty of perishing better than a high probability of being saved? (3) Such as live under the gospel have reason to apprehend it highly probable that they may obtain that grace which is necessary to their salvation, if they be not wanting to themselves. (4) For there is generally afforded to such that which is wont to be called common grace. Now, though this grace is not yet certainly saving, yet it tends to that which is so. And none have cause to despair but that, being duly improved and complied with, it may end in it. Let the consciences of men living under the gospel testify in the case. Appeal, sinner, to your own conscience: have you never felt anything of conviction by the word of God? Had you never any thought injected of turning to God, of reforming your life, of making your peace with God? Have no desires ever been raised in you, no fears? Have you never had any tastes and relishes of pleasure (Heb. 6:4–5) in the things of God? Whence have these come? What! from yourself, who is not sufficient to think anything as of yourself, i.e., any good or right thought. All must be from that good Spirit that has been striving with you and might still have been so unto a blessed issue for your soul, if you had not neglected and disobeyed it.

"And do not go about to excuse yourself by saying that all others have done so too, at one time or another; and if that therefore be the rule and measure, that they that content against the strivings and motions of God's Spirit must be finally deserted and given up to perish, who then can be saved? Think not of pleading so for your neglecting and despising the grace and spirit of God. It is true that herein the great God shows his sovereignty; when all that enjoy the same advantages for salvation deserve by their slighting them to be forsaken alike, he gives instances and makes examples of just severity and of the victorious power of grace, as seems him good. But our present design is not to justify your condemnation, but to procure your salvation; and therefore to admonish and instruct you, that though you are not sure, because some others that have slighted and despised the grace and Spirit of God are, notwithstanding, conquered and saved thereby, it shall therefore fare as well with you, yet you have reason to be confident and hopeful it will be well and happy for you, if now you despise and slight them not."

6.3.8 (see p. 781). In saying that if the unregenerate "suppresses conviction of sin and nullifies common grace, then God may withdraw all grace," conditional preterition does not logically follow. God may do this, but it is not infallibly certain that he will. He is sovereign to do as he pleases. He does not invariably condition his preterition upon the sinner's action, invariably refusing regenerating grace to all who nullify common grace and invariably bestowing it upon all who according to the Arminian view do not nullify it. God does not pass by one of two persons in the bestowment of saving grace because of original sin or of actual transgression (Rom. 9:11) or of foreseen perseverance in sin or of foreseen resistance of common grace, for these are all of them characteristic of both persons alike and would be a reason for passing by both of them. Westminster Larger Catechism 68 declares that the nonelect "may be and often are outwardly called by the ministry of the word and have some common operations of the Spirit and for their willful neglect and contempt of the grace offered to them, being justly left in their unbelief, do never come to Jesus Christ." This is a statement of the possibility and probability, not of the decreed certainty in the case. As the right use of common grace makes it probable but not infallibly certain that saving grace will follow (see pp. 776–77), so the abuse of common grace makes it probable but not infallibly certain that saving grace will not follow. The catechism says that the nonelect "may be and often are justly left because of their neglect of common grace"; but it does not say that they are always and invariably left because of this neglect. If it did, it would teach conditional preterition.

6.3.9 (see p. 781). Respecting the encouragement which the sinner has to seek salvation because of the probability, in distinction from the infallible certainty, that the right use of common grace will be followed by saving grace, Howe (Blessedness of the Righteous, chap. 17) thus remarks: "Why should you imagine so sad an issue as that after your utmost endeavors grace should be withheld and leave you to perish, because God has not bound himself by promise to you. What promise have the ravens to be heard when they cry? Experience tells the world that God's unpromised mercies freely flow everywhere. The whole earth is full of his goodness. God promises sinners, indefinitely, pardon and eternal life, for the sake of Christ, on condition that they believe on him. He gives of his good pleasure that grace whereby he draws any to Christ, without promise directly made to them. His discovery of his purpose to give such grace, indefinitely, amounts not to a promise claimable by any; for if it be said to be an absolute promise to particular persons, who are they? whose duty is it to believe it made to him? God binds himself to do what he promises; but has he anywhere bound himself to do no more? Did he promise you your being, or that you should live to this day? Did he promise you the bread that sustains you or the daily comforts of your life? Yea, what is nearer the present purpose, did he promise you a station under the gospel or that you should ever hear the name of Christ? If ever his Spirit have in any degree moved upon your heart and inclined you at all seriously to consider your eternal concernments, did he beforehand make you any promise of that? A promise would give you a full certainty of the issue, if it were absolute and unconditional; if conditional, as soon as you perform the condition. But can you act upon no lower rate than a foregoing certainty, a preassurance of the event? My friend, consider a little, that it is hope, built with those that are rational upon rational probability, with some oftentimes without hope at all, which is the great engine that moves the world, that keeps all sorts of men in action. Does the husbandman foreknow when he plows and sows that the crop will answer his cost and pains? Do you foreknow when you eat, it shall refresh you? when you take physic, that it shall recover your health and save your life? The Lord knows that in these cases men can be confident and active enough without a promise of infallible success. Will you not, upon the probability and hope you have before you, do as much for your soul?"

6.3.10 (see p. 782). Ursinus (Christian Religion Q. 74) thus replies to the objection that infants should not be baptized because belief is the requisite to baptism and infants cannot believe: "We deny the proposition which denies that infants do believe; for infants of believers regenerated by the Holy Spirit have an inclination to believe, or do believe by inclination; for faith is in infants potentially and by disposition, albeit faith be not in them actually as in those who are of age and understanding. And as unregenerate infants who are without the church have no actual impiety and wickedness, but an inclination only to wickedness, so godly infants who are in the church have not actual piety and godliness, but an inclination only to godliness; not by nature, indeed, but by the grace of the covenant. Infants have the Holy Spirit and are regenerated by him, as John was filled with the Holy Spirit when as yet he was in the womb; and it was said to Jeremiah, 'Before you came out of the womb I sanctified you.' If infants have the Holy Spirit, then, doubtless, he works in them regeneration, good inclinations, new motions, and all other things which are necessary unto salvation; as Peter says, 'Who can forbid water from them who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we?' Wherefore Christ numbered little children among believers: 'He who offends one of these little ones which believe in me.' Wherefore infants do not profane baptism, as the Anabaptists slander us."

In answer to the objection that if infants are to be baptized they should also partake of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, Ursinus Q. 74 replies: "Unto baptism, regeneration by the Holy Spirit and faith or an inclination to faith and repentance suffices; but in the supper conditions are added and required which hinder the use thereof to be granted unto infants. For in Scripture it is required (1) that they who use the sign show forth the death of the Lord and (2) that they try themselves whether they have faith and repentance or no. And seeing the age of infants cannot do these things, it is manifest that infants are for good cause excluded from the supper but not from baptism."

4 Conversion

Conversion is that action of man which results from regeneration. As the etymology implies, it is turning toward (converto) a certain point and away from a certain point. Conversion consists of two acts: faith and repentance. Faith is turning to Christ as the ground of justification and away from self as the ground. Repentance is turning to God as the chief end of existence and away from the creature as the chief end. Faith and repentance are converting acts; the first having principal reference to justification, the second to sanctification; the first to the guilt of sin, the second to its corruption.

Westminster Confession 14.2 defines faith in Jesus Christ as "a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon him for salvation." There is a difference between belief (assensus) and faith (fiducia). The first is assent to testimony; the last is assent to testimony and also trust in the person who gives the testimony: "Justifying faith not only assents to the truth of the promise, but receives and rests upon Christ for pardon" (Westminster Larger Catechism 72). There may be belief without faith. A man may credit the statements made by Jesus Christ and yet not rest in him for salvation. Faith is a "saving grace," but belief is not. All who are not skeptics believe the testimony of Christ and his apostles, but not all who are not skeptics have faith. Faith is accompanied with love; belief is not: "The devils believe and tremble." The natural man believes that God is merciful, but does not trust in his mercy.

This distinction is marked in the New Testament, by the use of the prepositions connected with the verb or noun. Pisteuō when used in reference to Christ is accompanied with en, eis, and epi5 because the object is to denote rest and reliance upon his person. Paul said to the jailer, "Believe on (pisteuson epi) the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved." He did not bid him merely to believe that the statements which he had heard from Paul respecting Christ were correct. He bade him do much more than this, namely, receive and rest on Christ himself as a living and personal Redeemer. Had he asked only for the assent of the mind to testimony, he would have said: "Believe the Lord Jesus Christ." (supplement 6.4.1.)

The same use of the prepositions is sometimes associated with the term gospel because of its connection with Christ: "Repent and believe (pisteuete en) the gospel" (Mark 1:15). Even when there is no preposition, pisteuō sometimes denotes trust: "Christ did not commit himself (ouk episteuen heauton)" (John 2:24); "who will commit (tis pisteusei) to your trust the true riches?" (Luke 16:11); "unto them were committed (episteuthēsan) the oracles" (Rom. 3:2); "the gospel of circumcision was committed to me" (Gal. 2:7); "I know whom I have believed (hō pepisteuka)" or trusted in (2 Tim. 1:12). An instance of mere belief in testimony is found in Mark 11:31: "Why did you not believe him (diati ouk episteusate autō)?"

This fiducial or confiding nature of faith is taught in the phrases looking to Christ, receiving Christ, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood. The definition which makes faith merely belief in testimony converts Christ into a witness only. He is this, but much more: a prince and savior; a prophet, priest, and king; a person not to be believed merely, but to be believed in and on.

Faith is an effect of which regeneration is the cause. This is taught in the following: "Whosoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God" (1 John 5:1); "unto you it is given, in behalf of Christ, to believe on him" (Phil. 1:29); "we pray that God would fulfill all the good pleasure of his goodness and the work of faith with power" (2 Thess. 1:11); "that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God" (1 Cor. 2:5); "no man can come to me except the Father which has sent me draw him; no man can come unto me, except it were given him of my Father" (John 6:44, 65); "by him, do you believe in God, that raised him up from the dead and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God" (1 Pet. 1:21). The order and connection between regeneration and faith is taught by our Lord. After announcing the doctrine of regeneration to Nicodemus in John 3:3 ("except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God"), he then in 3:14–18 proceeds to speak of his own atonement for sin and of man's trust in it: "The Son of Man must be lifted up, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." That great change which Christ denominates being "born again" manifests itself first of all in an act of reliance upon Christ's blood of atonement. Saving faith in the person and work of the Redeemer follows regeneration and always presupposes it.

The following particulars are to be noted.

Evangelical faith is an act of man. The active nature of faith in Christ is indicated in the scriptural phraseology, which describes it as "coming to Christ" (Matt. 11:28), "looking to Christ" (John 1:29), "receiving Christ" (3:11), and "following Christ" (8:12). The object of the Epistle of James is to teach that faith is an active principle. "Dead faith" the epistle defines to be "faith without works," that is, pretended faith that does not work. The hypocrite merely "says" that he has faith (James 2:14).

Evangelical faith is an act of both the understanding and the will. It is complex, involving a spiritual perception of Christ and an affectionate love of him. (a) That faith is an intelligent act is proved by the following: "They shall be all taught by God. Every man, therefore, that has heard and has learned of the Father, comes unto me" (John 6:44–45; 2 Cor. 3:14; 4:4); God gives "the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ" (Eph. 1:17–18); "you have an unction from the Holy One, and you know all things" (1 John 2:20). (b) That faith is an affectionate and voluntary act is proved by the following: "Faith works by love" (Gal. 5:6); "peace be to the brethren, and love, with faith from God the Father" (Eph. 6:23; 3:17; 4:16; 5:2; Col. 2:2; 1 Thess. 3:12; 5:8; 1 Tim. 1:14); "hold fast the form of sound words, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. 1:13).

Evangelical faith is the particular act that unites the soul to Christ. For this reason, it stands first in the order of the acts that result from regeneration: "The Holy Spirit applies to us the redemption purchased by Christ, by working faith in us and thereby uniting us to Christ in our effectual calling" (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 30). Penitence for sin, love of holiness, hope, long-suffering, patience, temperance, etc., are none of them acts by which Christ's atonement for sin is laid hold of and made personal. Trusting faith is the special exercise of the soul by which this is done, and hence faith is the first thing commanded: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved" (Acts 16:31); "this is the work of God, that you believe on him whom he has sent" (John 6:29).

The union with Christ by faith is not natural and substantial, like that between Adam and his posterity. Nor is it moral or social, like that between individuals in a corporation or state. Its characteristics are the following. (a) It is a spiritual union because of its author, the Holy Spirit: "He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit" (1 Cor. 6:17); "by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body" (12:13); "hereby we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has given us" (1 John 3:24; 4:13). (b) It is a vital union because it involves a divine and spiritual life derived from Christ: "Because I live, you shall live also" (John 14:19); "he that believes in me though he were dead, yet shall he live" (11:25); "I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). (c) It is an eternal union: "They shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand" (John 10:28); "who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" (Rom. 8:35–39; 1 Thess. 4:14, 17). (d) It is a mystical, that is, mysterious union: The elect are "mystically joined to Christ" (Westminster Larger Catechism 67); "this is a great mystery; I speak concerning Christ and the church" (Eph. 5:32). The spiritual union between Christ and his people is individual, not specific. It does not rest upon unity of race and nature. It results from regeneration, not from creation. Consequently, it is not universal, but particular. Upon this spiritual and mystical union rests the federal and legal union between Christ and his people. Because they are spiritually, vitally, eternally, and mystically one with him, his merit is imputable to them, and their demerit is imputable to him. The imputation of Christ's righteousness supposes a union with him. It could not be imputed to an unbeliever, because he is not united to Christ by faith.

Saving faith terminates on Christ as its object and upon Christ in all three of his offices: prophet, priest, and king. Since, however, guilt is a prominent fact in man's condition, the priestly office is prominent in relation to faith as described in Scripture. Under the levitical economy, faith was indispensable. The typical sacrifice must be offered trusting in the promise of God concerning the Messiah. Merely to bring and slay a lamb, as an opus operatum, was not sufficient. There must be filial reverence for the divine command and confidence in the divine promise of mercy through the coming Redeemer.

The second effect of regeneration is repentance. The word metanoia denotes a change of the mind (nous). But "mind" is employed in the sense of disposition, will, or inclination, as in Rom. 7:25: "With the mind (noi), I myself serve the law of God." It is an instance in which nous20 is put for kardia (see pp. 516–17). The word metamelōai is sometimes employed to denote the genuine sorrow that accompanies repentance: "Afterward he repented and went" (Matt. 21:29); "though I made you sorry, I do not repent though I did repent" (2 Cor. 7:8); "and you, when you had seen it, repented not afterward that you might believe him" (Matt. 21:32); "the Lord swore and will not repent" (Heb. 7:21). In Matt. 27:3 it denotes the impenitent remorse of Judas. But metanoia not metameleia24 is the technical term in the New Testament for repentance. The difference between penitence and remorse is described in 2 Cor. 7:9–10. Penitence is "godly sorrow" and is one of the elements in repentance.

The definition of repentance in Westminster Confession 15.2 comprises the following particulars: (a) "a sense not only of the danger, but of the odiousness of sin"; (b) "the apprehension of God's mercy in Christ"; (c) "grief for and turning from sin"; (d) "the purpose and endeavor to walk in God's commandments": "Then shall you remember your own evil ways and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities" (Ezek. 36:31); "against you, you only, have I sinned; that you might be justified when you speak and clear when you judge" (Ps. 51:4); "that you sorrowed after a godly sort what carefulness it wrought in you, yea what indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal" (2 Cor. 7:11; Ezek. 18:30–31; Joel 2:12–13; Amos 5:15; Ps. 119:128); "I have heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus: You have chastised me as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke; turn unto me, and I shall be turned; for you are the Lord my God" (Jer. 31:18–19).

Though faith and repentance are inseparable and simultaneous, yet in the order of nature, faith precedes repentance: "They shall look on me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourns for his only son" (Zech. 12:10); "a great number believed and turned unto the Lord" (Acts 11:22). This order is evinced by the following particulars:

1. Faith is the means, and repentance is the end. Faith leads to repentance, not repentance to faith. The Scriptures present God's mercy in redemption as the motive to repentance: "Turn, O backsliding children, says the Lord; for I am married unto you" (Jer. 3:14); "turn unto the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful" (Joel 2:13).

2. Repentance involves turning to God; but there can be no turning but through Christ: "No man comes unto the Father but by me" (John 14:6); "I am the door" (10:9).

3. If repentance precedes faith, then it stands between the sinner and Christ. The sinner cannot go to Christ "just as he is," but must first make certain that he has repented.

4. If repentance precedes faith, then none but the penitent man is invited to believe in Christ. This contradicts Rom. 5:6: "Christ died for the ungodly." Impenitent sinners are commanded to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ in order to the remission of their sins.

5. The doctrine that repentance precedes faith tends to make repentance legal, that is, a reason why Christ should accept the sinner.

6. God out of Christ and irrespective of faith in Christ is a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24; Heb. 12:29). It is impossible to have godly sorrow with this view of God. Only remorse and terror are possible. In such passages as Mark 1:15 ("repent and believe the gospel") and Acts 20:21 ("testifying repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ") the end is mentioned first and the means last. In a proposition, a term may have a position verbally which it has not logically. In Jer. 31:34 sanctification is mentioned before pardon: "They shall all know me, for I will forgive their iniquity."

SUPPLEMENT

6.4.1 (see p. 787). The fundamental position of faith as the effect and evidence of regeneration, as the act that unites the soul with Christ, as the instrumental cause of justification, and as the antecedent of repentance is indicated by our Lord's words to Peter: "Upon this rock I will build my church" (Matt. 16:18). That the rock spoken of was the faith, not the person of Peter, was a common explanation of the fathers. Owen (Person of Christ, preface) cites the following: "Origen (tractate in Matt. 16) expressly denies the words to be spoken of Peter: 'If you shall think that the whole church was built on Peter alone, what shall we say of John and each of the apostles? Shall we dare to say that the gates of hell shall not prevail against Peter alone? Hilary (Concerning the Trinity 2) says: 'This is the only immovable foundation; this is the rock of faith confessed by Peter, You are the Son of the living God.' And Epiphanius (Heresies 39) declares, 'Upon this rock of assured faith (epi tē petra tautē tēs asphalous pisteōs) I will build my church.' One or two more out of Augustine shall close these testimonies (Sermon concerning the Words of the Lord 13): 'Upon this rock which you have confessed, upon this rock which you have known, saying, You are Christ, the Son of the living God, I will build my church, that is, on me myself, the Son of the living God, I will build my church. I will build you upon myself, and not myself on you.' And he more fully declares his mind in tractate 124 on John: 'The church in this world is shaken with divers temptations, as with floods and tempests, yet falls not because it is built on the rock (petra) from which Peter took his name. For the rock is not called petra from Peter, but Peter is so called from petra the rock; as Christ is not so called from Christian, but Christian from Christ. Therefore, said the Lord, Upon this rock will I build my church; because Peter had said, You are Christ, the Son of the living God. Upon this rock which you have confessed will I build my church. For Christ himself was the rock on which foundation Peter himself was built. For other foundation can no man lay, save that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.' "

Peter's confession of faith in Christ is the model for all believers and is represented by Christ as the "rock" upon which his church is built (Matt. 16:18). Peter himself so understood the declaration of his Lord. He says, "It is contained in Scripture, Behold I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious, and the stone which the builders disallowed is made the head of the corner" (1 Pet. 2:6–7). Leighton thus expounds this passage: "Jesus Christ is the alone rock upon which his church is built, not Peter (if we will believe Peter himself, who here teaches us that Christ is the chief cornerstone of his church), much less his pretended successors." Nothing can be more incredible than the Romish invention that Christ is a cornerstone that rests upon the person of one of his disciples as the ledge (petra) or lower foundation.

5 Justification

Preliminary Considerations

Justification is one of the most important doctrines in the Christian system. It supposes faith, and faith supposes regeneration: "Whosoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God" (1 John 5:1); "I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts; for I will forgive their iniquity and will remember their sin no more" (Jer. 31:33–34). This order is given in Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 67: The "mind being enlightened" and "the will being renewed," the person is "enabled to accept Christ as offered in the gospel." Faith unites with Christ, and union with Christ results in justification. This is defined in Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 33 to be "an act of God's free grace wherein he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith"; "through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins; and by him, all that believe are justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses" (Acts 13:38–39); "all have sinned and have come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 3:23–24); "to him that works not but believes on him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness" (4:5, 6–8; 5:17–19; 8:30); "of God are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption" (1 Cor. 1:30; 2 Cor. 5:19, 21; Eph. 1:7; 2:8; Phil. 3:9; Jer. 23:6); "the just shall live by his faith" (Hab. 2:4).

The justification of a sinner is different from that of a righteous person. The former is unmerited; the latter is merited. The former is without good works; the latter is because of good works. The former is pardon of sin and accepting one as righteous when he is not; the latter is pronouncing one righteous because he is so. The former is complex; the latter is simple.

The justification of the "ungodly" (Rom. 4:5; 5:6) includes both pardon and acceptance. Either alone would be an incomplete justification of the ungodly. In the case of a sinner, the law requires satisfaction for past disobedience and also perfect obedience. When a criminal has suffered the penalty affixed to his crime, he has done a part, but not all that the law requires of him. He still owes a perfect obedience to the law in addition to the endurance of the penalty. The law does not say to the transgressor: "If you will suffer the penalty, you need not render the obedience." But it says: "You must both suffer the penalty and render the obedience." Sin is under a double obligation; holiness is under only a single one. A guilty man owes both penalty and obedience; a holy angel owes only obedience.

Consequently, the justification of a sinner must not only deliver him from the penalty due to disobedience, but provide for him an equivalent to personal obedience. Whoever justifies the ungodly must lay a ground both for his delivery from hell and his entrance into heaven. In order to place a transgressor in a situation in which he is dikaios or right in every respect before the law, it is necessary to fulfill the law for him, both as penalty and precept. Hence the justification of a sinner comprises not only pardon, but a title to the reward of the righteous. The former is specially related to Christ's passive righteousness, the latter to his active. Christ's expiatory suffering delivers the believing sinner from the punishment which the law threatens, and Christ's perfect obedience establishes for him a right to the reward which the law promises. The right and title in both cases rest upon Christ's vicarious agency. Because his divine substitute has suffered for him, the believer obtains release from a punishment which he merits; and because his divine substitute has obeyed for him, the believer obtains a reward which he does not merit.

The meaning of the term justify must be determined by its Scripture use and connection, and not by the etymology merely. It may have two meanings, like "glorify" and "sanctify." To "glorify God" and to "glorify the body" are different significations of the word. The one signifies to declare to be glorious, the other to make glorious. The clause sanctify the Lord God in your hearts employs the term sanctify differently from the clause you are sanctified. Similarly justify might mean "make just" (justum facere) as well as "pronounce just." But in Scripture, it never means sanctify or make inwardly holy.

In the New Testament, the verb dikaioō signifies (a) to pronounce or declare to be just: "And the publicans justified God" (Luke 7:29); "that you might be justified in your sayings" (Rom. 3:4); and (b) to acquit from condemnation: "Justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses" (Acts 13:39; Rom. 4:5–7; 5:1, 9; 8:30–33; 1 Cor. 6:11; Gal. 2:16; 3:11). That dikaioō does not mean sanctifying or making just is proved by its antithesis to "condemning" (Deut. 25:1; Prov. 17:15; Isa. 5:23; 2 Chron. 18:6–7) and by its equivalents "imputing righteousness" and "covering sin" (Rom. 4:3, 6–8; 2 Cor. 5:19, 21).

In order to be justified or pronounced righteous, a person must possess a righteousness (dikaiosynē) upon the ground of which the verdict is pronounced. There are two kinds of righteousness upon the ground of which a person might be justified before divine law:

1. Legal righteousness or that of the covenant of works. This is perfect personal conformity to the law: "Moses describes the righteousness which is of the law, that the man which does those things shall live by them" (Rom. 10:5). A holy being is justified by this kind of righteousness. A sinner cannot be pronounced righteous upon the ground of legal righteousness or perfect obedience because he has not rendered it: "By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified" (3:20); "there is none righteous, no, not one" (3:10, 23; Acts 13:39; Gal. 2:16). The impossibility of man's being justified by legal righteousness is relative, not absolute. If he had rendered perfect obedience, he would be pronounced just upon this ground: "The doers of the law shall be justified" (Rom. 2:13).

2. Gratuitous or evangelical righteousness or that of the covenant of grace. This is technically denominated "the righteousness of God" (Matt. 6:33; Rom. 1:17; 3:5, 21–22, 25–26; 10:3; 2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 3:9; 2 Pet. 1:1). The Old Testament teaches it: Lord our righteousness" (Jer. 23:6; 33:16). It is so denominated to distinguish it from the ordinary ethical or legal righteousness which is the righteousness of man. In Rom. 10:3 this latter is called idian dikaiosynēn and in Phil. 3:9 emēn dikaiosynēn. If man should perfectly obey the law, the righteousness would be the result of his own agency. It would be "his own righteousness." But the "righteousness of God" is the result of God's agency solely. Hence it is described (Rom. 4:6) as chōris ergōn (i.e., anthrōpou). Man is not the author of it, in any sense whatever.

The "righteousness of God" is the active and passive obedience of incarnate God. It is Christ's vicarious suffering of the penalty and vicarious obedience of the precept of the law which man has transgressed. It is Christ's atoning for man's sin and acquiring a title for him to eternal life. It is "gratuitous" righteousness, because it is something given to man outright, without any compensation or equivalent being required from him in return: "Ho, everyone that thirsts, come to the waters, and he that has no money; come, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price" (Isa. 55:1); "being justified gratuitously (dōrean) by his grace" (Rom. 3:24). Since this evangelical "righteousness of God" is not inherent and personal to man, like the legal or ethical "righteousness of the law," it has to be imputed to him: "David describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness" (Rom. 4:6, 9–10). Christ's atoning death for sin is not the sinner's atoning death for sin, but God imputes it to him, that is, he calls or reckons it his. Christ's perfect obedience which merits eternal life is not the sinner's perfect obedience, but God imputes it to him; he calls or reckons it his: "Abraham believed God, and it was counted (elogiothē) to him for righteousness. Now to him that works not, but believes on him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness" (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:3, 5); "Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness" (James 2:23).

We have observed that in order that a person may be pronounced just, there must be a reason or ground for the verdict. Justification cannot be groundless and without a reason. The "righteousness of God" is the ground or basis upon which a believing sinner is pronounced to be righteous. Because Christ has suffered the penalty for him, he is pronounced righteous before the law in respect to its penalty and is entitled to release from punishment. Because Christ has perfectly obeyed the law for him, he is pronounced righteous before the law in respect to its precept and is entitled to the reward promised to perfect obedience. To pardon a believer and accept him as if he had rendered the sinless obedience which entitles to eternal reward is to impute "the righteousness of God" to him.

Justification: Its Characteristics and Results

The following particulars in connection with the justification of a sinner are to be noted. First, faith is the instrumental, not the procuring or meritorious cause of his justification: "God justifies, not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ" (Westminster Confession 11.1). The reasons are …

1. Because faith is an internal act or work of man. If the sinner's act of faith merited the pardon of his sin and earned for him a title to life, he would be pronounced righteous because of his own righteousness and not because of God's righteousness. Faith is denominated a work: "This is the work of God, that you believe" (John 6:29). It is the activity of the man, like hope and charity, and can no more be meritorious of reward or atoning for disobedience than these acts can be: "In a right conception, fides est opus; if I believe a thing because I am commanded, this is opus" (Selden, Table Talk).

2. Because, as an inward act of the believer, faith is the gift of God, being wrought within him by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 2:8; Phil. 1:29). But a divine gift cannot be used as if it were a human product and made the ground of pardon and eternal reward. A debt to God cannot be paid by man out of God's purse, though it can be so paid by God himself.

3. Because the believer's faith is an imperfect act. As such, it cannot be either atoning or meritorious.

4. Because faith is not of the nature of suffering and consequently cannot be of the nature of an atonement. The believing sinner is "justified by faith" only instrumentally, as he "lives by eating" only instrumentally. Eating is the particular act by which he receives and appropriates food. Strictly speaking, he lives by bread alone, not by eating or the act of masticating. And, strictly speaking, the sinner is justified by Christ's sacrifice alone, not by his act of believing in it.

Second, the justification of a sinner is solely by Christ's satisfaction: "No man may look at his own graces as a part of his legal righteousness, in conjunction with Christ's righteousness as the other part. We must go wholly out of ourselves and deny and disclaim all such righteousness of our own" (Baxter, Spiritual Peace and Comfort 1.273). Justification does not depend partly upon the merit of Christ's work and partly upon that of the believer. The Tridentine theory is heretical at this point because it makes the believer's justification to rest upon Christ's satisfaction in combination with inward sanctification and outward works. Scripture explicitly teaches that justification is by faith alone—not by faith and works combined: "A man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law" (Rom. 3:28). Paul's "faith alone" in this passage must not be confounded with James's "faith that is alone" (James 2:17). The latter is spurious faith that produces no works, or "dead" faith.

Third, the justification of a sinner is instantaneous and complete. It is a single act of God which sets the believer in a justified state or condition: "There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1); "who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? who is he that condemns?" (8:33–34); "he that hears my word and believes on him that sent me has everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation" (John 5:24).

Fourth, the justification of a sinner is an all comprehending act of God. All the sins of a believer—past, present, and future—are pardoned when he is justified. The sum total of his sin, all of which is before the divine eye at the instant when God pronounces him a justified person, is blotted out or covered over by one act of God. Consequently, there is no repetition in the divine mind of the act of justification, as there is no repetition of the atoning death of Christ upon which it rests: "Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, that he should offer himself often; for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world; but now once in the end of the world has he appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself; and as he was once offered to bear the sins of many, unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time, without sin unto salvation. For by one offering he has perfected forever them that are sanctified" (Heb. 9:24–28; 10:14). (supplement 6.5.1.)

While, however, there is no repetition of the divine act of justification, yet the consequences of it in the soul of the believer are consecutive. In the believer's experience, God is continually forgiving his sins. Divine mercy "is constantly absolving us by a perpetual remission of our sins" (Calvin 3.14.10). The one eternal act of justification is executed successively in time, as the divine decree is: "God does from all eternity decree to justify all the elect; nevertheless, they are not justified, until the Holy Spirit does in due time actually apply Christ unto them" (Westminster Confession 11.4).

When a justified man commits sin, though his sin deserves eternal death, yet he is not exposed to eternal death as an unbeliever is and as he himself was prior to justification. But he experiences the withdrawal of divine favor and God's paternal chastisement. This may be very severe and painful and perhaps, sometimes, in the believer's experience may be almost equal to the distress of the unpardoned. David's experience during his backsliding was fearful in the extreme: "The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell got hold of me" (Ps. 116:3); "day and night your hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer" (32:4); "all your waves and your billows are gone over me" (42:7). Here in this life, the believer oftentimes suffers more than the unbeliever does. God deals with the former as with a son and causes him great mental distress for his soul's good; he deals with the latter as with a bastard and not a son (Heb. 12:8). Lazarus in this life suffered more than Dives did. At the same time, the true believer, under all this experience, is really and in the eye of God a justified and forgiven man. The believer himself may be in great doubt upon this point and sometimes may be on the brink of despair; but he is not cast off by God. David himself, after those dreadful passages in his experience, is enabled to hope in divine pity. He never falls into the absolute despair of the lost: "You have given commandment to save me" (Ps. 71:3); "why are you cast down, O my soul? hope in God; for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance" (42:5).

Some writers, in this reference, distinguish between "actual" and "declarative" justification. Cunningham and Buchanan make this distinction. Actual justification is the act in the divine mind; declarative justification is the announcement of the divine act in the consciousness of the believer. The believer's experience has its fluctuations and varieties; but the act of God is one and immutable. A person may be actually justified, with little or even no confident and joyful sense of it, in some chapters of his experience. Yet a justified man will not absolutely lose the hope of justification and have the experience of blaspheming despair.

Fifth, the justification of a sinner includes a title to eternal life, as well as deliverance from condemnation. This is denoted by the clause accepting as righteous in the Westminster definition. Eternal life, as a reward, rests upon perfect obedience of the law. Had man rendered this obedience, he could claim the reward. He has not rendered it and hence cannot claim it. Yet he must get a title to it, or he can never enjoy it. The rewards of eternity must rest upon some good basis and reason. They cannot be bestowed groundlessly. Christ the God-man has perfectly obeyed the law; God gratuitously (dōrean, chōris ergōn) imputes this obedience to the believer; and the believer now has a right and title to the eternal life and blessedness founded upon Christ's theanthropic obedience. This is the second part of justification, the first part being the right and title to exemption from the penalty of the law, founded upon Christ's atoning sacrifice. Justification thus includes the imputation of Christ's obedience as well as of his suffering, of both his active and his passive righteousness.

Piscator, Tillotson, Wesley, and Emmons denied the imputation of Christ's active obedience, contending that justification is "pardon" alone, without "acceptance," or a title to life. They maintain that after the pardon of the believer's sin, on the ground of Christ's passive obedience, sanctification by the Holy Spirit ensues, and this earns the title to eternal life. The objections to this theory are the following: (a) The obedience of the believer is imperfect, but eternal life is the recompense of perfect obedience. The believer cannot claim such an immense reward for such an inferior service. (b) Even if after his regeneration the believer's obedience were perfect and sinless, he has been disobedient previously; but eternal life is promised only to a perfect obedience from the beginning of man's existence to the end of it. For these two reasons, the believer cannot establish a valid title to an infinite and eternal reward upon the ground of his imperfect and halting service of God here in this life. He must therefore found it upon the perfect obedience of his Redeemer and expect entrance into heaven because his substitute has obeyed for him, even as he expects to escape retribution because his substitute has suffered for him. The reason why the believer must press forward after perfect sanctification is that he may be fit for heaven, not that he may merit heaven. Sinless perfection in the next life is not the ground and reason of the believer's future reward, but the necessary condition of his future blessedness. If there be remaining sin, there must be, so far, unhappiness.

Passages of Scripture that prove the imputation of Christ's active obedience are the following: "Through the obedience of one shall many be made righteous" (Rom. 5:19); "Christ is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification" (1 Cor. 1:30); "he made him to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Cor. 5:21). This "righteousness" is complete and therefore includes a title to the reward of righteousness: "You are complete in him" (Col. 2:10); "he has made us accepted in the beloved" (Eph. 1:6); "in whom we have boldness, and access with confidence" (3:12). The boldness and confidence imply that there is no deficiency in the justification effected for the believer by Christ. But if he were resting his title to eternal life upon his own character and works, he could be neither bold nor confident in the day of judgment (1 John 4:17): "Whosoever believes shall not perish, but shall have eternal life" (John 3:16).

It is objected that the believer is represented as being rewarded for his works and in proportion to his works in the last day. The reply is, first, the reward of the last day is gracious, resulting from a covenant and promise on the part of God. It is the recompense of a parent to a child, not the payment of a debtor to a creditor. God is not under an absolute indebtedness to the believer founded on an independent agency of the believer, but only a relative obligation established by himself and depending upon his assistance and support in the performance of the service. This is provd by the fact that the reward of a Christian is called an "inheritance" (Matt. 25:34; Acts 20:32; Gal. 3:18; Eph. 5:5; Col. 1:12). The believer's reward is like a child's portion under his father's will. This is not wages and recompense in the strict sense; and yet it is relatively a reward for filial obedience. If an angel under the legal covenant fails to keep the law in a single instance, he gets no reward; a redeemed man under the evangelical covenant, though he often fails, yet gets his reward. God graciously compensates the believer in Christ, because he is fatherly and compassionate toward his child and not because the reward has been completely earned and is strictly due upon the principle of abstract justice. Says Calvin (3.17.8–9):

Where remission of sins has been previously received, the good works which follow are estimated by God far beyond their intrinsic merit; for all their imperfections are covered by the perfection of Christ, and all their blemishes are removed by his purity. Now if anyone urge as an objection to the righteousness of faith that there is a righteousness of works, I will ask him whether a man is to be reputed righteous on account of one or two holy actions, while in all the other actions of his life he is a transgressor of the law. This would be too absurd to be pretended. I will then ask him if a man is to be reputed righteous on account of many good works, while he is found guilty of any instance of transgression. This, likewise, my opponent will not presume to maintain in opposition to the law which pronounces a curse upon those who do not fulfill every one of its precepts. I will then further inquire if there is any work of man which does not deserve the charge of impurity or imperfection. Thus he will be compelled to concede that there is not an absolutely good work to be found in man that deserves the name of righteousness in the strict sense.

Eternal life is called a "gift" in Rom. 6:23, while eternal death is called "wages." Again, the address of the judge in the last day to those who receive the reward of obedience is "come you blessed." The reward is also a blessing. This would not be the language of a debtor who is discharging strict indebtedness to his creditors. The redeemed, also, when receiving their reward disclaim absolute merit: "When saw we you hungry and fed you? Or thirsty and gave you drink?"

Second, the object in considering the works of men in the final judgment is to evince the genuineness of faith in Christ and discriminate true from false believers, not to show that man's works merit pardon and eternal life. Those who have done good works are described as humble and surprised that they receive such an immense recompense for their poor service; while those who have not done good works are described as self-righteous and proud and surprised that they are punished and not rewarded: "Many shall say unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? and then will I profess unto them, I never knew you" (Matt. 7:22); "then those on the left hand shall answer him, saying, Lord when saw we you hungry or athirst or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not minister unto you?" (25:44). The parable of the laborers, all of whom receive the same wages though hired at different hours, proves that the rewards of the last day are not regulated by the exact value of the obedience rendered. Since the reward is the consequence of a promise and not of an original obligation on the part of God, God may do as he will with his own. He never pays less than he has promised, thereby becoming himself a debtor. The lord in the parable did not. But he may pay more than is due. (supplement 6.5.2.)

An error of the perfectionist, at this point, is to be noticed. It is confounding imputed sanctification with inherent sanctification. Imputed sanctification is mentioned in 1 Cor. 1:30: "Christ was, of God, made unto us sanctification." Inherent sanctification is inward holiness, as in 6:11: "You are sanctified." In the former sense, a believer's "sanctification" is instantaneous and perfect; but not in the latter. When God imputes Christ's active obedience to the believer, Christ is "made sanctification" to him. It is a complete sanctification that is imputed, and his title to life founded upon it is perfect; but his inward sanctification or cleansing from indwelling sin is still imperfect. Sanctification as imputed is a part of justification; but sanctification as infused and inherent is the antithesis to justification. The perfectionist overlooks this distinction.

Sixth, justification is a means to an end. Men are justified in order that they may be sanctified; not sanctified in order that they may be justified. Redemption does not stop with justification: "Whom he justified, them he also glorified" (Rom. 8:30); do I condemn you; go and sin no more" (John 8:11). Pardon is in order to future resistance and victory over sin. The sense of forgiveness is accompanied with a hatred of sin and hunger after righteousness. If the latter be wanting, the former is spurious. An unpardoned man could not be sanctified because remorse and fear of retribution would prevent struggle with sin. David prays first for forgiveness in order that he may obey in future: "Purge me with hyssop; hide your face from my sins; then will I teach transgressors your ways" (Ps. 51:7, 13).

SUPPLEMENTS

6.5.1 (see p. 797). Edwards (Justification by Faith in Works 4.104) thus explains the comprehensive nature of justification and its connection with perseverance of faith: "Although the sinner is actually and finally justified on the first act of faith, yet the perseverance of faith even then comes into consideration as one thing upon which the fitness of acceptance to life depends. God, in the act of justification which is passed on a sinner's first believing, has respect to perseverance as being virtually contained in that first act of faith; and it is looked upon and taken by him that justifies as being as it were a property in that faith that then is. God has respect to the believer's continuance in faith, and he is justified by that, as though it already were, because by divine establishment it shall follow; and it being by divine constitution connected with that first faith as much as if it were a property in it, it is then considered as such, and so justification is not suspended; but were it not for this it would be needful that it should be suspended till the sinner had actually persevered in faith.

"And that it is so, that God in that act of final justification that he passes at the sinner's conversion has respect to perseverance in faith and future acts of faith as being virtually implied in that first act is further manifest by this, namely, that in a sinner's justification at his conversion there is virtually contained a forgiveness as to eternal and deserved punishment not only of all past sins but also of all future infirmities and acts of sin that they shall be guilty of; because that first justification is decisive and final. And yet pardon, in the order of nature, properly follows the crime and also follows those acts of repentance and faith that respect the crime pardoned, as is manifest both from reason and Scripture. David, in the beginning of Ps. 32, speaks of the forgiveness of sins that were doubtless committed long after he was first godly as being consequent on those sins and on his repentance and faith with respect to them; and yet this forgiveness is spoken of by the apostle in Rom. 4 as an instance of justification by faith. Probably the sin David there speaks of is the same that he committed in the matter of Uriah, and so the pardon the same with that release from death or eternal punishment which the prophet Nathan speaks of in 2 Sam. 12:13: 'The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die.' Not only does the manifestation of this pardon follow the sin in order of time, but the pardon itself in the order of nature follows David's repentance and faith with respect to this sin; for it is spoken of in the 32d psalm as depending on it.

"But inasmuch as a sinner in his first justification is forever justified and freed from all obligation to eternal punishment, it hence of necessity follows that future faith and repentance are beheld in that justification as virtually contained in that first faith and repentance; because repentance of those future sins and faith in a Redeemer with respect to them or, at least the continuance of that habit and principle in the heart that has such an actual repentance and faith in its nature and tendency, is now made sure by God's promise. If remission of sins committed after conversion, in the order of nature, follows that faith and repentance that is after them, then it follows that future sins are respected in the first justification no otherwise than as future faith and repentance are respected in it. And future faith and repentance are looked upon by him that justifies as virtually implied in the first repentance and faith in the same manner as justification from future sins is virtually implied in the first justification, which is the thing that was to be proved."

6.5.2 (see p. 800). Concerning the reward promised to works in the instance of the believer, Calvin (3.18.3), remarks that this rests upon the evangelical promise of the gospel, not the legal promise of the law: "The grand promise 'keep my statutes and judgments; which if a man do he shall live in them' (Lev. 18:5) the apostle maintains to be of no value to us if we rest upon it and that it will be no more beneficial to us than if it had never been given, because it is inapplicable to the holiest of God's servants, who are all far from fulfilling the law and are encompassed with a multitude of transgressions. But when these are superseded by the evangelical promises which proclaim the gratuitous remission of sins, the consequence is that not only our persons, but also our works, are accepted by God; and not accepted only, but followed by those blessings which were due by the covenant to the observance of the law. I grant, therefore, that the works of believers are rewarded by those things which the Lord has promised in his law to the followers of righteousness and holiness; but in this recompense it is always necessary to consider the cause which conciliates such favor to those works. This we perceive to be threefold: The first is that God averting his eyes from the actions of his servants, which are invariably more deserving of censure than of praise, receives and embraces them in Christ and by the intervention of faith alone reconciles them to himself without the assistance of works. The second is that in his paternal benignity and indulgence he overlooks the intrinsic unworthiness of these works and exalts them to such honor that he esteems them of some degree of value. The third cause is that he pardons these works as he receives them, not imputing the imperfection with which they are all so defiled that they might otherwise be accounted rather sins than virtues."

Again, in 3.18.1 he explains the relation of the believer's good works to his justification as follows: "The declaration that God will render to everyone according it his works is easily explained. For that phrase indicates the order of events rather than the cause of them. It is beyond all doubt that the Lord proceeds to the consummation of our salvation by these gradations of mercy: 'Whom he has predestinated them he calls; whom he has called he justifies; and whom he has justified he finally glorifies' (Rom. 8:30). Though he receives his children into eternal life of his mere mercy, yet since he conducts them to the possession of it through a course of good works that he may fulfill his work in them in the order he has appointed, we need not wonder if they are said to be rewarded according to their works, by which they are prepared to receive the crown of immortality. And for this reason they are properly said to 'work out their own salvation,' while, devoting themselves to good works, they aspire to eternal life. Whence it appears that the word work is not opposed to grace, but refers to human endeavors; and therefore it does not follow either that believers are the authors of their own salvation or that salvation proceeds from their works. By their good works they prove themselves to be the genuine children of God, by their resemblance to their heavenly Father in righteousness and holiness."

Augustine's (Grace and Free Will 19–20) explanation is the following: "How is eternal life both a reward for service and a free gift of grace? This is no small question which must be solved by the Lord's gift. If eternal life is rendered to good works, as the Scripture most openly declares, 'Then he shall reward every man according to his works,' how can eternal life be a matter of grace, seeing that grace is not rendered to works, but is given gratuitously as the apostle himself tells us, 'To him that works is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt'? This question is not possible of solution unless we understand that even those good works of ours which are recompensed with eternal life are a part of the grace of God, because of what is said by the Lord Jesus, 'Without me you can do nothing' (John 15:5); and by the Apostle Paul, 'By grace are you saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works lest any man should boast.' 'Not of works' is spoken here of the works which you suppose have their origin in yourself alone; but you have to think of works for which God has molded you. For of these the apostle says, 'We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.' We are framed, therefore, that is formed and created, 'in the good works which' we have not ourselves prepared, but which 'God has before ordained that we should walk in them.' It follows, then, dearly beloved, that as your good life is nothing else than God's grace, so the eternal life which is the recompense of a good life is also the grace of God; moreover, the eternal life is given gratuitously, even as the good life is given gratuitously to which the eternal life is given. But that good life to which eternal life is given is solely and simply grace; while this eternal life which is given to it is its reward; grace is for grace, as a remuneration for righteousness, in order that it may be true, because it is true, that God 'shall reward every man according to his works.' "

Ursinus (Christian Religion Q. 52) thus explains Christ's reference to the works of the believer in the day of judgment: "It is objected that unto every man shall be given according to his works: therefore judgment shall be given to all, not according to the gospel, but according to the doctrine of the law. Answer: In this sense it shall be given unto the elect according to their works; not that their works are merits, but in that they are the effects of faith. Wherefore, then, unto the elect shall be given according to their works; that is, they shall be judged according to the effects of faith; and to be judged according to faith is to be judged according to the gospel. Now Christ shall rather judge according to works as the effects of faith than according to faith as their cause (1) because he will have it known to others why he so judges, lest the ungodly and condemned persons might object that he gives us eternal life unjustly. He will prove by our works the fruits of our faith, that our faith was sincere and true and therefore we are such as those to whom life is due according to the promise. Wherefore he will show them our works and will bring them forth as testimonies to refute them that we have in this life applied unto us Christ's merit. (2) That we may have comfort in this life, that we shall hereafter, according to our works, stand at his right hand."

6 Sanctification

The term sanctify (hagiazein) is employed in Scripture in two senses: (a) to consecrate or set apart to a sacred service or use: "Whom the Father has sanctified and sent" (John 10:36); "the temple that sanctifies the gold" (Matt. 23:17); and (b) to purify and make holy: "But you are washed, you are sanctified" (1 Cor. 6:11; Heb. 13:12); "sanctify them through your truth" (John 17:17). The latter is the sense in which it is taken when the doctrine of sanctification is discussed. Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 35 defines as follows: "Sanctification is the work of God's free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness"; "God has chosen us that we should be holy" (Eph. 1:4); "you are washed, you are sanctified by the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor. 6:11); "God has chosen you to salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit" (2 Thess. 2:13); "the very God of peace sanctify you wholly" (1 Thess. 5:23).

Sanctification results from the continuation of the agency of the Holy Spirit after the act of regeneration (a) in strengthening and augmenting existing graces: faith, hope, charity, etc.; and (b) in exciting them to exercise, through reading and hearing the word, the sacraments, prayer, providences, afflictions, and chastisements. Hence it is often called "renewing" (Ps. 51:10; 2 Cor. 4:16; Eph. 4:23; Col. 3:10; Rom. 12:2; Titus 3:5). "Renewing" or renovation in this use of the term is not synonymous with "regeneration." When St. Paul exhorts the Ephesians (4:23) to "be renewed in the spirit of their mind," he is not exhorting them to regenerate themselves, but to sanctify themselves. So also with the exhortation to "the house of Israel": "Make you a new heart" (Ezek. 18:31).

Sanctification includes the entire man: "The very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless" (1 Thess. 5:23). Sanctification affects (a) the higher rational and spiritual part of man's nature, the pneuma, because this has been corrupted by the fall (Titus 1:15; Rom. 1:28; Eph. 4:18); (b) the inferior intelligence, the psychē; and (c) the body, sōma. As apostasy began in the pneuma6 and affected the other parts of human nature, so sanctification begins in the pneuma and passes throughout the soul and body. A man can control his physical appetites in proportion as he has a vivid spiritual perception of God and divine things. The intuition in the pneuma8 restrains the appetites of the psychē and sōma. If spiritual perception be dim, the bodily appetite is strong. That the higher nature, denominated pneuma or nous, is depraved and needs to be sanctified is proved by Rom. 1:28; 12:2; Eph. 4:17; 2 Tim. 3:8; Titus 1:15; Mark 1:23; 1 Thess. 5:23.

Sanctification is gradual: "We are enabled more and more to die to sin." It is the conflict with and victory over indwelling sin described in Rom. 7:14–8:28. Romans 7–8 speak of the struggle and groaning of the still partially enslaved will: "Even we ourselves who have the firstfruits of the Spirit groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. For we are saved by hope. Likewise the Spirit also helps our infirmities and makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered" (8:23–24, 26).

The means of sanctification are (a) internal, namely, faith ("faith works by love"; Gal. 5:6), hope ("hope makes not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts"; Rom. 5:5), joy ("in whom you rejoice with joy unspeakable, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls"; 1 Pet. 1:8–9), and peace ("the peace of God shall keep your hearts and minds, through Christ Jesus"; Phil. 4:7). The exercise of any one of these Christian graces increases the holiness of the believer. The means of sanctification are also (b) external, namely, the Scriptures ("sanctify them through your truth"; John 17:17; "desire the sincere milk of the word, that you may grow thereby"; 1 Pet. 1:22–23; 2:2), prayer ("whatsoever you shall ask in my name I will do it"; John 14:13–14; Acts 2:42), providential discipline ("every branch in me that bears not fruit, he purges"; John 15:2; Rom. 5:3–4; Heb. 12:5–11), and the sacrament of the supper ("they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread and in prayers"; Acts 2:42).

