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  SHEDD, WILLIAM G.T.-DOGMATIC THEOLOGY
  by Shedd William gt
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Shedd's systematic theological work presenting comprehensive Christian doctrine
in organized form, covering the full range of Reformed dogmatic theology from
the doctrine of God through eschatology.

  Chapters: 49

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. 02. Preface
    2. 03. To The Classes
    3. 05. Bible Support.com
    4. 1.00. PART 1: Theological Introduction
    5. 1.01.     True Method in Theological Science
    6. 1.02.     Plan, Divisions, and Subdivisions
    7. 1.03      Nature and Definition of Theological Science
    8. 2.00. PART 2: Bibliology
    9. 2.01.     Revelation and Inspiration
   10. 2.02.     Authenticity of Scripture
   11. 2.03.     Credibility of Scripture
   12. 2.04.     Canonicity of Scripture
   13. 3.00. PART 3: Theology
   14. 3.01.     Nature and Definition of God
   15. 3.02.     Innate Idea and Knowledge of God
   16. 3.03.     Arguments for the Divine Existence
   17. 3.04.     Trinity in Unity
   18. 3.05.     Divine Attributes
   19. 3.06.     The Divine Decrees
   20. 3.07.     Creation
   21. 3.08.     Providence
   22. 3.09.     Miracles
   23. 4.00. PART 4: Anthropology
   24. 4.01.     Man's Creation
   25. 4.02.     Man's Primitive State
   26. 4.03.     Human Will
   27. 4.04.     Man's Probation and Apostasy
   28. 4.05.     Original Sin
   29. 5.00. PART 5: Christology
   30. 5.01.     Christ's Theanthropic Person
   31. 5.02.     Christ's Divinity
   32. 5.03.     Christ's Humanity
   33. 5.04.     Christ's Unipersonality
   34. 5.05.     Christ's Impeccability
   35. 6.00. PART 6: Soteriology
   36. 6.01.     Christ's Mediatorial Offices
   37. 6.02.     Vicarious Atonement
   38. 6.03.     Regeneration
   39. 6.04.     Conversion
   40. 6.05.     Justification
   41. 6.06.     Sanctification
   42. 6.07.     Means of Grace
   43. 7.00. PART 7: Eschatology
   44. 7.01.     Intermediate or Disembodied State
   45. 7.02.     Christ's Second Advent
   46. 7.03.     Resurrection
   47. 7.04.     Final Judgment
   48. 7.05.     Heaven
   49. 7.06.     Hell

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  CHAPTER 1: 02. PREFACE
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Preface 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
Romans 5:1-21. 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.1[Note:
1. The reader is reminded that the supplementary material that Shedd published
in volume 3 is in this reprint edition collated into the main body of the
theology by moving it to the end of each chapter to which it belongs.] 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


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  CHAPTER 2: 03. TO THE CLASSES
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TO THE CLASSES FOR WHOM THIS THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM WAS PREPARED AND WHOSE FAITHFUL
ATTENTION TO ITS DELIVERY WAS A CONSTANT ENCOURAGEMENT IT IS RESPECTFULLY AND
AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR


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  CHAPTER 3: 05. BIBLE SUPPORT.COM
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  CHAPTER 4: 1.00. PART 1: THEOLOGICAL INTRODUCTION
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PART 1 Theological Introduction


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  CHAPTER 5: 1.01.     TRUE METHOD IN THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE
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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;1[Note: 1. ἔκθεσις πίστεως = exposition of
faith] 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). (See
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.2[Note: 2. WS: Systems of theology since the Reformation
generally include bibliology. It is found in those of Calvin, Turretin, De
Moor-Marck, Gerhard, Chemnitz, Quenstedt, Hutter, Hollaz, Buddaeus, Döderlein,
Baier, Bretschneider, Knapp, Ebrard, Schleiermacher, Twesten, Watson, Hill,
Hodge, and others.]

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.


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  CHAPTER 6: 1.02.     PLAN, DIVISIONS, AND SUBDIVISIONS
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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)1[Note: 1. βίβλιοῦ λόγος = aword or discourse about
the Bible] 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)2[Note: 2. θεοῦ λόγος =a word or discourse about God] 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 theologos3[Note: 3. ὁ θεόλογος = the theologian] 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)4[Note: 4. ἀνθρώπου λόγος = a word or discourse
about human beings] 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)5[Note: 5. χριστοῦ λόγος = a word or discourse about
Christ] 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)6[Note: 6. σωτηρίας λόγος = a word or discourse
about salvation] 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)7[Note: 7. ἐσχάτων λόγος = a word or discourse about
last things (i.e., end-times)] 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,8[Note: 8.
Common places (i.e., common topics in theology)] Zwingli’s Fidei ratio,9[Note:
9. Confession of faith] 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,10[Note: 0 10. Vorlesungen über neutestamentliche Theologie] 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;11[Note: 1 11. κατὰ τὴν ἀναλογίαν τῆς πιστεως]Romans 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.12[Note: 2 12. Polemical theology. From the Greek word polemos (war),
polemical theology is that branch of theology that attacks other theological
positions.] 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.


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  CHAPTER 7: 1.03      NATURE AND DEFINITION OF THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE
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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”
(Romans 12:1); “having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse
ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit” (2 Corinthians 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. (See
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)1[Note: 1. θεοῦ λόγος = a word or discourse about God] 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 [to reread or choose again]. Analogously, we speak of “elegant persons”
(elegantes) from the verb eligere [to choose]; of “diligent persons”
(deligantes) from the verb deligere [to call for]; and of “intelligent persons”
(intelligentes) from the verb intellegere [to understand].” (Concerning the
Nature of the Gods 2.28)2[Note: 2. Qui autem omnia quae ad cultum deorum
pertinerent diligenter retractarent, et tanquam relegerent, sunt dicti
religiosi, ex relegendo; ut elegantes ex eligendo, a diligendo diligentes, ex
intelligendo intelligentes. As H. C. P. McGregor notes, Cicero’s point is that
“all these words contain the same sense of ‘choosing’ (legere) that is present
in ‘religious’ ”; Cicero, Nature of the Gods (trans. H. C. P. McGregor;
Middlesex: Penguin, 1972), 153.]

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:3[Note: 3. to tie, fasten behind] “By
this chain [of piety] we are bound and tied (religati) to God. From this we
derive the very word religion, and not from the verb relego [to read or choose
again and again] as Cicero interpreted it” (Institutes 4.28).4[Note: 4. Hoc
vinculo obstricti deo et religati sumus: unde ipsa religio nomen recepit, non ut
Cicero interpretatus est, a relegendo.] 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
(theologia5[Note: 5. θεολογία = a discussion or discourse about God] and
theosebeia)6[Note: 6. θεοσέβεια = reverence for or worship of God] 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).7[Note: 7. Omnia pertractantur in sacra doctrina sub
ratione dei, vel quia sunt ipse deus, vel quia habent ordinem ad deum ut ad
principium, et finem. Unde sequitur quod deus vere sit subjectum hujus
scientiae.]

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.”8[Note: 8. WS: Bentley, On Free
Thinking, 8. See Newton’s exposure of the mistakes of Bolingbroke in Prophecies,
diss. 1.]

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.9[Note: 9. WS: A
writer in the Oct. 1838 Quarterly Review shows that Gibbon’s account of
gnosticism is superficial and sometimes positively erroneous. The knowledge of
gnosticism must be derived from the Christian fathers.]

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.10[Note: 0 10. WS: See a searching criticism of
Draper by Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 337-57.]

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.11[Note: 1 11. WS: “Is a man,” says
Plutarch (On Superstition), “of opinion that indivisibles were the first origin
of things? It is indeed a mistaken view, but makes no ulcer, no shooting
searching pain. But is a man of opinion that wealth is his chief good? This
error contains in it a canker; it preys upon a man’s spirits, it suffers him not
to sleep, it makes him horn-mad.” Similarly Frank (Christian Certainty, 105)
remarks “that it is of slight importance for the person of the observer, whether
this physical object which I see before me is in truth as I see it or other than
I see it. But the whole constancy and strength and worth of the personality
depends upon the question whether this moral good which I experience as real has
an actual existence or not; the personality cannot free itself therefrom,
without the innermost basis and supreme aim of its life being lost.”] 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.” (See 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,12[Note: 2 12. ὕλη = matter] 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. (See 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.13[Note: 3 13. WS: Strato (289 b.c.) maintained that “there
is inherent in nature an eternal and necessary principle of motion, or force,
without intelligence, which is the only cause of the production or dissolution
of bodies.”]

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.14[Note: 4 14. WS: See especially Whewell’s recapitulation
in 1.18.]

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.15[Note: 5 15. Nova Zembla is an island in the Russian Arctic.] 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.16[Note: 6 16. Lilliput and Brobdingnag are two fictitious lands described
in Swift’s famous Gulliver’s Travels. In Lilliput, Gulliver is a giant in
comparison to the six-inch-tall Lilliputians. Conversely, the inhabitants of
Brobdingnag are giants who tower over Gulliver.] “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[Note: 7 17. WS: Epicurus, on the
contrary, carried the doctrine that the senses are the only measure of truth so
far as to affirm that the sun is no larger than it appears; see Descartes,
Preface to Principles of Philosophy.]

“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. (See 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, n 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,18[Note: 8 18. θεωρία
= a looking at, viewing, or beholding (consequently, speculation)] 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,”19[Note: 9 19. εὔρηκα = I have found
it] 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.20[Note: 0 20. WS:

Him the Maker, we behold not; calm He veils himself in everlasting laws, Which
and not Him, the skeptic seeing, exclaims, “Wherefore a God? The world itself is
God.”

-Schiller, Don Carlos] 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. (See 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.21[Note: 1 21. WS: Shedd, Literary
Essays, 301-5. On the inferiority of natural science to moral, see Plato, Phaedo
96-100.] 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 Ephesians 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 Hebrews 11:1 as the “evidence” of unseen things. The word
elenchos22[Note: 2 22. ἔλεγχος = a proving or conviction about] 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.23[Note: 3 23. WS: On Hamilton’s and Mansel’s views, see Smith, Faith and
Philosophy, 297-336; Porter, Human Intellect, 681-97; Hodge, Theology 1.346-65;
Müller, Science of Language, 2d series, 596-600.]

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 [sensible
images] 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
[image] 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:24[Note: 4 24.
quanquam] 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 [unthinkable] 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.

S U P P L E M E N T S

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?” (Romans 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 Psalms
130:1-8): “ ‘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),25[Note: 5 25. αὔταρκες] 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 [i.e., nature] 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)26[Note: 6 26. μέλος] 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);27[Note: 7 27. φύσεως ἱστορίαν] 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 [thought is cerebration], 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)28[Note: 8 28. heavenly bodies (as in
astronomy)] 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 extra29[Note: 9 29. from the
outside] 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 [tangentially] 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 [but voluntary].”

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.


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  CHAPTER 8: 2.00. PART 2: BIBLIOLOGY
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PART 2

Bibliology


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  CHAPTER 9: 2.01.     REVELATION AND INSPIRATION
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Revelation and Inspiration

Bibliology (bibliou logos)1[Note: 1. βιβλίου λόγος = a word or discourse about
the Bible] 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)2[Note: 2. ἀποκαλύπτεται] from heaven” (Romans 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)3[Note: 3.
θειότης] is also represented as a divine teaching. “That which may be known of
God [in this intuitive manner] is manifest in them; for God has showed it unto
them” (Romans 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.”4[Note: 4. revelatio
naturalis]

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. (See
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.”5[Note: 5. WS: See
Twesten, Dogmatics 2.146; Shedd, Theological Essays, 303-4; Neander, Book of
Acts §6: “Reconciliation.”]

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 (Romans 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 Isaiah 6:1-13[Note: 6. WS: See
Conybeare’s “Reply to Tindal” in Shedd, History of Doctrine 1.208.] 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: orgē7[Note:
7. ὀργή = wrath] not agapē.8[Note: 8. ἀγάπη = love] 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[Note: 9. religiones licitae] 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” (Matthew 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 Romans
7:1-25; Romans 8:1-39. 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” (Hebrews 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 inspiration10[Note: 0 10.
inspiratio antecedens] or the revelation of things before unknown (this is
revelation proper); (2) concomitant inspiration11[Note: 1 11. inspiratio
concomitans] 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[Note: 2 12. inspiratio consequens] 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.”13[Note: 3 13. Res quae in scriptura continentur, non solum
per assistentiam et directionem divinam infallibilem literis consignatae sunt,
sed singulari Spiritus Sancti suggestioni, inspirationi, et dictamini, acceptae
ferendae sunt.] 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,”14[Note: 4 14. Res sanctis scriptoribus naturaliter prorsus incognitae;
naturaliter quidem cognoscibiles, actu tamen incognitae; non tantum naturaliter
cognoscibiles, sed etiam actu ipso notae.] 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 (Genesis 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)15[Note: 5 15. the matters themselves] 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
[inspired], 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. (See 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 Timothy 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” (Hebrews 1:1-2); “which things we speak, not in
the words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches” (1
Corinthians 2:13); “holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit”
(2 Peter 1:21); “search the Scriptures” (John 5:39); “unto them were committed
the oracles of God” (Romans 3:2); and “look to the law and to the testimony”
(Isaiah 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.” (See 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
Grundschrift16[Note: 6 16. a basic or foundational writing] 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” (Isaiah 1:1); “the burden of Tyre” (23:1); “the word of the
Lord that came to Jeremiah concerning the dearth” (Jeremiah 14:1); “then was the
secret revealed to Daniel in a night vision” (Daniel 2:19; Daniel 10:1); “thus
says Jehovah, Call unto me, and I will answer you and show great and mighty
things which you know not” (Jeremiah 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)17[Note: 7
17. ἐν ἀποκάλυψει] or by knowledge” (1 Corinthians 14:6); “when you come
together, everyone of you has a doctrine, has a revelation
(apokalypsin),18[Note: 8 18. ἀποκάλυψιν] has an interpretation” (14:26); “I will
come to visions and revelations of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 12:1). The product
of a revelation is denominated a “mystery”: “We speak the wisdom of God in a
mystery” (1 Corinthians 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 Thessalonians 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 Corinthians 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 (Romans 11:25. The account in Genesis 1:1-31 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 (Romans 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”
(Ezekiel 18:4) is natural religion. Christ “was made a curse for us” (Galatians
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 (Romans 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
(Matthew 10:5-20; John 14:25-26; John 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
apostolōn19[Note: 9 19. διδαχή τῶν ἀποστόλων = teaching of the apostles] 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;20[Note: 0 20.
ἀνατάξασθαι διήγησιν = to arrange a narrative, compile an account (New American
Standard Bible)] 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 apostolōn21[Note: 1 21. διδαχή τῶν ἀποστόλων = teaching of the
apostles] 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). (See
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” (Numbers 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” (Numbers 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. (See 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 15:1-41 with the individual action
subsequently of Peter spoken of in Galatians 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. (See 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.22[Note: 2 22. ab extra = from
the outside] It was communicated from on high. (See supplement 2.1.7.)

Inspiration is not omniscience.23[Note: 3 23. WS: Immer (Hermeneutics, 18)
argues against the infallibility of St. Paul because of the failure of his
memory in regard to a certain particular (1 Corinthians 14:16). Because the
apostle could not remember how many persons he had baptized, therefore his
teaching in1 Corinthians 15:1-58respecting the resurrection is fallible! Upon
the same principle, he should deny St. Paul’s infallibility because he was
ignorant of the steam engine and telegraph.] 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. (See 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 Peter 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.24[Note: 4 24. afflatus = a blowing or a breathing on, an inspiration]
There is an inbreathing of the Holy Spirit upon the human spirit. The epithet
employed by St. Paul (2 Timothy 3:16) is theopneustos.25[Note: 5 25. θεόπνευστος
= God-breathed (hence, divinely inspired)] The consequence is an inward impulse
and actuation of the mind: “Holy men of God spoke as they were moved (carried
along, pheromenoi)26[Note: 6 26. φερομένοι] by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21).
This contains (a) suggestion of matter both as to thought and language (aiding
the memory is included in this; John 14:26),27[Note: 7 27. WS: “In his extreme
old age, the elder Adams was asked for an analysis of James Otis’s speech in
1761 on the acts of the Board of Trade, which was five hours long. He answered
that no man could have written the argument from memory ‘the day after it was
spoken,’ much less ‘after a lapse of fifty-seven years.’ Adams then proceeded to
compose a series of letters on the subject filling thirty-three closely printed
pages. Comparing these letters with letters written at or near the time, I am
obliged to think that the venerable man blended together his recollections of
the totality of the influence and doctrines of Otis during the years 1761-66. I
own that I have had embarrassment in adjusting the authorities” (Bancroft,
History 4.416). If St. John did not compose and write his gospel until a.d. 80
or 90, he certainly would have needed supernatural assistance in reporting so
minutely and fully as he has the last discourse of Christ, some fifty or more
years after its delivery.] (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.28[Note: 8 28.
WS: Says Philippi (Doctrine, chap. 2), “While we maintain verbal inspiration
(Wortinspiration), we do not mean the inspiration of each word separately and by
itself (Wörterinspiration).” As he explains his meaning, it seems to be that an
apostle or prophet under the impulse of the divine Spirit originated a product
that as a unity and a whole was inspired both in matter and form, thought and
language. But each particular word, one by one, was not mechanically and
separately suggested to him. The process of inspiration was dynamic, continuous,
and flowing.] 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” (Psalms 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, logos29[Note: 9 29. λόγος = word] signifies both reason
and word. Reason is internal thought (logos endiathetos);30[Note: 0 30. λόγος
ἐνδιάθετος (i.e., a word as it exists in the mind)] word is external thought
(logos prophorikos).31[Note:1 31. λόγος προφορικός (i.e., a word that has been
uttered forth)]

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). (See 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.32[Note: 2 32. WS: On the necessary connection of thought and language, cf.
Müller, Science of Language, 1st series, lects. 1-2, 9; Science of Thought
1.284-85; Westcott, Study of the Gospels (introduction); Shedd, Literary Essays,
149-68.]

Scripture itself asserts verbal inspiration: “I have put words in your mouth”
(Jeremiah 1:9); “I will give you a mouth and wisdom [i.e., both language and
thought]” (Luke 21:12-15); “it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your
Father which speaks in you” (Matthew 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
Peter 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 Galatians 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 hagion33[Note: 3 33. τὸ γεννώμενον ἅγιον = the holy thing (neuter)
begotten. The neuter gender is significant here because it shows that Christ
derived his human nature from Mary; the neuter noun is suited to referto
Christ’s “impersonal” (i.e., not yet personalized) human nature. On the other
hand, the root of Christ’s person is the divine Logos, the second person of the
Trinity, who assumed that nature. If the reference were to his person, one would
expect to find a masculine noun (see p. 629 n. 38). See anhypostasis and
enhypostasis in glossary 1.] (Luke 1:35) and hen34[Note: 4 34. ἕν = one
(neuter)] instead of heis35[Note: 5 35. εἷς = one (masculine)] (John
10:30).36[Note: 6 36. Shedd’s point is that inJohn 10:30the neuter is used
because a oneness of essence/being/substance is in view; hence, the meaning is
“I and the Father are one thing [i.e., God].”] In Php 2:6morphē theou37[Note: 7
37. μορφή θεοῦ = the form of God] is used instead of ousia theou38[Note: 8 38.
οὐσία θεοῦ = the essence or being of God. A trinitarian person is one mode or
form (morphē) in which the divine essence (ousia) subsists. Thus, the word
morphē would have reference to Christ’s preincarnate personhood rather than to
the essence that the three trinitarian person have in common. See modus
subsistendi in glossary 1.] 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,39[Note: 9 39. οὕς δέδωκας = those (plural) whom you have
given (to me). The plural could be theologically significantin arguing that
election has reference to particular individuals rather than merely to the
church as a corporate entity. Shedd, in keeping with Reformed theology
generally, holds the former.] and the uncials read ho dedōkas.40[Note: 0 40. ὁ
δέδωκας = that which (singular) you have given to me] 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.41[Note: 1 41. ὁ = that which] If it was that of
particular individuals, the thought suggested the word hous.42[Note: 2 42. οὕς =
those] (See 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. (See 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 Chronicles 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
Corinthians 2:13). But if Scripture requires to be explained and corrected by
human authorities, then the divine is rectified by the human. In the fist 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 verba43[Note: 3 43. the very words, the exact
words, the words themselves] and were all the words, he would have stated an
error. (See 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
Chronicles 22:2). According to 1 Samuel 6:1950; 1 Samuel 6:070 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,44[Note: 4 44. I work to be brief, I become
obscure] 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[Note: 5 45. ἀπομνημονεῦματα = memoirs] 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 Matthew 24:31
(salpingos phōnē);46[Note: 6 46. σάλπιγγος φωνή = the voice (i.e., sound) of a
trumpet] 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 Genesis 1:1-31 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 Genesis 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 7:1-60 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
sensum47[Note: 7 47. to the sense] and not ad verbum48[Note: 8 48. to the word]
does not prove that he is uninspired and fallible upon the subject which he is
presenting.49[Note: 9 49. In other words, in this case the New Testament writer
conveys Moses’ meaning even though he does not reproduce Moses’ exact wording.]
(See 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. (See 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.50[Note: 0 50. WS: See
Whewell, Inductive Sciences 5.3.4 (the Copernican system opposed on theological
grounds).] 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
(Joshua 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. (See 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” (Genesis 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” (Psalms 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” (Proverbs
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” (Romans 4:17); “by him were all things created that are in
heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible” (Colossians 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,51[Note: 1 51. ὕλη = matter] 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 Isaiah 40:12; Isaiah 40:15; Isaiah
40:22; Psalms 104:1-35).

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)52[Note: 2 52. πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόπως] spoke in times past unto the
fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken unto us by his Son”
(Hebrews 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
(Genesis 18:1-17; Exodus 3:4; Exodus 19:20); (b) God appears in a form and
directly speaks to an individual in a dream (Genesis 28:12); (c) God appears in
a form and directly speaks to an individual in an ecstatic vision (Ezekiel 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” (Colossians 1:15), and the
“express image of the Father’s person” (Hebrews 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 (Exodus 28:30; 1 Samuel 28:6); (b) by the prophets under
an afflatus (2 Kings 21:10; Romans 1:2; 1 Peter 1:11-12; 2 Peter 1:21; 1
Corinthians 2:13); and (c) by the apostles under an afflatus (1 Corinthians
2:13; Galatians 1:12; Ephesians 3:3; 1 Thessalonians 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.

S U P P L E M E N T S

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” (Exodus
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 Exodus 26:30; Exodus
27:8; Numbers 8:4; Acts 7:44; Hebrews 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 [absolute] 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 (Matthew 10:1-16; Ephesians 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 Romans 1:1; 1 Corinthians 1:1; 1 Corinthians 9:1; 1
Corinthians 15:3; Galatians 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 [of the life and doctrine of Christ]. Matthew also issued
a written gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect [in addition to his
original Greek gospel] 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 14:1-36 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:53[Note: 3 53. ἀνάμνησις = a recollection]
“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 Peter 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” (Galatians 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” (Galatians 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
Corinthians 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 Corinthians 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),54[Note: 4 54. διήγησις] 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; Matthew 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 Revelation
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 Corinthians 15:5 St. Paul calls
eleven apostles the Twelve (cf. Matthew 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; John 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 [of my ministry]” (John 14:26; John 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” (Ephesians 2:20). Only the names of the “twelve
apostles of the Lamb” were cut into the jasper foundations of the New Jerusalem
(Revelation 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 Romans 8:28-39;Romans 9:1-33;Romans 10:1-21;Romans 11:1-36 and of the
resurrection in 1 Corinthians 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)55[Note: 5 55. τὰ
λόγια] 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 (Zechariah 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” (Php 4:5) and “yet a little while and he
that shall come will come and will not tarry” (Hebrews 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 Peter 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 Samuel 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 [in the case of the child] under the guidance of
sounds actually produced [by its teachers]; 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)56[Note: 6 56. λόγῳ = in word] and in all knowledge” (1
Corinthians 1:4-5); “you abound in utterance (logō)57[Note: 7 57. λόγῳ = in
word] and knowledge” (2 Corinthians 8:7); “praying for me, that utterance
(logos)58[Note: 8 58. λόγος = word] may be given unto me” (Ephesians 6:19);
“praying that God would open unto us a door of utterance (logou)”59[Note: 9 59.
λόγου = of word] (Colossians 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
logos60[Note: 0 60. λόγος = word] 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
Samuel 1:16), 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 [as well as the thought itself] and thus
speak internally and mentally.”61[Note: 1 61. Quia ipsa verba cogitamus nos
intus apud animam loqui.] 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,62[Note: 2 62. I am angry] 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
Genesis 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 Genesis 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 [identically] the same point of view. No two reports
from different sources can possibly be exactly [identically] 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 Psalms 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 Psalms
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 Numbers 6:6; Leviticus 5:2; Leviticus
19:28; Leviticus 21:1; Leviticus 21:11; Leviticus 22:4; Numbers 18:11; Numbers
18:13; Haggai 2:13). Again, such quotations from the Old Testament (Exodus
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 Exodus 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 (Matthew 2:15),
the killing of the paschal lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7; John 1:2), the lifting up of
the brazen serpent (3:14), the Nazirite vow in the instances of Samson and
Samuel (Matthew 2:23), the miracle of Jonah (Matthew 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
theopneustos63[Note: 3 63. θεόπνευστος] (divinely inspired; 2 Timothy 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;64[Note: 4 64.
φερόμενοι = having been carried along]2 Peter 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.)


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  CHAPTER 10: 2.02.     AUTHENTICITY OF SCRIPTURE
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Authenticity of Scripture The authenticity of a book is its genuineness.1[Note:
1. WS: Watson (Apology, letter 2) defines “an authentic book” as one “that
relates matters of fact as they really happened.” This is credibility and is the
earlier use of the term. The later usage makes authenticity to mean genuineness.
Cf. Shakespeare’s use with that of Addison and Burke in Richardson’s Dictionary
(under the appropriate entries).] 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 Antilegomena2[Note: 2. spoken against (a term applied
to certain biblical books whose canonicity was questioned)] (James, Jude, 2
Peter 2:1-22 -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. (See
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.


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  CHAPTER 11: 2.03.     CREDIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE
========================================================================

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. (See 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.1[Note: 1. Needless to
say, Shedd would have been quite surprised at the actual growth of Mormonism,
currently at eleven million members!] 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; John 9:33; John 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 [miraculous].” A miracle, therefore, if an actual
historical fact, is a proof of the divine origin of the truths attested by it.
(See 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 Peter 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 Corinthians
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.2[Note: 2. WS: See South,
On Christ’s Resurrection, sermon 3.91. Also Christlieb’s summing up of the ten
appearances of Christ after his resurrection (Modern Doubt, lect. 7).]

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. (See
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 domini3[Note: 3. in the year of (our) Lord] 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; John 7:52; John 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.4[Note:
4. WS: Edersheim (Life of Jesus 3.1) observes that the temptation of Christ in
the gospels is not found in the rabbinic representation of the Messiah.] Neither
can the person of Christ be explained as the natural product of human
development generally. Says Neander (Life of Christ, 4 [ed. Bohn]), “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.5[Note: 5. WS:
While this remark of Channing disconnects the New Testament too much from the
Old and separates Christianity too much from the spiritual Judaism that prepared
for it, it is nevertheless correct in regard to the originality of Christ’s
doctrines and is the more significant as it comes from one who denied his
deity.] (See 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” (Matthew
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 Genesis 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 (Genesis 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.6[Note: 6.
WS: On the distinction between historic faith (fides humana) and saving faith
(fides divina), see Dorner, Christian Doctrine 1.98-113.] 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 Corinthians 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. (See 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.7[Note: 7. At the same time, it is also worth noting that Shedd
believed that the ontological argument for God’s existence is valid and true and
quite compelling when the argument is correctly apprehended.] “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. (See 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” (Romans 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.8[Note: 8. WS: On the subject of Christian certainty, in distinction
from natural certainty, see the thoughtful treatise of Frank.] (See 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; Luke 24:44); “the gospel of
God was promised afore by his prophets in the holy Scriptures” (Romans 1:2);
“all Scripture is given by inspiration” (2 Timothy 3:16); “holy men of God spoke
as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (1 Peter 1:10-12; 2 Peter 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 Matthew 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; John 7:22-23 : “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 Matthew 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 Matthew
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 Chronicles 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 Matthew 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
Isaiah 61:1-11, 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.”9[Note: 9. inter scripturas canonicas] 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 (Deuteronomy 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. (See 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 Matthew 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.

S U P P L E M E N T S

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” (Matthew 24:24).
St. Paul says that the coming of Antichrist will be “with all power and signs
and lying wonders” (2 Thessalonians 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” (Deuteronomy
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?” (Matthew 9:28; Mark 9:23; and elsewhere); “he did
not many mighty works there because of their unbelief” (Matthew 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” (Exodus 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
Timothy 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 [to believe in proportion to the strength of the
evidence] 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. [Probability (probo)10[Note: 0 10.
I prove, demonstrate] is provability.] 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.”


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  CHAPTER 12: 2.04.     CANONICITY OF SCRIPTURE
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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. (See 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. (See 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 2Ma 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
Chronicles 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 Chronicles 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 Colossians 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 1:1-16 -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 tantum1[Note: 1. tantum =
only] is an error for unam).2[Note: 2. unam = one] 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.

S U P P L E M E N T S

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 [immediate] 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.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 13: 3.00. PART 3: THEOLOGY
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PART 3

Theology (Doctrine of God)


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 14: 3.01.     NATURE AND DEFINITION OF GOD
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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)1[Note:
1. πνεῦμα ὁ θεός = God (is) spirit] by its emphatic collocation of pneuma2[Note:
2. πνεῦμα = spirit] 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”
(Matthew 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
Timothy 6:16), because his immortality is a parte ante3[Note: 3. in the
direction of what comes before (i.e., looking backward in time)] as well as a
parte post.4[Note: 4. in the direction of what comes after (i.e., looking
forward in time)] His immortality is eternity.5[Note: 5. God is said to be
immortal not only because he will have no end but also because he had no
beginning; God’s immortality “always was and will be,” whether one looks to the
past or to the future.] 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” (Deuteronomy 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.6[Note: 6. WS: But in both of these modes of
manifestation, the infinite spirit though in a form is not shut up and confined
in it. The Son of Man was also in heaven at the same instant that he was on
earth in a human body. Jehovah, though present in the form of the burning bush,
was at the same moment omnipresent also.] 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)7[Note: 7. ἐξηγήσατο]
him” (1:18). In Php 2:6 the trinitarian personality of the Logos is denominated
a “form of God” (morphē theou).8[Note: 8. μορφή θεοῦ] 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)9[Note: 9. μορφή] of a
servant” (explained by schēma;10[Note: 0 10. σχῆμα = appearance] 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. Psalms 104:4;
Psalms 103:20; 1 Kings 22:19; 2 Chronicles 18:18; Isaiah 6:5; Luke 15:10;
Hebrews 1:7; Hebrews 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” (Hebrews 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” (Isaiah 40:17); “my age is as nothing before you” (Psalms 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.”11[Note: 1 11. WS: Claudienus of
Vienne, in the fifth century, notes the following points of difference between
soul and body: (1) Everything is incorporeal which does not occupy space. The
soul occupies no space. (2) Reason, memory, and will occupy no space. (3) The
body feels the impression of touch in the part touched; but the soul feels the
impression as a whole, not in a part. (4) There is in all bodies a right and a
left, an up and a down, a front and a back; but nothing of the kind in the soul.
(5) The soul feels by visible organs, but feels invisibly. The eye is one thing,
seeing is another; the ears are one thing, hearing is another; the hand is one
thing, touching is another. We distinguish by the touch what is hot and what
cold, but we do not touch the sensation of touch, which in itself is neither hot
nor cold; the organ by which we feel is a different thing from the sensation
(Guizot, Civilization 1.399 [ed. Bohn]).] (See 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 homoiousios12[Note: 2 12.
ὁμοιούσιος = similar nature] with God, but not homoousios.13[Note: 3 13.
ὁμοούσιος = same nature] 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”14[Note: 4 14.
Deus est quaedam substantia; nam quod nulla substantia est, nihil omnino est.
Substantia ergo, aliquid esse est.] (Augustine on Psalms 68:1-35). God is
ens:15[Note: 5 15. being] 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.16[Note: 6 16. WS: It should
be noticed that it is not because space and time are invisible that they are not
substances or entities. An entity may be invisible. The forces of nature are
invisible, but they are entities, not abstract ideas or forms of thought. They
make an impression upon substances. They are efficient powers. They answer to
Plato’s definition of substance. The force of gravity is like time in having
none of the geometrical dimensions, but it cannot, like time in Kant’s
philosophy, be explained as a mere form of the understanding, the mode in which
the human mind conceives. Gravity is a substantial or material force and
constitutes a part of the material universe. It is invisible matter; matter
without form, but not without entity. The same is true of all the other forces
of inorganic nature. Matter has an invisible and formless mode of existence in
organic nature, as well as in inorganic. The principle of animal life is real
entity, but it is without geometric dimensions and is as invisible as the spirit
of man or of God. But it is matter, not spirit. The bodily life, the so-called
animal soul of a dog, is nothing but matter. It constitutes no part of the moral
and spiritual world. It dies with the body which it inhabits and vitalizes. It
was the overlooking of the distinction between matter as visible and invisible
that led Butler, Wesley, Agassiz and others to favor the doctrine of animal
immortality. Because the dog’s soul is invisible like that of man, they
concluded that it is immortal like his. But an invisible principle may be as
perishable as a visible body and must be in case it is a material or physical
principle, in case it belongs to the world of matter, not of spirit.] (See
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” (Psalms 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” (Exodus 3:14) and “he who is” (Revelation 1:4) and by
attributing to him “Godhead” (theotēs;17[Note: 7 17. θεότης]Colossians 2:9) and
a “nature” (physis;18[Note: 8 18. φύσις]Galatians 4:8; 2 Peter 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)19[Note: 9 19. κυριώτερον]
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. (See 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).20[Note: 0 20.
from the earth] 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)21[Note: 1 21. and
for that reason, it must be eternal] (cf. More, On Immortality 1.3).22[Note: 2
22. WS: More departed from the common opinion in contending that spiritual
substance has extension and the three dimensions, like material substance. It
differs from matter in having self-motion and in not having impenetrability. It
is not moved ab extra, and its presence does not exclude that of material
substance. He denied the Schoolman’s dictum that the soul is all in every part
of the body because this is incompatible with the view that spiritual substance
is extended.]

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” (Ecclesiastes 12:17). 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
Corinthians 12:2-3). (See 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,”23[Note: 3 23. corporalitas animae] 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[Note: 4 24. Incorporalitas enim nihil patitur, non habens per quod
pati possit; aut si habet, hoc erit corpus. In quantum enim omne corporale
passibile est, in tantum quod passibile est, corporale est.] 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.”25[Note: 5 25. Tertulliano corpus
generaliter significat substantiam vere subsistentem, sive sit visibilis, sive
invisibilis. Hinc deum quoque corpus esse dixit. Sed praestat ejusmodi
ἀκυρολογίας (akyrologias) vitare.] 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.”26[Note: 6 26. Qui aut figuram negant habere ullam deum, aut
nullo affectu commoveri putant.] By “figure” Lactantius means the definiteness
of personality. (See 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” (Exodus 33:20). The incarnate Son is denominated “the
brightness (apaugasma,27[Note: 7 27. ἀπαύγασμα] the reflected splendor) of God’s
glory” (Hebrews 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” (Deuteronomy 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”
(Ecclesiastes 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 within28[Note: 8 28. WS: Similarly, Schelling
(Idealism of the Theory of Knowledge, 240) remarks: “Nur eine in sich selbst
zurückgehende Kraft schafft sich selbst ein Innres. Daher der Materie kein
Innres zukommt” [AG: Only a force that goes back into itself can itself create
an Innres, since matter cannot attain to the same]. Coleridge adopts this in his
Biographia (ed. Harper, 242). Schubert says that “the farther we penetrate into
matter, we find the minute and microscopic more and more; but the further we
penetrate into mind, we discover the great and grand more and more” (Opinions,
195).] 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;29[Note: 9 29. from the outside] spiritual
substance is moved ab intra,30[Note: 0 30. from within] 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
asōmatos31[Note: 1 31. ἀσώματος = without a body, disembodied] or incorporeal,
yet still spoke of a nous hylikos,32[Note: 2 32. νοῦς ὑλικός] a material
[substantial] 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”;33[Note: 3 33. Cogitatio attributum dei est, sive deus est res cogitans.]
and (3) this substance is extended: “Extension is an attribute of God, or God is
an extended thing.”34[Note: 4 34. Extensio attributum dei, sive deus est res
extensa.] 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.35[Note: 5 35. WS: For a refutation of Spinoza, see Howe,
Living Temple, 21. For a clear statement of Spinozism, see Überweg, History
2.55-56. Hobbes denied the existence of anything but body and asserted that God
is corporeal (Cudworth, Intellectual System 5.3). Berkeley (Principles of
Knowledge) takes the other extreme and maintains that mind is the only
substance.]

Plato (Sophist 246) describes the conflict going on in his day respecting the
definition of substance (ousia):36[Note: 6 36. οὐσία = being]

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)37[Note: 7 37. παθήματα] of
sins which are in the members (Romans 7:5; Galatians 5:24). Locke (Essay 2.21.4)
distinguishes between “active and passive power”: “From body [matter], 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”38[Note: 8 38. Esse relativi est ad aliud se habere. Si igitur relatio
sit ipsa divina essentia, sequitur quod esse divinae essentiae sit ad aliud se
habere; quod repugnat perfectioni divino esse quod est maxime absolutum est et
per se subsistens.] (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.39[Note: 9 39. from within]
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,40[Note: 0 40. from the outside] 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). (See 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.”41[Note: 1 41. Die Liebe Gottes ist eine anthropopathische Vorstellung
von ganz gleicher Ordnung mit der Persönlichheit Gottes; sie steht und fällt mit
dieser, und ist dem religiösen Bewusstseyn [sic] auf pantheistischer Basis
ebenso entbehrlich wie diese.] 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 (Genesis 3:22-23;
Exodus 13:17; Deuteronomy 32:27), must be regarded as metaphorical. The same is
true of jealousy (Deuteronomy 32:21) and of grieving and repenting (Genesis
6:6-7; Psalms 95:10; Jeremiah 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)42[Note: 2 42. ἀγάπη] and wrath
(orgē).43[Note: 3 43. ὀργή] 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” (Proverbs 8:36); “you that love the Lord, hate
evil” (Psalms 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).44[Note: 4 44. WS: On the subject of divine anger, see Tertullian, Concerning
the Wrath of God; Neander, Book ofActs 2:616(reconciliation inRomans 4:35;Php
2:6); Shedd, Theological Essays, 269-85.]

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” (Ephesians 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).45[Note: 5 45. ἐπιθυμία =
lust] 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 [hell
as well as heaven], 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.46[Note: 6 46. WS: One of the contradictions in Spinoza’s
system is that while he denies self-determination to man, he concedes
self-consciousness to him. But a theorist who could attribute to God the two
contradictories thought and extension could attribute to man the two
contradictories personality and necessity. On these two factors in personality,
see Müller, Sin 2.113-42 (trans. Urwick).]

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. (See 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. (See
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 (Matthew 11:27), 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” (Proverbs 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”47[Note: 7 47. Ein
Gegensatz von Selbstbewusstsein und Weltbewusstsein, von Ich and Nicht Ich, von
Subject und Object in Gott, nicht denkbar ist. Vielmehr sein Selbstbewusstsein
mit seiner intuitiven Weltbewusstsein eins ist. Das Absolute kann kein anderes
Selbstbewusstsein haben als sein intuitives Weltbewusstsein.] (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”
(Matthew 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,48[Note: 8 48. within, on the inside. In this
context, the reference is to relationships within the Godhead itself, as opposed
to the relationships the Godhead sustains to objects outside of itself (i.e., ad
extra).] 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;49[Note: 9 49. μορφή]Php 2:6; see p.
103 n. 38 [Note: . 38 38. οὐσία θεοῦ = the essence or being of God. A
trinitarian person is one mode or form (morphē) in which the divine essence
(ousia) subsists. Thus, the word morphē would have reference to Christ’s
preincarnate personhood rather than to the essence that the three trinitarian
person have in common. See modus subsistendi in glossary 1.] ) but not as to
essence (ousia)50[Note: 0 50. οὐσία] from the object contemplated. God the
Father is not the same person (morphē tou theou)51[Note: 1 51. μορφή τοῦ θεοῦ =
form of God] as God the Son, though he is the same substance or being (ousia tou
theou).52[Note: 2 52. οὐσία τοῦ θεοῦ = being of God] 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)53[Note: 3 53. μορφή] 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.54[Note: 4 54. WS: For a
fuller development of this subject, see Shedd, History of Doctrine 1.365-68;
Augustine’s On the Trinity, 8-9 (introduction); Augustine, On the Trinity
14.6-7; Güricke, Church History, 203; Müller, On Sin 2.136-37; Billroth,
Philosophy of Religion §§89-90; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 3; Kidd, On the
Trinity (eternal sonship; intro. Candlish); Candlish, Fatherhood of God; Dorner,
Christian Doctrine 1.412-62; Kurtz, Sacred History §2; Christlieb, Modern Doubt,
lect. 3; Passavant, Wille 4.]

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.”55[Note: 5 55.
omnis determinatio est negatio] 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. (See 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.”
(See 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.56[Note: 6 56. WS: It is also to be observed that God cannot
properly be denominated an object of benevolence or benevolent regard. Only a
created being can be such. We bless God in the sense of adoring him, but not in
the sense of bestowing a blessing upon him. We do not wish him well, as we do or
should all creatures. God is above this. To wish a being well implies the
possibility of his not being so.] 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 hen57[Note: 7 57. τὸ ἕν = the
one] as to pan.58[Note: 8 58. τὸ πάν = the all]

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 Corinthians 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.59[Note: 9 59. τὸ ἕν καὶ πᾶν = the one and all] 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. (See supplement 3.1.11.) The personality of one of the persons, the
Greek trinitarians denominated idiotēs60[Note: 0 60. ἰδιότης] (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.

S U P P L E M E N T S

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 [exists].” A particle is an atom or molecule;
and space has no atoms.

Locke (King, Life of Locke, 66 [ed. Bohn]) 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 phainomena61[Note: 1 61. μὴ φαινομένα = the unseen
things] of Hebrews 11:3, which were created ex nihilo in that “beginning” spoken
of in Genesis 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
substans62[Note: 2 62. standing under] 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” (Colossians 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 Genesis 1:3; Genesis 1:11;
Genesis 1:20; Genesis 1:24 : “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” (Ecclesiastes 3:21); “the beasts perish” (Psalms 49:12;
Psalms 49:20).

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 [ed. Shedd]). 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 unlimited as well as the all is often put for the
infinite. This is erroneous. The unlimited is 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 [ed. Tegg]): “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 [formed] 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 [trans. Veitch]): “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 [ed. Tegg]) 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 [i.e., no finite subject to worship the infinite
object 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.


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  CHAPTER 15: 3.02.     INNATE IDEA AND KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
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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 sit1[Note: 1. what it is] -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 sit2[Note: 2. the fact that
is/whether it exists] -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 (Psalms 14:1). In Ephesians 2:12 the atheoi en tō kosmō3[Note: 3. ἄθεοι ἐν
τῷ κόσμῳ = those without God in the world] are the same as the xenoi tōn
diathēkōn.4[Note: 4. ξένοι τῶν διαθηκῶν = strangers to the covenants]
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.”5[Note: 5. e re certa incerta
confirmare] “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 Romans 1:19-20 compared
with Acts 17:24-28; Acts 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),6[Note: 6. τὰ ἀόρατα αὐτοῦ = his invisible (attributes)] eternal (aidios
dynamis),7[Note: 7. ἀΐδιος δύναμις = everlasting power] omnipotent (aidios
dynamis),8[Note: 8. ἀΐδιος δύναμις = everlasting power] supreme
(theiotēs;9[Note: 9. θειότης = sovereignty] i.e., sovereignty not Godhead
[Authorized Version], which would require theotēs10[Note: 0 10. θεότης =
Godhead] as in Colossians 2:9), holy in revealing wrath (orgē)11[Note: 1 11.
ὀργή] against sin, one (there being only one almighty, supreme, and eternal
being), and benevolent (Acts 17:25; Acts 14:16; Romans 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 alētheian12[Note: 2 12. ἀλήθειαν = truth]
(Romans 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,13[Note: 3 13. νοούμενα] 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),14[Note: 4 14. νοῦς] 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 apokalyptō15[Note: 5 15. ἀποκαλύπτω = to reveal]
and phaneroō16[Note: 6 16. φανερόω = to make known or manifest] 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.
[ed. Tegg]).

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 theos17[Note: 7 17. ὁ θεός = God] and to
theion.18[Note: 8 18. τὸ θεῖον = the divinity] Sophocles speaks of ho megas
theos.19[Note: 9 19. ὁ μέγας θεός = the great God] Plato often denominates him
ho theos.20[Note: 0 20. ὁ θεός = God] Other titles are ho dēmiourgos,21[Note: 1
21. ὁ δημιοῦργος = the demiurge]ho hēgēōn,22[Note: 2 22. ὁ ἡγεμῶν = the
ruler/leader]ho prōtos theos,23[Note: 3 23. ὁ πρωτός θεός = the first God]ho
prōtos nous,24[Note: 4 24. ὁ πρωτός νοῦς = the first mind]ho hypatos
kreiontōn25[Note: 5 25. ὁ ὕπατος κρείοντων = the highest ruler] (Homer), and hē
pronoia26[Note: 6 26. ἡ προνοῖα = divine providence] (Plutarch). Horace (Odes
1.12) describes the supreme deity as the universal Father, to whom there is
nothing “alike or second.”27[Note: 7 27. simile aut secundum] “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 [of the gods] are
mistaken in name but agree concerning the one authority.”28[Note: 8 28. Audio
vulgus, cum ad caelum manus tendunt nihil aliud quam deum dicunt, et: “Deus
magnus est,” et; “Deus verus est,” et; “Si deus dederit.” Vulgi iste naturalis
sermo est, an christiani confitentis oratio? Et qui Jovem principem volunt,
falluntur in nomine, sed de una potestate consentiunt.] 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.”29[Note: 9 29. Platonis philosophiam,
in iis quae omnium maxime necessaria sunt cum illa Hebraeorum convenire.] 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” (Genesis 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 (Exodus 18:9-12; Exodus 18:19-23).
Balaam, in Mesopotamia, enunciates the doctrine of one God the sovereign ruler
of all (Numbers 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,30[Note: 0 30. πάντων ποιητής καὶ
πατήρ] 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 Isaiah
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. (See 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. (See 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 (Romans 1:25; Romans 1:28). 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 ephanerose31[Note: 1 31. θεός ἐφανέρωσεν = God made it evident]
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[Note: 2 32. WS: Channing is one of the ablest and most eloquent
of them. See his sermon “Likeness to God.”] Were these ideas self-originated,
did man, being at first a tabula rasa,33[Note: 3 33. tabula rasa = blank slate]
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[Note: 4 34. Unser Gottesbewustsein ist immer, wenn es ein wahres ist,
auch ein von Gott bewirktes.] 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.”35[Note: 5 35. Je sens qu’il y a un dieu, et je
ne sens pas qu’il n’y en ait point.]

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,”36[Note:
6 36. noverim me, noverim te] 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 [ed.
Bohn]). 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.37[Note: 7 37. WS: On this subject see Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 25;
Hardwick, Christ and Other Masters; Stillingfleet, Origines Sacrae 3.5.] 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.”38[Note: 8 38.
Quo propius homo aberat ab ortu et divina progenie, hoc melius ea fortasse, quae
essent vera cernebat.] 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.39[Note: 9 39. WS: On the influence of the patriarchal revelation, see
Bolton, Evidences, 2; Stillingfleet, Origines Sacrae 3.5; Gale, Court of the
Gentiles.] 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 Romans 1:1-32.

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 theou40[Note: 0
40. ὀργὴ τοῦ θεοῦ = the wrath of God] is revealed in the common human
consciousness, but not the agapē tou theou.41[Note: 1 41. ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ = the
love of God] 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” (Romans 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).42[Note: 2 42. WS: It is no reply to say that although God
does not owe the exercise of mercy to the sinner, he owes it to himself. For if
God owes it to his own attributes and perfection of character to pardon sin, a
neglect or refusal to do so in a single instance would be a dereliction of duty
to himself and a spot on his character. Mercy, on this supposition as well as on
the other, is not grace but debt.] 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” (Ephesians 2:12). (See supplement 3.2.3.) S U P P L E M E
N T S

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 [ed. Russell]) 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
Romans 1:19 as to gnōston tou theou.43[Note: 3 43. τὸ γνωστὸν τοῦ θεοῦ = that
which is known of God] 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 (Genesis 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 (Romans 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.”


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  CHAPTER 16: 3.03.     ARGUMENTS FOR THE DIVINE EXISTENCE
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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. (See 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)1[Note: 1. τοῦ ὄντος λόγος = discussion
concerning being] 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. (See 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 esse2[Note: 2. to not
exist (i.e., nonexistence)] is more than their esse;3[Note: 3. to exist (i.e.,
existence)] that is, they have more no-being than being. It is only some limited
portion [degree] of being that they have; but there is an infinitude [infinite
degree] 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” (Isaiah 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. (See 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.4[Note: 4. μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος = a
change into another kind/species] 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[Note: 5. WS: Another flaw in Gaunilo’s counterargument is that he starts
from the conception of a being “greater than all things else that exist,” but
Anselm starts from the conception of a being “greater than all things else that
can be conceived.” The latter implies a greater perfection than the former. From
the former conception, Anselm would not attempt to prove actual existence. The
ideal may be more perfect than the actual.]

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.6[Note: 6. are altogether different in kind] 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,7[Note: 7. from the force of the term (i.e., the expression
infinite being includes within it the notion of necessity)] is necessary being.
(See 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 [trans.
Meiklejohn]) 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.8[Note: 8. WS:
Kuno Fischer on Kant, 125, 258-59 (trans. Mahaffy).]

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 unus9[Note: 9. one] but unicus.10[Note: 0 10. unique, one of a
kind] 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?” (Isaiah 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.11[Note: 1 11. WS: In this
criticism, we have assumed as Kant and Fischer do that “existence” may be
regarded as an attribute and have argued from their point of view. As will be
seen further on, existence is not strictly an attribute. But if “necessity of
existence” be substituted for “existence,” the argument still holds good.
Certainly if from the concept of the absolutely perfect being the attribute of
necessity of existence be subtracted, the concept itself is changed.]

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 [ed. Harper]) 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,12[Note: 2 12. a logical entity] 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 [ed. Erdmann]).
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 [ed. Harper]), “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 [ed. Rosenkranz])13[Note: 3
13. WS: Überweg (2.50) notices the difference between the two forms of the
argument in the following remark: “The Cartesian form of the ontological proof
has a defect from which the Anselmic is free, namely, that the premise ‘being is
a perfection’ involves a very questionable conception of ‘being’ as a predicate
among other predicates, while Anselm has indicated a definite kind of being,
namely, being not merely in our minds but also outside of them, as that in which
superior perfection is involved.” But this misses the true point of difference.
Anselm’s “definite kind of being” is necessity of being, “not being outside of
our minds.” This latter is objective being and is the same as Descartes’s
“existence.” If this is all the difference between Anselm and Descartes, there
is none at all.] 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.14[Note: 4 14. WS:
Descartes seems to have been aware of the defect in this form of stating the
argument. He more commonly employs “existence” in Method and Meditations. But he
uses “necessity of existence” in Method, 79; Meditations, 67-68; Principles of
Philosophy, 119, 189-91 (trans. Veitch). Überweg (History 2.42, 49, 51),
Schwegler (History, 175), and Locke (King, Life of Locke, 314) represent
Descartes as stating the argument in the Anselmic form.]

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 [trans. Meiklejohn]).15[Note: 5 15.
WS: See Locke, Understanding 4.10, for the arguments for divine existence. In
this part of his work, he really admits the doctrine of innate ideas in the
sense in which Plato taught them, though not in the mistaken sense in which he
himself combats them.]

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 Exodus 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.”16[Note: 6 16. WS: Alexander, “Jehovah” in Kitto’s Encyclopedia.
Maimonides, a twelfth-century rabbi, so explains Jehovah (see Lowman, Hebrew
Ritual, 270). Delitzsch (Old Testament History of Redemption §58) says that “the
name Jehovah denotes the one whose nature consists in being (Seyn), which
continually manifests itself as existence (Daseyn), the eternal and eternally
living one.”] 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 (Genesis 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 (theos17[Note: 7 17. θεός = God] and deus)18[Note: 8 18. deus =
God] 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. (See 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).19[Note: 9 19. κόσμου λόγος = discussion concerning
the world] It is implied in Hebrews 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 [trans. Meiklejohn]) 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. (See 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.
(See supplement 3.3.7.)

Hume objects to the cosmological argument that it is a petitio
principii.20[Note: 0 20. a begging of the question. This expression refers to a
logical fallacy in which one assumes the truth of the very proposition to be
proven. That is, the truth of the conclusion is assumed in the premises of the
argument.] 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 argument21[Note: 1 21. WS: Janet, Final
Causes; Bell, Hand; Kirby, History and Habits of Animals.] is derived from a
particular characteristic of the world, namely, the marks of design and
adaptation to an end (telos)22[Note:2 22. τέλος] which appear in it. It is
stated in Psalms 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.23[Note: 3 23. WS:
Final causes are more easily discovered in a narrow than in a wide sphere, in
biology than in astronomy. When it is asked why do the planets revolve around
the sun, the efficient cause is commonly meant. The inquirer asks for the
particular force that causes the revolution. But when it is asked why the motor
nerves run along the limbs, the final cause is commonly meant. The inquirer asks
for the purpose of this arrangement.]

The teleological argument, like the cosmological, must not be confined to the
material world, but extended to the intellectual, as in Psalms 95:10 : “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.
(See 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.

S U P P L E M E N T S

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 [solitary] 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 [or exists contingently] 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” (Psalms 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 Timothy 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)24[Note: 4 24. Opus
ad intra in this context refers to an internal operation of the Godhead, whereas
opus ad extra refers to an operation of the Godhead in producing something
outside of itself. See p. 173 n. 48.] 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.


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  CHAPTER 17: 3.04.     TRINITY IN UNITY
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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”1[Note: 1. Cum dico unum, non me trinitatis turbat numerus, qui
essentiam non multiplicat, non variat, nec partitur. Rursum, cum dico tria, non
me arguit intuitus unitatis, quae illa quaecumque tria, seu illos tres, nec in
confusionem cogit, nec in singularitatem redegit.] (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 monad2[Note: 2. Hymnō se monas, hymno se trias (ὑμνῶ σε
μονάς, ὑμνῶ σε τριάς) monas ei trias ōn, trias ei monas ōn (μονάς εἶ τριάς ὤν,
τριάς εἶ μονάς ὤν).]

-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,3[Note: 3. one] but unicus.4[Note:
4. unique] 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
plērōma5[Note: 5. πλήρωμα] or plenitude of divine essence is spoken of in the
following: “filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19) and “the
fullness of the Godhead” (Colossians 1:19; Colossians 2:9). Ambrose (Concerning
Faith 5.1) marks the distinction as follows: “Singularity pertains to the
person, unity pertains to the nature.”6[Note: 6. Singularitas ad personam
pertinet, unitas ad naturam.] 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 [the Trinity] 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 [i.e., objectively real] 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”
(Deuteronomy 6:4); “the Lord is God, and there is none else” (1 Kings 8:60);
“beside me there is no God” (Isaiah 44:6); “the Lord our God is one Lord” (Mark
12:29); “I and my Father are one (hen)”7[Note: 7. ἕν] (John 10:30); “there is
none other God but one” (1 Corinthians 8:4); “one Lord, one God and Father of
all” (Ephesians 4:6); “God is one” (Galatians 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.8[Note: 8. pater
hominum deorumque] (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 Matthew 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” (Matthew
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 Corinthians 1:13). When it is said that the
Israelites “were all baptized unto Moses (eis ton mōysēn)”9[Note: 9. εἰς τόν
μω̈υσῆν] (1 Corinthians 10:2), the meaning is not that they were baptized unto
the name (eis to onōa)10[Note: 0 10. εἰς τὸ ὄνομα] of Moses, but with reference
to (eis)11[Note: 1 11. εἰς] 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 Corinthians 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 Ephesians 4:4-6 : “There is one Spirit, one Lord, one God and
Father of all”; and in 1 Peter 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)12[Note: 2 12. ἐρωτήσω] 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 [spiritual] gifts (charismata),13[Note: 3 13. χαρισμάτα] but the same Spirit.
And there are differences of [ecclesiastical] administrations, but the same
Lord. And there are diversities of [miraculous] operations
(energēmatōn),14[Note: 4 14. ἐνεργημάτων] but it is the same God who works all
in all” (1 Corinthians 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”
(Ephesians 2:18); “praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of
God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 1:20-21); “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” (Revelation 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 Genesis
1:26 and Isaiah 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 Peter 1:10-11). (See 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 15:1-8[Note: 5 15. WS: Cf. Witsius, Covenants 1.2.5-7;
Leighton, Theological Lectures, 7; Lee, Inspiration, lect. 3.123; Dorner,
Christian Doctrine §25.] Says Delitzsch (Old Testament History of Redemption,
178 [ed. Curtis]): 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 Genesis 16:1-16 and as the leader of Israel according to Exodus 14:19. The
angel of his presence according to Isaiah 63:9 is the Savior of his people. (See
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 excellentiae16[Note: 6 16. plural of
excellency. As Hebraists note, plural nouns in Hebrew can, under certain
conditions and in certain contexts, be used to express the excellency or majesty
of the object in question. For example, inGenesis 39:3; Genesis 39:7; Genesis
39:19Potiphar is called “Lord,” with the plural ˒adonayw being used. The plural
form is used to express the importance of Potiphar’s position and rank.] in the
name Elohim,17[Note: 7 17. àÁìÉäÄéí (˒ĕlōhîm) = God (the Hebrew noun is plural)]
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” (Genesis 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?” (Isaiah 7:8). 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 Isaiah
6:3 (“holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts”) and the threefold address in
Numbers 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 Genesis 16:7-13 is an example. Here, the person who is styled the
“angel (mal˒āk)18[Note: 8 18. îÇìÀàÈêÀ] of the Lord” in verses 7, 9, and 10-11
is addressed in verse 13 as almighty God (˒ēl):19[Note: 9 19. àÅì] “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)20[Note: 0 20. àÂãÉðÈé] 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)21[Note: 1 21. éÀäåÈä] 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 Genesis 19:1-38 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).22[Note: 2 22. àÂãÉðÈé] 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 Exodus 3:1-22 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)23[Note: 3 23. àÁìÉäÄéí] 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 [the Messiah]” (Isaiah 48:16). In Haggai
2:4-5; Haggai 2:7 three persons are mentioned: “The Lord of hosts,” his
“Spirit,” and the “Desire of all nations.” If ḥemdat24[Note: 4 24. çÆîÀãÌÇú =
desire of] (v. 7) is rendered ta eklekta25[Note: 5 25. τὰ ἐκλεκτά = picked out,
select] (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 (Exodus 3:2; Exodus 3:4; Exodus 23:20; Exodus 32:34), and the
“Spirit” of God (Isaiah 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 Samuel
7:14 (“I will be his father and he shall be my son”) and Psalms 2:7 (“you are my
son, this day have I begotten you”; cf. Hebrews 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 (Matthew 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; John 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 Genesis 1:1-2. The “beginning”
he understands to be an agent, as in Revelation 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 Deuteronomy 32:39 in comparison
with Exodus 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 trias26[Note: 6 26.
τρίας = three] 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 Php
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”27[Note: 7 27.
Respondeo, dicendum quod relationes quaedam sunt in divinis realiter.] (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 [without qualification and abstractly] 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.
(See 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,28[Note: 8 28. οὐσία =
being]physis,29[Note: 9 29. φύσις = nature, being] and to on;30[Note: 0 30. τό
ὄν = being] the Latin terms essentia,31[Note: 1 31. essence (see essentia in
glossary 1)]substantia,32[Note: 2 32. substance (see substantia in glossary
1)]natura,33[Note: 3 33. nature (see essentia in glossary 1)]ens,34[Note: 4 34.
being (see essentia in glossary 1)] and res;35[Note: 5 35. a thing (see essentia
in glossary 1)] 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 hypostasis36[Note: 6
36. ὑπόστασις = substance] as well as ousia37[Note: 7 37. οὐσία = being] 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.38[Note: 8 38. ἐξ ἑτέρας ὑποστάσεως ἤ οὐσίας = from a
different hypostasis or ousia. See Shedd’s discussion in this context for the
possible meaning of these terms.] 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
ousia39[Note: 9 39. οὐσία = being] to denote the essence and hypostasis40[Note:
0 40. ὑπόστασις = substance] 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 homoiousios41[Note: 1 41. ὁμοιούσιος = similar being/substance] but not
homoousios.42[Note: 2 42. ὁμοούσιος = same being/substance] Athanasius employs
both terms interchangeably: “Hypostasis43[Note: 3 43. ὑπόστασις = substance] is
substance (ousia)44[Note: 4 44. οὐσία] and means nothing but simply being.” In
the Latin church, substantia was employed to translate hypostasis45[Note: 5 45.
ὑπόστασις = substance] and together with essentia to translate ousia:46[Note: 6
46. οὐσία = being] “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),47[Note: 7 47. ὑπόστασεις] one essence, in
the same way as we say three persons, one essence or substance (essentiam vel
substantiam)”48[Note: 8 48. essence or substance] (Augustine, On the Trinity
7.4); “as from sapere49[Note: 9 49. to be wise] comes sapientia,50[Note: 0 50.
wisdom] so from esse51[Note: 1 51. to be, exist] comes essentia;52[Note: 2 52.
essence] 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”53[Note: 3 53. οὐσία = being] (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.”54[Note: 4 54. Quod
enim dixi summam trinitatem posse dici tres substantias, Graecos secutus sum,
qui confitentur tres substantias in una essentia, eadem fide qua nos tres
personas in una substantia. Nam hoc significant in deo per substantiam quod nos
per personam.] Calvin (1.13.5) remarks upon this ambiguity as follows: “When the
Latins would translate the word hōorzousios,55[Note: 5 55. ὁμοούσιος = same
nature] 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.” (See 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.”56[Note: 6 56. Substantia divina est ea natura, in qua inest vis
agendi infinita; essentia est complexus omnium perfectorum infinitorum.]
Similarly, Anselm (Monologium 16) defines the term essence: “Therefore, this
[essence] 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.”57[Note: 7 57. Illa igitur
est summa justitia, summa sapientia, summa veritas, summa bonitas, summa
beatitudo, summa eternitas, potestas, unitas; quod non est aliud quam summe ens,
summe vivens; et alia similiter.] 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 [pseudo-]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 una58[Note: 8 58. one
substance] 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,59[Note: 9 59. ὑπόστασις =
(etymologically) substance. However, the Greek trinitarians also used the word
to refer to an instance of a substance, i.e., as equivalent to a person in a
trinitarian context. See hypostasis and also modus subsistendi in glossary 1.]to
hypokeimenon,60[Note: 0 60. τὸ ὑποκειμένον = substance] or prosōpon.61[Note: 1
61. πρόσωπον = face, person] The first is found in Hebrews 1:3 : “the exact
image of his person” (charaktēr tēs hypostaseōs autou).62[Note: 2 62. χαρακτὴρ
τῆς ὑποστάσεως αὐτοῦ = the exact image of his person. It should be noted,
however, that some translations render hypostaseōs in this verse as “nature,”
not “person” (e.g., New American Standard Bible).] The last is found in Luke
12:56 : “face of the sky” (prosōpon tououranou).63[Note: 3 63. πρόσωπον τοῦ
οὐρανοῦ] 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.64[Note: 4 64. subsistence] The English terms are hypostasis,
subsistence, distinction, person, relation, and mode.

St. Paul (Php 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 morphē65[Note: 5 65. μορφή = form] is anarthrous. There are three
forms of God. The whole divine essence (ousia)66[Note: 6 66. οὐσία] subsisting
(hyparchōn,67[Note: 7 67. ὑπάρχων] not ōn)68[Note: 8 68. ὤν = being] in the
paternal form (morphē)69[Note: 9 69. μορφή] 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)70[Note: 0 70. σχῆμα = appearance] 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,71[Note: 1 71. after making the necessary changes] 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[Note: 2 72. WS: The defect in the ternary of subject, object,
and subject-percipient, like that in the ternary of memory, understanding, and
will employed by Augustine and the patristic trinitarians, is that neither of
them are so objective to each other as the three persons of the Trinity are. The
personal pronouns cannot be employed respecting them; neither can personal
actions and affections be ascribed to them. They illustrate the trinality of the
one divine essence, but not the substantiality of the three persons. The
subject-ego cannot send the object-ego on a mission. The memory cannot address
the understanding as a distinct person.]

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
[property] is common, but three [persons] 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,73[Note: 3 73. mode of subsisting]tropos hyparxeōs.74[Note: 4 74.
τρόπος ὑπάρξεως = manner of subsisting] 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 [separate and in isolation], 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 (Zechariah
13:7) knows another (Matthew 11:27) addresses another (Hebrews 1:8) is the way
to another (John 14:6) speaks of another (Luke 3:22) glorifies another (John
17:5) confers with another (Genesis 1:26; Genesis 11:7) plans with another
(Isaiah 9:6) sends another (Genesis 16:7; John 14:26) rewards another (Php
2:5-11; Hebrews 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 [of existence] differs from a thing”75[Note: 5 75. Persona differre
dicitur ab essentia, non realiter, id est essentialiter, ut res et res; sed
modaliter, ut modus a re.] (Turretin 3.27.3). (See 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).76[Note: 6 76.τὸ ἕν διώνυμον = one thing with two names]
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” (Hebrews 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)77[Note: 7 77.
πνεῦμα ὁ θεός = God is spirit] and 1 Corinthians 15:28 (hina ē ho theos ta panta
en pasin)78[Note: 8 78. ἵνα ᾖ ὁ θεός τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν = in order that God might
be all in all] 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,79[Note: 9 79. ὑποστατικῶς = hypostatically (i.e., personally)] as
peculiarly expressive of any one person, but as ousiōdōs,80[Note: 0 80. οὐσιωδῶς
= essentially] 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 theos81[Note:
1 81. θεός= God] 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).82[Note: 2 82.
θεός ἦ ν ὁ λόγος = the Word was God] St. John does not, here, say that the Logos
was the Godhead or the Trinity, but that he was divine. Hence, theos83[Note: 3
83. θεός = God] is anarthrous84[Note: 4 84. lacking the definite article the]
(1) to denote divine nature in the abstract (cf. anarthrous pneuma85[Note: 5 85.
πνεῦμα = spirit] 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
theon86[Note: 6 86. θεόν = God] with the article. When the Father or Son or
Spirit is denominated theos,87[Note: 7 87. θεός = God] 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 internae88[Note: 8 88. internal marks or
characteristics] and (2) external or notae externae.89[Note: 9 89. external
marks or characteristics]

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,90[Note: 0 90. internal works or operations (see p. 173 n. 48)] 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
(Jeremiah 4:2; Job 19:25; John 6:57). God swears by himself as the living one
(Numbers 14:21; Isaiah 49:18; Jeremiah 22:24; Ezekiel 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.91[Note: 1 91. Deus
est actus purissimus, sine ulla potentialitate.] God is the same yesterday,
today, and forever (Hebrews 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.92[Note: 2 92. spiritus quia spiratus] He is no more
spiritual in substance than the Father or Son. But the essence is communicated
to him by spiration or outbreathing (pneuma93[Note: 3 93. πνεῦμα = spirit] =
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 huios94[Note: 4 94. ἅμα πατὴρ, ἅμα υἱός =
at the same time there is a father there is a son] (Athanasius). “In this
Trinity nothing is before or after, nothing greater or lesser, but all three
persons are coeternal with themselves and coequal”95[Note: 5 95. In hac
trinitate nihil prius aut posterius, nihil majus aut minus, sed tota tres
personae coaeternae sibi sunt, et coaequales.] (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),96[Note: 6 96. The quotation from Turretin reads non
libertate indifferentiae, sed spontaneitatis. Turretin’s meaning is this: The
Father’s “freedom” in generating the Son is not a freedom of indifference or of
contrary choice, as if the Father could refrain from generating him. Rather, the
Father “freely” generates the Son in that this generation is a spontaneous
activity of the Father, free from any outside consideration or coercion.]
generates the Son “not by the freedom of indifference, but of
spontaneity.”97[Note: 7 97. WS: The objections made by the English Arians and
Semiarians (Clarke, Whiston, etc.) to the Athanasian doctrine were “that
generation implies division of essence, and necessary generation implies outward
coaction; that generation is an act, and every act implies choice; that
necessary agents are no agents, and necessary causes are no causes; that three
persons must be three intelligent agents, and three agents cannot be one being,
one substance, one God” (Waterland, Second Defence, 4).]

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)98[Note: 8 98. ἐκ] the essence by (dia)99[Note: 9 99. διά]
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,100[Note: 00 100.
θεὸς ἐκ θεοῦ = God from God] 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 (Psalms 2:7; Matthew 3:17;
Matthew 28:19; John 1:14; Acts 13:33; Romans 1:4; Hebrews 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; John 1:18; John 3:16; John 3:18; 1 John 4:9; Colossians
1:15; Hebrews 1:6; Romans 8:3; Romans 8:32; Colossians 1:13; Matthew 3:17;
Ephesians 1:6; 2 Peter 1:17). The second person in his original trinitarian
status is denominated huios;101[Note: 01 101. υἱός = son] in his estate of
humiliation as mediator, he is sometimes called pais.102[Note: 02 102. παῖς =
child (son or daughter) or slave, servant] This latter term means “servant” and
is never used of the unincarnate Word. In Acts 3:13 and Matthew 12:18 the phrase
pais mou103[Note: 03 103. παῖς μου = my servant] denotes the same as “my
servant” in Isaiah 42:1. The Septuagint renders ˓ebed104[Note: 04 104. òÆáÆã =
servant] by pais105[Note: 05 105. παῖς = child (son or daughter) orslave,
servant] (see Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine §13; Bengel on Matthew 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 r̂aḥ106[Note: 06 106. øåÌçÇ = breath] and Greek pneuma107[Note: 07
107. πνεῦμα = spirit] denote a breath or breathing (Genesis 1:2; Numbers 27:18;
Psalms 51:11; Isaiah 63:11; Hosea 9:7 [see Gesenius’s entries for these words];
Matthew 3:16; Luke 1:35; John 1:32-33; John 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”
(Galatians 4:6), the “Spirit of Christ” (Romans 8:9), and the “Spirit of Jesus
Christ” (Php 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. (See 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)108[Note: 08 108. spiritus
quia spiratus] 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)109[Note: 09 109. κοινωνεῖν]
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. (See 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).110[Note: 10 110. ἐκ τὴς
οὐσίας = out of the essence] 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)”111[Note:
11 111. ἐκ θεοῦ πεφυκώς] (To Autolycus 22). Paraeus (Body of Christian Doctrine,
25) says: “The Son is begotten, the Spirit proceeds or emanates from the
Father.”112[Note: 12 112. Filius est genitus, spiritus sanctus procedit, sive
emanat, a patre.] The term emanates113[Note: 13 113. emanat] is explanatory of
both begotten114[Note: 14 114. genitu] and proceeds115[Note: 15 115. procedit]
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”116[Note: 16 116. rerum natura]
(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.”117[Note: 17 117. Emanatio a patre et filio, distinctam a
filii generatione.] 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”118[Note: 18 118. Patrem esse principium Filii et
Spiritus Sancti, et utrumque ab ipso propagari interiore productione, non
externa: unde fit, ut non modo ex Patre, sed in ipso sint, et Pater in ipsis;
neque in sacra Triade altera persona ab altera separari possit, sicut tres
humanae personae ab invicem disterminantur.] (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 ousias119[Note: 19 119.
ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας = from the essence/substance] and the epithet homoousios120[Note:
20 120. ὁμοουσίος = the same essence/substance] might, of themselves, suggest a
specific unity. The preposition ek121[Note: 21 121. ἐκ =out of, from] may be
partitive in its signification, and so may the adjective hōos122[Note: 22 122.
ὁμός = same] and Latin con123[Note: 23 123. same] 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[Note: 24 124. WS: The English
Arians Clarke, Whiston, Whitby, and others denied that consubstantiality means
one numerical substance possessed by each of the three persons (Hunt, Religious
Thought in England 3.23).] (See 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,125[Note: 25 125. περιχώρησις]circulatio).126[Note: 26 126.
circumincession] There is a continual inbeing and indwelling of one person in
another. This is taught in John 14:10-11; John 17:21; John 17:23 : “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.”127[Note: 27 127. WS:
Athanasius (Orations 3.21) remarks that Christ prays here that the disciples
“may imitate the trinitarian unity of nature in their unity of affection. Had it
been possible for the disciples to be in the nature of the Father as the Son is,
he would have prayed ‘that they may be one in you,’ instead of ‘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 [person] is in each [person], and all [three persons] are in each [person],
and each [person] is in all [three persons], and all [three persons] are one
[being]. (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.128[Note: 28 128. In trinitate
maxime propria est et perfectissima περιχώρησις (perichōrēsis), siquidem
personae sese mutuo continent; ita ut ubicunque una persona est, ibi reliquae
duae existant, hoc est ubique omnes sint.] (Bull, Defensio 4.4.14)129[Note: 29
129. WS: The Platonists employed this figure of circulatory movement to explain
the self-reflecting and self-communing nature of the human mind: “It is not
possible for us to know what our souls are, but only by their kinēseis kyklikai
(κινήσεις κυκλίκαι), their circular and reflex motions, and converse with
themselves,which only can steal from them their own secrets” (Smith, Discourses:
Immortality 2).]

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 Corinthians
13:14; Galatians 1:1) and sometimes the Spirit before the Son (Revelation
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 [i.e., Athanasian Creed] can assert
that “in the Trinity nothing is before or after [in time], nothing greater or
lesser [in nature], but all three persons are coeternal with themselves and
coequal,”130[Note: 30 130. In trinitate, nihil prius aut posterius [tempore],
nihil majus aut minus [natura], sed tota tres personas coeternas sibi esse et
coequales.] 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 (Psalms 33:6; Proverbs 3:19; Proverbs 30:4; John 5:17; Acts
4:24; Acts 4:27). The Son redeems, yet commissioned by the Father (Romans 3:24;
Romans 5:11; Galatians 3:13; Revelation 5:9). The Spirit inspires and
sanctifies, yet as sent by the Father and Son: he inspires the prophets (2
Samuel 23:2; 2 Samuel 23:19; 2 Peter 1:21) and sanctifies the elect (1 Peter
1:2).

These works are occasionally attributed to another person. The Son creates
(Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:3; Isaiah 44:24). The name Savior is given to the
Father (1 Timothy 1:1; Jude 1:25). 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 (Romans 14:9; Acts
10:41; 1 Corinthians 15:4). The Father “judges without respect of persons” (1
Peter 1:17); and yet “all judgment is given to the Son” (John 5:22; Matthew
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. (See 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.” (See supplement 3.4.10.) The term father denotes the
Trinity in John 4:21; John 4:23-24 : “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 [paternal] 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” (Psalms 68:5-6; Isaiah 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 agennētos131[Note: 31 131. ἀγεννητός] (ingenerate or
unbegotten) and the Son gennētos132[Note: 32 132. γεννητός] (generate or
begotten). (See 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 theos133[Note: 33 133. μονόγενης θεός =
only begotten God] 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 [this reading] carries the weight of the testimonies.”134[Note: 34 134.
Dubitari nequit quin testimoniorum pondere valeat.] 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 theotētos135[Note: 35 135. πηγὴ τῆς θεότητος =
the fountain of the Godhead] or rhiza pasēs theotētos.136[Note: 36 136. ῥίζα
πάσης θεότητος = the root of all the Godhead] This phraseology is used with
qualification by accurate trinitarians. Some orthodox writers employ the phrase
fons trinitatis137[Note: 37 137. fountainhead/source of the Trinity] to denote
the hypostatic character of the Father, which is better than fons
deitatis.138[Note: 38 138. fountainhead/source of deity] 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 deitatis139[Note: 39 139.
fountainhead/source of deity] “if the mode of subsisting is in view.”140[Note:
40 140. si modus subsistendi spectatur] 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 [fountain] of the Godhead.”141[Note: 41
141. pater est πηγαῖα θεότητος (pēgaia theotētos)] 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 [Trinity].”

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),142[Note: 42 142. ἴδιος] 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.”143[Note: 43 143.
Dicimus concedere nos Christum esse naturalem Dei Filium.] Smalcius affirms: “We
do not deny that the son is a person, and a divine one at that”144[Note: 44 144.
Filium personam esse non diffitemur, eamque divinam.] (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).145[Note: 45 145. ὁμοουσίος = the same essence/substance] 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)146[Note: 46 146. àÁìÉäÄéí] is forever and
ever” (Psalms 45:6; Psalms 45:8). This is quoted and thus reaffirmed in Hebrews
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)”147[Note: 47 147. àÅì âÌÄáÌåÉø] (Isaiah 9:6). In Jeremiah 23:5-6 the
“branch” of David is called “the Lord (yhwh)148[Note: 48 148. éÀäåÈä] our
righteousness.” The same is said of Messiah in Jeremiah 33:15-17. Here,
Jerusalem = the church = Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12; Galatians 3:16) (Speaker’s
Commentary on Jeremiah 33:16). In Isaiah 7:14 Messiah is called “God with us,”
and the prophecy here recorded is said in Matthew 1:23 to be fulfilled in the
birth of Jesus Christ. In Malachi 3:1 the messenger (angellon149[Note: 49 149.
ἀγγέλλον] in the Septuagint) about to come to his own temple (naon
heautou150[Note: 50 150. ναόν ἑαυτοῦ] in the Septuagint) is called Lord
(˒adôn);151[Note: 51 151. àÇãåÉï] 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)”152[Note: 52 152. éÀäåÈä] in Malachi 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. Numbers 14:2; Numbers 21:5-6;
Psalms 95:9; 1 Corinthians 10:9). Here the tempting of Jehovah is the tempting
of Christ. The Textus Receptus, Itala, Peshitta, Vulgate, D, E, and F read
christon153[Note: 53 153. χριστόν = Christ] in 1 Corinthians 10:9; Lachmann,
Tischendorf, Hort, א, B, and C read kyrion;154[Note: 54 154. κύριον = Lord] the
Alexandrine codex reads theon.155[Note: 55 155. θεόν = God] In Hebrews 1:10-11,
what is attributed to Jehovah in Psalms 102:26 is attributed to Christ. In John
12:40-41, it is asserted that the language of Isaiah 6:9-10 concerning Jehovah
refers to Jesus Christ. Comparing Isaiah 45:23 with Romans 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
theou156[Note: 56 156. θεοῦ = of God] in Romans 14:10). Joel 2:32 compared with
Romans 10:13 proves that the name Jehovah is the name of Christ. In Ephesians
4:8-9 Christ gives the gifts that in Psalms 68:18 are given by Jehovah.

John 1:1 contains absolute proof of the deity of the Son of God: theos ēn ho
logos.157[Note: 57 157. θεός ἦ ν ὁ λόγος = the Word was God] The omission of the
article with theos158[Note: 58 158. θεός = God] converts the word into the
abstract, denoting the species “deity” (cf. anarthrous pneuma159[Note: 59 159.
πνεῦμα = spirit] in 4:24: pneuma ho theos).160[Note: 60 160. πνεῦμα ὁ θεός = God
is spirit] The use of ēn161[Note: 61 161. ἦ ν = was] implies uncreated being in
distinction from created, which in verse 3 is denoted by egeneto.162[Note: 62
162. ἐγένετο = became, came into being] The distinct personal existence of the
Logos is also denoted by pros ton theon,163[Note: 63 163. πρός τὸν θεόν =
with/face to face with God] which is quite different from syn tō theō.164[Note:
64 164. σύν τῳ θεῷ = with God] 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[Note: 65 165. οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ ἀληθινὸς θεός =
this is the true God] (1 John 5:20), houtos166[Note: 66 166. οὗτος = this (one)]
most naturally refers to iēsou christō.167[Note: 67 167. ἰησοῦ χριστῷ = Jesus
Christ] “Eternal life” is never appropriated to the Father by St. John, but is
very often to the Son (cf. John 1:4; John 11:25; John 14:6; 1 John 1:2; 1 John
5:11-12). Christ is called theos168[Note: 68 168. θεός = God] in Romans 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 ōn169[Note: 69 169. ὁ ὤν = who being] is a relative clause, not
beginning a new proposition but continuing one that has been commenced; and the
words to kata sarka,170[Note: 70 170. τὸ κατὰ σάρκα = according to the flesh]
referring to the human nature of Christ, require an antithesis referring to
divine nature, as in Romans 1:3 (see Shedd on Romans 9:5). Christ is called
theos171[Note: 71 171. θεός = God] 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 theou172[Note: 72 172. θεοῦ = of God] and sōtēros173[Note: 73
173. σωτῆρος = savior] denote one and the same person is proved by these facts:
(a) Epiphaneian174[Note: 74 174. ἐπιφάνειαν = appearing] 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[Note:
75 175. μεγάλου = great] 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,176[Note: 76 176. ὁ κύριος μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου = my Lord and my God]
proves the deity of Christ. It was addressed to Christ: eipen autō.177[Note: 77
177. εἶ πεν αὐτῷ = he (Thomas) said to him (Jesus)] The use of the article
ho178[Note: 78 178. ὁ = the] instead of the interjection ō179[Note: 79 179. ὦ =
O!] 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 theou180[Note: 80
180. θεοῦ = of God] is found in B, א, Peshitta, and Vulgate and adopted by
Textus Receptus, Mill, Knapp, Scholz, Alford, and Hort; the reading
kyriou181[Note: 81 181. κυριοῦ = Lord] is found in A, C, and D and adopted by
Griesbach, Wettstein, Lachmann, and Tischendorf. In 1 Timothy 3:16, “God was
manifest in the flesh,” the reading theos182[Note: 82 182. θεός = God] is
supported by D3, K, L, most minuscules, Textus Receptus, Mill, and Scholz; the
reading hos183[Note: 83 183. ὅς = he who] 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. Php 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)184[Note: 84 184. ἁρπαγμόν]
for Christ to claim equality with God. The proposed rendering “to be held on
upon” would require harpagma.185[Note: 85 185. ἁρπαγμά = booty, prey] 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. (See supplement 3.4.12.) Divine attributes are ascribed to the Son of
God:

1. Eternity (Proverbs 8:22-23): The personal Wisdom (ḥokmâ)186[Note: 86 186.
çÈëÀîÈä] “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.”187[Note: 87 187. WS: On the
connection of Old Testament Wisdom with John’s Logos, see Bleek, Introduction to
the New Testament §81; Luthardt, Authenticity of the Fourth Gospel; Godet,
Commentary on John; Dorner, Person of Christ, vol. 1.] “From Bethlehem Ephrathah
shall come forth he whose goings forth [emanation] have been from old [lit.,
from the days of eternity]” (Micah 5:2; cf. Matthew 2:6). In Isaiah 9:6 the
Messiah is called the “everlasting Father [lit., the Father of eternity].” The
“Son of God” has “neither beginning of days nor end of life” (Hebrews 7:3). In
Revelation 1:8; Revelation 22:13 the Son of Man says of himself, “I am Alpha and
Omega.” In John 8:28 Christ says of himself, “Before Abraham was I am”-where the
use of eimi188[Note: 88 188. εἰμί = I am] is in contrast with genesthai189[Note:
89 189. γενέσθαι = came into being (New American Standard Bible)] (cf. the
contrast between ēn190[Note: 90 190. ἦ ν = was] and egeneto191[Note: 91 191.
ἐγένετο = became] in John 1:1; John 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” (Matthew 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 ōn192[Note: 92 192. ὁ ὤν = who is] by “was.”193[Note: 93
193. fuisse]

3. Omnipotence: “I am the Almighty” (Revelation 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” (Hebrews 1:3). “All power is given unto me in
heaven and on earth” (Matthew 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 (Php 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” (Revelation 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 known” is frequent in Scripture: “Now I know that you fear God,
seeing that you have not withheld your only son from me” (Genesis 22:12). In 1
Corinthians 2:2 St. Paul says, “I determined not to know anything among you,
save Jesus Christ.” To “know” means to “make known” in Matthew 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 (Galatians 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 Corinthians 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” (Hebrews 1:11-12).
The immutability of Jehovah in Psalms 102:26 is here ascribed to the Son. “Jesus
Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

6. Divine plenitude, that is, divine essence and attributes is attributed to
Christ in Colossians 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” (Proverbs 8:27); “all
things were made by him” (John 1:3); “by him were all things created, visible
and invisible” (Colossians 1:16-17); “by whom he made the worlds” (Hebrews 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” (Hebrews 1:3);
“by him all things consist” (Colossians 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)194[Note:
94 194. οὐδὲ ἕν = not one thing] 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
(Colossians 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,195[Note: 95 195. δι᾽ αὐτοῦ =through him]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)196[Note: 96 196. δι᾽ αὐτοῦ =
through him] is applied to God: “And through him are all things” (Romans 11:36);
“an apostle not of men, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father” (Galatians 1:1);
(c) the creation is not only di’ autou197[Note: 97 197. δι᾽ αὐτοῦ = through him]
(Colossians 1:16) but eis auton198[Note: 98 198. εἰς αὐτόν = for him] (1:16);
Christ is the final end as well as first cause; and (d) the creation is not only
di’ autou199[Note: 99 199. δι᾽ αὐτοῦ = through him] but en autō200[Note: 00 200.
ἐν αὐτῷ = in him] (1:17). The universe has its supporting ground in Christ (en
autō synestēke),201[Note: 01 201. ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκε = in him (all things) hold
together (New American Standard Bible)] 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; Luke 8:46; Matthew 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 Matthew 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; Matthew 9:13)
sanctification (Ephesians 5:26) mission of the Spirit (John 16:7; John 16:14;
John 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 (Ephesians 4:5) and the husband of the
church (5:25), which latter is the title given to Jehovah in reference to Israel
(Isaiah 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)” (Psalms 2:12); but “cursed is the man that trusts
in man” (Jeremiah 17:5) adoration: “let all the angels of God worship him”
(Hebrews 1:6); “kiss [a mark of homage and adoration; 1 Samuel 10:1] the Son”
(Psalms 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” (Php 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 Corinthians 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” (Revelation 5:13); (c) doxology to Christ
(1 Peter 4:11; 2 Timothy 4:18; Revelation 1:6; 2 Peter 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),”202[Note: 02 202. ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ] 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”203[Note: 03 203. ἕν (neuter)] (John 10:30).204[Note: 04 204. WS:
Athanasius (Against the Arians 4.9) remarks that there are three ways in which
these words can be understood: (1) that which is one thing in one respect is two
in another, (2) that which is one thing is two by having two names, and (3) that
which is one thing is two by being divided into two parts. The first is Nicene
trinitarianism. The second is Sabellianism.] 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 (Psalms 82:6; Exodus 21:6; Exodus 22:8-9; Exodus 22:28 :
˒ĕlōhîm).205[Note: 05 205. àÁìÉäÄéí = judges] 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
Matthew 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 [party]” (Galatians 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” (Galatians 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 (Revelation
3:14) “the beginning (archē)206[Note: 06 206. ἀρχή] of the creation of God,” it
is in the active sense of the word archē,207[Note: 07 207. ἀρχή = beginning] as
in Revelation 1:1; Revelation 1:8, where Textus Receptus, Vulgate, Coptic, and א
have archē kai to telos.208[Note: 08 208. ἀρχή καὶ τὸ τέλος = the beginning and
the end] 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.209[Note: 09
209. περὶ ἀρχῶν (peri archōn)] The archē210[Note: 10 210. ἀρχή = beginning] of
Plato and Aristotle is the term for the cause of the origin or genesis of
anything. Plato (Phaedo) quotes Anaxagoras as teaching that nous211[Note: 11
211. νοῦς = mind] is hē archē tēs kinēseō.212[Note:12 212. ἡ ἀρχή τῆς κίνησεως =
the beginning of motion] Aristotle (Ethics 3.1) says that a man is blamed or
praised for that hou hē archē en autō esti.213[Note: 13 213. οὑ ἡ ἀρχή ἐν αὐτῳ
ἐστί = that which has its beginning in him] In Ethics 3.1 the same idea is
conveyed by the two phrases: hou hē archē exōthen214[Note: 14 214. οὑ ἡ ἀρχή
ἐξωθεν = whose beginning (causative principle) is outside (of the person)] and
hopot’ an hē aitia en tois ektos.215[Note: 15 215. ὁποτ᾽ ἄν ἡ αἰτία ἐν τοῖς
ἐκτός = when the cause of these things is in external circumstances (lit.,
outside)]

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:216[Note: 16 216. μονογενής
= only begotten] “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:217[Note: 17 217. πρωτότοκος = firstborn] “When he brings the
first begotten into the world” (Hebrews 1:6). The Son is prōtotokos pasēs
ktiseōs:218[Note: 18 218. πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως] “begotten before all
creation” (Colossians 1:15). The context shows that the genitive, here, is not
partitive, but is governed by prōtos219[Note: 19 219. πρῶτος = first] in
composition: “for by him were all things created” (1:16). Compare prōtos mou
ēn220[Note: 20 220. πρῶτος μου ἦ ν = he was before me] (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 ktiseōs221[Note: 21 221.
πρωτότοκος ἐκ πάσης κτίσεως = firstborn out of all creation] (cf. ek tōn
nekrōn;222[Note: 22 222. ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν = from (out of) the dead]Colossians
1:18). The Son is agapētos:223[Note: 23 223. ἀγαπητός = beloved] “This is my
beloved Son” (Matthew 3:17; Matthew 17:5). The Son is idios:224[Note: 24 224.
ἴδιος = one’s own, pertaining to oneself] “He said that God is his own Father
(patera idion)”225[Note: 25 225. πατέρα ἴδιον] (John 5:18). God “sent his own
Son (ton heautou huion)”226[Note: 26 226. τὸν ἑαυτοῦ υἱόν] (Romans 8:3; Romans
8:32). That the generation of the Son of God is in eternity and not a temporal
emanation is proved by Micah 5:2. The “goings forth” or “issuing”
(môṣEā˒)227[Note: 27 227. îåÉöÈà] of the ruler of Israel who is to be born in
Bethlehem are “from everlasting.” The Hebrew denotes an emanation, as in Psalms
65:8 : “The outgoings of the morning” are the beams of sunrise (cf. Hosea 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” (Hebrews 1:5). It is also proved by
the fact that he is to have the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession
(Psalms 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; Acts 13:33; Hebrews 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”
(Hebrews 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. Romans
9:17 : “For this same purpose have I raised you up [exēgeira se]”).228[Note: 28
228. ἐξήγειρά σε] 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
Isaiah 55:3 and from Psalms 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 Psalms 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” (Php 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.”229[Note: 29 229. spiritus quia spiratus] “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; Romans 8:16), (c) revealing future events (1 Timothy 4:1),
(d) searching the depths of God (1 Corinthians 2:10), (e) setting apart and
sending persons for the ministry (Isaiah 61:1; Acts 13:2; Acts 20:28), (f)
creating (Genesis 1:2), (g) the miraculous conception (Luke 1:35), and (h)
bestowing of ordinary and extraordinary gifts (1 Corinthians 12:11).