The believer cooperates with God the Spirit in the use of the means of sanctification. Sanctification is both a grace and a duty: "Watch, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong" (1 Cor. 16:13); "take the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit and watching thereunto with all perseverance" (Eph. 6:16, 18); "work out your own salvation, for it is God who works in you" (Phil. 2:12–13). Hence sanctification is the subject of a command: "Put off the old man, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind" (Eph. 4:22–23); "make you a new heart and a new spirit" (Ezek. 18:31). Regeneration, being the sole work of God, is a grace but not a duty. It is nowhere enjoined upon man as a duty to regenerate himself. (supplement 6.6.1.)

Sanctification though progressive is not complete in this life: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves" (1 John 1:8, 10); "brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended, but I press toward the mark" (Phil. 3:12–14); "I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing. I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind" (Rom. 7:18, 23; Gal. 5:7). Sanctification is completed at death: "The souls of believers at their death are made perfect in holiness" (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 37). The heavenly Jerusalem contains "the spirits of just men made perfect" (Heb. 12:23); "we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2); "absent from the body and present with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8); "Christ loved the church that he might sanctify it and present it to himself a glorious church not having spot or wrinkle" (Eph. 5:27); "now we see through a glass darkly; but when that which is perfect is come, face to face" (1 Cor. 13:12); "the pure in heart shall see God" (Matt. 5:8); "blessed are the dead who die in the Lord" (Rev. 14:13). (supplement 6.6.2.)

Sanctification once begun is never wholly lost. It fluctuates with the fidelity of the believer, but he never falls back into the stupor and death of the unregenerate state: "They whom God has sanctified by his Spirit shall constantly persevere to the end and be saved" (Westminster Larger Catechism 79); "my sheep shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand" (John 10:28–29); "the gifts and calling of God are without repentance" (Rom. 11:29); "he which has begun a good work in you will perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:6); believers are "kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation" (1 Pet. 1:5).

Exhortations to diligence and warnings against carelessness and failure are consistent with the certain perseverance of the believer because (a) while the certainty is objective in God, it may not be subjective in man. God knows that a particular man will certainly persevere, because he purposes that he shall, and he will realize his purpose by the operation of his Spirit within him; but the man does not know this unless he has assurance of faith. Many believers do not have this highest degree of faith and hence are more or less subject to doubts and fears. Exhortations to diligence and warnings against apostasy suit such an experience as this. But one who is assured of salvation by the witness of the Holy Spirit would not require to be warned against apostasy while in this state of assurance. Such exhortations and warnings are also consistent with the perseverance of the believer because (b) exhortations to struggle with sin and warnings against its insidious and dangerous nature are one of the means employed by the Holy Spirit to secure perseverance. The decree of election includes the means as well as the end. Now if success in the use of means is certain, there is the strongest motive to employ them; but if success is uncertain, then there is little motive to use them. St. Paul employs the certainty of success as a motive to struggle: "Fight the good fight of faith; lay hold on eternal life, whereunto you are called" (1 Tim. 6:12).

It must be remembered that salvation is certain, not because the person believes that he has once believed in the past, but because he now consciously believes. If from his present experience and daily life he has reason to think that he is truly a believing Christian, then he has reason to expect that he will continue to be one. Cromwell, according to the anecdote, committed an error in inferring his good estate because he believed that he was once a believer.

That sanctification is never lost is proved also by its connection with justification. Justification naturally tends to sanctification: "Faith works by love" (Gal. 5:6). Trust in Christ's blood of atonement spontaneously impels to the resistance of sin; and if there be no struggle against sin, it is clear proof that there is no true trust in Christ's sacrifice. Justification supplies the only efficient motive to obedience. Hence the obedience of the believer is called "new obedience" because of the new motive from which it springs, namely, the atoning love of the Redeemer. It is also denominated "the obedience of Christ" (2 Cor. 10:5). Gratitude to Christ and love of him for the forgiveness that comes through his death are the springs of this evangelical obedience and sanctification. The strongest inducement for a Christian to obey the divine law is the fact that he has been graciously pardoned for having broken the law. He follows after sanctification because he has received justification. He obeys the law not in order to be forgiven, but because he has been forgiven: "The love of Christ constrains us not to live unto ourselves, but unto him which died for us" (2 Cor. 5:4). And the love meant is Christ's redeeming love: "Having these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit" (7:1). Because God has blotted out all his past sin, the believer has the most encouraging of all motives to resist all future sin. Had God not pardoned the past, it would be futile to struggle in future. In 2 Pet. 1:4 it is said that the "exceeding great and precious promises are given to us in order that by these we might be partakers of a divine nature, having escaped the corruption of the world through lust." Sanctification does not justify; but justification sanctifies. And there being this close connection between the two, sanctification can no more be wholly lost than justification can be.

The necessary connection between sanctification and justification is taught by both Paul and James, between whose views there is a verbal but not a logical contradiction. Paul in Rom. 4:4–13 assumes that saving faith is living faith and produces works, but he says nothing particularly upon this latter point because his object is to contrast faith and works and because the opponent with whom he was disputing did not claim to be justified by faith of any kind, true or false, but by works altogether. James, on the other hand, not only assumes that saving faith is living faith and produces works, but speaks particularly and emphatically upon this latter point because he is not contrasting faith and works because he was contending with hypocrites who claimed that what they called "faith alone" and "faith only" and what James calls "dead faith" is a faith that would save the soul. Hooker (Justification) remarks that justification is spoken of by St. Paul in the narrow sense as exclusive of sanctification, but by St. James in the wide sense as inclusive of it. Paul means justification without its fruits; James means justification with its fruits. The former speaks of faith simply; the latter of working faith. Paul describes faith as the antithesis of works; James describes faith as producing works. (supplement 6.6.3.)

SUPPLEMENTS

6.6.1 (see p. 804). That the regenerate can cooperate with the Holy Spirit, but the unregenerate cannot, is illustrated by the act of prayer. There is no sincere prayer for a spiritual good except as it is prompted by the Holy Spirit. The foundation of prayer is a sense of want; of spiritual poverty and need: "The Spirit helps our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered" (Rom. 8:26); "I will pour out upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplications" (Zech. 12:10); "praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit" (Eph. 6:18). All desires expressed in prayer that are prompted solely by unregenerate human nature and without the impulse of the Holy Spirit are vitiated by selfishness. Man does not precede God, but God precedes man, in every exercise that is holy and spiritual. Consequently, when our Lord says, "Ask and you shall receive," he does not mean that the sincere desire and prayer for this blessing arises in the heart prior to any agency of the Holy Spirit upon it; but that the person who feels this desire has already been the subject of the Spirit's influence to this degree and is to express the desire and so cooperate with the Spirit. In other words, Christ presupposes regeneration as shown in holy and spiritual desires and prayers, when he says, "Ask and you shall receive; for everyone that asks receives." This line of remark is applicable to all the other means of sanctification. The regenerate cooperates with the divine Spirit in all struggling with sin, all attendance upon reading and hearing of the word, all confession of sin, all partaking of the Lord's Supper, etc., because the Spirit has gone before him and moved upon his heart. The unregenerate cannot thus cooperate in these acts because the action of his heart and will is not spiritual, but selfish. His prayers and use of the means of sanctification are prompted by fear, not by love. Consequently, the divine Spirit first regenerates the sinful heart prior to any right cooperating action in it, and then the regenerate heart coworks with the Holy Spirit.

Says Augustine (Grace and Free Will 33): "God operates without our assistance in order that we may will rightly, but when we will rightly he cooperates with us." Says Owen (Sin and Grace in Works 14.459): "The work of first conversion is performed by an immediate act of divine power, without any active cooperation on our part. But this is not the law or rule of the communication or operation of actual grace for the subduing of sin. This is given in a way of concurrence with us in the discharge of our duties, and when we are sedulous in them we may be sure we shall not fail of divine assistance."

6.6.2 (see p. 805). Bates (Of Death, chap. 3) describes the completion of sanctification at death: "Death is to a believer a universal remedy against all the evils of this life. It frees him from all injuries and sufferings and from sin in all its degrees, from all inclinations and temptations to it. He that is dead ceases from sin (1 Pet. 4:1). Death is the passage from this wilderness to the true Canaan, the rest above. There nothing can disturb the peace or corrupt the purity of the blessed. Beside the privative advantage, the freedom from all the effects of God's displeasure, there is the highest positive good obtained by death: the spirits of just men are made perfect in heaven. The soul is the glory of man, and grace is the glory of the soul, and both are then in their exaltation. All the faculties of the soul are raised to the highest degrees of natural and divine perfection. In this life grace renews the faculties, but does not elevate them to their highest pitch. It does not make a mean understanding pregnant nor a frail memory strong nor a slow tongue eloquent, but sanctifies them as they are. But when the soul is released from this dark body of earth, the understanding is clear and quick, the memory firm, the will and affections ardent and vigorous. And they are enriched with divine light and love and power that makes them fit for the most noble and heavenly operations. The lineaments of God's image on the soul are first drawn here, but at death it receives his last hand. All the celestial colors are added, to give utmost life and luster to it. Here we are advancing, but by death we arrive at perfection."

Respecting the possibility of complete sanctification in this life, Augustine, in his treatise Nature and Grace 49, 70, thus remarks: "Pelagius contends that the point lies in the possibility of a man's not sinning; on which subject it is unnecessary for us to take ground against him, for in truth I do not much care about expressing a definite opinion on the question whether in the present life there ever have been or now are or even can be any persons who have had or are having or to have the love of God so perfectly as to admit no addition to it; for nothing short of this amounts to a most true, full, and perfect righteousness. For my own part, I am unwilling to dispute the point whether a sinless state is possible in this life." In this treatise and in Man's Perfection in Righteousness, written about the same time (A.D. 415), Augustine does not deny the possibility of sinless perfection in this life—only it is by divine grace and not by the natural will as Pelagius asserted. But in his treatise Against Two Letters of the Pelagians (4.27) he says: "Let us consider the third point of theirs which is shocking to every member of Christ, that there have been righteous men having absolutely no sin." This treatise was written about 420. In 418 the Council of Carthage condemned the tenet of perfection in this life, in which decision Augustine must have had a leading part. Respecting complete sanctification at death, Augustine (Nature and Grace 70) says: "Whether there ever has been or is or can be a man living so righteous a life in this world as to have no sin at all may be an open question among true and pious Christians; but whoever doubts the possibility of this sinless state after the present life is foolish."

6.6.3 (see p. 806). Augustine (Grace and Free Will 18) explains the difference between Paul and James as follows: "Unintelligent persons with regard to the Apostle Paul's statement that 'we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law' have thought him to mean that faith suffices to a man even if he lead a bad life and does no good works. Impossible is it that such a person should be deemed 'a vessel of election' by that apostle, who, after declaring that 'in Christ Jesus neither circumcision avail anything nor uncircumcision,' adds immediately, 'but faith, which works by love.' It is such faith which separates God's faithful from unclean demons; for even these 'believe and tremble,' as the Apostle James says; but they do not work well. Therefore they have not the faith by which the justified man lives, the faith which works by love in suchwise that God recompenses it according to its works with eternal life. But inasmuch as we have even our good works from God, from whom likewise comes our faith and our love, therefore the same great teacher of the Gentiles has designated 'eternal life' as his gracious 'gift'."

The creeds, both Lutheran and Reformed, teach that justifying faith is working faith. The Formula of Concord 3.8 declares that "we are not to imagine any such justifying faith as can exist and abide with a purpose of evil, to wit: of sinning and acting contrary to conscience. But after that man is justified by faith then that true and living faith works by love (Gal. 5:6), and good works always follow justifying faith and are most certainly found together with it, provided only it be a true and living faith. For true faith is never alone, but has always charity and hope in its train." Smalcald Article 13 declares that "good works follows this faith, renovation, and remission of sins. Furthermore, we say that where good works do not follow, there the faith is false, not true."

The Irish Articles maintain that justifying faith is working faith and not faith which does not work, in the following manner: "When we say that we are justified by faith only, we do not mean that the said justifying faith is alone in man without true repentance, hope, charity, and the fear of God, for such a faith is dead and cannot justify; neither do we mean that this, our act, to believe in Christ, or this, our faith in Christ, which is within us, does of itself justify us or deserve our justification unto us, for that were to account ourselves to be justified by the virtue or dignity of something that is within ourselves; but the true understanding and meaning thereof is that although we hear God's word and believe it, although we have faith, hope, charity, repentance, and the fear of God within us and add never so many good works thereunto; yet we must renounce the merit of all our said virtues, of faith, hope, charity, and all other virtues and good deeds which we have done or shall do or can do as things that be far too weak and imperfect and insufficient to deserve remission of our sins and our justification, and therefore we must trust only in God's mercy and the merits of his most dearly beloved Son, our only Redeemer, Savior, and Justifier, Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, because faith does directly send us to Christ for our justification and that by faith given us by God we embrace the promise of God's mercy and the remission of our sins, which thing none other of our virtues or works does, therefore the Scripture used to say that faith without works, that only faith does justify us."

The faith which Paul and James both alike mean by justifying faith is not a faith to which works do not naturally belong, but are subjoined to faith from the outside, being produced by another act of the will than that of faith. Works, in their view, are produced by the one single act of faith itself and thus are an integral element and part of faith itself. The same mental action which produces the faith produces the works. The works are not a separate addition to faith, but an issue from it. They can no more be separated, even in thought, from faith, than vegetable fruit can be from vegetable life. We do not conceive of grapes as something that can be produced ab extra by another force than that of the vine and then added to the vital force of the vine, but as the spontaneous, natural, and necessary product of the vine's vitality and making an integral part of the vine's total action. Our Lord teaches this when he says, "Abide in me, and I in you: as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can you except you abide in me."

Faith and works, then, are two aspects or phases of one and the same principle of divine life in the soul. This one principle, viewed as cause, is faith; viewed as effect, is works—just as vegetable vitality and vegetable fruit are two aspects of one and the same principle of physical life. This one principle viewed as cause is the vitality of the vine stock; viewed as effect is the cluster of grapes. "It is not possible," says Owen (Justification, chap. 2), "that there should be any exercise of this faith unto justification but where the mind is prepared, disposed, and determined unto universal obedience. And therefore it is denied that any faith, trust, or confidence which may be imagined so as to be absolutely separable from and have its whole nature consistent with the absence of all other graces is that faith which is the especial gift of God and which in the gospel is required of us in a way of duty."

The alleged difficulty of harmonizing Paul and James arises, then, from an erroneous view of the relation of good works to living faith. If both of these are regarded as constituting a unity that has two phases or aspects, so that works are faith in operation and faith is works potentially, there is no contradiction in saying with Paul that a man is "justified by faith" (Rom. 3:28) and with James, that a man is "justified by works" (James 2:24). But if faith and good works are not regarded as a unity but as two separable and separate things, one of which can exist without the other, then it is contradictory to say with Paul that a man is "justified by faith" and with James that he is "justified by works."

Christlieb (Modern Doubt, 530) thus explains the subject: "The difference between Paul and James lies in the language used by each; inasmuch as what Paul usually designates as 'being saved' (sōzesthai; e.g., Eph. 2:8) is expressed by James by the word dikaiousthai, which Paul generally applies to the first part of redemption, namely, justification."

After this statement of the inseparability of good works from faith it is important to observe carefully that the works which naturally issue from faith are not the cause or ground of justification any more than the act of faith itself is. A man's sins are not remitted nor does he acquire a title to eternal life because of his own merit in believing, but because of Christ's merits in suffering and obeying for him; and neither does he obtain these benefits because of the good works that are inseparable from living faith.

7 Means of Grace

Preliminary Considerations

The means of grace are means of sanctification. They suppose the existence of the principle of divine life in the soul: "The outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicates to his church the benefits of his mediation are all his ordinances; especially the word, sacraments, and prayer; all of which are made effectual to the elect for their salvation" (Westminster Larger Catechism 154). The means of grace are administered within the visible church and to its members. Consequently, church membership is requisite to obtaining the benefits of the means of grace and sanctification. Some of these benefits cannot be enjoyed at all outside of the visible church: those, namely, connected with the administration of the sacraments and the fellowship and watch of Christians; and none of them can be enjoyed in their fullness by one who has not separated himself from the world by confessing Christ before men.2

Confession of faith and church fellowship is a means of sanctification. This is one of "the ordinances of Christ," all of which, according to the Westminster statement, are means of grace. Christ commands his disciples to confess him before men: "Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven" (Matt. 10:32–33; cf. 16:16–18). The use of this means of spiritual growth is often enjoined in the epistles (Rom. 10:9–10; Heb. 10:25).

Man is a social being, and his religious like his secular welfare depends upon association with others like-minded. Confession of faith and church membership promote sanctification (a) by personal sympathy and (b) by the watch and discipline of fellow Christians. Those who cherish a hope that they are believers, yet make no public acknowledgment of their faith, omit an important means of grace and hinder their own sanctification. Moreover, such a neglect of an explicit ordinance of Christ casts doubt upon the reality of the supposed faith. There would be more ground for hope were this doubt removed by the confession of faith.

The word of God is a means of grace and sanctification in two aspects of it. (a) As law its purpose is to point out the duty which God requires of man as a subject of his government. The effect of the word in this form upon the believer is to produce self-knowledge and humility. The believer by the law is made acquainted with indwelling sin. Meekness and lowliness of heart are the effect of the word in this aspect of it. He is kept "poor in spirit." (b) As gospel its purpose is to disclose the fullness of Christ to meet this spiritual poverty. Preaching should combine the two in just proportions in order to the sanctification of believers.

The efficacy of the word is from the Holy Spirit applying it. The Spirit does not operate upon the truth, but upon the soul: "Why do you not understand my speech? even because you cannot hear my word. He that is of God hears God's word: you therefore hear them not because you are not of God" (John 8:43, 47); "the natural man cannot know the things of the Spirit because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14). In using the word, the divine Spirit works directly upon the soul and produces two effects: (a) the understanding is enlightened and enabled to perceive the truth spiritually and (b) the will is renewed and inclined toward it. The aversion of the heart to truth is overcome. Some Lutheran divines represent the Holy Spirit as operating upon the truth so that the truth becomes an efficient by means of this superadded quality or power. The Reformed theologians regard the Holy Spirit as the sole efficient and the truth as only an instrument. (supplement 6.7.1.)

The sacraments are means of grace and sanctification. In the classical meaning, sacramentum was the oath of allegiance taken by the soldier. It was also the money pledged by contending parties in a litigated case. It implied obligation of some kind. The classical is not the biblical or the ecclesiastical signification. The Latin fathers employed sacramentum as the equivalent of mystērion. The sacrament was a "mystery." The Vulgate translates mystērion5 in Eph. 1:9; 3:3; 5:32 by sacramentum. But as a mystery is exhibited or explained by a symbol, the sacramentum was also a symbolum (Calvin 4.14.2).

In the biblical and ecclesiastical use, a "sacrament" is a sign or symbol of a Christian mystery: of the mystery of regeneration in the case of baptism, of the mystery of vicarious atonement in the case of the Lord's Supper. These two sacraments exhibit and certify, by sensible emblems, to the believing recipient these two mysterious facts in redemption. Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 162 so defines: "A sacrament is a holy ordinance instituted to signify, seal, and exhibit to believers the benefits of Christ's mediation, to strengthen their faith, to oblige them to obedience, to cherish their love and communion one with another."

Lord's Supper

The following are the fundamental positions in the Reformed theory of the sacraments:

1. They are means of grace, dependent like the other means upon the accompanying operation of the Holy Spirit and consequent faith in the soul of the recipient: "All the energy of operation belongs to the Spirit, and the sacraments are mere instruments which without his agency are vain and useless, but with it, are fraught with surprising efficacy" (Calvin 4.14.9); "the grace which is exhibited in or by the sacraments is not conferred by any power in them; neither does the efficacy of a sacrament depend upon the piety or intention of him that does administer it, but upon the work of the Spirit" (Westminster Confession 27.3); "I indeed baptize you with water, but he shall baptize with the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 3:11); "by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body" (1 Cor. 12:13); "let a man examine himself and so let him eat" (11:28); "neither is that circumcision which is outward" (Rom. 2:28); "the antitype whereunto, namely, baptism, does also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), by the resurrection of Jesus Christ" (1 Pet. 3:21).

2. In the sacrament of the supper, the bread and wine are both symbols and memorials of Christ's body. They both emblematize and remind of a particular fact, namely, Christ's atoning death. This is founded on Luke 22:19: "This is my body; this do in remembrance of me." The first clause describes the sacrament as symbolic; the second as mnemonic: "Our Lord Jesus instituted the sacrament called the Lord's Supper for the perpetual remembrance of the sacrifice of himself in his death and a commemoration of the one offering of himself upon the cross" (Westminster Confession 29.1, 2).

3. The act of truly partaking of the Lord's Supper is mental and spiritual, not physical and carnal. Westminster Confession 29.7 teaches that the "worthy receiver spiritually receives and feeds upon Christ crucified" and denies that he "carnally and corporally receives or feeds upon him." It also denies that "the body and blood of Christ are corporally or carnally in, with, or under the bread and wine" and asserts that they are "really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses."

The points in this statement of most importance are that the believer, in worthily partaking of the Lord's Supper, consciously and confidently relies upon Christ's atoning sacrifice for the remission of his sins. This is meant by the phrase feed upon Christ crucified. The allusion is to Christ's words in John 6:53–56: "Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you." The flesh and blood of Christ signify the expiatory death of Christ. To "drink Christ's blood" is to trust in Christ's atonement in a vital manner and with a vivid feeling of its expiatory efficacy. The Lord's Supper can have no meaning if his vicarious sacrifice is denied. (supplement 6.7.2.)

The "presence" of Christ is not in the bread or the wine, but in the soul of the participant. Christ, says the Westminster Confession, is "present to the faith of believers," and faith is mental and spiritual. The statement of Hooker (Polity 5.67) upon this point is explicit and excellent:

The real presence of Christ's most blessed body and blood is not to be sought for in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament. I see not which way it should be gathered by the words of Christ, when and where the bread is his body or the cup his blood; but only in the very heart and soul of him which receives them. As for the sacraments, they really exhibit, but for aught we can gather out of that which is written of them, they are not really nor do they really contain in themselves that grace which with them or by them it pleases God to bestow.

Again he remarks (5.67):

No side denies but that the soul of man is the receptacle of Christ's presence. Whereby the question is driven to a narrower issue, nor does anything rest doubtful but this, whether, when the sacrament is administered, Christ be whole within man only or else his body and blood be also externally seated in the very consecrated elements themselves. Which opinion they that defend are driven either to consubstantiate and incorporate Christ with elements sacramental or to transubstantiate and change their substance into his; and so the one to hold him really, but invisibly, molded up with the substance of those elements, the other to hide him under the only visible show of bread and wine, the substance whereof, as they imagine, is abolished, and his succeeded in the same room.

With this statement of Hooker, Calvin (4.17.31) agrees:

They are exceedingly deceived who cannot conceive of any presence of the flesh of Christ in the supper, except it be attached to the bread. For on this principle they leave nothing to the secret operation of the Spirit, which unites us to Christ. They suppose Christ not to be present unless he descends to us; as though we cannot equally enjoy his presence, if he elevates us to himself. The only question between us, therefore, respects the manner of this presence; because they place Christ in the bread, and we think it unlawful for us to bring him down from heaven. Let the reader judge on which side the truth lies. Only let us hear no more of that calumny that Christ is excluded from the sacrament unless he be concealed under the bread. For as this is a heavenly mystery, there is no necessity to bring Christ down to the earth in order to be united to us.

This view of Hooker and Calvin respecting the solely spiritual presence of Christ in the supper was that of the founders of the English church and entered into their form of worship. In the Office for the Communion of the Sick in the Episcopal prayer book, it is said:

If a man by reason of extremity of sickness or any other just impediment do not receive the sacrament of Christ's body and blood, the minister shall instruct him that if he do truly repent him of his sins and steadfastly believe that Jesus Christ has suffered death upon the cross for him and shed his blood for his redemption, earnestly remembering the benefits he has thereby and giving him hearty thanks therefor, he does eat and drink the body and blood of our Savior Christ profitably to his soul's health, although he do not receive the sacrament with his mouth.

The Romish theory of the sacraments is that they convey both regenerating and sanctifying grace by their own nature and efficiency: by the mere external muscular performance (ex opere operato) of the rite of baptism or of the supper the effect is produced in the soul. Bellarmine (Concerning the Sacraments 2.1) defines the theory thus: "The sacraments convey grace by the virtue of the sacramental action itself instituted by God for this end and not through the merit of either the agent or the receiver."

The Lutheran doctrine of the sacrament of the supper teaches (a) that its efficacy is conditioned upon faith in the recipient (in this it agrees with Reformed doctrine) and (b) that its efficacy is due to an intrinsic virtue, resulting from the presence of Christ's glorified body in and with the bread and wine. This copresence of Christ's glorified body in the emblems makes the sacrament efficacious to the believer. In this, the Lutheran differs from the Calvinistic doctrine. The latter finds the efficacy of the sacrament of the supper solely in the operation of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer: "The sacraments become effectual means of salvation, not by any power in themselves, but only by the working of the Holy Spirit" (Westminster Larger Catechism 161).

The Lutheran asserts that Christ is "spiritually present in the sacrament of the supper as to the manner, but corporeally present as to the substance." That is to say, the substance of Christ's spiritual and glorified body as it now exists in heaven, not of his material and unglorified body as it once existed on earth, is actually present in and with the sacramental emblems. Consequently, the spiritual and glorified body of Christ is present in the bread and wine, wherever and whenever the sacrament is administered. This requires the ubiquity of Christ's glorified body, whereby it can simultaneously be in heaven and on earth. But the glorified body of Christ, like that of his people, though a spiritual body, has form and is extended in space. The description of Christ's body after his resurrection and at his ascension proves this. But one and the same form cannot occupy two or more spaces at one and the same moment. Christ's glorified body can pass from space to space instantaneously, but cannot fill two spaces at the same instant. When Christ's body passed through the "doors being shut" (John 20:26) and stood among the disciples, his body was no longer on the outside of the doors and could not be.

Hooker (5.67) defines the Lutheran, the Romish, and the Reformed views of the supper as follows:

There are but three expositions made of the words this is my body. The first: "This is in itself, before participation, really and truly the natural substance of my body, by reason of the coexistence which my omnipotent body has with the sanctified element of bread"—which is the Lutheran's interpretation. The second: "This is in itself, and before participation, the true and natural substance of my body, by force of that deity which with the words of consecration abolishes the substance of bread and substitutes in the place thereof my body"—which is the popish construction. The third: "This hallowed food, through concurrence of divine power, is, in verity and truth, unto faithful receivers, instrumentally a cause of that mystical participation, whereby as I make myself wholly theirs, so I give them in hand an actual possession of all such saving grace as my sacrificed body can yield, and their souls do presently need. This is to them and in them my body."

According to this statement of Hooker, which agrees with that of the Reformed creeds, there are but three generic theories of the sacraments: Reformed, Lutheran, and Romish. Some would find a fourth theory represented by Zwingli. This comes from a misapprehension of the views of the Swiss reformer. The difference between Zwingli and Calvin upon sacramentarian points has been exaggerated. Zwingli has been represented as denying that the sacrament of the supper is a means of grace and that Christ is present in it. The following positions in his Confession of Faith disprove this. He asserts that (1) the sacraments are things that are holy and should be venerated; (2) they present a testimony of the thing borne; (3) they stand in place of the things which they signify, since they represent what cannot in itself be directly perceived; (4) they signify lofty things: having value not for what they are materially, but for what they signify; as a bridal ring is not worth merely the gold of which it is made;10 (5) they enlighten and instruct through the analogy between the symbol and the thing symbolized; (6) they bring aid and comfort to faith; and (7) they take the place of (vice) an oath. These positions accord entirely with those in the First Helvetic Confession, which contains Calvin's view of the sacraments, and also with those presented in the Articles of Agreement between the churches of Zurich and Geneva. Hagenbach (§258) asserts that Zwingli taught that the sacrament is "both a symbol (signum) and a means of strengthening faith." Sigwart and Zeller, in their monographs upon Zwingli, take the same view. The writer of "Lord's Supper" in Kitto's Encyclopedia represents Zwingli as holding that the Lord's Supper, by presenting under sensible emblems the sufferings and death of Christ and bringing them to vivid remembrance, deepens penitence, stimulates faith, calls out love, and in this way is a means of sanctification equally with hearing the word or any other means of grace employed by the Holy Spirit.

Zwingli asserted as strongly as Calvin the spiritual presence of Christ in the sacrament, denying with him the carnal and corporeal presence, either in the form of transubstantiation or consubstantiation. "Christ," he says, "is spiritually present in the consciousness of the believer (fidei contemplatione). In the recollection of his sufferings and death and by faith in these, his body is spiritually eaten. We trust in the dying flesh and blood of Christ, and this faith is called the eating of the body and blood of Christ" (Concerning the Eucharist; cf. Confession of Faith 4.63–64). The corporeal presence of Christ he denied, appealing to the authority of Augustine, as follows: "Augustine said that the body of Christ must be in some heavenly place, according to the mode of a visible body. The body of Christ is therefore in no more places than our bodies"13 (Confession of Faith 4.51).

Zwingli regarded the sacrament of the supper as a means of grace and sanctification, because of its didactic character, because by "evidently setting forth before the eyes Jesus Christ crucified" (Gal. 3:1) it teaches in a vivid and special manner the great truth of Christ's atonement and redemption and confirms the soul of the believer in it. It is an object lesson. In this respect, the function of the sacrament is like that of the word. Gospel truth is taught by both alike. Both alike are employed by the Holy Spirit in enlightening, strengthening, and comforting the mind of the believer. This feature in Zwingli's view is sometimes cited to prove a radical difference between him and Calvin. But Calvin is even more explicit and positive on this point:

The office of the sacraments is precisely the same as that of the word of God, which is to offer and present Christ to us and in him the treasures of heavenly grace; but they confer no advantage or profit without being received by faith. It is necessary to guard against being drawn into error from reading the extravagant language used by the fathers with a view to exalt the dignity of the sacraments; lest we should suppose there is some secret power annexed and attached to the sacraments, so that they communicate the grace of the Holy Spirit, just as wine is given in the cup; whereas the only office assigned to them is to testify and confirm his benevolence toward us; nor do they impart any benefit unless they are accompanied by the Holy Spirit to open our minds and hearts and render us capable of receiving this testimony. For the sacraments fulfill to us, on the part of God, the same office as messengers of joyful intelligence or earnests for the confirmation of covenants, on the part of men. (4.14.17)

God nourishes our faith in a spiritual manner by the sacraments, which are instituted for the purpose of placing his promises before our eyes for our contemplation and of serving as pledges of them. (4.14.12)

For this reason, Augustine calls a sacrament "a visible word"; because it represents the promises of God portrayed as in a picture and places before our eyes an image of them. (4.14.5–6)

Connected with the preaching of the gospel, another assistance and support of our faith is afforded us in the sacraments. (4.14.1)

There is no true administration of the sacrament without the word. For whatever advantage accrues to us from the sacred supper requires the word; whether we are to be confirmed in faith, exercised in confession, or excited to duty, there is need of preaching. Nothing more preposterous, therefore, can be done with respect to the supper than to convert it into a mute action, as we have seen done under the tyranny of the pope. (4.17.39)

The person who supposes that the sacraments confer any more upon him than that which is offered by the word of God, and which he receives by a true faith, is greatly deceived. Hence also it may be concluded that confidence of salvation does not depend on the participation of the sacrament, as though that constituted our justification, which we know to be placed in Christ Jesus alone, and is to be communicated to us no less by the preaching of the word than by the sealing of the sacraments, and that it may be completely enjoyed without this participation. (4.14.14) (supplement 6.7.3.)

This view of the nature of the sacrament of the supper as didactic is also confirmed by considering the nature and purpose of a symbol. The purpose of a symbol is to teach a certain truth by a visible sign or token. The ocean is a symbol of God's immensity, and the sun of his glory. The "invisible things" or truths relating to God are emblematized and impressed by "the things that are made" (Rom. 1:20). The heavens are a symbol of God because they "declare the glory of God" (Ps. 19:1). The cross is a symbol in all Christendom of the sacrifice of Christ. It teaches emblematically the truth that the Son of God died for man's sin. The ark, again, is a symbol of the church and teaches that men are safe within the kingdom of God. In the case of all these natural symbols, there is no efficacy in the symbol as such, but only in the truth taught by it. The ocean, the sun, the cross, the ark, make no spiritual impression as mere water, light, and wood. It is only the immensity and glory of God, as taught by the symbols of the ocean and the sun, that affect the mind. It is only the mercy of God, as suggested by the symbol of the cross and the ark, that produces the spiritual effect.

The bread and the wine of the Lord's Supper are specially and divinely appointed symbols, differing in this respect from all natural symbols. They are also seals as well as symbols, differing in this respect, also, from natural symbols. But as symbols they are didactic and teach that truth which is the heart of the Christian religion, namely, that the broken and bleeding body of Christ is the oblation for sin. They are "holy signs and seals of the covenant of grace, immediately instituted by God to represent Christ and his benefits and to confirm our interest in him" (Westminster Confession 28.1). But in this instance, too, as in that of natural symbols, it is the truth taught by the symbols and not the symbols themselves that strengthens the faith of the participant, deepens his gratitude, enlivens his hope, and sanctifies his heart. As mere bread and wine, the symbols produce no spiritual effect in the soul of the believer. When the Holy Spirit enlightens the mind of the participant to perceive the gospel truth which these emblems "exhibit, signify, and seal," then and only then do they become means of sanctification. It is not because the glorified body of Christ is conjoined with them, as the Lutheran asserts, or because they are converted into the glorified body of Christ, as the Romanist asserts, that they are effectual. It is because of the spiritual presence of Christ in the soul of the participant and the spiritual perception of the truth signified and sealed by the emblems, as Calvin and Hooker say, that they are means of grace.

Baptism

The sacrament of baptism is the sign and seal of regeneration. It is emblematic and didactic of this doctrine. Baptism is not a means of regeneration, as the Lord's Supper is of sanctification. It does not confer the Holy Spirit as a regenerating Spirit, but is the authentic token that the Holy Spirit has been or will be conferred, that regeneration has been or will be effected. This is taught in Rom. 4:11: Abraham "received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the faith which he had being yet uncircumcised." Baptism is Christian circumcision ("the circumcision of Christ"; Col. 2:11) and takes the place of the Jewish circumcision, so that what is true of the latter is of the former. Paul, Cornelius, and the eunuch were regenerated before they were baptized. As circumcision was not absolutely necessary to salvation, neither is baptism. This is shown by the omission of it in Mark 16:16, when damnation is spoken of. (supplement 6.7.4.)

Baptism, being the initiatory sacrament, is administered only once. While symbolical only of regeneration, it yet has a connection with sanctification. Being a divinely appointed sign, seal, and pledge of the new birth, it promotes the believer's growth in holiness by encouragement and stimulus. It is like the official seal on a legal document. The presence of the seal inspires confidence in the genuineness of the title deed; the absence of the seal awakens doubts and fears. Nevertheless, it is the title deed, not the seal, that conveys the title.

Baptism is to be administered to believers and their children: "The promise is unto you and your children" (Acts 2:38–39); "if the root be holy, so are the branches" (Rom. 11:16); "the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean: but now are they holy" (1 Cor. 7:14); "go teach all nations, baptizing them" (Matt. 28:19). If the command had been "go teach all nations, circumcising them," no one would have denied that infants were included in the command. Infants are called disciples in Acts 15:10: "Why tempt God to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples?" Accordingly, Westminster Confession 28.4 affirms that "the infants of one or both believing parents are to be baptized."

The baptism of the infant of a believer supposes the actual or prospective operation of the regenerating Spirit, in order to the efficacy of the rite. Infant baptism does not confer the regenerating Spirit, but is a sign that he either has been or will be conferred in accordance with the divine promise in the covenant of grace. The actual conferring of the Holy Spirit may be prior to baptism or in the act itself or subsequent to it. Hence baptism is the sign and seal of regeneration either in the past, in the present, or in the future. Westminster Confession 38.6 teaches that "the efficacy of baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered"; in other words, the regenerating grace of the Spirit, signified and sealed by the rite, may be imparted when the infant is baptized or previously or at a future time. The baptism is administered in this reference and with this expectation: "Baptism is to be administered, to be a sign and seal of regeneration and engrafting into Christ, and that even to infants" (Westminster Larger Catechism 177). Under the old dispensation, the circumcision of the flesh was a sign and seal of the circumcision of the heart (Deut. 10:16; 30:6). "God," says Calvin (4.16.5), "did not favor infants with circumcision without making them partakers of all those things which were then signified by circumcision." Similarly, under the new dispensation, the baptism of the body of the infant is the sign and seal of the baptism of the soul by the Holy Spirit.

The infant of the believer receives the Holy Spirit as a regenerating Spirit, by virtue of the covenant between God and his people: "I will establish my covenant between me and you and your seed after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto you and to your seed after you" (Gen. 17:7); "the promise is unto you and your children" (Acts 2:39). The infant of the believer, consequently, obtains the regenerating grace by virtue of his birth and descent from a believer in covenant with God and not by virtue of his baptism. God has promised the blessing of the Holy Spirit to those who are born of his people. The infant of a believer, by this promise, is born into the church, as the infant of a citizen is born into the state: "Children born within the pale of the visible church and dedicated to God in baptism are under the inspection and government of the church" (Directory for Worship, 9). They are church members by reason of their birth from believing parents; and it has been truly said that the question that confronts them at the period of discretion is not "will you join the visible church?" but "will you go out of it?" Church membership by birth from believers is an appointment of God under both the old and the new economies, in the Jewish and the Christian church.

Baptism is the infallible sign of regeneration when the infant dies in infancy. All baptized infants dying before the age of self-consciousness are regenerated without exception. Baptism is the probable sign of regeneration, when the infant lives to years of discretion. It is possible that the baptized child of believing parents may prove, in the day of judgment, not to have been regenerated, but not probable. The history of the church and daily observation show it to be the general fact that infant church members become adult church members. Yet exceptions are possible. A baptized infant on reaching years of discretion may to human view appear not to have been regenerated, as a baptized convert may. The fact of unregeneracy, however, must be proved before it can be acted upon. A citizen of the state must be presumed to be such until the contrary appears by his renunciation of citizenship and self-expatriation. Until he takes this course, he must be regarded as a citizen. So a baptized child, in adult years, may renounce his baptism and church membership, become an infidel, and join the synagogue of Satan; but until he does this, he must be regarded as a member of the church of Christ. Such instances are exceedingly rare, both in church and state. The possible exceptions to the general fact that baptism is the sign of regeneration are not more numerous in the case of baptized infants than of baptized converts. Says Hodge (Theology 3.590):

It is not every baptized child who is saved; nor are all those who are baptized in infancy made partakers of salvation. But baptism signs, seals, and actually conveys its benefits to all its subjects, whether infants or adults, who keep the covenant of which it is a sign. It does not follow that the benefits of redemption may not be conferred on infants at the time of their baptism. That is in the hands of God. What is to hinder the imputation to them of the righteousness of Christ or their receiving the renewing of the Holy Spirit, so that their whole nature may be developed in a state of reconciliation with God. Doubtless this often occurs; but whether it does or not, their baptism stands good; it assures them of salvation if they do not renounce their baptismal covenant. (supplement 6.7.5.)

The reason why there is not an infallible connection between infant baptism and regeneration, when the infant lives to years of discretion, so that all baptized children of true believers are regenerated without a single exception, is the fact that the covenant is not observed on the human side with absolute perfection. Should the believer keep the promise on his part with entire completeness, God would be bound to fulfill the promise on his part. But the believer's fulfillment of the terms of the covenant, in respect to faith in God's promise, to prayer, to the nurture and education of the child, though filial and spiritual, is yet imperfect. God is, therefore, not absolutely indebted to the believer, by reason of the believer's action, in respect to the regeneration of the child. Consequently, he may exercise a sovereignty, if he so please, in the bestowment of regenerating grace, even in the case of a believer's child. We have seen (p. 776) that the regeneration of an unbaptized adult, depending as it does upon election, cannot be made infallibly certain by the use of common grace, though it may be made highly probable by it. In like manner, the regeneration of a baptized child, depending also upon election, may be made highly probable by the imperfect faith and fidelity of the parents, yet not infallibly and necessarily certain.

The mode of baptism which is by far the most common in the history of the Christian church is sprinkling or pouring. From the time of Christ to the present, a vastly greater number have been sprinkled than have been immersed. At the present day, sprinkling is the rule throughout Christendom, and immersion the exception. The former mode is Catholic; the latter is denominational.

Sprinkling was the common mode of baptism in the Old Testament, and this fact furnishes the strongest presumption that it was the mode of Christ and his apostles. As the apostolic polity confessedly grew out of the Jewish synagogue, it is equally certain that the apostolic ceremonial and ritual grew out of the Jewish. Polity and ritual are indissolubly associated. Baptizing under the old economy was an important rite and would certainly influence the mode under the New. The Old Testament baptism, therefore, is of the utmost consequence in settling the dispute respecting the mode of baptism and its subjects. The following particulars are to be noted.

First, sacramental baptism by the levitical priest was always administered by sprinkling, never by immersion. (a) The whole congregation at Sinai were baptized by sprinkling (Exod. 24:6–8; Heb. 9:19–20). (b) The Levites when consecrated to office were baptized by sprinkling: "Thus shall you do unto them to cleanse them: sprinkle water of purifying upon them" (Num. 8:7). (c) Lepers and defiled persons when restored to the congregation were baptized by sprinkling (Lev. 14:4–7; 49–53; Num. 19:18–19; 31:19, 22–23; Luke 5:14). (d) Gentiles when admitted to the Jewish church were baptized by sprinkling (Num. 31:12, 19). These baptisms could be performed only by a priest or by some "clean person" appointed to act for him: "A clean person shall sprinkle water upon the unclean" (19:18–19). The baptism in these instances was sacramental, that is, had reference to guilt and expiatory cleansing. Hence the blood of a sacrificial victim was sprinkled upon the congregation at Sinai and upon the Levites and restored lepers. No individual could baptize himself with this sacramental and expiatory baptism. It was a priestly act and required the priest or his appointed agent.

Second, baptism by Jehovah in both the old economy and the new is by sprinkling or pouring. The Jehovah of the Old Testament is the Christ of the New and is the great high priest. He baptizes with the Holy Spirit: "He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire" (Matt. 3:11). This baptism is never by immersion: "He shall sprinkle many nations" (Isa. 52:15); "then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean; a new heart will I give you" (Ezek. 36:25); "let us draw near to God, having our hearts sprinkled (rherantismenoi) from an evil conscience" (Heb. 10:22); "the blood of sprinkling (rhantismou) that speaks better things than the blood of Abel" (12:24); "elect unto sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ" (1 Pet. 1:2); "until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high" (Isa. 32:15; Joel 2:28); "I will pour out my Spirit unto you" (Prov. 1:23).

Third, ceremonial baptisms or washings were administered by sprinkling or pouring, not by immersion. These baptisms had reference not to the guilt of sin, but its pollution. Sometimes they were administered by the person himself and sometimes by the priest. When a man ceremonially washed his hands, this was called a "baptism": "When the Pharisee saw it, he marveled that he had not first washed (ebaptisthē) before dinner" (Luke 11:38); "when they come from the market, except they wash (baptisōntai in A, D, F, Textus Receptus, Tischendorf; rhantisōntai22 in א, B, C, Lachmann, Hort), they eat not; and many other things there be which they have received to hold, as the washings (baptismous) of cups, pots, and brazen vessels and of tables" (Mark 7:4). The ceremonial "baptism" of the hands was performed by having a servant pour water upon them; and the ceremonial "baptism" of cups, pots, vessels, and tables was by sprinkling or pouring, as in Num. 19:18: "A clean person shall sprinkle water upon the tent and upon all the vessels of the unclean person."

Now, since sprinkling or pouring was the invariable mode of baptism under the old economy, it is probable in the very highest degree that John the Baptist employed this mode. Baptism was a priestly act, as is implied in the inquiry: "Why do you baptize, if you be not the Christ nor Elijah nor that prophet?" (John 1:25). John was a priest of the family of Aaron (Luke 1:5) and naturally administered the rite by sprinkling or pouring, as the Jewish priest had administered it from time immemorial. There is not a scintilla of proof that he introduced immersion. And this same mode would naturally be adopted by the apostles when our Lord substituted baptism for circumcision and transferred the rite from the old dispensation to the new, from the Jewish to the Christian church. Peter associates "preaching peace by Jesus Christ" with "the baptism which John preached" (Acts 10:36–37). (supplement 6.7.6.)

The principal supports of the mode by immersion are (a) the custom in the patristic church of immersing in the laver of the baptistery and (b) the classical meaning of baptō and baptizō.

Concerning the first argument, it is to be noticed, first, that the baptistery dates from a period when Christianity had become powerful and able to erect churches with all the appointments of an imposing ritual. The apostolic church could not do this. The baptistery and laver are as late as the fourth century. Furthermore, the first baptismal fonts were too small for immersing. The fresco in the catacombs of St. Calixtus (A.D. 200 according to Rossi) represents the rite administered by pouring from the vessel upon the person standing upright. The "Teaching of the Apostles" (A.D. 160) says that baptism may be performed by pouring. Second, a more profuse application of water than that of sprinkling or pouring belongs to a period in the history of the church when baptism was held to be regeneration itself. If water be efficacious when applied by the officiating minister, then immersion would be deemed more efficacious than sprinkling. Immersion grew with the growth of the sacramentarian theory of baptism and the doctrine of baptismal regeneration.

Respecting the classical meaning of baptō and baptizō, it is to be observed that these words had no technical or ritual signification in classical Greek. They were never used to denote a pagan rite. There were purifying rites in the Greek and Roman worship, but they were not called "baptisms." The Greeks denominated their purifying rite katharsis, and the Romans theirs lustratio. Sprinkling was the mode in both. The nouns baptismos, baptisma, and baptistēs33 are not in the classical vocabulary. They were coined by Jews and Christians from baptizō in order to denote the rite of purification in the Jewish and Christian churches. Consequently, it is the secondary technical use in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, not the primary untechnical meaning in the Greek classics, which must be considered in determining the mode of baptism.35

The classical meaning of baptō and baptizō37 is to dip into water, to sink under water, to dye or tinge in a fluid. The classical meaning favors baptism by immersion, as the classical meaning of sacramentum proves that the Christian sacrament is an oath. But in Hebraistic and New Testament Greek, baptō and baptizō39 are employed in a secondary ceremonial signification to denote a Jewish and Christian rite. Consequently, their meaning in the Septuagint and New Testament must be determined by their ritual and historical use, not by their classical. The word pagans (pagani), etymologically and classically, denoted persons living in the villages (pagi) outside of the large towns and cities. Classically, pagans were "villagers." As Christianity spread first among the inhabitants of the cities, the villagers were the unevangelized; and thus "pagan" came to mean "heathen" instead of "villager." Similarly, baptō and baptizō, which in heathenism denoted any unceremonial, nonritual immersion into water, when adopted by Judaism and Christianity, came to have the secondary signification of a ceremonial sprinkling or effusion of water. And he who argues that baptism means immersion in the Scriptures because in the classics the primary meaning of baptō and baptizō43 is "to immerse" commits the same error with him who should argue that a pagan is a villager because this was the original signification of paganus or that the Christian sacramentum is an oath and not a symbol because this is its meaning in Livy and Tacitus.

The word baptizō is employed in the Septuagint to signify a ritual purification performed by applying water to a person or thing so as to wet it more or less, but not all over and entirely.45 The passages that have been quoted (pp. 819–20) prove indisputably that the mode in which the baptismal water of ritual purification was applied under the levitical law was sprinkling or pouring. There was no immersion of the body in the sacramental baptism for guilt or in the ceremonial baptism for pollution. And the spiritual baptism of the Holy Spirit is pouring, not immersing. There is no good reason for supposing that the New Testament use of baptizō is different from that of the Septuagint.

Historically, there is the highest probability that John the Baptist and Christ's apostles employed the old mode and did not invent a new one like immersion, so different from the mode in both Jewish and Gentile lustrations. Furthermore, the circumstances and customs of the Jews necessitated sprinkling or effusion. It is morally certain that such baptisms as those of Pentecost (Acts 2:41), of the eunuch (8:36), of Cornelius and his family (10:47), and of the jailer (16:33) were not administered by immersion. In the narrative of the baptism of the eunuch, it is said that "the way that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza is desert" (8:26). The whole region is sandy and dry, with only here and there a small spring of water. In the account of the baptism of Cornelius and "all his house" (10:2), the phraseology implies that the baptismal water was brought into the room: "Can any man forbid the water (to hydōr), that these should not be baptized?" (10:47). This phraseology would be unnatural if the water in question were in a river, pond, or reservoir—but natural if it were in a vessel. No one would "forbid" the Hudson or Connecticut River. It is improbable that within the precincts of the jail there was either a stream or reservoir of water sufficient for immersing in the dead of night "the jailer and all his." The immersion of three thousand in Jerusalem on one day, at Pentecost (2:41), would have required the use of the public reservoirs of the city, which the Jewish authorities would have been as little likely to have allowed as the common council of New York City would in a similar case.

Christ certainly had reference to the Old Testament baptism and to John's baptism when he said to Nicodemus: "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (John 3:5). Christian baptism in the name of the Trinity had not yet been instituted. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and our Lord wished to rid him of all self-righteousness by teaching him that he must confess sin with "publicans and sinners" and submit to the old and common Jewish rite that was emblematic of forgiveness and cleansing. Though he was "a ruler of the Jews" and "a master of Israel," he must take the same attitude with the multitude who "were baptized in Jordan, confessing their sins" (Matt. 3:5). "All the people that heard John and the publicans justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John. But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him" (Luke 7:29–30). This is our Lord's account of John's baptism and of the state of mind in those who submitted to it and those who rejected it. John's baptism was like that of Peter's on the day of Pentecost: "a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins" (Luke 3:3; Acts 2:38; 19:4). And the remission in both cases alike was through Christ, Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). John directed his disciples to Christ, exactly as the apostles did theirs: "John looking upon Jesus, as he walked, says, Behold the Lamb of God" (1:36); "then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Jesus Christ" (Acts 19:4). The apostles were baptized with John's baptism and were not rebaptized by Christ. Apollos "knew only the baptism of John" (18:25) and was not rebaptized.