3. Because he is described as personally distinct from the Father and Son, being
sent by them (John 14:16; John 15:26; John 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 alētheias230[Note: 30 230.
ὅταν ἔλθῃ ἐκεῖνος τὸ πνεῦμα τῆς ἀληθεῖας = when he, the spirit of truth, comes]
(16:13); believers are sealed tō pneumati hos estin arrabōn231[Note: 31 231. τῷ
πνεύματι ὅς ἐστιν ἀρραβών = inthe spirit, who is the pledge] (Ephesians 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 (Matthew 28:19), the apostolic benediction (2 Corinthians
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 (Matthew 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” (Isaiah 63:10); the unpardonable sin (Matthew 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
Corinthians 12:4; 1 Corinthians 12:8; 1 Corinthians 12:11) and from the energy
(dynamis)232[Note: 32 232. δύναμις] of the Spirit (Luke 4:14; Luke 1:35). That
the Holy Spirit is a divine person is clear …

1. Because the divine name is given to him: In Isaiah 6:9 Jehovah speaks, and in
Acts 28:25 the Holy Spirit is said to speak the same words. In 2 Samuel 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 Corinthians
3:16; 1 Corinthians 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 (Genesis 1:2);
(b) omnipresence: “Whither shall I flee from your Spirit?” (Psalms 139:7-8);
“the Holy Spirit dwells in you” (1 Corinthians 3:16); (c) omniscience: “The
Spirit searches the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 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 Peter 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” (Romans
8:11).

3. Because divine works are attributed to him: (a) creation (Genesis 1:2; Psalms
33:6), (b) preservation and government (Psalms 104:30), (c) miracles (Matthew
12:28; 1 Corinthians 12:4; Luke 1:35), (d) the unction and mission of the
Messiah (Isaiah 61:1), (e) remission of sin and regeneration (1 Corinthians
6:11; John 3:5), (f) government of the church (Acts 13:2; Acts 15:28; Acts
20:28), (g) prediction of future events (John 16:13; Acts 11:28), (h) charismata
(1 Corinthians 12:7-11), (i) illumination (Ephesians 1:17-18), (j)
sanctification (2 Thessalonians 2:13; 1 Peter 1:2), and (k) resurrection of the
dead (Romans 8:11).

4. Because divine worship is rendered to him: in the baptismal formula (Matthew
28:19) and in the apostolic benediction (2 Corinthians 13:14; Revelation 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.233[Note: 33 233. WS: InRevelation 5:6“the seven spirits of God sent
forth into all the earth” are the “seven eyes of the Lamb”; in the Testament of
the Twelve Patriarchs “seven spirits” of error are described who stand for Satan
the archspirit of evil (Grabe, Spicilegium 1.146).] “Glorify God in your body,
which is God’s” (1 Corinthians 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 monou234[Note: 34 234. μόνου = alone] in article 7 of the Athanasian Creed:
apo tou (monou) patros;235[Note: 35 235. ἀπό τοῦ (μόνου) πατρός = from the
Father alone] 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 (Galatians 4:6; Romans 8:9;
Php 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.

S U P P L E M E N T S

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 Genesis 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’ (Exodus 13:14), but also says, ‘I am he’ (Deuteronomy 32:39),
he contrasts himself with himself, and an internal distinction is thereby made
in God. When he says in Isaiah 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’
(Genesis 1:3; Genesis 6:3; Psalms 51:11-12), nevertheless that Spirit is only
the Spirit of life given by God (104:29; Job 27:3; Job 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 (Isaiah
32:15; Ezekiel 36:27; Joel 2:28); or as the living basis of the theocracy,
animating artists, poets, heroes, judges, kings, and prophets (Numbers 11:17;
Numbers 11:25; Deuteronomy 34:9; Isaiah 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 ousia236[Note: 36 236. οὐσία = being]
and hypostasis:237[Note: 37 237. ὑπόστασις = substance] “The Grecians themselves
could not for a long season agree among themselves whether ousia238[Note: 38
238. οὐσία = being] and hypostasis239[Note: 39 239. ὑπόστασις = substance] 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.240[Note: 40 240. πρόσωπον = face] 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 Romans 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.241[Note: 41 241. ἠν πότε ὅτε οὐκ ἠν = there
was once when he was not] But ancient learning will explain that one thing may
proceed from another as its cause [source] 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 [source] 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 [or begotten]
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 [generation] is essential to the Supreme
Being, and as the first production [generation], 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 [generating] 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),242[Note: 42 242. ἀφ᾽
ἑαυτοῦ] 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);243[Note: 43 243. ἀπ᾽ ἐμαυτοῦ] 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),244[Note:
44 244. ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ] 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’ heautou245[Note: 45 245. ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ =
of himself] 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
Matthew 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 [from the
Father], 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 16:28egō
para tou patros exēlthon246[Note: 46 246. ἐγὼ παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς ἐξῆλθον = I came
forth from the Father] denotes leaving a position by the Father’s side. In 15:26
para247[Note: 47 247. παρά = from] signifies the same thing in reference to the
Holy Spirit.


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  CHAPTER 18: 3.05.     DIVINE ATTRIBUTES
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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.”1[Note: 1. divinae virtutes sunt ipsa essentia] 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.”2[Note: 2.
Attributa dei non possunt realiter differre ab essentia, vel inter se tanquam
res et res.]

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):3[Note: 3. δόξα] “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalms 19:1).
Sometimes, however, the context shows that a particular attribute is meant, as
in Romans 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 (Genesis 1:27) and to be made
partaker by regeneration of a divine nature (2 Peter 1:4) and is commanded to
imitate God: “Be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16). That they cannot be in a
creature in an infinite degree is proved by Matthew 19:17 : “There is none
[infinitely] 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)4[Note: 4. aseitas
(see aseity in glossary 1)] 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 Romans 11:36 that “all things are of him (ex
autou),”5[Note: 5. ἐξ αὐτοῦ] 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)6[Note: 6. γένος]
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
Chronicles 2:6; Jeremiah 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”7[Note: 7. extra flammantia moenia mundi] of Lucretius (Concerning Nature
1.74). God is said to be beyond the universe (extra mundum),8[Note: 8. outside
of the world] 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 Psalms
139:7-8 : “Whither shall I flee from your presence?” (Jeremiah 23:23-24; Isaiah
66:1; Acts 17:24). (See 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”
(Jeremiah 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).9[Note: 9. somewhere] 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[Note: 0 10. In quo loco est animus? Credo equidem in capite: et cur
credam, afferre possum. Sed alias ubi sit animus, certe quidem in te est.]
(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,”11[Note: 1 11. Specialis approximatio essentiae divinae
ad substantiam credentium.] 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,”12[Note: 2
12. jovis omnia esse plena] says Aratus. Virgil remarks that “God goes
throughout all the earth and the extent of the sea and the boundless
heaven”13[Note: 3 13. deum ire per omnes terras tractusque maris, coelumque
profundum] (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” (Genesis 21:33); “the one that inhabits eternity” (Isaiah 57:13); “from
eternity to eternity, you are God” (Psalms 90:2); “the king eternal” (Psalms
102:26-28; Isaiah 41:4; 1 Timothy 1:17); “the Lord of lords who only has
immortality” (1 Timothy 6:16); “I am Alpha and Omega” (Revelation 1:8). The
French version of the Scriptures renders Jehovah by l’Éternel.14[Note: 4 14. the
eternal one, the Lord]

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.”15[Note: 5 15. Eternitas est tota simul; in tempore,
autem, est prius et posterius. Ergo tempus et eternitas non sunt idem.] Says
Boethius (On the Consolation of Philosophy 5.4), “Eternity is the measure of
abiding existence, but time is the measure of movement.”16[Note: 6 16. Eternitas
est mensura esse permanentis, tempus vero est mensura motus.] 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
aiōn17[Note: 7 17. αἰών] 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” (Psalms 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” (Isaiah 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” (Isaiah 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 [of
knowledge]. 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
[one] 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. (See 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” (Genesis 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 Peter 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” (Psalms 90:4). The volition by which God
created “the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 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. (See 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.”18[Note: 8 18. Deus est actus purissimus sine ulla
potentialitate.] 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[Note: 9 19. Necesse
est id quod primum ens, esse in actu, et nullo modo in potentia.] 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 aiōnōn20[Note: 0 20. βάσιλευς τῶν αἰώνων = the
king eternal] (1 Timothy 1:17).” Similarly, Augustine (Confessions 11.13)
denominates God “the maker of time.”21[Note: 1 21. fabricator temporum]
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” (Malachi
3:6); “the heavens shall perish, but you shall endure” (Psalms 102:26); “with
whom is no variableness (parallagē),22[Note: 2 22. παράλλαγη] 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” (Numbers 23:19); “my counsel shall stand” (Isaiah
46:10); “the counsel of the Lord stands forever” (Psalms 33:11); “the Lord has
sworn and will not repent” (110:4); “the Strength of Israel will not lie nor
repent” (1 Samuel 15:29); “whereby God, willing to show the immutability of his
counsel, confirmed it by an oath” (Hebrews 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” (Genesis 6:6); “God repented of the evil that he had said that he would
do unto them” (Jonah 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” (Jeremiah 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)23[Note: 3 23. τετραχηλισμένα]
unto the eye of him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13; Romans 11:33;
Matthew 6:32; 1 Kings 8:39; Psalms 139:1-16; Isaiah 46:10; Ezekiel 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.”24[Note: 4 24. scientia simplicis intelligentiae] 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”25[Note: 5 25. scientia media] or “conditioned knowledge.”26[Note: 6
26. scientia conditionata] 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 Matthew
11:21-23 (the repentance of Tyre, Sidon, Sodom, and Gomorrah); 1 Samuel 23:5-14;
Jeremiah 38:17-20. (See supplement 3.5.4.) The doctrine of middle
knowledge27[Note: 7 27. scientia media] 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 Timothy
1:17). It is the intelligence of God as manifested in the adaptation of means to
ends. Hebrew ḥākām28[Note: 8 28. çÈëÈí] and Greek sophos29[Note: 9 29. σοφός]
primarily signify skillful, expert. It is seen (1) in creation: “The heavens
declare the glory of God” (Psalms 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” (Psalms 33:10-11); “all things work together for good”
(Romans 8:28); (3) in redemption: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom
and the knowledge of God!” (1 Corinthians 2:7; Romans 11:33); “the manifold
(polypoikilos)30[Note: 0 30. πολυποίκιλος] wisdom of God” (Ephesians 3:10). The
wisdom of God is called “the foolishness of God” (1 Corinthians 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 Proverbs 8:1-36
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” (Romans 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. (See 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” (Psalms 115:3); “holy Lord God Almighty” (Revelation 4:8); “I am
the almighty God” (Genesis 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” (Psalms 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 crate 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 Hebrews 6:18 (“it is
impossible for God to lie”); 2 Timothy 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.” (See
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.31[Note: 1
31. WS: Descartes asserts this: “God did not will that the three angles of a
triangle should be equal to two right angles because he knew it could not
possibly be otherwise. But because he willed that the three angles of a triangle
should be necessarily equal to two right angles, therefore this is now true; and
so on of other things. Nor is there any need to inquire how God from eternity
could have made it true that twice four should not be eight, for I confess that
this cannot be understood by us” (Responsiones §6). In other places, however,
Descartes “reasoned more correctly,” says Cudworth (ed. Tegg 2.532).] 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” (Romans 4:17; Isaiah 44:24; Genesis 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” (Hebrews 1:3). The omnipotence of God exerted in the act
of creation is denominated potentia absoluta.32[Note: 2 32. absolute power] 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.33[Note: 3 33. ordained power] 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 Corinthians 1:24); the gospel
is “the power of God” (Romans 1:16); “Messiah is the arm of the Lord” (Isaiah
53:1); Messiah is “the man of your right hand” (Psalms 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” (Isaiah 6:3; Isaiah 57:15; Exodus 15:11; Psalms
89:35; Psalms 145:17; Amos 4:2; Revelation 4:8; Revelation 15:4). God’s word is
holy (Romans 1:2). His promise is holy (Psalms 105:42). His Sabbath is holy
(Isaiah 58:13). His people are holy (62:12). His residence is holy (57:15). His
angels are holy (Revelation 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” (Matthew
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” (Psalms 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” (Jeremiah 44:4; Hebrews 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” (Leviticus 19:2; cf. 1 Peter 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” (Psalms 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,34[Note: 4 34. öÇãÌÄé ] which means straight, and Greek dikaios,35[Note:
5 35. δίκαιος] 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.36[Note: 6 36. WS: Owen, On Divine Justice; Edwards, Satisfaction for
Sin, 2.] 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” (Matthew 6:12). Cicero (On Ends 5.23) defines justice as “that
sentiment [lit., affect of the soul] assigning to each one his due.”37[Note: 7
37. animi affectus suum cuique tribuens] 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”
(Deuteronomy 32:4); “I am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers
upon the children” (Exodus 20:5); “the Lord God will by no means clear the
guilty” (34:7; Job 8:3; Job 34:12; Psalms 145:17; Daniel 9:14; Matthew 10:28;
Romans 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” (Psalms 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” (Romans
2:6); “the Father without respect of persons judges according to every man’s
work” (1 Peter 1:17); “say to the righteous that it shall be well with him. Woe
unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him” (Isaiah 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” (Psalms 58:11); “you have kept with
your servant David my father, that which you have promised him” (Deuteronomy
7:9; Deuteronomy 7:12-13; 2 Chronicles 6:15); you have been faithful over a few
things, I will make you ruler over many things” (Matthew 25:21; Matthew 25:34;
Micah 7:20; Romans 2:7; Hebrews 11:26; Jude 1:6).

Remunerative justice is the expression of divine love (agapē),38[Note: 8 38.
ἀγάπη] as retributive justice is of divine wrath (orgē).39[Note: 9 39. ὀργή] 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 Corinthians 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
Chronicles 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 Timothy 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 Romans 6:23 the recompense of obedience is
denominated a “gift” (charisma),40[Note: 0 40. χάρισμα] while that of
disobedience is called “wages” (opsōnia).41[Note: 1 41. ὀψώνια] 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” (Ephesians 1:11; Ephesians
1:14); “the Father has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the
saints in light” (Colossians 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
Peter 3:21) and (b) worldly prosperity: “Godliness has the promise of the life
that now is” (1 Timothy 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” (Psalms 16:11; John
14:23; Matthew 25:34-40); “I shall be satisfied when I awake in your likeness”
(Psalms 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.42[Note: 2 42. ὀργή = wrath] 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” (Romans 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)43[Note: 3 43. ἐκδίκησιν] on them that know not God” (2 Thessalonians
1:8); “vengeance (dikē)44[Note: 4 44. δίκη] suffers not to live” (Acts 28:4);
“vengeance (ekdikēsis)45[Note: 5 45. ἐκδίκησις] is mine, I will repay, says the
Lord” (Romans 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” (Genesis 2:17); “cursed is everyone that
continues not in all things written in the law to do them” (Galatians 3:10);
“the soul that sins, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4; Deuteronomy 27:26); “the wages
of sin is death” (Romans 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” (Exodus 34:7). If the penalty is not inflicted, it is not
“impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18); and it is untrue that “the Lord has
sworn and will not repent” (Psalms 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.”46[Note: 6 46.
Impersonaliter poenam necessario infligi omni peccato, sed non personaliter omni
peccatori.] 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[Note: 7 47. Duplex jus oritur circa poenae inflictionem; aliud
necessarium et indispensabile respectu peccati ipsius, aliud vero liberum et
positivum respectu peccatoris. A “positive” law is one which is enacted freely
and could be otherwise. On the other hand, a law which is absolutely necessary
is so by the nature of the case.]

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).48[Note: 8 48. to give oneself up (to death)] 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” (Genesis 2:17); and “the soul that sins it
shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4; Ezekiel 18:20). In these passages, the verb, not the
pronoun, is the emphatic word. They teach the same truth with Romans 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” (Romans 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. (See 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.49[Note: 9 49. WS: Cf. what
Cicero (On Duties 1.10) says concerning a “malicious interpretation” of law.]
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” (Psalms
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”50[Note: 0 50. fiat justitia ruat coelum] 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?”
(Genesis 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”
(Zechariah 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.”51[Note: 1 51. Dei qualitas non
est, sed tantum effectus voluntatis ipsius.] 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[Note: 2 52. Divinae justitiae, per quam peccatores damnari
meremur, pro peccatis nostris neque Christum satisfecisse, neque ut
satisfaceret, opus fuisse, arbitror.] 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).53[Note: 3 53. for the purpose of destroying that
most pestilential heresy] 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” (Exodus 34:7); “upon the
wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest” (Psalms
11:6); “it is better for you to enter into life halt or maimed than to be cast
into hellfire” (Matthew 18:8); “suffering the vengeance of eternal fire” (Jude
1:7); “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 Thessalonians 1:6); “a just recompense of reward”
(Hebrews 2:2).

2. The testimony from the human conscience and the consent of all nations
alluded to in Romans 2:14-15 : “Their conscience bearing witness and their
thoughts meanwhile accusing.”54[Note: 4 54. WS: See Plato, Republic 10.614-21;
Phaedo 113-14; Gorgias 523-27; Tacitus, Annals 6.6; 14.20; 15.26; Lewis, Plato
against the Atheists, app. 59; Tholuck, On Heathenism; Owen, On Divine Justice;
Shedd, Theological Essays, 284-93.]

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” (Hebrews 10:3).55[Note: 5 55. WS: Magee, Atonement (“Human Sacrifices”;
“Propitiation as held by Jews and Heathen”; “Universality of Sacrifice”); Owen,
On Divine Justice, 4; Smith, Christian Theology, 443-45.]

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.56[Note: 6 56. with this, not therefore
on account of this. The meaning here is that an action may effect results that
lie beyond the purpose for which the action was performed. Such results are
connected “with” the action, but the action was not performed “on account of” or
so as to effect these results.] 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 [ed.
Rosenkranz]): 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). (See 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?”
(Romans 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.57[Note: 7 57. Although
Shedd correctly defines the term acceptilatio, the position he illustrates in
the following sentences is more properly denominated acceptatio. In
acceptilatio, nothing is paid but the debt is wiped out as if a full payment has
occurred. In acceptatio, a payment of less than the full amount is accepted as
if it were payment in full.] 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 ṭôb58[Note: 8 58. èåÉá = good] by chrēstos:59[Note: 9 59. χρηστός =
useful] “Good (chrēstos)60[Note: 0 60. χρηστός = useful] are you, O Lord, and
you do good” (Psalms 119:68). In Romans 5:7 holiness is designated by
dikaios61[Note: 1 61. δίκαιος = righteous] and kindness by agathos:62[Note: 2
62. ἀγαθός = good] “Scarcely for a righteous (dikaios)63[Note: 3 63. δίκαιος]
man will one die; yet peradventure for a good (agathos)64[Note: 4 64. ἀγαθός]
man, some would even dare to die.” In Luke 18:19 the reference is to
benevolence, not to holiness: “None is good (agathos),65[Note: 5 65. ἀγαθός]
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)66[Note: 6 66. χρηστός = useful] 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” (Matthew 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” (Psalms 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” (Matthew 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” (Psalms 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” (Matthew 6:26); “you preserve man and beast” (Psalms
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” (Matthew 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” (Nehemiah 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” (Psalms 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. (See 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 (See 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 (Genesis 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,67[Note: 7
67. øÇçåÌí] tender, compassionate) and gracious (ḥannûn,68[Note: 8 68. çÇðÌåÌï]
showing kindness), long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping
mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exodus
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”
(Matthew 5:45); “the Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all
his works” (Psalms 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)69[Note: 9 69.
πάρεσις] of sin, in distinction from its remission (aphesis)70[Note: 0 70.
ἄφεσις] (Romans 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 Peter 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. (See 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)71[Note: 1 71. ἐχαρίτωσεν]
in the beloved” (Ephesians 1:4-6); “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion” (Romans 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”
(Numbers 23:19). It is seen (1) in revelation: “The word of the Lord endures
forever” (1 Peter 1:25); “his truth endures to all generations” (Psalms 100:5);
“one jot or tittle shall not pass from the law till all be fulfilled” (Matthew
5:18); (2) in redemption: “He is faithful that promised” (Hebrews 10:23); “God
willing [desiring] 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 Corinthians 1:9); “he abides faithful; he cannot
deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13); and (3) in retribution: “So, I swore in my
wrath, They shall not enter into my rest” (Hebrews 3:11; Hebrews 4:1-11).

S U P P L E M E N T S

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’
[i.e., substantial]. Again, if you choose to apply the epithet immaterial only
to that [divine] 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
[supremely immutable] 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 Peter 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:72[Note: 2 72. scientia simplicis intelligentiae] “All
things originally owe their futurition [actuality] 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
[actuality], 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” (Genesis 15:1); “the Lord is the portion of my
inheritance and of my cup” (Psalms 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.”73[Note: 3 73. Voluntas quidem justitiae est ipsa
justitia; voluntas vero beatitudinis non est beatitudo; quia non omnis habet
beatitudinem qui habet ejus voluntatem.]

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
Peter 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 [ed. Bohn]).


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  CHAPTER 19: 3.06.     THE DIVINE DECREES
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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” (Revelation 14:8). 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)”1[Note: 1.
πρόθεσιν] (8:28); “according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ”
(Ephesians 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 Peter 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”
(Psalms 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 (See 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)2[Note: 2. βουλήν] of his will”
(Ephesians 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,3[Note: 3.
from the outside] 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” (Psalms 33:11); “with him is wisdom and
strength; he has counsel and understanding” (Job 12:13); “the counsel of the
Lord, that shall stand” (Proverbs 19:21); “he has done all things well” (Mark
7:37); “God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good”
(Genesis 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” (Matthew 25:34); “he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the
world” (Ephesians 1:4); “God has from the beginning chosen you to salvation” (2
Thessalonians 2:13; 2 Timothy 1:9; 1 Corinthians 2:7); “the Lamb was slain from
the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8); Christ as a sacrifice “was
foreordained before the foundation of the world” (1 Peter 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” (Ephesians 1:10-11); “known unto God are all his works from the
beginning” (Acts 15:18; Proverbs 16:33; Daniel 4:34-35; Matthew 10:29-30; Acts
17:26; Job 14:5; Isaiah 46:10): (a) The good actions of men: “Created unto good
works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them” (Ephesians
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; Acts
4:27-28; Psalms 76:10; Proverbs 16:4); (c) so-called accidental events: “The lot
is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord” (Proverbs
16:33; Genesis 45:8; Genesis 50:20); “a bone of him shall not be broken” (John
20:36; Psalms 34:20; Exodus 12:46; Numbers 9:12); (d) the means as well as the
end: “God has chosen you to salvation, through sanctification (en
hagiasmō)4[Note: 4. ἐν ἁγιασμῷ] of the Spirit” (2 Thessalonians 2:13); “he has
chosen us that we should be holy” (Ephesians 1:4; 1 Peter 1:2); “elect through
sanctification of the Spirit” (Acts 27:24; Acts 27:31): 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” (Psalms 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” (Isaiah 38:1; Isaiah 38:5). 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” (Isaiah 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):5[Note: 5. ὅσα ἠθέλησαν]
likewise shall the Son of Man suffer them” (Matthew 17:12); “the Son of Man goes
as it was determined (hōrismenon),6[Note: 6. ὡρισμένον] 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.” (See 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 Peter 1:1); “the
faith of God’s elect” (Titus 1:1); “faith is the gift of God” (Ephesians 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. (See 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)7[Note: 7. εὐδοκία]
(Matthew 11:26; Ephesians 1:5; Romans 9:11); therefore it does not depend upon
the creature’s good pleasure; (c) the divine decree is immutable (Isaiah 46:10;
Romans 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.
(See 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” (Php 2:13);
“faith is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8); “if God peradventure will give them
repentance” (2 Timothy 2:25); “created in Christ Jesus unto good works”
(Ephesians 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)8[Note: 8. εἴασε] all nations to walk in their own ways” (Acts 14:16);
“the times of this ignorance God overlooked (hyperidōn)”9[Note: 9. ὑπεριδών]
(17:30); “he gave them their own desire” (Psalms 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. (See
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 permissa10[Note: 0 10. permitted things] 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)11[Note: 1 11. εὐδοκία] in accordance with which God permits sin must
not be confounded with the pleasure or complacency (agapē)12[Note: 2 12. ἀγάπη]
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” (Isaiah 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” (Genesis
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 hylē13[Note: 3 13. ὕλη = matter] 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” (Psalms 76:10); “you thought evil against me, but God meant
it unto good” (Genesis 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.”14[Note: 4 14. WS: Calvin is sometimes represented as differing from
Augustine and teaching that God decrees sin as he does holiness by an
efficacious decree. Möhler so asserts in his Symbolics, but Baur (Gegensatz,
744-45) shows that this is a mistake. Modern Lutheran theologians often make the
same assertion. Fisher (Reformation, 202) says that in his Institutes Calvin
“makes the primal transgression the object of an efficient decree,” but “in the
Consensus Genevensis confines himself to the assertion of a permissive decree in
the case of the first sin.” But Calvin 3.23.8 affirms that “the perdition of the
wicked depends upon divine predestination in such a manner that the cause and
matter of it are found in themselves. Man falls according to the appointment of
divine providence, but he falls by his own fault (suo vitio cadit).” Calvin, it
is true, asserts (2.4.3-5) that “prescience or permission” is not the whole
truth respecting God’s relation to sin, because he is said in Scripture “to
blind and harden the reprobate and to turn, incline, and influence their
hearts.” But the accompanying explanation shows that he has in mind the notion
of permission in the case of an idle spectator who cannot prevent an action and
can do nothing toward controlling it after it has occurred-the same notion that
is alluded to in the Westminster Confession and other Calvinistic creeds. The
“blinding, hardening, turning,” etc., Calvin describes as the consequence of
divine desertion, not causation. Some of his phraseology in this place is harsh,
but should be interpreted in harmony with his explicit teaching in 3.23.8. One
proof that Calvinism does not differ from Augustinianism on the subject of the
origin of sin under the divine decree is the fact that the Dort Canons, which
are a very strict statement of Calvinism, reject supralapsarianism and assert
infralapsarianism/sublapsarianism. This means that the relation of God to the
origin of sin is not efficacious, but permissive, which was Augustine’s view.]
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. (See
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” (Ecclesiastes 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.15[Note: 5 15. from the outside] 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.16[Note: 6
16. WS: Alexander in the 1831 Princeton Repertory makes the same objection as
above to the doctrine of the concursus.]

Fate, Certainty, Compulsion, and Necessity The divine decree differs from the
heathen fate.17[Note: 7 17. WS: On fate as presented in the pagan writers, see
the appendix to Toplady’s translation of Zanchi, On Predestination.] (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 theō18[Note: 8 18. τήν πεπρωμένην μοιράν ἀδυνάτον ἐστὶ ἀποφυγεῖν καὶ θεῷ =
no one can escape his appointed fate, not even a god] (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 (See 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:

[God] 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.19[Note: 9 19. WS: On this
point, see Clarke, Demonstration, prop. 20, who contends, however, only that
foreknowledge does not necessitate, not that foreordination does not. He is
Arminian on the subject of decrees.]

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.20[Note: 0 20. Si
praescita sunt omnia futura, hoc ordine venient, quo ventura esse praescita
sunt. Et si hoc ordine venient, certus est ordo rerum praescienti deo. Et si est
certus ordo rerum, est certus ordo causarum; non enim aliquid fieri potest, quod
non aliqua efficiens causa praecesserit. Si autem certus est ordo causarum quo
fit omne quod fit, fato fiunt omnia quae fiunt. Quod si ita est, nihil est in
nostra potestate.]

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”21[Note: 1 21. magna dii curant, parva negligunt] (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;22[Note: 2 22.
πρόθεσις]Romans 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 Corinthians 2:7, however, the gospel is described as
predestinated: “The hidden wisdom which God foreordained (proōrisen)23[Note: 3
23. προώρισεν] 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: proorizein24[Note:
4 24. προορίξειν = to circumscribe or limit beforehand] and
progignōskein.25[Note: 5 25. προγιγνώσκειν = to foreknow] The former signifies
“to circumscribe or limit beforehand.” The word horizein26[Note: 6 26. ὁρίξειν =
to divide, define] is transferred in English horizon, which denotes the dividing
line that separates the earth from the sky. Proorizein27[Note: 7 27. προορίξειν
= to determine before] occurs in Acts 4:28 : “To do whatsoever your hand and
your counsel determined before (proōrise)28[Note: 8 28. προώρισε] 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),29[Note: 9 29.
προέγνω] he also did predestinate (proōrise)30[Note: 0 30. προώρισε] to be
conformed to the image of his son” (Romans 8:29); “whom he did predestinate
(proōrisen),31[Note: 1 31. προώρισεν] them he also called” (8:30); “having
predestinated (proorisas)32[Note: 2 32. προορίσας] us unto the adoption of
children” (Ephesians 1:5); being predestinated (prooristhentes)33[Note: 3 33.
προορισθέντες] 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)34[Note: 4 34. προώρισεν] unto our glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7). The
word progignōskein35[Note: 5 35. προγιγνώσκειν] (to foreknow) occurs in several
texts: “Whom he did foreknow (proegnō),36[Note: 6 36. προέγνω] he also did
predestinate” (Romans 8:29); “God has not cast away his people, whom he foreknew
(proegnō)37[Note: 7 37. προέγνω] (11:2); Christ “verily was foreknown
(proegnōsmenos)38[Note: 8 38. προεγνωσμένος] before the foundation of the world”
(1 Peter 1:20). The noun prognōsis39[Note: 9 39. πρόγνωσις = was foreknown]
occurs in two texts: “Delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of
God” (Acts 2:23); “elect according to the foreknowledge of God” (1 Peter 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. Genesis 18:19; Psalms 1:6; Psalms 36:10; Psalms
144:3; Hosea 8:4; Amos 3:2; Nahum 1:7; Matthew 7:23; John 10:14; 1 Corinthians
8:3; 1 Corinthians 16:18; 2 Timothy 2:19; 1 Thessalonians 5:12; Shedd on Romans
7:15). Traces of this use of gignōskein40[Note: 0 40. γιγνώσκειν = to know] are
seen in the earlier Greek usage: gnōtos41[Note: 1 41. γνωτός] = gnōstos42[Note:
2 42. γνωστός] 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”
(Genesis 22:12); “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus
Christ” (1 Corinthians 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” (Romans 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 Peter 1:2 believers are “elected unto
obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Christ,” that is, unto justification
and sanctification. In 2 Timothy 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
Romans 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.43[Note: 3 43. προέγνω = to foreknow] 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 Timothy 2:25) and faith, since “faith is the
gift of God” (Ephesians 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)44[Note: 4 44. εὐδοκίαν] of his will” (Ephesians 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” (Romans
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 Timothy 2:19); “I know whom I have chosen”
(John 13:18); “I know you by name” (Exodus 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” (Jeremiah 1:5); “God separated me
from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace” (Galatians 1:15); “I know my
sheep” (John 10:14). (See 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 Timothy 5:21); “the
angels which kept not their first estate” (Jude 1:6). 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. (See 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.
(See 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” (Ephesians 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 Corinthians 1:27-28); “according as he has chosen us in
him before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4); “has not God chosen the
poor of this world, rich in faith?” (James 2:5; Matthew 13:11; Matthew 20:23;
Matthew 22:14; Matthew 24:22; Matthew 24:40; Matthew 25:34; Mark 4:11; Luke
10:20; Luke 12:32; Luke 17:34; John 6:37; Acts 13:48; Romans 8:28-33; Romans
8:9-11; Galatians 1:15; Ephesians 1:1-23; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; 2 Timothy 1:9;
Isaiah 42:1; Isaiah 45:4; Isaiah 65:9; Isaiah 65:22). 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” (Matthew 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. (See 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)45[Note: 5 45. ἀγάπη]
spoken of in John 14:23, but out of the divine goodness and kindness
(chrēstotēs)46[Note: 6 46. χρηστότης] spoken of in Romans 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?” (Jonah 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” (Ezekiel 33:11); “the Lord is full
of compassion; slow to anger and of great mercy” (Psalms 145:8; Psalms 103:8;
Psalms 86:15); “God delights in mercy” (Micah 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” (Exodus 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” (Matthew 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 Matthew 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 Romans
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)47[Note: 7 47.
χρηστότητα] and severity (apotomian)48[Note: 8 48. ἀποτομίαν] of God; on them
which fell, severity (strict justice); but toward you, goodness (mercy)” (Romans
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”
(Romans 11:22); “whom he predestinated them he glorified” (8:32). “Let us not
imagine,” says St. Augustine on Psalms 68:1-35, “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 Peter 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” (Ephesians 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.” (See 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” (Psalms 110:3); “it is God who works in you
to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Php 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.” 1 Peter 1:2 asserts that believers are “elected unto
obedience,” consequently, not because of obedience. 2 Timothy 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 (Ephesians 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 Romans 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 (Romans 9:16; Romans 8:7; John
1:12-13; John 3:5; John 6:44; John 6:65).49[Note: 9 49. WS: On this point, see
Hodge, Theology 2.639-710; Dabney, Theology, 580-81; Watson, Institutes
2.395-96.]

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 Romans 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.”50[Note: 0 50. Et quamvis deus norit qui sunt sui, et alicubi
mentio fiat paucitatis electorum, bene sperandum est tamen de omnibus, neque
temere reprobis quisquam est adnumerandus.]

Second Helvetic Confession 10.6: “Others say, ‘But if I am numbered among the
reprobate.’ ”51[Note: 1 51. Alii dicunt: si vero sum de reproborum numero.]

French Confession 12: “We believe that God removes the elect from this
condemnation, leaving the others”52[Note: 2 52. Nous croyons que de cette
condemnation, Dieu retire ceux lesquels il a élus, laissant les autres.] 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.”53[Note: 3 53. Nous croyons que Dieu s’est demontré tel qu’il est;
savoir miséricordieux et juste: miséricordieux, en retirant et sauvant ceux
qu’en son conseil éternel il a élus; juste, en laissant les autres en leur ruine
et trébuchement où ils se sont précipités.]

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 [i.e., of the fall], into which
they cast themselves through their own fault.”54[Note: 4 54. Scriptura Sacra
testatur non omnes homines esse electos, sed quosdam non electos, sive in
aeterna dei electione praeteritos, quos scilicet deus ex liberrimo, justissimo,
irreprehensibili, et immutabilimi beneplacito decrevit in communi miseria, in
quam se sua culpa praecipitarunt, relinquere.]

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.”55[Note: 5 55. WS: The Formula of Concord
(1576-84) teaches that foreknowledge extends to both good and evil, that
predestination extends to good only. The Waldensian Confession (1655) teaches
inability, election, and preterition. It is an abridgment of the Gallican
Confession and is “highly prized” by the modern Waldensians. The Articles of the
Congregational Union of England and Wales (1833) teach election. The creed of
the Free Church of Geneva (1848) teaches inability and election. The Free
Italian Church (1870) teaches inability. The Methodist Articles (1784) drawn up
by Wesley teach inability; the sinner “cannot turn and prepare himself to
faith.” The Arminian Articles (1610) teach impotence and that “God by an eternal
purpose has determined to save those who believe and persevere.” Niemeyer
excludes this from his collection of “Reformed” Confessions. The Cumberland
Presbyterian Confession (1813-29) teaches inability and that “God’s sovereign
electing love is as extensive as the legal condemnation or reprobation, in which
all men are by nature. But in a particular and saving sense, none can be
properly called God’s elect till they be justified and united to Christ. None
are justified from eternity. God has reprobated none from eternity” (Schaff,
Creeds 3.772).]

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 (Romans 1:19-20; Romans 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
[i.e., does not soften].” 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. (See 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).56[Note: 6 56. εὐδοκία] 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. (See
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 Chronicles 32:31; cf. Psalms 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 (Isaiah 6:9-10;
Matthew 11:25-26; Matthew 13:11; Matthew 22:14; Luke 17:34; John 10:26; John
12:39; Acts 1:16; 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12; 2 Timothy 2:20; 1 Peter 2:8; Romans
9:17-18; Romans 9:21-22; Jude 1:4). 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 Romans 9:18; Romans 9:23; Romans 9:33). 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” (Deuteronomy 7:10). Until the
appointed time had come, Christ himself forbade his disciples to preach the
gospel indiscriminately to Jews and Gentiles (Matthew 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
[Gentiles] not heard? Yes, verily, their sound [of the preachers] went into all
the earth, and their words to the end of the world” (Romans 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 [the nation] has not obtained that
which he seeks for, but the election has obtained it, and the rest [of the
nation] were blinded” (Romans 9:27; Romans 11:7); “many are [outwardly] called,
but few [inwardly] chosen” (Matthew 10:16; Isaiah 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” (Isaiah 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. (See 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 [regenerated and saved by Christ through the
Spirit], 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.”57[Note: 7 57. Agnoscimus
interim, deum illuminare posse homines etiam sine externo ministerio, quo et
quando velit: id quod ejus potentiae est.] 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?” (Romans
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” (Matthew
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 (Matthew 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 (Romans 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.58[Note: 8
58. WS: The case of the Indian described in Edward’s Life of Brainerd is
sometimes cited, but it is not so clear and satisfactory as some others.
Brainerd describes the Indian as one who “had formerly been like the rest of the
Indians, until about four or five years previously. Then, he said, his heart was
very much distressed. At length God comforted his heart and showed him what he
should do.” Brainerd adds: “I must say that there was something in his temper
and disposition which looked more like true religion than anything I ever
observed among other heathens.” But Brainerd does not say that this Indian
believed and trusted in Christ when Christ was presented to him as the Savior
from sin: yet had he done so, he would certainly have mentioned it. On the
contrary, Brainerd remarks that the Indian “disliked extremely” some of his
teaching. He also continued to practice the tricks of a conjurer in connection
with idolatrous worship. The evidence and criterion of a true sense of sin and
of a genuine work of the Holy Spirit in a heathen heart is that readiness to
welcome and believe in Christ when preached, which was exhibited by Cornelius
and the eunuch.] 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). (See 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”59[Note: 9 59. Homo
creabilis et labilis non est objectum praedestinationis, sed creatus et lapsus.]
(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)60[Note: 0 60. ὄν]
he will, he has mercy; and whom he will, he hardens” (Romans 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)61[Note: 1 61. ἐκ]
the world” (John 15:19). (c) The elect are chosen to justification and
sanctification (Ephesians 1:4-6; 1 Peter 1:2). They must therefore have been
already fallen and consequently created. God justifies “the ungodly” (Romans
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 1:4 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
Romans 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.62[Note:
2 62. WS: Says Haeckel (Evolution ofMan 2:3): “The human embryo passes through
the whole course of its development in the space of forty weeks. Each man is
really older, by this period, than is usually assumed. When, for example, a
child is said to be 9.25 years old, he is really 10 years old.”] He exists in
the womb; and he existed in Adam. Accordingly, in Romans 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 Psalms 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 (Galatians 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
gnōristhē63[Note: 3 63. ἵνα γνωρισθῇ = in order that it might be made known]
depends on euangelisasthai64[Note: 4 64. εὐαγγελίσασθαι = to preach the gospel]
and phōtisai65[Note: 5 65. φωτίσαι = to bring to light] 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”66[Note: 6 66. Ubi nuda est permissio, ibi locum non habet
causalitas.] (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” (Romans 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 (Romans 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
Deuteronomy 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” (Proverbs 1:31). (See
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 Romans 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.”67[Note: 7 67. WS: “Pharaoh was hardened
because God with his Spirit and grace hindered not his ungodly proceedings, but
suffered him to go on and have his way. Why God did not hinder or restrain him
we ought not to inquire” (Luther, Table Talk, 49 [ed. Bogue]).] 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 emisēsa68[Note: 8 68.
ἐμίσησα = I hated] 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 Matthew 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 Psalms 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). (See 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”
(Romans 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 Corinthians 3:7; 2 Corinthians 3:9). (See 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.69[Note:
9 69. WS: Respecting election, Watson (Institutes 2.338) remarks as follows: “To
be elected is to be separated from the world (‘I have chosen you out of the
world’) and to be sanctified by the Spirit (‘elect unto obedience’). It follows,
then, that election is not only an act of God in time, but also that it is
subsequent to the administration of the means of salvation. Actual election
cannot be eternal, for from eternity the elect were not actually chosen out of
the world and could not be actually sanctified unto obedience.” This explanation
makes election to be sanctification itself, instead of its cause: “To be elected
is to be separated from the world and to be sanctified.” The term separate is
used here by Watson not as St. Paul uses it to denote election, when he says
that God “separated him from his mother’s womb” (Galatians 1:15); but in the
sense of sanctification, as St. Paul employs it in2 Corinthians 6:17: “Be
separate and touch not the unclean thing.” By this interpretation, election is
made to be the same thing as sanctification, instead of being an act of God that
produces it, as is taught inEphesians 1:4(“he has chosen us that we should be
holy”) and in1 Peter 1:2(“elect unto obedience”).]

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),70[Note: 0 70. κατὰ εὐδοκίαν] 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 Jude 1:5. Arminian
election is inconsistent with a part of the Arminian statement respecting
inability.71[Note: 1 71. WS: Baur (Gegensatz, 216) shows that the same
inconsistency, in first asserting and then denying inability, appears in the
Lutheran doctrine of regeneration as stated in the Formula of Concord.] 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. (See 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 index 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 Ezekiel 33:11; Ezekiel 18:32 : “As I live, says the Lord, I have no
pleasure72[Note: 2 72. WS: The Septuagint, contrary to New Testament usage,
incorrectly renders this by boulōai (βούλομαι = to decide) instead of thelō
(θέλω = to desire).] (ḥāpēṣ)73[Note: 3 73. çÈôÅõ] 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 Exodus 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 Romans 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” (Exodus 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; Luke 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” (Hebrews 12:2) and by which he demonstrates that
“all power is given unto him in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 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. (See
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.74[Note: 4 74. WS: Cf. Edwards, On Decrees
and Election §§59-62; Howe, Reconciliableness of God’s Prescience with His
Sincerity; Baxter, Directions for Spiritual Peace and Comfort 1.252 (ed.
Bacon).] (See 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 Deuteronomy 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 Hebrews
13:20-21 : “Now the God of peace make you perfect to do his will
(thelēma),75[Note: 5 75. θέλημα] working in you that which is well pleasing
(euareston)76[Note: 6 76. εὐάρεστον] in his sight.” Here, God’s will is
something which he desires and delights in. An example of the secret will is
found in Romans 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.77[Note: 7 77. βούλημα] 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[Note: 8 78. WS: Augustine (Enchiridion 101) shows how one man in doing
right may agree with the revealed will of God and disagree with the secret will;
and another in doing wrong may disagree with the revealed will and agree with
the secret. A sick father has two sons. One of them is godly and desires and
prays for his father’s recovery. The other is wicked and desires and prays for
his father’s death. God purposes that the father shall die, and he does die. See
Owen, Arminianism, 5.] 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 signi79[Note: 9 79. voluntas signi = will of sign, i.e., his
revealed will] (signified) and voluntas beneplaciti.80[Note: 0 80. voluntas
beneplaciti = will of good pleasure] The Greeks speak of the will
euarestias81[Note: 1 81. εὐαρεστίας = well pleased] and eudokias.82[Note: 2 82.
εὐδοκίας = satisfied]

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”
(Isaiah 53:10); “I will give you the heathen for your inheritance” (Psalms 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
(Hebrews 6:4-6; Hebrews 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 Peter 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
(Hebrews 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 [human] might nor by [human] power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Hosts”
(Zechariah 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 Peter 3:19-21).

S U P P L E M E N T S

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 Romans 8:29; Romans 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 [the doctrine of
two eternal principles of good and evil] 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 [ed. Bohn]) 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. [This is common grace, which Howe elsewhere describes as
failing to overcome the sinner’s opposition.] 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 [causative] thereunto. [Howe here refers to
the struggle with indwelling sin in the regenerate which is assisted by God.]
(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 [created] 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 [internal influence]
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 estin83[Note: 3 83. τὸ μὴ κωλούον αἴτιον ἐστιν = that which does not
hinder (an action) is responsible (for it)] 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 Romans 1:24; Romans 1:28. 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 orgē84[Note: 4 84. ὀργή = wrath] 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 Romans 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’ (Ezekiel 14:9), and likewise what the apostle says,
‘He has mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardens’ (Romans
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 (Psalms
105:25; Proverbs 21:1; 1 Kings 12:15; 2 Chronicles 21:16-17) and from similar
passages, it is, I think, sufficiently clear that God works in the hearts of men
to incline their wills85[Note: 5 85. ad inclinandas eorum voluntates]
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 Romans 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” (Php 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)86[Note: 6 86. εἴασε] 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” (Psalms 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’ (Joshua 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 Samuel 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 [already] 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 Psalms
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.87[Note: 7 87. Lapsus
est primus homo, quia Dominus ita expedire censuerat; cur censuerit nos latet.
Certum tamen est non aliter censuisse, nisi quia videbat nominis sui gloriam
inde merito illustrari. Ubi mentionem gloriae Dei audis, illic justitiam cogita.
Justum enim oportet quod laudem meretur. Cadit igitur homo, Dei providentia sic
ordinante: sed suo vitio cadit.] [In a note Baur adds, “It is remarkable that
Möhler repeatedly cites this passage from Calvin, but in every instance omits
the clause upon which everything depends: ‘but he [man] fell through his own
fault.’88[Note: 8 88. sed suo vitio cadit] His bold assertion in his New
Investigations §125 that the vitio suo cadere is not omitted is refuted by
ocular demonstration (Augenschein).”] 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.’89[Note: 9 89. Pronuntiaverat paulo
ante Dominus omnia quae fecerat esse valde bona. Unde ergo illa homini pravitas
ut a Deo deficiat? Ne ex creatione putaretur, elogio suo approbaverat Deus quod
profectum erat a se ipso. Propria ergo malitia, quam acceperat a Domino puram
naturam corrupit; sua ruina totam posteritatem in exitium suum attraxit. Quare
in corrupta potius humani generis natura evidentem damnationis causam, quae
nobis propinquior est, contemplemur, quam absconditam ac penitus
incomprehensibilem inquiramus in Dei praedestinatione. Tametsi aeterna Dei
providentia in eam cui subjacet calamitatem conditus est homo, a se ipso tamen
ejus materiam, non a Deo, sumpsit; quando nulla alia ratione sic perditus est,
nisi quia a pura Dei creatione in vitiosam et impuram perversitatem
degeneravit.] 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’90[Note: 0 90. cadit homo Deo sic ordinante,
sed suo vitio] 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 [of his being] 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 nothing91[Note: 1 91. de nihilo (which carries essentially the
same meaning as ex nihilo)] 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 Samuel 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” (Psalms 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 (Romans 9:18) and to blind when he does not enlighten
(11:8, 10; John 12:40; Isaiah 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’ (Proverbs 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 (Deuteronomy 2:30). The psalmist, reciting the same
history, says: ‘He turned their heart to hate his people’ (Psalms 105:25). Now,
it cannot be said that they stumbled (impegisse) [merely] 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 [concerning God’s
hardening, etc.] with a foolish cavil; that since Pharaoh himself is said to
have hardened his own heart his own will is the [only] 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 [active] providence of God a bare [passive] 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 Romans 1:24; Romans 1:283. By using the agency of Satan
(described in John 13:2; John 13:27): “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’ (Ezekiel 14:9). But according to another, God is said himself to
give men over to a reprobate mind (Romans 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,92[Note: 2 92. from the outside] 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’ (Revelation 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 (Romans 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 [ed. Erdmann]), 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 (Ephesians 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 (Revelation 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 mē93[Note: 3 93. εἰ μή =
except] qualifying ho huios tēs apoleias94[Note: 4 94. ὁ υἱὸς τῆς ἀπολείας = the
son of perdition] 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 mē95[Note: 5 95. εἰ μή = except] qualifying neeman ho
syrios96[Note: 6 96. νεεμὰν ὁ σύρος = Naaman the Syrian] 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 [whom you gave me] is lost; but the son of perdition [is lost] 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. [The
grace of election is from eternity; that of the general offer is at a particular
time.] (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. [It imparts the life
which produces the faith.] (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 [envious] 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 [in baptized infants], 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
[in baptism] 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 [as to bring them up in idolatry]. 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 Romans 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” (Hebrews 11:20; Genesis 27:27; Genesis 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” (Malachi 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” (Romans 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’ (Deuteronomy 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 [of national election] as his brother Isaac, for
the spiritual covenant was equally sealed in him by the symbol of circumcision.
He is cut off [in individual election]; 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’ (Psalms 78:67-68). I grant that it was by their own crime and guilt that
Ishmael, Esau, and persons of similar character fell from [national] 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’ (Malachi 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 Romans 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’ [This is the objector’s,
not Calvin’s phraseology. In his reply, Calvin says, “previously to birth
adjudged to endless misery,” not previously to creation], 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 [sinful] 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 [not previously to their
creation and fall in Adam, as the objector states it] 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 [sinful]
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 [i.e., the
condemnation], 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 [of justice]”
(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 [to death] 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 [i.e., to a greater degree of 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’ (Matthew 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’ (Romans 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 Samuel 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
[regenerating] 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 Genesis 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 [by assigning some other reason for preterition than
the sovereign will of God]. 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)97[Note: 7 97. In this connection
Richard Muller’s observation about the “horrible decree” is worth repeating:
“Decretum horrible: terrifying decree; a much-abused term from Calvin. It does
not translate ‘horrible decree’ and in no way implies that the eternal decree is
somehow unjust or horrifying, but only that the decree is awesome and
terrifying, particularly to those who are not in Christ”; Richard A. Muller,
Dictionary of Greek and Latin Theological Terms (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985),
88.] 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” (Ezekiel 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’ (Deuteronomy 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 Samuel 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 Timothy 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 [and originated in] 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
[actuation] in that uncleanness the heathen were given up to: ‘Wherefore God
gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts’ (Romans
1:24). God’s giving them up was the logical [or occasional] cause [of the
uncleanness]; their own lusts were the true and natural cause [of it]. 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’ (Hosea 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’
(Revelation 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.”98[Note: 8 98. Τὸ μισεῖν
intelligendum est comparate pro amore minori et diminuto.] The hardening of a
part of the Israelites is described as not softening them, in Deuteronomy 29:4 :
“Yet the Lord has not given [all of you] a heart to perceive and eyes to see and
ears to hear, unto this day.” This identical process is described in Isaiah 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” (Psalms 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 [ed. Bohn])
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”
(Romans 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)99[Note: 9 99. δυνάμεις] 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.


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  CHAPTER 20: 3.07.     CREATION
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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.

CreationEx 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”
(Proverbs 8:22); and God is said to have created the heaven and earth “in the
beginning” (Genesis 1:1). The doctrine of creation is taught in Genesis 1:1;
Nehemiah 9:6; Job 26:3; Psalms 19:1; Psalms 104:30; Psalms 124:8; Psalms 146:6;
John 1:3; Acts 17:24; Romans 11:36; 1 Corinthians 8:6; 2 Corinthians 4:6;
Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 3:4; Hebrews 4:4; Hebrews 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” (Hebrews 11:3); “God commanded the
light to shine out of darkness” (2 Corinthians 4:6); and “by him were all things
created, visible and invisible” (Colossians 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,1[Note: 1. ὕλη] 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.
(See supplement 3.7.1.) In Scripture, the term creation is sometimes employed in
a secondary sense: “You send forth your spirit, they are created” (Psalms
104:30); “I create evil” (Isaiah 45:7); “the Lord has crated a new thing in the
earth” (Jeremiah 31:22); “create in me a clean heart” (Psalms 51:10); “I create
new heavens and a new earth” (Isaiah 65:17; Revelation 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˒.2[Note: 2. áÌÈøÈà =
to create] According to Gesenius (in voce) it signifies “(1) to cut, to carve;
(2) to form, create, produce; Genesis 2:3 reads bārā˒ la˒ăśôt:3[Note: 3. áÌÈøÈà
ìÇòÂùÒåÉú = to create by making] which he created in making, that is, which he
made in creating something new.” Says Delitzsch (in Lange’s Commentary on
Genesis 1:1), “Bārā˒4[Note: 4. áÌÈøÈà] in the Piel signifies to cut, hew, form;
but in the Qal,5[Note: 5. The Qal is the simplest pattern of the Hebrew verb. It
is used to express the basic meaning of the verb root. The Piel is a Hebrew verb
pattern that may also express the basic meaning for some verb roots, though it
more usually indicates some intensification of the action. For verbs whose Qal
pattern represents a state or condition rather than an action (e.g., “to be
heavy”), the Piel will refer to bringing about or making that condition (e.g.,
“to make heavy”).] it is employed to denote divine products, new and not
previously existing in the sphere of nature and history (Exodus 34:10; Numbers
16:30; and frequently in the prophets) or in the sphere of spirit (Psalms
51:10). In the Qal it never denotes human productions and is never used with the
accusative of the material.” In Exodus 5:16, ˓āśâ6[Note: 6. òÈùÒÈä = to make] is
used with the accusative of material: “Make brick.” Dillmann (on Genesis 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.”7[Note: 7. ex, non designat sed excludit materiam] Creation of entity from
nonentity is expressed in Romans 4:17 : “God calls those things which be not, as
though they were (ta mē onta hōs onta).”8[Note: 8. τὰ μὴ ὄντα ὡς ὄντα] The same
idea is suggested in 2 Corinthians 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 Colossians 1:16, which says that “all things visible and
invisible” were created (ektisthē)9[Note: 9. ἐκτίσθη] 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 2Ma 7:28 it is said that
“God made the heaven and earth of things that are not (ex ouk ontōn).”10[Note: 0
10. ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων = from nonexisting things] 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”11[Note: 1 11. ex nihilo nihil fit] 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[Note: 2 12. nullam rem e nihilo gigni divinitus unquam] 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).13[Note: 3 13.
De principiis philosophiae Renati Descartes.] 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,”14[Note: 4 14. substantia una et
unica] of which everything is a modification. By this begging the
question15[Note: 5 15. petitio principii] or postulate of one substance only, he
excludes created substance and lays the foundation of pantheism.16[Note: 6 16.
WS: A similar petitio principii is seen in von Baer’s definition of evolution,
adopted by Spencer, as the “transformation [transmutation] of the homogeneous
into the heterogeneous.” That a homogeneous substance (say, vegetable) can be
transmuted into a heterogeneous substance (say, animal or mineral) is the point
in dispute, but is quietly assumed in the definition. And, in order to give
plausibility to this petitio, a false definition of the “homogeneous” is
introduced. It is defined as “that which is without organs,” the heterogeneous
being “that which has organs” (Carpenter, Physiology, 888). But the presence or
absence of organs is not a mark of a difference in substance, which is what is
requisite in order to heterogeneity. Vegetable protoplasm before the
differentiation into organs begins is as really vegetable substance as
afterward. Animal protoplasm is as really animal matter before the organs appear
as after. There is nothing heterogeneous in either instance. Another petitio
principii of the same kind appears in the agnostic definition of knowledge as
“classification.” According to this definition, nothing can be known unless it
can be brought under a class; and a class implies several individuals of the
same species. “The first cause, the infinite, in order to be known must be
classed,” says Spencer (First Principles, 81). But as the infinite is the only
one of the species, he cannot be put into a class, and therefore he is utterly
unknowable. The point in dispute is whether all knowledge is classification and
is quietly assumed by the agnostic in his definition of knowledge. Even in
regard to those objects which can be classified, the whole of our knowledge does
not consist merely in knowing the class to which they belong. Classification is
only one of several elements in cognition.] 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 [trans. Abbott]). (See supplement
3.7.2.) The maxim “nothing comes from nothing”17[Note: 7 17. ex nihilo nihil
fit] is false in reference to the supernatural and omnipotent power of God. The
Supreme Being can originate entity from nonentity.18[Note: 8 18. WS: On this
dogma of creation ex nihilo, so vital to theism, ethics, and religion, see
Cudworth, Intellectual System, chap. 5; Pearson, On the Creed, art. 1; Clarke,
Demonstration, 76; Augustine, Confessions 11-12; Ambrose, Hexaemeron 2.1-2;
Shedd, History of Doctrine 1.7-15; Theological Essays, 133-35, 154-59.] 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 Genesis
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.19[Note: 919. οὐκ ἦ ν πότε ὅτε οὐκ ἦ ν = there was not when he was not]

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”
(Jeremiah 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,20[Note: 0 20. ὕλη =
matter] 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 Colossians 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 Genesis 1:26 that men were created on the sixth day. This is the
old patristic interpretation of Genesis 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.”21[Note: 1 21. WS: See also City of God 11.9; On the
Literal Meaning ofGenesis 1:9:15; Gangauf, Augustinus, 100. Howe (Oracles 2.9)
takes the same view, as does Pearson, On the Creed, art. 1. Delitzsch (Old
Testament History of Redemption, 12) says that “the account of the creation
begins with an all-comprehending statement (Genesis 1:1). The creation which is
here intended is the very first beginning, which was not preceded by any other
and hence embraces the heaven of heavens. That which follows in the second verse
is confined to the earth and its heavens.”] (See supplement 3.7.3.) The created
universe of mind and matter, denominated “heaven and earth” in Genesis 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 Genesis 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 Genesis 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 Genesis 1:1 and the series of divine acts in the six
days described in Genesis 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 Genesis 1:1.

Augustine’s exegesis of Genesis 1:1-31 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 Genesis 1:1-31 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
ofGenesis 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.”22[Note: 2 22. multum impares (i.e.,
to our days)] 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” (Genesis 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 (Genesis 1:5; Genesis 1:16; Genesis 1:18); (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
(Genesis 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.” (See 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 (Exodus 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.23[Note: 3 23. WS: For a lucid statement of the teachings of geology
concerning the order of creation, see Dana, Creation.]

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 Genesis 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 Genesis 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 Genesis 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 Genesis 1:6-8 : “And God said, Let there be a firmament
[expanse], 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
Genesis 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 Genesis 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 Peter 3:5 : “By the word of God, there were
heavens from of old and an earth compacted (synestōsa)24[Note: 4 24. συνεστῶσα]
out of water (ex hydatos)25[Note: 5 25. ἐξ ὕδατος] and amid (or through) water
(di’ hydatos)”26[Note: 6 26. δι᾽ ὕδατος] (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˒)27[Note: 7 27. ãÌÈùÑÈà]
grass” (Genesis 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”
(Genesis 2:5).28[Note: 8 28. WS: This is the rendering of the Septuagint,
Vulgate, and Authorized Version. But even if that of the Targums, Syriac,
Gesenius, and many modern Hebraists, whom the Revised Version follows, be
adopted, it still appears from the narrative that there was a time when “no
plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung
up.” In this state of things, it is plain that the earth could not “bring forth”
what was not “in the earth,” except by the intervention of a creative act.] 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.29[Note: 9 29. WS: Philo (Questions
on Genesis) so explains: “Moses here (Genesis 2:5) intimates, in enigmatic
expressions, the incorporeal species which were created first in accordance with
the intellectual nature which those things which are upon the earth perceptible
to the outward senses were to imitate.”] The creation of this is the creation of
the species vegetable. This interpretation is evidently the true one, not only
because it agrees with Genesis 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),30[Note: 0 30. αὐτομάτη] 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” (Genesis 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 Genesis 1:14-19.

Animal life in the waters and in the air is then created (Genesis 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
[ed. Bohn]).

Animal life on the land is then created: (a) irrational animals and (b) man
(Genesis 1:24-31). Geology shows that man is latest in the series. The six days
of Genesis 1:1-31 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 [an] evening, and there was [a] 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 Genesis 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 (Genesis 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 Corinthians
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 Genesis 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.” (See 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 Genesis 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. CreationEx 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.31[Note: 1 31. vis inertiae] It must be moved ab
extra;32[Note: 2 32. from the outside] and its motion diminishes if not
perpetuated ab extra.33[Note: 3 33. from the outside] 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.34[Note: 4 34. νοῦς ἔστι ἀρχή τῆς κίνησεως = mind is the beginning of
motion] 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.”35[Note: 5 35. Corpus omne perseverare in statu quo quiescendi vel
movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus illud, a viribus impressis,
cogitur statum suum mutare.] 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 inertia36[Note: 6 36.
vis inertiae] (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). (See 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.37[Note: 7
37. WS: Darwin’s theory of evolution requires a Creator to account for the
primitive protoplasm, though no Creator subsequently.] 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 [sensuous] 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.38[Note: 8 38. WS: “The progress of science is incalculably
promoted by the existence of a body of men, trained to the study of the higher
mathematics, who are prepared when an abstruse theory comes before the world to
appreciate its evidence, to take steady hold of its principles, to pursue its
calculations, and to convert it into a portion of the permanent science of the
world” (Whewell, Inductive Sciences 2.130). Pseudoevolution has had no
endorsement of this kind.] (See 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.39[Note: 9 39. WS: The theory that thought is nothing but cerebration and
that all mental phenomena result from the motion of the molecules of the brain
was taught in the University of Laputa, according to Swift. Among the various
methods of instruction employed in that wonderful institution, Lemuel Gulliver
mentions the following: “I was at the mathematical school, where the master
taught his pupils after a method scarce imaginable to us in Europe. The
proposition and demonstration were fairly written on a thin wafer, with ink
composed of a cephalic tincture. This, the student was to swallow upon a fasting
stomach, and for three days following eat nothing but bread and water. As the
wafer digested, the tincture mounted to his brain, bearing the proposition along
with it” (Gulliver’s Travels, 5).]

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). (See 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.40[Note: 0 40. from the outside] 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.41[Note: 1 41. WS:
The following facts go to prove the comparatively recent origin of the solar
system. (1) The earth is cooling slowly, yet at such a rate as to make it
impossible that it should have existed many millions of years. It would have
been stone cold clear through, in that case. (2) There is reason to believe that
the earth is not rotating on her axis with the same rapidity as in former ages,
and inasmuch as her shape would have been different if, at the same time she was
in a molten state, she had been rotating more rapidly than now, it follows that
she has not been rotating so long as has been supposed. (3) The sun is parting
with caloric at such a rate as to make it certain that it could not have
continued to radiate heat at the same rate for more than a few millions of
years. (4) The changes in the earth’s crust, stupendous and varied as they are,
could be and probably were accomplished in shorter periods than some geologists
consider possible (Quarterly Review 1876).]

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.42[Note: 2 42. WS: It is claimed that
the same amount of heat produced by the combustion of the carbon in a man’s
dinner would be produced by the same amount of carbon if burnt out of the body.
But no experiment has proved that the vital heat in this instance is equivalent
mathematically to the chemical heat or that the two are identical in kind. Cf.
Cooke, Credentials of Science, 172-73.] 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,43[Note: 3
43. from the outside] 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. CreationEx 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 [transmutation] 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). (See
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.”44[Note: 4 44. omne
animal ex ovo est] 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.” (See 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). (See
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.45[Note: 5
45. WS: The hopefulness of the evolutionist is expressed in the words of Wagner
in the second part of Goethe’s Faust,Acts 2:1-47:

Look yonder! see the flashes from the hearth!

Hope for the world dawns there, that, having laid The stuff together of which
man is made, The hundredfold ingredients mixing, blending, (For upon mixture is
the whole depending), If then in a retort we slowly mull it, Next to a
philosophic temper dull it, Distil and redistil, at leisure thin it, All will
come right, in silence, to a minute.

Turning again to the hearth.

’Tis forming-every second brings it nearer- And my conviction becomes stronger,
clearer.

What nature veils in mystery, I expect Through the plain understanding to
effect;

What was organization will at last Be with the art of making crystals classed.]

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.46[Note: 6 46. WS: The loose use of the term species
covers up much sophistical reasoning of the evolutionists. Quatrefages (Human
Species, 96) says: “Darwin has formed no clear conception of the sense which he
gave to the word species; I have been unable to find in any of his works a
single precise statement on this point.” Darwin remarks that “it seems probable
that allied species are descended from a common ancestor.” The connection in
which this is said shows that by “allied species” he means only varieties of
pigeons, dogs, etc.] 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
laws47[Note: 7 47. lex legum] -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.’ ”48[Note: 8 48. Non ad translationem
generis, sed ad aegritudinem quandam seminis, videtur esse referendum.]

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 index 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.49[Note: 9 49. WS: This supposes that in nature an eye can be found
in isolation, by itself, separate from the body of which it is the eye. But
nature never forms organs in this way. They are found only in connection with
the organization and growth of the entire body.] 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. (See 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. (See 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 pinus50[Note: 0 50. pine] in the
vegetable kingdom. But according to Linnaeus, felis could not develop from
equus;51[Note: 1 51. horse] nor pinus from pirus.52[Note: 2 52. pear tree]

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.53[Note: 3 53. WS: Lewis, “On the Early Populations of the Globe” in
“Genesis” in Lange’s Commentary, 314-15; Southall, Recent Origin of Man;
Pouchet, Universe, 609; Fraser, Blinding Lights; Lyell, Antiquity of Man;
Quatrefages, Human Species 3.12-13; British Quarterly Review 1863 (review of
Lyell); Cabell, Unity of Mankind.] 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. (See 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. (See 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
(Genesis 12:1-20). 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 (Genesis 12:1-20). 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.”54[Note: 4 54. Les textes de Manéthou sont profondément altérés, et
la série des dates monumentales est très incomplète.] 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. (See 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.55[Note: 5 55. WS: Hume, Populousness of
Ancient Nations; “Population” in Penny Cyclopaedia; Wallace, Dissertation on the
Numbers of Mankind; Petavius, Computation in Thomas Brown’s Pseudodoxia 6.6.]
“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 (Genesis 10:1-32 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). (See 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). (See 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. (See 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 index 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.

S U P P L E M E N T S

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’ [chaotic], 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 (Hebrews 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 [sensuously] and hence
denies all immediate [or intuitive] 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 Genesis 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
Colossians 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. [Howe refers here to the invisible material forces-gravitation,
electricity, attraction, etc.-and the invisible physical principles, namely,
vegetable and animal life; see p.157 n.16.] 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’ (Genesis 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 [namely, earth, water, and air] 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
[universe] 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 patrum56[Note: 6 56. Gleaning of
the fathers] (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 [the origination of vegetables and animals] 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,57[Note: 7 57. let it bring forth] which is the word of animation; for
the other words [of the inorganic days] are but words of essence [inorganic
substance].” 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 ofMan 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
[inorganic] nature, without which there could be no science of [inorganic]
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)58[Note: 8 58. final causes. In the Aristotelian scheme of causality, a
final cause refers to the goal or end toward which an entity or activity tends.]
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 ofMan 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
[sound and light]. 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,59[Note: 9 59. in through a leap, suddenly. The meaning here is that
species arise suddenly rather than gradually.] 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 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 [namely, the prognathous,
pyramidal, and elliptical skulls], 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 Chronicles 39:30), it seems more
probable that the date should be earlier than 703 b.c.” (Conder, Syrian Stone
Lore, 116-17).


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  CHAPTER 21: 3.08.     PROVIDENCE
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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 Hebrews 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).
(See 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.”1[Note: 1. Deus concurrit cum causis secundis juxta ipsarum naturam;
cum liberis libere, cum necessariis necessario, cum debilibus debiliter, cum
fortibus fortitur, pro sua suavissima dispositione universali operando.] 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).”2[Note: 2. καὶ ἔσμεν = and we
are/exist] 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” (Psalms 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 (Psalms 104:21-29; Psalms 147:9): “Not a sparrow falls to
the ground without your father” (Matthew 6:26; Matthew 10:29); (c) to the events
of human history (1 Chronicles 16:31; Psalms 47:7; Proverbs 21:1; Job 12:23;
Isaiah 10:12-15; Daniel 2:21); (d) to individual life (1 Samuel 2:6; Psalms
18:30; Proverbs 16:9; Isaiah 45:5; James 4:13-14); (e) to so-called fortuitous
events (Exodus 21:13; Psalms 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” (Proverbs 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” (Matthew 10:29; Matthew 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”3[Note: 3. magna dii curant, parva negligunt] (Cicero,
Concerning the Nature of the Gods 2.66); (g) to the free actions of men (Exodus
12:36; 1 Samuel 24:9-15; Proverbs 16:1; Proverbs 19:21; Proverbs 20:24; Jeremiah
10:23; Php 2:13); and (h) to the sinful actions of men (2 Samuel 16:10; 2 Samuel
24:1; Psalms 76:10; Romans 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” (Psalms 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 hylē4[Note:
4. ὕλη = matter] has no such option and freedom as this. He must take the
properties of the hylē5[Note: 5. ὕλη = matter] 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.

S U P P L E M E N T

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.”


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  CHAPTER 22: 3.09.     MIRACLES
========================================================================

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.”1[Note: 1. Nec deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice
nodus inciderit.]

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
Corinthians 15:24; Matthew 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. (See 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 [favoring circumstances]
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. (See 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 index 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 (Exodus
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. (See 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.’ ” (See
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 [invariable] 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.

S U P P L E M E N T S

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 Ecclesiastes 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 [from
nothing, which is likewise an effect of pure will without means or instruments].
For the giving a new determination to the motion of the animal spirits, which
some make use of to explain voluntary motion [as the present materialism, for
the same purpose, makes use of the motion of molecules], clears not the
difficulty one jot; for to alter the determination of [material or physical]
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 [will], or by some other body put in their way by thought [will] which
was not in their way before, and so must owe its motion to thought [will];
either of which suppositions leaves voluntary motion an unintelligible
[inexplicable] 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
[by explaining the movement by a purely physical or material cause]. 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.2[Note: 2. praeter omnem priorem experientiam] A
miracle might be defined, likewise, as an effect not having its cause in
anything congenerous [homogeneous]. 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 [by the agency of the ball],
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 [recognition] 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.


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  CHAPTER 23: 4.00. PART 4: ANTHROPOLOGY
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PART 4

Anthropology


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  CHAPTER 24: 4.01.     MAN'S CREATION
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Man’s Creation Preliminary Considerations

Anthropology (anthrōpou logos)1[Note: 1. ἀνθρώπου λόγος = a word or discourse
about man (kind)] 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 Genesis 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 Ecclesiastes 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
Matthew 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” (Matthew 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),2[Note: 2. ðÆôÆùÑ çÇéÌÈä] a
breath or soul of life (Genesis 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 Ecclesiastes 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” (Genesis 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” (Jeremiah 15:9). In Genesis 1:20
God says, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has
life [lit., let the waters swarm a swarm of the soul of life (nepeš
ḥayyâ)].”3[Note: 3. ðÆôÆùÑ çÇéÌÈä] And in 1:21 it is said that “God created
every living creature that moves [lit., God created every living soul of life
that creeps]” (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 Ecclesiastes 3:21 that “the spirit (rûaḥ)4[Note: 4. øåÌçÇ]
of man goes upward,” and “the spirit (rûaḥ)5[Note: 5. øåÌçÇ] 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. (See 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.” (See 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.” (See 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?6[Note: 6. WS: Augustine describes man as the union of spiritual and
corporeal substance (Letter 137 to Volusianus): “Persona hominis mixtura est
animae et corporis, duarum rerum commixtio: unius incorporeae, et alterius
corporeae; nam si anima in sua natura non fallatur, incorpoream se esse
comprehendit” [AG: In the person of man is a mixture of soul and body, a
commixture of two things: the one incorporeal and the other corporeal. For if
the soul is not mistaken regarding its own nature, it comprehends itself to be
incorporeal]; “Quicquid enim corpus non est, et tamen aliquid est, jam recte
spiritus dicitur” [AG: For whatever is not body, but nevertheless is something,
indeed is rightly called “spirit”]; On the Literal Meaning ofGenesis 12:7:16;
cf. Gangauf, Psychology of Augustine, 101.]

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
Genesis 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. (See 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” (Hebrews 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” (Hebrews 11:3). Similarly, through faith he understands that “death
passed upon all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12); that “by one offense,
judgment came upon all men to condemnation” (Romans 5:18); and that “in Adam all
die” (1 Corinthians 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.7[Note: 7. WS: Hodge notices the contrariety of the two views: “If
we reconcile the condemnation of men on account of the sin of Adam, on the
ground that he was our representative or that he sustained the relation which
all parents bear to their children, we renounce the ground of a realistic union.
If the latter theory be true, then Adam’s sin was our act as truly as it was
his. If we adopt the representative theory, his act was not our act in any other
sense than that in which a representative acts for his constituents” (Theology
2.164). “A union of representation is not a union of identity. If Adam and his
race were one and the same, he was not their representative, for a thing cannot
represent itself. The two ideas are inconsistent. Where the one is asserted, the
other is denied” (Princeton Essays 1.138).] 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[Note:
8. guilt, culpability] and reatus poenae.9[Note: 9. obligation/liability to
punishment] 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;10[Note: 0 10. middle
knowledge] 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. (See 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 Genesis
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 ˒ādām11[Note: 1 11.
àÈãÈí = man, mankind] 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)12[Note: 2 12. àÈãÈí] in our image, and let them have dominion. So God
created man (˒et-hā˒ādām)13[Note: 3 13. àÆúÎçÈàÈãÈí] 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:

˒ĕnôš14[Note: 4 14. àÁðÀåÉùÑ] 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” (Genesis 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.15[Note: 5 15. WS: Gesenius does not agree with this
statement: “˒ĕnôš (àÁðÀåÉùÑ = man, mankind) is rarely put for the singular, is
more commonly collective for the whole race (Job 7:17; Job 15:14;Psalms 8:5). It
is the same as ˒ādām (àÈãÈí = man, mankind), but only in poetic style.”] (See
supplement 4.1.6.) The same usage is found in the New Testament. In Romans 7:1
St. Paul asks, “Know not, brethren, how that the law has dominion over the man
(tou anthrōpou)16[Note: 6 16. τοῦ ἀνθρώπου] 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 anthrōpos17[Note: 7 17. ἄνθρωπος = man] but by anēr.18[Note: 8 18. ἀνήρ =
man (i.e., male)] When St. Paul asserts (1 Corinthians 15:21) that “by man came
death,” he means both Adam and Eve, whom in the next clause he denominates to
adam.19[Note: 9 19. τὸ ἀδάμ = man (or Adam)] Again, our Lord is denominated the
Son of Man (anthrōpou),20[Note: 0 20. ἀνθρώπου = man] although only the woman
was concerned in his human origin, showing that woman is “man.” When Christ
(Matthew 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” (Colossians 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” (Ephesians 5:31). In accordance with this, Augustine denominates Adam and
Eve “the first men in paradise”21[Note: 1 21. primos illos homines in paradiso]
(City of God 11.12). The elder Protestant divines call them protoplasti.22[Note:
2 22. the first ones formed, the first men]

That man was created a species in two individuals appears also from the account
of the creation of Eve. According to Genesis 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 Corinthians
11:8), “is not made out of (ek)23[Note: 3 23. ἐκ] the woman, but the woman out
of (ex)24[Note: 4 24. ἐξ] 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” (Genesis
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 physically. 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)25[Note: 5 25. àÄéùÑ] and “female-man” (˒iššâ),26[Note: 6
26. àÄùÑÌÈä] man and woman (Genesis 1:27; Genesis 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” (Genesis 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.27[Note: 7 27. γεγεννημένον =
begotten] The flesh or man, consisting of soul and body together, is begotten
and born. That sarx28[Note: 8 28. σάρξ = flesh] often comprehends the soul as
well as the body is clear from many passages (Matthew 24:22; Luke 3:6; John
1:14; John 17:2; Acts 2:17; Romans 3:20; Romans 8:4-5; Romans 8:8; Galatians
5:16; Galatians 5:19). 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)29[Note: 9 29. ἐγεννηθήσαν] 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 Romans 1:3 it is said
that Christ “according to the flesh (kata sarka)30[Note: 0 30. κατὰ σάρκα] 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.31[Note: 1
31. πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης = spirit of holiness] Christ’s soul and body together
constituted his sarx;32[Note: 2 32. σάρξ = flesh] and this is represented as
being “made of the seed of David.” St. Paul employs the verb ginōai33[Note: 3
33. γίνομαι = to become] 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 Romans 1:3). In Hebrews
12:9 it is said that “we have had fathers of our flesh (tēs sarkos
hēmōn),34[Note: 4 34. τῆς σαρκὸς ἡμῶν] and we gave them reverence: shall we not
much rather be in subjection to the Father of Spirits (tōn pneumatōn)35[Note: 5
35. τῶν πνευμάτων] 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[Note: 6 36. ἡμῶν = of our] with
pneumatōn37[Note: 7 37. πνευμάτων = of spirits] 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)38[Note: 8 38.
τοῦ πνεύματος ἡμῶν] instead of “the Father of spirits” (tōn pneumatōn).39[Note:
9 39. τῶν πνευμάτων] In this text, therefore, as in John 3:6, sarx40[Note: 0 40.
σάρξ = flesh] 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”41[Note: 1 41. Σάρξ (sarx) bezeichnet hier so
wenig als irgendwo, den Leib (daher der Creationismus sich für die Lehre, dasz
der Leib allein von den Ältern gezeugt werde, die Seele aber von Gott geschaffen
werde, mit Unrecht auf diese Stelle beruft); sondern σάρξ (sarx) bezeichnet
hier, wie immer, das natürliche durch creaturliche Krafte zu Stande kommende
Leben.] (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 Hebrews 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 Psalms 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 Jeremiah 1:5 : “Before I formed you in the belly, I knew you.” In Psalms
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 Exodus 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
Hebrews 4:4 : God “rested from all his works.”

1 Corinthians 15:22 supports traducianism: “In Adam (tō adam)42[Note: 2 42. τῷ
ἀδάμ] all die.” The article shows that Adam here, as in Genesis 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 Ephesians 2:3 : “We were by nature
(physei)43[Note: 3 43. φύσει] children of wrath.” Here the term physis44[Note: 4
44. φύσις] denotes a real nature derived from foregoing ancestors, as in
Galatians 2:15 : hēmeis physei ioudaioi.45[Note: 5 45. ἡμεῖς φύσει ἰουδαῖοι = we
are Jews by nature] 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 hēmarton46[Note: 6 46. ἥμαρτον = sinned] in Romans
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,47[Note: 7 47. πάντες ἥμαρτον = all sinned] but pantes hēmartēkotes
ēsan48[Note: 8 48. πάντες ἡμαρτηκότες ἦ σαν = all were regarded as sinners] as
in Genesis 44:32; Genesis 43:9. But if all “sinned” in Adam in the active sense
of hēmarton,49[Note: 9 49. ἥμαρτον = sinned] all must have existed in him.
Nonentity cannot sin; and merely physical substance cannot sin (Shedd on Romans
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 [material] part of the mother as the body is.
Though the soul is no [material] 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.50[Note: 0 50. WS: Cf. As You
Like It 1.1: “I know you are my elder brother: the courtesy of nations allows
you my better, in that you are the firstborn: but the same tradition takes not
away my blood, were there twenty brothers between us: I have as much of my
father in me as you.”] 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” (Isaiah 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” (Zechariah 12:1). The verb yāṣar51[Note: 1
51. éÈöÇø = to fashion or form] 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”
(Numbers 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” (Hebrews 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 Romans 4:3; Romans 4:8). 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 Romans 5:15, where the first sin of Adam is
denominated paraptōma.52[Note: 2 52. παράπτωμα = transgression] 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.
(See 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 [ed. Harper]) 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; Psalms
51:5; Psalms 58:3; John 3:6; Ephesians 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.”53[Note: 3 53.
tradux peccati, tradux animae] 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” (Romans 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”;54[Note: 4 54. sensu physico et ratione seminali] 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”55[Note: 5 55. nondum erant in rerum natura] 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[Note: 6 56.
Eadem ratione constituimur peccatores in Adamo, qua justi constituimur in
Christo. At in Christo justi constituimur per justitiae imputationem; ergo et
peccatores in Adamo per peccati ipsius imputationem.] (9.9.16). Sometimes, on
the other hand, he teaches that Adam’s posterity were “in the nature of
things,”57[Note: 7 57. in rerum natura] 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,58[Note: 8 58. qui totius prosapiae suae personam tunc gerebat] 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[Note: 9 59. ut rami in radice, massa in
primitiis, et membra in capite] (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.”60[Note: 0 60. Representare est vi quadam juris exhibere praesentiam
ejus, quod praesens non est.] 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. (See 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.61[Note: 1 61. WS: A similar incongruity is found in the combination
of creationism with traducianism, attempted by Martensen (Dogmatics §74) and
Dorner (Christian Doctrine 2.353).] 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”62[Note: 2 62. Est unitas naturae, cui unitas foederalis erat innixa.]
(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.63[Note: 3 63. WS: Turretin
denominates the federal union the principal union (praecipue). But if it be true
that Adam and his posterity were not constituted a unity by the covenant
(foedus) of works, it cannot be the primary and principal one.]