Immersion has been supported by the equivocal rendering of the verb synthaptō in Rom. 6:4 and Col. 2:12. In Rom. 6:4 the rendering is "buried by baptism"; in Col. 2:12 "buried in baptism." The English word bury is applicable either to burial in earth or in water; but the Greek word synthaptō is applicable only to burial in earth. No one would render it "to immerse." The English word bury can suggest immersion, but the Greek cannot. Consequently, when a person unacquainted with the original reads in the English version of a "burial in baptism" or "by baptism," a burial in water is the only idea that enters his mind; an idea which the Greek positively excludes. For when a dead body is "buried" in a tomb as our Lord was, it comes into no contact with water and is carefully protected from it. Had synthaptō been translated literally by "entombed" instead of "buried," this text never would have been quoted, as it so frequently has been, to prove that Christian baptism is immersion. Christ's entombment or burial in Joseph's sepulcher has not the slightest connection with his baptism at the Jordan and throws no light upon the mode in which he was baptized; and, consequently, it throws no light upon the mode in which his disciples were. Matthew Henry (on Rom. 6:4) remarks as follows:

Why this "burying in baptism" should so much as allude to any custom of dipping under water in baptism, any more than our "baptismal crucifixion" and death should have any such reference, I confess I cannot see. It is plain that it is not the sign, but the thing signified in baptism, that the apostle here calls "being buried with Christ"; and the expression of "burying" alludes to Christ's burial. As Christ was buried that he might rise again to a new and more heavenly life, so we are, in baptism, buried, that is, cut off from the life of sin that we may rise again to a new life of faith and love.

SUPPLEMENTS

6.7.1 (see p. 810). The Lutheran Formula of Concord 5 makes the following excellent statement of the law and the gospel as means of grace:

1. We believe, teach, and confess that the distinction of the law and the gospel, as a most excellently clear light, is to be retained with special diligence in the church of God, in order that the word of God, agreeably to the admonition of St. Paul, may be rightly divided.

2. We believe, teach, and confess that the law is properly a doctrine divinely revealed, which teaches what is just and acceptable to God and which also denounces whatever is sinful and contrary to the divine will.

3. Wherefore, whatever is found in the Holy Scriptures which convicts of sin, this properly belongs to the preaching of the law.

4. The gospel, on the other hand, we judge to be properly the doctrine which teaches what a man ought to believe who has not satisfied the law of God and therefore is condemned by the same, to wit: that it behooves him to believe that Jesus Christ has expiated all his sins and made satisfaction for them and has obtained remission of sins, a righteousness which avails before God, and eternal life, without the intervention of any merit of the sinner.

5. But inasmuch as the word gospel is not always used in Holy Scripture in one and the same signification, we believe, teach, and confess that if the term gospel is understood to denote the whole doctrine of Christ which he set forth in his ministry, as also did his apostles (in which signification the word is used in Mark 1:15 and Acts 20:21), it is rightly said and taught that the gospel is a preaching of both repentance and remission of sins.

6. But when the law and the gospel are compared together, as in John 1:17, where Moses is described as the teacher of the law and Christ of the gospel, we believe, teach, and confess that the gospel is not a preaching of repentance and convicting of sin, but that it is properly nothing else than a most joyful message and preaching full of consolation, not convicting or terrifying, since it comforts the conscience against the terrors of the law and bids it look at the merits of Christ alone and, by a most sweet preaching of the grace and favor of God, obtained through the merits of Christ, lifts it up again.

7. But as respects the revelation of sin, the case stands thus: That veil of Moses of which St. Paul speaks (2 Cor. 3:13–16) is drawn over all men's eyes so long as they hear only the preaching of the law and nothing of Christ. And so they do not by the law come to know their sins truly and humbly, but either become hypocrites swelling with an opinion of their own righteousness, like the Pharisees of old, or despair in their sins, as did the traitor Judas. For this cause Christ took it upon himself to explain the law spiritually (Matt. 5:21–48; Rom. 7:14–24), and in this manner the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all sinners (1:18), in order that by perceiving the true meaning of the law it may be understood how great is that wrath. And thus, at length, sinners being remanded to the law, truly and rightly come to know their sins. But such a humble and penitent acknowledgment of sin, Moses alone never could have extorted from them. Although, therefore, this preaching of the passion and death of Christ the Son of God is full of severity and terror, inasmuch as it sets forth the wrath of God against sin, from whence men are at length brought nearer to the law of God, after the veil of Moses is taken away so that they may exactly perceive how great things God requires from us in his law, none of which we are able to perform, so that it behooves us to seek the whole of our righteousness in Christ alone.

8. Nevertheless, so long as the passion and death of Christ place before the eyes the wrath of God and terrify man, so long they are not properly the preaching of the gospel, but the teaching of the law and Moses, and are Christ's strange work, through which he proceeds to his proper office, which is to declare the grace of God, to console and vivify. These latter things are the peculiar function of evangelical preaching. We reject, therefore, as a false and perilous dogma the assertion that the gospel, as distinguished from the law, is properly a preaching of repentance, rebuking, accusing, and condemning sins, and that it is not solely a preaching of the grace of God, For in this way the gospel is transformed again into law, the merit of Christ and the Holy Scriptures are obscured, a true and solid consolation is wrested away from godly souls, and the way is opened to papal errors and superstitions.

9. We believe that the law is to be inculcated upon the regenerate also; that although they who truly believe in Christ and are sincerely converted to God are through Christ set free from the curse and constraint of the law, they are not on that account without law, inasmuch as the Son of God redeemed them for the very reason that they might meditate on the law day and night and continually exercise themselves in the keeping thereof (Ps. 1:2; 119:1–2). For not even our first parents, even before the fall, lived wholly without law, which was certainly at that time graven on their hearts, because the Lord had created them after his own image (Gen. 1:26–27; 2:16–17; 3:3).

10. We therefore believe, teach, and confess that the preaching of the law should be sedulously urged upon those who truly believe in Christ, are truly converted to God, and are regenerated and justified by faith. For, although they are regenerate and renewed in the spirit of their mind, yet this regeneration and renewal is not absolutely complete, but only begun. And they that believe have continually to struggle with their flesh, that is, with corrupt nature, which inheres in us even till death (Gal. 5:17; Rom. 7:21, 23). And on account of the old Adam, which still remains fixed in the intellect and will of man and in all his powers, there is need that the law of God should always shine before man, that he may not frame anything in matters of religion under an impulse of self-devised devotion, and may not choose out ways of honoring God not instituted by the word of God. Also, lest the old Adam should act according to his own bent, but that he may rather be constrained against his own will not only by the admonitions and threats of the law, but also by chastisements and afflictions, in order that he may render obedience to the Spirit and give himself up captive to the same (1 Cor. 9:27; Rom. 6:12; Gal. 6:14; Ps. 119:1–2; Heb. 12:1; 13:21)."

6.7.2 (see p. 811). Augustine (Tractates in John 26.1), expounding the words except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you, says: "The Lord, when he was about to give the Holy Spirit, said that he is the bread that came down from heaven, exhorting them to believe in him. For to believe in him is to eat the living bread. He who believes, eats: he is nourished invisibly, because he is invisibly born again." Again (26.18) he finds a definition of "eating flesh" and "drinking blood," by St. John himself (6:56), in the declaration "he that eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells in me, and I in him." "Therefore, this is what it means to eat that food and to drink that drink: to abide in Christ and to have him abiding within. But he who does not abide in Christ through this, and in whom Christ does not abide, beyond doubt neither eats his flesh nor drinks his blood." The words in brackets are not Augustine's, but the Benedictine editor's.

This view of Augustine that "believing is eating" and that "eating Christ's flesh and blood" is not to be understood literally but metaphorically for trusting in his vicarious atonement passed into the creeds very widely and into theological literature. Zwingli (Exposition of the Faith) declares that "in the Lord's Supper that natural and substantial body of Christ, in which he suffered here and in which he now sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven, is not eaten naturally and in its essence, but spiritually only. 'To eat spiritually' the body of Christ is nothing other than to trust in the mercy and goodness of God through Christ with our spirit and mind. To eat the body of Christ sacramentally, when we wish to speak properly, is, when connected with the sacrament, to eat the body of Christ in mind and in spirit." The Confession of the Ministers of the church of Zurich, as quoted by Hodge (Theology 3.628), declares that "although the things of which the service of the sacrament is a memorial are not visible or present after a visible or corporal manner, nevertheless believing apprehension and the assurance of faith renders them present, in one sense, to the soul of the believer. He has truly eaten the bread of Christ who believes on Christ, very God and very man, crucified for us, on whom to believe is to eat and to eat is to believe." The Heidelberg Catechism in answer to Q. 76 ("what is it to eat of the crucified body and drink the shed blood of Christ?") states: "It is not only to embrace with a believing heart all the sufferings and death of Christ and thereby to obtain the pardon of sin and life eternal, but also besides that to become more and more united to his sacred body by the Holy Spirit, who dwells both in Christ and in us; so that we, though Christ is in heaven and we on earth, are notwithstanding 'flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone'; and live and are governed forever by one spirit as members of the same body are by one soul." The Second Helvetic Confession describes two kinds of eating: "Eating is not of one kind. There is corporeal eating, in which food is received into the mouth by a man, is chewed with the teeth and swallowed into the stomach. The Capernaites in times past thought that the flesh of the Lord ought to be eaten in this way, but they are refuted by him in John 6. And there is a spiritual eating of Christ's body—not, indeed, as if we thought that the food was changed into spirit, but in which the body and blood of the Lord are communicated to us spiritually, while retaining their own essence and property. These certainly are not communicated to us in a corporeal but in a spiritual way, through the Holy Spirit, who evidently applies and confers on us those things which are bestowed through the body and blood of the Lord given on our behalf in death, that is, the very remission of sins, liberation, and eternal life, so that Christ might live in us and we in him. From all these it becomes clear that by 'spiritual food' we hardly mean 'imaginary food' (whatever that might be: nescio quem), but the very body of the Lord given for us, which nevertheless is received by the faithful spiritually through faith, not corporeally. In this matter we follow completely the doctrine of the Savior Christ the Lord himself, saying in John 6:63: 'The flesh (undoubtedly corporeal eating) profits nothing; it is the spirit who gives life. The words which I speak to your are spirit and life.' Moreover, this spiritual food and drink occurs even outside of the Lord's Supper, whenever and wherever a man should believe in Christ. Perhaps the following statement of Augustine applies: 'Why do you provide for your teeth and stomach? Believe and you have eaten.' " Belgic Confession 33 declares that "God has ordained the sacraments in order to seal unto us his promises and to be pledges of his goodwill and grace toward us and also to nourish and strengthen our faith"; and that he "has added them to the word of the gospel in order the better to represent to our outward senses both that which he teaches by his written word and that which he works inwardly in our hearts." This view, like that of Calvin, closely associates the sacraments with the written word and makes their influence mental and didactic like that of the word, not material and corporeal. Belgic Confession 35 thus defines "eating Christ": "For the support of the spiritual and heavenly life which believers have, God has sent a living bread which descended from heaven, namely, Jesus Christ, which nourishes and strengthens the spiritual life of believers when it is eaten, that is to say, when it is applied and received by faith in the mind (esprit)." It further declares that "what is eaten and drunk by us is the proper and natural body and the proper blood of Christ; but the manner of our partaking of the same is not by the mouth, but by the Spirit through faith." The Thirty-nine Articles teach that "the body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the supper only after a heavenly and spiritual manner; and the means whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the supper is faith." The Irish Articles in almost the same terms say that "the body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the Lord's Supper only after a heavenly and spiritual manner; and the means whereby the body of Christ is thus received and eaten is faith." Westminster Confession 29.8.7 says that "worthy partakers of the supper inwardly by faith receive and feed upon Christ crucified." On pp. 811–16 we have presented Zwingli's, Calvin's, and Hooker's doctrines of the Lord's Supper and shown their agreement with each other and with the Reformed creeds. They all deny the corporeal and local presence of Christ's body and blood in the bread and wine, together with the literal eating of Christ's flesh and blood by the mouth, and maintain that the words this is my body are metaphorical and that the believer eats and drinks the flesh and blood of Christ by trusting in his vicarious sacrifice for sin, being enlightened and enabled to this act of faith by the Holy Spirit.

It is noteworthy that Lutheranism, in some of its earlier creed statements, substantially adopted this spiritual view of the supper, though subsequently departing from it in its development of the doctrine of consubstantiation. Luther's Shorter Catechism presents it in the following questions and answers: "What is the use of such eating and drinking? It is shown to us in the words given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins; that is to say, through these words, the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation are given to us in the sacrament; for where there is forgiveness of sins there is also life and salvation. How can corporeal eating and drinking do such great things? Eating and drinking, indeed, do not do them, but the words which stand here: 'Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.' Which words, besides the corporeal eating and drinking, are the main point in the sacrament; and he who believes these words has that which they say and mean, namely, forgiveness of sins. Who, then, receives this sacrament worthily? He is truly worthy and well prepared who has faith in these words given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. But he who does not believe these words, or doubts, is unworthy and unfit; for the words for you require truly believing hearts." In these answers faith in Christ's atonement is declared to be the meaning of eating and drinking his flesh and blood. But the position that Christ's spiritual body is literally and locally present in and with the material bread and wine and is literally eaten by the mouth when these are eaten, notwithstanding all endeavors to guard and spiritualize it, finally neutralized the earlier affinity with the Reformed doctrine of the supper and ended in antagonism and separation. The Saxon Visitation Articles mention as a "false and erroneous doctrine of the Calvinists" that "the body of Christ is in the bread and wine as a typified body, which is only signified and prefigured by the bread and wine" and that "the body is received by faith alone, which raises itself to heaven and not by the mouth."

6.7.3 (see p. 815). If, as Calvin asserts, "the office of the sacraments is precisely the same as that of the word of God, which is to offer and present Christ to us," and if, as Augustine declares, "a sacrament is a visible word because it presents the promises of God as in a picture and places before our eyes an image of them," the question arises, How then does the sacrament of the supper differ from the other didactic means of grace—such as the preaching and hearing of the word, prayer, and meditation? The answer is, generally, that it consists in teaching the cardinal doctrine of Christ's sacrifice and satisfaction in a special and peculiar manner. Owen mentions several points of difference. In the seventh of his Sacramental Discourses he remarks: "In the ordinance of the supper there is a real exhibition and tender of Christ unto every believing soul. The exhibition and tender of Christ in this ordinance is distinct from the tender of Christ in the promise of the gospel, in that, in the gospel promise, the person of the Father is principally looked upon as proposing and tendering Christ unto us. But in the ordinance of the supper Christ tenders himself: 'This is my body,' says he; 'do this in remembrance of me.' He makes an immediate tender of himself unto a believing soul and calls our faith unto a respect to his grace, to his love, to his readiness to unite and spiritually to incorporate with us. Again it is a tender of Christ and an exhibition of Christ, under an especial consideration; not in general, but under this consideration, as he is a new and fresh sacrifice in the great work of reconciling, making peace with God, making an end of sin, doing all that was done between God and sinners that they might be at peace." Owen here represents the office of the sacrament of the supper as the same in kind with that of the ministry of the word. It is didactic of divine truth, like that. But it differs in being confined to a particular truth instead of ranging over the whole field of revelation. And, again, it differs from the ordinary teaching by the word in that the instruction is by means of sensuous and visible emblems and not by articulate language only. Owen mentions a second point of difference in his tenth Sacramental Discourse: "Christ is present with us in an especial manner in the sacrament of the supper. One of the greatest engines that ever the devil made use of to overthrow the faith of the church was by forging such a presence of Christ as is not truly in this ordinance to drive us off from looking after that presence which is true. It is not a corporeal presence; there are arguments of sense, reason, and faith that overthrow that. But I will remind you of two texts wherewith it is inconsistent. The first is John 16:7: 'It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you.' The corporeal presence of Christ and the evangelical presence of the Holy Spirit as the Comforter are inconsistent with each other. But, say the Romish priests, Christ so went away as to his presence, as to come again with his bodily presence. No, says Peter in Acts 3:21: 'The heavens must receive him till the time of the restitution of all things.' We must not, therefore, look for a bodily presence of Christ until the time of the restitution. Christ is present in the sacrament …

1. By representation through sensible emblems. He represents himself as the food of our souls; and he represents himself as the sacrifice for our sins. There are three ways whereby God represents Christ to the faith of believers: one is by the word of the gospel as written; the second by the ministry of the gospel and preaching the word; and the third is by this sacrament, wherein we represent the Lord's death to the faith of our own souls.

2. By exhibition through emblems. The bread and wine exhibit what they do not themselves contain. The bread does not contain the body or flesh of Christ; the cup does not contain the blood of Christ; but they exhibit them. We must not think that the Lord Jesus Christ deludes our souls with empty shows and appearances. It is himself as literally broken and crucified that he exhibits unto us.

3. By obsignation. In the sacrament of the supper, he seals the covenant. Therefore the cup is called 'the new covenant in the blood of Christ.' "

In the second of his Sacramental Discourses Owen mentions another characteristic of the sacrament of the supper, namely, an especial and peculiar communion with Christ. This communion, he says, differs from the other forms of communion with the Lord Jesus, in four particulars: "(1) It is commemorative: 'Do this in remembrance of me'; (2) it is professional: it has a peculiar profession attending it: 'You show forth the Lord's death till he come'; you make a profession and manifestation of it; (3) It is peculiarly eucharistic: there is a special thanksgiving that ought to attend this ordinance; it is called 'the cup of blessing or thanksgiving' (eulogia); (4) it is a federal ordinance wherein God confirms the covenant of grace unto us and wherein he calls upon us to make a recognition of the covenant to God."

6.7.4 (see p. 817). That baptism is not a means of regeneration but only the sign and seal of it is evident from its relation to faith. It presupposes faith, and faith presupposes regeneration. Philip said to the eunuch, "If you believe with all your heart you may be baptized" (Acts 8:37). No faith, no baptism. Christ's command for the church in all time is "he that believes and is baptized shall be saved" (Mark 16:16). The Apostle Peter declares that "baptism saves us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ" (1 Pet. 3:21). Not by its own efficacy, therefore, but as the emblem of what has been done by Christ's redemption, whose "resurrection" is one of the constituent factors in it. And in order to preclude the notion that the mere application of water has any spiritual effect like that of regenerating the soul, the apostle explains that baptism does not "save by the putting away of the filth of the flesh," but by "the answer of a good conscience towad God." The "answer of a good conscience" is its pacification through the atonement of Christ for sin, to which baptism has reference. For, as St. Paul says, "As many of us as were baptized with reference to (eis) Jesus Christ were baptized with reference to (eis) his death."

6.7.5 (see p. 818). Baxter (Directions for Spiritual Peace) thus speaks of the salvation of infants: "Grace is not natural to us or conveyed by generation. Yet grace is given to our children as well as to us. That it may be so and is so with some, all will grant who believe that infants may be and are saved; and that it is so with the infants of believers I have fully proved in my book on baptism; but mark what grace I mean. The grace of remission of original sin, the children of all true believers have at least a high probability of, if not a full certainty; their parent accepting it for himself and them and dedicating them to Christ and engaging them in his covenant, so that he takes them for his people and they take him for their Lord and Savior. And for the grace of inward renewing of their nature or disposition, it is a secret to us, utterly unknown whether God use to do it in infants or no." According to this, Baxter regarded the election and salvation of infants as individual only. All dying infants are not elected and saved.

6.7.6 (see p. 820). Mosheim (Commentaries 1.5) thus remarks upon "the rite of baptism, by which our Savior ordained that his followers should be received into the kingdom of heaven or the new covenant": "My opinion on this subject entirely corresponds with theirs who consider this ceremony as having been adopted by the Jews long before the time of our Savior and used by them in the initiating of strangers who had embraced their religion. The account given in John 1 of the embassy sent by the supreme council of the Jews to John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, supports this view. For the rite itself of baptizing with water those who have confessed their sins and promised an amendment of life does not seem to have been regarded by the elders of the Jews as a novelty or as a practice of an unusual kind. The only point on which they require information of John is from whence he derived his authority to perform this solemn and sacred ceremony. The thing itself occasioned them no surprise, since daily use had rendered it familiar to them: what attracted their attention was that a private individual should take upon him to perform it, contrary to the established usage of the nation.

"An inference of still greater moment may also be drawn from this message sent by the Jewish council to John, which will supply the reason why our Savior adopted this ancient Jewish practice of baptizing proselytes with water; for the concluding question put by the messengers evidently implies an expectation in the Jews of that age that the Messiah for whom they looked would baptize men with water: 'If you be not that Christ nor Elijah nor that prophet, why do you then baptize?' An opinion, it appears, prevailed among the Jews that Elijah, whose coming was to precede that of the Messiah, and also the Messiah himself, would initiate their disciples by a 'sacred ablution'; and it was necessary, therefore, in order to avoid giving the Jews any pretext for doubt respecting Christ's authority that both John and himself should accommodate themselves to this popular opinion."

Part 7

Eschatology

1 Intermediate or Disembodied State

Summary of the Doctrine

Eschatology (eschatōn logos) is that division in dogmatics which treats the intermediate or disembodied state, Christ's second advent, the resurrection, the final judgment, heaven, and hell. Revelation does not give minute details upon these subjects, yet the principal features are strongly drawn and salient.

The doctrine of the intermediate state has had considerable variety of construction, owing to the mixing of mythological elements with the biblical. The representations of Christ in the parable of Dives and Lazarus have furnished the basis of the doctrine. The most general statement is that the penitent, represented by Lazarus, is happy and that the impenitent, represented by Dives, is miserable.

The doctrine taught in Scripture that the body is not raised until the day of judgment implies that the condition of all men between death and resurrection is a disembodied one. This doctrine has been greatly misconceived, and the misconception has introduced grave errors into eschatology. Inasmuch as the body, though not necessary to personal consciousness, is yet necessary in order to the entire completeness of the person, it came to be supposed in the patristic church that the intermediate state is a dubious and unfixed state, that the resurrection adds very considerably both to the holiness and happiness of the redeemed and to the sinfulness and misery of the lost. This made the intermediate or disembodied state to be imperfectly holy and happy for the saved and imperfectly sinful and miserable for the lost. According to Hagenbach (§142), the majority of the fathers between 250 and 730 "believed that men do not receive their full reward till after the resurrection." Jeremy Taylor (Liberty of Prophesying §8) asserts that the Latin fathers held that "the saints, though happy, do not enjoy the beatific vision before the resurrection." Even so respectable an authority as Ambrose, the spiritual father of Augustine, taught that the soul "while separated from the body is held in an ambiguous condition (ambiguo suspenditur)."

The incompleteness arising from the absence of the body was more and more exaggerated in the patristic church, until it finally resulted in the doctrine of a purgatory for the redeemed, adopted formally by the papal church, according to which, the believer between death and resurrection goes through a painful process in hades which cleanses him from remaining corruption and fits him for paradise. The corresponding exaggeration in the other direction, in respect to the condition of the lost in the disembodied state, is found mostly in the modern church. The modern restorationist has converted the intermediate state into one of probation and redemption for that part of the human family who are not saved in this life.

The Protestant reformers, following closely the scriptural delineations, which represent the redeemed at death as entirely holy and happy in paradise and the lost at death as totally sinful and miserable in hades, rejected altogether the patristic and medieval exaggeration of the corporeal incompleteness of the intermediate state. They affirmed perfect happiness at death for the saved and utter misery for the lost. The first publication of Calvin was a refutation of the doctrine of the sleep of the soul between death and the resurrection. The limbus and purgatory were energetically combated by all classes of Protestants. "I know not," says Calvin (2.16.9), "how it came to pass that any should imagine a subterraneous cavern, to which they have given the name of limbus. But this fable, although it is maintained by great authors and even in the present age is by many seriously defended as a truth is after all nothing but a fable."

The doctrine of the intermediate or disembodied state, as it was generally received in the Reformed (Calvinistic) churches, is contained in the following statements in the Westminster standards:

The souls of believers are, at their death, made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory; and their bodies, being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection. At the resurrection, believers, being raised up in glory, shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment and made perfectly blessed in full enjoying of God to all eternity. (Westminster Shorter Catechism QQ. 37–38)

According to this statement, there is no essential difference between paradise and heaven. Westminster Larger Catechism 86 asserts that "the souls of the wicked are, at death, cast into hell, and their bodies kept in their graves till the resurrection and judgment of the great day." Westminster Larger Catechism 89 and Westminster Confession 1 say that "at the day of judgment, the wicked shall be cast into hell, to be punished forever." According to this, there is no essential difference between hades and hell.

The substance of the Reformed view, then, is that the intermediate state for the saved is heaven without the body and the final state for the saved is heaven with the body, that the intermediate state for the lost is hell without the body and the final state for the lost is hell with the body. In the Reformed or Calvinistic eschatology, there is no intermediate hades between heaven and hell, which the good and evil inhabit in common. When this earthly existence is ended, the only specific places and states are heaven and hell. Paradise is a part of heaven; hades is a part of hell. A pagan underworld containing both paradise and hades, both the happy and the miserable, like the pagan idol, is "nothing in the world." There is no such place.

Pagan Influences on the Doctrine of Hades

This view of hades did not continue to prevail universally in the Protestant churches. After the creeds of Protestantism had been constructed, in which the biblical doctrine of hades is generally adopted, the mythological view began again to be introduced. Influential writers like Lowth and Herder gave it currency in Great Britain and Germany. "A popular notion," says Lowth (Hebrew Poetry, lect. 8), "prevailed among the Hebrews, as well as among other nations, that the life which succeeded the present was to be passed beneath the earth; and to this notion the sacred prophets were obliged to allude, occasionally, if they wished to be understood by the people, on this subject." Says Herder (Hebrew Poetry 2.21), "no metaphorical separation of the body and soul was yet known among the Hebrews, as well as among other nations, and the dead were conceived as still living in the grave, but in a shadowy, obscure, and powerless condition." The theory passed to the lexicographers, and many of the lexicons formally defined hades as the underworld. It then went rapidly into commentaries and popular expositions of Scripture.

The pagan conception of hades is wide and comprehensive; the biblical is narrow and exclusive. The former includes all men; the latter only wicked men. The Greeks and Romans meant by hades neither the grave in which the dead body is laid nor the exclusive place of retribution, but a netherworld in which all departed souls reside. There was one hadēs for all, consisting of two subterranean divisions: Elysium and Tartarus.6 In proportion as the later Jews came to be influenced by the Greek and Roman mythology, the Septuagint hades, which is narrow and definite because confined to the evil, became wide and indefinite because it was made to include both the good and evil. In Scripture, hades is descriptive of moral character. Whoever goes to hades is ipso facto a wicked man and like Dives goes to punishment and misery. In mythology, hades is nondescriptive of moral character. He who goes to hades is not ipso facto a wicked person. He may be either good or evil, may go either to happiness or misery. This mythological indefiniteness, when injected into the definiteness of the inspired representation of hades, takes off the solemn and terrible aspect which it has for the sinner in Scripture and paves the way for the assertion that when the sinner goes to hades he does not go to punishment and misery.

This mythological influence upon the eschatology of the later Jews is seen in Josephus. He describes Samuel as being called up from hades (Antiquities 6.14.2). Yet in another place (Jewish War 3.8.5), he says that "the souls of the good at death obtain a most holy place in heaven, while the souls of the wicked are received by the darkest place in hades." Here is the same vacillation between the biblical and the mythological view which appears in many of the Christian fathers. The mythological influence increased, until the doctrine of purgatory itself came into the Jewish apocryphal literature. Purgatory is taught in 2 Maccabees 12:45: Manasses in his prayer asks God not "to condemn him into the lower parts of the earth." The synagogue according to Charnock (Discourse 2) believed in a purgatory.

That class of commentators, lexicographers, and theologians who contend that hades denotes an underworld and deny that it means either hell or the grave appeals to pagan and rabbinic authorities in proof. This assumes that there is no essential difference between the hades of Scripture and that of the nations; that the inspired mind took the same general view with the uninspired of the state of souls after death; that Moses, Samuel, David, and Isaiah together with Christ and his apostles agreed in their eschatology with Homer, Plato, Virgil, the Egyptian "Ritual of the Dead," and the Babylonian tablets. A close adherence to the text and context of Scripture shows, we think, that this assumption is unfounded. Upon such an unknown subject as the future state, the appeal must be made to revelation alone. Because the Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans believed that all human spirits at death go to one and the same underworld, it does not follow that it is a fact or that the circle of inspired men who wrote the Scriptures believed and taught it. And because the Jewish rabbis came to adopt the mythological eschatology, it does not follow that the biblical eschatology is to be interpreted by their opinions.

Revealed religion may be properly illustrated by ethnical religion when the latter agrees with the former, not when it conflicts with it. When mythology is an echo, even broken and imperfect, of Scripture, it may be used to explain inspired doctrine, but not when it is a contradiction. The meaning of hades must therefore be explained by the connection of thought in the Scriptures themselves and not by the imagination of uninspired man peering into the darkness beyond the grave and endeavoring to picture the abode of departed spirits. The mythological eschatology is a picturesque and fanciful conjecture respecting the unseen world. The biblical eschatology is the description of it by an eyewitness, namely, God speaking through prophets, apostles, and Jesus Christ.

The pagan conception passed also into the Christian church. It is found in the writings of many of the fathers, but not in any of the primitive creeds:

The idea of a hades (šĕ˒ôl), known to both Hebrews and Greeks, was transferred to Christianity, and the assumption that the real happiness or the final misery of the departed does not begin till after the general judgment and the resurrection of the body appeared to necessitate the belief in an intermediate state, in which the soul was supposed to remain, from the moment of its separation from the body to the last catastrophe. Tertullian, however, held that the martyrs went at once to paradise, the abode of the blessed, and thought that in this they enjoyed an advantage over other Christians, while Cyprian does not seem to know about any intermediate state whatever. (Hagenbach, History of Doctrine §77)

According to this hellenized conception of the intermediate state, at death all souls go down to hades: in inferna loca or ad inferos homines. This is utterly unbiblical. It is connected with the heathen doctrine of the infernal divinities and the infernal tribunal of Minos and Rhadamanthus. The God of revelation does not have either his abode or his judgment seat in hades. From Christ's account of the last judgment, no one would infer that it takes place in an underworld. In both the Old and New Testaments, the good dwell with God, and God's dwelling place is never represented as "below," but "on high." Paradise is the third heaven (2 Cor. 12:1, 4), and none of the heavens are in the underworld. Elijah "went up by a whirlwind into heaven" (2 Kings 2:11). The saints remaining on earth at the advent go up "to meet the Lord in the air" (1 Thess. 4:17; cf. 2 Thess. 2:14; Eph. 4:8; John 17:24; Acts 7:25; Luke 23:42–43, 46; Prov. 15:24). David expects to be "received to glory." Christ describes the soul of a believer at death as ascending to paradise: "The beggar died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. And in hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and sees Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom" (Luke 16:22–23). According to this description, Abraham's bosom and hades are as opposite and disconnected as the zenith and the nadir. To say that Abraham's bosom is a part of hades is to say that the heavens are a compartment of the earth. St. Matthew (8:11) teaches that Abraham's bosom is in heaven: "Many shall recline (anaklithēsontai) with Abraham in the kingdom of heaven." Paradise is separated from hades by a "great chasm" (Luke 16:26). The word chasma denotes space either lateral or vertical, but more commonly the latter. Schleusner says: "It is especially used concerning space which is extended from a higher to a lower place."15 Hades is in infernis; Abraham's bosom or paradise is in superis; and heaven proper is in excelsis or summis.

If paradise is a section of hades, then Christ descended to paradise, and saints at death go down to paradise and at the last day are brought up from paradise. This difficulty is not met by resorting to the later Jewish distinction between a supernal and an infernal paradise. The paradise spoken of by Christ in Luke 24:33 is evidently the same that St. Paul speaks of in 2 Cor. 12:3–4, which he calls "the third heaven."

It is sometimes said that there is no "above" or "below" in the spiritual world, and therefore the special representation in the parable of Dives and Lazarus must not be insisted upon. This, certainly, should not be urged by those who contend for an underworld. Paradise and hades, like heaven and hell, are both in the universe of God. But wherever in this universe they may be, it is the biblical representation (unlike the mythological) that they do not constitute one system or one sphere of being any more than heaven and hell do. They are so contrary and opposite as to exclude each other and to constitute two separate places or worlds; so that he who goes to the one does not go to the other. This contrariety and exclusiveness is metaphorically expressed by space vertical, not by space lateral. Things on the same plane are alike. Those on different planes are not. If paradise is above and hades is beneath, hades will be regarded as hell and be dreaded. But if paradise and hades are both alike beneath and paradise is a part of hades, then hades will not be regarded as hell (as some affirm it is not) and will not be dreaded. Hades will be merely a temporary residence of the human soul where the punishment of sin is imperfect and its removal possible and probable. (supplement 7.1.1.)

A portion of the fathers, notwithstanding the increasing prevalence of the mythological view, deny that paradise is a compartment of hades. In some instances, it must be acknowledged, they are not wholly consistent with themselves, in so doing. According to Archbishop Ussher (Works 3.281), "the first who assigned a resting place in hell to the fathers of the Old Testament was Marcion the gnostic." This was combated, he says, by Origen, in his second Dialogue against Marcion. In his comment on Ps. 9:18, Origen remarks that "as paradise is the residence of the just, so hades is the place of punishment (kolastērion) for sinners." The locating of paradise in hades is opposed by Tertullian (Against Marcion 4.34) in the following terms: "Hades (inferi) is one thing, in my opinion, and Abraham's bosom is another. Christ, in the parable of Dives, teaches that a great deep is interposed between the two regions. Neither could the rich man have 'lifted up' his eyes, and that too 'afar off,' unless it had been to places above him and very far above him, by reason of the immense distance between that height and that depth." Similarly, Chrysostom in his Homilies on Dives and Lazarus, as quoted by Ussher, asks and answers: "Why did not Lazarus see the rich man, as well as the rich man is said to see Lazarus? Because he that is in the light does not see him who stands in the dark; but he that is in the dark sees him that is in the light." Augustine in his exposition of Ps. 6 calls attention to the fact that "Dives looked up, to see Lazarus." Again, he says, in his letter to Euodius, "It is not to be believed that the bosom of Abraham is a part of hades (aliqua pars inferorum). How Abraham, into whose bosom the beggar was received, could have been in the torments of hades, I do not understand. Let them explain who can." Again, he remarks (On the Literal Meaning of Genesis 12.33–34): "I confess, I have not yet found that the place where the souls of just men rest is hades (inferos). If a good conscience may figuratively be called paradise, how much more may that bosom of Abraham, where there is no temptation and great rest after the griefs of this life, be called paradise." To the same effect says Gregory of Nyssa (In pascha): "This should be investigated by the studious, namely, how, at one and the same time, Christ could be in these three places: in the heart of the earth, in paradise with the thief, and in the 'hand' of the Father. For no one will say that paradise is in the places under the earth (en hypochthoniois), or the places under the earth in paradise; or that those infernal places (ta hypochthonia) are called the 'hand' of the Father." Cyril of Alexandria in his On the Departure of the Soul remarks: "The innocent are above, the guilty below. The innocent are in heaven, the guilty in the abyss. The innocent are in God's hand, the guilty in the devil's." Ussher asserts that the following fathers agree with Augustine in the opinion that paradise is not in hades: Chrysostom, Basil, Cyril Alexandrinus, Gregory Nazianzus, Bede, Titus of Bostra, and others.25 (supplement 7.1.2.)

These patristic statements respecting the supernal locality of paradise agree with Scripture: "The way of life is above to the wise, that he may depart from sheol beneath" (Prov. 15:24). When Samuel is represented as "coming up from the earth" (1 Sam. 28:7–20), it is because the body reanimated rises from the grave. This does not prove that the soul had been in an underworld any more than the statement of St. John (12:17) that Christ "called Lazarus out of his grave" proves it. Paradise is unquestionably the abode of the saved; and the saved are with Christ. The common residence of both is described as on high: "When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive" (Eph. 4:8); "Father, I will that they also whom you have given me be with me where I am, that they may see my glory" (John 17:24); "those which sleep in Jesus, God will bring with him" (2 Thess. 2:14). At the second advent, "we which are alive and remain shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air" (1 Thess. 4:17). Stephen "looked up into heaven and saw Jesus standing on the right hand of God" (Acts 7:55). Christ said to the Pharisees, "You are from beneath, I am from above" (John 8:23). Satan and his angels are "cast down to Tartarus" (2 Pet. 2:4). The penitent thief says to Christ: "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom." Christ replies: "This day shall you be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:42–43). This implies that paradise is the same as Christ's kingdom; and Christ's kingdom is not an infernal one. Christ "cried with a loud voice, Father into your hands I commend my spirit, and having said this, he gave up the ghost" (23:46). The "hands" of the Father, here meant, are in heaven above, not in "sheol beneath." These teachings of Scripture and their interpretation by a portion of the fathers evince that paradise is a section of heaven, not of hades, and are irreconcilable with the doctrine of an underworld containing both the good and the evil.

Christ's Alleged Descent into Hell

Another stimulant, besides that of mythology, to the growth of the doctrine that the intermediate state for all souls in the underworld of hades was the introduction into the Apostles' Creed of the spurious clause he descended into hades. Biblical exegesis is inevitably influenced by the great ecumenical creeds. When the doctrine of the descent to hades was interpolated into the oldest of the Christian creeds, it became necessary to find support for it in Scripture. The texts that can, with any success, be used for this purpose, are few, compared with the large number that prove the undisputed events in the life of Christ. This compelled a strained interpretation of such passages as Matt. 12:40; Acts 2:27; Rom. 10:7; 1 Pet. 3:18–20; 4:6 and largely affected the whole subject of eschatology as presented in the Scriptures.

The Apostles' Creed in its original form read as follows: "Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead, and buried; the third day he rose again from the dead." This is also the form in the two creeds of Nice (325) and Constantinople (381): a certain proof that these great ecumenical councils did not regard the descensus as one of the articles of the catholic faith. The first appearance of the clause he descended into hades is in the latter half of the fourth century in the creed of the church of Aquileia. Pearson, by citations, shows that the creeds, both ecclesiastical and individual, prior to this time do not contain it. Burnet (Thirty-nine Articles, art. 3) asserts the same. Refinus, the presbyter of Aquileia, says that the intention of the Aquileian alteration of the creed was not to add a new doctrine, but to explain an old one; and therefore the Aquileian creed omitted the clause was crucified, dead, and buried and substituted for it the new clause descendit in inferna. Refinus also adds that "although the preceding Roman and oriental editions of the creed had not the words he descended into hades, yet they had the sense of them in the words he was crucified, dead, and buried" (Pearson, On the Creed, art. 5). The early history of the clause, therefore, clearly shows that the hades to which Christ was said to have descended was simply the grave in which he was buried.

Subsequently, the clause went into other creeds. The Athanasian Creed (600) follows that of Aquileia in inserting the "descent" and omitting the "burial." It reads: "Who suffered for our salvation descended into hades, rose again the third day from the dead." Those of Toledo, in 633 and 693, likewise contain it. It is almost invariably found in the medieval and modern forms of the Apostles' Creed, but without the omission, as at first, of the clause was crucified, dead, and buried: two doctrines thus being constructed in place of a single one as at first. If, then, the text of the Apostles' Creed shall be subjected, like that of the New Testament, to a revision in accordance with the text of the first four centuries, the descensus ad inferos must be rejected as an interpolation. (supplement 7.1.3.)

While the tenet of Christ's local descent into hades has no support from Scripture or any of the first ecumenical creeds, it has support, as has already been observed, from patristic authority. Says Pearson (On the Creed, art. 5):

The ancient fathers differed much respecting the condition of the dead and the nature of the place into which the souls, before our Savior's death, were gathered; some looking on that name which we now translate hell, hades, or infernus as the common receptacle of the souls of all men, both the just and unjust, while others thought that hades or infernus was never taken in the Scriptures for any place of happiness; and therefore they did not conceive the souls of the patriarchs or the prophets did pass into any such infernal place.

This difference of opinion appears in Augustine, who wavered in his views upon the subject of hades, as Bellarmine concedes. Pearson (On the Creed, art. 5) remarks of him that "he began to doubt concerning the reason ordinarily given for Christ's descent into hell, namely, to bring up the patriarchs and prophets thence, upon this ground, that he thought the word infernus (hadēs) was never taken in Scripture in a good sense to denote the abode of the righteous."32 Pearson cites, in proof, the passages already quoted from Augustine's epistle and Commentary on Genesis. On the other hand, in City of God 20.15, Augustine hesitatingly accepts the doctrine that the Old Testament saints were in limbo and were delivered by Christ's descent into their abode: "It does not seem absurd to believe that the ancient saints who believed in Christ and his future coming were kept in places far removed, indeed, from the torments of the wicked, but yet in hades (apud inferos), until Christ's blood and his descent into these places delivered them." Yet in his exposition of the Apostles' Creed (On Faith and the Creed), Augustine makes no allusion to the clause he descended into hades. And the same silence appears in the On the Creed, attributed to him. After expounding the clauses respecting Christ's passion, crucifixion, and burial, he then explains those concerning his resurrection and ascent into heaven. This proves that when he wrote this exposition, the dogma was not an acknowledged part of the catholic faith. Still later, Peter Chrysologus, archbishop of Ravenna, and Maximus of Turin, explain the Apostles' Creed and make no exposition of the descent to hades. The difference of opinion among the fathers of the first four centuries, together with the absence of scriptural support for it, is the reason why descensus ad inferos was not earlier inserted into the Apostles' Creed. It required the development of the doctrine of purgatory and of the medieval eschatology generally in order to get it formally into the doctrinal system of both the Eastern and Western churches. (supplement 7.1.4.)

The personal and local descent of Christ into hades—whether to deliver the Old Testament saints from limbo or to preach judicially, announcing condemnation to the sinners there, or evangelically, offering salvation to them—if a fact, would have been one of the great cardinal facts connected with the incarnation. It would fall into the same class with the nativity, the baptism, the passion, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the ascension. Much less important facts than these are recorded. St. Matthew speaks of the descent of Christ into Egypt, but not of his descent into hades. Such an act of the Redeemer as going down into an infernal world of spirits would certainly have been mentioned by one of the inspired biographers of Christ. The total silence of the four gospels is fatal to the tenet. St. Paul, in his recapitulation of the principal events of our Lord's life, evidently knows nothing of the descent into hades: "I delivered unto you that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins and that he was buried and that he rose again the third day" (1 Cor. 15:3–4). The remark of Bishop Burnet (Thirty-nine Articles, art. 3) is sound:

Many of the fathers thought that Christ's body went locally into hell and preached to some of the spirits there in prison; that there he triumphed over Satan and spoiled him and carried some souls with him into glory. But the account that the Scriptures give of the exaltation of Christ begins it always at his resurrection. Nor can it be imagined that so memorable a transaction as this would have been passed over by the first three evangelists and least of all by St. John, who, coming after the rest and designing to supply what was wanting in them and intending particularly to magnify the glory of Christ, could not have passed over so wonderful an instance of it. The passage in St. Peter seems to relate to the preaching to the Gentile world by virtue of that inspiration that was derived from Christ.

Scriptural View of the Intermediate State

The early patristic and Reformed view of the intermediate state agrees with the Scriptures, as the following particulars prove.

Both the Old and New Testaments represent the intermediate state of the soul to be a disembodied state: "Jacob yielded up the ghost and was gathered unto his people" (Gen. 49:33); "oh that I had given up the ghost" (Job 10:18; 11:20; 14:20); "she has given up the ghost" (Jer. 15:9); "there is no man that has power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither has he power in the day of death" (Eccles. 8:8); "then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return to God who gave it" (12:7); "Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the spirit" (Matt. 27:50); "when Jesus had cried with a loud voice he said, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit; and having said this, he gave up the spirit" (Luke 23:46); called upon God, saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (Acts 7:59); "we are willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8); "I knew a man in Christ about four years ago, whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell" (12:2); "we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: if so be that being clothed 'we shall not be found naked' " (5:2–3); "knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ has showed me" (2 Pet. 1:14); "I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus" (Rev. 20:4); "I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God" (6:9). In accordance with this, the prayer for the burial of the dead in the Episcopal order begins as follows: "Forasmuch as it has pleased almighty God, in his wise providence, to take out of this world the soul of our deceased brother, we therefore commit his body to the ground." And God is addressed as the one "with whom do live the spirits of those who depart hence in the Lord and with whom the souls of the faithful, after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, are in joy and felicity."

Belief in the immortality of the soul and its separate existence from the body after death was characteristic of the old economy, as well as the new. It was also a pagan belief. Plato elaborately argues for the difference, as to substance, between the body and the soul and asserts the independent existence of the latter. He knows nothing of the resurrection of the body and says that when men are judged in the next life, "they shall be entirely stripped before they are judged, for they shall be judged when they are dead; and the judge too shall be naked, that is to say, dead; he with his naked soul shall pierce into the other naked soul, as soon as each man dies" (Gorgias 523).

That the independent and separate existence of the soul after death was a belief of the Hebrews is proved by the prohibition of necromancy in Deut. 18:10–12. The "gathering" of the patriarchs "to their fathers" implies the belief. Death did not bring them into association with nonentities. Jehovah calls himself "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," and this supposes the immortality and continued existence of their spirits; for, as Christ (Luke 20:28) argues in reference to this very point, "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living"—not of the unconscious, but the conscious. Our Lord affirms that the future existence of the soul is so clearly taught by "Moses and the prophets" that if a man is not convinced by them, neither would he be "though one should rise from the dead" (Luke 16:29).

Some, like Warburton, have denied that the immortality of the soul is taught in the Old Testament because there is no direct proposition to this effect and no proof of the doctrine offered. But this doctrine, like that of divine existence, is nowhere formally demonstrated because it is everywhere assumed. Most of the Old Testament is nonsense upon the supposition that the soul dies with the body and that the sacred writers knew nothing of a future life. For illustration, David says, "My soul pants after you." He could not possibly have uttered these words if he had expected death to be the extinction of his consciousness. The human soul cannot long for a spiritual communion with God that is to last only seventy years and then cease forever. Every spiritual desire and aspiration has in it the element of infinity and endlessness. No human being can say to God, "You are my God, the strength of my heart, and my portion for threescore years and ten, and then my God and portion no more forever." When God promised Abraham that in him should "all the families of the earth be blessed" (Gen. 12:3), and Abraham "believed in the Lord, and he counted it to him for righteousness" (15:6), this promise of a Redeemer and this faith in it both alike involve a future existence beyond this transitory one. God never would have made such a promise to a creature who was to die with the body, and such a creature could not have trusted in it. In like manner, Adam could not have believed the protevangelium, knowing that death was to be the extinction of his being. All the messianic matter of the Old Testament is absurd on the supposition that the soul is mortal. To redeem from sin a being whose consciousness expires at death is superfluous. David prays to God, "Take not the word of truth out of my mouth; so shall I keep your law continually forever and ever" (Ps. 119:43–44). Every prayer to God in the Old Testament implies the immortality of the person praying: "My flesh fails, but God is the strength of my heart forever" (63:2); "trust in the Lord forever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength" (Isa. 26:4). The nothingness of this life only leads the psalmist to confide all the more in God and to expect the next life: "Behold, you have made my days as a handbreadth; and my age is as nothing before you: verily, every man at his best state is altogether vanity. And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in you" (Ps. 39:5, 7). As John Davies says of the soul in his poem on immortality:

Water in conduit pipes can rise no higher

Than the well-head from whence it first doth spring:

Then since to eternal God she doth aspire,

She cannot be but an eternal thing.

That large class of texts which speak of a "covenant" which God has made with his people and of a "salvation" which he has provided for them have no consistency on the supposition that the Old Testament writers had no knowledge and expectation of a future blessed life. The following are examples: "I will establish my covenant between me and you and your seed after you, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto you and to your seed after you" (Gen. 17:7); "I have waited for your salvation, O Lord" (49:18); "I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God" (Exod. 6:7); "yea, he loved the people; all his saints are in your hand; happy are you, O Israel; who is like unto you, O people saved by the Lord?" (Deut. 33:3, 29); "though he slay me, yet will I trust in him" (Job 13:15); "for the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; he will save us" (Isa. 33:22); "are you not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my Holy One? we shall not die?" (Hab. 1:12); "into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord God of truth" (Ps. 31:5).

It is impossible to confine this "covenant" of God, this "love" of God, this "salvation" of God, this "trust" in God, and this "redemption" of God to this short life of threescore years and ten. Such a limitation empties them of their meaning and makes them worthless. The words of St. Paul apply in this case: "If in only this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable" (1 Cor. 15:19). Calvin (2.10.8) remarks that

these expressions, according to the common explanation of the prophets, comprehend life and salvation and consummate felicity. For it is not without reason that David frequently pronounces how "blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord and the people whom he has chosen for his own inheritance"; and that, not on account of any earthly felicity, but because he delivers from death, perpetually preserves and attends with everlasting mercy those whom he has taken for his people.

In the same reference, Augustine (Confessions 6.11.19) says: "Never would such and so great things be wrought for us by God, if with the death of the body the life of the soul came to an end." When God said to Abraham, "You shall go to your fathers in peace" (Gen. 15:15), he meant spiritual and everlasting peace. It was infinitely more than a promise of an easy and quiet physical death. When Jacob on his deathbed says: "I have waited for your salvation, O Lord" (49:18), he was not thinking of deliverance from physical and temporal evil. What does a man care for this, in his dying hour?

The religious experience delineated in the Old Testament cannot be constructed or made intelligible upon the theory that the doctrine of immortality was unknown or disbelieved. The absolute trust in God, the unquestioning confidence in his goodness and truth, the implicit submission to his will, the fearless obedience of his commands whatever they might be, whether to exterminate the Canaanites or slay the beloved child, and the hopeful serenity with which they met death and the untried future, would have been impossible had the belief of Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Samuel, and the prophets concerning a future existence been like that of Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, and Mirabeau.

Another reason why the Old Testament contains no formal argument in proof of immortality and a spiritual world beyond this is because the intercourse with that world on the part of the Old Testament saints and inspired prophets was so immediate and constant. God was not only present to their believing minds and hearts, in his paternal and gracious character, but, in addition to this, he was frequently manifesting himself in theophanies and visions. We should not expect that a person who was continually communing with God would construct arguments to prove his existence or that one who was brought into contact with the unseen and spiritual world by supernatural phenomena and messages from it would take pains to demonstrate that there is such a world. The Old Testament saints "endured as seeing the invisible."

The Scriptures teach that the intermediate state for the believer is one of blessedness. The disembodied spirit of the penitent thief goes with the disembodied Redeemer directly into paradise: "Today shall you be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). Paradise has the following marks:

1. It is the third heaven: "I knew a man caught up to the third heaven. He was caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter" (2 Cor. 12:2, 4); "to him that overcomes will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the center of the paradise of God" (Rev. 2:7).

2. It is "Abraham's bosom": "The beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom" (Luke 16:22); "many shall come from the east and west and shall recline (anaklithēsontai) with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 8:11).

3. It is a place of reward and happiness: "Remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted" (Luke 16:25); "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8); am in a strait between two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better" (Phil. 1:23); "for me, to die is gain" (1:21); "Christ died for us that whether we wake or sleep we should live together with him" (1 Thess. 5:9–10); "they stoned Stephen, calling upon God and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (Acts 7:59). According to Luke 9:30–31 Moses and Elijah coming directly from the intermediate state "appear in glory" at the transfiguration.

The Old Testament, with less of local description yet with great positiveness and distinctness, teaches the happiness of believers after death: "Enoch walked with God; and he was not; for God took him" (Gen. 5:24); "let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his" (Num. 23:10); the dying Jacob confidently says, "I have waited for your salvation, O Lord" (Gen. 49:18); "my flesh shall rest in hope; for you will not leave my soul in hell; neither will you suffer your Holy One to see corruption; you will show me the path of life; in your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand there are pleasures forevermore" (Ps. 16:9–11); "as for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied, when I awake with your likeness" (17:15); "God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave; for he shall receive me" (49:15); "you shall guide me with your counsel and afterward receive me to glory; whom have I in heaven but you? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside you; my flesh and my heart fails; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever" (73:24–26); "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints" (116:15); "he will swallow up death in victory" (Isa. 25:8, quoted by St. Paul in 1 Cor. 15:54 to prove the resurrection of the body); "I will ransom them from the power of the grave: I will redeem them from death; O death, I will be your plagues; O grave, I will be your destruction" (Hos. 13:14, cited by St. Paul in 1 Cor. 15:55); of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake to everlasting life; and they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever" (Dan. 12:2–3); "I know that my Redeemer lives and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though, after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself and my eyes shall behold" (Job 19:25–27). St. Paul teaches that the Old Testament saints, like those of the New, trusted in the divine promise of the resurrection: "I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers: unto which promise, our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come. For which hope's sake, King Agrippa, I am accused of the Jews. Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?" (Acts 26:6–8; cf. 23:6). "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them and embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And, truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly" (Heb. 11:13–16). These bright and hopeful anticipations of the Old Testament saints have nothing in common with the pagan world of shades, the gloomy Orcus, where all departed souls are congregated. (supplement 7.1.5.)

The Scriptures teach that the intermediate state for the impenitent is one of misery. The disembodied spirit of Dives goes to hades, which has the following marks:

1. Hades is the place of retribution and woe: "In hades he lifted his eyes, being in torments. And Abraham said, Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and now you are tormented" (Luke 16:23, 25). Christ describes Dives as suffering a righteous punishment for his hard-hearted, luxurious, and impenitent life. He had no pity for the suffering poor and squandered all the "good things" received from his maker in a life of sensual enjoyment. The Redeemer of mankind also represents hades to be inexorably retributive. Dives asks for a slight mitigation of penal suffering, "a drop of water." He is reminded that he is suffering what he justly deserves and is told that there is a "fixed gulf" between hades and paradise. He then knows that his destiny is decided and his case hopeless and requests that his brethren may be warned by his example. After such a description of it as this, it is passing strange that hades should ever have been called an abode of the good.

2. Hades is the contrary of heaven, and the contrary of heaven is hell: "You, Capernaum, which are exalted until heaven, shall be brought down to hades" (Matt. 11:23). This is explained by our Lord's accompanying remark that it shall be more tolerable in the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for Capernaum, showing that to "be brought down to hades" is the same as to be sentenced to hell.

3. Hades is Satan's kingdom, antagonistic to that of Christ: "The gates of hades shall not prevail against my church" (Matt. 16:18). An underworld containing both the good and the evil would not be the kingdom of Satan. Satan's kingdom is not so comprehensive as this. Nor would an underworld be the contrary of the church, because it includes paradise and its inhabitants.

4. Hades is the prison of Satan and the wicked. Christ said to St. John, "I have the keys of hades and of death" (Rev. 1:18) and describes himself as "he that opens and no man shuts, and shuts and no man opens" (3:7). As the Supreme Judge, Jesus Christ opens and shuts the place of future punishment upon those whom he sentences: "I saw an angel come down from heaven having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand, and he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years and cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up" (20:1–3). All modifications of the imprisonment and suffering in hades are determined by Christ: "I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened, and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in those books; and death and hades gave up the dead which were in them, and they were judged every man according to their works; and death and hades were cast into the lake of fire" (20:12–14). This indicates the difference between the intermediate and the final state for the wicked. On the day of judgment, at the command of incarnate God, hades, the intermediate state for the wicked, surrenders its inhabitants that they may be reembodied and receive the final sentence, and it then becomes gehenna, the final state for them. Hell without the body becomes hell with the body.

5. Hades is inseparably connected with spiritual and eternal death: "I have the keys of hades and of death" (Rev. 1:18); "death and hades gave up the dead which were in them" (20:13); "I saw a pale horse; and his name that sat upon him was Death, and hades followed him" (6:6). Hades here stands for its inhabitants, who are under the power of ("follow") the "second death" spoken of in 2:11; 20:6, 14; 21:8. This is spiritual and eternal death and must not be confounded with the first death, which is that of the body only. This latter, St. Paul (1 Cor. 15:26) says, was "destroyed" by the blessed resurrection of the body, in the case of the saints but not of the wicked (see p. 857). The "second death" is defined as the "being cast into the lake of fire" (Rev. 20:14). This "death" is never "destroyed"; because those who are "cast into the lake of fire and brimstone with the devil that deceived him shall be tormented day and night forever and ever" (20:10).

6. Hades is not a state of probation. Dives asks for an alleviation of penal suffering and is solemnly refused by the eternal arbiter. And the reason assigned for the refusal is that his suffering is required by justice. But a state of existence in which there is not the slightest abatement of punishment cannot be a state of probation. Our Lord, in this parable, represents hades to be as immutably retributive as the modern hell. There is no relaxation of penalty in the former, any more than in the latter. Abraham informs Dives that it is absolutely impossible to get from hades to paradise: "Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us that would come from thence." After this distinct statement of Abraham, Dives knows that the case of a man is hopeless when he reaches hades: "Then, said he, I pray you, therefore, father, that you would send Lazarus to my father's house: for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come to this place of torment" (Luke 16:27). The implication is that if they do come to it, there is no salvation possible for them. Abraham corroborates this by affirming that he who is not converted upon earth will not be converted in hades: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead" (16:31).

In the nine New Testament passages which have been cited in this discussion, the connection shows that hades denotes the place of retribution and misery. There are three other instances in the received text (two in the uncial) in which the word is employed and denotes the grave: Acts 2:27, 31; 1 Cor. 15:55. In 1 Cor. 15:55, א, A, B, C, D, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Hort, and Revised Version read thanate.

In Acts 2:27 it is said: "You will not leave my soul in hades, neither will you suffer your Holy One to see corruption." The soul, here, is put for the body, as when we say, "The ship sank with a hundred souls." The same metonymy is found frequently in the Old Testament: "There shall none be defiled for a dead body" (Lev. 21:1); "you shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead" (19:28); "he shall come at no dead body" (Num. 6:6; cf. Lev. 5:2; 22:4; Num. 18:11, 13; Hag. 2:13; see p. 857 n. 51 for Pearson's proof of this metonymy).

That soul is put metonymically for body and that hades means the grave in Ps. 16:10 is proved by the following considerations: (a) St. Peter says that "David being a prophet spoke of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hades neither did his flesh see corruption" (Acts 2:31). But there is no resurrection of the soul in the ordinary literal use of the word. The use here, therefore, must be metonymical. Soul, as in the Old Testament passages cited above, must therefore stand for body. (b) Christ's resurrection could not be a deliverance of both soul and body from hades, because both of them together could not be in hades. Whichever signification of hades be adopted, only one of the two could be in hades, and consequently only one of the two could be delivered from hades. If hades be the underworld, then only Christ's soul was in hades, not his body. If hades be the grave, then only Christ's body was in hades, not his soul. Accordingly, if hades be the underworld, then "not to leave Christ's soul in hades" was to take his soul out of the underworld. But to call this a resurrection of his body, as St. Peter does in 2:31, is absurd. If hades be the grave, then "not to leave Christ's soul in hades" was to take his body out of the grave. To call this a resurrection of his body is rational. The choice must be made between the two explanations, because to take both the soul and body of Christ out of hades is an impossibility. (c) The connection shows that "to leave Christ's soul in hades" is the same thing as "to suffer the Holy One to see corruption." David's reasoning, as stated by St. Peter in Acts 2:25–27, implies this. David "foresaw the Lord," that is, the Messiah. Respecting this Messiah, David argues that "his flesh shall rest in hope" because his "soul shall not be left in hades nor he be suffered to see corruption." Now, unless "soul" is here put for "flesh" and hades means the grave, there is a non sequitur in David's reasoning. That Christ's soul was not left in an underworld would be no reason why his body should rest in hope and not see corruption.

Again, St. Peter's own reasoning (Acts 2:22–27) proves the same thing. After saying that "God had raised up Jesus of Nazareth, having loosed the pangs of death," he shows that this event of Christ's resurrection was promised, by quoting the words of David, "You will not leave my soul in hades, neither will you suffer your Holy One to see corruption." That is to say, the promise "not to leave Christ's soul in hades" was fulfilled by "raising up Jesus of Nazareth and loosing the pains of death." And yet again, St. Paul's quotation in 13:35 of this passage from David shows that he understood soul to be put for body and hades to mean the grave, because he entirely omits the clause you will not leave my soul in hades, evidently regarding the clause you will not suffer your Holy One to see corruption as stating the whole fact in the case, namely, the resurrection of Christ's body from the grave. In 2:31 the uncials, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Hort, and Revised Version omit hē psychē autou.

Meaning of the Word Sheol

The Old Testament term for the future abode of the wicked and the place of future punishment is sheol (šĕ˒ôl). This word, which is translated by hades (hadēs) in the Septuagint, has two significations: (a) the place of future retribution and (b) the grave.

Before presenting the proof of this position, we call attention to the fact that it agrees with the explanation of sheol and hades common in the early patristic and Reformation churches and disagrees with that of the later patristic, the medieval, and a part of the modern Protestant church. It agrees also with the interpretation generally given to these words in the versions of the Scriptures made since the Reformation in the various languages of the world.

That sheol in the Old Testament signifies the place of future punishment is proved by the following considerations.

First, it is denounced against sin and sinners and not against the righteous. It is a place to which the wicked are sent, in distinction from the good: "The wicked in a moment go down to sheol" (Job 21:13); "the wicked shall be turned into sheol, and all the nations that forget God" (Ps. 9:17); "her steps take hold on sheol" (Prov. 5:5); "her house is the way to sheol, going down to the chambers of death" (7:27); "her guests are in the depths of sheol" (9:18); "you shall beat your child with a rod and shall deliver his soul from sheol" (23:14); "a fire is kindled in my anger, and it shall burn to the lowest sheol" (Deut. 32:22); "if I ascend up into heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in sheol, behold you are there" (Ps. 139:8); "the way of life is above to the wise, that he may depart from sheol beneath" (Prov. 15:24); "sheol is naked before him, and destruction has no covering" (Job 26:6); "sheol and destruction are before the Lord" (Prov. 15:11); "sheol and destruction are never satisfied" (27:20). If in these last three passages the revised rendering be adopted, it is still more evident that sheol denotes hell; for Abaddon is the Hebrew for Apollyon, who is said to be "the angel and king of the bottomless pit" (Rev. 9:11).

There can be no rational doubt that in this class of Old Testament texts the wicked and sensual are warned of a future evil and danger. The danger is that they shall be sent to sheol. The connection of thought requires, therefore, that sheol in such passages have the same meaning as the modern hell, and like this have an exclusive reference to the wicked. Otherwise, it is not a warning. To give it a meaning that makes it the common residence of the good and evil is to destroy its force as a divine menace. If sheol be merely a promiscuous underworld for all souls, then to be "turned into sheol" is no more a menace for the sinner than for the saint and consequently a menace for neither. In order to be of the nature of an alarm for the wicked, sheol must be something that pertains to them alone. If it is shared with the good, its power to terrify is gone. If the good man goes to sheol, the wicked man will not be afraid to go with him. It is no answer to this to say that sheol contains two divisions, hades and paradise, and that the wicked go to the former. This is not in the biblical text or in its connection. The sensual and wicked who are threatened with sheol as the punishment of their wickedness are not threatened with a part of sheol, but with the whole of it. Sheol is one, undivided, and homogeneous in the inspired representation. The subdivision of it into heterogeneous compartments is a conception imported into the Bible from the Greek and Roman classics. The Old Testament knows nothing of a sheol that is partly an evil and partly a good. The biblical sheol is always an evil and nothing but an evil. When the human body goes down to sheol in the sense of the "grave," this is an evil. And when the human soul goes down to sheol in the sense of "hell and retribution," this is an evil. Both are threatened as the penalty of sin to the wicked, but never to the righteous.

Consequently, in the class of passages of which we are speaking, "going down to sheol" denotes something more dreadful than going down to the grave or than entering the so-called underworld of departed spirits. To say that "the wicked shall be turned into sheol" implies that the righteous shall not be; just as to say that "they who obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ shall be punished with everlasting destruction" (2 Thess. 1:8–9) implies that those who do obey it shall not be. To say that the "steps" of the prostitute "take hold on sheol" is the same as to say that "whoremongers shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone" (Rev. 21:8). To "deliver the soul of a child from sheol" by parental discipline is not to deliver him either from the grave or from a spirit world, but from the future misery that awaits the morally undisciplined and rebellious. In mentioning sheol in such a connection, the inspired writer is not mentioning a region that is common alike to the righteous and the wicked. This would defeat his purpose to warn the latter. Sheol when denounced to the wicked must be as peculiar to them and as much confined to them as when "the lake of fire and brimstone" is denounced to them. All such Old Testament passages teach that those who go to sheol suffer from the wrath of God as the eternal judge who punishes iniquity. Thus, "the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands; the wicked shall be turned into sheol, and all the nations that forget God" (Ps. 9:16–17) is as much of the nature of a divine menace against sin as "in the day you eat thereof, you shall surely die" (Gen. 2:17). And the interpretation which eliminates the idea of endless punishment from the former, to be consistent, should eliminate it from the latter. (supplement 7.1.6.)

Accordingly, these texts must be read in connection with and be explained by that large class of texts in the Old Testament which represent God as a judge and assert a future judgment and even a future resurrection for this purpose: "Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?" (Gen. 18:25); "to me belongs vengeance and recompense; their feet shall slide in due time" (Deut. 32:35); "Enoch the seventh from Adam prophesied of these, saying, Behold the Lord comes with ten thousand of his saints to execute judgment upon all and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed" (Jude 14–15); "the wicked is reserved to the day of destruction; they shall be brought forth to the day of wrath" (Job 21:30); "the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment; the way of the ungodly shall perish" (Ps. 1:5–6); "verily, he is a God that judges in the earth" (58:11); "who knows the power of your anger? even according to your fear, so is your wrath" (90:11); "O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongs, show yourself; lift up yourself, you judge of the earth: render a reward to the proud" (94:1–2); "there is a way that seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death" (Prov. 16:25); "God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for there is a time for every purpose and every work" (Eccles. 3:17); "walk in the ways of your heart and in the sight of your eyes; but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment" (11:9); "God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil" (12:14); "the sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness has surprised the hypocrites; who among us shall dwell with devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" (Isa. 33:14); of "the men that have transgressed against God," it is said that their "worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched" (66:24); "I beheld till the thrones were cast down and the ancient of days did sit; his throne was like the fiery flame and his wheels like burning fire; thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the judgment was set, and the books were opened" (Dan. 7:9–10); "many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt" (12:2); "the Lord has sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I never will forget any of their works" (Amos 8:7); "they shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my jewels" (Mal. 3:17).

A final judgment, unquestionably, supposes a place where the sentence is executed. If there is a day of doom, there is a world of doom. Consequently, these Old Testament passages respecting the final judgment throw a strong light upon the meaning of sheol and make it certain in the highest degree that it denotes the world where the penalty resulting from the verdict of the Supreme Judge is to be experienced by the transgressor. The "wicked" when sentenced at the last judgment are "turned into sheol," as "idolaters and all liars" when sentenced "have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone" (Rev. 21:8).

A second proof that sheol signifies the place of future punishment in the Old Testament is the fact that there is no other proper name for it in the whole volume: for Tophet is metaphorical and rarely employed. If sheol is not the place where the wrath of God falls upon the transgressor, there is no place mentioned where it does. But it is utterly improbable that a final sentence would be announced so clearly as it is under the old dispensation and yet the place of its execution be undesignated. In modern theology, judgment and hell are correlates, each implying the other, each standing or falling with the other. In the Old Testament theology, judgment and sheol sustain the same relations. The proof that sheol does not signify hell would, virtually, be the proof that the doctrine of hell is not contained in the Old Testament; and this would imperil the doctrine of the final judgment. Universalism receives very strong support from all versions and commentaries which take the idea of retribution out of the term sheol, because no texts that contain the word can be cited to prove either a future sentence or a future suffering. They only prove that there is a world of disembodied spirits, whose moral character and condition cannot be inferred from anything in the signification of sheol, because the good are in sheol and the wicked are in sheol. When it is merely said of a deceased person that he is in the world of spirits, it is impossible to decide whether he is holy or sinful, happy or miserable.

A third proof that sheol in these passages denotes the dark abode of the wicked and the state of future suffering is found in those Old Testament texts which speak of the contrary bright abode of the righteous and of their state of blessedness. According to the view we are combating, paradise is in sheol and constitutes a part of it. But there is too great a contrast between the two abodes of the good and evil to allow their being brought under one and the same gloomy and terrifying term sheol. When "the Lord put a word in Balaam's mouth," Balaam said, "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his" (Num. 23:5, 10). The psalmist describes this "last end of the righteous" in the following terms: "My flesh shall rest in hope; you will show me the path of life; in your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand, there are pleasures forevermore" (Ps. 16:11); "as for me, I will behold your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake with your likeness" (17:15); "God will redeem my soul from the power of sheol; for he shall receive me" (49:15); "you shall guide me with your counsel and afterward receive me to glory; whom have I in heaven but you?" (73:24). In like manner, Isa. 25:8 says respecting the righteous that "the Lord God will swallow up death in victory and will wipe away tears from all faces." and Solomon asserts that "the righteous has hope in his death" (Prov. 14:32). These descriptions of the blessedness of the righteous when they die have nothing in common with the Old Testament conception of sheol and cannot possibly be made to agree with it. The "anger" of God "burns to the lowest sheol," which implies that it burns through the whole of sheol, from top to bottom. The wicked are "turned"into sheol and "in a moment go down" to sheol; but the good are not "turned" into "glory," nor do they "in a moment go down" to "the right hand of God." The "presence" of God, the "right hand" of God, the "glory" to which the psalmist is to be received, and the "heaven" which he longs for are certainly not in the dreadful sheol. They do not constitute one of its compartments. If between death and the resurrection the disembodied spirit of the psalmist is in "heaven," at the "right hand" of God, in his "presence," and beholding his "glory," it is not in a dismal underworld. There is not a passage in the Old Testament that asserts or in any way suggests that the light of the divine countenance and the blessedness of communion with God are enjoyed in sheol. Sheol in the Old Testament is gloom and only gloom—and gloomy continually. Will anyone seriously contend that in the passage "Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him," it would harmonize with the idea of "walking with God" and with the Old Testament conception of sheol to supply the ellipsis by saying that "God took him to sheol?" Was sheol that "better country, that is, a heavenly," which the Old Testament saints "desired," and to attain which they "were tortured, not accepting deliverance?" (Heb. 11:16, 35).

A fourth proof that sheol is the place of future retribution is its inseparable connection with spiritual and eternal death. The Old Testament, like the New, designates the punishment of the wicked by the term death. And spiritual death is implied as well as physical. Such is the meaning in Gen. 2:17. The death there threatened is the very same thanatos to which St. Paul refers in Rom. 5:12 and which "passed upon all men" by reason of the transgression in Eden. Spiritual death is clearly taught in the following: "I have set before you this day life and good and death and evil" (Deut. 30:15); "I set before you the way of life and the way of death" (Jer. 21:8); "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live" (Ezek. 18:32; 33:11); "all they that hate me love death" (Prov. 8:36). Spiritual death is also taught by implication in those Old Testament passages which speak of spiritual life as its contrary: "As righteousness tends to life, so he that pursues evil pursues it to his own death" (11:19); "whoso finds me finds life" (8:35); "he is in the way of life that keeps instruction" (10:17); "you will show me the path of life" (Ps. 16:11); "with you is the fountain of life" (36:9); "there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life forevermore" (133:3).

Sheol is as inseparably associated with spiritual death and perdition in the Old Testament as hades is in the New Testament and as hell is in the common phraseology of the Christian church: "Sheol is naked before him, and destruction has no covering" (Job 26:6); "sheol and destruction are before the Lord" (Prov. 15:11); "sheol and destruction are never full" (27:20); "her house is the way to sheol, going down to the chambers of death" (7:27); "her house inclines unto death, and her paths unto the dead" (2:18); "her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on sheol" (5:5). The sense of these passages is not exhausted by saying that licentiousness leads to physical disease and death. The "death" here threatened is the same that St. Paul speaks of when he says that "they which commit such things are worthy of death" (Rom. 1:32) and that "the end of those things is death" (6:21). Eternal death and sheol are as inseparably joined in Prov. 5:5 as eternal death and hades are in Rev. 20:14. But if sheol be taken in the mythological sense of an underworld or spirit world, there is no inseparable connection between it and "death," either physical or spiritual. Physical death has no power in the spirit world over a disembodied spirit. And spiritual death is separable from sheol in the case of the good. If the good go down to sheol, they do not go down to eternal death.

That sheol in one class of Old Testament passages denotes the grave, to which all men, the good and evil alike, go down, is clear from the following citations. Before proceeding, however, to this citation, it is to be remarked that this double signification of hell and the grave is explained by the connection between physical death and eternal retribution. The death of the body is one of the consequences of sin and an integral part of the total penalty. To go down to the grave is to pay the first installment of the transgressor's debt to justice. It is, therefore, the metonymy of a part for the whole when the grave is denominated sheol. As in English death may mean either physical or spiritual death so in Hebrew sheol may mean either the grave or hell.

When sheol signifies the "grave," it is only the body that goes down to sheol. But as the body is naturally put for the whole person, the man is said to go down to the grave when his body alone is laid in it. Christ "called Lazarus out of his grave" (John 12:17). This does not mean that the soul of Lazarus was in that grave. When a sick person says, "I am going down to the grave," no one understands him to mean that his spirit is descending into a place under the earth. And when the aged Jacob says, "I will go down into sheol, unto my son mourning" (Gen. 37:35), no one should understand him to teach the descent of his disembodied spirit into a subterranean world: "The spirit of man goes upward, and the spirit of the beast goes downward" (Eccles. 3:21). The soul of the animal dies with the body; that of the man does not. The statement that "the Son of Man shall be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matt. 12:40) refers to the burial of his body, not to the residence of his soul. When Christ said to the penitent thief, "Today shall you be with me in paradise," he did not mean that his human soul and that of the penitent should be in "the heart of the earth," but in the heavenly paradise. Christ is represented as dwelling in heaven between his ascension and his second advent: "Him must the heavens receive, till the time of the restitution of all things" (Acts 3:21); "the Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God" (1 Thess. 4:16); "our conversation is in heaven, from which we look for our Savior the Lord Jesus" (Phil. 3:20). But the souls of the redeemed during this same intermediate period are represented as being with Christ: "Father, I will that they whom you have given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which you have given me" (John 17:24); "we desire rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8). When, therefore, the human body goes down to sheol, it goes down to the grave and is unaccompanied with the soul.

The following are a few out of many examples of this signification of sheol: "The Lord kills and makes alive: he brings down to sheol and brings up" (1 Sam. 2:6); "your servants shall bring down the gray hairs of your servant our father with sorrow to sheol" (Gen. 44:31); "O that you would hide me in sheol" (Job 14:13); "sheol is my house; I have said to corruption, You are my father: to the worm, you are my mother and my sister" (Job 17:13–14); "our bones are scattered at the mouth of sheol" (Ps. 141:7); Korah and his company "went down alive into sheol, and they perished from the congregation" (Num. 16:33); "in sheol, who shall give you thanks?" (Ps. 6:5); "there is no wisdom in sheol where you go" (Eccles. 9:10); "I will ransom them from the power of sheol; O sheol, I will be your destruction" (Hos. 13:14); "my life draws nigh unto sheol" (Ps. 88:3); "what man is he that lives and shall not see death? shall he deliver his soul from the hand of sheol?" (89:48). "The English version," says Stuart, "renders sheol by grave in thirty instances out of sixty-four and might have so rendered it in more."

Sheol in the sense of the grave is invested with gloomy associations for the good as well as the wicked, and this under the Christian dispensation as well as under the Jewish. The old economy and the new are much alike in this respect. The modern Christian believer shrinks from the grave like the ancient Jewish believer. He needs as much grace in order to die tranquilly as did Moses and David. It is true that "Christ has brought immortality to light in the gospel," has poured upon the grave the bright light of his own resurrection, a far brighter light than the patriarchal and Jewish church enjoyed; yet man's faith is as weak and wavering as ever and requires the support of God.

Accordingly, sheol in the sense of the grave is represented as something out of which the righteous are to be delivered by a resurrection of the body to glory, but the bodies of the wicked are to be left under its power: "Like sheep, the wicked are laid in sheol; death shall feed on them; but God will redeem my soul from the power of sheol" (Ps. 49:14–15); "you will not leave my soul in sheol; neither will you suffer your Holy One to see corruption" (16:10). This passage, while messianic, has also its reference to David and all believers: "I will ransom them from the power of sheol. O death, I will be your plagues; O sheol, I will be your destruction" (Hos. 13:14). St. Paul quotes this (1 Cor. 15:55) in proof of the blessed resurrection of the bodies of believers—showing that sheol here is the grave where the body is laid and from which it is raised.

The bodies of the wicked, on the contrary, are not delivered from the power of sheol or the grave by a blessed and glorious resurrection, but are still kept under its dominion by a "resurrection to shame and everlasting contempt" (Dan. 12:2). Though the wicked are raised from the dead, yet this is no triumph for them over death and the grave. Their resurrection bodies are not "celestial" and "glorified," like those of the redeemed, but are suited to the nature of their evil and malignant souls: "Like sheep they are laid in sheol; death shall feed upon them" (Ps. 49:14). Respecting sinful Judah and the enemies of Jehovah, the prophet says, "Sheol has enlarged herself and opened her mouth without measure, and their glory shall descend unto it" (Isa. 5:14). Of the fallen Babylonian monarch, it is said, "Sheol from beneath is moved for you to meet you at your coming. Your pomp is brought down to sheol: the worm is spread under you, and the worms cover you" (14:9, 11). To convert this bold personification of the "grave" and the "worm" which devour the bodies of God's adversaries into an actual underworld where the spirits of all the dead, the friends as well as the enemies of God, are gathered is not only to convert rhetoric into logic, but to substitute the mythological for the biblical view of the future life. Says Alexander (on Isa. 14:9):

Some interpreters proceed upon the supposition that in this passage we have before us not a mere prosopopoeia or poetical creation of the highest order, but a chapter from the popular belief of the Jews, as to the locality, contents, and transactions of the unseen world. Thus Gesenius, in his lexicon and commentary, gives a minute topographical description of sheol as the Hebrews believed it to exist. With equal truth a diligent compiler might construct a map of hell as conceived by the English Puritans from the descriptive portions of the Paradise Lost.

The clear perception and sound sense of Calvin penetrate more unerringly into the purpose of the sacred writer. "The prophet," he says (Isa. 14:9), "makes a fictitious representation, that when this tyrant shall die and go down to the grave, the dead will go forth to meet him and honor him." Theodoret (14:9) explains in the same way. He remarks on the words hell from beneath is moved for you, to meet you that "it is the custom of Scripture sometimes to employ a figure in order to state a thing more clearly. In this place the prophet introduces death as endowed with mind and reason, and expostulating with the king of Babylon."

From this examination of texts, it appears that sheol in the Old Testament has the same two significations that hades has in the New. The only difference is that in the Old Testament, sheol less often in proportion to the whole number of instances denotes "hell" and more often the "grave" than hades does in the New Testament. And this, for the reason that the doctrine of future retribution was more fully revealed and developed by Christ and his apostles than it was by Moses and the prophets.

If after this study of the biblical data, there still be doubt whether sheol and hades denote sometimes the place of retribution for the wicked and sometimes the grave, and not an underworld or spirit world common to both the good and evil, let the reader substitute either spirit world or underworld in the following passages and say if the connection of thought or even common sense is preserved: "The wicked in a moment go down to the spirit world"; "the wicked shall be turned into the spirit world, and all the nations that forget God"; "her steps take hold on the spirit world"; "her guests are in the depths of the spirit world"; "you shall beat your child with a rod and shall deliver his soul from the spirit world"; "the way of life is above to the wise, that he may depart from the spirit world beneath"; "in the spirit world, who shall give you thanks?"; "there is no wisdom in the spirit world, whither you go"; "I will ransom them from the power of the spirit world; O spirit world I will be your destruction"; "like sheep the wicked are laid in the spirit world; death shall feed upon them; but God will redeem my soul from the power of the spirit world"; "the gates of the spirit world shall not prevail against the church"; "you, Capernaum, which are exalted unto heaven shall be brought down to the spirit world"; "death and the spirit world were cast into the lake of fire"; "I saw a pale horse, and his name that sat upon him was Death, and the spirit world followed him."

SUPPLEMENTS

7.1.1 (see p. 836). Tertullian (Apologetic 48) represents gehenna as the contrary of paradise: "We Christians are ridiculed when we preach a punitive deity, because the pagan poets and philosophers also teach the same. If we threaten gehenna, which is a subterranean storehouse of secret fire for punishment, we are immediately laughed to scorn. For this is the heathen river Phlegethon. And if we mention paradise, a place of divine felicity destined to receive the spirits of the holy, separated from the common globe by a wall of fire, the Elysian fields have previously engaged the belief of men. But whence come, I ask you, these notions of the poets and philosophers so similar to ours, unless from our mysteries (sacraments)?"

7.1.2 (see p. 837). Irenaeus (Against Heresies 1.27.3), like Origen, mentions as one of the heresies of Marcion "that Cain, the Sodomites, the Egyptians, and others like them, and in fine all the nations who walked in all sorts of abominations, were saved by the Lord on his descending into hades." He also, when enunciating "the faith which the church has received from the apostles," makes no mention of the descent into hades (Against Heresies 1.10.1). This is conclusive evidence that in the last quarter of the second century this tenet was not regarded as one of the cardinal doctrines of Christianity. So well-informed and influential a bishop would not have omitted it when stating the creed of the church, had it been as generally accepted as the doctrines of the Trinity incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, etc.

7.1.3 (see p. 839). Jeremy Taylor (Liberty of Prophesying, 1) acknowledges the spuriousness of the clause concerning the descent into hell: "For taking out the article of Christ's descent into hell, which was not in the old creed, as appears in some of the copies I before referred to in Tertullian, Rufinus, and Irenaeus; and indeed was omitted in all the confessions of the Eastern churches, in the church of Rome, and in the Nicene Creed which by adoption came to be the creed of the Catholic church, all other articles are such as directly constitute the parts and work of our redemption, such as clearly derive the honor to Christ and enable him with the capacities of our Savior and Lord."

7.1.4 (see p. 840). Augustine's view of the intermediate state is somewhat vacillating, although on the whole more in accord with the Protestant than the papal doctrine. In his letter to Evodius (Letter 164) he makes the following objection to Christ's preaching to the spirits in prison: "This is felt by me to be difficult. If the Lord when he died preached in hell to spirits in prison, why were those who continued unbelieving while the ark was a preparing the only ones counted worthy of this favor, namely, the Lord's descending into hell? For in the ages between the time of Noah and the passion of Christ there died many thousands of many nations whom he might have found in hell. I do not, of course, speak of those who in that period of time had believed in God, as, for example, the prophets and patriarchs of Abraham's line, or going farther back Noah himself and his house, who had been saved by water, excepting perhaps the one son who afterward was rejected, and, in addition to these, all others outside of the posterity of Jacob who were believers in God, such as Job, the citizens of Nineveh, and any others, whether mentioned in Scripture or existing unknown to us in the vast human family at any time. I speak only of those many thousands of men who, ignorant of God and devoted to the worship of devils or of idols, had passed out of this life from the time of Noah to the passion of Christ. How was it that Christ, finding these in hell, did not preach to them, but preached only to those who were unbelieving in the days of Noah when the ark was a preparing? Or if he preached at all, why has Peter mentioned only these and passed over the innumerable multitude of the others?"

The following extracts exhibit the uncertainty of his mind: "The saying of Scripture that 'the pains of hell were loosed' by the death of Christ may be understood to refer to himself; meaning that he so far loosed, that is, made ineffectual, the pains of hell that he himself was not held by them, especially since it is added that it was 'impossible for him to be held by them.' Or if anyone, objecting to this interpretation, asks the reason why Christ chose to descend into hell, where those pains were which could not possibly hold him in whom the prince and captain of death found nothing which deserved hell punishment, the words the pains of hell were loosed may be understood as referring not to all but only to some whom he chose to deliver. As to the first man, the father of mankind, it is agreed by almost the entire church that the Lord loosed him from that prison; although the authority of the canonical Scriptures cannot be cited as speaking expressly in its support, though this seems to be the opinion which is more than any other borne out by the words in the Book of Wisdom (10:1–2): 'Wisdom preserved the first-formed father of the world that was created alone and brought him out of his fall and gave him power to rule all things.' Some add to this tradition that the same favor was bestowed on Abel, Seth, Noah and his house, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the other patriarchs and prophets: they also being loosed from those pains at the time when the Lord descended into hell. But for my part, I cannot see how Abraham, into whose bosom the pious beggar in the parable was received, can be understood to have been in these pains. Moreover, I have not been able to find anywhere in Scripture the term hell used in a good sense. And if this use of the term is nowhere found in the Scriptures, assuredly the 'bosom of Abraham,' that is, the abode of a safe and tranquil rest, is not to be believed to be a part of hell. Nay, from the words of the master, in which he represents Abraham as saying, 'Between us and you there is a great gulf (chaos) fixed,' it is sufficiently evident that the bosom of that glorious felicity was not any integral part of hell. For what is that great gulf (chaos) but a chasm (hiatus) completely separating those places between which it not only is, but is fixed. Therefore if Scripture, without mentioning hell and its pains, had simply said that Christ when he died went to the bosom of Abraham, would anyone have dared to say that he 'descended into hell'? But seeing that plain scriptural testimonies make mention of hell and its pains, no reason can be alleged for believing that the Savior went thither except that he might save some from its pains; but whether he saved all or only some whom he deemed worthy of this favor, I still query. That he was in hell (apud inferos) and conferred this favor upon persons subjected to these retributive pains, I do not doubt; but I have not been able to find what benefit he conferred, when he descended into hell, upon those righteous persons who were in Abraham's bosom, from whom I do not perceive that he ever withdrew himself, so far as concerns the beatific presence of his divinity. For on the very day that he died he promised that the thief should be with him in paradise at the time when he was himself about to descend to 'loose the pains of hell.' Most certainly, therefore, Christ was simultaneously in paradise and the bosom of Abraham in his beatific wisdom and in hell in his condemning power; for since the Godhead is confined by no limits, where is it not present? At the same time, however, so far as regarded his created nature, in assuming which he became man while still continuing to be God; that is to say, so far as regarded his human soul; he was in hell—as is plainly declared by the words of Scripture, 'You will not leave my soul in hell' " (Letter 164.2, 5–8 to Evodius, A.D. 414). It is to be noticed that in these extracts Augustine uses the word hell to denote the abode of the lost alone. He does not understand it to mean a nonpenal underworld containing both the evil and the good. "Abraham's bosom," he says, is not within it; and the inhabitants of it, like "the pious beggar," do not suffer the pains of punitive torment. "Hell," for him, here means only the place of penal retribution; as it does also in the Septuagint, Vulgate, Luther's, and James's versions. At the same time it is to be observed that in other places Augustine employs "hell" to denote the abode of the saints redeemed under the old dispensation. He describes them as being in "hell" and delivered therefrom by Christ's descent for that purpose and asserts that those redeemed under the new dispensation do not go to "hell" and are not so delivered: "If it does not seem irrational to believe that the ancient saints who believed in Christ and his then future coming were kept in places far removed indeed from the torments of the wicked, yet in 'hell' (apud inferos), until Christ's blood and his descent into these places delivered them, then, certainly, good Christians, redeemed by that price already paid, are wholly ignorant of 'hell' (inferos nesciunt) while they wait for the resurrection of their bodies and the reception of their eternal reward" (City of God 20.15). In saying that the Old Testament saints were in "hell" before the descent of Christ to deliver them, Augustine conflicts with his assertion in his letter to Evodius that he "has not been able to find anywhere in Scripture the term hell used in a good sense"—that is, to denote the place were the good dwell. The explanation is that the eschatology of the church was in an unsettled state and on the way to the doctrine of purgatory and Augustine sometimes clung to the earlier doctrine of the apostolic age, which, like Scripture, knows nothing of the descensus and sometimes followed the current of his time.

The following extracts from Augustine respecting Christ's "preaching to the spirits in prison" and the possibility that those who die unbelieving may believe and repent in the middle state agree with the doctrine of Calvin and the Reformers: "If we accept the opinion that men who did not believe while they were in life can in hell (apud inferos) believe in Christ, who can endure the contradictions both of reason and faith which must follow? In the first place, if this were true, we should have no reason for mourning over those who have departed from the body without the grace of faith, and there would be no ground for being solicitous and urgent that men should accept the grace of God before they die, lest they should suffer eternal death. If, second, it be alleged that in hell those only believe to no purpose and in vain who refused to accept here on earth the gospel preached to them, but that believing will profit those who never despised a gospel which they never had it in their power to hear, another still more absurd consequence is involved, namely, that the gospel ought not to be preached at all here upon earth since all men shall certainly die and, in order to get any benefit from believing the gospel in hell, must not have incurred the guilt of rejecting it here on earth" (Letter 164.13 to Evodius). The opinion that men are not damnable for original sin and actual transgression, but only for rejecting the offer of mercy, has been revived by the present advocates of salvation in the middle state. The objection which Augustine here makes to it is the same which the advocate of modern missions makes, namely, that it takes away the principal motive for preaching the gospel to men in this life as the only "day of salvation": "Consider, I pray you, whether what the Apostle Peter says concerning spirits shut up in prison who were unbelieving in the days of Noah may not have been written without any reference to hell, but rather to the typical nature of those times as related to the present time. For that transaction had been typical of future events, so that those who do not believe the gospel in our age, when the church is being built up in all nations, may be understood to be like those who did not believe in that age while the ark was preparing; also, that those who have believed and are saved by baptism may be compared to those who at that time, being in the ark, were saved by water; wherefore he says, 'So baptism by a like figure saves you.' Let us therefore interpret the rest of the statements concerning them that believed not, so as to harmonize with the analogy of the figure, and refuse to entertain the thought that the gospel was once preached or is even to this hour being preached in hell in order to make men believe and be delivered from its pains, as if a church had been established there as well as on earth" (Letter 164.15). "Those who have inferred from the words he preached to the spirits in prison that Peter held the opinion that Christ preached to disembodied souls in hell seem to me to have been led to this view by imagining that the term spirits could not be used to designate souls which were at the time of the preaching still in the bodies of men and which, being shut up in the darkness of ignorance, were, so to speak, 'in prison'—a prison such as that from which the psalmist sought deliverance in the prayer, 'Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise your name.' Instances in which 'soul' and 'spirit' denote living persons on earth are Rom. 13:1; 1 John 4:1, 3" (Letter 164.16). "Let it not be regarded as an objection to the interpretation that the Apostle Peter says that Christ himself preached to the spirits shut up in the prison of sin, who were unbelieving in the days of Noah, that Christ had not yet come. Though he had not come bodily, yet from the beginning of the human race he came often to this earth whether to rebuke the wicked, as Cain, and before that, Adam and his wife, when they sinned; or to comfort the good or to admonish them; so that some should believe to their salvation, and others should refuse to believe to their condemnation; coming not in the flesh but in the spirit, speaking by suitable manifestations of himself to such persons and in such manner as seemed good to him" (Letter 164.17). "There cannot be any middle life between holiness and sin, nor any middle judicial sentence between reward and punishment" (On Free Will 3.66). Augustine is explicit respecting the finality and endlessness of the punishment of the unregenerate dead, but respecting the temporary chastisement of the regenerate dead in the middle state, and prayers for their deliverance, he was involved in the errors of his time and makes some statements which are justly cited by Roman Catholic theologians in support of the doctrine of purgatory. Concerning the first point, he says: "When the judge of quick and dead has said, Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels, and these shall go away into the eternal punishment, it were excessively presumptuous to say that the punishment of any of those whom God has said shall go away into eternal punishment shall not be eternal and so bring either despair or doubt upon the corresponding promise of life eternal" (City of God 21.24). Respecting the second point, the following extracts exhibit his views: "The church prays for the wicked as long as they live, but she does not pray for the unbelieving and godless who are dead. For some of the dead, indeed, the prayer of the church or of pious individuals is heard; but it is for those who, having been regenerated in Christ, did not spend their life so wickedly that they can be judged unworthy of such compassion nor so well that they can be considered to have no need of it. As, also, after the resurrection there will be some of the dead to whom, after they have endured the pains proper to the spirits of the dead, mercy shall be accorded, and acquittal from the punishment of the eternal fire. For were there not some whose sins, though not remitted in this life shall be remitted in that which is to come, it could not be truly said, 'They shall not be forgiven, neither in this world, neither in that which is to come' " (City of God 21.24; A.D. 413–26). "Temporary punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by others after death, by others both now and then; but all of them before that last and strictest judgment" (City of God 21.13). "It is a matter that may be inquired into, and either ascertained or left doubtful, whether some believers shall pass through a kind of purgatorial fire and, in proportion as they have loved with more or less devotion the goods that perish, be less or more quickly delivered from it" (Enchiridion 69; A.D. 425). "It cannot be denied that the souls of the dead are benefited by the piety of their living friends, who offer the sacrifice of the mediator or give alms in the church on their behalf" (Enchiridion 110).

7.1.5 (see p. 846). Tholuck thus evinces the heavenly blessedness of the Old Testament saints from the Old Testament: "The Psalms show that the Old Testament saints stood to God, in the relation of love, to a much greater extent than some suppose. Who can be untouched on hearing the words of David at the beginning of the psalm of thanksgiving which he sang toward the close of his life: 'I will love you, O Lord, my strength' (Ps. 18:1); 'you are my Lord, I have no good beyond you' (16:2). No Christian could describe in sweeter language the peace of reconciliation than we find it done in Ps. 16, 23, 26, 27, 71, 73, 103. How happy must have been their communion with God who say, 'How excellent is your loving-kindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of your wings; they are abundantly satisfied with the fatness of your house, and you make them drink of the river of your pleasures' (36:8–9); 'blessed is the man whom you choose and cause to approach unto you, that he may dwell in your courts; he shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, even of your holy temple' (65:5); 'your loving-kindness is better than life; when I remember you upon my bed and meditate on you in the night watches' (63:4, 7). It is always a mark of a strong and healthy divine life when the traces of God are recognized in surrounding nature. Do classical songs celebrate the traces of God in nature? The Psalms do this eminently (cf. Ps. 8, 18, 19, 29, 104, 107, 147). The Old Testament saints were remarkable for the depth and sincerity of their worship of God. 'There is no attribute,' says Herder, 'no perfection of God left unexpressed in the simplest and most powerful manner in the Psalms and the Prophets.' In fact we can hardly realize how much energy and freshness the Christian belief in and worship of God would lose were the lofty utterances of the Psalms concerning the divine excellence and glory withdrawn from the Christian church (see Ps. 33, 47, 65, 86, 90, 91, 97, 103, 104, 139). The Old Testament saints did not merely fear the divine law, but loved it. The law is described as their delight, as sweeter than honey and the honeycomb; as the riches, the peculiar portion and possession of the righteous, as the song in the house of his pilgrimage (19:8–11; 119:54–57; 103:11). Is it possible to find an instance of more thorough absorption of the human will in the law of God than this? 'I delight to do your will, O my God; yea your law is within my heart' (40:9). We are therefore entitled to say that morality of the purest kind, as the effect of filial love and reverence of God, formed part of the obedience of the Old Testament saints. The depth of their convictions of sin on the one hand and their fervent sense of divine mercy and of intimacy and communion with God on the other constituted a religious experience not exceeded by anything of the kind in the patristic, medieval, and modern church" (On the Psalms, introduction, 4).

Baxter (Dying Thoughts, app.) thus argues in proof that the Old Testament saints at death went to paradise or heaven: "Sure it is not true that the souls of the fathers before Christ's coming did not enter into heaven, but lay in some inferior limbus. For Moses and Elijah came from heaven; their shining glory showed that, and their discourse with Christ and the voice and glory that went with them. And it is not to be thought that they were separated from the rest of the souls of the faithful and, with Enoch, were in heaven by themselves alone and the rest elsewhere. Though it is said that God's house has many mansions, and there are various degrees of glory, yet the blessed are all fellow citizens of one society and children of one family of God. And they that came from east and west shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God; and Lazarus is in Abraham's bosom and the believing thief with Christ in paradise."

7.1.6 (see p. 852). Calvin (2.16.8–10) says that "though it appears from the writings of the fathers that the article concerning the 'descent into hell' was not always in common use in the churches, yet in discussing a system of doctrine it is necessary to introduce it as containing a mystery highly useful. Indeed there are some of the fathers who do not omit it. Hence we may conjecture that it was inserted a little after the days of the apostles and was not immediately but gradually received in the churches. It was explained in different senses. Some are of opinion that the clause contains nothing new, but is only a repetition in other words of what had been said respecting Christ's burial; because the word here rendered 'hell' is frequently used in the Scriptures to signify the grave. I admit the truth of this observation respecting the meaning of the word, that it is frequently to be understood of the 'grave'; but their opinion is opposed by two reasons, which induce me to dissent from them. For what carelessness it would betray, after a plain fact had been stated in the most explicit manner, to assert it a second time in an obscure statement calculated rather to perplex than to elucidate it. When two phrases expressive of the same thing are connected together, the latter ought to be an explanation of the former. But what an explanation would this be if one were to express it thus: 'When Christ is said to have been buried, the meaning is that he descended into hell!' Besides, again, it is not probable that such a superfluous tautology could have found its way into this compendium in which the principal articles of faith are expressed with the utmost possible brevity. Others explain the clause to mean that Christ descended to the souls of the fathers who had died under the Old Testament dispensation, for the purpose of announcing to them the accomplishment of redemption and liberating them from the prison in which they were confined. To this purpose they pervert the passages Ps. 107:16 and Zech. 9:11. I freely confess, indeed, that Christ illuminated the souls of the Old Testament saints by the power of his Spirit, so that they might know that the grace which they had only tasted by hope was then exhibited to the whole world. And probably to this we may accommodate that passage in Peter, where he says that Christ 'went and preached unto the spirits who were keeping watch as in a tower.' This is generally rendered 'the spirits in prison,' but I conceive improperly. The context also gives us to understand that the faithful who had died before that time were partakers of the same grace with us. For the apostle amplifies the efficacy of the death of Christ from this consideration, that it penetrated even to the dead: 'For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit' (1 Pet. 4:6).

"But laying aside all consideration of the creed, we have to seek for a more certain explanation of the descent of Christ into hell; and we find one in the divine word replete with singular consolation to the believer. If Christ had merely died a corporeal death, no end would have been accomplished by it. It was requisite, also, that he should feel the severity of divine retribution in order to appease the wrath of God and satisfy his justice. Hence it was necessary for him to contend with the powers of hell and the horror of eternal death. We have already stated from the prophet that 'the punishment of our peace was upon him,' that 'he was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities,' the meaning of which is that he was made a substitute and surety for transgressors and even treated as a criminal himself and bore all the punishments which would have been inflicted upon them; only with this exception, that 'it was not possible that he should be held of the pains of death' (Acts 2:24). Therefore it is no wonder if he be said to have descended into hell, since he suffered that death which the righteous wrath of God inflicts on transgressors. It is an inadequate objection to say that by this explanation the order of things is perverted, because it makes that subsequent to his burial which really preceded it. For those sufferings of Christ which were visible to men are very properly followed by that invisible and mysterious infliction which he suffered from the hand of God; in order to assure us that not only the body of Christ was given as the price of our redemption, but that there was another and more excellent ransom, since he suffered in his soul a dreadful agony of a person condemned and irretrievably lost." (Christ's estate of humiliation and suffering did not end at his crucifixion but his resurrection. During the interval between these, he was, therefore, still suffering, "the just for the unjust.")

Selden (Table Talk) thus explains the term hell in the article on the descent: "There are two texts for Christ's descending into hell, the one Ps. 16:10; the other Acts 2:27, 31. The Bible that was in use when the Thirty-nine Articles were made has 'hell'; but the Bible that was in Queen Elizabeth's time, when the articles were confirmed, reads it 'grave'; and so it continued till the new translation in King James's time, when it is 'hell' again. By this we may gather that the Church of England declined, as much as they could, the article concerning the descent; otherwise they never would have altered the Bible.

"This may be the interpretation of the clause he descended into hell. He may be dead and buried, then his soul ascended into heaven. Afterward he descended again into hell, that is, into the grave, to fetch his body and to rise again. To understand by 'hell' the grave is no tautology, because the creed first tells what Christ suffered: 'He was crucified, dead, and buried'; then it tells us what he did: 'He descended into hell, the third day he rose again, he ascended,' etc." Whitby explains like Selden (see p. 840 n. ).

2 Christ's Second Advent

The teaching of Scripture is explicit that Jesus Christ shall come again from heaven to earth in a visible bodily form: "While the apostles looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, You men of Galilee, why stand gazing up unto heaven? This same Jesus, who is taken from you into heaven, shall so come, in like manner as you have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1:10–11). Christ himself, being solemnly adjured by the high priest to say whether he was "the Christ the Son of God," replies "You have said. Hereafter shall you see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven" (Matt. 26:63–64). St. John, seeing the event in ecstatic vision, says, "Behold, he comes with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him" (Rev. 1:7).