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,64[Note: 4 64.
massa = mass]natura,65[Note: 5 65. natura = nature]essentia.66[Note: 6 66.
essentia = essence] 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[Note: 7 67. Etsi enim in Adamo et Heva,
natura initio pura, bona, et sancta creata est; tamen per lapsum, peccatum
ipsorum naturam invasit.] (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”68[Note: 8 68. Lapsus Adae vi pessima, humana tota
massa, natura, et ipsa essentia corrupta est.] (Formula of Concord, epitome;
Hase, 574). Witsius (Covenants 2.4.11) quotes Cloppenburg as saying that “the
apostle in Romans 5:1-21 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 Timothy 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. Romans 5:12-19 with 1 Corinthians 15:21-22).”69[Note: 9 69. Nec
negat ab altera parte apostolus mulieris peccatum, cum unum hominem, quem ceu
τύπον τοῦ μέλλοντος Christo opponit, peccati propagati auctorem, in quo
peccavimus et morimur omnes, esse docet, quem expresse quoque Adamum vocat.
Coll.Romans 5:12-19cum1 Corinthians 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 (Genesis 2:24). Augustine (City of God 11.12) denominates Adam
and Eve “the first men in paradise.”70[Note: 0 70. primos illos homines in
paradiso] Odo (Bibliotheca maxima patrum71[Note: 1 71. The most extensive
library of the fathers] 21.230) remarks: “It is asked how we have sin from our
origin, which is Adam and Eve.”72[Note: 2 72. Quaeritur quomodo peccatum
habeamus ab origine nostra quae est Adam et Eva.] All this agrees with St. Paul,
who asserts that “the woman being deceived was in the [first] transgression” (1
Timothy 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 Romans 5:12) explains
pantes hēmarton73[Note: 3 73. πάντες ἥμαρτον] by “all sinned, that is, are held
fast in guilt and in obligation to punishment.”74[Note: 4 74. Omnes peccaverunt,
hoc est, culpa et reatu tenentur.] 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)75[Note: 5 75. by participation of guilt]
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)76[Note: 6 76.
by the imputation of the obligation to punishment] 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. (See 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” (Romans 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).77[Note: 7 77. WS: The proof that participation in the first sin
is an essential point in early Calvinism has been carefully collected by Landis
in a volume entitled Original Sin and Gratuitous Imputation. The author,
however, while asserting participation and combating the later doctrine of mere
representation by Adam, with particular reference to the views of Hodge, yet
rejects the realistic doctrine of race-existence as the true explanation (13,
20, 31). In so doing, he departs from both Augustine and the elder Calvinists,
as much as do the advocates of the representative theory. For it is clear that
there can be no participation in the first sin unless the posterity are in
existence to participate in it. And the only way in which they could exist and
act in Adam is as a single specific nature. They could not exist in Adam as an
aggregate of millions of individuals.]

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.78[Note: 8 78. WS: Breckenridge (Theology,
499), on the contrary, contends that “we must not attempt to separate Adam’s
federal from his natural headship, by which he is the root of the human race;
since we have not a particle of reason to believe that the former would ever
have existed without the latter.”] “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 [Westminster Larger Catechism 22] 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. (See 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 anothersin. 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
hēmarton79[Note: 9 79. ἥμαρτον = sinned] in Romans 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 hēmarton80[Note: 0 80. ἥμαρτον = sinned] in Romans 5:12 to
mean “to be exposed to suffering and death,” “to be regarded as sinners,” “to
endure the punishment of sin”81[Note: 1 81. peccati poenam subire] (Grotius),
“to bear the culpability for sin”82[Note: 2 82. pro peccati [sic] culpam
sustines] (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. (See
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 hēmarton83[Note: 3 83. ἥμαρτον =
sinned] in Romans 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”84[Note: 4 84. Per unius illius voluntatem malam omnes in
eo peccaverunt, quando omnes ille unus fuerunt.] (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). (See
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 poenae85[Note: 5 85. obligation to punishment] 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.”86[Note: 6 86. Repudianda
prorsus est papistica distinctio inter reatum culpae et poenae.] 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.”87[Note: 7 87. Reatus
est obligatio peccatoris ad poenam justam sustinendam propter culpam.] Riissen
(9.57) distinguishes between reatus potentialis88[Note: 8 88. potential
obligation (to punishment)] and actualis,89[Note: 9 89. actual obligation (to
punishment)] but rejects the distinction between reatus culpae90[Note: 0 90. the
obligation to guilt] and reatus poenae:91[Note: 1 91. the obligation to
punishment]

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.92[Note: 2 92. Reatus est potentialis, qui notat meritum
intrinsicum poenae, quod a peccato inseparabile est; vel actualis, qui per dei
misericordiam ab eo separari potest, per remissionem scilicet, quae proprie est
reatus actualis ablatio. Ille pertinet ad peccati demeritum, et τὸ κατακριτικόν
seu condemnabilitatem, quae semper, peccato adhaeret. Iste vero ad demeriti
judicium, seu κατάκριμα, condemnationem, quae tollitur in iis quibus venia
peccati facta est.] (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.93[Note: 3 93.
Perperam vero a Pontificiis distinguitur reatus in lapsum culpae et poenae:
reatus culpae illis dicitur, quo peccator ex se indignus est dei gratia, dignus
autem est ipsius ira et damnatione; poenae vero, quo obnoxius est damnationi, et
ad eam obligatur.]

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.94[Note: 4 94. Inepte distinguunt Pontificii inter reatum poenae et
reatum culpae, quasi a nobis possit tolli reatus culpae manente tamen reatu
poenae: quasi Christus nos liberasset a culpa, sed ita ut nos ipsi luamus
poenam, vel in purgatorio, vel alibi: quod est falsissimum. Ubi enim nulla est
culpa, ibi nullus prorsus reatus, nullaque poena concipi potest.]

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 hēmarton95[Note: 5 95. ἥμαρτον = sinned] 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 (Romans 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; Php
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 culpa96[Note: 6 96. culpability] and
poena.97[Note: 7 97. punishment] 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[Note: 8 98. WS: It may be objected
that on the traducian theory the human nature of Christ did participate in
Adam’s sin because it was a fractional part of the original human nature which
committed this sin. This is true; and if Christ had been born by ordinary
generation and his human nature had not been supernaturally prepared for a union
with the divine, he would have shared the common guilt of Adam’s sin. But the
effect of the miraculous conception and incarnation upon Christ’s humanity was
to abolish both the guilt and the pollution derived through the virgin mother
from Adam. Christ’s human nature was both justified and sanctified before it was
assumed into union with the Logos-justified proleptically, as were the Old
Testament saints, on the ground of an atonement yet to be made and sanctified
completely by the power of the Holy Spirit. This justification and
sanctification of Christ’s human nature was tantamount to nonparticipation in
Adam’s sin. For it placed Christ’s human nature in the same innocent and perfect
state that the common human nature was in by creation and before apostasy. See
pp. 475-76. For Owen’s statement on this point, see Communion with the Trinity,
1.] (See 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.99[Note: 9 99. WS: While dissenting from the views of Hodge on
the nature of the union between Adam and his posterity and of the imputation of
the first sin, the writer has the most profound respect for the opinions of this
learned and logical theologian. With the exception of the elder Edwards, to no
divine is American theology more indebted.]

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 opheilēma100[Note: 00 100. κατὰ ὀφείλημα = according to debt/what is
owed] or kata charin101[Note: 01 101. κατὰ χάριν = according to grace] =
dōrean102[Note: 02 102. δωρεάν = freely] = chōris ergōn103[Note: 03 103. χωρὶς
ἔργων = without works] (Romans 3:21; Romans 3:24; Romans 3:28; Romans 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,104[Note: 04 104. κατὰ ὀφείλημα = according to debt/what is owed]
never dōrean,105[Note: 05 105. δωρεάν = freely] never chōris ergōn,106[Note: 06
106. χωρὶς ἔργων = without works] 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 Romans 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 Romans 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.107[Note:
07 107. WS: “Nec si Adamus nos injustos constituit effective per propagationem
vitiositatis inhaerentis, propter quam etiam rei sumus mortis coram deo;
sequitur pariter Christum nos justos constituere per justificationem forensem
judicii dei per justitiam inhaerentem nobis ab ipso datam. Quia scopus Apostoli,
qui unice respiciendus, non eo tendet, sed tantum vult aperire fundamentum
communionis reatus ad mortem, et juris ad vitam, ex unione nostra cum Adamo
primo et secundo, quoad rem, licet modus sit diversus propter diversitatem
subjecti.” [AG: Nor if Adam constituted us unrighteous efficiently through the
propagation of an inhering corruption, on account of which even we are obligated
to death before God, does it follow equally that Christ constituted us righteous
through the forensic justification of God’s judgment through an inhering
righteousness granted to us by him. The scope of the apostle’s argument, which
alone is to be considered, does not extend to this. He only wishes to show the
ground of the common obligation to death and of the right to life from our union
with the first and second Adam, as to the fact of it, even though the mode is
diverse on account of the diversity of the subject.] This phraseology of
Turretin, taken by itself, would teach the mediate imputation of Adam’s sin,
which Turretin combated. If Adam’s posterity are constituted unrighteous merely
and only “by the propagation of inherent depravity” (and this is all he says
here), this was the view of Placaeus. But in other places, Turretin abundantly
teaches that there is a reason for this propagation of depravity-namely, the
immediate imputation of the first sin. The propagation of inherent depravity
requires an explanatory and justifying reason; but the advocate of mediate
imputation in denying the imputation of the first sin itself gives none. So far
as Turretin held to natural union, the logical reason for the propagation of
depravity would be the imputation of the first sin to the posterity because of
their participation in it; so far as he held to representative union, the
logical reason would be the imputation of the first sin to the posterity
constructively and without participation.] (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.”108[Note: 08 108. Effectivé, per propagationem vitiositatis
inhaerentis.] 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. (See 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 Genesis 2:5 : God “made every
plant of the field before it was in the earth and every herb of the field before
it grew.”109[Note: 09 109. WS: This is the rendering of the Septuagint and
Vulgate. The Targums and Syriac render: “Now no plant of the field was yet in
the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprouted forth” (Speaker’s
Commentary in loco).] 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
Colossians 1:16. It is one of those “things not seen” (mē phainomena)110[Note:
10 110. μὴ φαινομένα] of which the “things seen” (ta blepomena)111[Note: 11 111.
τὰ βλεπόμενα] are made (Hebrews 11:1; Hebrews 11:3). Hodge (Theology 2.80-82)
explains the original invisibility of a species by the following quotations.
Says Agassiz: The immaterial [invisible]112[Note: 12 112. WS: “Invisible” is
preferable to “immaterial” in this connection because the immaterial strictly
speaking is the mental and spiritual. Physical life is neither. It belongs to
the material world. It is matter, not mind, but in an invisible state or mode.]
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 [invisible] 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 [invisible] 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 [invisible] 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 vitae113[Note: 13 113. power of life] of
Haller, the nisus formativus114[Note: 14 114. organizing force] of Blumenbach,
the vis medicatrix naturae115[Note: 15 115. the healing power of nature] 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 Genesis 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”
(Genesis 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). (See 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.116[Note: 16 116. WS:
Anselm complained of this same misapprehension of the notion of a species on the
part of Roscellin and the Nominalists. He contended that general conceptions
were not mere flatus vocis [AG: breath of the voice; i.e., mere words or
labels], but denoted substances. “Nondum intellegit,” he says of Roscellin;
“quomodo plures hommes [sic] in specie sint unus homo; non potest intelligere
aliquid esse hominem, nisi individuum” [AG: he does not yet understand in what
way many men are one man in species; he cannot understand anything to be man
except the individual]; Baur, Doctrine of the Trinity 2.411-12.] 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.117[Note: 17 117. WS: The inquiry may arise whether carbon, here, is
not a species and the crystal an individual under it-contrary to what was said
on p. 468 respecting the inorganic sphere. The reply is that the crystal though
having an individuality has not a specific individuality. This requires that the
individual be produced by propagation and have no other properties than those
which are in the specific substance. But a crystal is not produced by
propagation, and even in the instance of the diamond, which is the purest form
of carbon, it is not absolutely free from other properties than those of carbon;
while anthracite, charcoal, and graphite, and other individual forms of carbon
are highly impure. Carbon, however, is one of those general terms which denote
an objective reality within the sphere of inorganic being and so far goes to
prove the truth of realism. The original sum total of carbon is as objectively
real as any one of its individualized parts.] (See 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).118[Note: 18 118. universal in
the thing (i.e., the universal exists in the thing) (see universals in glossary
1)] 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).119[Note: 19 119. universal before the
thing (i.e., the universal exists prior to the particular object) (see
universals in glossary 1)] 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.120[Note: 20 120. WS: On realism and nominalism, see Hase, Anselm 2.77;
Neander, History 4.356; Dorner, Person of Christ 2.377; Überweg, History of
Philosophy 1.365-66; Baur, Doctrine of the Trinity 2.406-7; Baumgarten-Crusius,
Concerning the True Difference between the Realist and Nominalist Scholastics.]

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”:121[Note: 21 121. Rudimenta partium omnium simul parit et producit.] 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)122[Note: 22 122. νοοῦμεν] that the worlds were
framed by the word of God” (Hebrews 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” (Php 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 ek123[Note: 23 123. ἐκ = out of]
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. (See 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.124[Note: 24 124. WS:
Creationism asserts that it was incomplex and simple. It was only physical and
material.] Adam and Eve procreated Cain “in their own image and likeness”
(Genesis 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 Hebrews 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 Romans 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 Romans 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 Corinthians 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)125[Note: 25 125. ἐδικαιώθη] by (en)126[Note: 26 126. ἐν] the
Spirit” (1 Timothy 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.127[Note: 27 127. WS: That the antithesis, here, between
sarx (σάρξ = flesh) and pneuma (πνεῦμα = spirit) is the same as in1 Peter
3:18andRomans 1:3-4-namely, between the humanity and the divinity in Christ’s
person-is plain from the context. If this be so, the dative is instrumental in
both instances, denoting the agency by which the action of the verb is brought
about: “God was manifested by the humanity and justified by the divinity.” The
“justification” of the human nature was through the atonement made by the divine
nature incarnate. This view of the antithesis between sarx (σάρξ) and pneuma
(πνεῦμα = spirit) was taken generally by the older commentators. Of modern
exegetes, it is adopted by Wiesinger.] (See 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)128[Note: 28 128. ἐσώθη καὶ
ἠλευθερώθη] 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 1:129[Note: 29 129. WS: A species or
specific nature is divisible, but an individual is not-as the etymology
(individuus) implies.] 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. (See 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.130[Note:
30 130. Communior est sententia eorum, qui volunt animam esse ex traduce; i.e.,
animam traduci ex anima, non per decisionem aut partitionem animae paternae, sed
modo quodem spirituali, ut lumen accenditur de lumine. Nos autem statuimus,
animas omnes immediate a deo creari, et creando infundi.]

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,”131[Note: 31 131. deus est qui nos personat] 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.132[Note: 32 132. WS: Shedd, Theological Essays, 252; Delitzsch,
Biblical Psychology 7.137.]

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 Romans 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 (Romans 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, Ezekiel 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 Romans 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 (Genesis
1:28).133[Note: 33 133. WS: It is certainly an error when Baird (Elohim, 356)
asserts that “the blood of Cain and Abel does not now flow in any human veins;
that human nature is not any longer transmitted from them; but that Seth is the
father of the present population of the earth.” The line of Seth was that of the
church, and that of Cain of the world as the opposite of the church. Both
individuals were concerned in the propagation of the species.] 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” (Matthew 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. (See 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
Seyn134[Note: 34 134. being] of all was then, though the Daseyn135[Note: 35 135.
existence] 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 Psalms 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.

S U P P L E M E N T S

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 [individual] 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. [“Create,” consequently, is used here in a
secondary sense.] Nor is your [Jerome’s] opinion, which [if proved from
Scripture] 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 [soul], 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 [Jerome] 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
[namely, how the dying infant can have contracted guilt requiring the sacrament
of baptism] 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 [derived from Adam]? 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 [sin] 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 [what I am] sinned,
but Odo [who I am] 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).136[Note: 36 136. Dicitur duobus modis
peccatum, personale et naturale. Et naturale est cum quo nascimur, et quod ab
Adam trahimus in quo omnes peccavimus. In ipso enim erat anima mea, specie non
persona, non individua sed communi natura. Nam omnis humanae animae natura erat
in Adam obnoxia peccato. Et ideo omnis humana anima culpabilis est secundum suam
naturam, etsi non secundum suam personam. Ita peccatum quo peccavimus in Adam,
mihi quidem naturale est, in Adam vero personale. In Adam gravius, levius in me;
nam peccavi in eo non qui sum, sed quod sum. Peccavi homo (quod sum), sed non
Odo (qui sum). Peccavi substantia, non persona; et quia substantia non est nisi
in persona, peccatum substantiae est etiam personae, sed non personale. Peccatum
vero personale est quod facio ego qui sum, non hoc quod sum; quo pecco Odo, non
homo; quo pecco persona, non natura; sed quia persona non est sine natura,
peccatum personae est etiam naturae, sed non naturale.] “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).137[Note: 37 137. Sicut aliquid de universali dicitur pro
individuo, sic aliquid dicitur pro parte de toto; ut propter animam solam
dicatur peccator homo individuus, qui animam simul habet et corpus. Ad corpus
peccatum non pertinet, et tamen peccator est qui corpus habet; non igitur anima
sola peccase dicitur in Adam, sed et ipse per animam, scilicet totus ex pluribus
partibus per unam. Dicitur ergo et Adam pecasse, quia peccavit anima quam habuit
ipse. Et si peccavit Adam, peccavit homo; quia si peccavit ipse homo, peccavit
humana natura quae est homo. Sed humana natura tota tunc erat in ipso, nec
usquam erat alibi specialis homo. Cum ergo peccavit persona, scilicet ipse homo,
peccavit tota natura, scilicet communis homo. Et in peccato personae, culpabilis
factus est homo communis naturae. Et qualem Adam fecit humanam naturam in se,
talem posteris etiam post se. Et qualis facta est humana natura per insipientiam
peccatoris, talis necesse est transfundatur in posteros per justitiam.]

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),138[Note: 38 138. rootstock (according to Irven Resnick in Odo of
Tournai’s On Original Sin and a Disputation with the Jew, Leo, concerning the
Advent of Christ, the Son of God [trans. I. M. Resnick; Philadelphia: University
of Philadelphia Press, 1994], 70)] 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),139[Note: 39 139. nutritive power
(according to Resnick in Odo of Tournai’s On Original Sin, 70)] 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 [the womb] 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, [this same
power] 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)140[Note: 40 140. lust (according to
Resnick in Odo of Tournai’s On Original Sin, 71)] 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).141[Note: 41 141. Dicunt seminatores animarum, quorum rationem post
orthodoxos insumpsimus dicere, quod omnis anima venit de traduce, id est anima
per semen de anima, sicut ejus corpus per semen propagatur de corpore, vel arbor
de arbore, et sic esse vim seminariam in anima, quemadmodum in corpore. In
animalibus enim nisi vim vegetabilem trahat semen parentis, non proficit ad
creationem (i.e., generationem) sequentis prolis, nam semen fusum in femina,
quomodo pullulat nisi vim animae vegetabilem trahat? Quomodo concrescit in
viscera praegnantis seminatum, nisi utcunque fuerit animatum? Infundantur urina
de parente, vel sputum, vel aliud quidquam, non proficit in partum, vel in
prolem ullam, nec unquam natum est animal tali infusione, quia talis infusio
caret animatione. Nullam vim animae talis infusio trahit, ideo non prospicit in
partum, nec inde pullulat aliquid.… Trahit ergo secum semen corporis semen
animae, scilicet vim vegetationis quae corporeum semen vegetet in humanam
formam, ipse cum eo succrescens in rationalem animam, ut sicut particula quae
non est humanum corpus ab humano corpore fluit in sementem, sic particula quae
non est humana anima ab humana anima decurrat ut semen. Et sicut pruritus
corporis non solet sine delectatione animae fieri, sic pruritus a corpore non
excutit seminarium liquorem nisi simul animae delectatio producat ab anima
seminariam vim, id est vegetabilitatem ut sit humanae animae vis vegetabilis,
sicut seminarius liquor semen est corporis. Et sicut simul procedunt causae,
scilicet delectatio et pruritus, sic simul sequuntur effectus, id est vis
vegetabilis et liquor seminarius simul etiam cum crescendo proficiunt, hoc usque
ad humanam formam, illud ad rationalem animam, inde simul manent in una persona
usque ad mortem. Causae conjunctae simul jungunt suos effectus in unum
individuum ejus quod constat ex animae et corpore.… Tolle animam, non facit
corpus semen; facit semen, habet igitur animam. Habet ergo semen ab anima vim
vegetabilem. Aut habet ab anima, aut a corpore. Si a corpore, tolle animam et
funde semen, et dabimus palmam tibi victoriae si videamus sequentem prolem. Si
autem non potest fieri, confitere veritatem, et animae concede vim vegetabilem.
Et licet ipsa vis non sit anima, per eam tamen ab anima propagatur anima, et fit
semen animae propagantis animam.]

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,142[Note: 42 142. mode/way of
propagation] 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[Note:
43 143. Animas eorum qui Adamo et Eva progeniti fuissent non creatas, neque
etiam generatas, sed propagatas fuisse] 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.’144[Note: 44 144.
Anima humana non immediate creatur, sed mediante semine foecundo a parentibus
generatur et in liberos traducitur. Non generatur anima ex traduce sine semine
foecundo tanquam principio materiali, sed per traducem seu mediante semine
prolifico tanquam vehiculo, propagatur] The Renewed Confession of the True
Lutheran Faith, point 22145[Note: 45 145. Consensus Repetitus, Fidei verae
Lutheranae, Punct. 22.] (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.’ ”146[Note: 46 146. Profitemur et docemus, hominem generare hominem,
idque non tantum quoad corpus sed etiam animam. Rejicimus eos qui docent in
hominibus singulis animas singulas non ex propagine oriri sed ex nihilo tunc
primum creari et infundi cum in uteris matrum foetus concepti atque ad
animationem praeperati sunt.]

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 Genesis 1:1-31 to denote
the species and in Genesis 2:1-25 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’147[Note: 47 147. omnes
eramus unus ille homo] (Augustine); in that one man, or that one sin, ‘we all
sinned’ (Romans 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 (Daniel
7:10)” (Forgiveness in Works 14.136 [ed. Russell]). 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 Genesis 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).”148[Note: 48 148. not simply as another’s, but even as our own; neither
as innocent, but as companions of the offense, and guilty together with him]
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 [individual] 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 [individual] 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” (Jeremiah 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 [all] 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 [i.e., a will and means] 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’ (Psalms 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
(Jeremiah 31:32; Jeremiah 31:34; Ezekiel 34:24-31; Hebrews 8:7-12; Jeremiah 4:1;
Ezekiel 18:30-32; Matthew 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 (Zephaniah 3:12; Romans
15:12). (3) The conditional promise calls for a new heart, the absolute promise
gives it (Ezekiel 36:1-38). (4) The conditional promise calls for holy
obedience, the absolute promise gives it or causes it (Ezekiel 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’
(Psalms 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’ (Zephaniah 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’ (Romans 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 [individual] 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 [individual] 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 Psalms 51:1-19. 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 (Romans
5:18-19) instituted a comparison between the first and second Adam, in respect
to the fact [of union], 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 Corinthians 15:22) and “in whom all
sinned” (Romans 5:12); and with Augustine: “We all were that one man.”149[Note:
49 149. omnes eramus unus ille homo]

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’ (Hebrews 7:25). Christ
was in Adam in a natural sense from his first creation, in respect of the
purpose of God (Luke 3:23; Luke 3:38), 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 (Galatians 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 Corinthians 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” (Romans 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 Hebrews 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 Romans 8:3 :
“God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin [Revised
Version: as an offering 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” (Hebrews 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 [ed. Russell]) 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 [part of] 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 [part of human] nature in him were so defiled as the
[part of human] 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 [specific] 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
[individual part of human] 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 [in the person of
Christ] 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
[legal] covenant whereon Adam stood. For Christ derived it [his human nature]
legally only from and after the first promise when Adam ceased to be a public
person. Nor did it proceed from him [Adam] 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” (Romans 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” (Galatians 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 [by division and separation
of a part] 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 more [merely] that individual man which he was, than every man is now the
man that he is [merely] by his individual subsistence. [That is to say: Adam was
an individual and also specific as including the whole nature. Each of his
posterity is also an individual and also specific, as partaking of, but not
including, the whole nature.] So the Lord Christ taking [a part of] 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 [human] 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.


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  CHAPTER 25: 4.02.     MAN'S PRIMITIVE STATE
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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.”1[Note: 1. τὸ βέλτιον καὶ τό τιμιώτερον πρότερον εἶ ναι τῇ
φύσει δοκεῖ (to beltion kai to timiōteron proteron einai tē physei dokei)] 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[Note: 2. Vetustissimi mortalium, nulla
adhuc mala libidine, sine probro, scelere, eoque sine poena aut
coercitationibus, agebant: neque praemiis opus erat, cum honesta suopte ingenio
peterentur: et ubi nihil contra morem cuperent, nihil per metum vetabantur.]
(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” (Genesis 1:26-27). “God has made man upright; but they have sought out
many inventions” (Ecclesiastes 7:29). “The new man is renewed in knowledge after
the image of him that created him” (Colossians 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
theon3[Note: 3. κατὰ θεόν = according to God] (Ephesians 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:4[Note: 4. we are not born
full] 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,5[Note: 5. in a state of
pure nature. Richard A. Muller translates this phrase as “in a purely natural
condition”; see Dictionary of Greek and Latin Theological Terms (Grand Rapids:
Baker, 1985), 151.] 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. (See 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 Corinthians 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 (Colossians
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 Genesis 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.6[Note:
6. WS: The narrative in Genesis speaks of a knowledge like that of “God”
(Genesis 3:22) and like that of “the gods” or Satan and his angels (3:5). The
knowledge is described from two points of view. Adam, by apostasy, came to have
a knowledge of evil similar to that of God in that it was a thorough knowledge
and a knowledge identical with that of Satan, because it was a conscious
knowledge. Respecting the knowledge of unfallen Adam, see Augustine, City of God
22.30; Stillingfleet, Origines Sacrae 1.2.3.] 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 Corinthians 2:14). (See 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 Timothy
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 SpiritualMan 1:1; Man 1:212-24). (See 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.7[Note: 7. from within] 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[Note: 8. WS: Throughout this discussion,
self-determination is synonymous with spontaneity or inclination.] 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” (Leviticus 20:8); “there shall come out of Zion the
deliverer and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob” (Romans 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).9[Note: 9. ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ = from itself] 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 Corinthians 9:8 : “God is able to make all grace abound toward you, so that
having all sufficiency (autakreian)10[Note: 0 10. αὐταρκεῖαν] 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”11[Note: 1 11. voluntarie moveri est ex se moveri, et
non ab alio] (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.12[Note: 2 12. WS: “Fons erroris est, libertatis
naturam metiri ex ἰσορροπίᾳ, et ei τὸ ἀμφιρρεπές essentiale facere; cum per
lubentiam et spontaneitatem definienda sit” [AG: The source of the error is that
the nature of liberty is to be measured by indifferent inclination (isorropia)
and to make ambiguity (to amphirrepes) essential to it. Rather, liberty should
be defined in terms of willingness and spontaneity]; Turretin 6.5.11.] 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[Note: 3 13. possibility of sinning.] 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. (See 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. (See 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 Deuteronomy
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 Isaiah 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. (See 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,”14[Note: 4 14. libertas indifferentiae est impossibilis] says
Leibnitz (Concerning Freedom, 669 [ed. Erdmann].15[Note: 5 15. WS: Sometimes
“indifference” is employed to denote the possibilitas peccandi (possibility of
sinning) connected with Adam’s mutable holiness. Maresius (System 6.23) so uses
it: “Libertatem tribuimus homini primo, non solum spontaneitatis, quod nempe
ultro et absque coactione ruerit in peccatum, sed etiam indifferentiae, juxta
quam potuisset abstinere a peccato, et in illo statu permanere” [AG: We
attribute liberty to the first man, not only of spontaneity-because no doubt he
fell into sin of his own accord and without coercion-but also of indifference,
according to which he would have been able to refrain from sin and to remain in
that state]. But this is not the ordinary use of the term. Nor is it a proper
use of it. Holy Adam, while “able to abstain from sin and to continue holy,” was
not indifferent to holiness. Howe also asserts that the human will “was created
without any determination to good; it was made in such a state of liberty as to
be in a certain sort of equipoise, according as things should be truly or
falsely represented by the leading faculty, the mind or understanding” (Oracles
2.22). Howe supposes this in order to explain the possibility of the fall. The
understanding of Adam was capable of being deceived because it was finite. And
the will was capable of yielding to the deception. This capability he calls an
“equipoise” of the will. A will not in equipoise but inclined to holiness is
capable of yielding to deception or any other temptation, providing it be a
finite and mutable will. It is not necessary to assume absolute indifference to
holiness and sin in order to account for the apostasy of Adam’s will. While,
however, asserting this indifference, Howe does not regard it as a necessary
element in freedom. It was necessary only in order to probation. It is “not a
perfection belonging immutably to the nature of man,” he says. After the fall,
it disappears. The sinful will is not in equipoise. Nor is the holy will in its
perfect state in heaven.]

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.16[Note: 6 16. αἰτία = cause, reason, charge, ground for complaint] It
implies causation. “The notion of pure will,” says Kant (Practical Reason, 205
[trans. Abbott]), “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.17[Note: 7 17. from the
outside] 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.18[Note: 8 18. originated inclination] Viewed
with reference to the voluntary faculty, it is spontaneous and self-moving:
inclinatio originans.19[Note: 9 19. originating inclination] Holy inclination is
at once the Creator’s product and the creature’s activity. (See 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
originans20[Note: 0 20. originating inclination] and inclinatio
originata.21[Note: 1 21. originated inclination]

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” (Romans
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. (See supplement 4.2.8.) S U P P L E M E N T S

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 [Taylor’s] 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 [in executive
volitions]; and affirms a universal pravity of will [inclination] previous to
the actual choice [of means to gratify it].”

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,22[Note: 2 22. θεορία = spectacle, sight] 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,23[Note: 3 23. ὑπερῶον] 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
[without aid], 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 [of that
assistance]. 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 [infallibly] 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 [infallibly] 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 Galatians 5:16-24 and Romans 7:14-25;
Romans 8:1-26 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,24[Note: 4
24. not able to sin (see posse peccare et non posse peccare in glossary 1)]
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;
Job 35:7; Psalms 16:2-3; Romans 11:35; 1 Corinthians 4:7; 1 Corinthians 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 [to
the contrary] 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” (Deuteronomy 30:19); “before the child
shall know to choose the good and refuse the evil” (Isaiah 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 [in
support of the suggestions of Diabolus] 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 Chronicles 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);25[Note: 5 25. ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ] 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” (Php 2:12-13); “not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think
anything [holy] as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; who has made us
able ministers of the new testament” (2 Corinthians 3:5-6); “I labored more
abundantly than they all; yet not I but the grace of God which was with me” (1
Corinthians 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” (Galatians 5:19; Galatians 5:22).
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 [recompense] 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 [trans. Toplady]) 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.


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  CHAPTER 26: 4.03.     HUMAN WILL
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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.1[Note: 1. WS: In this reasoning, however, Edwards, as is frequently the
case, does not mark off choice or volition from desire. He calls a volition a
desire. “All things considered,” he says, “the man chooses to utter such words
and does not desire not to utter them.” Here, the volition by which the words
are spoken is called a “desire.” But this is not desire as spoken of by Locke,
when he says that the man does not desire that the words shall be effectual to
persuade. The desire and the volition, in Locke’s use of the terms, which is
also the correct use, are two different acts of the will, and one may not agree
with the other. But the desire and the volition, in Edward’s use, in this place,
are one and the same act and of course cannot disagree with each other.]

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 [trans. Abbott]).
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.2[Note: 2. WS: A full classification on
this basis would be understanding, will, and instinct (using the latter term in
a wide sense). The old psychology, however, did not formally appropriate the
term instinct to designate the involuntary side of man’s nature, but left it
undesignated.]

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 NaturalMan 1:1;Man 1:15). 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”
(Colossians 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
(Colossians 3:20), of the love and care of parents toward their children (3:21),
of the relation of the citizen to the state (Romans 13:5; 1 Peter 2:13-14), of
the relation between master and servant (Colossians 3:22; 1 Timothy 6:1-2), and
of the physical appetites (Romans 14:6; 1 Corinthians 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).3[Note: 3. WS: The classification of the
instinctive desires is various. Hopkins (Outlines, lect. 9), besides the
physical appetites, enumerates the desire of existence, good (happiness), power,
knowledge, property, esteem, liberty, society, beauty. These can all be brought
under the category of the finite. No one of them is desire for God and spiritual
good.]

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”4[Note: 4. amor seu dilectio valentior est voluntas] (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”5[Note: 5.
Affectus in deo nihil aliena sunt quam actus voluntatis divinae.] (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”6[Note: 6. Voluntas, quae est appetitus
rationalis, semper est conjuncta cum appetitu sensitivo, ita quidem, ut ipse
appetitus sensitivus in homine proportionaliter respondeat voluntati.]
(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”7[Note: 7. Non omnino involuntarii sunt isti motus, quia
nostra voluntate eos attraximus. Nihil obstat, quominus ad peccatum actuale eos
etiam motus referamas: quia nimirum concupiscentia actuale peccatum est: motus
autem isti aut partes, aut prima puncta, concupiscentiae.] (Keckermann in Heppe,
Reformed Dogmatics); “as the will does now work upon that object [namely, God]
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 [ed.
Auber]). (See 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”8[Note: 8. Velle, nihil aliud est quam inclinatio quaedam in objectum
voluntatis, quod est bonum universale.] (Aquinas, Summa 1.105.4). In the
Authorized Version, “willing” sometimes means “desiring” and sometimes
“purposing,” according as it translates thelō9[Note: 9. θέλω = to desire] or
bouleuō:10[Note: 0 10. βουλεύω = to decide] “What if God [though] willing
(thelōn)11[Note: 1 11. θέλων] to show his wrath [yet] endured” (Romans 9:22);
“willingly (thelontas)12[Note: 2 12. θέλοντας] ignorant” = desiring to be
ignorant (2 Peter 3:5; cf. 1 Timothy 2:4); “the centurion willing
(boulomenos)13[Note: 3 13. βουλομένος] to save Paul” (Acts 27:43; cf. 1 Timothy
2:8; 1 Timothy 5:14; 2 Peter 3:9). In Ephesians 2:3, the “lusts”
(epithymiai)14[Note: 4 14. ἐπιθυμίαι] are called “inclinations”
(thelēmata).15[Note: 5 15. θελήματα] St. James (4:2) represents sinful desire to
be the same as sinful inclination, when he says, “You lust (epithymeite)16[Note:
6 16. ἐπιθυμεῖτε] and have not, you desire to have (zēloute)17[Note: 7 17.
ζηλοῦτε] 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.
(See 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 storgē18[Note: 8 18. στοργή = love,
affection] 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” (Romans
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” (Psalms 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” (112:20); “grant not,
O Lord, the desires of the wicked” (140:8); “the expectation of the wicked shall
perish” (Proverbs 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” (Ephesians 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 Galatians 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” (Galatians 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 Corinthians 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 onMan 1:2

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,19[Note: 9 19. καρδία = heart]thelēma,20[Note: 0 20. θέλημα =
will] and boulē21[Note:1 21. βουλή = will] are terms for the voluntary side of
the soul; and in the Old Testament lēb22[Note: 2 22. ìÅá = heart, understanding]
denotes the same. The cognitive side of the soul is designated in the New
Testament by pneuma,23[Note: 3 23. πνεῦμα = spirit]nous,24[Note: 4 24. νοῦς =
mind] and phrēn;25[Note: 5 25. φρήν = thinking, understanding] and in the Old
Testament by nepeš26[Note: 6 26. ðÆôÆùÑ = life, soul] and rûaḥ27[Note: 7 27.
øåÌçÇ = spirit] (Girdlestone, Synonyms of the Old Testament). The primary and
dominant meaning of kardia28[Note: 8 28. καρδία = heart] is will, as antithetic
to understanding. It includes the inclination, together with the moral desires
and affections: “lusts of the heart” (Romans 1:24); “impenitent heart” (2:5);
“purposed in the heart” (2 Corinthians 9:7); “with the heart man believes”
(Romans 10:9-10); “turn the hearts” (Luke 1:17); “if you seek with all your
heart” (Deuteronomy 4:29); “love with all your heart” (6:5); “I have inclined my
heart” (Psalms 119:112); “the heart of her husband does trust her” (Proverbs
31:11); “does not afflict willingly (Hebrew: from the heart)” (Lamentations
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 kardia29[Note: 9 29. καρδία] or heart,” says Owen (On the Spirit
3.3), “in Scripture, is to praktikon30[Note: 0 30. τὸ πράκτικον = the effective
[part]] 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.”

Thelēma31[Note: 1 31. θέλημα = will] denotes inclination and desire in
distinction from volition: “your will be done” (Matthew 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” (Romans 2:18); “good pleasure of his
will” (Ephesians 1:15); “the desires (thelēmata)32[Note: 2 32. θελήματα] 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).

Boulē33[Note: 3 33. βουλή = will] and boulēma34[Note: 4 34. βούλημα = will]
denote volition in distinction from inclination and desire: “The same had not
consented to the counsel [decision] of them” (Luke 23:51); “I will be [decide to
be] no judge of such matters” (Acts 18:15); “when Paul would have [purposed to]
entered” (19:30); “I would [decide] also hear the man myself” (25:22); “I was
minded [purposed] to come unto you” (2 Corinthians 1:15); “the determinate
counsel [purpose] of God” (Acts 2:23); “God willing [purposing] to show more
abundantly unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his council” (Hebrews
2:17) (see Bruder, under the appropriate words). In these passages,
boulē35[Note: 5 35. βουλή = will] 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 pneuma36[Note: 6 36.
πνεῦμα = spirit] and its cognates nous37[Note: 7 37. νοῦς = mind] and
phrēn38[Note: 8 38. φρήν = thinking, understanding] 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 Corinthians 2:11); “be not children in
understanding (phresin)”39[Note: 9 39. φρεσίν] (14:20); “opened their
understanding (noun)”40[Note: 0 40. νοῦν] (Luke 24:45); “sing with the
understanding (noi)”41[Note: 1 41. νοΐ] (1 Corinthians 14:15); “my soul
(nepeš)42[Note: 2 42. ðÆôÆùÑ] knows right well” (Psalms 139:14); “that the soul
be without knowledge is not good” (Proverbs 19:2); “keep your soul diligently,
lest you forget” (Deuteronomy 4:9); “the spirit (rûaḥ)43[Note: 3 43. øåÌçÇ] of
my understanding” (Job 20:3); “they that erred in spirit shall come to
understanding” (Isaiah 29:24); “the spirit of wisdom” (Exodus 28:3). As the
understanding and will are one soul or person, the terms for each are frequently
interchanged. Kardia44[Note: 4 44. καρδία = heart] is put for pneuma45[Note: 5
45. πνεῦμα = spirit] in the following: “reasoning in their hearts” (Mark 2:6);
“the law [of conscience] written in their hearts” (Romans 2:15); “shined in the
heart to give the light of the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 4:6); “God is
greater than our heart [conscience] and knows all things” (1 John 3:20); “wise
in heart (lēb)”46[Note: 6 46. ìÅá] (Job 9:4); “void of understanding
(lēb)”47[Note: 7 47. ìÅá] (Proverbs 7:7); “I have understanding (lēb)48[Note: 8
48. ìÅá] 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, pneuma49[Note: 9 49. πνεῦμα = spirit] is put for kardia50[Note: 0 50.
καρδία = heart] in the following: “poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3); “spirit of
meekness” (1 Corinthians 4:21); “newness of spirit” (Romans 7:6); “mind
(phronēma)51[Note: 1 51. φρόνημα] of the spirit” (8:6); “he who searches the
heart (kardia)52[Note: 2 52. καρδία] knows what is the mind (phronēma)53[Note: 3
53. φρόνημα] of the spirit (pneumatos)”54[Note: 4 54. πνεῦματος] (8:27);
“rejoiced in spirit” (Luke 10:21); “in whom my soul (nepeš)55[Note: 5 55.
ðÆôÆùÑ] delights” (Isaiah 42:1); “my soul thirsts for God” (Psalms 42:2); “if it
be your mind (nepeš)”56[Note: 6 56. ðÆôÆùÑ] (Genesis 23:8; 2 Kings 9:15); “with
a willing mind (nepeš)”57[Note: 7 57. ðÆôÆùÑ] (1 Chronicles 28:9). In the Old
Testament nepeš58[Note: 8 58. ðÆôÆùÑ] 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.”59[Note: 9 59. Je puis faire de bonnes et fortes actions; je ne puis avoir
de bons procédés.]

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. (See 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.60[Note: 0 60. WS: Preference is inclination, not choice,
though Locke (Understanding 4.31) considers them to be identical. Preference is
bias. A man can choose what he does not prefer. He can choose pain in a
particular instance, though he prefers pleasure. He can control his choice by a
volition, but not his preference.]

The volition has the same moral quality with the inclination. This is taught by
Christ in Matthew 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 Matthew 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.61[Note: 1 61. WS: Sometimes a
volition may be exerted without any inclination prompting it. Out of thirty
silver dollars, all newly minted and all alike, a man may take one arbitrarily.
He has no motive or inclination to take the one he does take, rather than
another: stat pro ratione voluntas [AG: the will stands for the reason]. This is
caprice. Such a volition is uncommon and has no morality. It is only a sporadic
spasmodic act of the will that moves the muscles convulsively.]

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.62[Note: 2 62. possibility of sinning] 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.63[Note: 3 63. originating
righteousness] Viewed objectively, it is this spontaneity as originally created
or subsequently recreated by God: justitia originata.64[Note: 4 64. originated
righteousness] Sinful inclination, viewed subjectively, is the activity of the
will, its voluntary spontaneity: peccatum originans.65[Note: 5 65. originating
sin] Viewed objectively, it is this spontaneity considered as an abiding state
of the will originated by the will itself in Adam’s fall:66[Note: 6 66. WS: This
designation of the subjective and objective aspect of an active principle by the
active and passive participle is employed by the philosopher as well as the
theologian. A force of nature contemplated subjectively as energizing and
producing effects is called natura naturans; contemplated objectively as having
energized and produced an effect it is called natura naturata. Gravitation
viewed subjectively as cause is the invisible force. This is natura naturans.
Gravitation viewed objectively as effect is the visible phenomenon or fact
(e.g., the falling apple). This is natura naturata. The old English poet Hawes
(Pastime of Pleasure, chaps. 25, 39) employs the terms: The right hye power
Nature, naturying Naturate made the bodyes above, In sundry wise, to take their
working That aboute the worlde naturallye do move.

Till that dame Nature naturying had made All thinges to growe.]peccatum
originatum.67[Note: 7 67. originated sin]

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.68[Note: 8 68. WS: The following are examples of the
indiscriminate use of inclination and choice by Edwards: “If the will, all
things now considered, inclines or chooses to go that way, then it cannot
choose, all things now considered, to go the other way and so cannot choose to
be made to go the other way” (Will 3.4). Edwards, here, is speaking of
inclination, not of volition. Again, he says: “The thing which has led men into
this inconsistent notion of action when applied to volition, as though it were
essential to this internal action …” (Will 4.2). Here, Edwards designates the
internal action or inclination of the will by the term volition.]

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.69[Note:
9 69. WS: Hartmann in his Philosophy of the Unconscious makes will synonymous
with vitality. Animal growth, animal instinct, and animal lust equally with
human inclination and volition are alike modes of will, according to this
theorist. The distinction between nature and spirit, matter and mind, is denied,
and the whole universe is converted into a blind pantheistic movement of
physical appetite and bestial desire called “will.”]