The passages of Scripture which must chiefly be relied upon in constructing the doctrine of the second advent are Matt. 25; 26:64; 1 Cor. 15; 2 Thess. 2; Rev. 20–21.

The doctrine which the church very early derived from the Scriptures respecting Christ's second coming is found in the statement of the Apostles' Creed: "The third day Christ rose from the dead; he ascended into heaven; and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead." According to this statement, there is no corporeal advent of Christ upon earth after his resurrection, until he leaves his session with the Father and comes directly "from thence" to the last judgment.

The doctrinal statement in the Apostles' Creed, consequently, precludes a premillennial advent of Christ. According to this theory, there are two corporeal resurrections; the first, of the righteous alone, supposed to be taught in Rev. 20:4–5; the second, that of both the righteous and the wicked at the end of the world, taught in Matt. 25:31–46. There is an interval of a thousand years between the two, and during this period Christ reigns in corporeal presence upon the renovated earth.

Premillenarianism was the revival of the pseudo-Jewish doctrine of the messianic kingdom, as this had been formed in the later periods of Jewish history by a materializing exegesis of the Old Testament (see Neander, History 1.650–51). Its most flourishing period was between 150 and 250. Its prevalence in the church at that time has been much exaggerated. That it could not have been the catholic and received doctrine is proved by the fact that it forms no part of the Apostles' Creed, which belongs to this period, and hence by implication is rejected by it. "Chiliasm," says Neander (1.651), "never formed a part of the general creed of the church. It was diffused from one country and from a single fountainhead." In the preceding period of the apostolic fathers, 100 to 150, it had scarcely any currency. There are no traces of it in Clement of Rome, Ignatius, and Polycarp. In Barnabas, Hermas, and Papias it is found; but these are much less influential names than the former. The early apologists Tatian, Athenagoras, and Theophilus do not advocate it. Alford (on Rev. 20:4–5) is greatly in error in saying that "the whole church for three hundred years from the apostles understood the two resurrections in the literal premillenarian sense."

Revelation 20:4–6 is the chief and nearly the sole support of the doctrine of two corporeal resurrections. In explaining it, reference must be had to other passages of Scripture, especially Matt. 25. Christ himself here gives an account of his own final advent, and he speaks of only one corporeal resurrection.

In order to harmonize Matt. 25 with Rev. 20:4–6, the term resurrection in the latter passage must have a tropical signification. And this is supported by the phraseology employed by St. John: "I saw the souls (psychas) of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and they lived (ezēsan) and reigned with Christ a thousand years. This is the first resurrection." The "living and reigning" is the "resurrection." Had St. John intended a literal resurrection, he would have said, "I saw the bodies of them that were beheaded"; and he would have employed the verb anistēmi, as is the case in the New Testament generally, and not the verb zō4 or anazō. The revelator, in vision, sees the martyrs and other witnesses for Christ as disembodied spirits dwelling in paradise and describes them not as rising, but as "living and reigning" with Christ for a thousand years. This "living and reigning" he calls "the first resurrection." They lived with Christ by their faith in him, and this spiritual life was a spiritual resurrection from "death in trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2:1). Having thus "risen with Christ" (Col. 3:1), they sought "those things which are above where Christ sits on the right hand of God," and as the reward of their eminent spirituality and devotion, even to martyrdom, reign in the heavenly paradise with Christ in his spiritual reign, during that remarkable period of the triumph of the gospel upon earth which is denominated the millennium. Special honor in heaven, granted to particular persons for extraordinary service and suffering in Christ's cause upon earth, is spoken of elsewhere. To the apostles our Lord says, "When the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (Matt. 19:28). This certainly is to be interpreted metaphorically, not literally.

The tropical use of "resurrection" to denote regeneration is a characteristic of St. John, as well as of St. Paul. In John 5:25–29 our Lord speaks of two resurrections, the first of which is spiritual, and the second is corporeal: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live." The reference, here, is to the regeneration of the human soul, which is often called a resurrection, as the following passages show: "He that believes on me is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24); "he that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die" (11:25–26); "as Christ was raised from the dead, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Rom. 6:4); "arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you life" (Eph. 5:14); "if you be risen with Christ, seek those things that are above" (Col. 3:1); "when we were dead in sins, God quickened us and raised us up and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:6); "entombed with him in baptism, wherein also you are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God" (Col. 2:12).

After speaking of regeneration as a spiritual resurrection, our Lord proceeds to speak of another resurrection which he describes as corporeal: "Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in their graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation." This is the literal resurrection of the body; and this is the "second resurrection" in relation to the first tropical resurrection. The regeneration of the soul, according to St. Paul, results in the resurrection of the body: "If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwells in you" (Rom. 8:11). It should be noticed that while Christ in John 5:25–29 directly mentions both resurrections, St. John in Rev. 20:5–6 directly mentions only one, namely, the "first resurrection." He leaves the "second resurrection," namely, that of the body, to be inferred. That the "first resurrection" in 20:6 is spiritual is proved still further by the fact that those who have part in it are "blessed and holy" and not "under the power of the second death" and are "priests of God." The literal resurrection is not necessarily connected with such characteristics, but the tropical is. (supplement 7.2.1.)

In Rev. 20:5 it is said that "the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished." The remainder of the believing dead do not "live" until the final consummation at the end of the world. The martyrs are honored above the mass of believers by a coreign with the Redeemer during the millennium. The church generally does not participate in the triumph of its head until after the millennium and final judgment.

Augustine (City of God 20.6–10) gives this explanation of the two resurrections. The binding of Satan, he says, is spiritual, and the reign of Christ on earth is also spiritual. The martyrs, as disembodied spirits, reign spiritually with their Lord. Augustine (City of God 20.7) mentions the opinion of some who believed that the saints will rise on the completion of six thousand years from the creation and will live upon the earth to celebrate the millennial Sabbath. "This opinion," he adds, "would not be objectionable, if it were believed that the joys of the saints in that Sabbath shall be spiritual and consequent on the presence of God, for I myself, too, once held this opinion. But as they assert that those who then rise again shall enjoy the leisure of immoderate carnal banquets, furnished with an amount of meat and drink such as not only to shock the feeling of the temperate, but even to surpass the measure of credulity itself, such assertions can be believed only by the carnal. They who do believe them are called by the spiritual 'Chiliasts'; which we may literally reproduce by the name of 'Millenarians' " (see Wordsworth on John 5:24–29).

SUPPLEMENT

7.2.1 (see p. 865). Neither the phrase second resurrection nor the phrase first death are found in Scripture. They are inferences from the phrases first resurrection and second death, which are found there; the former in Rev. 20:5–6; the latter in 2:11; 20:6, 14; 21:8. The inferred "first death" and the inferred "second resurrection" are both of them physical. The "first death" is destroyed by the resurrection of the body (1 Cor. 15:26, 54–55; 1 Tim. 1:10; Heb. 2:14); the "second death" is indestructible (Rev. 20:14, 10). The "second resurrection" is that of the body; and the "first resurrection" is that of the soul in regeneration. One death and one resurrection are directly taught, and one death and one resurrection indirectly taught in Scripture. One of each is physical, and one of each is spiritual. But the order is different in each class. The first death is physical, and the second is spiritual; the first resurrection is spiritual, and the second physical.

Leighton (on 1 Pet. 2:2) explains the phrase newborn babes as denoting the new birth and says that "this new birth is the same that St. John calls the first resurrection and pronounces them blessed that partake of it: 'Blessed are they that have part in the first resurrection, the second death shall have no power over them' (Rev. 20:6). This new life put us out of danger and fear of that eternal death. 'We are passed from death to life,' says St. John (1 John 3:14), speaking of those that are born again."

3 Resurrection

Historical Considerations

The doctrine of the resurrection of the body was from the first a cardinal and striking tenet of Christianity. The resurrection of Christ made it such. Perhaps no article of the new religion made greater impression, at first view, upon the pagan. When the philosophers of Athens "heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, and others said, 'We will hear you again of this matter' " (Acts 17:32). The immortality of the soul and its disembodied existence were familiar to them. Socrates in Phaedrus 245 argues that "the soul is immortal, for that is immortal which is ever in motion; but that which is moved by another in ceasing to move ceases to live." And in Phaedo 114, after his description of the underworld, he adds, "I do not mean to affirm that the description which I have given of the soul and her mansions is exactly true—a man of sense ought hardly to say that. But I do say that, inasmuch as the soul is shown to be immortal, he may venture to think, not improperly or unworthily, that something of the kind is true." "As for your body," says Marcus Aurelius (Meditations 10), "it is but a vessel or case that compasses you about. It is but an instrument, like a carpenter's ax. Without the soul, which has power to use it, the instrument is of itself of no more use to us than the shuttle is of itself to the weaver or the pen to the writer or the whip to the coachman." (supplement 7.3.1.)

The doctrine of the transmigration of the soul is wholly different from that of the resurrection. In this case, the soul goes into another body than its own: "The Egyptians believed in the transmigration of souls, so that the soul in a destined cycle wandered through the bodies of every species of animals, till it returned to a human body; not to the one it had formerly occupied, but to a new one" (Heeren, Egyptians, 2). According to Rawlinson (Egypt, 10), "the good soul, having just been freed from its infirmities by passing through the basin of purgatorial fire, reentered its former body, rose from the dead, and lived once more a human life upon earth. This process was reiterated, until a certain mystic cycle of years became complete, when finally the good soul attained the crowning joy of union with God and absorption into the divine essence." The soul of the evil, according to Lenormant, goes through transmigrations until it is finally annihilated. "This latter point is not, perhaps, universally allowed," says Rawlinson (1.318).

The early fathers maintained the doctrine of the resurrection of the body with great earnestness and unanimity against the objections of the skeptics, of whom Celsus was acute and scoffing in his attack. Most of them believed in the resurrection of the very same material body. Justin Martyr, according to Hagenbach, teaches that cripples will rise as cripples, but at the instant of resurrection, if believers, will be made physically perfect. In this tract on the resurrection (§4), he argues that the miracles of Christ wrought upon the body prove the fact of its resurrection: "The same power that could say, Arise, take up your bed and walk, could say to the dead body, Come forth. If on earth Christ healed the sicknesses of the flesh and made the body whole, much more will he do this in the resurrection, so that the flesh shall rise perfect and entire." The Alexandrine school, alone, adopted a spiritual theory of the resurrection. Origen went so far as to assert that a belief in the resurrection of the body is not absolutely essential to the profession of Christianity, provided the immortality of the soul were maintained.

The patristic view of the resurrection passed into the Middle Ages with little modification, excepting that in connection with the materialism of Roman Christianity it naturally became more materialistic. The poetry of Dante and the painting of Angelo powerfully exhibit it. In the Protestant system, a real body, and one that preserves the personal identity, is affirmed; but the materialism of the papal and to some extent that of the patristic church is avoided by a more careful attention to St. Paul's distinction between the natural body (sōma psychikon) and the spiritual body (sōma pneumatikon).

Respecting the probability of a resurrection of the body, it may be remarked that it is no more strange that the human body should exist a second time than that it has existed the first time. That a full-formed human body should be produced from a microscopic cell is as difficult to believe, upon the face of it, as that a spiritual resurrection body should be produced out of the natural earthly body. The marvels of embryology are, a priori, as incredible as those of the resurrection. The difference between the body that is laid in the grave and the body that is raised from the grave is not so great as the difference between the minute embryonic ovum and the "human form divine" represented by the Antinous or the Apollo Belvidere. If the generation of the body were, up to his time, as rare an event as the resurrection of the body, it might be denied with equal plausibility. The question of St. Paul in Acts 26:8 applies here: "Why should it be thought a thing incredible that God should raise the dead?" The omnipotence that originated the body can of course reoriginate it. Even if the extreme view be adopted, that there must be the very same material particles in order to the identity of the body, this is not an impossibility for God. For as Pearson (On the Creed, art. 11) remarks: "Though the parts of the body of man be dissolved, yet they perish not, they lose not their own entity when they part with their relation to humanity; they are laid up in the secret places and lodged in the chambers of nature, and it is no more a contradiction that they should become the parts of the same body of man to which they did belong than that after his death they should become the parts of any other body, as we see they do." Only in this case, a particle of matter that had once been a constituent in two or more human bodies could not be a constituent of two or more resurrection bodies because this would involve the simultaneous presence of an atom in two or more places.

The resurrection of the body was taught in the Old Testament, and for this reason it was the common belief of the Jews in the time of Christ (John 11:24; Mark 6:16; 12:23). Passages that teach it are "your dead men shall live; together with my dead body shall they arise" (Isa. 26:19); "my flesh also shall rest in hope" (Ps. 16:9); "many that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake" (Dan. 12:2). The parable of a spiritual resurrection implies a bodily resurrection (Ezek. 37:1–14). The majority of commentators find the resurrection in Job 19:23–27. The translation of Elijah and the reappearance of Samuel at Endor favor the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. The careful sepulcher of the body by Abraham and the Old Testament saints proves the expectation of the resurrection (Gen. 49:29). The Apocrypha teaches the resurrection (2 Maccabees 7:9, 23). (supplement 7.3.2.)

Scriptural Teaching on the Resurrection

The principal points in the scriptural representation are the following.

Christ suddenly and unexpectedly descends from heaven accompanied by angels and reproduces the bodies of all the dead (Matt. 25:3–32; John 5:28–29; Acts 24:15; 1 Thess. 4:16). The generation living upon earth at the time of the resurrection will instantaneously be reembodied (1 Thess. 4:17 compared with 1 Cor. 15:51). In Westminster Confession 32.2 it is said that "such as are found alive shall not die, but be changed." The meaning is that they will not die gradually like men generally, not that they will altogether escape the penalty of death. All in Adam must die. Says Augustine (City of God 20.20), "Neither do we suppose that in the case of these saints, the sentence earth you are and unto earth shall you return is null, though their bodies do not on dying fall to the earth, but both die and rise again at once, while caught up into the air. For not even the saints shall be quickened to immortality unless they first die, however briefly."

The body thus reproduced is a "spiritual body," for both the good and the evil (1 Cor. 15:44, 53). By sōma pneumatikon is meant a spiritlike body, that is, a body adapted to the future spiritual world. It is antithetic to the sōma psychikon4 or the "flesh and blood" spoken of in 1 Cor. 15:15, by which is meant the present earthly body suited to the present sensuous world. The body is not converted into spirit: "It is one thing for a body to become spiritual with respect to its qualities, by reason of its clarity, agility, subtlety, and so forth. But it is another thing to become spirit or to be changed into the nature of spirit" (Turretin 13.19.19).

In denominating the present body psychikon and the future body pneumatikon, St. Paul distinguishes between psychē8 and pneuma in the same way that he does in 1 Thess. 5:23 and Heb. 4:12. The latter denotes the higher side of the human soul (the "rational soul") and the former its lower side (the "animal soul"). Usually, the two are not distinguished in this way by either St. Paul or the other New Testament writers since they constitute one soul (psychē) in distinction from the body (sōma) and are sometimes designated in their unity by pneuma12 and sometimes by psychē. Commonly, the sacred writers speak of man as constituted as "body and soul" or "body and spirit"—but not "body, soul, and spirit." But in 1 Cor. 15:44; 1 Thess. 5:23; and Heb. 4:12 St. Paul requires the distinction between the "animal" and the "rational" soul for the purposes of his discussion and accordingly makes it (Shedd on Rom. 8:10). (supplement 7.3.3.)

The sōma psychikon or "natural" body is marked by the qualities of the psychē16 or "animal" soul, namely, by physical appetites and passions, such as hunger, thirst, and sexual appetite. These are founded in "flesh and blood" or that material substance of which the present human body is composed. The resurrection or "spiritual" body, on the other hand, will be marked by the qualities of the pneuma or "rational soul." It will not be composed of flesh and blood, but of a substance which is more like pneuma18 than like psychē, more like the rational than the animal soul.

That the resurrection body of both the good and the evil will have the common characteristic of being destitute of fleshly appetites and passions and will be a "spiritual" in distinction from a "natural" body is proved by the following: "They neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God" (Matt. 22:30); "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor. 15:50); "they hunger no more, neither thirst any more" (Rev. 7:16).

But while alike in this particular, the spiritual body of the redeemed differs in several important respects from the spiritual body of the lost: "Some shall awake to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt" (Dan. 12:2); "all that are in the graves shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation" (John 5:28–29). (a) The spiritual body of the redeemed is a "celestial" body (1 Cor. 15:40); that of the lost is not. (b) It is a "glorified" body (1 Cor. 15:43; Phil. 3:21); that of the lost is not. (c) It is a "resplendent" body ("the righteous shall shine forth as the sun"; Matt. 13:43); that of the lost is not. The difference between the blessed and the miserable resurrection is also marked by exanastasis instead of anastasis21 (Phil. 3:11), by the phrase tēs ek nekrōn (Luke 20:35), and by the assertion that there is an order in the resurrection from the dead: "Every man in his own order, they that are Christ's at his coming" (1 Cor. 15:23; Cudworth, Intellectual System 3.315 ). (supplement 7.3.4.)

The spiritual body is not wholly a new creation ex nihilo, as the Manicheans asserted, but is the old body transformed: "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality" (1 Cor. 15:44, 53). When Christ raised Lazarus in Bethany, the body raised was identical as to the very particles. It was not a spiritual body, because there was no transformation. It had been sown a natural body, and it was raised a natural body. This resurrected body of Lazarus will require to be changed before it can be the spiritual body of the final resurrection.

The resurrection body is an identical body. An identical body is one that is recognized by the person himself and by others. No more than this is required in order to bodily identity. A living man recognizes his present body as the same body that he had ten years ago; yet the material particles are not the same identically: "We shall rise again with the same bodies we have now as to the substance, but the quality will be different" (Calvin 3.25.8); "the dead shall be raised up with the self-same bodies and none other, although with different qualities" (Westminster Confession 33.2). In saying that the substance is the same but the quality is different, Calvin does not mean that all the qualities will be different. This would be incompatible with sameness of substance. But some of the qualities are changed. Calvin explains his statement in the following words: "Just as the very body of Christ which had been offered as a sacrifice was raised again, but with such new and superior qualities as though it had been altogether different." Certain qualities of the "natural" body will still belong to the "spiritual," such as extension, figure, etc. The difference will be in the secondary, rather than in the primary properties of the natural body.

That the spiritual body is recognized is proved by Luke 9:30–33: Moses and Elijah were recognized by Christ and pointed out to the disciples; "you shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God" (Luke 13:28; John 14:3; 20:16–17, 20); Christ prepares a place for his people and receives them individually: "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me" (2 Sam. 12:23); "Jacob was gathered unto his people" (Gen. 49:33); "Abraham died and was gathered to his people" (25:8). (supplement 7.3.5.)

That the spiritual body does not consist of the very same particles of matter with the natural body, no more, no less, and no different, is proved by St. Paul's illustration in 1 Cor. 15:35–40: "You sow not that body that shall be; but God gives it a body as it has pleased him. All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men, another of fishes, and another of birds. There are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial." The ten or more grains of wheat that are produced by germination and growth from the single grain sown are not composed of exactly the same atoms of matter that constituted the seed kernel. There are many more atoms in them, which have been collected from the soil and the atmosphere. And yet there is the perpetuity, in each of these ten or more new grains, of something that existed in the single seed grain. The vegetable life in this latter has passed into the former and become the constructive principle in each of the ten or more grains. When Paul says that "that which you sow is not quickened except it die," he does not mean the death of everything in the seed kernel. Should the germ in the kernel die, there would be no quickening and no new individual grains. That which dies is the integument or covering of the germ. This dies and rots; but some part even of this reappears in the new grains of wheat. The growing plant is nourished by the decaying integument, similarly as the ovum is nourished by the yolk. Yet the particles of the decaying integument do not make up the total sum of the particles in the new grain. Still other particles have to be gathered by the transmitted vital principle from the soil and atmosphere in order to make out the whole amount required for the new individuals.

It should be carefully observed that St. Paul does not mean that the resurrection of the body is the same in every particular with the reproduction of grain by germination. It is only an illustration and not an explanation. In the case of germination, one grain becomes ten or twenty grains. But in the case of resurrection, one body becomes only one body. The transformation in the first instance is of one individual into many individuals; in the latter instance of one individual into one individual. The special point in the illustration is that the transformation in the instance of the seed grain does not entirely destroy the old substance; so that there is some sameness of substance between the old and the new. But the sameness between the spiritual body and the natural body is much closer than that between the ten grains of new wheat and the one grain from which they were produced. It is evident that the apostle intended by the illustration to teach that while the resurrection of the body is a supernatural and creative act, it is not such in the sense of originating all the materials from nothing. The resurrection body is founded upon and constructed out of the previously existing earthly body.

Employing St. Paul's threefold distinction in 1 Thess. 5:23, man is a synthesis of pneuma, psychē, and sōma. The brute is a synthesis of only psychē26 and sōma. Man is composed of a rational soul, an animal soul, and a body; the brute is composed of an animal soul and a body. An animal soul has intelligence in its lower forms, but not reason or the power of intuitive perception in mathematics, morals, and religion. The difference between the rational soul and the animal soul is marked in Gen. 2:7 and 1:20–21, 24. In the first passage, a living soul (nepeš ḥayyâ) is attributed to Adam, but it is inbreathed by God. In the latter passages, a living soul is attributed to the lower animals, but it is merely created, not inbreathed by God. The death of an animal is the death of both the body and the incomplex animal soul, not the separation of the latter from the former and the continued life of the latter. The death of a man is the separation of the complex rational-animal soul from the body or the departure of the pneuma-psychē29 from the sōma, the continued conscious existence of the former and the decomposition of the latter. The substance of the sōma31 is mortal and dissolves and "returns to dust as it was." The substance of the pneuma-psychē is immortal and is not changed in the least by being separated from the sōma. In this pneuma-psychē34 or rational soul is the nucleus or, to use St. Paul's illustration from the grain of wheat, the germ of the resurrection body. The psychē, which is united with the pneuma36 and constitutes one indivisible principle with it, is the inner reality of the body or the sōma, standing for and representing it in the interval between death and the resurrection. Though the sōma39 is scattered to the four winds and like Wycliffe's ashes cast into the Avon and floated into the Severn and finally into the sea, yet the psychē—the organic and constructing principle of the sōma41—is still united with the pneuma. And in the instance of the believer, the pneuma-psychē43 is united with Christ; so that thus it may be said (Westminster Larger Catechism 86) that the believer's "body is still united to Christ" between death and the resurrection, although the material particles that composed it are "scattered at the grave's mouth, as when one cuts and cleaves wood upon the earth" (Ps. 141:7). Says Poor (in Lange's Commentary on 1 Cor. 15:35–40; cf. a similar statement in Hodge, Theology 3.779):

The rational soul, the pneuma-psychē, is the true substance of the body: that which stands under the outward visibility of a corporeal form and imparts to it its reality. If this be so, it is easy to see that when by death the materials of our present bodily structure are all dissolved and scattered abroad, this vital organic principle, through the supernatural agency of God at the sounding of the last trump, may gather to itself and assimilate new materials of a different nature from "flesh and blood" and build up a spiritual body suited to the new condition of things.

In the instance of the unbeliever, the pneuma-psychē is not united to Christ by faith, and therefore it is not said that his "body is still united to Christ" between death and the resurrection. The rational soul of the unbeliever is preserved for "the resurrection of damnation" (John 5:29) by the omnipotence of God in the exercise of his providence merely, not of his redeeming grace. (supplement 7.3.6.)

SUPPLEMENTS

7.3.1 (see p. 867). Howe (Blessedness of the Righteous, chap. 9) notices the fact that Pythagoras, Plato, and the Neoplatonists not only held the soul to be of a different substance from the body and capable of existing and acting without it, but also "that we are borne down by the body to the earth and are continually recalled by it from the contemplation of higher things and that the body must therefore be relinquished as much as possible even here and altogether in another life, that free and unencumbered we may discern truth and love goodness." He then proceeds to argue in support of the diversity of nature between soul and body and the independence of the former, as follows: "If it be possible enough to form an unexceptionable notion of a spiritual being distinct and separable from any corporeal substance (which the learned Dr. More has sufficiently demonstrated in his treatise on the immortality of the soul) with its proper attributes and powers peculiar to itself, what can reasonably withhold me from asserting that, being separated from the body, it may as well operate alone (I mean exert such operations as are proper to such a spiritual being) as exist alone? What we find it here, in fact, in its present state, acting only with dependence on a body, will no more infer that it can act no otherwise, than its present existence in a body will that it can never exist out of it; neither of which inferences amounts to more than the trifling exploded argument a non esse ad non posse, that because a thing is not it cannot be, and would make as good sense as to say, such an one walks in his clothes, therefore out of them he cannot move a foot. Yea, and the very use itself which the soul now makes of corporeal organs and instruments plainly evidences that it does exert some action of its own wherein they assist it not. For it supposes an operation upon them antecedent to any operation by them. Nothing can be my instrument which is not first the subject of my action; as when I use a pen I act upon it in order to my action by it; that is, I impress a motion upon it, in order whereunto I use not the pen or any other such material instrument; and though I cannot produce the designed effect, that is, leave such characters so and so figured, without it, my hand can yet, without it, perform its own action, proper to itself, and produce many nobler effects. When therefore the soul makes use of a bodily organ, its action upon it must needs at last be without the ministry of any organ, unless you multiply to it body upon body ad infinitum. And if possibly it perform not some meaner and grosser pieces of drudgery when out of the body, wherein it made use of its help and service when in the body, that is no more a disparagement or diminution than it is to the magistrate that law and decency permit him not to apprehend or execute a malefactor with his own hand. It may yet perform those operations which are proper to itself, that is, such as are more noble and excellent and immediately conducive to its own felicity. Which sort of actions, as cognitation and dilection, though because being done in the body there is conjunct with them an agitation of the spirits in the brain and heart, it yet seems to me more reasonable that as to these agitations the spirits are rather subjects than instruments; that the whole essence of these mental acts of thinking and loving is antecedent to the motion of the bodily spirits;; and that this bodily motion is certainly but only incidentally consequent upon the thinking and loving merely by reason of the present but soluble union the soul has with the body. The purity and refinedness of these bodily spirits does only remove what would hinder such mental acts as thinking and loving, rather than contribute positively thereunto. And so little is the alliance between a thought and any bodily or material thing, even those very finest spirits themselves, that I dare say that whoever sets himself closely and strictly to consider and debate the matter with his own faculties will find it much more easily apprehensible how the acts of intellection and volition may be performed without these corporeal spirits than by them.

"As therefore the doctrine of the soul's activity out of its earthly body has favor and friendship enough from philosophers, so I doubt not but that upon the most strict and ready disquisition it would be as much befriended by philosophy itself. In the meantime it deserves to be considered with some regret that this doctrine should find the generality of learned pagans more forward advocates than some learned and worthy advocates of the Christian faith, which is only imputable to the undue measure and excess of an otherwise just zeal in these latter for the resurrection of the body, so far transporting them that they became willing to let go one truth that they might hold another the faster and to ransom this at the too dear and unnecessary expense of the former, accounting they could never make sure enough the resurrection of the body without making the soul's dependence on it so absolute and necessary that it should be able to do nothing but sleep in the meanwhile. Whereas it seems a great deal more inconceivable how such a being as the soul is, once quit of the entanglements and encumbrances of the body, should sleep at all, than how it should act without the body."

In a similar manner Baxter (Dying Thoughts) argues for the independence of the soul upon matter: "Why should my want of formal conceptions of the future state of separated souls and my strangeness to the manner of their subsistence and operations induce me to doubt of those general points which are evident and beyond all rational doubting? That souls are substances and not annihilated and essentially the same when they forsake the body as before, I doubt not. Otherwise, neither the Christian's resurrection nor the Pythagorean's transmigration were a possible thing. For if the soul cease to be, it cannot pass into another body nor can it reenter into this. If God raise this body, then it must be by another soul. For the same soul to be annihilated and yet to begin again to be is a contradiction; for the second beginning would be by creation, which makes a new soul and not the same that was before. It is the invisible things that are excellent, active, operative, and permanent. The visible things are of themselves but lifeless dross. It is the unseen part of plants and flowers which cause all their growth and beauty, their fruit and sweetness. Passive matter is but moved up and down by the invisible active powers, as chessmen are moved from place to place by the gamester's hands. What a loathsome corpse were the world without the invisible spirits and natures that animate, actuate, or move it. To doubt of the being or continuation of the most excellent, spiritual parts of creation, when we live in a world that is actuated by them and where everything demonstrates them, as their effects, is more foolish than to doubt of the being of those gross materials which we see."

In support of the independence of the soul of the body, Plato in Phaedo 64–65 remarks that "the philosopher is entirely concerned with the soul and not with the body, and would like, as far as he can, be quit of the body and turn to the soul." And this for the reason that "thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself and none of these bodily things trouble her—neither sounds nor sights nor pain nor any pleasure—when she has as little as possible to do with the body and has no bodily sense or feeling but is aspiring after true being. The philosopher despises the body; his soul runs away from the body and desires to be alone and by herself."

The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is even more deeply entrenched in the human constitution than that of the divine existence, for it is sometimes held when the latter is overlooked or even speculatively denied. The belief in the continued existence of their ancestors is found in the most degraded tribes and exerts more influence upon them than their belief in their fetishes. The worship of ancestors has a more prominent place in Confucianism than the worship of the deity. When the idea of God has become extremely dim in the savage, he still confidently believes that the souls of his ancestors are existing and wandering in another life. Such is the position of this truth in natural religion. And it is woven through and through the fabric of revealed religion. "Life and immortality are brought into sunlight by the gospel (phōtisantos zōēn kai aphtharsian dia tou euangeliou)" (2 Tim. 1:10).

But irrepressible and universal as it is, the doctrine of man's immortality is an astonishing one and difficult to entertain. For it means that every frail finite man is to be as long-enduring as the infinite and eternal God; that there will no more be an end to the existence of the man who died today than there will be of the deity who made him. God is denominated "the ancient of days." But every immortal spirit that ever dwelled in a human body will also be an "ancient of days." The little infant consigned to the grave yesterday will one day be millions and billions of years old, will one day have an antiquity with which the vastness of the geological ages is nothing. For this is what immortality means and involves. We find it difficult to entertain the idea of an earthly life like that of Adam and Seth continuing for nearly a thousand years—a period longer than from Romulus to Augustus Caesar, than from Constantine to Charlemagne, than from Alfred to Victoria. But what is this in comparison with endless duration? The entire six thousand years of human history, which seem so long to the historical student and are crowded with an immensity of incident, are only a mote in the sunbeam, a drop in the ocean, compared with the biography of an immortal. Yes, man must exist. He has no option. Necessity is laid upon him. He cannot extinguish himself. He cannot cease to be.

7.3.2 (see p. 869). Job 19:25–27 refers to the resurrection of the body in the Septuagint, Vulgate, Targum (partly), Clemens Romanus, Origen, Cyril Jerusalem, Ephraem, Epiphanius, Jerome, Augustine, Schoolmen, Luther's version, English version, Reformed creeds, Cocceius, Schultens, Michaelis, Rosenmüller, Pearson, Owen, J. P. Smith, Lee, Wordsworth (see "Job" in Lange's Commentary 19.460–65). Eichhorn, Knapp, Hoffman, and Noyes explain mĕbbĕśārî as "from out of my flesh" or "in my flesh"; Conant explains "without my flesh."

7.3.3 (see p. 870). Augustine (Faith and Creed 10) adopts dichometry in the constitution of man: "There are three things of which man consists, namely, spirit, soul, and body; which again are spoken of as two, because frequently the soul is named along with the spirit; for a certain rational part of the same, of which beasts are destitute, is called spirit: the principal part in us is the spirit; next, the life whereby we are united with the body is called the soul; finally, the body itself, as it is visible, is the last part in us."

7.3.4 (see p. 870). Augustine (s 91–93) thus distinguishes between the resurrection body of the redeemed and the lost: "The bodies of the saints shall rise again free from every defect and blemish, as from all corruption, weight, and impediment. For their ease of movement shall be as complete as their happiness. Whence their bodies have been called spiritual, though undoubtedly they shall be bodies and not spirits. For just as now the body is called animate, though it is a body and not a soul, so then the body shall be called spiritual, though it shall be a body and not a spirit (1 Cor. 15:44). Hence, as far as regards the corruption which now weighs down the soul and the vices which urge 'the flesh to lust against the spirit,' it shall not then be flesh, but body; for these are bodies which are called celestial. Wherefore it is said, 'Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God'; and as if in explanation of this: 'Neither does corruption inherit incorruption.' What the apostle first called 'flesh and blood' he afterward calls 'corruption'; and what he first called 'the kingdom of God' he afterward calls 'incorruption.' But as far as regards the substance, even then it shall be flesh. For even after the resurrection the body of Christ was called flesh (Luke 24:39). The apostle, however, says: 'It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body'; because so perfect shall then be the harmony between flesh and spirit, the spirit keeping alive the subjugated flesh without any need of nourishment, that no part of our nature shall be in discord with another; but as we shall be free from enemies without, so we shall not have ourselves for enemies within.

"But as for those who, out of the mass of perdition caused by the first man's sin, are not redeemed through the one mediator between God and man, they too shall rise again, each with his own body, but only to be punished with the devil and his angels. Now, whether they shall rise again with all their diseases and deformities of body, bringing with them the diseased and deformed limbs which they had here, it would be labor lost to inquire. For we need not weary ourselves in speculating about their appearance, which is a matter of uncertainty, when their eternal damnation is a matter of certainty. Nor need we inquire in what sense their body shall be incorruptible, if it be susceptible of pain; or in what sense corruptible, if it be free from the possibility of death. For there is no true life except where there is happiness in life, and no true incorruption except where health is unbroken by any pain. When, however, the unhappy are not permitted to die, then, if I may so say, death itself dies not; and where pain without intermission afflicts the soul and never comes to an end, corruption itself is not ended. This is called in Holy Scripture 'the second death' (Rev. 2:11). And neither the first death, which takes place when the soul is compelled to leave the body, nor the second death, which takes places when the soul is not permitted to leave the suffering body, would have been inflicted on man had no one sinned. And, of course, the mildest punishment of all will fall upon those who have added no actual transgressions to the original sin they brought with them; and as for the rest, who have added such actual transgressions, the punishment of each will be the more tolerable in the next world, according as his iniquity has been less in this world."

7.3.5 (see p. 871). In order to personal identity there must be a rational soul. The animal, because it has only an animal soul destitute of reason, cannot have the consciousness of personality and personal identity. A man or angel is conscious that his soul is the same entity today that it was yesterday or ten years ago. Sameness of mental substance in every particular is requisite in order to personal identity. The very same identical soul, with identically the same properties, without loss or alteration of any of them that exist in old age existed in infancy and childhood. Again, in order to the personal identity of a man there must be a material body, because man as a person is a union of soul and body. Though the soul is the principal part of a man, it is not the whole of him. Hence in the intermediate or disembodied state, though the most important part of the person exists, yet a perfectly complete person is lacking. This is the reason for the resurrection of the body. The body, however, does not require to be so strictly the same in every particular as the soul does. Some of its properties may be different; but none of the properties of the soul may be. There is only one kind of mental substance, but there is more than one kind of material substance. Consequently, the body can be changed from a "natural" to a "spiritual" body and still be recognized as the same body. The body of "flesh and blood" of this life may become the "spiritual body" of the next life and in union with the rational soul constitute the same person. This spiritual body can have form, limbs, lineaments, and all the appearance of a human body and yet not all of the very same particles, no more, no less, and no different, go to the making of it. All those properties which in this life required food for their support, for example, may be exchanged for properties that do not require it. On the side, therefore, of the body, there is not so strict an identity of substance and properties as there is on the side of the soul.

The recognition of one disembodied spirit by another is more difficult of explanation than the recognition of one embodied spirit by another. Dives and Lazarus were both of them destitute of bodies, yet they knew one another. How does the human spirit recognize and know itself? Not by means of the body which it inhabits, but directly. A man is not assisted in knowing himself by calling to mind the features of his own face and the characteristics of his own body. His knowledge of himself is independent of these latter, being the immediate consciousness of himself, that is, of his spirit. Similarly, his knowledge of the mind or spirit of another man is not the result of his sensuous perception of the man's bodily form and features, but of his mental and spiritual traits; and the knowledge of these does not depend upon the knowledge of the physical traits. He is not helped to the knowledge that another person is learned or benevolent because he is tall or short in stature.

7.3.6 (see p. 873). Hodge (Theology 3.775–79), remarks upon bodily identity as follows: "In the church it has often been assumed that sameness of substance is essential to the identity between our present and future bodies. This idea has been pressed sometimes to the utmost extreme. Augustine seems to have thought that all the matter which at any period entered into the organism of our present bodies would in some way be restored in the resurrection. Thomas Aquinas was more moderate. He taught that only those particles which entered into the composition of the body at death would enter into the composition of the resurrection body. Others assume that it is not necessary to the identity contended for that all the particles of the body at death should be included in the resurrection body. It is enough that the new body should be formed exclusively out of particles belonging to the present body. But as the body after the resurrection is to be refined and ethereal, a tenth, a hundredth, or a ten-thousandth portion of these particles would suffice.

"Identity in living organisms is higher and more inscrutable than in works of art. The acorn and the oak are the same; but in what sense? Not in substance, not in form. The infant and the man are the same through all the stages of life—boyhood, manhood, and old age; the substance of the body, however, is in a state of perpetual change. It is said this change is complete every seven years. Hence if a man live to be seventy years old, the substance of the body, during this period, has been entirely changed ten times. Here, then, is an identity independent of sameness of substance. Our future bodies, therefore, may be the same as those we now have, although not a particle that was in the one should be in the other. It may readily be admitted by those who adhere to the generally received doctrine that man consists of soul and body (and not of spirit, soul, and body); that the soul, besides its rational, voluntary, and moral faculties, has in it what may be called a principle of animal life. That is, that it has not only faculties that fit it for the higher exercises of a rational creature capable of fellowship with God, but also faculties which fit it for living in organic union with a material body. It may also be admitted that the soul, in this aspect, is the animating principle of the body, that by which all its functions are carried on. And it may further be admitted that the soul, in this aspect, is that which gives identity to the human body through all the changes of substance to which it is here subjected. And, finally, it may be admitted, such being the case, that the body which the soul is to have at the resurrection is as really and truly identical with that which it had on earth as the body of the man of mature life is the same which he had when he was an infant. All this may pass for what it is worth. What stands sure is what the Bible teaches: that our heavenly bodies are in some high, true, and real sense to be of the same nature as those which we now have. There are two negative statements in the Bible on this subject which imply a great deal. One is that in the resurrection men 'neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God.' The other is that 'flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.' Three things are implied in these passages: (1) that the bodies of men must be specially suited to the state of existence in which they are to live and act; (2) that our present bodies, consisting as they do of flesh and blood, are not adapted to our future state of being; and (3) that everything in the organization of our bodies designed to meet our present necessities will cease with the life that now is. If blood be no longer our life, we shall have no need of organs of respiration and nutrition. The following particulars, however, may be inferred with more or less confidence from what the Bible has revealed on this subject: (1) that our bodies after the resurrection will retain the human form; (2) that the future body will be a glorified likeness of what it was on earth; and (3) that we shall not only recognize our friends in heaven, but also know, without introduction, prophets, apostles, confessors, and martyrs of whom we have heard while here on earth."

Perowne (Immortality, lect. 4) argues that bodily identity consists wholly in the sameness of the organizing principle: "We maintain that the same body which has been laid in the grave may be raised at the last day, even though not one single material particle which went to constitute the one body shall be found in the other. For what is it that is necessary to the identity of the body? The identity of the body does not depend on the identity of the material particles of which it is composed. These are in a state of perpetual flux. The body of our childhood is not the body of our youth, nor the body of our youth that of our manhood, nor the body of our manhood that of our old age. Every particle is changed, and yet it is the same body; the person to whom it belongs still continues the same person. If you insist upon it that every particle of matter of which my body is built must be brought together to form my new resurrection body, then I ask, What body during this present life is my true body? Is it the body of my childhood or of my youth or of my old age? The body in which I die is no more truly mine than the body with which I came into the world. Both are mine, both are in some sense the same body, and yet they have not a single material particle in common. What possible reason is there then for contending that the body which is laid in the grave must be brought together again, particle for particle, at the resurrection, when it is no more essentially a part of myself than my body at any other stage of my existence? The only thing of which we need to be assured is that the principle of identity which governs the formation of the body in this life shall govern its formation at the resurrection. In the ever flowing torrent of our life, as wave after wave passes through our bodily frame, bringing with it growth and variety in the structure, there is some principle or law or specific form, call it what you will, which remains ever the same. The organism is essentially one, despite the changes of size, of form, of inward constitution. This holds true in every region of nature where there is life: of the acorn which becomes an oak, of the worm which changes to a chrysalis and then to a butterfly. Is it not the same with man? Is not the human embryo the same individual when it becomes child, youth, old man? And yet does there remain in the oak, in the butterfly, in the man, a single one of the ponderable molecules which existed in the germ, the egg, the embryo? And still, we repeat, it is the same vegetable, the same insect, the same man.

"What then is this thing which remains ever the same in the vegetable in all its developments, in the insect in all its metamorphoses, in the human body in every phase of its existence? What is this which never perishes, is never destroyed in all the changes and fluctuations of the material organism? It escapes all our investigations; we see it only in its manifestations in the phenomena of life. But that it is a reality all observation goes to show; and if through all the changes of the body during this life this principle continues in all its force, why may it not survive the shock of death? Why may not this 'specific form,' as Gregory of Nyssa terms it, remain united to the soul, as he conjectured and as other thinkers like Leibnitz have supposed, after its separation from the body and thus become at length the agent in the resurrection, by reconstituting, though in a new and transfigured condition, the body which was dissolved at death? Why may not the same body which was sown in corruption be raised in incorruption, and that which was sown a natural body be raised a spiritual body? There is, at least, nothing improbable in such a supposition; there is everything in the analogies of nature to confirm it; and when revelation is silent we may be thankful for such glimpses of probability as come to us in aid of our faith."

Respecting the nature of the resurrection body, Augustine (Letter 95.7–8 to Paulinus, A.D. 408) thus remarks: "As to the resurrection of the body and the future offices of its members in the incorruptible and immortal state, it is to be held most firmly as a true doctrine of Holy Scripture that these visible and earthly bodies which are now called 'natural' (animalia; 1 Cor. 15:44) shall, in the resurrection of the just, be spiritual bodies. At the same time I do not know how the quality of a spiritual body can be comprehended and described by us, seeing that it lies beyond the range of our experience. There shall be, assuredly, in such bodies no corruption, and therefore they shall not require the perishable nourishment which is now necessary; yet though unnecessary, it will not be impossible for them at their pleasure to take and consume food; otherwise it would not have been taken by our Lord after his resurrection, who has given us such an example of the resurrection of the body that the apostle argues from it, 'If the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised.' But he, when he appeared to his disciples, having all his members and using them according to their functions, also pointed out to them the places where his wounds had been, respecting which I have always supposed that they were the scars and not the wounds themselves and that they were there not of necessity but according to his free exercise of power. He gave at that time the clearest evidence of the ease with which he exercised this power, both by showing himself in 'another form' to the two disciples and by his appearing not as a spirit, but in his true body, although the doors were shut (Mark 16:12, 14; Luke 24:15–43; John 20:14–29)." Again (Letter 148.16 to Fortunatianus, A.D. 413) he says: "As to the spiritual body which we shall have in the resurrection, how great a change for the better it is to undergo—whether it shall then become pure spirit, so that the whole man shall then be a spirit, or shall (as I rather think, but yet do not confidently maintain) become a spiritual body in such a way as to be called spiritual because of a certain wonderful facility in its movements, but at the same time to retain its material substance, which cannot live and feel by itself but only through the spirit which uses it, as our present body is animated and used by the soul inhabiting it; and whether, if the properties of the body then immortal and incorruptible shall remain unchanged, it shall then in some degree aid the spirit to see visible, that is, material things, as at present we are unable to see anything of this kind except through the eyes of the body; or whether our spirit shall then be able to know material things directly without the instrumentality of the body (for God himself does not know these things through bodily senses)—on these and many other things that perplex us, I confess that I have not yet read anything which I regard as sufficiently settled to deserve to be taught to men."

4 Final Judgment

The doctrine of the final judgment was, from the first, immediately connected with the resurrection of the body. Mankind "must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the things done in his body" (2 Cor. 5:10). The fathers founded their views of the day of doom upon the representations and imagery of Scripture. They believed that a general conflagration will immediately follow the last judgment, which some said will destroy the world; while others ascribed only a purifying agency to it. Augustine (City of God 20.16.24) holds that this world is to be changed, not destroyed, and is to be the "new earth" spoken of in the Apocalypse. Some, like Tertullian and the more rhetorical of the Greek fathers, enter into minute details; while others, like Augustine, endeavor to define dogmatically the facts couched in the figurative language of the Bible. In the Middle Ages, representations varied with the bent of the individual theologian. One popular opinion was that the judgment will be held in the valley of Jehoshaphat. Aquinas maintained that the last judgment will be mental, because the oral trial of each individual would require too much time. In the modern church, the course of thinking has been similar to that in the ancient and medieval. The creeds of the different Protestant denominations explicitly affirm a day of judgment at the end of the world. Individual speculations, as of old, vibrate between the extremes of materialism and idealism.

According to Scripture, there is a private judgment at death and a public judgment at the last day. The private judgment is proved by the following particulars. First, the Bible teaches that the human when it leaves the body meets God directly, as it never has before: "The dust shall return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it" (Eccles. 12:7). This implies self-consciousness in the immediate presence of God; and this implies self-knowledge in that presence: "Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known" (1 Cor. 13:12; cf. Ps. 139:1–6). But this self-consciousness and self-knowledge at death is a private individual judgment. Every man when he dies knows his own moral character—and knows it accurately. Consequently, at death every man either acquits or condemns himself. What St. Paul says is done in the public judgment of the last day is also done in the private judgment on the day of death: "The conscience bears witness, and the thoughts accuse or else excuse one another" (Rom. 2:15). Consequently, the private judgment at death indicates the moral state of the soul: "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this, judgment" (Heb. 9:27). Second, the private judgment at death and the public judgment at the last day coincide, because in the intermediate state there is no alteration of moral character and consequently no alteration of the sentence passed at death. We have presented the proof from Scripture that sheol or hades is a state of retribution and misery and paradise a state of reward and blessedness. The parable of Dives and Lazarus teaches that the impenitent spirit goes to hades at death and that hades is hell without the body. Consequently, the destiny of the impenitent is known and determined at death. The same parable teaches that the penitent spirit goes to paradise at death and that paradise is heaven without the body. Consequently, the destiny of the penitent is also known and determined at death. Penitence or impenitence at death is therefore the state of mind that settles the everlasting condition of the individual. Christ teaches that "to die in sin" is to be hopelessly lost (John 8:21, 24). Every man who has the publican's feeling when he dies and cries "God be merciful to me a sinner" is forgiven through the blood of Christ: "To this man, says the Lord, will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit" (Isa. 66:2); "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:3). Every man who at death is destitute of the publican's feeling is unforgiven: "The proud he knows afar off" (Ps. 138:6); "the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon everyone that is proud and lofty" (Isa. 2:12). Every penitent pagan is saved, every impenitent nominal Christian is lost. (supplement 7.4.1.)

That there is a day of judgment and a public judgment is distinctly and often asserted by our Lord: "It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment" (Matt. 11:22, 24); "the men of Nineveh shall rise in the judgment with this generation" (12:41); 25:34–41 gives a detailed account of the day of judgment; "whosoever shall say, You fool, shall be in danger of hellfire" (5:22); "I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:39–40, 44); "he has appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness" (Acts 17:31); "the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ" (Rom. 2:16); "that day when I make up my jewels" (Mal. 3:17); "for all these things God will bring you into judgment" (Eccles. 11:9); "God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing" (12:14; Gen. 18:25; Deut. 32:35; Job 21:30; Ps. 1:5–6; 58:11; 90:11; 94:1–2; Prov. 16:25; Eccles. 3:17; Isa. 34:14; 66:24; Dan. 7:9–10; 12:2; Jude 14–15).

The biblical representations of the last judgment are as follows:

1. The preparation: Christ with the angelic host unexpectedly descends in bodily presence, and the throne of judgment is set (Matt. 25:31; Rev. 21:11): "This same Jesus that is taken up from you into heaven shall come in like manner as you have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11). His human nature is one reason why the Son of God is the judge (John 5:27).

2. The congregation of all men before the throne of judgment (Matt. 25:32; Rom. 14:10; Rev. 21:12).

3. The separation of the evil from the good (Matt. 25:32–33): Plato (Republic 10.614) represents the judges as bidding "the just to ascend by the heavenly way on the right hand and the unjust to descend by the lower way on the left hand."

4. The disclosure of character and conduct, so that the grounds of the judgment to be passed upon both classes may be clearly known (Matt. 25:34–46): "God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ" (Rom. 2:16); "all things are naked and opened (tetrachēliōena) unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do" (Heb. 4:13); "the Lord will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts" (1 Cor. 4:5). In particular, the temporal good which the evil have enjoyed in this life and the temporal evil which the good have experienced will be explained (see Augustine, City of God 20.2).

Respecting the last judgment, Augustine (City of God 20.14) says that there will not be an angel for each man to recite to him the deeds he has done, but we must understand by the phrase another book was opened that by divine power "everyone shall recall to memory all his own works, whether good or evil, and shall mentally survey them with a marvelous rapidity, so that this knowledge will either accuse or excuse, and thus all and each shall be simultaneously judged." (supplement 7.4.2.)

SUPPLEMENTS

7.4.1 (see p. 879). Bates (On Death, chap. 2) thus speaks of the private judgment at death: "Death is fearful in the apprehension of conscience, as it is the most sensible mark of God's wrath which is heavier than death and a summons to give an account of all things done in this life to the righteous judge of the world: 'It is appointed to all men once to die, and afterward the judgment' (Heb. 9:27). The penal fear is more wounding to the spirit than the natural and physical. When the awakened sinner presently expects the citation to appear before the tribunal above, where no excuses, no supplications, no privileges avail, where the cause of eternal life and death must be decided, and the awards of justice be immediately executed, O the convulsions and agonies of conscience in that hour! This made a heathen, a governor of a province, to tremble before a poor prisoner. When Paul 'reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled' (Acts 24:25)." Again Bates (Eternal Judgment, chap. 5) remarks that "the day of death is equivalent to the day of judgment; for immediately after it there is a final decision of men's states forever. But the distinction that is made between men at death is private and particular and not sufficient for the honor of God's government; hence at the last day all men that have lived in the several successions of ages shall appear, and justice have a solemn process and triumph before angels and men."