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. (See 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 index and executive; but no such necessary
connection exists between an inclination and a foregoing inclination or between
and 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
[trans. Abbott]). 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).70[Note: 0 70. See noumenon and phenomenon in glossary 1 for the
Kantian distinction between these two terms.] 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.71[Note: 1 71. the
thing in itself] 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 ofMan 1:1; Man 1:212; Man 1:231; Man 1:257). (See
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 originans72[Note: 2 72. originating] or
originata.73[Note: 3 73. originated] 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[Note: 4 74.
WS: “The subject of the Paradise Lost is the origin of evil-an era in existence,
an event more than all others dividing past from future time, an isthmus in the
ocean of eternity” (Campbell, Essay on English Poetry).] 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.75[Note: 5 75. WS: Of American writers, Hopkins (Outline Study
ofMan 1:1; Man 1:224) distinguishes between “choice” and “volition” in a manner
that approximates the distinction between inclination and volition: “Rational
choice is the fundamental, the voluntary, the moral part of the will; volition
is the executive part of the will.” “The point of freedom is in choice and in
that only. Choice being made, volition follows of course. The one is the
essential element of freedom manifesting itself in the spiritual realm and is
the immediate object of divine government; the other simply instrumental and
executive and is that of which human governments chiefly take cognizance” (225;
cf. 212, 231, 257). Hickok also tends toward the distinction between inclination
and volition in his threefold discrimination of “immanent preference,”
“governing purpose,” and “desultory volition” and in his definition of
“spiritual susceptibility” and “spiritual disposition” (Empirical Psychology,
282-92). But both Hopkins and Hickok adopt the classification of intellect,
sensibility, and will.]

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 thelēma76[Note: 6 76. θέλημα = will] and
boulē77[Note: 7 77. βουλή = will] (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. (See 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.78[Note: 8 78. WS: Hodge (Theology 2.307) defines a
self-determined will as “acting independently of reason, conscience,
inclinations, and feelings.” This is the Arminian volitionary
self-determination, which is accompanied with the power to the contrary.] 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 [ed. Erdmann])
says, “Freedom79[Note: 9 79. WS: Owen (Arminianism, 12) defines freedom, with
Prosper, as “a spontaneous appetite of what seems good unto it: liberum
arbitrium est rei sibi placitae spontaneus appetitus.”] 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[Note: 0 80. Libertas est
spontaneitas intelligentis, itaque, quod spontaneum est in bruto vel alia
substantia intellectus experte, id in homine vel in alia substantia
intelligente, altius assurgit et liberum appellatur.] 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
(Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 28:39-40), to “make the tree good”
(Matthew 12:33), to love not (1 John 2:15), to lust not (Exodus 20:17) are
examples. (See 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.

S U P P L E M E N T S

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 Ephesians 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),81[Note: 1 81. θέλω] I do not, but the evil which I would not (ou
thelō),82[Note: 2 82. οὐ θέλω] that I do (prassō)”83[Note: 3 83. πράσσω] (Romans
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)84[Note: 4 84. WS: inclination] and ability
(posse)85[Note: 5 85. WS: volition] . Not everyone who has will (vult) has
ability (potest); nor everyone that has ability has will. For as we sometimes
will (volumus)86[Note: 6 86. WS: desire] what we are unable to execute
(non-possumus), so also we sometimes execute what we do not will
(volumus).87[Note: 7 87. WS: desire] Will (velle) is derived from willingness
(voluntas), and ability (posse) from ableness (potestas). As the man who
inclines (vult)88[Note: 8 88. WS: desires] 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). [Augustine here uses
voluntas to denote volition, though arbitrium would be better. In the previous
sentences he has employed it to denote inclination. It is like the
indiscriminate use of “will” in Edwards, for example, to denote either
inclination or volition.] For no man is said to do a thing with ability, if he
did it without any act of will whatever (invitus).89[Note: 9 89. unwillingly]
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)90[Note: 0
90. WS: inclination] yet it is not performed without will [volition]” (Spirit
and Letter 53). Augustine also describes inclination as desire and affection:
“Our will or love or pleasure (dilectionem), which is a stronger will [i.e., its
deeper movement], is variously affected according as various objects [i.e.,
ultimate ends] 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.91[Note: 1 91. from the
outside] 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 [ed. McClintock]). “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?
[Augustine answers, ‘Yes, in Adam.’] 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 [sinful] 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,92[Note: 2 92. from the
outside] 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[Note:
3 93. a certain free impulse] (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 seriatim94[Note: 4 94. serially, in succession] 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 [i.e., as a series of antecedents and consequents]
for attributes of things in themselves [i.e., as single and without sequences],
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,95[Note: 5 95. in the
direction of what came before (i.e., looking backward in time)] 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 [i.e., by a series of antecedent and consequents instead of by pure and
simple self-motion], 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 [i.e., as a series], it follows that if this were the mode
in which we had also to conceive of the existence of these things in themselves
[i.e., as a unity without series], freedom [in the sense of self-motion] 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 [i.e., is one of a series of antecedents and
consequents, like the volitions of the will], and therefore its causality,
according to the law of physical necessity, as belonging to appearance only
[i.e., as merely the phenomenal manifestation] and to attribute freedom to the
will as the thing in itself [i.e., as the noumenon or underlying bias or
inclination]. This is certainly inevitable if we would retain both of these
contrary concepts [of free inclination and necessary volitions] 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 materiale96[Note: 6 96. a material automaton/machine] when the
mechanical being is moved by matter or with Leibnitz is called automaton
spirituale97[Note: 7 97. a spiritual automaton/machine] 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 [i.e., as exerting volitions and choices]; 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 [in distinction from the
manifestation of 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 [noumenonal] existence nothing is
antecedent to the self-determination [inclination] of his will, but every
[volitionary] 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
[spiritual] existence nothing but the result, and never the determinant, of his
causality as a noumenon. In this view [of the absolute self-motion of the will
as inclining] the rational being can justly say of every unlawful [volitionary]
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 [spiritual] 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 [i.e., the inclination of the will] 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 [trans. Urwick]) 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.”98[Note: 8 98. Inanimatum est omne
quod impulso agitur externo; quod autem anima est, id motu cietur interiore et
suo.] 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.’99[Note: 9 99. Voluntarie declinans in unam partem magis quam in
alteram.] 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 [sinner’s] 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;100[Note: 00 100. φρόνημα τῆς σαρκός]Romans 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”;101[Note:
01 101. inclinatio pugnans cum lege dei] the same that Rivetus means when he
defines concupiscentia102[Note: 02 102. concupiscentia = concupiscence] as
inclinatio voluntaria;103[Note: 03 103. voluntary inclination] the same that
Charnock means by “the sin which is voluntary not by an immediate act of the
will [a volition], but by a general or natural inclination”; the same that Owen
means when he declares that “original sin as peccatum originans104[Note: 04 104.
originating sin] was voluntary in Adam and, as it is originatum105[Note: 05 105.
originated] in us, is in our wills habitually [as a habitus or inclination] 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 extra106[Note: 06 106.
from the outside] 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 [decision] 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 [choose] 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 [i.e., by a separate volition]. 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 [choices or
volitions] 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).


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  CHAPTER 27: 4.04.     MAN'S PROBATION AND APOSTASY
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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 (Genesis 3:6-8;
Genesis 3:13; Ecclesiastes 7:29; 2 Corinthians 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” (Genesis 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 1:24; Ephesians
1:10; John 10:28 -; 1 Thessalonians 4:17; Revelation 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
peccandi1[Note: 1. possibility of sinning] 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. (See 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.2[Note: 2. WS: The possibility of sinning must not be confounded with
the tendency to sin. The possibility of sinning is merely the power to originate
sin ex nihilo by the act of self-determination. The tendency to sin implies that
the originating or self-determining power has been inwardly exerted, though it
may not have been externally. A tendency to sin is an inclination to sin. It is
a propensity of the heart and a disposition of the will. The possibility of
sinning is innocent; the tendency to sin is sinful.]

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. (See 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 Genesis 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 [represent] the two covenants” (Galatians 4:24); one
of works and the other of grace (Romans 9:4); “but they like man (margin: Adam)
have transgressed the covenant” (Hosea 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. (See 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 Romans 5:12; Romans
5:15-19. 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 [ed. Bohn]). 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”
(Genesis 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; Matthew 5:28; Romans 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 [true] 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 [out of the will and other than the will] 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 Genesis 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” (Romans 5:14); “Adam died” (Genesis 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 Genesis 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 Revelation 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
Romans 8:11; Romans 8:23, 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. (See 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 (Galatians 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)3[Note:
3. to be able to die] which was associated with Adam’s relative perfection would
become an impossibility (posse non mori),4[Note: 4. to be able not to die. To
describe the state of being unable to die, I believe that Shedd should have
given the Latin as non posse mori, which would be translated “unable to die.”]
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 Romans 5:18, where it is opposed
to “spiritual life” (so also in Romans 5:21; Romans 6:23; 2 Timothy 1:10). The
description of the consequences of apostasy discloses mental characteristics
that belong to spiritual death, namely, terror and shame before God (Genesis
3:8; Genesis 3:10; Genesis 3:24).5[Note: 5. WS: Wesley held that the death
caused by the first sin was spiritual, not physical; yet that it brought
physical death upon the brutes; Southey, Wesley, chap. 20.]

That the death was endless is proved by the texts that represent it as the
contrary of life, because the life is unquestionably endless (Romans 5:18;
Romans 5:21; Romans 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)6[Note: 6. WS: Cf. Howe,
Oracles 2.24; Augustine, City of God 14.12, 14; 21.12, 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. (See 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” (Romans 3:23). “All have deviated (exeklinan)”7[Note: 7. ἐξέκλιναν]
(3:12). “Sin is lawlessness (anōia)”8[Note: 8. ἀνομία] (1 John 3:4). Sin is “the
work of the flesh” (Galatians 5:19-21). Sin is “the carnal mind and enmity
toward God” (Romans 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 Timothy 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:9[Note: 9. the highest good] “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. (See 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; sarx10[Note: 0 10. σάρξ = flesh] is not pneuma.11[Note:
1 11. πνεῦμα = spirit] 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 [i.e., substances]; 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”12[Note: 2 12. Peccatum non est quid substantiale, ut Flacius Illyricus,
haud procul a Manichaeismo, saltem de originale labe statuebat. Materia peccati
proxima est ipsamet velἕξις vel actio vitiosa. (Note, however, the alternate
meaning for hexis that Shedd cites below.)] (Maresius, System 6.6, 8). The term
hexis13[Note: 3 13. ἕξις = being in a permanent condition] 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.” (See 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 (Romans
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” (Romans
2:12). (See supplement 4.4.8.) S U P P L E M E N T S

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 [i.e., indefectibility], 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 Genesis 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’ (Deuteronomy 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
[volition] 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’ (Genesis 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 [and efficiently]
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 (Romans
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.14[Note: 4 14. the highest good]
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 [i.e., the appetency of a rational self-moving soul in
distinction from an instinctive necessitated animal soul]. 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?’ (Psalms 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,15[Note: 5 15. the highest good] 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 [inclination] 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,16[Note: 6 16. pleasant good or a pleasant good thing] 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 [inclination] 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
Timothy 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 [trans. Abbott]) directs attention to the ambiguity
of the expression sub ratione boni:17[Note: 7 17. under the idea/notion of the
good] “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 [Pelagius]
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 [of the flesh] 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.”


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  CHAPTER 28: 4.05.     ORIGINAL SIN
========================================================================

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” (Romans 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 [externally] without a sinful inclination.” Edwards replies
that “this is doubtless true; for although there was no natural sinful
inclination in [holy] 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
[individual] 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 [the start or origination] 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.1[Note: 1. WS: Hodge (Princeton Essays 1.150,
168) thinks that Edwards here “abandons” the doctrine of immediate imputation
which “he maintains in two-thirds of his work on original sin” and adopts
mediate imputation. But Edwards, in this place, explicitly imputes the guilt of
the first rising of evil desire as well as of the corruption resulting from it;
and this rising of evil desire he says was the first sin, which was inseparable
from its consequence, namely, corruption of nature. Had Edwards asserted that
only the corruption as the effect, but not the rising of evil desire itself as
the cause of the effect, is imputed, he would have been liable to the charge of
holding mediate imputation.] (Original Sin in Works 2.481) (See 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
1:24) 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. (See
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 Genesis 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.2[Note: 2. WS: If it be objected to this explanation of the
term gods in this place that inGenesis 3:22the knowledge is described as like
that of God himself (“one of us”), the reply is that there are two ways of
knowing evil: the one as Satan knows it, namely, by personal sinfulness and
self-consciousness; the other as God knows it, namely, by the intuition of
omniscience without personal sinfulness and self-consciousness. The knowledge
can therefore be spoken of from either point of view. As prohibited, it must
have been as a bad knowledge, that is, the knowledge of “the gods” in the bad
sense, the knowledge which Satan and his angels had.] 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”
(Joshua 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.”3[Note: 3. WS: The lustful
looking of Eve is indicated in Luther’s version ofGenesis 3:6(Lange’s Commentary
in loco).]

The account given in Genesis 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)4[Note: 4. úÌÇàÂåÈä]
to the eyes and a tree to be desired (neḥmād)5[Note: 5. ðÆçÀîÈã] to make one
wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat; and gave also unto her husband
and he did eat” (Genesis 3:6). St. Paul (1 Timothy 2:14) affirms that “Adam was
not deceived [by Satan], but the woman being deceived by him fell into the
transgression (en parabasei gegone).”6[Note: 6. ἐν παράβασει γέγονε] 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 Genesis 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)7[Note: 7.
úÌÇàÂåÈä] 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)8[Note: 8. ðÆçÀîÈã] 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. (See supplement
4.5.3.) But the account in Genesis 3:6 further adds that the tree of knowledge
came to be for Eve a tree “to be desired (neḥmād),9[Note: 9. ðÆçÀîÈã] 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,10[Note: 0 10. ðÆçÀîÈã = to be desired] descriptive of Eve’s longing
after the prohibited knowledge, is the same employed in the tenth commandment
(Exodus 20:17), which the Septuagint renders by ouk epithymēseis.11[Note: 1 11.
οὐκ ἐπιθυμήσεις = you shall not lust] Eve’s evil desire was also the same in
kind with the epithymia12[Note: 2 12. ἐπιθυμία = lust] of St. Paul, which he
declares to be hamartia13[Note: 3 13. ἁμαρτία = sin] (Romans 7:7). It was also
the same in kind with the epithymia14[Note: 4 14. ἐπιθυμία = lust] 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; Matthew 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 (Matthew 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 (Deuteronomy 30:19). The holiness of Immanuel, which is true
holiness, is described as “refusing the evil and choosing the good” (Isaiah
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. (See 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 Romans 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 (Ephesians 4:17-18).

Says Luther on Galatians 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.15[Note: 5 15. WS: Cf. Heppe, Reformed
Dogmatics 2.249; Augustine, Unfinished Work 5; Concerning Nature, Healthy and
Corrupt.] 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)16[Note: 6 16. θελήματα] of the
flesh and of the mind (tōn dianoiōn)”17[Note: 7 17. τῶν διανοιῶν] (Ephesians
2:3). According to 2 Corinthians 7:1 there is a “filthiness of the flesh and the
spirit (pneumatos).”18[Note: 8 18. πνεύματος]

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” (Genesis 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” (Romans 5:12); “through the offense of one (man)
many be dead (apethanon)”19[Note: 9 19. ἀπέθανον] (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)20[Note: 0 20. τῷ ἀδάμ] all die” (1 Corinthians 15:22). The very important
discussion of St. Paul in Romans 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 hēmarton21[Note: 1 21. ἥμαρτον = sinned] 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[Note: 2 22. ἥμαρτον = sinned] 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 Romans 5:12-19). That hēmarton23[Note: 3
23. ἥμαρτον = sinned] is active in its signification is proved (a) by the fact
that eph’ hō pantes hēmarton24[Note: 4 24. ἐφ᾽ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον = in whom all
sinned] means the same as dia tēs hamartias25[Note: 5 25. διὰ τῆς ἁμαρτίας =
through sin] in the preceding context and hamartias26[Note: 6 26. ἁμαρτίας =
sin] is active in signification; (b) by the invariable use of the word
hēmarton27[Note: 7 27. ἥμαρτον = sinned] elsewhere (Matthew 27:4; Luke 15:18;
John 9:2; Acts 25:8; Romans 2:12; Romans 3:23; Romans 5:14; Romans 5:16; Romans
6:15; 1 Corinthians 7:28; Ephesians 4:26; 1 Timothy 5:20; 1 Peter 2:20); (c) by
the invariable signification of the substantive hamartia28[Note: 8 28. ἁμαρτία =
sin] (a verb has the same meaning as its noun); and (d) by the interchange of
hamartia29[Note: 9 29. ἁμαρτία = sin] with paraptōma,30[Note: 0 30. παράπτωμα =
transgression] which is active in meaning (Romans 5:16-21). (See supplement
4.5.5.)

Turretin (9.9.16) denies that hēmarton31[Note: 1 31. ἥμαρτον = sinned] 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”32[Note: 2 32. Verbumἥμαρτον (hēmarton = sinned) proprie non protest
trahi ad habitum peccati, vel ad corruptionem habitualem et inhaerentem, sed
proprie peccatum aliquod actuale notat, idque praeteritum, quod non potest aliud
esse quam ipsum Adami peccatum; aliud quippe est peccatorem esse vel nasci,
aliud vero reipsa peccare.] (so also Witsius, Covenants 1.8.31). Edwards
(Original Sin in Works 2.448) denies that hēmarton33[Note: 3 33. ἥμαρτον =
sinned] 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 [Taylor’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 hēmarton34[Note: 4 34. ἥμαρτον = sinned] 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,35[Note: 5 35. ἥμαρτον = sinned] 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[Note: 6 36. ἁμαρτάνειν = to sin] in
scores of other instances being the ordinary use. But while hēmarton37[Note: 7
37. ἥμαρτον = sinned] in Romans 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 hēmarton38[Note: 8 38. ἥμαρτον = sinned]
unquestionably refers to the same sin that is spoken of in 5:15-19. In Romans
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)39[Note: 9 39. πάντες] 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 Romans 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
hēmarton40[Note: 0 40. ἥμαρτον = sinned] 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 hamartanō41[Note: 1 41. ἁμαρτάνω = I sin] 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 hamartanein42[Note: 2 42.
ἁμαρτάνειν = to sin] with einai,43[Note: 3 43. εἰναί = to be] and he would have
used the compound form pantes hēmartēkotes hēsan44[Note: 4 44. πάντες
ἡμαρτηκότες ἦ σαν = all were regarded as sinners] as does the Septuagint in
Genesis 43:9; Genesis 44:32 (hēmartēkōs esomai);45[Note: 5 45. ἡμαρτηκὼς ἔσομαι
= I will be (regarded as) a sinner]1 Kings 1:21 (esomai egō kai salōmōn
hamartoloi).46[Note: 6 46. ἔσομαι ἐγω καὶ σάλωμων ἁμαρτολοί = I and (my son)
Solomon will be counted sinners]

3. The passive signification excludes Adam and Eve from the pantes47[Note: 7 47.
πάντες = all] who sinned. They, certainly, were not “reckoned” to have sinned.

4. According to the passive signification, hēmarton48[Note: 8 48. ἥμαρτον =
sinned] 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 thanatos49[Note: 9 49. θάνατος = death] 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.50[Note: 0 50. ἥμαρτον = sinned] 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[Note: 1 51. ἁμαρτάνω = I
sin] 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” (Romans 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”52[Note: 2 52.
Haud justum fuisset unius angeli crimen alteri imputari, vel unius hominis
peccatum alterius censeri, posito quod singuli seorsim essent creati sicut
angeli. Sed est unitas naturae, cui unitas foederalis erat innixa.] (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 Ephesians 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, Ezekiel 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. (See
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 Romans 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 (Galatians 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 (Leviticus 5:17-18; Luke 12:48). Men
generally are not self-conscious of the “secret sins” (Psalms 19:12; Psalms
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 (Ephesians 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” (Ephesians 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.”53[Note: 3 53. WS: See Ritschl, History of Justification, 390-410
(trans. Black); Shedd, Theological Essays, 243-54.]

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 criminis54[Note: 4 54. a partner in crime] 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.55[Note: 5 55.
WS: “Sin,” as Müller (Sin 2.163) remarks, “must begin, not in a state, but in an
act.” Yet the first act of sin, it must be remembered, causes and produces a
state of sin.]

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 [in the decree of the synod] 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.56[Note: 6 56. Illis enim verbis [in the decree of the
synod] aut exposita non est Placaei sententia, aut male exposita est. Is enim
primi peccati Adae imputationem nunquam simpliciter negavit, nunquam negatam
voluit. Cum igitur imputationem primi illius peccati quandam affirmet, quandam
neget, non exponitur ejus sententia, si dicitur simpliciter, et nulla
distinctione adhibita, primi peccati Adae imputationem negare.] (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 [of Adam’s sin] 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 [of Adam’s sin] which follows upon seeing in the posterity that
hereditary corruption derived to them from Adam and which is brought about by it
[hereditary corruption] as the means or medium [of the imputation]. 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 [first] 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
[first] 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 [i.e., the imputation of the first sin
itself]-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” (Ezekiel 11:19), “carnal mind” (Romans 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 Peter 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 Ephesians 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” (Isaiah 42:7);
“recovering of sight to the blind” (Luke 4:18); “know not that you are blind”
(Revelation 3:17); “the god of this world has blinded their minds” (2
Corinthians 4:4). Many texts speak of regeneration as “enlightening” (2
Corinthians 4:6; Ephesians 5:14; 1 Thessalonians 5:5; Psalms 97:11). And many
texts call sin “darkness” (Proverbs 4:19; Isaiah 60:2; Ephesians 5:11;
Colossians 1:13; 1 John 2:11; 1 Thessalonians 5:4; Ephesians 4:18 [“having the
understanding (dianoia)57[Note: 7 57. διάνοια] darkened”]; Romans 1:28
[“reprobate mind (noun)]”).58[Note: 8 58. νοῦν]

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 Corinthians 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 Peter 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 Timothy 4:2). A third
effect is pollution: “even their reason (nous)59[Note: 9 59. νοῦς] and
conscience (syneidēsis)60[Note: 0 60. συνείδησις] are polluted” or stained
(memiantai)61[Note: 1 61. μεμίανται] (Titus 1:15); “they became vain in their
reasonings” or speculations (dialogismous)62[Note: 2 62. διαλόγισμους] (Romans
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” (Hebrews 13:18 [kalēn syneidēsin];63[Note: 3 63. καλήν
συνείδησιν]1 Peter 3:16; 1 Peter 3:21; 1 Timothy 1:5; 1 Timothy 1:19; Acts 23:1
[syneidēsin agathēn])64[Note: 4 64. συνείδησιν ἀγαθήν] or a “pure conscience” (1
Timothy 3:9 : syneidēsis kathara).65[Note: 5 65. συνείδησις κάθαρα] It is an
“evil conscience” (ponēra syneidēsis):66[Note: 6 66. πονήρα συνείδησις] a
conscience needing cleansing by atoning blood “from dead works” (Hebrews 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 (Romans 8:6;
James 4:4 [“the friendship of the world is enmity toward God”]; Deuteronomy 1:26
[“they rebelled against God”]; Job 34:37; Isaiah 1:1; Isaiah 30:9; Isaiah 45:2;
Ezekiel 12:2); (b) hatred (Romans 1:29; Psalms 89:23; Psalms 139:21; Exodus
20:5; Proverbs 1:25; Proverbs 5:12; John 7:7; John 15:18; John 15:23-24); (c)
hardness of heart or insensibility (Exodus 7:14; Exodus 7:22; 2 Kings 17:14; Job
9:4; Isaiah 63:17; Daniel 5:20; John 12:20; Acts 19:9; Hebrews 3:8; Hebrews
3:15; Hebrews 4:7); (d) aversion (John 5:40 [“you will not (ou
thelēte),”67[Note: 7 67. οὐ θέλητε] you are disinclined]; Revelation 2:21); (e)
obstinacy (Deuteronomy 31:27 [“stiff-necked”]; Exodus 32:9; Psalms 75:5; Isaiah
26:10; Isaiah 43:4; Acts 7:51; Romans 10:21); (f) bondage (Jeremiah 13:23; Mark
3:23; John 6:43-44; John 8:34; Romans 5:6; Romans 6:20; Romans 7:9; Romans 7:14;
Romans 7:18; Romans 7:23; Romans 8:7-8; Romans 9:16; 2 Peter 2:14).

Corruption of Nature as Guilt

Original sin, considered as corruption of nature, is sin in the sense of guilt:
“They [the Lutherans] condemn the Pelagians and others who deny that the flaw
(vitium) of our origin is sin”68[Note: 8 68. Damnant Pelagianos et alios, qui
vitium originis negant esse peccatum. (Vitium can also mean “sin, offense,
vice.”)] (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.69[Note: 9 69. WS: Shedd, History of Doctrine
2.35-42, 180-86; onRomans 7:15-17; Müller, Sin 2.400.]

Corruption of nature is guilt because …

1. The Scriptures do not distinguish between sin proper and improper.
Hamartia70[Note: 0 70. ἁμαρτία = sin] as denoting the principle of sin is
exchanged with paraptōma71[Note: 1 71. παράπτωμα = transgression] denoting the
act of sin and vice versa (Romans 5:13; Romans 5:15-17; Romans 5:19; Romans
5:21).

2. Hamartia72[Note: 2 72. ἁμαρτία = sin] is the equivalent of epithymia73[Note:
3 73. ἐπιθυμία = lust, desire] and sarx:74[Note: 4 74. σάρξ = flesh] “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 (Exodus 20:17; cf. 1 John
2:16). The tenth commandment, which the Septuagint renders ouk
epithymēseis,75[Note: 5 75. οὐκ ἐπιθυμήσεις = do not lust/covet] 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 (Matthew
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)76[Note: 6
76. æÄîÌÈä] of foolishness is sin” (Proverbs 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. (See
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)

[Augustine defines sin to be] something coveted, said, or done contrary to God’s
law.77[Note: 7 77. Aliquid concupitum, dictum, factum, contra legem dei.]
(Turretin 9.1.3)

[Augustine] 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 Peter 2:11) be already sin (Exodus 20:17;
Matthew 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.78[Note:
8 78. Lex “ne concupiscito” inquit. Itaque et si cupiditate, quae te incendit,
non assentiaris, ipse tamen carnis tuae impetus peccatum est.] (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”79[Note: 9 79. Inclinatio,
actio, vel omissio pugnans cum lege dei.] (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”80[Note: 0 80. concupiscentia est inclinatio voluntaria]
(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 [volition] or voluntary by a
general or natural inclination of the will [self-determination]. 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,81[Note: 1 81. originating sin] was voluntary in Adam; and
as it is originatum82[Note: 2 82. originated] in us is in our wills habitually
[as a habitus] 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 [volition]-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 [volitionary] 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 [i.e., of their inclination or disposition], 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 [i.e., a volition], 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 [volition], in order to their being justly
blamed or praised; but it teaches no such thing in respect to the internal acts
of will themselves.83[Note: 3 83. WS: Edwards defines inclination as the
“leading act” of the will. See p. 512.]

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.”84[Note: 4 84. WS: The Arminian and the
Calvinistic views of freedom are contrasted in the following statement of
Edwards: “Natural sense does not place the moral evil of volitions and
dispositions in the cause of them, but the nature of them. An evil thing’s being
from a man in the sense of from something antecedent in him is not essential to
the original notion we have of blameworthiness; but it is its being the choice
of the heart. When [on the other hand] a thing is from a man in the sense that
it is from his will or choice, he is to blame for it because his will is in it:
so far as the will is in it blame is in it, and no further. Neither do we go any
further in our notion of blame to inquire whether the bad will be from a bad
will: there is no consideration of the original of that bad will: because,
according to our natural apprehension, blame originally consists in it [i.e.,
the bad will]”; Will in Works 2.174.]

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 [i.e., by
a foregoing volition], 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 [i.e., the inclination of the will], and not only those actions
which are the effects of the will [inclination], 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 [i.e., the inclination] 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 Psalms 51:1-19 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 Chronicles 29:14). (See 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.85[Note: 5 85. The author of evil is not the avenger of evil.] 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
Romans 7:14-25; Romans 8:1-27 (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” (Romans 7:23); original sin is denominated “the law of sin
and death” (8:2). (See 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.86[Note: 6 86. WS: Calvin 2.2.5; Shedd, History of Doctrine 2.164-77;
Theological Essays, 235-43; Sermons to the Natural Man, sermon 11.] 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 (Romans 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),87[Note: 7 87. τὰ τοῦ νόμου] not all things.88[Note: 8 88. WS: Had St.
Paul intended to teach that these virtuous heathen do all things required by the
law, he would have said ton nomon poiē (τὸν νόμον ποιῇ = he keeps the law), as
inGalatians 5:3.] 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.89[Note: 9 89. WS: On the natural instincts
and the moral and religious affections, see p. 511.] 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” (Matthew 11:37). 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 physis90[Note: 0 90. φύσις = nature] 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 [spiritual] 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)”91[Note: 1 91. Nam servit
voluntas peccato, non nolens sed volens. Etenim voluntas non noluntas dicitur.]
(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 Corinthians 2:14); “and were by nature
(physei;92[Note: 2 92. φύσει] i.e., by birth) children of wrath” (Ephesians
2:3); “conceived in sin and shaped in iniquity” (Psalms 51:5). In this last
passage, “conceived” is not synonymous with “created” and must be carefully
distinguished from it. So, also, in Romans 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,
maninability 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. (See 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).93[Note: 3 93. WS: Cf. Formula
Consensus Helvetica, 737 (ed. Niemeyer). For Turretin’s account of the
distinction; see 10.4.39.] (See 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).94[Note: 4 94. WS: In Works 2.102 Edwards, however, speaks
doubtfully on this point: “If moral inability can truly be called inability.”
Cf. his doubt whether it is proper to call God a part of “being in general.” See
nature and definition of God on pp. 176-77.]

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 [i.e., are
inclined], 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),95[Note: 5 95. προθυμία] it is accepted according to what a man
has and not according to what he has not” (2 Corinthians 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 [according to him] 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,96[Note: 6 96. WS: So Ursinus (Christian Religion Q. 8) argues: “They
who cannot but sin are unjustly punished; but the unregenerate cannot but sin:
therefore God does unjustly punish them. Answer. They who necessarily sin are
unjustly punished, except that necessity come voluntarily and by their own will.
But men have drawn upon them that necessity voluntarily in the first parents and
themselves do willingly sin. Therefore God does justly punish them.”] 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 [is inclined], but the very
willing [inclining] 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 [inclination].” 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). (See 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 peccandi97[Note: 7 97. the
possibility of sinning] and denied the potestas.98[Note: 8 98. (the) power (of
sinning)] In moral things, the ability implies the inclination and tendency.
(See 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 [ed. Bohn]) 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 choose99[Note: 9 99. WS: “To
choose” here means “to incline” or “to be willing.” It does not mean “to exert a
volition,” for a man is able to exert a volition “contrary to a present
inclination.”] 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 [moral] 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. (See 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” (Romans 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” (Romans 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 [inclination];
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 Corinthians 15:10). The testimony of the angelic consciousness is
also against this. The seraphim cried, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts”
(Isaiah 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 [inclination]; 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 [inability], 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 [to the contrary]
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 [to the contrary] 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.100[Note: 00 100. WS: Shedd, Sermons to the NaturalMan
1:1;Man 1:11;Man 1:14.]

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 arbitrium101[Note: 01 101. free will] 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 (Php 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 Corinthians 4:7); “you have received the
spirit of adoption” (Romans 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” (Deuteronomy 32:4; 2 Samuel
22:31; Psalms 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. (See 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” (Romans 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”102[Note: 02 102. Praecepta dei non sunt mensura virium, sed regula
officii; non docent quid nunc possumus, sed quid debeamus, et quod olim
potuerimus.] (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 [i.e., by the action of his own will]. 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)103[Note: 03 103. δουλεία] to righteousness” (Romans 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 motu104[Note: 04 104. by
his own movement] 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.105[Note: 05 105. WS: Will
in Works 2.17. So also does Locke, Understanding 2.8, 21; and Hobbes, Works
2.410.] 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 [i.e., the inclination] fully complies, and the
proposed effect does not prove, according to the laws of nature, to be connected
with his [executive] volition, the man is perfectly excused; he has a natural
inability to the thing required. For the will [inclination] 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 [inclination], the person has done his duty, and if
other things do not prove to be connected with his [executive] 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.106[Note: 06 106. The cause of a cause is the cause
of the thing caused.] 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,107[Note: 07 107. from within] 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. (See 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” (Psalms 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” (Romans 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.108[Note: 08 108. WS:
See also Howe, Blessedness of the Righteous, 18; Boston, Fourfold State 2.3.1-3;
and especially Owen, Holy Spirit 3.2.]

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 Corinthians 6:2); “God limits (horizei)109[Note: 09
109. ὁριζεῖ] a certain day: saying, Today if you will hear his voice harden not
your hearts” (Hebrews 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 hominem110[Note: 10 110. an argument
relying on personal abuse] 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 (Romans 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” (Genesis 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” (Galatians 5:17). Holiness and sin are in a conflict that causes the
regenerate to “groan within themselves” (Romans 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 (Romans 1:25).

S U P P L E M E N T S

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 [created] 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 [ed. Russell]) 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 Ephesians
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
(Ephesians 4:18; Romans 12:2; Genesis 6:5). They place it in the flesh or whole
man (Romans 6:6; Galatians 5:16), so that it is not a bare imputation of
another’s fault but an intrinsic adjacent [associated] corruption of our nature
itself, that we call by this name of original sin. In respect of our wills, we
are not innocent [but guilty] 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 [will] 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 [individual] fault, but
something of the same nature [with it] is derived unto us), but also by an
imputation of his actual transgression unto us all, his singular [individual]
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 (Revelation 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 [as their representative] 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 [associated] 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 [will] 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 [as an individual
representing not including his posterity], 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 Isaiah 53:1-12 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
[eternal] 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 (Joshua 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 (Deuteronomy 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 (Deuteronomy 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 (Jeremiah 31:29-33; Ezekiel
11:19-21; Ezekiel 18:1 ff.).

“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 [in baptism] 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 [i.e., baptism]. 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 [i.e., the
inclination] fully complies, and the proposed effect does not prove, according
to the laws of nature, to be connected with his [executive] volition, the man is
perfectly excused; he has a natural inability to the thing required. For the
will [inclination] 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 [inclination],
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 Ecclesiastes 5:2; Ecclesiastes 5:4-6. (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
[given by God to all men indiscriminately in the promises of common grace]
promise immediately to believe and repent, though this be not in his own power,
then it will follow [according to Williams’s affirmation that ‘God will never be
worse than his encouragement’] that whenever an unconverted man covenants with
such moral sincerity as gives a lawful right to the sacraments [according to
Williams and the halfway covenant party], 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 [and sinful] or new [and holy], 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 [Note: . 96 96. WS: So Ursinus (Christian Religion Q. 8)
argues: “They who cannot but sin are unjustly punished; but the unregenerate
cannot but sin: therefore God does unjustly punish them. Answer. They who
necessarily sin are unjustly punished, except that necessity come voluntarily
and by their own will. But men have drawn upon them that necessity voluntarily
in the first parents and themselves do willingly sin. Therefore God does justly
punish them.”] ). 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” (Matthew
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 (Jeremiah 31:18). When I assert that the
will being deprived of its liberty [to good] 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 [voluntary] 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 [compulsion]. Therefore if a necessity
[infallible certainty] 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 [that springs from the state of his will]?” 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 [the word]
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 [namely, necessity], 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 [certainty] 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 [compulsory] 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 [to good] 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 [as Paul argues in Romans
6:18-20; Romans 6:22]. 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 Romans 6:18-20; Romans
6:22).

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 [i.e., a creature of God] 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 Romans 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 [freely] commits sin is the slave of sin” (John
8:34); “of whom a man is [voluntarily] overcome, of the same is he brought in
bondage” (2 Peter 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.


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  CHAPTER 29: 5.00. PART 5: CHRISTOLOGY
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PART 5

Christology


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  CHAPTER 30: 5.01.     CHRIST'S THEANTHROPIC PERSON
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Christ’s Theanthropic Person Preliminary Considerations

Christology (christou logos)1[Note: 1. χριστοῦ λόγος = a word/discourse about
Christ] 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” (Matthew
13:17); “Abraham saw my day and was glad” (John 8:56; John 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”2[Note: 2. WS: The patristic and Reformation divines find
both the Trinity and the God-man in the Old Testament. Irenaeus (Against
Heresies 4.33-34) makes ample quotations in proof of both doctrines. For the
Lutheran and Reformed citations, see Gerhard, Chemnitz, Hase, Heppe, and
Schweitzer in locis.] (1 Peter 1:10-12). The Redeemer is announced under several
names in the Old Testament. The earliest designation is the “seed of the woman”
(Genesis 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
Isaiah 9:6 Messiah is denominated “prince of peace”; in Micah 5:5 of the
Redeemer it is said, “This man shall be our peace”; in Zechariah 9:10 he is
denominated the “speaker of peace”; and in Ephesians 2:14 “our peace.”3[Note: 3.
WS: See Kitto’s Encyclopedia; Speaker’s Commentary onGenesis 49:10; and Newton,
Prophecies, diss. 4.] Others explain the term Shiloh to mean “the desired one”
(Haggai 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).4[Note: 4. WS: The connection is strongly
against this last interpretation: “Probably the town Shiloh did not exist in
Jacob’s time, and Judah neither acquired nor lost the preeminence over the other
tribes at Shiloh. He was not the leader in the wilderness, for the people were
led by Moses and Aaron; nor did he gain any fresh authority at Shiloh. Every
ancient version, paraphrase, and commentator makes Shiloh, not the objective
case after the verb, but the nominative before the verb” (Speaker’s Commentary
in loco).] In Isaiah 7:14 the Redeemer is called Immanuel; in Daniel 9:25
Messiah; in Zechariah 6:12 the branch; and in Malachi 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),5[Note: 5. îÈùÑÄéçÇ] rendered in the
Septuagint by christos.6[Note: 6. χρίστος = Messiah, Anointed One] It is found
39 times in the Old Testament (see Alexander on Isaiah 52:13). The time of the
Redeemer’s advent is distinctly foretold in Genesis 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 Daniel 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.”7[Note: 7. WS: “It is supposed that John the Baptist began his ministry
about three and a half years before Christ; so that John’s ministry and Christ’s
put together made seven years, which were the last of Daniel’s weeks. Christ
came in the middle of the week, as Daniel foretold: ‘And in the middle of the
week he shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease’ ” (Edwards, Work of
Redemption in Works 1.407).] 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 (Genesis 3:15; Psalms 22:10; Micah 5:3; Galatians 4:4;
1 Timothy 2:15; Revelation 12:15) 2. born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew
1:23; Luke 1:26-35) 3. of the family of Shem (Genesis 9:26-27) 4. of the Hebrew
race (Exodus 3:18) 5. of the seed of Abraham (Genesis 12:3; Genesis 18:18;
Matthew 1:1; John 8:56; Acts 3:25) 6. of the line of Isaac (Genesis 17:19;
Romans 9:7; Galatians 4:23-28; Hebrews 11:8) 7. of the line of Jacob or Israel
(Genesis 28:4-14; Numbers 24:5-17; Isaiah 41:8; Luke 1:68; Luke 2:32; Acts
28:20) 8. of the tribe of Judah (Genesis 49:10; 1 Chronicles 5:2; Micah 5:2;
Matthew 2:6; Hebrews 7:14; Revelation 5:5)

9. of the house of David (2 Samuel 7:12-15; 1 Chronicles 17:11-14; Psalms
89:4-36; Isaiah 9:7; Matthew 1:1; Luke 1:69; Luke 2:4; John 7:42; Acts 2:30;
Romans 1:3; 2 Timothy 2:8; Revelation 22:16) 10. born at Bethlehem (Micah 5:2;
Matthew 2:6; Luke 2:4; John 7:42) 11. to suffer an agony (Genesis 3:15; Psalms
22:1-18; Isaiah 53:1-12; Zechariah 13:6-7; Matthew 26:37; Luke 24:26)

12. to die in a peculiar manner (Isaiah 53:9; Daniel 9:26; Numbers 21:9 compared
with John 3:14; Psalms 22:18 compared with John 19:24) 13. to be embalmed and
entombed (Isaiah 53:9; Matthew 27:57; Luke 23:56; John 19:38-41) 14. to rise
from the dead (Psalms 16:10; Acts 3:15) 15. to ascend into heaven (Psalms 68:18
compared with Ephesians 4:8; Psalms 110:1; Luke 24:51)

16. to come a second time spiritually in regeneration (Isaiah 40:10; Isaiah
62:11; Jeremiah 23:5-6; Hosea 3:5; Micah 5:4; Daniel 7:13-14; John 14:3; John
14:18; John 14:23; John 16:23; John 16:26)

17. to come a second time visibly (Job 19:25; Psalms 50:1-6; Daniel 12:1-2;
Matthew 25:31; 1 Corinthians 15:23; 1 Thessalonians 1:10; Revelation 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
[originally] 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” (Php 2:6-7; Galatians 4:4; Luke 1:35; Romans 9:5;
Colossians 2:9; Romans 1:3-4; 1 Timothy 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.”8[Note: 8. Non ipsa trinitas bene incarnata dicatur, quia
incarnatio non terminatur ad naturam divinam absolute, sed ad personam τοῦ λογοῦ
(tou logou) relate.] 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.
(See 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 [individual] 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. (See 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 entheos9[Note: 9. ἄνθρωπος ἔνθεος] (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.”10[Note: 0 10. Naturalis unio animae et corporis in unam naturam humanam
est separabilis, quaesoluta fuit morte Christi; personalis unio duarum
naturarum, divinae et humanae, in unam personam est inseparabilis, quia quod
semel λόγος (logos) assumpsit nunquam deposuit.] 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
[theanthropic] person, so that the dissolution of them should destroy his
[theanthropic] personality; but he was a [theanthropic] person by the uniting of
both into the Son of God”11[Note: 1 11. WS: In a similar manner, the body and
soul of a believer, though separated from each other between death and the
resurrection, are both as truly united to Christ during this disembodied period
as they were before it (Westminster Larger Catechism 86). But in this case the
union is mystical, not theanthropic.] (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.”12[Note: 2 12. WS: It did not become strictly omnipotent,
according to the later Lutheran doctrine, for this would be, insofar, the
conversion of the human nature into the divine. But it became powerful enough to
do anything which the Logos willed it to do.] 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” (Psalms
22:6). (See 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.18 [Note: .18 18. WS: Bengel onMark 13:32adopts the
explanation favored by Augustine: “Christ’s words may be understood to mean that
he does not know the time of the judgment day because it was not among his
instructions from the Father to declare the time. An apostle was able both to
know and not to know one and the same thing, according to the different point of
view (‘I know that I shall abide’;Php 1:25); how much more Christ?” In1
Corinthians 2:2to “know” means to “make known”: “I determined not to know
anything among you but Christ and him crucified.” The same is the meaning of
“know” inGenesis 22:12: “Now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not
withheld your son from me.” God has made Abraham’s faith to be known by this
trial.] ). 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)13[Note: 3 13. τὸ γεννώμενον = that which is begotten] 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.14[Note:
4 14. WS: The term occultatio (hiding, concealment) is used by Zanchi,
Heidegger, Ursinus, andothers to denote the self-emptying (heauton ekenōse,
ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσε = he emptied himself) of the Logos spoken of by St. Paul inPhp
2:7. The exinanition related to the use and manifestation of divine excellences,
not to their possession. Traces of thisare seen in Ambrose (On the Incarnation
1), who employs the terms retentio (keeping back, withholding) and retraxit
(holding back). Van Mastricht uses subducere (to take away stealthily) with
occultare (to hide). Francis Junius says: “In humana natura, gloriam et
majestatem apud homines non exercuerit Christus ut post resurrectionem et
ascensionem, sed veluti represserit et occultam continuerit: vel (ut loquitur
Irenaeus) quieverit, ut humana natura tentari et mori possit, quamvis interim
divinae naturae quaedam vindicia [sic] ad fidei confirmationem prodierint” [AG:
Christ did not make use of his glory and majesty in his human nature among men
as he did after his resurrection and ascension, but accordingly he restrained
and kept them hidden-or, as Irenaeus said, he remained quiescent (quieverit). He
did this so that the human nature could be tempted and die, although, meanwhile,
certain vindicia of the divine nature appeared for the confirmation of faith];
Theological Theses: Concerning the Humiliation of Christ. The words of Irenaeus
are the following: “As Christ became man in order to undergo temptation, so also
was he the Word that he might be glorified; the Word remaining quiescent, that
he might be capable of being tempted, dishonored, crucified, and suffering
death” (Against Heresies 3.19, quoted by Paraeus in Christian Doctrines Q. 37).
[AG: The word vindicia in the above passage from Junius may be an error in
Shedd’s citation. If Shedd cited the Latin correctly, then vindicia probably
carries the sense of “vindicating marks or evidences.” If the Latin word is
actually indicia (evidences), then the text reads “certain evidences of the
divine nature appeared.” Either way the meaning is nearly the same.] (See
supplement 5.1.4.)] 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.”15[Note: 5 15. Ipsa θεότητος plenitudo sese, prout et quatenas
ipsa libuit, humanitati assumtae insinuavit.] 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.”16[Note: 6 16. Videtur mihi, hic locus non
impie posse exponi hunc in modum; ut dicamus divinam sapientiam menti humanae
Christi effectus suos impressisse pro temporum ratione. By pro temporum ratione
(according to the manner of the times), Grotius presumably is referring to
Christ’s mental development appropriate to his chronological age.] 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,”17[Note: 7 17. quia
verbum hoc illi non releverat] says Turretin (13.13.5).18[Note: 8 18. WS: Bengel
onMark 13:32adopts the explanation favored by Augustine: “Christ’s words may be
understood to mean that he does not know the time of the judgment day because it
was not among his instructions from the Father to declare the time. An apostle
was able both to know and not to know one and the same thing, according to the
different point of view (‘I know that I shall abide’;Php 1:25); how much more
Christ?” In1 Corinthians 2:2to “know” means to “make known”: “I determined not
to know anything among you but Christ and him crucified.” The same is the
meaning of “know” inGenesis 22:12: “Now I know that you fear God, seeing you
have not withheld your son from me.” God has made Abraham’s faith to be known by
this trial.] 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 Matthew
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 [of the Father] 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” (Hebrews 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,19[Note: 9
19. point of time] 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)20[Note: 0 20. λόγος ἄσαρκος = the Word (Logos) outside of
the flesh] not the incarnate Logos (logos ensarkos).21[Note: 1 21. λόγος
ἔνσαρκος = the Word (Logos) enfleshed] 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” (Romans 9:5); “in him dwells
[now and forever] all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9);
“Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8);
“believers sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6); “we
have a great high priest who has passed into the heavens” (Hebrews 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 [mediator] 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). (See 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” (Ephesians 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.”22[Note: 2 22. For more information on this
passage from Calvin, see extra calvinisticum in the glossary 1.] “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.”23[Note: 3 23.
Christus dicitur de coelo descendisse ratione divinae naturae, non ita quod
natura divina in coelo desierit; sed quia in infimis novo modo coepit, scilicet
secundum naturam assumptam.] (See 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)24[Note: 4 24.
σπέρμα] of Abraham” (Hebrews 2:16); Christ “was made of the seed of David”
(Romans 1:3); in the first promise the Redeemer is denominated the “seed of the
woman” (Genesis 3:15); “forasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and
blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same” (Hebrews 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)25[Note: 5 25. ὑπεστησάτο] 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 [divine]
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
[Godhood] 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”26[Note: 6 26. homo ex substantia matris in saeculo
natus] In the theological nomenclature, “nature” is designated by “substance,”
and person by “subsistence.”27[Note: 7 27. See essentia and substantia in
glossary 1 for a discussion of these terms.]