The private judgment is taught in the lines of Toplady's hymn:

When mine eyelids close in death,

When I rise to worlds unknown,

See thee on thy judgment throne,

Rock of ages! cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in thee.

The Scriptures teach it in declaring that at death Judas "went to his own place" (Acts 1:25) and knew that he did and also that Dives "died and was buried, and in hell he lifted up his eyes being in torments" (Luke 16:22–23).

Leighton (Exposition of the Apostles' Creed) describes the private judgment: "It is certainly most congruous that there shall be a solemn judicial proceeding on entering and placing man in the afterstate. And that this be done not only in each particular apart, but most conspicuously in all together, so that the justice and mercy of God may not only be accomplished, but acknowledged and magnified, and that not only severally in the individual persons of men and angels, but universally, jointly, and manifestly in the view of all, as upon one theater. Each ungodly man shall not only read, whether he will or no, the justice of God in himself and his own condemnation, which all of them shall do before that time to their souls' particular judgment; but they shall then see the same justice in all the rest of the condemned world."

Pearson (On the Creed, art. 7) connects the private with the general judgment: "It is necessary that we should believe that an account must be given of all our actions; and not only so, but that this account will be exacted according to the rule of God's revealed will, that 'God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to the gospel' (Rom. 2:16). There is in every man not only a power to reflect, but a necessary reflection upon his actions; not only a voluntary remembrance, but also an irresistible judgment of his own conversation. Now if there were no other judge besides our own souls, we should be regardless of our own sentence and wholly unconcerned in our own condemnations. But if we were persuaded that these reflections of conscience are to be so many witnesses before the tribunal of heaven and that we are to carry in our own hearts a testimony either to absolve or condemn us, we must infallibly watch over that unquiet inmate and endeavor above all things for a good conscience."

7.4.2 (see above). Belgic Confession 37 says that in the last day "the books, that is to say, the conscience, shall be opened, and the dead be judged according to what they shall have done." Bates (Eternal Judgment, chap. 4) declares that "the conscience of every man shall be opened by the omniscience of God and give an accusing or excusing testimony of all things (Rom. 2:15–16). For these acts of conscience, in the present life, have a final respect to God's tribunal; and though the accounts are so vast there shall be an exact agreement between the books of God's omniscience and of conscience in the day of judgment. Now, indeed, the conscience of man, though never so inquisitive and diligent in examining and revising his ways, is unable to take a just account of his sins. As one that would tell the first-appearing stars in the evening, before he can reckon them others appear and confound his memory with their number, so when conscience is seriously intent in reflecting upon itself, before it can reckon up the sins committed against one command, innumerable others appear. This made the psalmist, upon the survey of his actions, break forth in amazement and perplexity: 'My iniquities are more than the hairs of my head, therefore my heart fails me' (Ps. 40:12). But it will be one of the miracles of that day to enlarge the view of conscience to all their sins. Now, the records of conscience are often obliterated, and the sins written therein are forgotten; but then they shall appear in so clear an impression that the wicked shall be inexcusable to themselves, and conscience subscribes their condemnation. This information of conscience, at the last, will make the sinner speechless; for the book of accounts with divine justice was always in God's own keeping, and whatever is recorded there was written with his own hand.

"Other witnesses, also, will appear to finish the process of that day. (1) Satan will then bring in a bloody charge against the wicked. This is intimated in that fearful imprecation, 'Let Satan stand at his right hand; when he is judged let him be condemned' (Ps. 109:6–7). He is now an active watchful spirit whose diligence is equal to his malice and by violent temptations draws men to sin. But then he will be their most bitter accuser, not from zeal for justice but pure malignity. (2) The wicked themselves will accuse one another. Then all that have been jointly engaged in the commission of sin will impeach each other. The inferior instruments will accuse their directors for their pernicious counsel, and the directors will accuse the instruments for their wicked compliance. (3) All the holy servants of God, who by their instructions, counsels, admonitions, examples, have endeavored to make the world better, will give a heavy testimony against them. Indeed, the very presence of the saints will upbraid the wicked for their resisting all the warning melting entreaties, all the grave and serious reproofs, all the tender, earnest expostulations, that were ineffectual by the hardness of their hearts."

5 Heaven

That the blessedness of the redeemed is endless has been the uniform faith of the church. Representations concerning the nature of this happiness vary with the education and intellectual spirit of the age or individual. Justin Martyr regarded the blessedness of heaven as consisting mainly in the continuation and increase of the happiness of the millennial reign. Origen held that the blessed dwell in the aerial regions and pass from one heaven to another as they advance in holiness. At the same time, he condemns those who expect any sensuous enjoyment. Greek theologians Gregory Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa follow Origen. Augustine believed that the heavenly happiness consists in the enjoyment of peace which passes knowledge and the beatific vision of God. One important element in it consists in indefectibility: the deliverance from all hazard of apostasy—the non posse peccare et mori. The Schoolmen held the patristic views, but with an endeavor to systematize. They divided heaven into three parts: the visible heavens or the firmament, the spiritual heaven where saints and angels dwell, and the intellectual heaven where the beatific vision of the Trinity is enjoyed (see Dante, Paradise 30–33). The modern church maintains the doctrine of the everlasting blessedness but in a more spiritual form than prevailed in either the ancient or the medieval church. The more common opinion is that this world is not to be either annihilated or destroyed, but renovated for the abode of the redeemed. Turretin defends this view (20.5). Anselm (Why the God-Man? 1.18) says: "We believe that the material substance of the world must be renewed and that this will not take place until the number of the elect is completed and that happy kingdom be made perfect and that after its completion there will be no more change."

The scriptural representation of the heavenly state is as follows:

1. It is marked by sinless perfection: "A glorious church without spot or wrinkle" (Eph. 5:27); the "armies" of heaven are "clothed in fine linen, white and clean" (Rev. 19:14); "the Lamb's wife is arrayed in fine linen, which is the righteousness of saints" (19:8); "the creature shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom. 8:21); "the spirits of just men made perfect" are in the "heavenly Jerusalem" (Heb. 12:23).

2. It is marked by impeccability or indefectibility (Rom. 8:35–39): "We shall ever be with the Lord" (1 Thess. 4:17); "a rest remains to the people of God" (Heb. 4:9); "we shall be like him" (1 John 3:2). Indefectibility, or the absence of that possibility of apostasy which was connected with man as created, renders his state as redeemed more blessed because of the sense of security. Eden was uncertain; heaven is certain. This is the absolute rest into which he enters. There is to be no probation or temptation, internal or external: "Every man who not merely supposes but certainly knows that he shall eternally enjoy the most high God, in the company of angels and beyond the reach of ill—this man, no matter what bodily torments afflict him, is more blessed than was he who, even in that great felicity of paradise, was uncertain of his fate" (Augustine, City of God 11.12; cf. Concerning the Gift of Perseverance).

3. It is chiefly mental happiness—the vision of the divine perfections and delight in them: "Then shall we see face to face" (1 Cor. 13:12); "we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2); "whom I shall see for myself" (Job 19:27; Rev. 4:10–11; 5; 7:9–10; 21:3–4; 22:4): "I shall behold your face in righteousness" (Ps. 17:15); "in your presence is fullness of joy" (16:11).

4. It is the personal presence of the mediator with his redeemed people: "They follow the Lamb whithersoever he goes" (Rev. 14:4); "Father, I will that they whom you have given me be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory" (John 17:24). This is an element in the heaven of redeemed man that does not enter into that of the angels (see Owen, Person of Christ, 19).

6 Hell

History of the Doctrine

The common opinion in the ancient church was that the future punishment of the impenitent wicked is endless. This was the catholic faith, as much so as belief in the Trinity. But as there were some church fathers who deviated from the creed of the church respecting the doctrine of the Trinity, so there were some who dissented from it in respect to that of eternal retribution. The deviation in eschatology, however, was far less extensive than in trinitarianism. The Semiarian and Arian heresies involved and troubled the ancient church much more seriously than did the universalism of that period. Long controversies ending in ecumenical councils and formulated statements were the consequence of the trinitarian errors, but no ecumenical council and no authoritative counterstatement was required to prevent the spread of the tenet of restoration. Having so little even seeming support in Scripture and reason, it gradually died out of the ancient church by its own intrinsic mortality. Neander (History 2.737), speaking of the second period in his arrangement (312–590), when there was more restorationism than in the first, says:

The doctrine of eternal punishment continued, as in the preceding period, to be dominant in the creed of the church. Yet, in the oriental church, in which, with the exception of those subjects immediately connected with the doctrinal controversies, there was greater freedom and latitude of development, many respectable church teachers still stood forth, without injuring their reputation for orthodoxy, as advocates of the opposite doctrine, until the time when the Origenistic disputes caused the agreement with Origen in respect to this point also to be considered as something decidedly heretical.

Hagenbach (History of Doctrine §78) says of the period down to A.D. 250: "Notions more or less gross prevailed concerning the punishment of the wicked, which most of the fathers regarded as eternal."

The principal deviation from the catholic doctrine of endless retribution was in the Alexandrine school, founded by Clement and Origen. The position taken by them was that "the punishments of the condemned are not eternal, but only remedial, the devil himself being capable of amelioration" (Gieseler 1.214). Thus early was the question raised whether the suffering to which Christ sentences the wicked is for the purpose of correcting and educating the transgressor or of vindicating and satisfying the law he has broken: a question which is the key to the whole controversy. For if the individual criminal is of greater consequence than the universal law, then the suffering must refer principally to him and his interests. But if the law is of more importance than any individual, then the suffering must refer principally to it.

Origen's restorationism grew naturally out of his view of human liberty. He held that the liberty of indifference and the power of contrary choice, instead of simple self-determination, are the substance of freedom. These belong inalienably and forever to the nature of the finite will. They cannot be destroyed, even by apostasy and sin. Consequently, there is forever a possibility of a self-conversion of the will in either direction. Free will may fall into sin at any time; and free will may turn to God any time. This led to Origen's theory of an endless alternation of falls and recoveries, of hells and heavens; so that practically he taught nothing but a hell. For, as Augustine (City of God 21.17) remarks, in his refutation of Origen, "heaven with the prospect of losing it is misery." "Origen's theory," says Neander (1.656), "concerning the necessary mutability of will in created beings led him to infer that evil, ever germinating afresh, would still continue to render necessary new processes of purification and new worlds destined for the restoration of fallen beings, until all should again be brought back from manifoldness to unity, so that there was to be a constant interchange between fall and redemption, between unity and manifoldness." (supplement 7.6.1.)

Traces, more or less distinct, of a belief in the future restoration of the wicked are found in Didymus of Alexandria, the two Gregories, and Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, the leaders of the Antiochian school. All of these were more or less under the influence of Origen. Origen's opinions, however, both in trinitarianism and eschatology, were strongly combated in his own time by the great body of contemporary fathers and subsequently by the church under the lead of Epiphanius, Jerome, and Augustine.

The medieval church was virtually a unit in holding the doctrine of endless punishment. The Reformation churches, both Lutheran and Calvinistic, adopted the historical and catholic opinion.

Since the Reformation, universalism, restorationism, and annihilation have been asserted by some sects and many individuals. But these tenets have never been adopted by those ecclesiastical denominations which hold, in their integrity, the cardinal doctrines of the Trinity and incarnation, the apostasy and redemption, although they have exerted some influence within these denominations. None of the evangelical churches have introduced the doctrine of universalism, in any form of it, into their symbolical books. The denial of endless punishment is usually associated with the denial of those tenets which are logically and closely connected with it: such as original sin, vicarious atonement, and regeneration. Of these, vicarious atonement is the most incompatible of any with universal salvation, because the latter doctrine, as has been observed, implies that suffering for sin is remedial only, while the former implies that it is retributive. Suffering that is merely educational does not require a vicarious atonement in order to release from it. But suffering that is judicial and punitive can be released from the transgressor only by being inflicted upon a substitute. He, therefore, who denies personal penalty must, logically, deny vicarious penalty. If the sinner himself is not obliged by justice to suffer in order to satisfy the law he has violated, then, certainly, no one needs suffer for him for this purpose.

Within the nineteenth century, universalism has obtained a stronger hold upon German theology than upon any other and has considerably vitiated it. It grew up in connection with the rationalism and pantheism which have been more powerful in Germany than elsewhere. Rationalism has many of the characteristics of deism and is vehemently polemic toward evangelical truth. That it should combat the doctrines of sin and atonement is natural. Pantheism, on the other hand, has to some extent been mingled with evangelical elements. A class of antirationalistic theologians in Germany, whose opinions are influenced more or less by Spinoza and Schelling, accept the doctrines of the Trinity, incarnation, apostasy, and redemption and assert the ultimate salvation of all mankind. Schleiermacher, the founder of this school, whose system is a remarkable blending of the gospel and pantheism, has done much toward the spread of restorationism. The following are the objections which this theologian (Doctrine §163, app.) makes to eternal damnation:

1. Christ's words in Matt. 25:46; Mark 9:44; and John 5:29 are figurative.

2. First Cor. 15:25–26 teaches that all evil shall be overcome.

3. Misery cannot increase, but must decrease. If it is bodily misery, custom habituates to endurance, and there is less and less suffering instead of more and more. If, on the other hand, it is mental suffering, this is remorse. The damned suffer more remorse in hell than they do upon earth. This proves that they are better men in hell than upon earth. They cannot, therefore, grow more wretched in hell, but grow less so as they grow more remorseful.

4. The sympathy which the saved have with their former companions, who are in hell, will prevent the happiness of the saved. The world of mankind and also the whole universe are so connected that the endless misery of a part will destroy the happiness of the remainder.

These objections appeal mainly to reason. But the two assumptions that hell is abolished by becoming used to it and that remorse is of the nature of virtue do not commend themselves to the intuitive convictions.

Besides the disciples of Schleiermacher, there are trinitarian theologians standing upon the position of theism who adopt some form of universalism. Nitzsch (Dogmatics §219) teaches restorationism. He cites in support of it only two passages out of the entire Scriptures: 1 Pet. 3:19, which speaks of the "preaching to the spirits in prison"; and Heb. 11:39–40: "These received not the promises." These two passages Nitzsch explains as teaching that "there are traces of a capacity in another state of existence for comprehending salvation and for a change and purification of mind"; and upon them, solely, he founds the sweeping assertion that "it is the apostolic view that for those who were unable in this world to know Christ in his truth and grace, there is a knowledge of the Redeemer in the other state of existence which is never inoperative, but is either judicial or quickening."

Rothe (Dogmatics 2.2.46–49, 124–31) contends for the annihilation of the impenitent wicked in the sense of the extinction of self-consciousness. Yet he asserts that the aim of penalty is requital and the satisfaction of justice, an aim that would be defeated by the extinction of remorse. Julius Müller (Sin 2.418–25) maintains that the sin against the Holy Spirit is never forgiven because it implies such a hardness in sin as is incapable of penitence. But he holds that the offer of forgiveness through Christ will be made to every human being, here or hereafter: "Those who have never in this life had an opportunity of knowing the way of salvation will certainly be placed in a position to accept and enter upon this way of return, if they will, after their life on earth is ended. We may venture to hope that in the interval between death and the judgment many serious misconceptions, which have hindered men from appropriating truth in this life, will be removed." The use of the term misconception would seem to imply that some who had the offer of salvation in this life but had rejected it will have the opportunity in the next life to correct their error in this. Dorner (Christian Doctrine 4.416–28), after the arguments for and against endless punishment, concludes with the remark that "we must be content with saying that the ultimate fate of individuals, namely, whether all will attain the blessed goal or not, remains veiled in mystery."His further remark that "there may be those eternally damned, so far as the abuse of freedom continues eternally, but in this case man has passed into another class of beings" looks in the direction of annihilation and suggests that sin may finally destroy the humanity of man and leave him a mere brute. Respecting the future offer of mercy, Dorner (3.77) asserts that "the final judgment can take place for none before the gospel has been so addressed to him that free appropriation of the same was possible." (supplement 7.6.2.)

Universalism has a slender exegetical basis. The biblical data are found to be unmanageable and resort is had to human sentiment and self-interest. Its advocates quote sparingly from Scripture. In particular, the words of Christ relating to eschatology are left with little citation or interpretation. Actual attempts by the restorationist to explain what the words depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels really mean are rare. The most common device is to dismiss them, as Schleiermacher does, with the remark that they are figurative. Some words of St. Paul, on the other hand, whose views upon sin, election, and predestination, however, are not especially attractive to this class, are made to do yeoman's service. Texts like Rom. 5:18 ("as judgment came upon all men unto condemnation, so the free gift came upon all men unto justification") and 1 Cor. 15:22 ("as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive") are explained wholly apart from their context and by emphasizing the word all. When St. Paul asserts that "the free gift upon all men unto justification," this is severed from the preceding verse, in which the "all" are described as "those which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness." And when the same apostle affirms that "in Christ shall all be made alive," no notice is taken of the fact mentioned in the succeeding verse that not all men are "in Christ"—the clause they that are Christ's at his coming implying that there are some who are not "Christ's at his coming."

Biblical Argument

The strongest support of the doctrine of endless punishment is the teaching of Christ, the Redeemer of man. Though the doctrine is plainly taught in the Pauline epistles and other parts of Scripture, yet without the explicit and reiterated statements of God incarnate, it is doubtful whether so awful a truth would have had such a conspicuous place as it always has had in the creed of Christendom. If, in spite of that large mass of positive and solemn threatening of everlasting punishment from the lips of Jesus Christ which is recorded in the four gospels, the attempt has nevertheless been made to prove that the tenet is not an integral part of the Christian system, we may be certain that had this portion of revelation been wanting, this attempt would have been much more frequent and much more successful. The apostles enter far less into detailed description and are far less emphatic upon this solemn theme than their divine Lord and master. And well they might be. For as none but God has the right and would dare to sentence a soul to eternal misery for sin and as none but God has the right and would dare to execute the sentence, so none but God has the right and should presume to delineate the nature and consequences of this sentence. This is the reason why most of the awful imagery in which the sufferings of the lost are described is found in the discourses of our Lord and Savior. He took it upon himself to sound the note of warning. He, the judge of quick and dead, assumed the responsibility of teaching the doctrine of endless retribution: "I will forewarn you whom you shall fear: Fear him who after he has killed has power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him." "Nothing," says Dr. Arnold, "is more striking to me than our Lord's own description of the judgment. It is so inexpressibly forcible, coming from his very own lips, as descriptive of what he himself would do" (Stanley, Life of Arnold 1.176).

Christ could not have warned men so frequently and earnestly as he did against "the fire that never shall be quenched" and "the worm that dies not" had he known that there is no future peril fully corresponding to them. That omniscient being who made the statements respecting the day of judgment and the final sentence that are recorded in Matt. 25:31–46 could neither have believed nor expected that all men without exception will eventually be holy and happy. To threaten with "everlasting punishment" a class of persons described as "goats upon the left hand" of the eternal judge, while knowing at the same time that this class would ultimately have the same holiness and happiness with those described as "sheep upon the right hand" of the judge, would have been both falsehood and folly. The threatening would have been false. For even a long punishment in the future world would not have justified Christ in teaching that this class of mankind are to experience the same retribution with "the devil and his angels," for these were understood by the Jews, to whom he spoke, to be hopelessly and eternally lost spirits. And the threatening would have been foolish, because it would have been a brutum fulmen, an exaggerated danger, certainly in the mind of its author. And for the persons threatened, it would have been a terror only because they took a different view of it from what its author did—they believing it to be true, and he knowing it to be false! (supplement 7.6.3.)

The mere perusal of Christ's words when he was upon earth, without note or comment upon them, will convince the unprejudiced that the Redeemer of sinners knew and believed that for impenitent men and devils there is an endless punishment. We solicit a careful reading and pondering of the following well-known passages:

When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all nations, and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall he say unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment. (Matt. 25:31–33, 41, 46)

If your right hand offend you, cut it off: it is better for you to enter into life maimed than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched, where their worm dies not and the fire is not quenched. And if your foot offend you, cut if off: it is better for you to enter into life than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched, where their worm dies not and the fire is not quenched. And if your eye offend you, pluck it out: it is better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than having two eyes to be cast into hellfire, where their worm dies not and the fire is not quenched. (Mark 9:43–48)

What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? What is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world and be cast away? (Mark 8:36; Luke 9:25)

The rich man died and was buried, and in hell he lifted up his eyes being in torments. (Luke 16:22–23)

Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matt. 10:28)

The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. (Matt. 13:41–42)

Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? Then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity. (Matt. 7:22–23)

He that denies me before men shall be denied before the angels of God. Unto him that blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it shall never be forgiven. (Luke 12:9–10)

Woe unto you, you blind guides. You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell? (Matt. 23:16, 33)

Woe unto that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It had been good for that man if he had not been born. (Matt. 26:24)

The Lord of that servant will come in a day when he looks not for him and at an hour when he is not aware and will cut him in sunder and appoint him his portion with unbelievers. (Luke 12:46)

He that believes not shall be damned. (Mark 16:16)

You, Capernaum, which are exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down to hell. (Matt. 11:23)

At the end of the world, the angels shall come forth and sever the wicked from among the just and shall cast them into the furnace of fire. (Matt. 13:49–50)

Then said Jesus again to them, I go my way, and you shall seek me and shall die in your sins: whither I go you cannot come. (John 8:21)

The hour is coming in which all that are in their graves shall hear my voice and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation. (John 5:28–29)

To all this, add the description of the manner in which Christ will discharge the office of the eternal judge. John the Baptist represents him as one "whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor and gather his wheat into the garner, but will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire" (Matt. 3:12). And Christ describes himself as a householder who will say to the reapers, "Gather together first the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them" (13:30); as a fisherman "casting a net into the sea and gathering of every kind, which when it was full he drew to the shore and sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away" (13:47–48); as the bridegroom who took the wise virgins "with him to the marriage" and shut the door upon the foolish (25:10); and as the man traveling into a far country who delivered talents to his servants and afterward reckons with them, rewarding the "good and faithful" and "casting the unprofitable servant into outer darkness, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (25:19–20).

Let the reader now ask himself the question: Do these representations and this phraseology make the impression that the future punishment of sin is to be remedial and temporary? Are they adapted to make this impression? Were they intended to make this impression? Is it possible to believe that that holy and divine person who uttered these fearful and unqualified warnings, eighteen hundred years ago, respecting the destiny of wicked men and devils, knew that a time is coming when there will be no wicked men and devils in the universe of God and no place of retributive torment? Did Jesus of Nazareth hold an esoteric doctrine of hell: a different view of the final state of the wicked from that which the common and natural understanding of his language would convey to his hearers and has conveyed to the great majority of his readers in all time? Did he know that in the far-off future, a day will come when those tremendous scenes which he described—the gathering of all mankind, the separation of the evil from the good, the curse pronounced upon the former and the blessing upon the latter—will be looked back upon by all mankind as "an unsubstantial pageant faded," as a dream that is passed and a watch in the night?

Jesus Christ is the person responsible for the doctrine of eternal perdition. He is the being with whom all opponents of this theological tenet are in conflict. Neither the Christian church nor the Christian ministry are the authors of it. The Christian ministry never would have invented the dogma; neither would they have preached it in all the Christian centuries, like Jeremiah, with shrinking and in tears, except at the command of that same Lord God who said to the weeping prophet, "Whatsoever I command you, you shall speak" (Jer. 1:7).

Having given, in the discussion of the intermediate state, the proof from Scripture that sheol and hades signify the place of punishment for the wicked, we proceed to consider the nature and duration of the suffering inflicted in it.

The Old Testament is comparatively silent upon these particulars. Sheol is represented vaguely as an evil to be dreaded and avoided, and little description of its fearfulness is given by the "holy men of old who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." The New Testament makes a fuller revelation and disclosure; and it is principally the Redeemer of the world who widens the outlook into the tremendous future. The suffering in hades and gehenna is described as "everlasting (aiōnios) punishment" (Matt. 25:46), "everlasting (aiōnios) fire" (18:8), "the fire that never shall be quenched" (Mark 9:45), "the worm that dies not" (9:46), "flaming fire" (2 Thess. 1:8), "everlasting (aidios) chains" (Jude 6), "eternal (aiōnios) fire" (Jude 7), "the blackness of darkness forever" (Jude 13), "the smoke of torment ascending up forever and ever" (Rev. 14:11; 19:3), "the lake of fire and brimstone" in which the devil, the beast, and the false prophet "shall be tormented day and night, forever and ever" (20:10).

Sensible figures are employed to describe the misery of hell, as they are to describe the blessedness of heaven. It cannot be inferred from the mere use of metaphors that the duration of either is temporary. Figures are employed to describe both temporal and eternal realities. The psalmist describes God as rock, fortress, shield, etc.; and man as vapor, flower, etc. A figure by its form, as the rhetoricians call it, indicates the intention of the writer. No one would employ the figure of a rock to denote transiency, or of a cloud to denote permanence. Had Christ intended to teach that future punishment is remedial and temporary, he would have compared it to a dying worm and not to an undying worm, to a fire that is quenched and not to an unquenchable fire. The ghost in Hamlet describes the "glowworm's fire" as "ineffectual," that is, harmless (1.5). None of the figures employed in Scripture to describe the misery of the wicked are of the same rhetorical form with those of the morning cloud, the early dew, etc. They are invariably of the contrary form and imply fixedness and immutability. The "smoke of torment" ascends forever and ever. The "worm" of conscience does not die. The "fire" is unquenchable. The "chains" are eternal. The "blackness of darkness" overhangs forever. Had the sacred writers wished to teach that future punishment is for a time only, even a very long time, it would have been easy to have chosen a different species and form of metaphor that would have conveyed their meaning. And if the future punishment of the wicked is not endless, they were morally bound to have avoided conveying the impression they actually have conveyed by the kind of figures they have selected. "It is the willful deceit," says Paley, "that makes the lie; and we willfully deceive when our expressions are not true in the sense in which we believe the hearer to apprehend them." (supplement 7.6.4.)

The epithet aiōnios (everlasting) is of prime importance. In order to determine its meaning when applied to the punishment of the wicked, it is necessary, first, to determine that of the substantive from which the adjective is derived. Aiōn13 signifies an "age." It is a time word. It denotes "duration" more or less. Of itself, the word duration or age does not determine the length of the duration or age. God has duration, and angels have duration. The Creator has an aiōn and the creature has an aiōn, but that of the latter is as nothing compared with that of the former: "Behold you have made my days as a handbreadth; and my age is as nothing before you" (Ps. 39:5).

In reference to man and his existence, the Scriptures speak of two and only two aiōnes or ages: one finite and one infinite, one limited and one endless, the latter succeeding the former.17 An indefinite series of limited eons with no final endless eon is a pagan and gnostic, not a biblical conception. The importation of a notion of an endless series of finite cycles, each of which is without finality and immutability, into the Christian system has introduced error, similarly as the importation of the pagan conception of hades has. The misconceiving of a rhetorical figure in the scriptural use of the plural for the singular, namely, tous aiōnas tōn aiōnōn for ton aiōna, has also contributed to this error.

The two eons or ages known in Scripture are mentioned together in the following: "It shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world (aiōn) nor in the world (aiōn) to come" (Matt. 12:32); "he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time (kairos), and in the world (aiōn) to come eternal life" (Mark 10:30); "he shall receive manifold more in this present time (kairos), and in the world (aiōn) to come life everlasting" (Luke 18:30); "above every name that is named, not only in this world (aiōn) but also in that which is to come" (Eph. 1:21). The "things present" and the "things to come" mentioned in Rom. 8:38 and 1 Cor. 3:22 refer to the same two ages. These two eons or ages correspond to the two durations of "time" and "eternity," in the common use of these terms. The present age or eon is "time"; the future age or eon is "eternity." (supplement 7.6.5.)

The present finite and limited age or eon is denominated in Scripture "this world" (ho aiōn houtos) or ˓ôlām ḥzzeh29 (Matt. 12:32; 13:22; Luke 16:8; 20:34; Rom. 12:2; 1 Cor. 1:20; 2:6). Another designation is "this present world" (ho nyn aiōn or ho enestōs aiōn) (1 Tim. 6:17; 2 Tim. 4:10; Titus 2:12; Gal. 1:4). Sometimes the present limited age or eon is denoted by aiōn without the article: "Which he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began (ap' aiōnos)" (Luke 1:70); "it was not heard since the world began (ap' aiōnos)" (John 9:39).

For rhetorical effect, the present limited age or eon is sometimes represented as composed of a number of lesser ages or cycles, as in modern phrase the sum total of finite earthly time is denominated "the centuries" or "the ages." The following are examples: "The hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages (pro tōn aiōnōn)" (1 Cor. 2:7; cf. Eph. 3:9; Col. 1:26). In 1 Tim. 1:17 God is denominated basileus tōn aiōnōn (king of the ages of time) and therefore "the king eternal" (Authorized Version). In Rom. 16:25 a "mystery" is said to have been kept secret chronois aiōniois (during eonian times; Authorized Version: since the world began). The ages of the limited eon are meant. The secret was withheld from all the past cycles of time. In Titus 1:2 "eternal life" is said to have been promised pro chronōn aiōniōn (before eonian times; Authorized Version: before the world began). The ages of the limited eon are meant. God promised eternal life prior to all the periods of time, that is, eternally promised. In these passages, "eonian times" is equivalent to "the centuries" or the "long ages."39 This rhetorical plural does not destroy the unity of the limited age or eon. To conceal a mystery from the past "eonian ages" or the past centuries and cycles of finite time is the same as to conceal it from past finite time as a whole. (supplement 7.6.6.)

The future infinite and endless age or eon is denominated in Scripture "the future world" (Authorized Version and Revised Version: the world to come, aiōn ho mellōn or ˓ôlām habbā˒; Matt. 12:32; Heb. 2:5; 6:5). Another designation is "the world to come" (aiōn ho erchomenos; Mark 10:30; Luke 18:30). Still another designation is "that world" (aiōn ekeinos; Luke 20:35). Frequently, the endless age is denoted by aiōn simply, but with the article for emphasis (ho aiōn): "Has never forgiveness (eis ton aiōna)" (Mark 3:29; cf. Matt. 21:19; John 4:14; 6:51, 58; 8:35, 51–52; 10:28; 11:26; 12:34; 13:8; 14:16; 2 Cor. 9:9; Heb. 5:6; 6:20; 7:17; 2 Pet. 2:17; 1 John 2:17; Jude 13).

The same use of the plural for rhetorical effect employed in the case of the limited eon is also employed in that of the unlimited. The future infinite aiōn is represented as made up of lesser aiōnes49 or cycles, as in English "infinity" is sometimes denominated "the infinities," "eternity," "the eternities," "immensity," and "the immensities." The rhetorical plural, in this instance as in the other, does not conflict with the unity of the infinite age or eon. The following are examples of this use: "The Creator is blessed forever (eis tous aiōnas)" (Rom. 1:25; cf. 9:5; 11:36; 16:27; 2 Cor. 11:31; Phil. 4:20; Gal. 1:5; 1 Tim. 1:17; Rev. 1:6, 18; 4:9–10; 5:13; 7:12). The phrases eis tous aiōnas and eis tous aiōnas tōn aiōnōn53 are equivalent to eis ton aiōna. All alike denote the one infinite and endless eon or age.

Since the word eon (aiōn) or age in Scripture may denote either the present finite age or the future endless age, in order to determine the meaning of eonian (aiōnios), it is necessary first to determine in which of the two eons—the limited or the endless—the thing exists to which the epithet is applied, because anything in either eon may be denominated "eonian." The adjective follows its substantive in meaning. Onesimus, as a slave, existed in this world (aiōn) of "time," and when he is called an eonian or "everlasting" (aiōnios) servant (Philem. 15), it is meant that his servitude continues as long as the finite eon in which he is a servant; and this is practically at an end for him, when he dies and leaves it. The mountains are denominated eonian or "everlasting" (aiōnia) in the sense that they endure as long as the finite world (aiōn) of which they are a part endures. God, on the other hand, is a being that exists in the infinite aiōn61 and is therefore aiōnios in the endless signification of the word. The same is true of the spirits of angels and men, because they exist in the future eon as well as in the present one. If anything belongs solely to the present age or eon, it is eonian in the limited signification; if it belongs to the future age or eon, it is eonian in the unlimited signification. If, therefore, the punishment of the wicked occurs in the present eon, it is eonian in the sense of temporal; but if it occurs in the future eon, it is eonian in the sense of endless. The adjective takes its meaning from its noun.63

The English word forever has the same twofold meaning both in Scripture and in common use. Sometimes it means as long as a man lives upon earth. The Hebrew servant that had his ear bored with an awl to the door of his master was to be his servant "forever" (Exod. 21:6). Sometimes it means as long as the Jewish state should last. The ceremonial laws were to be statutes "forever" (Lev. 16:34). Sometimes it means as long as the world stands: "One generation passes away, and another generation comes; but the earth abides forever" (Eccles. 1:4). In all such instances, "forever" refers to the temporal eon and denotes finite duration. But in other instances, and they are the great majority in Scripture, "forever" refers to the endless eon, as when it is said that "God is over all blessed forever." The limited signification of "forever" in the former cases does not disprove its unlimited signification in the latter. That Onesimus was an "everlasting" (aiōnios) servant and that the hills are "everlasting" (aiōnia) no more disproves the everlastingness of God, the soul, heaven, and hell than the term forever in a title deed disproves it. To hold land "forever" is to hold it "as long as grass grows and water runs," that is, as long as this world or eon endures.

The objection that, because aiōnios or "eonian" denotes "that which belongs to an age," it cannot mean endless rests upon the assumption that there is no endless aiōn67 or age. It postulates an indefinite series of limited eons or ages, no one of which is final and everlasting. But the texts that have been cited disprove this. Scripture speaks of but two eons which cover and include the whole existence of man and his whole duration. If, therefore, he is an immortal being, one of these must be endless. The phrase ages of ages applied to the future endless age does not prove that there is more than one future age, any more than the phrase the eternities proves that there is more than one eternity or the phrase the infinities proves that there is more than one infinity. The plural in these cases is rhetorical and intensive, not arithmetical, in its force.

This examination of the scriptural use of the word aiōnios refutes the assertion that eonian means "spiritual" in distinction from "material" or "sensuous" and has no reference at all to time or duration, that when applied to "death" it merely denotes that the death is mental and spiritual in its nature without saying whether it is long or short, temporary or endless. Beyond dispute, some objects are denominated "eonian" in Scripture which have nothing mental or spiritual in them. The mountains are "eonian." The truth is that the term aiōn denotes time only—and never denotes the nature and quality of an object. All the passages that have been quoted show that duration, either limited or endless, is intended by the word. Whenever this visible world in the sense of the matter constituting it is meant, the word employed is kosmos, not aiōn. It is only when this world in the sense of the time of its continuance is intended that aiōn72 is employed. St. Paul combines both meanings in Eph. 2:2: the heathen, he says, "walk according to the course of this world (kata ton aiōna tou kosmou toutou)." In Heb. 1:2 and 11:3, where aiōnes denotes the worlds created by God, it is, as Lewis ("Ecclesiastes" in Lange's Commentary, 47) remarks in opposition to Winer and Robinson, "the time sense of worlds after worlds," not "the space sense of worlds beyond or above worlds," that is intended.

In by far the greater number of instances, aiōn and aiōnios76 refer to the future infinite age and not to the present finite age, to eternity and not to time. Says Stuart (Exegetical Essays, 13, 16):

Aiōnios is employed 66 times in the New Testament. Of these, 51 relate to the future happiness of the righteous; 7 relate to future punishment (Matt. 18:8; 25:41, 46; Mark 3:29; 1 Thess. 1:9; Heb. 6:2; Jude 6); 2 relate to God; 6 are of a miscellaneous nature (5 relating to confessedly endless things, as covenant, invisibilities; and one, in Philem. 15, to a perpetual service). In all the instances in which aiōnios refers to future duration, it denotes endless duration; saying nothing of the instances in which it refers to future punishment. Hebrew ˓ôlām79 is translated in the Septuagint by aiōn 308 times. In almost the whole of these instances the meaning is time unlimited: a period without end. In the other instances, it means aiōn81 in the secondary, limited sense; it is applied to the mountains, the levitical statutes, priesthood, etc.

The younger Edwards (Reply to Chauncy, 14) says that "aiōn, reckoning the reduplications of it, as aiōnes tōn aiōnōn, to be single instances of its use, occurs in the New Testament in 104 instances, in 32 of which it means a limited duration. In 7 instances, it may be taken in either the limited or the endless sense. In 65 instances, including 6 instances in which it is applied to future punishment, it plainly signifies an endless duration."

An incidental proof that the adjective aiōnios has the unlimited signification when applied to future punishment is the fact that the destiny of lost men is bound up with that of Satan and his angels: "Then shall he say unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt. 25:41). These are represented in Scripture as hopelessly lost: "The devil that deceived them shall be tormented day and night forever and ever" (Rev. 20:10). The Jews to whom Christ spoke understood the perdition of the lost angels to be absolute. If the positions of the restorationist are true in reference to man, they are also in reference to devils. But Scripture teaches that there is no redemption for the lost angels: "Christ took not on him the nature of angels" (Heb. 2:16).

Respecting the nature of the "everlasting punishment," it is clear from the biblical representations that it is accompanied with consciousness: Dives is "in torments" (Luke 16:23); "the smoke of their torment ascends up forever and ever" (Rev. 14:11); "fear has torment" (1 John 4:18); and the lost fear "the wrath of the Lamb" (Rev. 6:16). The figures of "fire" and "worm" are intended to denote conscious pain. An attempt has been made to prove that the punishment of the wicked is the extinction of consciousness. This doctrine is sometimes denominated annihilation. Few of its advocates, however, have contended for the strict annihilation of the substance of the soul and body. The more recent defenders maintain the doctrine of conditional immortality. According to this view, the soul is not naturally immortal. Some of this class contend that it is material. It gains immortality only through its redemption by Christ. All who are not redeemed lose all consciousness at the death of the body, and this is the "spiritual death" threatened in Scripture. As the death of the body is the extinction of sensation, so the death of the soul is the extinction of consciousness. The falsity of the theory of annihilation in both of its forms is proved by the following considerations:

1. Death is the opposite of birth, and birth does not mean the creation of substance. The conception and birth of an individual man is the uniting of a soul and a body, not the creation ex nihilo of either; and the physical death of an individual man is the separation of a soul and body, not the annihilation of either. Death is a change of the mode in which a substance exists and supposes that the substance itself continues in being:

Ne, when the life decays and forme does fade,

Doth it consume and into nothing goe,

But chaunged is and often altered to and froe.

The substaunce is not chaunged nor altered,

But th' only forme and outward fashion.

The death of an animal substance makes an alteration in the relations of certain material atoms, but does not put them out of existence. Dead matter is as far from nonentity as living matter. That physical death is not the annihilation of substance is proved by 1 Cor. 15:36: "That which you sow is not quickened except it die" (cf. John 12:24). In like manner, the death of the soul, or spiritual death, is only a change in the relations of the soul and its mode of existence, and not the annihilation of its substance. In spiritual death the soul is separated from God, as in physical death the soul is separated from the body. The union of the soul with God is spiritual life; its separation from God is spiritual death: "He that has the Son has life, and he that has not the Son has not life" (1 John 5:12).

2. The spiritually dead are described in Scripture as conscious: "In the day you eat thereof, you shall surely die" (Gen. 2:17) compared with "hid themselves" (3:8). After Adam and Eve's fall they were spiritually dead and filled with shame and terror before God. The "dead in trespasses and sins walk according to the course of this world" (Eph. 2:1–2); "she that lives in pleasure is dead while she lives" (1 Tim. 5:6); "you being dead in your sins has he forgiven" (Col. 2:13); "you live and are dead" (Rev. 3:1). Spiritual death is the same as the "second death," and the second death "hurts" (2:11); and its smoke of torment "ascends forever and ever" (19:3).

3. The extinction of consciousness is not of the nature of punishment. The essence of punishment is suffering, and suffering is consciousness. In order to be punished, the person must be conscious of a certain pain, must feel that he deserves it, and know that it is inflicted because he does. All three of these elements are required in a case of punishment. To reduce a man to unconsciousness would make his punishment an impossibility. If God by a positive act extinguishes at death the remorse of a hardened villain by extinguishing his self-consciousness, it is a strange use of language to denominate this a punishment. Still another proof that the extinction of consciousness is not of the nature of punishment is the fact that a holy and innocent being might be deprived of consciousness by his Creator, but could not be punished by him. God is not obliged by his justice to perpetuate a conscious existence which he originated ex nihilo. For wise ends, he might suffer an unfallen angel not only to lose consciousness, but to lapse into his original nonentity. But he could not, in justice, inflict retributive suffering upon him.

4. The extinction either of being or of consciousness admits no degrees of punishment. All transgressors are "punished" exactly alike. This contradicts Luke 12:47–48 and Rom. 2:12.

5. According to this theory, brutes are punished. In losing consciousness at death, the animal like the man incurs an everlasting loss. The annihilationist contends that the substance of punishment is in the result and not in its being felt or experienced. If a transgressor is put out of conscious existence, the result is an everlasting loss to him, though he does not know it. But the same thing is true of a brute. And if the former is punished, the latter is also.

6. The advocate of conditional immortality, in teaching that the extinction of consciousness is the "eternal death" of Scripture, implies that the continuance of consciousness is the "eternal life." But mere consciousness is not happiness. Judas was conscious, certainly, when he hung himself, even if he is not now. But he was not happy.

7. The extinction of consciousness is not regarded by sinful men as an evil, but a good. They substitute the doctrine of the eternal sleep of the soul for that of its eternal punishment. This shows that the two things are not equivalents. When Mirabeau lay dying, he cried passionately for opium, that he might never awake. The guilty and remorseful have, in all ages, deemed the extinction of consciousness after death to be a blessing; but the advocate of conditional immortality explains it to be a curse. "Sight and hearing and all earthly good, without justice and virtue," says Plato (Laws 2.661), "are the greatest of evils, if life be immortal; but not so great, if the bad man lives a very short time."

8. The fact that the soul depends for its immortality and consciousness upon the upholding power of its maker does not prove either that it is to be annihilated or to lose consciousness. Matter also depends for its existence and operations upon the Creator. Both matter and mind can be annihilated by the same being who created them from nothing. Whether he will cease to uphold any particular work of his hand can be known only by revelation. In the material world, we see no evidence of such an intention. We are told that "the elements shall melt with fervent heat," but not that they shall be annihilated. And, certainly, all that God has said in revelation respecting creation, redemption, and perdition implies and teaches that he intends to uphold, not to annihilate the human spirit; to perpetuate, not extinguish its self-consciousness.

The form of universalism which is the most respectable—and therefore the most dangerous—is that which concedes the force of the biblical and rational arguments respecting the guilt of sin and its intrinsic desert of everlasting punishment, but contends that redemption from it through the vicarious atonement of Christ is extended into the next world. The advocates of this view assert that between death and the final judgment the application of Christ's work is going on, that the Holy Spirit is regenerating sinners in the intermediate state, and they are believing and repenting as in this life. This makes the day of judgment, instead of the day of death, the dividing line between "time" and "eternity," between ho aiōn houtos and aiōn ho mellōn. And this makes the intermediate state a third eon by itself, lying between "time" and "eternity," between "this world" and "the world to come."

That the "intermediate state" is not a third eon, but a part of the second endless eon, is proved by the following considerations:

First, by the fact that in Scripture the disembodied state is not called "intermediate." This is an ecclesiastical term which came in with the doctrine of purgatory and along with the exaggeration of the difference between paradise and heaven and between hades and gehenna. Second, by the fact that in Scripture death is represented as the deciding epoch in a man's existence. It is the boundary between the two biblical eons or worlds. Until a man dies, he is in "this world" (ho nyn aiōn); after death, he is in "the future world" (aiōn ho mellōn). The common understanding of the teaching of Scripture is that men are in "time" so long as they live, but when they die they enter "eternity": "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after that judgment" (Heb. 9:27). This teaches that prior to death man's destiny is not decided, he being not yet sentenced; but after death his destiny is settled. When he dies, the "private judgment," that is, the immediate personal consciousness either of penitence or impenitence, occurs. Every human spirit, in that supreme moment when it "returns to God who gave it," knows by direct self-consciousness whether it is a child or an enemy of God in temper and disposition; whether it is humble and contrite or proud, hard, and impenitent; whether it welcomes or rejects divine mercy in Christ. The article of death is an event in human existence which strips off all disguises and shows the person what he really is in moral character. He "knows as he is known," and in this flashing light passes a sentence upon himself that is accurate. This "private judgment" at death is reaffirmed in the "general judgment" of the last day.

Accordingly, our Lord teaches distinctly that death is a finality for the impenitent sinner. Twice in succession, he says with awful emphasis to the Pharisees, "If you believe not that I am he, you shall die in your sins" (John 8:21, 24). This implies that to "die in sin" is to be hopelessly lost. Again, he says, "Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walks in darkness knows not whither he goes. While you have light, believe in the light, that you may be the children of light" (12:35–36). According to these words of the Redeemer, the light of the gospel is not accessible in the darkness of death: "The night comes, wherein no man can work" (9:4). The night of death puts a stop to the work of salvation that is appointed to be done in the daytime of this life. St. Paul teaches the same truth in 1 Thess. 5:5–7: "You are all the children of light and the children of the day: we are not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night." "God said unto him, You fool, this night your soul shall be required of you: then whose shall those things be which you have provided? So is he that lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God" (Luke 12:20–21). The end of a man's life on earth is often represented as the decisive moment in his existence: "He that endures to the end shall be saved" (Matt. 10:22; 24:13); "Jesus Christ shall confirm you unto the end" (1 Cor. 1:8); "whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end" (Heb. 3:6); "we are made partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end" (3:14); "we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end" (6:11); "he that overcomes and keeps my works unto the end to him will I give power over the nations" (Rev. 2:26). In these passages, the end of life or of this world is meant. No one would think of the end of the intermediate state or of eternity as the telos or telous91 in the mind of the writer.

With these New Testament teachings agrees the frequent affirmation of the Old Testament that after death nothing can be done toward securing salvation: "The wicked is driven away in his wickedness; but the righteous has hope in his death" (Prov. 14:32); "when a wicked man dies, his expectation shall perish" (11:7); "in death there is no remembrance of you: in the grave who shall give you thanks?" (Ps. 6:5); "will you show wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise you? shall your loving-kindness be declared in the grave?" (88:10–11); "the dead praise not the Lord, nor any that go down into silence" (115:17); "to him that is joined to all the living, there is hope: for the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward" (Eccles. 9:4–6). These passages do not teach the utter unconsciousness of the soul after death, in flat contradiction to that long list already cited (p. 844) which asserts the contrary, but that there is no alteration of character in the next life: "In death, there is noremembrance of God"; "the dead shall not arise and praise God"; "shall God declare his loving-kindness in the grave?" (supplement 7.6.7.)

The parable of Dives proves that death is the turning point in human existence and fixes the everlasting state of the person. Dives asks that his brethren may be warned before they die and enter hades; because after death and the entrance into hades, there is an impassable gulf between misery and happiness, sin and holiness. This shows that the so-called intermediate state is not intermediate in respect to the essential elements of heaven and hell, but is a part of the final and endless state of the soul. It is "intermediate" only in reference to the secondary matter of the presence or absence of the body.

The asserted extension of redemption into the endless eon or age is contradicted by Scripture. Salvation from sin is represented as confined to the limited eon by the covenant between the Father and the Son. The most important and explicit passage bearing upon this point is 1 Cor. 15:24–28: "Then comes the end, when Christ shall have delivered up the kingdom of God, even the Father, when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet." St. Paul here states the fact disclosed to him by revelation from God that the redemption of sinners will not go on forever, but will cease at a certain point of time. The mediator will carry on his work of saving sinful men until he has gathered in his church and completed the work according to the original plan and covenant between himself and his Father, and then he will surrender his mediatorial commission and office (basileian). There will then no longer be any mediation going on between sinners and God. The redeemed will be forever united to their divine head in heaven, and the wicked will be shut up in the "outer darkness." That Christ's mediatorial work does not secure the salvation of all men during the appointed period in which it is carried on is proved by the fact that when "the end comes" some men are described as the "enemies" of Christ and as being "put under his feet" (1 Cor. 15:24–25). All of Christ's redeemed "stand before his throne" (Rev. 14:3; 19:4–7; 21:3). They are in the "mansions" which he has "prepared" for them (John 14:2–3).

The reason assigned for Christ's surrender of his mediatorial commission is "that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28); not that "God even the Father may be all in all" (1 Cor. 15:24). It is the Trinity that is to be supreme. To Christ, as an incarnate trinitarian person and an anointed mediator, "all power is given in heaven and upon earth" (Matt. 28:18) for the purpose of saving sinners. As such, he accepts and holds a secondary position of condescension and humiliation, when compared with his original unincarnate position (see pp. 675–76). In this reference, he receives a "commandment" (John 10:18) and a "kingdom" (1 Cor. 15:24). In this reference, as believers "are Christ's," so "Christ is God's" (1 Cor. 3:23); and as "the head of the woman is the man," so "the head of Christ is God" (1 Cor. 11:3). But when Christ has finished his work of mediating between the triune God and sinful men and of saving sinners, this condition of subjection to an office and a commission ceases. The dominion (basileian) over heaven and earth, temporarily delegated to a single trinitarian person incarnate for purposes of redemption and salvation, now returns to the eternal three whence it came and to whom it originally belongs. The Son of God, his humanity exalted and glorified and his divine-human person united forever to his church as their head, no longer prosecutes that work of redemption which he carried forward through certain ages of time, but, with the Father and Spirit, three in one, reigns over the entire universe: over the holy "who stand before the throne" and over the wicked who are "under his feet" and "in the bottomless pit."

The confinement of the work of redemption to the limited eon, which terminates practically for each individual at the death of the body, is taught in many other passages of Scripture: "My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh; yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years" (Gen. 6:3). This teaches that the regenerating agency of the divine Spirit in the sinner's heart was to be restricted to the hundred and twenty years which for a time was the average length of human life. "O that they were wise, that they would consider their latter end" (Deut. 32:29); "teach us so to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom" (Ps. 90:12); "everyone that is godly shall pray unto you in a time when you may be found" (32:6); "because I have called, and you refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but you have set at naught all my counsel and would none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear comes; then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me" (Prov. 1:24–28); "whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work nor device nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave whither you go" (Eccles. 9:10); "seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near" (Isa. 55:6); "take heed to yourselves lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and cares of this life and so that day come upon you unawares: for as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the earth" (Luke 21:34–35); "watch, therefore, for you know not what hour your Lord comes; the Lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looks not for him and shall cut him asunder and appoint him his portion with unbelievers: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matt. 24:42, 50); "if you had known, even you, at least in this your day, the things which belong unto your peace! but now they are hid from your eyes" (Luke 19:42); "strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able; when once the master of the house is risen up and has shut the door, and you begin to stand without and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us, he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence you are" (13:24–25); "we beseech you that you receive not the grace of God in vain; for he says, I have heard you in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succored you: behold now is the accepted time; behold now is the day of salvation" (2 Cor. 6:2); "today if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts" (Heb. 3:7). The argument in 3:7–19 is to the effect that as God swore that those Israelites who did not believe and obey his servant Moses during the forty years of wandering in the desert should not enter the earthly Canaan, so those who do not "while it is called today"—that is, while they are here in time—believe and obey his Son Jesus Christ, shall not enter the heavenly Canaan: "Take heed lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief. But exhort one another daily, while it is called today" (3:12–13); "God limits a certain day, saying in David, today after so long a time, today if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts" (4:7). Hebrews 10:26 speaks of a time when "there remains no more sacrifice for sins, but a fearful looking-for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries of God." "Behold I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give to every man according as his work shall be. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still" (Rev. 22:11–12).

If sinners are redeemed beyond the grave, man must be informed of the fact by God himself. There is no other way of finding it out. He has not been so informed, but, if language has any meaning, has been informed of the contrary. Bishop Butler (Analogy 1.2) states the case with his usual conciseness and clearness:

Reason did, as it well might, conclude that it should finally be well with the righteous and ill with the wicked; but it could not be determined upon any principles of reason whether human creatures might not have been appointed to pass through other states of life and being, before that distributive justice should finally and effectually take place. Revelation teaches us that the next state of things after the present is appointed for the execution of this justice; that it shall no longer be delayed, but the mystery of God, the great mystery of his suffering vice and confusion to prevail, shall then be finished; and he will take to him his great power and will reign by rendering to everyone according to his works.

The asserted extension of redemption into the period between death and the resurrection cannot be placed upon the ground of obligation and justice; and the only other ground possible, that of the divine promise so to extend it, is wanting. Our Lord teaches that men prior to his coming into the world are "condemned already" (John 3:16). His advent to save them supposes that they are already lost; and they are lost by sin; and sin is man's free self-determination. Consequently, man the sinner has no claim upon God for redemption. Forgiveness is undeserved, whether offered here or hereafter. The exercise of mercy is optional with God: "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy" (Rom. 9:15). It follows from this that the length of time during which the offer of mercy is made to transgressors is likewise optional with God. It may be long or short, according to the divine will. Should God say to a sinner: "I will pardon your sin today, if you will penitently confess it, but not tomorrow," this sinner could not complain of injustice, but would owe gratitude for the mercy thus extended for a limited time. It cannot be said that unless God offers to pardon man forever and ever he is not a merciful being. Neither can this be said, if he confines redemption to this life and does not redeem sinners in the intermediate state.

It is here that the logical inconsistency of such theologians as Müller and Dorner appears. Lessing, the first of German critics, makes the following remark respecting the German mind: "We Germans suffer from no lack of systematic books. No nation in the world surpasses us in the faculty of deducing from a couple of definitions whatever conclusions we please, in most fair and logical order" (Preface to Laocoon). The truth of this remark is illustrated by some of the systems of theology and philosophy constructed in Germany. The reasoning is close, consecutive, and true in some sections; but loose, inconsequent, and false as a whole. The mind of the thinker when moving in the limited sphere moves logically; but moving in the universe and attempting to construct a philosophy or theology of the infinite fails utterly. Many of the trains of reasoning in Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre are profound, closely reasoned, and correct, but the system as a whole has fatal defects. No one will deny the rigor of Hegel's logical processes in segments, but the total circle of his thinking is pantheistic and full of inconsistency.

Lessing's remark applies to that type of universalism of which Müller and Dorner are the best representatives and the ablest advocates. In the first place, upon "a couple" of obscure and dubious scriptural texts, they rear the whole great fabric of a future redemption, in direct contradiction to some scores of perfectly plain texts that teach the confinement of redemption to this life. And, second, after laying down a theory of sin which represents it as pure self-determination and guilt, sin is then discussed as an evil that is entitled to the offer of a pardon and a remedy. Müller and Dorner, both alike, explain sin as originating in the free and guilty agency of the finite will and as requiring an atonement in order to its remission. And yet both alike, when they come to eschatology, assume tacitly, but do not formally assert, that divine perfection requires that the offer of forgiveness be made sooner or later to every sinner, that there will be a defect in the benevolence and a blemish in the character of the Supreme Being if he does not tender a pardon to every transgressor of his law. Their eschatology thus contradicts their hamartiology.

The extension of the work of redemption into the future world is made to rest very much for its support upon the cases of the heathen and of infants. Respecting the former, it is certain that the heathen are voluntary transgressors of the moral law and therefore have no claim upon divine mercy. Scripture teaches that they perish because of their sin and impenitence in sin. It is wicked to sin and still more wicked not to repent of it. The heathen are chargeable with both. St. Paul describes them as those "who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them" (Rom. 1:32); "there is no respect of persons with God; for as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law" (2:11); "the Gentiles show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts accusing, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ" (2:14–15); "the Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart, who being past feeling have given themselves over into lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness" (Eph. 4:17); "remember that you being in time past Gentiles were at that time without hope and without God in the world" (2:11–12); "murderers, whoremongers, and idolaters shall have their part in the lake of fire and brimstone: which is the second death" (Rev. 21:8). Jesus Christ said from heaven to Saul of Tarsus that he had appointed him to be "a minister and witness to the Gentiles, to open their eyes, to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among them that are sanctified by faith" (Acts 26:16–18). There is, consequently, no ground for asserting that justice and obligation require that the pardon of sins be tendered to the heathen in the next life.

It does not follow, however, that because God is not obliged to offer pardon to the unevangelized heathen, either here or hereafter, therefore no unevangelized heathen are pardoned. The electing mercy of God reaches to the heathen. It is not the doctrine of the church that the entire mass of pagans, without exception, have gone down to endless impenitence and death. That some unevangelized men are saved in the present life by an extraordinary exercise of redeeming grace in Christ has been the hope and belief of Christendom. It was the hope and belief of the elder Calvinists, as it is of the later. The Second Helvetic Confession, after the remark that the ordinary mode of salvation is by the instrumentality of the written words, adds (1.7): "We acknowledge, meanwhile, that God can illuminate men even without the external ministry, how and when he pleases, for such lies within his power." Westminster Confession 10.3, after saying that "elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who works when and where and how he pleases," adds: "So also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word." This is commonly understood to refer not merely, or mainly, to idiots and insane persons, but to such of the pagan world as God pleases to regenerate without the use of written revelation. One of the strictest Calvinists of the sixteenth century, Zanchi, whose treatise on predestination was translated by Toplady, after remarking that many nations have never had the privilege of hearing the word, says (chap. 4) that "it is not indeed improbable that some individuals in these unenlightened countries may belong to the secret election of grace, and the habit of faith may be wrought in them." By the term habit (habitus), the elder theologians meant an inward disposition of the heart. The "habit of faith" involves penitence for sin and the longing for its forgiveness and removal. The "habit of faith" is the broken and contrite heart, which expresses itself in the prayer, "God be merciful to me a sinner." It is certain that the Holy Spirit can produce, if he please, such a disposition and frame of mind in a pagan without employing, as he commonly does, the written word. The case of the blind man in John 9:36–38 is an example of the "habit of faith," though produced in this instance through the instrumentality of the written law: "Jesus says unto him, Do you believe on the Son of God? He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? And Jesus said unto him, You have both seen him, and it is he that talks with you. And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshiped him." Here was sorrow for sin and a desire for redemption from it wrought in the heart by the divine Spirit, prior to the actual knowledge of Christ as the Savior of sinners. The cases of the centurion Cornelius and the Ethiopian eunuch are also examples of the "habit of faith." These men, under the teaching of the Spirit, were conscious of sin and were anxiously inquiring if and how it could be forgiven. That there is a class of persons in unevangelized heathendom who are the subjects of gracious influences of this kind is implied in St. Paul's affirmation that "they are not all Israel, which are of Israel" (Rom. 9:6) and that "they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham" (Gal. 3:7). It is taught also in Matt. 8:11 and Luke 13:30: "Many shall come from the east and west and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out. And, behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last." This affirmation of Christ was called out by the "habit of faith or disposition to believe in that Gentile centurion, respecting whom he said, "I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel" (Matt. 8:5–10).

The true reason for hoping that an unevangelized heathen is saved is not that he was virtuous, but that he was penitent. A penitent man is necessarily virtuous; but a virtuous man is not necessarily penitent. Sorrow for sin produces morality; but morality does not produce sorrow for sin. A great error is committed at this point. The Senecas, the Antonines, the Plutarchs, and such like have been singled out as the hopeful examples in paganism. It is not for man to decide what was the real state of the heart; but the writings of these men do not reveal the sense of sin, do not express penitence, do not show a craving for redemption. There is too much egotism, self-consciousness, and self-righteousness in them. The man, judged by his books, is moral, but proud. He is virtuous, but plumes himself upon it. This is not a hopeful characteristic, when we are asking what are the prospects of a human soul, before the bar of God: "To this man will I look, says the Lord, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and trembles at my word" (Isa. 66:2); "blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:3). (supplement 7.6.8.)

This line of remark holds good in Christendom as well as in heathendom. There is a class of men in modern society marked by morality and lofty self-respect, but by no consciousness of sin and no confession of it. And judged by New Testament principles, no class of mankind is farther off from the kingdom of heaven. There is no class that scorns the publican's cry and spurns the atoning blood with such decision and energy as they. To them, the words of Christ in a similar case apply: "The publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of heaven before you" (Matt. 21:31). The Magdalen is nearer divine pity than the Pharisee. And upon the same principle, those benighted children of ignorance and barbarism who feel their sin and degradation and are ready to listen with docility to the missionary when he comes with the tidings of the infinite compassion are nearer to heaven than the children of a gilded and heartless civilization who have no moral unrest and turn a deaf ear to all the overtures of mercy.

This extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit is mentioned by the Redeemer to illustrate the sovereignty of God in the exercise of mercy, not to guide his church in their evangelistic labor. His command is to "preach the gospel to every creature." The extraordinary work of God is not a thing for man to expect and rely upon, either in the kingdom of nature or of grace. It is his ordinary and established method which is to direct him. The law of missionary effort is that "faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God" (Rom. 11:17).

Two errors, therefore, are to be avoided: First, that all men are saved; second, that only a few men are saved. Some fifty years ago, Schleiermacher surprised all Lutheran Germany with a defense of the Calvinistic doctrine of election; but the surprise was diminished when it appeared that he held that God has elected and will save every human creature without exception. This cannot be squared with Scripture. On the other hand, some Calvinists have represented the number of the reprobated as greater than that of the elect or equal to it. They found this upon the words of Christ, "Many are called, but few are chosen." But this describes the situation at the time when our Lord spoke and not the final result of his redemptive work. Christ himself, in the days of his flesh, called many, but few responded to the call from his gracious lips. Our Lord's own preaching was not as successful as that of his apostles and of many of his ministers. This was a part of his humiliation and sorrow. But when Christ shall have "seen of the travail of his soul" and been "satisfied" with what he has seen, when the whole course of the gospel shall be complete and shall be surveyed from beginning to end, it will be found that God's elect or church is "a great multitude which no man can number, out of all nations and kindreds and peoples and tongues," and that their voice is as the voice of many waters and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, "Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigns" (Rev. 7:9; 19:6). The circle of God's election is a great circle of the heavens and not that of a treadmill.

Respecting the more difficult case of infants: the Scriptures do not discriminate and except them as a class from the mass of mankind, but involve them in the common sin and condemnation: "Suffer little children to come unto me" (Luke 18:16); "the promise is unto you and to your children" (Acts 2:39). The fall in Adam explains their case. Adopting the Augustino-Calvinistic statement of this fall, it can then be said that infants, like all others of the human family, freely and responsibly "sinned in Adam and fell with him in his first transgression" (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 16). This is no more impossible and no more of a mystery, in the case of infants than of adults. If it be conceded that the whole race apostatized in Adam, infants are righteously exposed to the punishment of sin and have no claim upon divine mercy. The sin which brings condemnation upon them is original sin and not actual transgressions. But original sin is the sinful inclination of the will. An infant has a rational soul, this soul has a will, this will is wrongly inclined, and wrong inclination is self-determined and punishable. If sinful inclination in an adult needs to be expiated by the atoning blood of Christ, so does sinful inclination in an infant. Infants, consequently, sustain the very same relation to the mercy of God in Christ that the remainder of the human race do. They need divine clemency like the rest of mankind. The "salvation" of infants supposes their prior damnation. Whoever asserts that an infant is "saved," by implication concedes that it is "lost." The salvation of an infant, like that of an adult, involves the remission and removal of sin and depends upon the unmerited and optional grace of God. This being so, it cannot be said that God would treat an infant unjustly if he did not offer him salvation in the intermediate state. And upon the supposition, now common in the evangelical churches, that all infants dying in infancy, being elect, are "regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who works when and where and how he pleases" (Westminster Confession 10.3), there is no need of any such offer. (supplement 7.6.9.)

Rational Argument

The chief objections to the doctrine of endless punishment are not biblical, but speculative. The great majority of students and exegetes find the tenet in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. Davidson, the most learned of English rationalistic critics, explicitly acknowledges that

if a specific sense be attached to words, never-ending misery is enunciated in the Bible. On the presumption that one doctrine is taught, it is the eternity of hell torments. Bad exegesis may attempt to banish it from the New Testament Scriptures, but it is still there, and expositors who wish to get rid of it, as Canon Farrar does, injure the cause they have in view by misrepresentation. It must be allowed that the New Testament record not only makes Christ assert everlasting punishment, but Paul and John. But the question should be looked at from a larger platform than single texts: in the light of God's attributes and the nature of the soul. The destination of man and the Creator's infinite goodness, conflicting as they do with everlasting punishment, remove it from the sphere of rational belief. If provision be not made in revelation for a change of moral character after death, it is made in reason. Philosophical considerations must not be set aside even by Scripture. (Last Things, 133, 136, 151)

Consequently, after presenting the biblical argument for endless punishment, it becomes necessary to present the rational argument for it. So long as the controversy is carried on by an appeal to the Bible, the defender of endless retribution has comparatively an easy task. But when the appeal is made to human self-love and sentiment or to ratiocination the demonstration requires more effort. And yet the doctrine is not only biblical, but rational. It is defensible on the basis of sound ethics and pure reason. Nothing is requisite for its maintenance but the admission of three cardinal truths of theism, namely, that there is a just God; that man has free will; and that sin is voluntary action. If these are denied, there can be no defense of endless punishment—or of any other doctrine except atheism and its corollaries. (supplement 7.6.10.)

The Bible and all the creeds of Christendom affirm man's free agency in sinning against God. The transgression which is to receive the endless punishment is voluntary. Sin, whether it be inward inclination or outward act, is unforced human agency. This is the uniform premise of Christian theologians of all schools. Endless punishment supposes the freedom of the human will and is impossible without it. Could a man prove that he is necessitated in his murderous hate and his murderous act, he would prove, in this very proof, that he ought not to be punished for it, either in time or eternity. Could Satan really convince himself that his moral character is not his own work, but that of God or of nature, his remorse would cease and his punishment would end. Self-determination runs parallel with hell.

Guilt, then, is what is punished, and not misfortune. Free and not forced agency is what feels the stroke of justice. What, now, is this stroke? What do law and justice do when they punish? Everything depends upon the right answer to this question. The fallacies and errors of universalism find their nest and hiding place at this point. The true definition of punishment detects and excludes them.

Punishment is neither chastisement nor calamity. Men suffer calamity, says Christ, not because they or their parents have sinned, "but that the works of God should be made manifest in them" (John 9:3). Chastisement is inflicted in order to develop a good, but imperfect character already formed: "The Lord loves whom he chastens," and "what son is he whom the earthly father chastens not?" (Heb. 12:6–7). Punishment, on the other hand, is retribution and is not intended to do the work of either calamity or chastisement, but a work of its own. And this work is to vindicate law, to satisfy justice. Punishment, therefore, as distinguished from chastisement is wholly retrospective in its primary aim. It looks back at what has been done in the past. Its first and great object is requital. A man is hung for murder, principally and before all other reasons, because he has voluntarily transgressed the law forbidding murder. He is not hung from a prospective aim, such as his own moral improvement or for the purpose of deterring others from committing murder. The remark of the English judge to the horse thief, in the days when such theft was capitally punished, "You are not hung because you have stolen a horse, but that horses may not be stolen," has never been regarded as eminently judicial. It is true that personal improvement may be one consequence of the infliction of penalty. But the consequence must not be confounded with the purpose: cum hoc non ergo propter hoc. The criminal may come to see and confess that his crime deserves its punishment and in genuine unselfish penitence may take sides with the law, approve its retribution, and go into the presence of the final judge, relying upon that great atonement which satisfies eternal justice for sin; but even this, the greatest personal benefit of all, is not what is aimed at in man's punishment of the crime of murder. For should there be no such personal benefit as this attending the infliction of the human penalty, the one sufficient reason for inflicting it still holds good, namely, the fact that the law has been violated and demands the death of the offender for this reason simply and only. Says Kant (Practical Reason, 151):

The notion of ill desert and punishableness is necessarily implied in the idea of voluntary transgression; and the idea of punishment excludes that of happiness in all its forms. For though he who inflicts punishment may, it is true, also have a benevolent purpose to produce by the punishment some good effect upon the criminal, yet the punishment must be justified, first of all, as pure and simple requital and retribution, that is, as a kind of suffering that is demanded by the law without any reference to its prospective beneficial consequences; so that even if no moral improvement and no personal advantage should subsequently accrue to the criminal, he must acknowledge that justice has been done to him and that his experience is exactly conformed to his conduct. In every instance of punishment, properly so called, justice is the very first thing and constitutes the essence of it. A benevolent purpose and a happy effect, it is true, may be conjoined with punishment; but the criminal cannot claim this as his due, and he has no right to reckon upon it. All that he deserves is punishment, and this is all that he can expect from the law which he has transgressed.

These are the words of as penetrating and ethical a thinker as ever lived.

Neither is it true that the first and principal aim of punishment, in distinction from chastisement, is the protection of society and the public good. This, like the personal benefit in the preceding case, is only secondary and incidental. The public good is not a sufficient reason for putting a man to death, but the satisfaction of law is. This view of penalty is most disastrous in its influence as well as false in its ethics. For if the good of the public is the true reason and object of punishment, the amount of it may be fixed by the end in view. The criminal may be made to suffer more than his crime deserves, if the public welfare in suppressing this particular kind of crime requires it. His personal desert and responsibility not being the one sufficient reason for his suffering, he may be made to suffer as much as the public safety requires. It was this theory of penalty that led to the multiplication of capital offenses. The prevention of forgery, it was once claimed in England, required that the forger should forfeit his life, and upon the principle that punishment is for the public protection and not for strict and exact justice, an offense against human property was expiated by human life. Contrary to the Noachic statute, which punishes only murder with death, this statute weighed out man's lifeblood against pounds, shillings, and pence. On this theory, the number of capital offenses become very numerous, and the criminal code very bloody. So that, in the long run, nothing is kinder than exact justice. It prevents extremes in either direction: either that of indulgence or that of cruelty.

This theory breaks down from whatever point it be looked at. Suppose that there were but one person in the universe. If he should transgress the law of God, then, upon the principle of expediency as the ground of penalty, this solitary subject of moral government could not be punished, that is, visited with a suffering that is purely retributive and not exemplary or corrective. His act has not injured the public, for there is no public. There is no need of his suffering as an example to deter others, for there are no others. But upon the principle of justice, in distinction from expediency, this solitary subject of moral government could be punished. (supplement 7.6.11.)

The vicious ethics of this theory of penalty expresses itself in the demoralizing maxim, "It is better that ten guilty men should escape than that one innocent man should suffer." But this is no more true than the converse, "It is better that ten innocent men should suffer than that one guilty man should escape." It is a choice of equal evil and equal injustice. In either case alike, justice is trampled down. In the first supposed case there are eleven instances of injustice and wrong; and in the last supposed case there are likewise eleven instances of injustice and wrong. Unpunished guilt is precisely the same species of evil with punished innocence. To say, therefore, that it is better that ten guilty persons should escape than that one innocent man should suffer is to say that it is better that there should be ten wrongs than one wrong against justice. The maxim assumes that the punishment of the guilty is not of so much consequence as the immunity of the innocent. But the truth is that both are equally required by justice.

The theory that punishment is retributive honors human nature, but the theory that it is merely expedient and useful degrades it. If justice be the true ground of penalty, man is treated as a person; but if the public good is the ground, he is treated as a chattel or a thing. When suffering is judicially inflicted because of the intrinsic gravity and real demerit of crime, man's free will and responsibility are recognized and put in the foreground; and these are his highest and distinguishing attributes. The sufficient reason for his suffering is found wholly within his own person in the exercise of self-determination. He is not seized by the magistrate and made to suffer for a reason extraneous to his own agency and for the sake of something lying wholly outside of himself—namely, the safety and happiness of others—but because of his own act. He is not handled like a brute or an inanimate thing that may be put to good use; but he is recognized as a free and voluntary person who is not punished because punishment is expedient and useful, but because it is just and right—not because the public safety requires it, but because he owes it. The dignity of the man himself, founded in his lofty but hazardous endowment of free will, is acknowledged.

Supposing it, now, to be conceded that future punishment is retributive in its essential nature, it follows that it must be endless from the nature of the case. For, suffering must continue as long as the reason for it continues. In this respect, it is like law, which lasts as long as its reason lasts: ratione cessante, cessat ipsa lex. Suffering that is educational and corrective may come to an end because moral infirmity and not guilt is the reason for its infliction, and moral infirmity may cease to exist. But suffering that is penal can never come to an end because guilt is the reason for its infliction, and guilt once incurred never ceases to be. The lapse of time does not convert guilt into innocence, as it converts moral infirmity into moral strength; and therefore no time can ever arrive when the guilt of the criminal will cease to deserve and demand its retribution. The reason for retribution today is a reason forever. Hence, when God disciplines and educates his children, he causes only a temporary suffering. In this case, "he will not keep his anger forever" (Ps. 103:9). But when, as the Supreme Judge, he punishes rebellious and guilty subjects of his government, he causes an endless suffering. In this case, "their worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:48).

The real question, therefore, is whether God ever punishes. That he chastises is not disputed. But does he ever inflict a suffering that is not intended to reform the transgressor and does not reform him, but is intended simply and only to vindicate law and satisfy justice by requiting him for his transgression? Revelation teaches that he does: "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord" (Rom. 12:19); "vengeance belongs unto me, I will recompense, says the Lord" (Heb. 10:30). Retribution is here asserted to be a function of the Supreme Being and his alone. The creature has no right to punish except as he is authorized by the infinite ruler: "The powers that be are ordained of God. The ruler is the minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that does evil" (Rom. 13:1, 4). The power which civil government has to punish crime—the private person having no such power—is only a delegated right from the source of retribution. Natural religion, as well as revealed, teaches that God inflicts upon the voluntary transgressor of law a suffering that is purely vindicative of law. The pagan sages enunciate the doctrine, and it is mortised into the moral constitution of man, as is proved by his universal fear of retribution. The objection that a suffering not intended to reform but to satisfy justice is cruel and unworthy of God is refuted by the question of St. Paul: "Is God unrighteous who takes vengeance?" (3:5–6). It is impossible either to found or administer a government, in heaven or upon earth, unless the power to punish crime is conceded.

The endlessness of future punishment, then, is implied in the endlessness of guilt and condemnation. When a crime is condemned, it is absurd to ask, "How long is it condemned?" The verdict "Guilty for ten days" was Hibernian. Damnation means absolute and everlasting damnation. All suffering in the next life, therefore, of which the sufficient and justifying reason is guilt, must continue as long as the reason continues; and the reason is everlasting. If it be righteous today in God's retributive justice to smite the transgressor because he violated the law yesterday, it is righteous to do the same thing tomorrow and the next day and so on ad infinitum, because the state of the case ad infinitum remains unaltered. The guilt incurred yesterday is a standing and endless fact. What, therefore, guilt legitimates this instant, it legitimates every instant and forever.

The demand that penal suffering shall stop when it has once begun is as irrational as the demand that guilt shall stop when it has once begun. The continuous nature of guilt necessitates the endlessness of retribution. A man, for illustration, is guilty of profanity today. God, we will suppose, immediately begins to cause him to suffer in his mind as the righteous requital for his transgression of the third commandment. The transgressor immediately begins to feel remorse for his sin. Why, upon principles of justice, should he feel remorse for his profanity today and not feel it tomorrow? Why should he feel it tomorrow and not feel it a million years hence? Why should he feel it a million years hence and not feel it forever? At what point should remorse stop? If we suppose the state of the case to be unchanged, if we suppose no penitence for the profanity and no appropriation of the only atonement that cancels guilt, then the mental suffering which the profanity deserves and experiences now it always must deserve and experience. The same reasoning will apply to whatever suffering besides remorse enters into the sum total of future punishment.

Again, the endlessness of punishment follows from the indivisibility of guilt. The nature of guilt is such that it cannot be divided up and distributed in parts along a length of time and be expiated in parts, but is concentrated whole and entire at each and every point of time. The guilt of the sin of profanity does not rest upon the transgressor, one part of it at twelve o'clock and another part of it at half past twelve and another part of it at one o'clock and so on. The whole infinite guilt of this act of sin against God lies upon the sinner at each and every instant of time. He is no more guilty of the supposed act at half past twelve than at twelve, and equally guilty at both these instants. Consequently, the whole infinite penalty can justly be required at any and every moment of time. Yet the whole penalty cannot be paid at any and every moment by the suffering of that single moment. The transgressor at any and every point in his endless existence is infinitely guilty and yet cannot cancel his guilt by what he endures at a particular point. Too long a punishment of guilt is thus an impossibility. The suffering of the criminal can never overtake the crime. And the only way in which justice can approximately obtain its dues is by a never-ceasing infliction. We say approximately, because, tested strictly, the endless suffering of a finite being is not strictly infinite suffering; while the guilt of sin against God is strictly infinite. There is, therefore, no overpunishment in endless punishment.

It will be objected that, though the guilt and damnation of a crime be endless, it does not follow that the suffering inflicted on account of it must be endless also, even though it be retributive and not reformatory in its intent. A human judge pronounces a theft to be endlessly a theft and a thief to be endlessly a thief, but he does not sentence the thief to an endless suffering, though he sentences him to a penal suffering. But this objection overlooks the fact that human punishment is only approximate and imperfect, not absolute and perfect like the divine. It is not adjusted exactly and precisely to the whole guilt of the offense, but is more or less modified, first, by not considering its relation to God's honor and majesty; second, by human ignorance of the inward motives; and, third, by social expediency. Earthly courts and judges look at the transgression of law with reference only to man's temporal relations, not his eternal. They punish an offense as a crime against the state, not as a sin against God. Neither do they look into the human heart and estimate crime in its absolute and intrinsic nature, as does the searcher of hearts and the omniscient judge. A human tribunal punishes mayhem, we will say, with a six-month imprisonment because it does not take into consideration either the malicious and wicked anger that prompted the maiming or the dishonor done to the Supreme Being by the transgression of his commandment. But Christ, in the final assize, punishes this offense endlessly, because his all-seeing view includes the sum total of guilt in the case, namely, the inward wrath, the outward act, and the relation of both to the infinite perfection and adorable majesty of God. The human tribunal does not punish the inward anger at all; the divine tribunal punishes it with hellfire: "For whosoever shall say to his brother, You fool, is in danger of hellfire" (Matt. 5:22). The human tribunal punishes seduction with a pecuniary fine because it does not take cognizance of the selfish and heartless lust that prompted it or of the affront offered to that immaculate holiness which from Sinai proclaimed, "You shall not commit adultery." But the divine tribunal punishes seduction with an infinite suffering because of its more comprehensive and truthful view of the whole transaction. And, in addition to all this imperfection in human punishment, the human tribunal may be influenced by prejudice and selfishness:

In the corrupted currents of this world,

Offense's gilded hand may shove by justice;

And oft 'tis seen, the wicked prize itself

Buys out the law. But 'tis not so above.

There is no shuffling, there the action lies

In his true nature; and we ourselves compelled

Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,

To give in evidence.

—Hamlet 3.4

Again, human punishment, unlike the divine, is variable and inexact because it is to a considerable extent reformatory and protective. Human government is not intended to do the work of the supreme ruler. The sentence of an earthly judge is not a substitute for that of the last day. Consequently, human punishment need not be marked, even if this were possible, with all that absoluteness and exactness of justice which characterizes the divine. Justice in the human sphere may be relaxed by expediency. Human punishment may sometimes be more severe and sometimes less severe than exact requital demands, but divine punishment may not be. The retributive element must, indeed, enter into human punishment; for no man may be punished by a human tribunal unless he deserves punishment—unless he is a criminal. But retribution is not the sole element when man punishes. Man, while not overlooking the guilt in the case, has some reference to the reformation of the offender and still more to the protection of society. Here, in time, the transgressor is capable of reformation, and society needs protection. Hence civil expediency and social utility modify exact and strict retribution.

For the sake of reforming the criminal, the judge sometimes inflicts a penalty that is less than the real guilt of the offense. For the sake of shielding society, the court sometimes sentences the criminal to a suffering greater than his crime deserves. Human tribunals, also, vary the punishment for the same offense: sometimes punishing forgery capitally and sometimes not, sometimes sentencing those guilty of the same kind of theft to one year's imprisonment and sometimes to two.

But the divine tribunal, in the last great day, is invariably and exactly just, because it is neither reformatory nor protective. In eternity, the sinner is so hardened as to be incorrigible, and heaven is impregnable. Hell, therefore, is not a penitentiary. It is righteous retribution, pure and simple, unmodified by considerations either of utility to the criminal or of safety to the universe. In the day of final account, penalty will not be unjustly mild for the sake of the transgressor nor unjustly severe for the sake of society. Christ will not punish incorrigible men and devils (for the two receive the same sentence and go to the same place; Matt. 25:41) for the purpose of reforming them or of screening the righteous from the wicked, but of satisfying the broken law. His punishment at that time will be nothing but just requital. The Redeemer of men is also the eternal judge; the Lamb of God is also the Lion of the tribe of Judah; and his righteous word to wicked and hardened Satan, to wicked and hardened Judas, to wicked and hardened pope Alexander VI, will be: "Vengeance is mine; I will repay. Depart from me, you cursed, that work iniquity" (Rom. 12:19; Matt. 25:41; 7:23); "the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel" (2 Thess. 1:7–8). The wicked will receive their desert and reap according as they have sown. The suffering will be unerringly adjusted to the intrinsic guilt: no greater and no less than the sin deserves: "That servant which knew his lord's will and did not according to his will shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew not and did commit things worthy of stripes shall be beaten with few stripes. As many have sinned without law shall also perish without law; and as many as have sinned under law shall be judged by the law" (Luke 12:47–48; Rom. 2:12).

It is because the human court, by reason of its ignorance both of the human heart and the true nature of sin against a spiritual law and a holy God, cannot do the perfect work of the divine tribunal that human laws and penalties are only provisional and not final. Earthly magistrates are permitted to modify and relax penalty and pass a sentence which, though adapted to man's earthly circumstances, is not absolute and perfect and is finally to be revised and made right by the omniscient accuracy of God. The human penalty that approaches nearest to the divine is capital punishment. There is more purely retributive element in this than in any other. The reformatory element is wanting. And this punishment has a kind of endlessness. Death is a finality. It forever separates the murderer from earthly society, even as future punishment separates forever from the society of God and heaven.

The difference between human and divine punishment is well stated by Paley (Moral Philosophy 6.9):

The proper end of human punishment is not the satisfaction of justice, but the prevention of crimes. By the satisfaction of justice, I mean the retribution of so much pain for so much guilt, which is the dispensation we expect at the hand of God and which we are accustomed to consider as the order of things that perfect justice requires. Crimes are not by any government punished in proportion to their guilt, nor in all cases ought to be so, but in proportion to the difficulty and the necessity of preventing them. The crime must be prevented by some means or other; and consequently whatever means appear necessary to this end, whether they be proportionable to the guilt of the criminal or not, are adopted rightly. It is in pursuance of this principle, which pervades indeed the whole system of penal jurisprudence, that the facility with which any species of crime is perpetrated has been generally deemed a reason for aggravating the punishment. This severity would be absurd and unjust, if the guilt of the offender was the immediate cause and measure of the punishment.

On the other hand, from the justice of God we are taught to look for a gradation of punishment exactly proportioned to the guilt of the offender. When, therefore, in assigning the degrees of human punishment we introduce considerations distinct from that of guilt and a proportion so varied by external circumstances that equal crimes frequently undergo unequal punishments or the less crime the greater, it is natural to demand the reason why a different measure of punishment should be expected from God: why that rule which befits the absolute and perfect justice of the deity should not be the rule which ought to be preserved and imitated by human laws. The solution of this difficulty must be sought for in those peculiar attributes of the divine nature which distinguish the dispensations of supreme wisdom from the proceedings of human judicature. A being whose knowledge penetrates every concealment, from the operation of whose will no act or flight can escape and in whose hands punishment is sure—such a being may conduct the moral government of his creation in the best and wisest manner by pronouncing a law that every crime shall finally receive a punishment proportioned to the guilt which it contains, abstracted from any foreign consideration whatever, and may testify his veracity to the spectators of his judgments by carrying this law into strict execution. But when the care of the public safety is entrusted to men whose authority over their fellow creatures is limited by defects of power and knowledge, from whose utmost vigilance and sagacity the greatest offenders often lie hid, whose wisest precautions and speediest pursuit may be eluded by artifice or concealment, a different necessity, a new rule of proceeding results from the very imperfection of their faculties. In their hands, the uncertainty of punishment must be compensated by the severity. The ease with which crimes are committed or concealed must be counteracted by additional penalties and increased terrors. The very end for which human government is established requires that its regulations be adapted to the suppression of crimes. This end, whatever it may do in the plans of infinite wisdom, does not, in the designation of temporal penalties, always coincide with the proportionate punishment of guilt.

Blackstone also (Commentaries 4.1) alludes to the same difference in the following words: "The end or final cause of human punishments is not atonement or expiation for the crime committed, for that must be left to the just determination of the Supreme Being."

The argument thus far goes to prove that retribution in distinction from correction—or punishment in distinction from chastisement—is endless from the nature of the case, that is, from the nature of guilt. We pass, now, to prove that it is also rational and right.

Endless punishment is rational, in the first place, because it is supported by the human conscience. The sinner's own conscience will "bear witness" and approve of the condemning sentence "in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ" (Rom. 2:16). Dives, in the parable, when reminded of the justice of his suffering, is silent. Accordingly, all the evangelical creeds say with Westminster Larger Catechism 89 that "the wicked, upon clear evidence and full conviction of their own consciences, shall have the just sentence of condemnation pronounced against them." If in the great day there are any innocent men who have no accusing consciences, they will escape hell. We may accommodate St. Paul's words (Rom. 13:3–4) and say: "The final judgment is not a terror to good works, but to evil. Will you, then, not be afraid of the final judgment? Keep the law of God perfectly, without a single slip or failure, inwardly or outwardly, and you shall have praise of the same. But if you do that which is evil, be afraid." But a sentence that is justified by the highest and best part of the human constitution must be founded in reason, justice, and truth. It is absurd to object to a judicial decision that is confirmed by the man's own immediate consciousness of its righteousness:

For what, my small philosopher, is hell?

'Tis nothing but full knowledge of the truth,

When truth, resisted long, is sworn our foe:

And calls eternity to do her right.

—Young

The opponent of endless retribution does not draw his arguments from the impartial conscience, but from the bias of self-love and desire for happiness. His objections are not ethical but sentimental. They are not seen in the dry light of pure truth and reason, but through the colored medium of self-indulgence and love of ease and sin.

Again, a guilty conscience expects endless punishment. There is in it what the Scriptures denominate "the fearful looking-for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries" of God (Heb. 10:27). This is the awful apprehension of an evil that is to last forever, otherwise it would not be so "fearful." The knowledge that future suffering will one day cease would immediately relieve the apprehension of the sinner. A guilty conscience is in its very nature hopeless. Impenitent men, in their remorse, "sorrow as those who have no hope" (1 Thess. 4:13). Unconverted Gentiles "have no hope and are without God in the world" (Eph. 2:12); "the hope of the wicked shall be as the giving up of the ghost" (Job 11:20); "the hypocrite's hope shall perish" (8:13). Consequently, the great and distinguishing element in hell torment is despair, a feeling that is impossible in any man or fallen angel who knows that he is finally to be happy forever. Despair results from the endlessness of retribution. No endlessness, no despair. Natural religion, as well as revealed, teaches the despair of some men in the future life. Plato (Gorgias 525), Pindar (Olympia 2), and Plutarch (On the Delay of the Deity in the Punishment of the Wicked) describe the punishment of the incorrigibly wicked as eternal and hopeless.

In Scripture there is no such thing as eternal hope. Hope is a characteristic of earth and time only. Here in this life, all men may hope for forgiveness: "Turn, you prisoners of hope" (Zech. 9:2); "now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation" (2 Cor. 6:2). But in the next world, there is no hope of any kind, because there is either fruition or despair. The Christian's hope is converted into its realization: "For what a man sees, why does he yet hope for it?" (Rom. 8:24):

Soon shall close thine earthly mission,

Soon shall pass thy pilgrim days;

Hope shall change to glad fruition,

Faith to sight, and prayer to praise.

And the impenitent sinner's hope of heaven is converted into despair. Canon Farrar's phrase eternal hope is derived from Pandora's box, not from the Bible. Dante's legend over the portal of hell is the truth: "All hope abandon, you who enter here."

That the conscience supports endless retribution is also evinced by the universality and steadiness of the dread of it. Mankind believe in hell, as they believe in divine existence, by reason of their moral sense. Notwithstanding all the attack made upon the tenet in every generation, by a fraction of every generation, men do not get rid of their fear of future punishment. Skeptics themselves are sometimes distressed by it. But a permanent and general fear among mankind cannot be produced by a mere chimera or a pure figment of the imagination. Men have no fear of Rhadamanthus, nor can they be made to fear him, because they know that there is no such being: "An idol is nothing in the world" (1 Cor. 8:4). But men have "the fearful looking-for of judgment" from the lips of God, ever and always. If the biblical hell were as much a nonentity as the heathen Atlantis, no one would waste his time in endeavoring to prove its nonexistence. What man would seriously construct an argument to demonstrate that there is no such being as Jupiter Ammon or such an animal as the centaur? The very denial of endless retribution evinces by its spasmodic eagerness and effort to disprove the tenet, the firmness with which it is entrenched in man's moral constitution. If there really were no hell, absolute indifference toward the notion would long since have been the mood of all mankind; and no arguments, either for or against it, would be constructed.

And finally, the demand, even here upon earth, for the punishment of the intensely and incorrigibly wicked proves that retribution is grounded in the human conscience. When abominable and satanic sin is temporarily triumphant, as it sometimes has been in the history of the world, men cry out to God for his vengeance to come down. "If there were no God, we should be compelled to invent one" is now a familiar sentiment. "If there were no hell, we should be compelled to invent one" is equally true. When examples of depravity occur, man cries: "How long, O Lord, how long?" The noninfliction of retribution upon hardened villainy and successful cruelty causes anguish in the moral sense. For the expression of it, read the imprecatory psalms and Milton's sonnet on the massacre in Piedmont. (supplement 7.6.12.)

In the second place, endless punishment is rational because of the endlessness of sin. If the preceding view of the relation of penalty to guilt be correct, endless punishment is just, without bringing the sin of the future world into the account. Man incurs everlasting punishment for "the things done in his body" (2 Cor. 5:10). Christ sentences men to perdition, not for what they are going to do in eternity, but for what they have already done in time. It is not necessary that a man should commit all kinds of sin or that he should sin a very long time in order to be a sinner: "Whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all" (James 2:10). One sin makes guilt, and guilt makes hell.

But while this is so, it is a fact to be observed that sin is actually being added to sin in the future life, and the amount of guilt is accumulating. The lost spirit is "treasuring up wrath" (Rom. 2:5). Hence, there are degrees in the intensity of endless suffering. The difference in the grade arises from the greater resoluteness of the wicked self-determination and the greater degree of light that was enjoyed upon earth. He who sins against the moral law as it is drawn out in the Sermon on the Mount sins more determinedly and desperately than the pagan who sins against the light of nature. There are probably no men in paganism who sin so willfully and devilishly as some men in Christendom. Profanity or the blaspheming of God is a Christian and not a heathen characteristic. They are Christian peoples who force opium and rum on helpless pagans. These degrees of sin call for degrees of suffering. And there are degrees in future suffering, because it is infinite in duration only. In intensity, it is finite. Consequently, the lost do not all suffer precisely alike, though all suffer the same length of time. A thing may be infinite in one respect and finite in others. A line may be infinite in length and not in breadth and depth. A surface may be infinite in length and breadth and not in depth. And two persons may suffer infinitely in the sense of endlessly, and yet one experience more pain than the other.

The endlessness of sin results, first, from the nature and energy of sinful self-determination. Sin is the creature's act solely. God does not work in the human will when it wills antagonistically to him. Consequently, self-determination to evil is an extremely vehement activity of the will. There is no will so willful as a wicked will. Sin is stubborn and obstinate in its nature because it is enmity and rebellion. Hence, wicked will intensifies itself perpetually. Pride, left to itself, increases and never diminishes. Enmity and hatred become more and more satanic. "Sin," says South, "is the only perpetual motion which has yet been found out and needs nothing but a beginning to keep it incessantly going on." Upon this important point, Aristotle, in the seventh book of his Ethics, reasons with great truth and impressiveness. He distinguishes between akolasia and akrasia, between strong will to wickedness and weak self-indulgence. The former is viciousness from deliberation and preference and implies an intense determination to evil in the man. He goes wrong not so much from the pull of appetite and passion as purposely, knowingly, and energetically. He has great strength of will, and he puts it all forth in resolute wickedness. The latter quality is more the absence than the presence of will; it is the weakness and irresolution of a man who has no powerful self-determination of any kind. The condition of the former of these two men Aristotle regarded as worse than that of the latter. He considered it to be desperate and hopeless. The evil is incurable. Repentance and reformation are impossible to this man; for the wickedness in this instance is not mere appetite; it is a principle; it is cold-blooded and total depravity.

Another reason for the endlessness of sin is the bondage of the sinful will. In the very act of transgressing the law of God, there is a reflex action of the human will upon itself, whereby it becomes unable to perfectly keep that law. Sin is the suicidal action of the human will. A man is not forced to kill himself; but if he does, he cannot bring himself to life again. And a man is not forced to sin, but if he does, he cannot of himself get back where he was before sinning. He cannot get back to innocency, nor can he get back to holiness of heart. The effect of vicious habit in diminishing a man's ability to resist temptation is proverbial. An old and hardened debauchee, like Tiberius or Louis XV, just going into the presence of infinite purity, has not so much power of active resistance against the sin that has now ruined him, as the youth has who is just beginning to run that awful career. The truth and fact is that sin, in and by its own nature and operation, tends to destroy all virtuous force, all holy energy, in any moral being. The excess of will to sin is the same thing as defect of will to holiness. The human will cannot be forced and ruined from without. But if we watch the influence of the will upon itself, the influence of its own wrong decisions and its own yielding to temptations, we shall find that the voluntary faculty may be ruined from within, may surrender itself with such an absorbing vehemence and totality to appetite, passion, and selfishness that it becomes unable to reverse itself and overcome its own inclination and self-determination. And yet, from beginning to end, there is no compulsion in this process. The transgressor follows himself alone. He has his own way and does as he likes. Neither God nor the world nor Satan forces him either to be or to do evil. Sin is the most spontaneous of self-motion. But self-motion has consequences as much as any other motion. And moral bondage is one of them: "Whosoever commits sin is the slave of sin," says Christ (John 8:35).

The culmination of this bondage is seen in the next life. The sinful propensity, being allowed to develop unresisted and unchecked, slowly but surely eats out all virtuous force as rust eats out a steel spring, until in the awful end the will becomes all habit, all lust, and all sin: "Sin, when it is finished, brings forth death" (James 1:15). In the final stage of this process, which commonly is not reached until death, when "the spirit returns unto God who gave it," the guilty free agent reaches that dreadful condition where resistance to evil ceases altogether and surrender to evil becomes demoniacal. The cravings and hankerings of long-indulged and unresisted sin become organic and drag the man; and "he goes after them as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks, till a dart strike through his liver" (Prov. 7:22–23). For though the will to resist sin may die out of a man, the conscience to condemn it never can. This remains eternally. And when the process is complete, when the responsible creature in the abuse of free agency has perfected his moral ruin and his will to good is all gone, there remain these two in his immortal spirit: sin and conscience, "brimstone and fire" (Rev. 21:8).

Still another reason for the endlessness of sin is the fact that rebellious enmity toward law and its source is not diminished, but increased, by the righteous punishment experienced by the impenitent transgressor. Penal suffering is beneficial only when it is humbly accepted, is acknowledged to be deserved, and is penitently submitted to; when the transgressor says, "Father, I have sinned and am no more worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired servants" (Luke 15:18–19); when, with the penitent thief, he says, "We are in this condemnation justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds" (23:41). But when in this life retribution is denied and jeered at and when in the next life it is complained of and resisted and the arm of hate and defiance is raised against the tribunal, penalty hardens and exasperates. This is impenitence. Such is the temper of Satan; and such is the temper of all who finally become his associates. This explains why there is no repentance in hell and no meek submission to the Supreme Judge. This is the reason why Dives, the impenitent sensualist, on discovering that there is no reformation in hades, asks that Lazarus may be sent to warn his five brethren, "lest they also come into this place of torment."

In the third place, endless punishment is rational because sin is an infinite evil: infinite, not because committed by an infinite being, but against one. We reason invariably upon this principle. To torture a beast is a crime; to torture a man is a greater crime. To steal from one's own mother is more heinous than to steal from a fellow citizen. The person who transgresses is the same in each instance; but the different worth and dignity of the objects upon whom his action terminates makes the difference in the gravity of the two offenses. David's adultery was a finite evil in reference to Uriah, but an infinite evil in reference to God. "Against you only have I sinned" was the feeling of the sinner in this case. Had the patriarch Joseph yielded, he would have sinned against Pharaoh. But the greatness of the sin as related to the fellow creature is lost in its enormity as related to the Creator, and his only question is "how can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?"

The incarnation and vicarious satisfaction for sin by one of the persons of the Godhead demonstrates the infinity of the evil. It is incredible that the eternal Trinity should have submitted to such a stupendous self-sacrifice to remove a merely finite and temporal evil. The doctrine of Christ's vicarious atonement, logically, stands or falls with that of endless punishment. Historically, it has stood or fallen with it. The incarnation of almighty God, in order to make the remission of sin possible, is one of the strongest arguments for the eternity and infinity of penal suffering.

The objection that an offense committed in a finite time cannot be an infinite evil and deserve an infinite suffering implies that crime must be measured by the time that was consumed in its perpetration. But even in human punishment, no reference is had to the length of time occupied in the commission of the offense. Murder is committed in an instant, and theft sometimes requires hours. But the former is the greater crime and receives the greater punishment.

In the fourth place, that endless punishment is reasonable is proved by the preference of the wicked themselves. The unsubmissive, rebellious, defiant, and impenitent spirit prefers hell to heaven. Milton correctly represents Satan as saying: "All good to me becomes bane, and in heaven much worse would be my state" and also as declaring that "it is better to reign in hell that to serve in heaven." This agrees with the scriptural representation that Judas went "to his own place" (Acts 1:25).

The lost spirits are not forced into a sphere that is unsuited to them. There is no other abode in the universe which they would prefer to that to which they are assigned, because the only other abode is heaven. The meekness, lowliness, sweet submission to God, and love of him that characterize heaven are more hateful to Lucifer and his angels than even the sufferings of hell. The wicked would be no happier in heaven than in hell. The burden and anguish of a guilty conscience, says South, is so insupportable that some "have done violence to their own lives and so fled to hell as a sanctuary and chose damnation as a release." This is illustrated by facts in human life. The thoroughly vicious and ungodly man prefers the license and freedom to sin which he finds in the haunts of vice to the restraints and purity of Christian society. There is hunger, disease, and wretchedness in one circle; and there is plenty, health, and happiness in the other. But he prefers the former. He would rather be in the gambling house and brothel than in the Christian home:

Those that, notwithstanding all gracious means, live continually in rebellion against God; those that impenitently die in their sins; those that desire to live here forever that they might enjoy their sweet sins; those that are so hardened and naturalized in their vices that if they were revived and brought again into this world of temptations would certainly return to the pleasures of sin—is it not right that their incorrigible obstinacy should be punished forever? (Bates, On Eternal Judgment 3)

The finally lost are not to be conceived of as having faint desires and aspirations for a holy and heavenly state and as feebly but really inclined to sorrow for their sin, but are kept in hell contrary to their yearning and petition. They are sometimes so described by the opponent of the doctrine or at least so thought of. There is not a single throb of godly sorrow or a single pulsation of holy desire in the lost spirit. The temper toward God in the lost is angry and defiant. "They hate both me and my father," says the Son of God, "without a cause" (John 15:24–25). Satan and his followers "love darkness rather than light," hell rather than heaven, "because their deeds are evil" (3:19). Sin ultimately assumes a fiendish form and degree. It is pure wickedness without regret or sorrow and with a delight in evil for evil's sake. There are some men who reach this state of depravity even before they die: "Some men's sins are evident beforehand, going before to judgment" (1 Tim. 5:24 Revised Version). They are seen in the callous and cruel voluptuaries portrayed by Tacitus and the heaven-defying atheists described by St. Simon. They are also depicted in Shakespeare's Iago. The reader knows that Iago is past saving and deserves everlasting damnation. Impulsively, he cries out with Lodovico: "Where is that viper? bring the villain forth." And then Othello's calmer but deeper feeling becomes his own: "I look down toward his feet—but that's a fable: If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill you." The punishment is remitted to the retribution of God.