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 [going before] the singular
[single] 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,28[Note: 8 28. θεάνθρωπος = God-man] God and man, the
Son of God, having assumed hagion to gennōmenon29[Note: 9 29. ἅγιον τὸ
γεννώμενον] (Luke 1:35) that holy thing that was born of the virgin,
anypostaton,30[Note: 0 30. ἀνυπόστατον = anhypostatic (see anhypostasis and
enhypostasis in glossary 1)] 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
[personal] subsistence in themselves, till they were united to the [trinitarian]
person 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
[human] nature of the Son of God according to Hebrews 2:14; Hebrews 2:16. The
[trinitarian] Son of God took “flesh and blood”to be his own [human] 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;31[Note: 1 31. WS: It is noticeable that in
this place Turretin describes Christ’s “human nature,” while existing in the
virgin mother, as a “spiritual” and “intelligent” substance and not as merely
physical. This is inconsistent with the creationist view adopted by Turretin.]
because it has not that peculiar incommunicable property which constitutes a
subsistence as distinguished from a substance [or a person as distinguished from
a nature]. 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
tends32[Note: 2 32. WS: This agrees with Aristotle’s materia appetit formam [AG:
matter seeks form].] (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.”33[Note: 3 33. Subsistentia non ad essentiam hominis pertinet, sed ad
terminationem humanitatis. For the meaning of terminus in this quotation, note
Shedd’s discussion of the word in this paragraph.] 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.”34[Note: 4 34. Non enim persona (alioquin duae essent in Christo
personae), sed natura humana, propria personalitate destituta, assumpta est.]
Calovius teaches that Christ as man was “born from the seminal mass”;35[Note: 5
35. natus e massa seminali] Hollaz says “animated from the seed”;36[Note: 6 36.
e semine animato] Baier says “from the bloodline of the virgin.”37[Note: 7 37. e
massa sanguinea virginis]

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 [i.e., as merely human
nature]. 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.38[Note: 8 38. WS: The human nature of Christ viewed by itself and
prior to the union with the Logos must be designated by the impersonal pronoun
it. We could not call it he; nor could we address it as you. InLuke 1:35the
neuter is employed: to gennōmenon (τὸ γεννώμενον), “that holy thing which shall
be born” or rather “which is being conceived.”]

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.39[Note: 9 39. WS: The more
accurate statement would be that the human nature in the virgin mother,
antecedent to the assumption of it by the Logos, is impersonal. Strictly
speaking, the human nature when once “in the person of Christ” is no longer
impersonal, because it has been personalized by the union. As Owen says, the
Logos “gave it its subsistence in his own person, whence it has its
individuation and distinction from all other persons whatever.”] 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.”40[Note: 0 40. Ineffabilis quaedam relatio divinae personae ad humanam
naturam per quam haec humana natura peculiariter est humana natura secundae
personae deitatis.] 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.’ ”41[Note: 1 41.
WS: Dorner (Christian Doctrine §93) objects to “the anhypostasia or
impersonality of the human nature” and asserts that “it has passed into no creed
and is only to a moderate extent the doctrine of theologians.” The extracts
given above disprove the latter assertion. Dorner’s objection to the tenet is
that “if a divine ego is supposed to take the place of the human, there is an
abridgment of the humanity, according to its complete idea-a more subtle kind of
Apollinarianism.” But the divine ego does not take the place of the human ego,
for the reason that there is no human ego. There is, at the moment of the
assumption, only the seed or unindividualized substance of the virgin. Dorner
assumes that a human nature without a human individuality is “abridged” and
incomplete humanity. But all the essential properties of humanity are in this
nature. Only it has not been constituted a particular person by conception in
the womb. This personalizing, which in the case of Christ’s humanity is produced
miraculously by its union with deity, adds no new properties to the human
nature. It only gives it a new form.] (See 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.42[Note: 2 42. WS: This description is traducian.
The creationist concedes only one side to the nature, namely, the sensuous; and
finds only physical properties.]

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)43[Note: 3 43. σπέρμα] of Abraham” (Hebrews 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 Php 2:6 by morphē theou.44[Note: 4 44.
μόρφη θεοῦ = form of God] This is not the same in every respect with ousia
theou45[Note: 5 45. οὐσία θεοῦ = being of God] or physis theou.46[Note: 6 46.
φύσις θεοῦ = nature of God] It is a personal form of the ousia47[Note: 7 47.
οὐσία = being] or physis theou.48[Note: 8 48. φύσις θεοῦ = nature of God] 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)49[Note: 9 49. ὄργανον ἐνυπόστατον ἴδιοποιησε]
(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 [in order to] 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).”50[Note: 0 50. Natura humana,
prius ἀνυπόστατος, in unitatem personae assumpta est a λόγῳ et facta
ἐνυπόστατος.] 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:51[Note: 1 51. ἀνυπόστατος] 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”52[Note: 2 52. Humana natura, ut Damascenus dicit,
habet suam personalitatem in Christo.] (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.”53[Note: 3 53. Materiam ex beatissimi
virginis substantia decisam.] 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[Note: 4 54. WS: It is at
this point that the strongest objection to the traducian theory arises. How can
unextended substance be subdivided? How can that have parts which has none of
the geometrical dimensions? (see pp. 476-77).]

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”55[Note: 5 55. Dicendum quod Verbum Dei non assumpsit
humanam naturam in universali sed in atomo, id est, in individuo, sicut
Damascenus ait, Orthod. Fid. 3.7; alioquin oporteret quod cuilibet homini
conveniret esse Dei Verbum, sicut convenit Christo.] (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” (Isaiah
11:2); “Christ was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without
sin”56[Note: 6 56. WS: In this passage, chōris hamartias (χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας =
without sin) qualifies pepeirasmenon (πεπειρασμένον = having been
tempted),showing that all of Christ’s temptations were sinless. He was not
“tempted and drawn away by inward lust” (James 1:14).] (Hebrews 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 [lit., which is being conceived, to
gennōmenon]”57[Note: 7 57. τὸ γεννώμενον] (Luke 1:35); “butter and honey shall
Immanuel eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good” (Isaiah
7:14-15); “a body have you prepared for me” (Hebrews 10:5); “this is my beloved
Son in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 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)”58[Note: 8 58. Eandam
humanam nostram naturam (opus videlicet suum) Christus redemit, eandam (quae
ipsius opus est) sanctificat, eandam a mortuis resuscitat, et ingenti gloria
(opus videlicet suum) ornat.] (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” (Romans 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 (Colossians 1:5) as meaning the same as “firstborn among many brethren”
(Romans 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)59[Note: 9 59. ἐσώθη καὶ ἠλευθερώθη] 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.60[Note: 0 60. Non conveniebat λόγῳ (logō), filio dei, assumere naturam
pollutam peccato. Quicquid enim natum est ex carne, peccatrice scilicet et non
sanctificata, caro est, mendacium et vanitas. Spiritus Sanctus optime novit
separare peccatum a natura hominis; substantiam ab accidente. Peccatum enim non
est de natura hominis, sed aliunde a diabolo naturae accessit. Separavit a foetu
omnem impuritatem, et contagionem peccati originalis.]

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 [supernatural] 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.”61[Note: 1 61. Idem Spiritus, singularissima praesentia et virtute, Mariam
semper virginem ad concipiendum mundi Salvatorem foecundam reddidit, semen
prolificum ex castis ejus sanguinibus elicuit, ab omni adhaerente peccato
purgavit, ipsique Mariae virtutem praebuit qua conciperet ipsum Dei Filium.]

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
Galatians 4:5 states that he was made of a woman,”62[Note: 2 62. Carnem humanam
habuit Christus ex substantia virginis Mariae, cum ejus filius (Luke 11:7), et
ex muliere factus (Galatians 4:5), dicatur.] 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.”63[Note: 3 63. Actio
Spiritus fere triplex fuit; foecundatio seminis virginei, humanae naturae
formatio, et ab omni labe praeservatio; quae inde bene derivari potest, quod
Christus, supernaturaliter generatus, culpa Adamica non tenetur, hinc labe
illius infici non potest.] 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.”64[Note: 4 64. Altingius observat “semen illud,
ex quo corpus Christi formatum est, ut a peccatrice decisam, sic peccato, saltem
quoad dispositionem, fuit infectum. At Spiritus Sanctus praeparando illud
repurgavit ab omni labe inhaerente; atque etiam principia infirmitatum, toti
speciei communium, quae manserunt, ab ἀνομία καὶ ἀταξία secrevit.”]

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).65[Note: 5 65. Semen illud
virgineum quasi defoecavit, non quidem ab impuritate morali seu peccato, utpote
cui semen necdum animatum non est obnoxium; sed ab intemperie physica, a qua,
suo tempore, peccatum potuisset resultare, aut saltem nativitatem ab omni
impuritate praeservavit, ad hoc, ut quod ex eo nasceretur esset sanctum (Luke
1:35).]

In 4.10.6 he says:66[Note: 6 66. WS: The impossibility of harmonizing the
Augustino-Calvinistic tenet that original sin as culpability is transmitted by
propagation with creationism is here virtually acknowledged by Van Mastricht.
Only physical corruption can be inherited, if only the body is propagated; but
physical corruption without moral, as Van Mastricht teaches, is not peccatum
(sin). And the cleansing from it is quasi cleansing. In 4.10.24 Van Mastricht
assigns as the principal reason for the absence of original sin from the human
nature of Christ that this nature though naturaliter in Adam, velut in capite et
radice naturae humanae (naturally in Adam, just as in the head and root of human
nature), was not foederaliter (federally) in him. But, in his reasoning, he
apparently confounds the simple humanity of Christ with the composite θεάνθρωπος
(theanthrōpos = God-man), who of course was neither naturally nor federally in
Adam (see Dorner, Person of Christ 2.308, 341n).]

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.67[Note: 7 67. Istud autem semen, licet per peccatores
ad Mariam fuerit propagatum; peccato tamen, seu malitiae morali, non fuit
obnoxium, cum malitia ista non cadat in inanimatum et irrationale, licet
intemperiem naturalem possit habere, quae postmodum peccato possit occasionem
praebere, quam hinc, a semine Mariano, per Spiritum Sanctum sublatam diximus.]

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 Romans 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.”68[Note: 8 68. In
primo conceptionis nostrae momento, ipsum semen ex quo homo formatur peccato
contaminatum et corruptum est.] It also condemns the Anabaptists who asserted
“that Christ did not assume his flesh and blood from the virgin Mary,69[Note: 9
69. WS: Even if the Romish dogma of the immaculate conception of Mary were true,
it would not follow that a human nature transmitted by her would also be
immaculate. Regeneration and sanctification by the Holy Spirit are confined to
the individual. They do not affect the specific nature in him. See pp. 91-92.]
but brought them with him from heaven.”70[Note: 0 70. Quod Christum carnem et
sanguinem suum non e Maria virgine assumpserit, sed e caelo attulerit.]

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.71[Note:
1 71. WS: Irving’s view is that Christ’s human nature after its union with the
Logos was still fallen and “sinful flesh” (Romans 8:3) as it was before the
union, but that by means of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit Christ repressed
all stirrings of this sinful flesh, so that he not only never committed an
outward transgression, but never exercised a sinful desire. At the same time,
Irving contends that Christ experienced all the temptations which sinful man
experiences. His words are as follows: Christ’s humanity “was flesh in the
fallen state and liable to all the temptations to which [fallen] flesh is
liable; but the soul of Jesus, thus anointed with the Holy Spirit, did ever
resist the suggestions of evil. I wish it to be clearly understood that I
believe it to be necessary unto salvation that a man should believe that
Christ’s soul was so held in possession by the Holy Spirit and so supported by
the divine nature as that it never assented unto an evil suggestion and never
originated an evil suggestion” (Irving, On the Incarnation: Its Method, 1). This
last assertion is inconsistent with the assertion that Christ “was liable to all
the temptations to which sinful flesh is liable.” If his human nature “never
originated an evil suggestion,” he could not have been tempted by inward lust,
which is one species of temptation that sinful man experiences, according
toJames 1:14. Irving’s view of Christ’s holiness seems to be that of spiritual
regeneration by the Holy Spirit as in the case of a believer, rather than of a
supernatural transformation by the miraculous conception. Only, the regeneration
in Christ’s case completely subjects the inward corruption, while in the
believer it imperfectly subjects it. According to the catholic doctrine, the
corruption is entirely extirpated from the human nature of Christ; according to
Irving’s doctrine, it remains, but is repressed and subdued: “They argue for an
inherent holiness; we argue for a holiness maintained by the person of the Son
through the operation of the Holy Spirit. The substance of our argument is that
Christ’s human nature was holy in the only way in which holiness under the fall
exists or can exist, namely, through inworking or energizing of the Holy Spirit”
(Irving, Works 5.564).] 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 [in this manner] 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.72[Note: 2 72. WS: Here, we notice an
important point of difference between traducianism and creationism. According to
the former theory, both the soul and body of Christ were formed simultaneously
and by one act of the Holy Spirit out of the psychico-physical substance of the
mother. According to the latter, only the body was formed out of the virgin’s
merely physical substance, the soul being subsequently created ex nihilo and
infused into the body. Turretin presents this view in 13.11.11-15. As in the
creation of Adam, God first made his body out of the substance of the earth and
then by a second act created and inbreathed his soul, so, according to the
creationist, in the origination of the humanity of our Lord two acts must be
postulated: one by which his human body was conceived out of the substance of
the virgin and another by which his human soul was created from nothing.]

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 Romans 5:1-21 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.73[Note: 3 73. WS: Shedd in
Presbyterian Review (July 1881): 618-21.] (See supplement 5.1.8.) S U P P L E M
E N T S

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 [theanthropic] 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.14 [Note: .1414. WS: The term occultatio (hiding,
concealment) is used by Zanchi, Heidegger, Ursinus, and others to denote the
self-emptying (heauton ekenōse, ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσε = he emptied himself) of the
Logos spoken of by St. Paul inPhp 2:7. The exinanition related to the use and
manifestation of divine excellences, not to their possession. Traces of this are
seen in Ambrose (On the Incarnation 1), who employs the terms retentio (keeping
back, withholding) and retraxit (holding back). Van Mastricht uses subducere (to
take away stealthily) with occultare (to hide). Francis Junius says: “In humana
natura, gloriam et majestatem apud homines non exercuerit Christus ut post
resurrectionem et ascensionem, sed veluti represserit et occultam continuerit:
vel (ut loquitur Irenaeus) quieverit, ut humana natura tentari et mori possit,
quamvis interim divinae naturae quaedam vindicia [sic] ad fidei confirmationem
prodierint” [AG: Christ did not make use of his glory and majesty in his human
nature among men as he did after his resurrection and ascension, but accordingly
he restrained and kept them hidden-or, as Irenaeus said, he remained quiescent
(quieverit). He did this so that the human nature could be tempted and die,
although, meanwhile, certain vindicia of the divine nature appeared for the
confirmation of faith]; Theological Theses: Concerning the Humiliation of
Christ. The words of Irenaeus are the following: “As Christ became man in order
to undergo temptation, so also was he the Word that he might be glorified; the
Word remaining quiescent, that he might be capable of being tempted, dishonored,
crucified, and suffering death” (Against Heresies 3.19, quoted by Paraeus in
Christian Doctrines Q. 37). [AG: The word vindicia in the above passage from
Junius may be an error in Shedd’s citation. If Shedd cited the Latin correctly,
then vindicia probably carries the sense of “vindicating marks or evidences.” If
the Latin word is actually indicia (evidences), then the text reads “certain
evidences of the divine nature appeared.” Either way the meaning is nearly the
same.] (See supplement 5.1.4.)] ). 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 no [personal] subsistence of its own, but subsists [personally] only
through the divine [personality], 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 [ed. Harper]) 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 [namely, the Logos]
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
[namely, the Logos]. It is, therefore, expressed by a word of the same import
with that used in Genesis 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’ (Exodus 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 [chaotic]
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 [humanity]. 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 [humanity] 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 (Romans 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 [human seed], but also of the will of man [human will]
and of the will of the flesh [sexual appetite]; but he was born only of flesh
and blood [the seed of the virgin], not of the will of man [human will] nor of
the will of the flesh [sexual appetite], 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 [i.e., of a flesh which,
prior to its miraculous sanctification, was sinful in the virgin mother, because
propagated from Adam]. 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
[as the mother of the God-man] 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
(Php 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.


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  CHAPTER 31: 5.02.     CHRIST'S DIVINITY
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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,1[Note: 1. κατὰ σάρκα = according to the flesh] omitting that aspect of
him presented in the other class of passages that describe him kata pneuma
hagiōsynēs2[Note: 2. κατὰ πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης = according to the spirit of
holiness] (Romans 1:4), ho ōn epi pantōn3[Note: 3. ὁ ὤν ἐπὶ πάντων = the one who
is over all] (9:5), en morphē theou hyparchōn4[Note: 4. ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ ὑπάρχων =
existing/being in the form of God] (Php 2:6), and theos5[Note: 5. θεός = God]
(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.


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  CHAPTER 32: 5.03.     CHRIST'S HUMANITY
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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” (Genesis 3:15); “the Son of Man” (Matthew 13:37); “a
virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah
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” (Galatians 4:4); “Jesus Christ concerning the flesh was made
of the seed of David” (Romans 1:3); “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 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; Luke 24:36-44; Matthew 4:1; John 11:33; John
11:35; John 13:23; Hebrews 4:15; Hebrews 5:8; Php 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),1[Note: 1. δοκεῖν = to think,
suppose] 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” (Matthew
26:38) and Jesus “marveled” (Mark 6:6; Matthew 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 sōma2[Note: 2. σῶμα = body, flesh] and
psychē3[Note: 3. ψυχή =soul] and not the pneuma4[Note: 4. πνεῦμα = spirit] in
St. Paul’s classification in 1 Thessalonians 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 Romans 1:3-4, which describes
Christ kata sarka5[Note: 5. κατὰ σάρκα = according to the flesh] and kata pneuma
hagiōsynēs,6[Note: 6. κατὰ πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης = according to the spirit of
holiness] and by 9:5, which describes him kata sarka7[Note: 7. κατὰ σάρκα =
according to the flesh] and epi pantōn theos.8[Note: 8. ἐπί παντῶν θεός = God
over all (things)] 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[Note: 9. WS: Dorner (Christian Doctrine 3.280) is Eutychian in asserting
that Christ had “a God-human nature” and in denominating “the God-human
personality” “a God-humanity.” This is confounding and mixing the natures. A
“God-human nature” would be a theanthropic nature. There is a “God-human” or
theanthropic person having two natures, but not a “God-human” or theanthropic
nature having two sets of properties, divine and human. A “God-humanity,”
strictly speaking, would be a divine humanity, that is, a human nature that is
divine. But this is very different from a divine-human person. Hooker’s
statement is excellent on this point: “Let us set it down for a rule or
principle necessary to the plain deciding of all doubts and questions about the
union of natures in Christ, that of both natures there is a cooperation often,
an association always, but never any mutual participation, whereby the
properties of the one are infused into the other” (Polity 5.53). Hooker quotes
the following from Gregory of Nyssa and adds that it is “so plain and direct for
Eutyches” that he “stands in doubt that the words are his whose name they
carry”: “The nature which Christ took weak and feeble from us, by being mingled
with deity, became the same which deity is; so that the assumption of our
substance into his was like the blending of a drop of vinegar with the huge
ocean, whereby although it continue still, yet not with those properties which
severed it has; because since the instant of the conjunction all distinction of
the one from the other is extinct, and whatsoever we can now conceive of the Son
of God is nothing else but mere deity.” It may be objected that the traducianist
seems to affirm a nature with two sets of properties when he postulates a “human
nature” that is both psychical and physical. But this does not mean that one and
the same substance has both psychical and physical properties, but that two
distinct and different substances, the psychical and the physical, are combined
in a complex unity to which the general title of “human nature” is given. Each
substance has its own properties diverse from those of the other. But the two
are associated in a complex whole, a common “specific nature,” from which each
individual man is derived both mentally and bodily.]


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  CHAPTER 33: 5.04.     CHRIST'S UNIPERSONALITY
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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 Romans 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 Romans 1:4). Christ is described by St. Paul kata
sarka1[Note: 1. κατὰ σάρκα = according to the flesh] and kata pneuma
hagiōsynēs,2[Note: 2. κατὰ πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης = according to the spirit of
holiness] 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 (Php 2:6-11; 1 Timothy 3:16;
Hebrews 1:6-9 compared with 2:14; John 1:14; 1 John 1:1-3; 1 John 4:3; Galatians
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);3[Note: 3. WS: The reading theou
(θεοῦ = of God) is supported byà, B, Vulgate, Syriac, Textus Receptus, and Hort;
kyriou (κυρίου = of the Lord) is supported by A, C, D, E, Sahidic, Coptic,
Tischendorf, and Lachmann.] “God spared not his own son (idiou huiou)”4[Note: 4.
ἰδίου υἱοῦ] (Romans 8:32); “they crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians
2:8); “redemption through the blood tou huiou tēs agapēs autou”5[Note: 5. τοῦ
υἱοῦ τῆς ἀγάπης αὐτοῦ = of his beloved son] (Colossians 1:13-14); “a virgin
shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (Matthew 1:33);
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” (Romans 9:5); and “worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power”
(Revelation 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 Corinthians 15:1-58 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.6[Note: 6. WS:
“Virgo Maria non nudum aut merum hominem, sed verum dei filium, concepit et
genuit: unde recte mater dei appellatur” [AG: The virgin Mary did not conceive
and give birth to only a mere man, but the true Son of God. Consequently, she is
rightly called the “Mother of God”]; Formula of Concord 8.] 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?” (Matthew 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” (Psalms 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.”7[Note: 7. WS: When St. Paul says: “I hate what I do”
and “with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh I myself
serve the law of sin” (Romans 7:15; Romans 7:25), the two modes of consciousness
spring out of one nature, namely, the mental or spiritual and are both alike
mental. This would not illustrate the difference in the consciousness that
arises from two diverse natures.]

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 [i.e., in the
self-consciousness] 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. (See 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 idiomatum8[Note: 8. communication of attributes (see glossary 1)]
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”9[Note: 9. in which the human nature is exalted by divine attributes]
(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” (Matthew
28:18; Matthew 28:20); “concerning the flesh, Christ is God over all, blessed
forever” (Romans 9:5); “at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow” (Php 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. (See 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”10[Note: 0 10. Hae duae
naturae in persona Christi nunquam confunduntur, vel altera in alteram mutatur.]
(Hase, Symbolical Books, 762); that “the essential properties of one nature
never become the essential properties of the other nature”11[Note: 1 11. Unius
naturae proprietates essentiales nunquam alterius naturae proprietates
essentiales fiunt.] (Hase, Symbolical Books, 763); that “in this union, each
nature retains its essence and properties”12[Note: 2 12. In hac unione, utraque
natura essentiam et proprietates suas retinet.] (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”13[Note: 3 13. Non tantum ut deus, verum etiam ut homo, ubique praesens
dominatur et regnat a mari ad mare, et usque ad terminos terrae.] 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.14[Note: 4 14. WS: A similar
self-contradiction is found in the Formula of Concord respecting the doctrine of
predestination and election (see Müller, Sin 2.228-30 [trans. Urwick]).] 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”15[Note: 5 15. Quo filius dei idiomata
divinae suae naturae humanae naturae, propter unionem personalem, vere et
realiter communicavit, ad communem possessionem, usurpationem, et
denominationem.] (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)”16[Note: 6 16. Subjectum, cuidata est majestas divina,
est Christus secundum humanam naturam, vel quod idem est, humana natura in
ὑπόστασιν τοῦ λογού assumpta.] (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”17[Note: 7 17. Communicatio naturaram in persona
Christi est mutua divinae et humanae Christi naturae participatio, per quam
natura divina τοῦ λογού particeps facta humanae naturae, hanc permeat, perficit,
inhabitat, sibique appropriat; humana vero particeps facta divinae naturae, ab
hac permeatur, perficitur et inhabitatur.] (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.18[Note: 8 18. WS: Dorner
(Christian Doctrine §§93, 95) so understands it: “The Reformed disown the
communication of essence of the Lutherans.”] 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.”19[Note:
9 19. Genus majestaticum continet propositiones quibus de natura humana idiomata
naturae divinae praedicantur.] Gerhard (Loci 4.12) says: “We teach that the
[human] 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” (Matthew 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)20[Note: 0 20. οὐσίαι] constitute one personal subsistence
(hypostasis).21[Note: 1 21. ὑπόστασις] 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). (See 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.22[Note: 2 22. μὶα θεανδρίκη ἐναργεῖα = one theandric (i.e., God-human)
energy] 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.

S U P P L E M E N T S

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 [denoting the person], not in
an abstract [denoting the nature]; 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 [deity], which is the abstract impersonal term, no property of the
manhood may be affirmed, but only the properties of the Godhood, because Godhood
[deity] signifies not the whole person who has both natures, but only the divine
nature itself. But of [incarnate] 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’ (Hebrews 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 Romans 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 Zechariah 10:10 : ‘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 [factors] 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 sin offering]; 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 [strict]. 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 [strictness] 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).”


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  CHAPTER 34: 5.05.     CHRIST'S IMPECCABILITY
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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.1[Note: 1. WS: Neander, Life of Christ, 77-78 (ed. Bohn); Jeremy
Taylor, Life of Christ §3; Ullmann, Sinlessness of Jesus 3.1.2; Trench, Studies
in the Gospels (“The Temptation”). Ullmann is profound and thoughtful on
Christ’s sinlessness, but deficient on the subject of his impeccability. Edwards
(Will 3.2) asserts Christ’s impeccability.] 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,2[Note: 2. to be able not to sin (see posse peccare et non posse peccare
in glossary 1)] but by the non posse peccare.3[Note: 3. to not be able to sin
(see posse peccare et non posse peccare in glossary 1)] 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. (See 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 Hebrews 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 Timothy 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. (See 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” (Hebrews 12:2). He is
denominated the “last Adam” in distinction from the first, and as such he is “a
quickening spirit” (1 Corinthians 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 Romans 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.4[Note: 4. WS: It is remarkable that a
theologian of such soundness and accuracy as the elder Hodge should deny the
impeccability of the God-man. “The sinlessness of our Lord,” he says (Theology
2.457), “does not amount to absolute impeccability. It was not a non potest
peccare (he is not able to sin). Temptation implies the possibility of sin. If
from the constitution of his person it was impossible for Christ to sin, then
his temptation was unreal and without effect, and he cannot sympathize with his
people.” Theodore Mopsuestia and Abelard denied 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” (Hebrews 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?” (Romans 7:19-20;
Romans 7:24). 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” (Galatians
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
apeirastos5[Note: 5. ὁ γὰρ θεὸς ἀπείραστος = for God cannot be tempted] (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 (Hebrews 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” (Matthew 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 (Matthew 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” (Hebrews 12:4;
Hebrews 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 epithymia6[Note: 6. ἐπιθυμία = lust] spoken of is the
same which St. Paul mentions in Romans 7:7 as the equivalent of hamartia.7[Note:
7. ἁμαρτία = sin] 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.8[Note: 8. you shall not have evil desires]
St. James (1:2-3) bids the believer to “count it all joy when he falls into
divers [innocent] 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; John
12:43; Romans 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 [of heart], and pray God if peradventure the
thought (epinoia)9[Note: 9. ἐπίνοια] of your heart may be forgiven you.” Simon
Magus’s particular lust was avarice; it was wickedness (kakia)10[Note: 0 10.
κακία] 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 Hebrews 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.11[Note: 1 11. WS: When Westminster
Larger Catechism 37 affirms that “Christ was born of the virgin Mary, yet
without sin,” the meaning is not that he “was born of the virgin Mary, yet did
not commit sin,” but that he “was born sinless of the virgin Mary.”] This is
evident, because, in the original chōris hamartias12[Note: 2 12. χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας
= without sin] qualifies pepeirasmenon.13[Note: 3 13. πεπειρασμένον = tempted]
Christ was tempted without sin, or sinlessly, “in all points like as we
are.”14[Note: 4 14. WS: The preposition chōris (χωρίς = without, apart from)
denotes entire separation (chōrizein,χωρίζειν = to separate). The author of
Hebrews frequently uses it. Their consecration was oathless: “Those priests were
made without an oath (chōris horkōmosias,χωρὶς ὁρκωμοσίας)” (Hebrews 7:21). The
dedication was not bloodless: “The first testament was not dedicated without
blood (chōris haimatos,χωρὶς αἵματος)” (9:18). Remission is not bloodless:
“There is no remission without shedding of blood (chōris haimatekchysias,χωρὶς
αἱματεκχυσίας)” (9:22). So, too, any temptation that is chōris hamartias (χωρὶς
ἁμαρτίας = without sin) is sinless: wholly separate from sin, either internal or
external. Had the writer omitted chōris hamartias (χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας), the passage
would read: “Tempted in all points (kata panta, κατὰ πάντα) like as we are.” In
adding this, he modifies kata panta (κατὰ πάντα) so that it reads: “all points,
sin excepted.” See Ebrard onHebrews 4:15.]

Temptations from evil desire have a different moral quality from those presented
through innocent desire. The former are di’ hamartias15[Note: 5 15. δι᾽ ἁμαρτίας
= through sin] or ex hamartias,16[Note: 6 16. ἐξ ἁμαρτίας = from sin] not chōris
hamartias.17[Note: 7 17. χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας = without sin] 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 [and innocent] 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 Galatians 5:19; Galatians 5:21, 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?” (Isaiah 14:10). (See 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” (Hebrews
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” (Isaiah 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!” (Matthew 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”18[Note: 8 18. gemuit sub pondere cymba] (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”
(Colossians 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” (Psalms 2:2; Psalms 2:4); “he must reign till he has put all enemies
under his feet” (1 Corinthians 15:25); “it became him for whom are all things,
to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (Hebrews
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 teliōsai19[Note: 9 19. τελιῶσαι = to make perfect] and not
hagiazein20[Note: 0 20. ἁγιάζειν = to make holy, sanctify] 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”
(Galatians 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” (Isaiah
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”
(Hebrews 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.

S U P P L E M E N T S

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 (Hebrews 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 [infinite and omnipotent] 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
[concupiscence] 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 [infinite and omnipotent] 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 [infinite and omnipotent] 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 (Isaiah 43:1-4; Isaiah 49:7-9; Isaiah 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 (Psalms 110:4; Psalms 2:7-8; Isaiah 52:13-15; Isaiah
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’ (Jeremiah 23:5-6; Jeremiah 33:15; Isaiah 9:6-7; Luke 24:44; Hebrews
6:17-18; Psalms 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 Corinthians 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 (Romans 1:24; Romans 1:26; Romans
1:28).”

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 [seduced] of his own lust and enticed.” So, also, are they in
Galatians 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; James 1:12.
Seduction is temptation with sin or sinful temptation. Trial is temptation
“without sin” or innocent temptation. Ebrard (on Hebrews 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.21[Note: 1 21. πειρασμός = temptation] 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.


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  CHAPTER 35: 6.00. PART 6: SOTERIOLOGY
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PART 6

Soteriology


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  CHAPTER 36: 6.01.     CHRIST'S MEDIATORIAL OFFICES
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Christ’s Mediatorial Offices

Soteriology (sōtērias logos)1[Note: 1. σωτηρίας λόγος = a word/discourse about
salvation] 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 Timothy 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 Corinthians 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 (Daniel 9:25; Psalms 2:2; Psalms 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” (Matthew
16:20; Luke 9:20; John 1:25; John 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
Galatians 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 Samuel 2:25);
“there is not any daysman between us, to lay his hand upon us both” (Job 9:33);
and “therefore when he [the mediator] comes into the world, he says, A body have
you prepared for me” (Hebrews 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 Php 2:5; Php 2:8 : “Let this [lowly] 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” (Matthew 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” (Colossians
1:19); “the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him to show unto his
servants” (Revelation 1:1); “he became obedient unto death” (Php 2:8); the Son
of God “was made under the law” (Galatians 4:4); “he put all things under his
feet and gave him to be head over all things” (Ephesians 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 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
Corinthians 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 Corinthians 15:24; 1 Corinthians 15:28 : “Then comes the end [of the economy
of redemption], 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 [the triune] 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 [available] sacrifice for sin”
(Hebrews 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).2[Note: 2. WS: See also Christ’s parables of the foolish
virgins (Matthew 25:1-46) and the wedding garment (Matthew 22:1-46). Cf.
Witsius, Apostles’ Creed, diss. 10.42-44; 26.76.] 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 Php 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
Hebrews 2:9 : “We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels [i.e.,
was made a man; v. 7.], for the suffering of death crowned with glory and
honor”; and in Revelation 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. (See supplement
6.1.1.)

Jesus Christ is represented in Scripture as the mediator of a covenant: “Jesus
the mediator of the new covenant” (Hebrews 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” (Malachi 3:1); “this cup is the new
covenant (diathēkē)3[Note: 3. διαθήκη] in my blood” (Luke 22:20; cf. Matthew
14:24; Matthew 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” (Hebrews 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 Galatians 3:16 : “Now to Abraham and his
seed were the promises made. He says not, And to seeds, as of many [seeds]; but
as to one [seed], 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” (Isaiah 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”4[Note: 4. WS: “Israel, as
well as the Messiah, and in due dependence on him, was to be the light of the
Gentiles, the Redeemer of apostate nations” (Alexander onIsaiah 59:21). In
Isaiah, the “servant of the Lord” is sometimes national (i.e., the church) and
sometimes personal (i.e., the Messiah). This is the key to the interpretation.]
(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.5[Note: 5. WS: Christ is the
mediator of the covenant of redemption as well as of grace; for though no one
mediates between the Father and the incarnate Son, yet as the elect are one with
him in the former covenant as well as the latter, he is a mediator in respect to
them in the former case as well as in the latter. All the benefits that come to
the church from the covenant between the Father and the Son are mediated to it
through the Son.] 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”
(Isaiah 42:1-6); “I appoint (diatithemai)6[Note: 6. διατίθεμαι] 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” (Isaiah 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” (Psalms 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 Isaiah 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 Galatians 3:16 : “To Abraham and his seed were
the promises made”; but this seed “is Christ.” The elect are here (as also in 1
Corinthians 12:12) called “Christ,” because of the union between Christ and the
elect. And in like manner, when Christ, as in Isaiah 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” (Galatians 2:20); his resurrection
involves their resurrection: “Grown together in the likeness of his
resurrection” (Romans 6:5); his exaltation brings their exaltation: “You shall
sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28); “we shall
judge angels” (1 Corinthians 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” (Ephesians 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” (Galatians 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” (Isaiah 53:10; Psalms
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” (Isaiah 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 Corinthians 3:14 : “Moses put a veil [of types
and ceremonies] 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 Hebrews 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.7[Note: 7. WS: The difference between these two
phases of one and the same evangelical covenant is marked in the Authorized
Version of the New Testament by the translation of diathēkē (διαθήκη). It is
generally rendered “covenant” when it refers to the administration of mercyin
the old dispensation and “testament” when it refers to the administration of
mercy in the new. But the only passage in which it can with any plausibility
mean “testament” isHebrews 9:16-17; and in this “covenant” might be used in
accordance with the following rendering: “For where a covenant is, the death of
the covenantor (tou diathemenou, τοῦ διαθεμένου) of necessity is implied (anankē
pheresthai, ἀνάγκη φέρεσθαι). For a covenant is valid [only] over dead victims
(nekrois, νεκροῖς); since it is never of force while the covenantor (ho
diathemenos, ὁ διαθέμενος) lives. Wherefore, neither the first covenant was
instituted without blood [i.e., without a vicarious victim].” The clause death
of the covenantor is natural from the Hebrew point of view. In the biblical
conception, the covenantor is identified with his substituted offering. The
death of the offering is equivalent, before the divine tribunal, to the death of
the offerer. The covenantor is reckoned to have died when his vicarious victim
dies. Such a phrase as the death of the covenantor would not have seemed strange
in the least to the Hebrews, to whom the epistle was addressed.]

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” (Deuteronomy 18:15;
Deuteronomy 18:18; Acts 3:22); “the spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because
the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings” (Isaiah 16:1; Luke 4:18). His
priestly office is taught in the following: “You are a priest forever after the
order of Melchizedek” (Psalms 110:4; Hebrews 5:5-6); “we have a great high
priest that is passed into the heavens” (Hebrews 4:14-15). His kingly office is
taught in the following: “He shall be called the prince of peace” (Isaiah
9:6-7); “I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion” (Psalms 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” (Revelation 13:8);
“the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head” (Genesis 3:15); “to
declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past” (Romans
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” (Hebrews 9:15;
Galatians 3:8; Galatians 3:14; Galatians 3:16-18 compared with Genesis 17:7;
Genesis 22:18); “we believe that through the grace of Christ we shall be saved
even as they [the fathers]” (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 [Jewish dispensation] having a shadow of good things to
come” (Hebrews 10:1-10); the Jewish ordinances “are a shadow of things to come,
but the body is of Christ” (Colossians 2:17; Isaiah 53:1-12); “I the Lord have
called you and will give you for a light of the Gentiles” (Isaiah 42:6); “unto
us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them” (Hebrews 4:2).

Faith in the mediator was the unmeritorious but indispensable condition of
salvation8[Note: 8. WS: On the use of the term condition applied to the covenant
of grace, see Witsius, Apostles’ Creed, diss. 1 n. 44.] before the advent as
well as after it: “The just [i.e., the justified] shall live by faith” (Habakkuk
2:4, quoted by St. Paul in Romans 1:17); “blessed are all they that put their
trust in him” (Psalms 2:12); “Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for
righteousness” (Romans 4:3); “David says, Blessed is the man to whom the Lord
will not impute sin” (4:8); “these all died in faith” (Hebrews 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 Galatians 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 [ceremonial] 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 (Psalms 32:1-11; Psalms 32:51; Psalms 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; John 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 (Isaiah 9:6), witness (55:4), interpreter (Job
33:23), apostle (Hebrews 3:1), word (John 1:1), truth (14:6), and wisdom
(Proverbs 8:1-36). 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; Isaiah 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” (Colossians 2:3). Hence the voice
from heaven to mankind: “This is my beloved Son, hear him” (Matthew 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” (Matthew 5:34). Merely human prophets, like Isaiah
(see Isaiah 6:1-13), 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”
(Matthew 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:
him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 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 Peter 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” (Revelation 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 Peter 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 Peter 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 (Romans 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” (Matthew 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 Ephesians
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
[teaching] of the Lord [through Paul]” (Acts 13:12). In 1 Corinthians 1:6 and
Revelation 1:2 the preaching of the gospel is denominated “the testimony of
Christ.” In 2 Corinthians 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 Peter 3:19 and Ephesians 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 Peter 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 (Matthew 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 [saints enlightened]; 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 Corinthians 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 Hebrews 5:1 : “Every high
priest is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both
gifts and sacrifices for sins.”9[Note: 9. WS: Cf. “Priest” in Kitto’s
Encyclopedia; Lowman, Hebrew Ritual; Outram, On Sacrifice; Kurtz, Mosaic
Sacrifices; Cave, On Sacrifice; Blunt, Coincidences, 14-22.] 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” (Genesis 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 Genesis 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 [a sin offering] 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 Leviticus 17:10; Leviticus 17:12; 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”
(Genesis 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 [Authorized Version:
princes] 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” (Hebrews 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 Hebrews 7:1-28. The king of Salem was the only one of his class.
He was “without father, without mother, without descent (agenealogētos),10[Note:
0 10. ἀγενεαλόγητος] 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” (Ephesians 4:11-12). But he did not appoint any to be priests to
“offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins” (Hebrews 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” (Hebrews 9:14; Hebrews 9:28); 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” (Hebrews 2:17); “a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28); “my blood is
shed for you” (Luke 22:19); “he made him to be sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21);
“Christ was made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13); “Christ suffered for our sins
the just for the unjust” (1 Peter 3:18); “he is the propitiation for our sins”
(1 John 2:2); “he made his soul an offering for sin” (Isaiah 53:10); “he spared
not his own Son, but delivered him up for us” (Romans 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” (Ephesians 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” (Hebrews 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; John 17:20). 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 Romans 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 Hebrews
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” (Matthew 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”
(Galatians 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” (Ephesians 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).