In the fifth place, that endless punishment is rational is proved by the history of morals. In the records of human civilization and morality, it is found that that age which is most reckless of law and most vicious in practice is the age that has the loosest conception of penalty and is the most inimical to the doctrine of endless retribution. A virtuous and religious generation adopts sound ethics and reverently believes that "the judge of all the earth will do right" (Gen. 18:25); that God will not evil good and good evil nor put darkness for light and light for darkness" (Isa. 5:20); and that it is a deadly error to assert with the sated and worn-out sensualist: "All things come alike to all; there is one event to the righteous and the wicked" (Eccles. 9:2).

The French people, at the close of the eighteenth century, were a very demoralized and vicious generation, and there was a very general disbelief and denial of the doctrines of divine existence, immortality of the soul, freedom of the will, and future retribution. And upon a smaller scale, the same fact is continually repeating itself. Any little circle of businessmen who are known to deny future rewards and punishments are shunned by those who desire safe investments. The recent uncommon energy of opposition to endless punishment, which started about ten years ago in this country, synchronized with great defalcations and breaches of trust, uncommon corruption in mercantile and political life, and great distrust between man and man. Luxury deadens the moral sense, and luxurious populations do not have the fear of God before their eyes. Hence luxurious ages and luxurious men recalcitrate at hell and "kick against the goads." No theological tenet is more important that eternal retribution to those modern nations which, like England, Germany, and the United States, are growing rapidly in riches, luxury, and earthly power. Without it, they will infallibly go down in that vortex of sensuality and wickedness that swallowed up Babylon and Rome. The bestial and shameless vice of the dissolute rich that has recently been uncovered in the commercial metropolis of the world is a powerful argument for the necessity and reality of "the lake which burns with fire and brimstone."

A single remark remains to be made respecting the extent and scope of hell. It is only a spot in the universe of God. Compared with heaven, hell is narrow and limited. The kingdom of Satan is insignificant in contrast with the kingdom of Christ. In the immense range of God's dominion, good is the rule, and evil is the exception. Sin is a speck upon the infinite azure of eternity, a spot on the sun. Hell is only a corner of the universe. The Gothic etymon (Höhle, Hölle) denotes a covered-up hole. In Scripture, hell is a "pit," a "lake"—not an ocean. It is "bottomless" but not boundless. The gnostic and dualistic theories which make God and Satan (or the demiurge) nearly equal in power and dominion find no support in revelation. The Bible teaches that there will always be some sin and some death in the universe. Some angels and men will forever be the enemies of God. But their number, compared with that of unfallen angels and redeemed men, is small. They are not described in the glowing language and metaphors by which the immensity of the holy and blessed is delineated: "The chariots of God are twenty thousand and thousands of angels" (Ps. 68:17); "the Lord came from Sinai and shined forth from Mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of his saints" (Deut. 22:2); "the Lord has prepared his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all" (Ps. 103:21); "yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory" (Matt. 6:13). The Lord Christ "must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet" (1 Cor. 15:25). St. John "heard a voice from heaven as the voice of many waters and as the voice of a great thunder" (Rev. 14:1). The New Jerusalem "lies four square, the length is as large as the breadth; the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day; the kings of the earth do bring their honor into it" (21:16, 24–25). The number of the lost spirits is never thus emphasized and enlarged upon. The brief, stern statement is that "the fearful and unbelieving shall have their part in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone" (21:8). No metaphors and amplification are added to make the impression of an immense "multitude which no man can number." (supplement 7.6.13.)

We have thus presented the rational argument for the most severe and unwelcome of all the tenets of the Christian religion. It must have a foothold in the human reason or it could not have maintained itself against all the recoil and opposition which it elicits from the human heart. Founded in ethics, in law, and in judicial reason, as well as unquestionably taught by the author of Christianity, it is no wonder that the doctrine of eternal retribution, in spite of selfish prejudices and appeals to human sentiment, has always been a belief of Christendom. From theology and philosophy it has passed into human literature and is wrought into its finest structures. It makes the solemn substance of the Iliad and the Greek drama. It pours a somber light into the brightness and grace of the Aeneid. It is the theme of the Inferno and is presupposed by both of the other parts of the Divine Comedy. The epic of Milton derives from it its awful grandeur. And the greatest of the Shakespearean tragedies sound and stir the depths of the human soul by their delineation of guilt intrinsic and eternal.

In this discussion, we have purposely brought into view only the righteousness of almighty God as related to the voluntary and responsible action of man. We have set holy justice and disobedient free will face to face and drawn the conclusions. This is all that the defender of the doctrine of retribution is strictly concerned with. If he can demonstrate that the principles of eternal rectitude are not in the least degree infringed upon, but are fully maintained when sin is endlessly punished, he has done all that his problem requires. Whatever is just is beyond all rational attack.

But with the Christian gospel in his hands, the defender of divine justice finds it difficult to be entirely reticent and say not a word concerning divine mercy. Over against God's infinite antagonism and righteous severity toward moral evil, there stands God's infinite pity and desire to forgive. This is realized, not by the high-handed and unprincipled method of pardoning without legal satisfaction of any kind, but by the strange and stupendous method of putting the eternal judge in the place of the human criminal, of substituting God's own satisfaction for that due from man. In this vicarious atonement for sin, the triune God relinquishes no claims of law and waives no rights of justice. The sinner's divine substitute, in his hour of voluntary agony and death, drinks the cup of punitive and inexorable justice to the dregs. Any man who, in penitent faith, avails himself of this vicarious method of setting himself right with the eternal nemesis will find that it succeeds; but he who rejects it must through endless cycles grapple with the dread problem of human guilt in his own person and alone.

The Christian gospel—the universal offer of pardon through the self-sacrifice of one of the divine persons—should silence every objection to the doctrine of endless punishment. For as the case now stands, there is no necessity, so far as the action of God is concerned, that a single human being should ever be the subject of future punishment. The necessity of hell is founded in the action of the creature, not of the Creator. Had there been no sin, there would have been no hell; and sin is the product of man's free will. And after the entrance of sin and the provision of redemption from it, had there been universal repentance in this life, there would have been no hell for man in the next life. The only necessitating reason, therefore, for endless retribution that now exists is the sinner's impenitence. Should every human individual, before he dies, sorrow for sin and humbly confess it, hades and gehenna would disappear. (supplement 7.6.14.)

For the Scriptures everywhere describe God as naturally and spontaneously merciful and declare that all the legal obstacles to the exercise of this great attribute have been removed by the death of the Son of God "for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2). In the very center of the holy revelations of Sinai, Jehovah proclaimed it to be his inherent and intrinsic disposition to be "merciful and gracious, long-suffering, forgiving iniquity and transgression" (Exod. 34:6–7). Nehemiah, after the exile, repeats the doctrine of the Pentateuch: "You are a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, and of great kindness" (Neh. 9:17). The psalmist declares that "the Lord is ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy unto all that call upon him" (Ps. 86:5); "the Lord takes pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy" (147:11). From the twilight of the land of Uz, Elihu, feeling after the promised Redeemer if haply he might find him (Job 33:23), declares that "God looks upon men, and if any say, I have sinned and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; he will deliver his soul from going down to the pit, and his life shall see the light" (33:27–28). The Bible throughout teaches that the Supreme Being is sensitive to penitence and is moved with compassion and paternal yearning whenever he perceives any sincere spiritual grief. He notices and welcomes the slightest indication of repentance: "The eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy" (Ps. 33:18); "whoso confesses and forsakes his sins shall have mercy" (Prov. 28:13). The heavenly Father sees the prodigal when he is "yet a great way off." He never "breaks the bruised reed" nor "quenches the smoking flax." If there be in any human creature the broken and contrite heart, divine pity speaks the word of forgiveness and absolution. The humble confession of unworthiness operates almost magically upon the eternal. Incarnate mercy said to the heathen "woman of Canaan" who asked for only the dogs' crumbs, "O woman, great is your faith; be it unto you even as you will" (Matt. 15:28). The omnipotent is overcome whenever he sees lowly penitential sorrow. As "the foolishness of God is wiser than man," so the self-despairing helplessness of man is stronger than God. When Jacob says to the infinite one, "I am not worthy of the least of all your mercies," yet wrestles with him "until the breaking of the day," he becomes Israel and "as a prince has power with God" (Gen. 32:10, 24, 28). When Jehovah hears Ephraim "bemoaning himself" and saying, "Turn me, and I shall be turned," he answers, "Ephraim is my dear son. I will surely have mercy upon him" (Jer. 31:18, 20).

Now the only obstruction, and it is a fatal one, to the exercise of this natural and spontaneous mercy of God is the sinner's hardness of heart. The existing necessity for hell punishment is not chargeable upon God. It is the proud and obstinate man who makes hell. It is his impenitence that feeds its perpetual fires. For so long as the transgressor does not grieve for sin and does not even acknowledge it, it cannot be pardoned. Almightiness itself cannot forgive impenitence, any more than it can make a square circle. Impenitence after sinning is a more determined and worse form of sin than sinning is in and of itself. For it is a tacit defense and justification of sin. If after transgression the person acknowledges that he has transgressed and asks forgiveness for so doing, he evinces that he does not excuse his act or defend it. On the contrary, he renounces his act, condemns it, and mourns over it. But if after transgression the person makes no acknowledgment and asks no forgiveness, he is repeating and intensifying his sin. He justifies himself in his act of rebellion against authority and thus aggravates the original fault. It is for this reason that impenitence for sin is more dreadful than sin itself. A penitent sinner can be forgiven; but an impenitent sinner cannot be. The former God pities and extends the offer of mercy to him. To the latter God holds out no hope, because he cannot.

This is what gives to human existence here upon earth its dark outlook. All the gloom, discontent, and anxiety of human life grow out of this. This is what makes "all the uses of this world so weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable." Men are impenitent. They give no heed to the voice of conscience, know little of remorse, nothing of genuine sorrow. They are stolid and lethargic in sin or else angrily deny the fact. They bend no knee in self-abasement before the all holy; they do not cry, "O Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, grant me your peace." Human life is wretched and despairing, not because there is no mercy in the sweet heavens, but because there is no relenting, no softening, in the human heart. One is weary of hearing the incessant wail of the agnostic and the cynic over the "mystery" of this existence, the monotonous moan of the pessimist that life is not worth living. A sincere confession of what the consciousness of every man will tell him is the absolute truth respecting his character and conduct, when tried by a spiritual and perfect standard, would drive away this false view of earthly existence as the miasmic fog is blown by the winds. But instead of confessing sin and imploring its forgiveness, men stand complaining of its punishment or employing their ingenuity in endeavoring to prove that there is none; and then wonder that the heavens are black and thunderous over their heads. Not by this method will the sky be made clear and sunny. Whoever will cast himself upon divine compassion will find life to be worth living; but he who quarrels with divine justice will discover that he had better not have been born. (supplement 7.6.15.)

What the human race needs is to go to the divine confessional. The utterance of the prodigal should be that of every man: "Father, I have sinned." The utterance of the psalmist should be that of every man: "O you that hear prayer, unto you shall all flesh come. Iniquities prevail against me: as for our transgressions, you shall purge them away." "God commands all men everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30). But so long as man glosses over or conceals the cardinal fact in his history, he must live under a cloud and look with anxiety and fear into the deep darkness beyond. It is useless to contend with the stubborn fact of moral evil by the ostrich method of ignoring and denying. The sin is here, in self-consciousness, terrible and real, the lancinating sting of pain and the deadly sting of death, in this generation and in all generations. Kant, the ethical and the metaphysical, is right when he affirms that the noumenon of sin is the dark ground under the phenomenon of life. Confession, therefore, is the only way to light and mental peace. The suppression of any fundamental form of human consciousness necessarily results in unrest. Man's words about himself must agree with his true character and condition; otherwise he becomes insincere, miserable, and false. The denial of moral evil is the secret of the murmuring and melancholy with which so much of modern letters is filled. Rousseau made a confession, but not truthful, not humble; and hence it brought him no repose. Augustine made a confession, genuine, simple, thoroughly accordant with the facts of human nature; and the outpouring of his confidences into the ear of eternal purity and mercy brought the peace that passes all understanding and the immortal life that knows no melancholy and no dissatisfaction. These historic persons are types of the two classes into which all men fall: the penitent and the impenitent.

The king in Shakespeare's Hamlet, writhing with selfish remorse but destitute of unselfish sorrow, in his soliloquy exclaims:

Try what repentance can: what can it not?

Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?

O wretched state! O bosom black as death!

O liméd soul; that struggling to be free

Art more engaged!

Bunyan's man of Despair, in the iron cage, when assured by Christian that "the Son of the Blessed is very pitiful," replies: "I have so hardened my heart that I cannot repent."

In these powerful delineations, these profound psychologists of sin bring to view a peril that environs free will. Pardon may be proffered by God, but penitence may become impossible through the action of man. "There are some sins," says Augustine, "that follow of necessity, from foregoing sins that occurred without necessity." The adoption of atheism is a sin without necessity. It is the voluntary action of man. But the hardness of heart that results from it results of necessity. No man is forced to be an infidel; but if he is one, he must be an impenitent man. A luxurious and skeptical age should remember this. That man cannot repent who drowns himself in pleasure and never seriously reflects upon his accountability to his maker. That man cannot repent who expends the energy of his mind in the endeavor to prove that all human action is irresponsible and the threatenings of revelation an idle tale. They who have "eyes full of adultery cannot cease from sin" (2 Pet. 2:14). Absorption in worldliness and adoption of infidel opinions make repentance an impossibility. Sensuality and atheism harden the human heart and render it impervious to the Christian religion.

SUPPLEMENTS

7.6.1 (see p. 884). Augustine thus states his view of endless punishment: "The church justly abominates the opinion of Origen that even they whom the Lord says are to be punished with everlasting punishment, and also the devil himself and his angels, after a time, however protracted, will be purged and released from their penalties and shall then cleave to the saints who reign with God in blessedness" (Proceedings of Pelagius 10). "Eternal punishment seems hard and unjust to human perceptions, because in the weakness of our mortal condition there is wanting that highest wisdom by which it can be perceived how great a wickedness was committed in that first transgression. The more enjoyment man found in God, the greater was his wickedness in abandoning God; and he who destroyed in himself a good that might have been eternal become deserving of eternal evil. Hence the whole mass of the human race is condemned; for he who at first gave entrance to sin has been punished with all his posterity who were in him as in a root, so that no one is exempt from this just and deserved punishment unless delivered by mercy and undeserved grace. And the human race is so apportioned that in some is displayed the efficacy of merciful grace, in the rest the efficacy of just retribution. For both could not be displayed in all; for if all had remained under the punishment of just condemnation there would have been seen in no one the mercy of redeeming grace; and on the other hand, if all had been transferred from darkness to light, the strict justice of retribution would have been manifested in none. But many more are left under punishment than are delivered from it in order that it may thus be shown what was due to all. And had it been inflicted on all, no one could justly have found fault with the justice of him who takes vengeance; whereas, in the deliverance of so many from that just award, there is cause to render the most hearty thanks to the gratuitous bounty of him who delivers" (City of God 21.12). An analysis of the doctrine contained in these extracts respecting eternal retribution, gives the following particulars: (1) Original sin is the self-determination of the human species in Adam and is punishable for the same reason that any wrong self-determination is. Sinful inclination originated in this manner is as voluntary and unforced agency as any volition prompted by it. The whole human race, consequently, responsibly ruined themselves in Adam's fall and made themselves justly liable to eternal death. Actual transgression is not the primary, but the secondary reason for future punishment. It adds to original sin and increases the degree of the penalty, but is not the first ground for it. The principal Scripture for this is Rom. 5:12–19. (2) Salvation from eternal death is undeserved, because guilt has no desert but that of penalty; it cannot therefore be claimed as due by any man, and it is bestowed without obligation on the part of God and upon whomsoever he chooses. (3) When bestowed, it manifests his attribute of mercy and that in its highest form of self-sacrifice in the vicarious sufferings and death of his Son; and when not bestowed, it manifests his justice. It will be seen from this analysis that the self-produced and responsible fall of the human race in Adam is the key to Augustine's doctrine of endless retribution. If it be denied or disproved, universalism is the logical consequence. For if original sin and sinful inclination are necessitated and guiltless, so are the actual transgressions that issue from it. The stream has the same qualities with the fountain. (4) The number of the saved is less than that of the lost. Modern Calvinists have departed from Augustine in affirming the converse, by teaching the regeneration of all who die in infancy.

7.6.2 (see p. 887). The agnostic position which Dorner takes respecting the doctrine of endless punishment, in saying that it "remains veiled in mystery," though formally negative and noncommittal is really as positive as direct denial and attack. Agnosticism, generally, is a crafty way of casting doubt upon truth and of rejecting it. If a person says that there may or may not be a God, but that no one knows certainly, this has the same practical effect as avowed atheism. It tends to destroy the belief in a deity and the fear of him. So also, if a person says that there may or may not be salvation after death, this has the same general influence as positive universalism. It contributes to weaken the conviction that men will be endlessly punished for the deeds done in the body. If I say to a person: "The Bible is reticent upon the subject of the future life. It does not positively teach that probation ends for all mankind at death. It may or it may not; no one knows certainly," I relieve him in a great measure from the fear of hell. For he will regard the assertion that there possibly may be a future probation as equivalent to the assertion of the probability of such a probation. If a thing is possible, it may be actual; and when the thing possible is strongly desired and its contrary is greatly dreaded, the possibility will be construed into actuality. It will be of little use for the agnostic in eschatology to put in a caveat and attempt to warn the sinner. If he reminds him that we do not certainly know that there is salvation after death, the reply will be, that neither do we certainly know that there will not be. A theorist of this class writes as follows: "What resources may be available in other worlds, only the great arbiter can know. Hence modern theology emphasizes with solemn appeal the need of instant surrender of the heart to God. Delay is dangerous, and it may be fatal." "And it may not be fatal," is the agnostic sinner's reply, which takes all the force out of this so-called solemn appeal and warning.

This agnostic method of sapping the doctrine of endless retribution is not only wanting in frank and open dealing in an argument, but is chargeable with falsifying divine revelation. To say that the Bible "veils the subject of endless punishment in mystery" and that it is "reticent upon the subject of the future life," in the face of such an eschatology as the Son of God presents in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, to say nothing of the great mass of similar teaching in other parts of the divine word, is an assumption and assurance that is contradicted by the well-nigh unanimous verdict of all readers and students of Scripture in all time.

7.6.3 (see p. 889). In Christ's account of the day of judgment he describes himself as dividing mankind into two classes, saying to one, "Come, you blessed," and to the other, "Depart, you cursed." This language naturally implies that these two classes are to exist always and forever. It makes the impression of finality and has been so understood by the immense majority of readers. But if the penalty of sin is only remedial and temporary, there is ultimately only one class. All men are finally blessed of God. Upon this supposition the transactions of the judgment day are a mere unmeaning show. The day of doom, instead of being a solemn administration of divine justice having a final and irrevocable character, as our Lord represents, is only a spectacle like a scene in a play. A temporary curse is pronounced from the throne of judgment upon some men that is afterward followed by an eternal blessing upon them. This view destroys the moral sincerity and veracity of the Son of God. It is inconceivable that he who is and styles himself the truth should engage in such a false and deluding transaction before the assembled universe and that to any of mankind who he foreknows will finally be his friends and enter eternal joy, he will speak the words: "You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell." It is incredible that the righteous judge of the universe will at one time say to some of mankind: "Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels," and at a subsequent time say to this very same class, "Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."

7.6.4 (see p. 892). Respecting the use of figures in describing the misery of hell, Paley (sermon 31) states the case with great plainness and power: "I admit that it is very difficult to handle the dreadful subject of the punishment of hell properly; and one cause among others of the difficulty is that it is not for one poor sinner to denounce such appalling terrors, such tremendous consequences against another. Damnation is a word which lies not in the mouth of man, who is a worm, toward any of his fellow creatures whatsoever; yet it is absolutely necessary that the threatenings of almighty God be known and published. Therefore, we begin by observing that the accounts which the Scriptures contain of the punishment of hell are, for the most part, delivered in figurative or metaphorical terms; that is to say, in terms which represent things of which we have no notion by a comparison with things with which we have a notion. Therefore take notice what those figures and metaphors are. They are of the most dreadful kind which words can express; and be they understood how they may, ever so figuratively, it is plain that they convey and were intended to convey ideas of horrible torment. They are such as these: 'Being cast into hell, where the worm dies not and where the fire is not quenched.' It is 'burning the chaff with unquenchable fire.' It is 'going into fire everlasting, which is prepared for the devil and his angels.' It is 'being cast with all the members into hell, where the worm dies not and the fire is not quenched.' These are heart-appalling expressions and were undoubtedly intended by the person who used them, who was no other than our Lord Jesus Christ himself, to describe terrible endurings, positive, actual pains of the most horrible kinds. I have said that the punishment of hell is thus represented to us in figurative speech. I now say that from the nature of things it could not have been represented to us in any other. It is of the very nature of pain that it cannot be known but by being felt. It is impossible to give to anyone an exact conception of it without his actually tasting it. Experience alone teaches its acuteness and intensity. For which reason, when it was necessary that the punishment of hell should be set forth in Scripture for our warning and set forth to terrify us from our sins, it could only be done as it has been done by comparing it with sufferings of which we can form conception and making use of terms drawn from these sufferings. When words less figurative and more direct but at the same time more general are adopted, they are not less strong otherwise than as they are more general: 'Indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that does evil.' These are St. Paul's words. It is a short sentence, but enough to make the stoutest heart tremble; for though it unfold no particulars, it clearly designates positive torment."

7.6.5 (see p. 893). Olshausen (on Matt. 12:32) thus interprets: "To explain this passage as meaning that although the sin against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven in this eon nor the next eon, it shall be afterward, plainly contradicts the intention of the speaker. For the proposition it shall not be forgiven is the direct contrary of the proposition it shall be forgiven, and the adjunct neither in this eon, neither in the eon to come is certainly intended to strengthen, not to weaken, the affirmation of nonforgiveness. Matthew does not conceive of the aiōn mellōn as only a fractional part of future duration which is to be followed by other fractions indefinitely, but as constituting, in connection with aiōn houtos, the whole of duration." Consequently, if a sin is not forgiven in either eon, it is never forgiven. This same reasoning applies to that other interpretation of this passage which makes it teach that all sins excepting that against the Holy Spirit shall be forgiven in the world to come, if they have not been forgiven in this world. To hold out the hope of forgiveness in the next world is to destroy the force and effect of the threat to punish sin which is made in this world; and it cannot be supposed that God would thus weaken and undo all his punitive legislation and menace here in time.

7.6.6 (see p. 894). Anselm (Proslogion 21) describes the rhetorical plural as the equivalent of the literal singular: "For as an age of time contains all things pertaining to time, so your eternity contains even ages of time themselves. Your eternity is called an age (aiōn) on account of its indivisible immensity."

7.6.7 (see p. 901). Another explanation of those texts which seem to teach that the dead are unconscious is given by Edwards (God's End in Creation 2.4): "There are several Scriptures which lead us to suppose that the great thing God seeks of the moral world and the end to be aimed at by moral agents is the manifestation or making known of the divine perfections. This seems implied in that argument God's people sometimes made use of, in deprecating a state of death and destruction; that in such a state they cannot proclaim the glorious excellency of God: 'Shall your loving-tenderness be declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in destruction? Shall your wonders be known in the dark, and your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?' (Ps. 88:18–19; 30:9). The argument seems to be this: Why should we perish? And how shall your end, for which you have made us, be obtained in a state of destruction in which your glory cannot be declared? 'The grave cannot praise you, death cannot celebrate you. The living, the living, he shall praise you, as I do this day; the father to the children shall make known your truth' (Isa. 38:18–19)."

Cook (Bible Commentary), in his introduction to the Psalms §17 and in his interpretation of them, gives the following view of the "notices of the future state" contained in this part of Scripture: "Respecting the feelings and hopes of the psalmist touching a future state, it is clear, on the one hand, that no formal revelation of a future state of retribution had as yet been vouchsafed to the Israelites. It is indeed certain, our Lord's authority makes it certain, that this truth was implicitly contained in God's manifestation of himself as the God of Abraham and the fathers; and also that the patriarchs of old looked upon life here but as a pilgrimage (Heb. 11:13). David himself (Ps. 39:12) prays, 'Hear my prayer, O Lord, and hold not your peace at my tears: for I am a stranger with you and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.' The stranger is one who is merely a guest for a season, the sojourner one who lives as a client under the protection of a prince or noble: neither has any right or settled footing in the land. An image which is at once humbling and suggestive of a sure hope. The earth is not the home of man (cf. Lev. 25:23; 1 Chron. 29:15; Ps. 119:19). Still we cannot reasonably doubt that to the generality of the people, the grave or the unknown sheol, of which the grave is the entrance, bounded the region of hope and fear. It has been shown in the introduction and notes to Job that the writer of that book at least felt that attempts to vindicate the righteousness of God would be futile, were the problem of the future state left unsolved; and that in the agony of the death struggle, when all other hope was finally abandoned, the conviction sprang up that God would manifest himself in some unknown way as the Redeemer. But the hope was after all vague and suggestive; little more than a preparation for a future disclosure of the truth.

"It would be easy to settle the question were we to decide it by reference to the numerous passages in which the state of the departed is represented as one of darkness, where there is no 'remembrance of God,' where 'he is not praised,' neither loved nor dreaded. On looking at these passages carefully, we may indeed find reason to conclude that they speak of the condition of those who are the objects of divine punishment and that they express the fears of one who regards himself as having incurred divine displeasure. Such, for example, is Ps. 6:5. David here speaks of those who die not saved; see verse 4. For such there is no opportunity to celebrate the mercy of God or to give him thanks. David knew that life is the season for serving God, and this knowledge sufficed for practical purposes until the life and immortality dimly anticipated by the patriarchs were brought to light by Christ. Again, 16:8–11 (quoted by St. Peter in Acts 2:31 and by St. Paul in 13:35 in proof of the resurrection) contains one of the very clearest and strongest declarations of belief in a blessed futurity which can be adduced from the Old Testament. As such it is recognized by ancient and modern interpreters, none speaking out more clearly than Ewald, who says: 'It goes beyond other words of David, nor is anything corresponding to it found in later Hebrew writers.' There is but one adequate explanation of such a fact, namely, that the Spirit of Christ which was in David as a prophet (1 Pet. 1:11; Acts 2:30) moved and controlled his utterances, so that while they expressed fully his own yearnings, they 'signified beforehand the glory that should follow' in the resurrection of Christ.

"But even in those psalms which contain such declarations as make the impression of a final triumph of death and the cessation of consciousness, we are struck by the expression of feelings which are wholly incompatible with the certainty of annihilation: in none are there more lively, joyous expressions of trust and hope; see especially the last half of Ps. 146 and 13:3 contrasted with 13:5. Nor are these expressions to be explained as referring to the anticipation of a temporary deliverance from death or to the postponement of a general and inevitable doom. The psalmists speak of thanks to be offered to the Lord God forever (30:12; 61:8; 145:1, 21), of an eternal portion in heaven (16:11; 17:15), and of the end of the upright as peace (37:37). In the very depth of humiliation and hopelessness, so far as this life is concerned, God is called upon as Helper, Deliverer, and Redeemer; as 'the Lord my salvation' (38:22; 88:1). The general judgment is regarded as a day when the wicked shall not stand in the congregation of the righteous (1:5), as the morning of the eternal day when the upright shall have dominion over the wicked (49:14), when the righteous shall see the light, while the man who is 'in honor and understands not is like the beasts that perish' (49:20). Taking such statements in their combination and mutual bearings as explaining, developing, and illustrating each other, it is strange that any should fail to recognize throughout the Psalms a state of feelings and convictions which speak of a deep, though it may be half-conscious faith in the perpetuity of the soul, the light, the glory (16:9), the spiritual principle of God's rational creatures. The soul will see 'light in God's light' (36:9); 'God will be its portion forever' (73:26). Touching the great bulk of the Davidic psalms, indeed of the whole Psalter, there are throughout indications, more or less distinct, sometimes faint, sometimes singularly bright and strong, of an undercurrent of feeling in harmony with those undying and irrepressible aspirations which God has implanted in souls bearing his impress and capable of union with him; a union which excludes the possibility of annihilation."

Upon this general subject, Baxter (Dying Thoughts, introduction) remarks as follows: "I have often marveled to find David in the Psalms, and other saints before Christ's coming, to have expressed so great a sense of the things of this present life and to have said so little of another; to have made so great a matter of prosperity, dominions, and victories on the one hand and of enemies, success, and persecution on the other. But I consider that it was not for mere personal, carnal interest, but for the church of God and for his honor, word, and worship. And they knew that if things go well with us on earth, they will be sure to go well in heaven. If the militant church prosper in holiness, there is no doubt but it will triumph in glory. God will be sure to do his part in receiving souls if they be here prepared for his receipt. And Satan does much of his damning work by men; so that if we escape their temptations we escape much of our danger. If idolaters prospered, Israel was tempted to idolatry. The Greek church is almost swallowed up by Turkish prosperity and dominion. Most follow the powerful and prosperous side. And therefore for God's cause and for heavenly, everlasting interest, our own state, but much more the church's, must be greatly regarded here on earth. Indeed, if earth be desired only for earth and prosperity loved but for the present welfare of the flesh, it is the certain mark of damning carnality and an earthly mind. But to desire peace and prosperity and power to be in the hands of wise and faithful men, for the sake of souls and the increase of the church and the honor of God, that his name may be hallowed, his kingdom come, his will be done on earth as it is in heaven, this is to be the chief of our prayers to God."

7.6.8 (see p. 908). Augustine's view of pagan virtue is thus expressed: "You allude in your letter to the fact that Xenocrates converted Polemo from a dissipated to a sober life, though the latter was not only habitually intemperate, but was actually intoxicated at the time. Now although this was, as you truthfully apprehend, not a case of conversion to God, but of emancipation from a particular form of self-indulgence, I would not ascribe even this amount of improvement wrought in him to the power of man, but to the power of God. For even in the body all excellent things, such as beauty, vigor, health, and the like, are the work of God, to whom nature owes its creation and preservation; how much more certain, then, must it be that none but God can impart excellent quality to the soul. If, therefore, Polemo, when he exchanged a life of dissipation for a life of sobriety, had so understood whence the gift came, that renouncing the superstitions of the heathen he had rendered worship to the divine giver, he would then have become not only temperate, but truly wise and savingly religious; which would have secured to him not merely the practice of virtue in this life, but also immortal blessedness in the life to come" (Letter 144.2). "If we say that all without exception who were found in hell were delivered therefrom by Christ when he descended thither, who would not rejoice if this could be proved? Especially would men rejoice for the sake of some who are known to us by their literary labors—poets, philosophers, and orators—who have held up to contempt the false gods of the nations and have even occasionally confessed the one true God, although along with the rest they observed superstitious rites, and also for the sake of many more of whom we have no literary remains, but respecting whom we have learned from the writings of these others that their lives were to a certain extent praiseworthy, so that with the exception of idolatry and serving the creature rather than the Creator, they may be held up as models of frugality, self-sacrifice, chastity, sobriety, braving death in their country's defense, and keeping faith not only with their fellow citizens but also their enemies. All these things, indeed, when they are not performed in true humility to the glory of God, but in pride and for the sake of human praise and glory, become morally worthless and unprofitable; nevertheless, as indications of a certain temper of mind, they please us so much that we would desire that those in whom they exist should either by special favor or along with all mankind without exception be freed from the pains of hell, were it not that the verdict of human sensibility is different from that of the perfect holiness and justice of God" (Letter 164.4 to Evodius).

7.6.9 (see p. 911). Müller (Sin 2.281) thus describes the sinful selfishness of childhood: "We meet with this natural egoism in childhood generally, not indeed always in the form of violent passion and self-will, but sometimes under the garb of prevailing passivity and natural softness of disposition and tractableness of character; even in these cases none but a very superficial observer can fail to trace the selfish principle, though modified in its manifestations by natural temperament. An unbiased observation of childhood, when once the moral consciousness is awakened, will satisfy anyone that in the most tenderhearted and affectionate child there is a tendency to indulge hostile feelings against anything that hinders it in the attainment of its own wishes and desires and that it is wont thoughtlessly to give way to this impulse provided it be not held in check by other influences, by blood relationship, or judicious tutelage. Even in the best-dispositioned children we may discover, in greater or less degree, an element of hatred usually aroused by wounded self-love and an element of falsehood which in disputes with its playmates or in answer to its parents or teachers willfully sacrifices truth for the sake of self. Experience indeed shows that this self-seeking on the child's part chiefly appears in the gratification of particular affections and in sensuous pleasures, so that these seem to be the excitants tempting it to wrongdoing and the outward material of its sins; but can this circumstance justify our reducing the principle of selfishness to the excessive strength of particular affections? By no means; on the contrary, the predominance of particular affections and sensuous desires to which experience thus witnesses arises from a radical disturbance in that other sphere of life which is actuated by the perverted will. Experience, moreover, unequivocally testifies that as human development advances selfishness shows itself equally in the spiritual nature and sometimes with such strength as to ignore and suppress the calls of the sensuous nature and of particular affections. The theory of sensuousness or of particular affections is quite insufficient to explain these phenomena."

7.6.10 (see p. 911). Owen (Arminianism, chap. 7) teaches the salvation of some infants outside of the covenant and the church: "In this inquiry respecting the desert of original sin, the question is not 'what shall be the certain lot of those that depart this life under the guilt of this sin only?' but 'what does this hereditary and native corruption deserve in all those in whom it is?' For as St. Paul says, 'We judge not them that are without,' especially infants (1 Cor. 5:13). But for the demerit of this corruption before the justice of God, our Savior expressly affirms that unless a man be born again 'he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven'; and let them that can, distinguish between a not going to heaven and a going to hell: a third receptacle for souls in Scripture we find not. St. Paul also tells us that 'by nature we are children of wrath'; even originally and actually we are guilty of and obnoxious unto that wrath which is accompanied with fiery indignation that shall consume the adversaries. Again, we are assured that no unclean thing shall enter into heaven (Rev. 21); with which hell-deserving uncleanness children are polluted, and, therefore, unless it be purged by the blood of Christ, they have no interest in everlasting happiness. By this means sin is come upon all to condemnation, and yet we do not peremptorily censure to hell all infants departing this world without the laver of regeneration, the ordinary means of waiving the punishment due to this pollution. This is the question de facto which we before rejected: yea, and two ways there are whereby God saves such infants, snatching them like brands from the fire: First, by interesting them into the covenant, if their immediate or remote parents have been believers; he is a God of them and of their seed, extending his mercy unto a thousand generations of them that fear him. Second, by his grace of election which is most free and not tied to any conditions; by which I make no doubt that God takes many infants unto himself in Christ, whose parents never knew or had been despisers of the gospel. And this is the doctrine of our church, agreeable to the Scripture affirming the desert of original sin to be God's wrath and damnation."

Matthew Henry (on 2 Sam. 12:15–25) remarks respecting infant salvation: "Nathan had told David that the child should certainly die, yet while it is within the reach of prayer he earnestly intercedes with God for it, chiefly, we may suppose, that its soul might be safe and happy in another world and that his own sin might not come against the child and that it might not fare the worse for that in the future state. The child died when it was seven days old and therefore not circumcised, which David might perhaps interpret as a further token of God's displeasure, that it died before it was brought under the seal of the covenant. Yet he does not therefore doubt of its being happy, for the benefits of the covenant do not depend upon the seals. Godly parents have great reason to hope concerning their children that die in infancy, that it is well with their souls in the other world; for the promise is 'to us and our seed,' which shall be performed to those who do not put a bar in their own door, as infants do not."

7.6.11 (see p. 914). Graves (Pentateuch 2.3) remarks upon "the striking difference that exists between the Mosaic penal code and that of most modern states. No injury affecting property was punished by death. Restitution was required, or an additional fine imposed suited to the nature of the offense; or at the utmost, if the offender was too poor to make restitution or pay the regulated fine, he might be sold as a slave, still, however, within the pale of the Jewish nation. But this slavery could not exceed seven years, as the Sabbatical Year would terminate it. It must be acknowledged that the Jewish law adjusted its punishments more suitably to the real degree of moral depravity of the different species of crime than modern codes which permit some of the most atrocious instances of moral turpitude to pass with trivial punishments or none at all, while they punish even slight invasions of property with ignominious death. If in England the crimes of adultery, obstinate disobedience to parents, and perjury when intended to destroy the innocent man's life cannot now be capitally punished, because penal laws so extremely rigorous would not be executed and therefore would be ineffectual, while we daily see our scaffolds loaded with criminals prosecuted and condemned for violations of property, will the conclusion be favorable to modern manners? Can we avoid suspecting that our hearts are more anxious for money than for virtue; and that such lenity proves we slight the crimes to which we are thus indulgent, notwithstanding the religion we profess, rather than that we act from pure mercy to the criminal?" In the levitical economy, no sacrifice was appointed for the crime of murder: "You shall take no satisfaction (kōper) for the life of a murderer which is guilty of death; but he shall surely be put to death" (Num. 35:31).

7.6.12 (see p. 922). The spontaneous impulse to invoke the holy and just retribution of God upon diabolical wickedness, when it is persisted in and not repented of, finds expression in the imprecatory psalms, only purified by impersonal judicial feeling from the personal and selfish emotion which exasperates the natural man. Those who would exclude the imprecatory psalms from both the liturgical and the didactic services of the church utterly misconceive their nature. They suppose them to be the expression of the revengeful anger of the individual on account of some injury done to himself by sin, instead of being the judicial displeasure of the conscience at sin as the violation of divine law and the dishonor of God: "Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate you? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies" (Ps. 139:21–22). In this instance, David hates the hater of God, not the hater of himself. The person spoken of is not David's enemy, but God's enemy; by reason of his own love and reverence for God he so identifies himself with God that he "counts" God's enemy as his own enemy, and his invocation of divine retribution thereby obtains the dispassionateness and righteousness of God's own action (119:52–53). The following extract from Tholuck (On the Psalms, introduction 4.3) places the subject in a clear and true light: "The attitude of the psalmists toward their enemies has always formed an objection to their morality. Instead of the mild voice of placability and compassion, we hear, it is said, the tumult of revenge and prayers for the condemnation of their foes. Augustine felt this difficulty and endeavored to remove it by saying that the reference is not to the wishes of the psalmists, but only to predictions of God's retributions suspended over confirmed sinners: 'Indeed, the form of wishing appears in these words, but the foreknowledge of declaring is understood' (sermon 22). The opinion is considerably current that love to enemies is enjoined as a duty only in the New Testament. But the erroneousness of this is evident from Exod. 23:4–5; Lev. 19:18; Job 31:29; Prov. 24:17–18, 29; 25:21–22. In order to form a right estimate of the imprecatory psalms, we must consider the end contemplated by punishment. One view is that with God, and also with the truly righteous man, punishment springs from benevolence and love and contemplates the improvement of man. But what is to be done if you have to do with an impenitent and incorrigible sinner? By his impenitence he is persisting in sin, justifying his sin, and reaffirming it. No one, certainly, would maintain that this concentration of sin into hardness and insensibility is a reason why it should not suffer the intrinsic desert of sin. That there is no prospect and probability of improvement in this case is no reason why the criminal should be dismissed without any infliction. Improvement as the end does not exhaust the purpose of penalty. Philosophy agrees with Christianity that the first and principal purpose of punishment is retribution; that is, that the happiness of the individual criminal be wholly sacrificed to the higher demands of justice as expressed in the law of God and the state. Hence to demand, not from selfish and personal motives but from a sense of the holiness of God and his law, that the hardened sinner be punished in order to vindicate the authority of both is as little to be regarded as evidencing moral imperfection as to desire that those who are susceptible of improvement should be reformed by means of painful correctives. If, therefore, it can be shown that the imprecations and prayers for divine retribution do not flow from the vindictive disposition, the personal irritability, and passion of the psalmist, but from the conscientious and unselfish motives relating to God and law just now alluded to, the objection to the imprecatory psalms is removed. These supplications would then correspond to the desire of a good monarch or a just judge to discover the guilty that justice might be administered. David the king gives expression to this desire in many instances: 'I will walk within my house with a perfect heart. I will set no wicked thing before my eyes; I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me. A forward heart shall depart from me; I will not know a wicked person. Whoso privily slanders his neighbor, him will I cut off; him that has a high look and a proud heart will not I suffer. He that works deceit shall not dwell within my house; he that tells lies shall not tarry in my sight. I will early destroy all the wicked of the land; that I may cut off all wicked doers from the city of the Lord' (Ps. 101). It is not injury and dishonor to himself personally to which he refers in this language, but dishonor to God. He disavows personal and selfish revenge: 'If I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me (yea, I have delivered him that without cause is my enemy), let the enemy pursue my soul and take it; yea, let him tread down my life upon the earth' (7:5–6). Having sinned, he invokes punitive infliction upon himself: 'Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness; and let him reprove me, it shall be an excellent oil' (141:5).

"The psalmists frequently mention reasons like the following for their prayers for the punishment of sinners: that the holiness of God and his righteous government of the world should be acknowledged; that the faith of the pious should be strengthened; that the haughtiness of the ungodly should be brought within bounds; that they should know that God is the righteous judge of the world; and that the fulfillment of his promises to maintain right and justice should not fail. See Ps. 5:11–12; 9:19–20; 12:9; 22:23–32; 28:4–5; 35:24; 40:17; 59:14; 109:27; 142:7. The invocation of divine judgments upon the heathen, such as 79:6: 'Pour out your wrath upon the heathen that have not known you; and upon the kingdoms that have not called upon your name,' is the expression of a desire that the true religion may prevail in the earth. The victory of the heathen over Israel threatened the destruction of it. Moreover, it should be observed that aversion toward a nation as a whole, on account of its enmity to Jehovah, does not exclude sympathy and kindness toward the individuals of it viewed merely as human beings. An instance of this kind occurs in 2 Kings 6:22. From this point of view, even Lessing once advocated the so-called vindictive psalms.

"In the New Testament the same expression of desire for righteous retribution upon the incorrigibly wicked appears. In terms not less severe than those in the Psalms, Christ announces judgment to the 'cursed' (Matt. 25:41) and sentences the hypocritical and selfish Pharisees to 'the damnation of hell' (23:33). Peter in the name of God smote Ananias and Sapphira with instantaneous death for their blasphemy of the Holy Spirit; and his words to both of them contain not the slightest trace of personal and selfish anger. He said to Simon the sorcerer, in holy indignation, 'Your money perish with you,' yet added, 'Repent therefore of this your wickedness.' Did not Paul strike Elymas the sorcerer with blindness and call him a 'child of the devil'? Did he not solemnly 'deliver unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh' the wicked Corinthian who had married his stepmother and say, 'Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil; the Lord reward him according to his works'? Such is the general nature of the imprecations in the Psalms, even if we should concede that in a few instances, like Ps. 137:8–9, there may have been some blending of the unhallowed flame of personal passion with the holy fire."

In his comment upon Ps. 5:10, Tholuck thus explains: " 'Make them guilty' means 'may divine justice cause them to feel their guilt by the failure of their enterprises and make them perceive that they did not only oppose man but God.' The Lord said (Deut. 32:35), 'To me belongs vengeance and recompense.' That declaration caused David to refrain from taking vengeance into his own hands and to refer it to God, as he said to Saul, 'The Lord judge between me and you, and the Lord avenge me of you; but my hand shall not be upon you' (1 Sam. 24:12). In this psalm, he supplicates vengeance at the hands of God, not for his personal gratification but mainly because the cause of oppressed innocence is always that of God and because divine glory is sullied when wickedness triumphs. Proud men have not the remotest idea that God sets so great a value upon poor mortals that he should consider his eternal majesty injured when they are injured. They no more think that their blows will strike heaven than they do when they tread the dust or mud underfoot. But divine wisdom now and then furnishes the most palpable evidence how precious are to him those 'little ones,' as Christ calls them. With this correspond the words of the prophet, 'He that touches you touches the apple of his eye' (Zech. 2:8). As still another ground for the supplicated manifestation of God's punitive justice, the psalmist adduces the eternal praise and gratitude of the entire company of the godly which should be paid to him for this manifestation: 'I remembered your judgments of old, O Lord, and have comforted myself' (Ps. 119:52). For God is not like an unfeeling idol, unheedful of the sacrifices of praise which man his creature offers to him, but he is like a father who rejoices in the honor and love which his children bear to him. David, here and elsewhere, so completely regards all the pious as one component whole, where if 'one member be honored all the members rejoice with it' (1 Cor. 12:26), that he considers his own deliverance as their common interest; for are not benefits conferred on individuals pledges to the rest?"

It must always be remembered that when the psalmist invokes the retribution of God upon the enemies of God, he supposes their impenitence and persistence in enmity. And what other feeling than the desire that obstinate and persevering hostility to God and his government should be punished is proper? David never calls down the judicial vengeance of heaven upon the humble and penitent man who confesses his sin and endeavors to forsake it. This shows that his feeling is not revengeful and selfish; for when mere revenge exists, no discrimination is made between penitence and impenitence. The cry for mercy is disregarded by the malignant and exasperated man, and he wreaks his anger upon the object of it, without regard to the state of mind which may be in the one who has injured him. When David says, "My eye also shall see my desire upon my enemies, and my ears also shall hear my desire of the wicked that shall rise up against me" (Ps. 92:11), he assumes that there is no relenting on their part and no intention to change their course of conduct. And that "my enemies" means God's enemies is proved by the preceding context: "For, lo, your enemies, O Lord, for, lo, your enemies shall perish; all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered" (92:9).

Butler (On Human Nature, sermon 6) evinces the ethical nature of dispassionate resentment against hardened and obstinate wickedness: "The indignation raised by cruelty and injustice, and the desire to have it punished which persons even when not affected by it feel, is by no means malice. No; it is resentment against vice and wickedness, it is one of the common bonds by which society is held together, a fellow feeling which each individual has in behalf of the whole species as well as of himself; and it does not appear that this, generally speaking, is at all too excessive among mankind. It is not natural but moral evil, it is not suffering but injury, which raises that anger or resentment of which we are speaking. The natural object of it is not one who appears to the suffering person to have been only the innocent occasion of his pain or loss, but one who has been in a moral sense injurious to himself or others."

7.6.13 (see p. 929). The existence of a comparatively small kingdom of evil within the vast holy and blessed universe of God is plainly taught in the Apocalypse. (1) It is denominated "the bottomless pit": "The fifth angel sounded, and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth; and unto them was given power as the scorpions of earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should hurt only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And their torment was as the torment of a scorpion when he strikes a man" (Rev. 9:1–5). (2) Satan or the devil is the prince and head of this kingdom: "They had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue has his name Apollyon" (9:11); "and the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent the devil, and Satan, which deceive the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him" (12:9). (3) The members of the kingdom of evil are characterized by willing, willful, and intense hatred of God and holiness and by an impenitent and blaspheming spirit: "They worshiped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? And the beast opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name and his tabernacle and them that dwell in heaven. And they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and repented not of their deeds" (13:4, 6; 16:11). (4) The misery of the kingdom of evil is awful and endless: "The smoke of their torment ascends up forever and ever; and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image and whosoever receives the mark of his name. The beast and the false prophet shall be tormented day and night forever and ever" (14:11; 20:10).

7.6.14 (see p. 930). Bohemian Confession 4 enunciates the often-forgotten truth that the torments of hell, like sin itself, originate in the finite will, not in the infinite; in man, not in God: "For as God is not the cause of sin, even so he is not the cause of punishment." The author of sin is the real author of hell. Says Augustine (On the Trinity 4.12): "The judge inflicts punishment on the guilty; yet it is not the justice of the judge, but the desert of the crime, which is the cause of punishment."

7.6.15 (see p. 932). The boundlessness of divine mercy, of which Dante speaks, supposes penitence for sin, and penitence necessarily begins with the acknowledgment of justice, because mercy exists and is known only as the antithesis of justice. If there were no justice in God, there could be no mercy in him; for mercy is releasing from justice. Here is the fatal defect in spurious penitence. The sinner does not begin at the beginning, by bending the knee before the Holy One. Justice must first be recognized in order to any experience of mercy. Whoever denies the justice of God and recalcitrates at it will be eternally kept in contact and conflict with it and never know anything of divine compassion. He will find it an iron wall through which he cannot break. God, for him, will be a perfectly just and righteously punitive being and nothing more. But whoever humbly recognizes justice by confessing sin and guilt will find that the Supreme Being is infinitely and tenderly pitiful and will forgive and eradicate the deepest sin. For the mercy has been manifested at the cost to the eternal Trinity of a self-sacrifice to satisfy justice of which neither man nor angel has any conception and which was necessitated by the inexorable nature of law and retribution. To deny, therefore, or combat this inexorableness makes the manifestation of pity and mercy on the part of God an utter impossibility.

Accordingly, in all the biblical descriptions of the lost, the absence of sorrow for sin as related to justice and the hatred of justice itself are invariable elements. Satan and his angels, together with condemned men, are utterly and malignantly impenitent: "The fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat and blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they repented not to give him glory. And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain and blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores and repented not of their deeds" (Rev. 16:8–11). Lost men "despise the goodness and forbearance and long-suffering of God that lead to repentance" and "in proportion to (kata) their hardness and impenitent heart treasure up wrath against the day of wrath" (Rom. 2:4–5).

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MONERGISM BOOKS

Dogmatic Theology by W. G. T. Shedd, Copyright © 2021

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Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1: Theological Introduction

1. True Method in Theological Science

2. Plan, Divisions, and Subdivisions

3. Nature and Definition of Theological Science

Part 2: Bibliology

1. Revelation and Inspiration

2. Authenticity of Scripture

3. Credibility of Scripture

4. Canonicity of Scripture

Part 3: Theology (Doctrine of God)

1. Nature and Definition of God

2. Innate Idea and Knowledge of God

3. Arguments for the Divine Existence

4. Trinity in Unity

5. Divine Attributes

6. The Divine Decrees

7. Creation

8. Providence

9. Miracles

Part 4: Anthropology

1. Man's Creation

2. Man's Primitive State

3. Human Will

4. Man's Probation and Apostasy

5. Original Sin

Part 5: Christology

1. Christ's Theanthropic Person

2. Christ's Divinity

3. Christ's Humanity

4. Christ's Unipersonality

5. Christ's Impeccability

Part 6: Soteriology

1. Christ's Mediatorial Offices

2. Vicarious Atonement

3. Regeneration

4. Conversion

5. Justification

6. Sanctification

7. Means of Grace

Part 7: Eschatology

1. Intermediate or Disembodied State

2. Christ's Second Advent

3. Resurrection

4. Final Judgment

5. Heaven

6. Hell