S U P P L E M E N T

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 Corinthians 15:24-28. “It is certain (1) that the divine, essential, and
natural kingdom of Christ [as the second person of the Trinity] 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 exercise [as
mediator] of divine power, wherein he is absolute and supreme. When this
[mediatorial and redeeming power] ceases he shall be subject unto the Father in
that [human] nature, and only so. Wherefore when this work [of mediation between
God and sinners] 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 [in redemption]. Then will God ‘be all
in all.’ ”

Edward Irving (Christ’s Kingly Office) remarks to the same effect: “To give up
this superinduced power [of mediator between God and sinful men] 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 [tri]personalities and
offices-shall be all in all.”


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 37: 6.02.     VICARIOUS ATONEMENT
========================================================================

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)1[Note: 1.
ἀντί] many” (Matthew 20:28); “this is my body which is given for (anti)2[Note:
2. ἀντί] you” (Mark 10:45). In these two passages the preposition anti3[Note: 3.
ἀντί] indisputably denotes substitution. Passages like “Archelaus reigned in the
room (anti)4[Note: 4. ἀντί] of his father Herod” (Matthew 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 hyper5[Note: 5. ὑπέρ] is employed: “This
cup is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for (hyper)6[Note: 6. ὑπέρ]
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” (Romans 5:6-8); “he delivered him
up for us all” (8:32); “if one died for all then all died” (2 Corinthians
5:14-15); “he made him to be sin for us” (5:21); “being made a curse for us”
(Galatians 3:13); “Christ gave himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to
God” (Ephesians 5:2; Ephesians 5:25); “the man Christ Jesus gave himself a
ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5-6); Christ “tasted death for every man” (Hebrews
2:9); Christ “suffered the just for the unjust” (1 Peter 3:18). The preposition
hyper,7[Note: 7. ὑπέρ] 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)8[Note: 8. ὑπέρ] his friends”
(John 15:13). The preposition hyper9[Note: 9. ὑπέρ] 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[Note: 0 10. ὑπέρ] is
employed, because it has two meanings. In 2 Corinthians 5:20-21hyper11[Note: 1
11. ὑπέρ] is indisputably put for anti:12[Note: 2 12. ἀντί] “Now then we are
ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us; we pray you in
Christ’s stead (hyper christou),13[Note: 3 13. ὑπὲρ χριστοῦ] be reconciled to
God. For he has made him who knew no sin to be sin for us (hyper
hēmōn).”14[Note: 4 14. ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν] In Philem. 13 hyper15[Note: 5 15. ὑπέρ] is
clearly equivalent to anti:16[Note: 6 16. ἀντί] “Whom I would have retained with
me, that in your stead (hyper sou)17[Note: 7 17. ὑπὲρ σοῦ] he might have
ministered unto me.” In 2 Corinthians 5:14 it is said that “the love of Christ
constrains us, because we thus judge that if one died for all (hyper
pantōn),18[Note: 8 18. ὑπὲρ πάντῶν] then all died (pantes apethanon).”19[Note: 9
19. πάντες ἀπέθανον] 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 hyper20[Note: 0 20. ὑπέρ]
may be used in the sense of anti.21[Note: 1 21. ἀντί] 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).22[Note: 2 22. ἤ καὶ ἐθελοις ἄν, ὧ ἐπίσθενες, ὑπὲρ τουτοῦ
ἀποθανεῖν = Would you even be willing to die, O Episthenes, on his behalf?] The
same use of hyper23[Note: 3 23. ὑπέρ] 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 anti24[Note: 4
24. ἀντί] is employed, and in the remainder hyper25[Note: 5 25. ὑπέρ] 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.”26[Note: 6 26. erōtēson toutous, mallon
de egō touth’ hyper sou poiēsō (ἐρωτησόν τούτους, μαλλὸν δὲ ἐγω τουθ᾽ ὑπὲρ σοῦ
ποιήσω)] Winer (Grammar, 383 [ed. Thayer]) remarks that “hyper27[Note: 7 27.
ὑπέρ] is sometimes nearly equivalent to anti”28[Note: 8 28. ἀντί] (see
especially Euripides, Alcestis 700; Thucydides 1.141; Polybius 3.67; Philem.
13). De Wette on Romans 5:7 says: “Hyper29[Note: 9 29. ὑπέρ] can signify ‘in
place of’; 2 Corinthians 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 Romans 4:25; Galatians
1:4; Romans 8:3; 1 Corinthians 15:3; 2 Corinthians 5:14, the concept of
substitution, at least in substance, ought not to be rejected.”30[Note: 0 30.
Wenn auch in vielen Stellen das apothanein hyper nur ein Sterben zum besten
Anderer ist, so kann doch wohl in den Stellen,Romans 4:25;Galatians 1:4;Romans
8:3;1 Corinthians 15:3;2 Corinthians 5:14, der Begriff der Stellvertretung,
wenigsten der Sache nach, nicht zurückgewiesen werden.]

The meaning, therefore, of hyper31[Note: 1 31. ὑπέρ] 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,32[Note: 2 32. ἀντί = in place of]hyper,33[Note: 3 33.
ὑπέρ = for]dia,34[Note: 4 34. διά = on account of]peri,35[Note: 5 35. περί =
concerning] 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),36[Note: 6 36. ἀντὶ ἡμῶν] although it would
be absurd to say that he suffered instead of our offenses (anti tōn hamartēmatōn
hēmōn).37[Note: 7 37. ἀντὶ τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων ἡμῶν] 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[Note: 8 38.
WS: Thefirst of these statements might be either hyper hēmōn (ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν = on our
behalf/in our place) or anti hēmōn (ἀντὶ ἡμῶν = in our place); the second might
be hyper tōn hamartēmatōn hēmōn (ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων ἡμῶν = because of our
sins) or peri (περί) or dia (διά), but not anti (ἀντί). The preposition anti
(ἀντί) has only the one meaning of substitution: the others have more than this
meaning.] 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 hyper39[Note: 9 39. ὑπέρ] so
often, rather than anti,40[Note: 0 40. ἀντί] 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.41[Note: 1 41. ὑπέρ] 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.42[Note: 2 42. WS: The law as precept, however, would not be satisfied.
This proves that endless punishment is not excessive punishment. It still leaves
the sinner in debt. According to strict justice, the law could require from the
lost an active as well as a passive obedience, perfect obedience in the present
and future as well as suffering the penalty for past disobedience.] 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. (See 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
Romans 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; 1 John 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 [the
Father] 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” (Romans 8:32); “[the
triune] God commends his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us” (5:8).43[Note: 3 43. WS: The following are the principal
points of difference between Unitarianism and Calvinism respecting the subject
of Christ’s redemption. Unitarianism contends (a) that God is inherently and
spontaneously merciful; (b) that justice is only a form of benevolence and
opposes no obstacles to the exercise of God’s inherent and spontaneous mercy;
(c) that Christ was not God, but an exalted creature sent to announce divine
mercy, set a holy example, and proffer spiritual assistance to imitate it; it
was no part of his mission to satisfy legal claims and harmonize justice with
mercy, because there is no need of harmonizing them; and (d) that the doctrine
of vicarious atonement implies that God is not inherently merciful, but needs to
be made so by the agency of another being, namely, Christ (Channing, Life 1.294,
344, 349, 354). Calvinism contends (a) that God is inherently and spontaneously
merciful; (b) that justice is an attribute distinct from benevolence, requiring
satisfaction for sin and prohibiting the exercise of mercy until this
requirement is met; (c) that Jesus Christ was incarnate God himself, who
suffered vicariously for sinners in order to satisfy the legal claims which
obstructed the exercise of divine mercy; and (d) that this vicarious
satisfaction of justice by God himself is the way in which God shows his
inherent and spontaneous mercifulness and not a means employed by a third party,
other than God, to make him merciful.]

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 Zechariah 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” (Isaiah 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; John
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.44[Note: 4 44. WS: Divine
wrath against sin, we have seen (p. 168), causes no unhappiness or misery in God
because of its righteousness and legitimateness.] 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” (Psalms 49:7); “shall I give my firstborn for my transgression?” (Micah
6:7); “what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 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 Leviticus 6:2-7; Leviticus 4:13-35;Leviticus
5:1-19;Leviticus 6:1-30;Leviticus 7:1-38;Leviticus 8:1-36;Leviticus
9:1-24;Leviticus 10:1-20;Leviticus 11:1-47;Leviticus 12:1-8;Leviticus
13:1-59;Leviticus 14:1-57;Leviticus 15:1-33;Leviticus 16:1-34;Leviticus
17:1-16;Leviticus 18:1-30;Leviticus 19:1-37;Leviticus 20:1-27[Note: 5 45. WS:
“It was in China that a Baptist missionary found his converts slow to appreciate
the value of Christ’s atoning blood, until the Book of Leviticus threw light
upon the sacrificial offering and showed the relation between shedding of blood
and remission” (Bible Society’s Record, 21 Nov. 1878).] “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” (Leviticus 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; Matthew 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 (Matthew 27:34).46[Note: 6 46. WS:
Bähr (Symbolism of the Mosaic Cultus) denies that there is anything piacular in
the levitical sin offering. The slain victim is emblematic of self-consecration
and self-sacrifice, not of penal satisfaction. The death of the lamb or goat
teaches, not that the offerer deserves to die for his past transgression, but
that he ought to live for future consecration to obedience. This interpretation
lies under all the moral theories of the atonement. Its inconsistency is
apparent in making the shedding of blood or death the symbol of life.] (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,47[Note: 7 47. ëÌÈôÇø] which in the
Piel48[Note: 8 48. The Piel is a Hebrew verb pattern that may express the basic
meaning for some verb roots, though it more usually indicates some
intensification of the action.] is translated “to make an atonement,” literally
signifies “to cover over” so as not to be seen. And Hebrew ṣmlaḥ,49[Note: 9 49.
ñÈìÇç] translated “to forgive,” has for its primary idea that of “lightness,
lifting up,” perhaps “to be at rest or peace” (Gesenius in voce). (See
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” (Psalms 51:19); “you have cast all
my sins behind your back” (Isaiah 38:17); “you will cast all their sins into the
depths of the sea” (Micah 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
kāppar50[Note: 0 50. ëÌÈôÇø = to make an atonement, cover over] is rendered by
exilaskomai51[Note: 1 51. ἐξιλάσκομαι] (to propitiate or appease), and the word
ṣmlaḥ52[Note: 2 52. ñÈìÇç] is translated by aphiēmi53[Note: 3 53. ἀφίημι] (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.”54[Note: 4 54.
Venia sive condonatio peccatorum, ex vulgari et biblica dicendi consuetudine,
est abolitio poenae peccatis contractae, et restitutio benevolentiae divinae
erga peccatorem.] In the Lord’s prayer, the petition for forgiveness is aphes
hēmin ta opheilēmata hēmōn55[Note: 5 55. ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν = forgive
us our debts] (Matthew 6:12). Christ assures the paralytic that his sins are
forgiven, in the words apheōntai soi hai hamartiai sou56[Note: 6 56. ἄφεωνταί
σοι αἱ ἁμαρτίαι σοῦ = your sins are forgiven you] (9:2). The preaching of the
gospel is the preaching of the “release of sins” (aphesis hamartiōn;57[Note: 7
57. ἄφεσις ἁμαρτιῶν]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
(Hebrews 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 Romans 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.58[Note: 8 58. WS: If
it be objected that in the statement of the doctrine of vicarious atonement it
is maintained that God atones to God (pp. 702-3), the reply is that Jesus Christ
does not make satisfaction to himself as Jesus Christ, but to the Trinity. The
incarnate Word satisfies the justice of the Godhead. The relation of his death
is therefore objective. It has reference to the divine nature, not to his own
theanthropic personality.] 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 kāppar59[Note: 9 59. ëÌÈôÇø = to make an
atonement, cover over] denotes that the sacrificial victim produces an effect
upon sin. It covers it up. But the corresponding Septuagint term
hilaskomai60[Note: 0 60. ἱλάσκομαι = to propitiate] denotes that the sacrificial
victim produces an effect upon God. It propitiates his holy displeasure. When
St. John (1 John 2:2; 1 John 4:10) asserts that “Jesus Christ the righteous is
the propitiation (hilasmos)61[Note: 1 61. ἱλασμός] 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 katallagē62[Note: 2 62. καταλλαγή = atonement,
reconciliation] and the verb katallassein.63[Note: 3 63. καταλλάσσειν = to
conciliate, appease] These two words occur nine times in the New Testament with
reference to Christ’s atoning work (Romans 5:10-11; Romans 5:15; 2 Corinthians
5:18-20). In the Authorized Version, katallagē64[Note: 4 64. καταλλαγή] is
translated “atonement” in Romans 5:11; but in the other instances
“reconciliation” and “reconcile” are the terms employed. The verb
katallassein65[Note: 5 65. καταλλάσσειν] 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,66[Note: 6 66. καταλλάττεται = is
appeased] 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.67[Note: 7 67. καταλλαγή = atonement, reconciliation] 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 Matthew 5:24 : “First, be reconciled to your brother (diallagēthi tō
adelphō).”68[Note: 8 68. διαλλάγηθι τῷ ἀδελφῷ] 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
Romans 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 Romans 3:25; 2 Corinthians 5:18-19; Colossians 1:21; Ephesians 2:16
is referred to the atoning death of Christ.”69[Note: 9 69. WS: See Magee,
Atonement, diss. 20; Owen, Vindications, chap. 21; Shedd, Theological Essays,
265-73.]

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)70[Note: 0 70. λύτρον] for (anti)71[Note: 1 71. ἀντί] many” (Matthew
20:28); “the church of God which he has purchased (peripoiēsato)72[Note: 2 72.
περιεποιήσατο] with his own blood” (Acts 20:28); “the redemption
(apolytrōsis)73[Note: 3 73. ἀπολυτρώσις] that is in Jesus Christ” (Romans 3:24);
“you are bought (ēgorasthēte)74[Note: 4 74. ἠγοράσθητε] with a price” (1
Corinthians 6:20); “Christ has redeemed (exēgorasen)75[Note: 5 75. ἐξηγόρασεν]
us from the curse” (Galatians 3:13); “redemption through his blood” (Ephesians
1:7; Colossians 1:14); “who gave himself a ransom (antilytron)76[Note: 6 76.
ἀντίλυτρον] for all” (1 Timothy 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 Timothy 2:26 sinful
men are said to be “taken captive by the devil at his will.” In 1 Timothy 1:20
Hymenaeus and Alexander are “delivered unto Satan.” In 1 Corinthians 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)77[Note: 7 77. δούλος] of
sin”; and by St. Paul in Romans 6:16 : “Know not that to whom you yield
yourselves servants (doulous)78[Note: 8 78. δούλους] 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 Corinthians 5:18-19 it is said that “God has
reconciled us to himself (heautō)79[Note: 9 79. ἑαυτῷ] by Jesus Christ” and that
“God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself (heautō).”80[Note: 0 80.
ἑαυτῷ] The statement is repeated in Colossians 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 [i.e., as Son] 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” (Psalms 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” (Isaiah 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
Zechariah 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.”81[Note: 1 81. Respira, o peccator, respira; ne desperes, spera in eo
quem times. Affuge ad eum a quo aufugisti. Invoca importune quem superbe
provocasti.]

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:82[Note: 2 82.
from the outside] no device of a third party or even of sinful man himself to
render God placable toward man. It is wholly ab intra:83[Note: 3 83. from
within] 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, Exodus 6:1-30),
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” (Romans 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).”84[Note: 4 84. Non dicimur reconciliati quasi deus de novo amare
incipiret, nam aeterno amore dilexit, sed quia per hanc reconciliationem sublata
est omnis odii causa, tum per ablutionem peccati, tum per recompensationem
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[Note: 5 85. Scholastici loquntur,
dilexit deus humanum genus quantum ad naturam quam ipse fecit; odit quantum ad
culpam quam homines contraxerunt.]

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” (Romans 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” (Psalms 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” (Zechariah 13:7).86[Note: 6 86. WS: The same
principle applies to the afflictions of life. The strength and comfort must come
from the very same being who afflicts. God is the source of affliction, and he
is the God of all comfort. God wounds, and God heals the wound. See Pascal’s
letter to his brother-in-law on the death of his own father. The same truth is
expressed in the lines of George Herbert:

Ah, my dear, angry Lord!

Since Thou dost love, yet strike;

Cast down, yet help afford;

Sure, I will do the like.

I will complain, yet praise;

I will bewail, approve; And all my sour-sweet days, I will lament, and love.]

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” (Matthew 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,”87[Note: 7 87. oderunt quem laeserint] 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.88[Note:
8 88. WS: “La conscience est la voix de l’âme, les passions sont la voix du
corps” [AG: The conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice
of the body]; Rousseau, Émile, 4. This is borrowed from Descartes, Passions of
the Soul, arts. 18-19.] 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” (Ephesians 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 Timothy 7:14), 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 (Romans 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.89[Note: 9 89. WS: On the
difference between divine and human anger, see Shedd, Theological Essays,
269-84.]

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 [vicarious] 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” (Romans 5:1); “we are made nigh to
God by the blood of Christ, for he is our peace” (Ephesians 2:13-14); “having
made peace through the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:20); “peace I leave
with you, my peace I give unto you” (John 14:27); “the peace of God passes all
understanding” (Php 4:7). The human conscience is the mirror and index 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 Timothy 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 Matthew 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 Leviticus 26:41; Leviticus 26:43
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 Corinthians 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 Jude 1:90[Note: 0 90. WS: Suicide, if the act
of sanity, is ipso facto proof of insubmission and rebellion toward God and
impenitence in sin. Socrates (Phaedo 61) contends that to take one’s own life is
to defraud and dishonor the Creator. “The gods,” he says, “are our guardians,
and we are a possession of theirs. If one of your own possessions, an ox or an
ass, for example, took the liberty of putting himself out of the way when you
had given no intimation of your wish that he should die, would you not be
displeased with him and would you not punish him if you could?” It was upon this
view of suicide that the self-murderer was denied burial by the church in
consecrated ground.] 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
Psalms 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. (See 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 38:1-41; Job 39:1-30; Job 40:1-24; Job 41:1-34). 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 Hebrews 12:6 : “For whom the Lord loves, he chastens
(paideuei).”91[Note: 1 91. παιδεύει = treats like a child] Chastisement and
punishment are distinguished from each other in 1 Corinthians 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;92[Note: 2 92. res
domi = matters of the home] 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.93[Note: 3 93. μετάβασις εἰς ἀλλο γένος = a change into another
kind] 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” (Psalms 89:31-34;
Psalms 103:9; Jeremiah 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
sympheron94[Note: 4 94. ἐπὶ τὸ συμφέρον = for what is profitable] (Hebrews
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 Corinthians 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. (See 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 Jeremiah 31:20 (Ephraim is “my dear son”); Ephesians
5:1 (“be followers of God as dear children”); Romans 8:16-17 (“the Spirit itself
bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children
then heirs”); Galatians 3:26 (“you are the children of God by faith in Christ
Jesus”); and Matthew 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 Malachi 2:10 the
question is asked: 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
Deuteronomy 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?” (Deuteronomy 32:6). Our
Lord teaches (Matthew 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” (Matthew 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?” (Malachi 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 [the church
above and below] is named” (Ephesians 3:15). All others “are bastards and not
sons” (Hebrews 12:8).95[Note: 5 95. WS: See the excellent treatise of Crawford,
Fatherhood of God.]

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 talionis96[Note: 6 96. law of retaliation] or law of requital.97[Note: 7
97. WS: See the explanation and defense of it by Kalisch onExodus 21:22-25.] 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” (Romans
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 talionis98[Note: 8 98. law of
retaliation] 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 Peter 3:18); “Christ was
made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13); “Immanuel was wounded for our
transgressions and bruised for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5); “Jesus our Lord
was delivered for our offenses” (Romans 4:25); “he has made him to be sin [a sin
offering] for us, who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 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” (Romans 8:32). With this, compare 2 Peter 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” (Matthew 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
ekthambeisthai99[Note: 9 99. ἐκθαμβεῖσθαι = to be amazed] and adēmonein100[Note:
00 100. ἀδημονεῖν = to be distressed] 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.101[Note: 01 101. WS: Christ felt that he was forsaken of
God, but not, like a despairing person, that he was eternally forsaken. The
desertion was only temporary. The comforting presence of God returns to Christ,
as is indicated in the statement ofLuke 23:46that “Jesus cried with a loud
voice, saying, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Again, the agony of
Christ was not despair, because in this very cry he says “my God.” A despairing
man or angel would say “O God” and would not exclaim, saying, “Why have you
forsaken me?” Again, Christ did not experience despair, because he knew that the
union between the divine and human natures was indissoluble. He also knew that
the covenant of redemption between him and the Father could not fail. His
distress did not relate to either of these two particulars. It arose (a) from
his view of the nature of the curse upon sin which he had vicariously come
under; (b) because the comforting influences from the union of the divine with
the human nature were temporarily restrained; (c) from temporary desertion of
God; and (d) from positive infliction when the “sword was awakened” against him
(Owen, Third Sacramental Discourse). The words why have you forsaken me? express
wonder, not ignorance or unbelief or complaint. Christ well knew why he was
deserted at this hour, had perfect faith and confidence in his Father, and was
entirely submissive to his will. But he was amazed and paralyzed at the
immensity of the agony. The word why is not interrogative, but exclamatory. The
words are equivalent to “how you have forsaken me!” This is Hugh St. Victor’s
explanation (see Hooker 5.48). When a Christian exclaims, “Why am I so
unbelieving and sinful?” it is only another way of saying, “How unbelieving and
sinful I am!” He is not asking for information. He well knows the reason why.]

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 Isaiah 53:5-6; Isaiah 53:10 : “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 Zechariah
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!”102[Note:
02 102. WS: South, Sermon on Messiah’s Suffering; Edwards, Excellency of Christ
in Works 4.189.]

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. (See 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” (Matthew 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”103[Note: 03 103. ira dei est voluntas puniendi]
(Anselm, Why the God-?Man 1:6). In Romans 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 [emotionally] 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 (Php 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.104[Note: 04 104. WS: Philippi, Active Obedience of
Christ.] 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” (Php 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 [human nature] 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” (Hebrews 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.105[Note: 05 105.
WS: Piscator was the first formally to present this view. John Taylor of Norwich
went to an opposite extreme and held that active obedience was the sole cause of
man’s salvation. He denied any piacular effect of Christ’s death and held that
as a reward of Christ’s active obedience alone the remission of sin was given to
man, as the eminent services of a soldier are rewarded by the monarch by
benefits to his family.] 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” (Romans 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
Corinthians 1:30). Believers are described as “complete” in Christ (Colossians
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)106[Note: 06 106.
τέλος] of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes” (Romans 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” (Romans 5:19); “by his knowledge shall my righteous
servant justify many” (Isaiah 53:11); “the Lord our righteousness” (Jeremiah
23:6); “in the Lord have I righteousness” (45:24; Romans 8:4; Php 3:9; 2
Corinthians 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).107[Note: 07 107. WS: See on this point, Paley, sermon
onHebrews 9:26, part 2.] But if he founds his title to eternal life and his
expectation of it upon the obedience of Christ for him, his anxiety disappears.
(See 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.108[Note: 08 108. therefore, he
merited by making satisfaction, and he made satisfaction by meriting]

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.109[Note: 09 109. WS: Owen
(Justification, chap. 10) endorses the distinction as made by Grotius: “Whereas
we have said that Christ has procured two things for us, freedom from punishment
and a reward, the ancient church attributes the one of them to his satisfaction,
the other to his merit.” Edwards adopts it: “Whatever in Christ had the nature
of satisfaction, it was by virtue of the suffering or humiliation in it. But
whatever had the nature of merit, it was by virtue of the obedience or
righteousness that was in it” (Redemption in Works 1.402).]

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” (Hebrews 12:29). The affirmation “holy, holy, holy is the Lord
of Hosts” (Isaiah 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.110[Note: 10 110. WS: Bengel
composed his Syntagma de sanctitate (Book on holiness) to prove that all the
attributes of God are implied in Hebrew qādôš (


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  CHAPTER 38: 6.03.     REGENERATION
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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 [Westminster Larger Catechism 67 adds: powerfully
determining’] 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 Peter 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.”1[Note: 1. WS: In the older
theological treatises, regeneration commonly does not constitute a separate
topic, but is discussed under vocation.]

Various Uses of the TermRegeneration 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. (See 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)2[Note: 2.
ἀνανεοῦσθαι] in the spirit of your minds” (Ephesians 4:22-25). He exhorts
Christians to “be transformed by the renewing (anakainōsei)3[Note: 3.
ἀνακαινώσει] of their mind” (Romans 12:2). In 2 Corinthians 4:16 he says that
the “inward man is renewed (anakainountai)4[Note: 4. ἀνακαινοῦνται = is renewed]
day by day.” In these instances, as the use of ananeoō5[Note: 5. ἀνανεόω = to
renew] and anakainoō6[Note: 6. ἀνακαινόω = to renew] instead of gennaō7[Note: 7.
γεννάω = to give birth to] 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 Corinthians 4:6; Romans 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” (Revelation 2:5). In the New Testament the renewing of regeneration
is denoted by ktizein,8[Note: 8. κτίζειν = to create]gennaō,9[Note: 9. γεννάω =
to give birth to. Shedd has gennan (γεννάν), which is probably a typo for gennaō
(γεννάω), judging by the present context.]zōopoiein;10[Note: 0 10. ζῳοποιείν =
to make alive] and that of sanctification by ananeousthai11[Note: 1 11.
ἀνανεοῦσθαι = to be renewed] (Ephesians 4:23), anakainountai12[Note: 2 12.
ἀνακαινοῦνται = to be made new] (2 Corinthians 4:16), and anakainōsis13[Note: 3
13. ἀνακαίνωσις = renewal] (Romans 12:2). (See 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.”14[Note: 4 14.
Conversio habitualis seu passiva fit per habituum supernaturalium infusionem a
Spiritu Sancto.] 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[Note: 5 15. Conversio actualis seu activa fit per bonorum istorum
habituum exercitium, quo actus fidei et poenitentae, et dantur a deo, et homine
eliciuntur.] 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; John 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” (Ezekiel 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”
(Jeremiah 31:33). The vision of dry bones (Ezekiel 37:1-28) taught the doctrine
symbolically. Moses taught the doctrine in Deuteronomy 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. Psalms 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” (Ephesians 4:24), “fathering” (James 1:18), “quickening”
(John 5:21; Ephesians 2:5), “calling out of darkness into light” (1 Peter 2:9),
“commanding the light to shine out of darkness” (2 Corinthians 4:6), “alive from
the dead” (Romans 6:13), “new creature” (2 Corinthians 5:17), “born again” (John
3:3-7), “God’s workmanship” (Ephesians 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 Corinthians 4:6; 1 Corinthians
2:12-13); “the eyes of your understanding being enlightened” (Ephesians 1:18;
Php 1:9; Colossians 3:10; 1 John 4:7; 1 John 5:20; 1 John 17:3; Psalms 19:7-8;
Psalms 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” (Matthew 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” (Matthew 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” (Hebrews 5:2). Scoffers are
“willingly ignorant” (2 Peter 3:5). Unbelieving Jews were “ignorant of God’s
righteousness” (Romans 10:3). Before regeneration, men fashion themselves
“according to their lusts in ignorance” (1 Peter 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” (Psalms 73:32).

St. Paul explains the difference between the knowledge of the natural man and
that of the regenerate in 1 Corinthians 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 Peter
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”
(Psalms 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” (Ezekiel 11:19;
Ezekiel 36:26-27); “renew a right spirit within me” (Psalms 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” (Hebrews 13:21); “it is not of him that wills, but of God
that show mercy” (Romans 9:16); “God works in you to will” (Php 2:13); “your
people shall be willing in the day of your power” (Psalms 110:3); “the Lord
direct your hearts into the love of God” (2 Thessalonians 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.16[Note: 6 16. WS: Edwards denominates it the
origination of a new “principle”: “By a principle I mean that foundation which
is laid for any particular kind of exercise of the faculties of the soul. A new
holy disposition of heart is not a new faculty of will, but a foundation laid
for a new kind of exercise of the faculty of will” (Affections 3.1). Similarly,
Owen remarks: “As the principle of holiness has the nature of a habit, so also
has it the properties thereof. And the first property of a habit is that it
inclines and disposes the subject wherein it is unto acts of its own kind” (On
the Spirit 4.1).] 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” (Psalms
110:3). God “works in him to will” (Php 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” (Psalms 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” (Isaiah 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.”17[Note: 7 17. WS: Owen, Works 2.357-58 (ed. Russell).]
The physis18[Note: 8 18. φύσις = essence] or essence of the Holy Spirit operates
upon the physis19[Note: 9 19. φύσις = essence] 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”
(Galatians 3:16; 1 Corinthians 12:12). Christ is “formed in the believer”
(Galatians 4:19). It is also supported by the biblical statements respecting the
working of the Holy Spirit in the soul: “The Spirit makes intercession” (Romans
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 Corinthians 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).20[Note: 0 20. WS: Meyer in loco
explains eti (ἔτι) literally: “Still from his mother’s womb.” After birth, he
was still the subject of the Holy Spirit’s influences as he was before it.] (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[Note: 1 21. Quicquid recipitur, recipitur in modum recipientis.]
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,22[Note: 2 22. from the outside] 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”23[Note: 3 23. Proprium est dei movere voluntatem, maxime interius eam
inclinando.] (Aquinas, Summa 1.105.4). (See 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 temporis24[Note: 4 24. point of time] 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[Note: 5 25. point of time] 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” (Romans 8:7). Enmity cannot cooperate
with love. (See 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 Ezekiel 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”
(Ephesians 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 Corinthians 2:14). There is
repulsion, not recipiency, in the natural man. “The carnal mind
(phronēma)26[Note: 6 26. φρόνημα] is enmity against God” (Romans 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. (See
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
Corinthians 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 Corinthians 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.27[Note: 7 27. WS: In the case of an
adult, the precedence of regeneration to conversion is of order and nature only,
not of time. Regeneration immediately exhibits its fruit in the converting acts
of faith and repentance. In the case of infant regeneration, there is an
interval of time between regeneration and conversion.] 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.28[Note: 8 28. WS: The words inJames 1:18are sometimes quoted to
prove that the truth is a means of regeneration: “Of his own will, he gave us
birth with the word of truth.” The original is boulētheis apekyēsen hēmas logō
alētheias (βουληθεὶς ἀπεκύησεν ἡμᾶς λόγῳ ἀληθείας); Revised Version: “According
to his purpose, he brought us forth by the word of truth.” Apokyein (ἀποκυεῖν =
to bring forth) denotes the maternal, not the paternal act; as éÈìÇã (yālad)
primarily does inPsalms 2:7: “I have begotten you.” And logos alētheias (λόγος
ἀληθείας = word of truth) means the gospel, as inEphesians 1:13: “After that you
heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation”; and inColossians 1:5:
“Whereof you heard before, in the word of the truth of the gospel, which is come
unto you as it is in all the world.” The teaching, then, of St. James in this
text is that “in accordance with the divine purpose man is born a child of God,
under the gospel dispensation.” There is a similar statement in1 Peter 1:23:
“Being born again (anagegennēmenoi, ἀναγεγεννημένοι) not of corruptible seed,
but of incorruptible, by the word of God.” The “word of God,” here, is not the
“incorruptible seed” itself from which the birth proceeds. The Holy Spirit is
this. But it is the sphere within which the birth takes place. It denotes the
gospel dispensation, like the “word of truth” inJames 1:18. Christians are born
again of incorruptible seed, namely, of the Holy Spirit, under the Christian
dispensation. The Revised Version rendering of this verse is “having been
begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word
of God.”]

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. (See
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 Timothy 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” (Revelation 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 Peter 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” (Malachi 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” (Romans 10:17);
“who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 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
Corinthians 2:14, but the legal illumination referred to in 2 Corinthians 7:10;
(b) conviction and distress of conscience;29[Note: 9 29. WS: On legal and
evangelical humiliation, see Edwards, Affections 3 in Works 3.137-38; Howe,
Blessedness of the Righteous, chap. 17; Owen, Works 2.309-10 (ed. Russell).] 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; Luke 11:13 : “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” (Ezekiel 36:24; Ezekiel
36:27); “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” (Matthew 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 Thessalonians 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” (Romans 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 Timothy 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. (See 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 [ed. Barnes]; cf. Owen, Works 2.272-73 [ed. Russell]):

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 [as preaching the gospel] 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
[to believe]; 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 [than their
performance of them].” 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 Timothy 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?” (Jonah 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; Romans 10:13), the
prayer of the convicted may be meant, and the general fact is that it will be
answered.30[Note: 0 30. WS: Cf. “if I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me”
and “my word shall not return unto me void.” These texts do not mean that every
single individual shall be saved, but describe the general and common effect of
the gospel.] 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
Psalms 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 (Judges 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; Acts
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.31[Note: 1 31. WS: See Bunyan’s account of his own experience in Grace
Abounding; Edwards, Manner of Seeking Salvation in Works 4.386-87; Pressing into
the Kingdom in Works 4.381-82.]

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” (Psalms 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” (Romans 10:12); “seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon
him while he is near” (Isaiah 55:6); “I will that men pray everywhere, lifting
up holy hands without wrath and doubting” (1 Timothy 2:8); “behold he prays”
(Acts 9:11); “you that hear prayer, unto you shall all flesh come” (Psalms
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).32[Note: 2 32. WS: See the admirable remarks of Calvin entitled
“Prayer the Principal Exercise of Faith” in 3.20.1-17.]

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 (Jeremiah 4:3; Hosea 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 [willingly] 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” (Romans
10:3; Romans 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. (See 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. (See 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 Corinthians 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” (Ephesians 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.33[Note: 3 33. WS:
The regenerate child, youth, and man believes and repents immediately. The
regenerate infant believes and repents when his faculties will admit the
exercise and manifestation of faith and repentance. In this latter instance,
regeneration is potential or latent faith and repentance.] 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” (Matthew 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.34[Note: 4 34. WS:
Westminster Confession 7.3; 8.8; 9.4; 10.1; 14.1; Westminster Larger Catechism
Q. 32; Q. 59; Q. 67; Q. 72.] (See supplement 6.3.10.) S U P P L E M E N T S

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 [professedly] 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 [i.e., of Satan] 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 [of baptism] 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
[professed] 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 [i.e.,
reputably in church communion] are [popularly] called the children of God; but
because they are afterward to live wickedly [i.e., inconsistently with church
communion] 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, begin [apparently] to
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 [of falling] 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 [outwardly] 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 [baptized] infants die only to original sin; those who are older
[when baptized] 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
[by his sponsor] 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’
(Ephesians 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’ (Php 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.35[Note: 5 35. As noted
by Benjamin Warfield in Perfectionism, the same comment would apply to the
theology of Charles Finney.] 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”
(Php 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
novo36[Note: 6 36. anew] 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” (Galatians 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” (Romans 4:28). 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.37[Note: 7 37. after
this, yet not therefore on account of this] 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 (Hebrews 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 (Romans 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 [in common grace] binds himself to do what he
promises [namely, to save on condition of faith]; 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.”


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  CHAPTER 39: 6.04.     CONVERSION
========================================================================

Conversion

Conversion is that action of man which results from regeneration.1[Note: 1. WS:
Jeremy Taylor’s elaborate and eloquent treatise Unum necessarium; or, Doctrine
and Practice of Repentance is somewhat vitiated by a legalizing element and
tendency.] 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. Pisteuō2[Note: 2. πιστεύω = to believe] when used in reference to
Christ is accompanied with en,3[Note: 3. ἐν = in]eis,4[Note: 4. εἰς = unto] and
epi5[Note: 5. ἐπί = upon] because the object is to denote rest and reliance upon
his person. Paul said to the jailer, “Believe on (pisteuson epi)6[Note: 6.
πίστευσόν ἐπί] 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.” (See 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)7[Note: 7. πιστεύετε ἐν] the gospel”
(Mark 1:15). Even when there is no preposition, pisteuō8[Note: 8. πιστεύω = to
believe] sometimes denotes trust: “Christ did not commit himself (ouk episteuen
heauton)”9[Note: 9. οὐκ ἐπίστευεν ἑαυτόν] (John 2:24); “who will commit (tis
pisteusei)10[Note: 0 10. τίς πιστεύσει] to your trust the true riches?” (Luke
16:11); “unto them were committed (episteuthēsan)11[Note: 1 11. ἐπιστεύθησαν]
the oracles” (Romans 3:2); “the gospel of circumcision was committed to me”
(Galatians 2:7); “I know whom I have believed (hō pepisteuka)”12[Note: 2 12. ᾧ
πεπίστευκα] or trusted in (2 Timothy 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)?”13[Note:3 13. διάτι οὐκ ἐπιστεύσατε αὐτῳ]

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” (Php 1:29);
“we pray that God would fulfill [in you] all the good pleasure of his goodness
and the work of faith with power” (2 Thessalonians 1:11); “that your faith
should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God” (1 Corinthians
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; John
6:65); “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 Peter 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” (Matthew 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 Corinthians 3:14; 2 Corinthians
4:4); God gives “the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ”
(Ephesians 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” (Galatians 5:6); “peace be to the
brethren, and love, with faith from God the Father” (Ephesians 6:23; Ephesians
3:17; Ephesians 4:16; Ephesians 5:2; Colossians 2:2; 1 Thessalonians 3:12; 1
Thessalonians 5:8; 1 Timothy 1:14); “hold fast the form of sound words, in faith
and love which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 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 16:13); “this is the work of God, that you believe on him whom he
has sent” (John 6:29).14[Note: 4 14. WS: The priority in the order of faith to
all other acts is illustrated by the following anecdote: “In a beautiful New
England village a boy lay very sick, drawing near to death and very sad. His
heart longed for the treasure which was worth more to him now than all the gold
of the western mines. One day I sat down by him, took his hand, and looking in
his troubled face asked him what made him so sad. ‘Uncle,’ said he, ‘I want to
love God. Won’t you tell me how to love God?’ I cannot describe the piteous
tones in which he said these words and the look of anxiety which he gave me. I
said to him: ‘My boy, you must trust God first, and then you will love him
without trying to at all.’ With a surprised look he exclaimed, ‘What did you
say?’ I repeated the exact words again, and I shall never forget how his large,
hazel eyes opened on me, and his cheek flushed as he slowly said, ‘Well, I never
knew that before. I always thought that I must love God first before I had any
right to trust him.’ ‘No, my dear boy,’ I answered, ‘God wants us to trust him;
that is what Jesus always asks us to do first of all, and he knows that as soon
as we trust him we shall begin to love him. This is the way to love God, put
your trust in him first of all.’ Then I spoke to him of the Lord Jesus and how
God sent him that we might believe in him and how, all through his life, he
tried to win the trust of men; how grieved he was when men would not believe in
him, and everyone who believed came to love without trying at all. He drank in
all the truth and simply saying, ‘I will trust Jesus now,’ without an effort put
his young soul in Christ’s hands that very hour; and so he came into the peace
of God which passes understanding and lived in it calmly and sweetly to the
end.”]

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 Corinthians 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; 1 John 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”
(Galatians 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?” (Romans 8:35-39; 1 Thessalonians 4:14; 1 Thessalonians
4:17). (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” (Ephesians 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.15[Note: 5 15.
WS: For twelve points of difference between union with Adam and union with
Christ, see Shedd onRomans 5:19.] 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,16[Note: 6 16.
a work worked (see opus operatum in glossary 1)] 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 metanoia17[Note: 7 17. μετάνοια = change of mind] denotes a
change of the mind (nous).18[Note: 8 18. νοῦς] But “mind” is employed in the
sense of disposition, will, or inclination, as in Romans 7:25 : “With the mind
(noi),19[Note: 9 19. νοΐ] I myself serve the law of God.” It is an instance in
which nous20[Note: 0 20. νοῦς] is put for kardia21[Note:1 21. καρδία = heart]
(see pp. 516-17). The word metamelōai22[Note: 2 22. μεταμέλομαι = to repent,
change one’s mind] is sometimes employed to denote the genuine sorrow that
accompanies repentance: “Afterward he repented and went” (Matthew 21:29);
“though I made you sorry, I do not repent though I did repent” (2 Corinthians
7:8); “and you, when you had seen it, repented not afterward that you might
believe him” (Matthew 21:32); “the Lord swore and will not repent” (Hebrews
7:21). In Matthew 27:3 it denotes the impenitent remorse of Judas. But
metanoia23[Note: 3 23. μετάνοια = repentance] not metameleia24[Note: 4 24.
μεταμέλεια = regret, repentance] is the technical term in the New Testament for
repentance. The difference between penitence and remorse is described in 2
Corinthians 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”;25[Note: 5 25. WS: Sorrow for sin must be
carefully distinguished from shame on account of it. The impenitent experience
shame for sin, and they “awake to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2).
A person may feel degraded by his vices and ashamed of them without any sincere
grief for them as committed against God. Such feeling as this is selfish, while
godly sorrow is disinterested. A man may be vexed and angry with himself and
despise himself without any humble prostration of soul before God and confession
of guilt. A sense of the meanness and disgrace of sin is not the sense of its
odiousness and ill desert.] (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” (Ezekiel 36:31); “against you,
you only, have I sinned; that you might be justified when you speak and clear
when you judge” (Psalms 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 Corinthians 7:11; Ezekiel 18:30-31; Joel 2:12-13; Amos
5:15; Psalms 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” (Jeremiah 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” (Zechariah
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” (Jeremiah 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 Romans 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
(Deuteronomy 4:24; Hebrews 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 Jeremiah 31:34 sanctification is mentioned before
pardon: “They shall all know me, for I will forgive their iniquity.”26[Note: 6
26. WS: “Melanchthon taught that repentance was the effect of the law and
anterior to faith and used forms of expression which were thought to imply that
good works or sanctification, although not the ground of justification, were
nevertheless a causa sine qua non [a cause without which not] of our acceptance
with God. To this Luther objected, as true sanctification is the consequence and
in no sense the condition of the sinner’s justification. We are not justified
because we are holy; but being justified, we are made holy” (Hodge, Theology
3.238).]

S U P P L E M E N T

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”
(Matthew 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 Matthew 16:1-28) 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)27[Note: 7 27. ἐπὶ τῇ πέτρα ταύτῃ τῆς ἀσφαλοῦς
πίστεως] 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 (Matthew
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 Peter 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)28[Note: 8 28. πέτρα] or
lower foundation.


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  CHAPTER 40: 6.05.     JUSTIFICATION
========================================================================

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” (Jeremiah 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” (Romans 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 Corinthians 1:30; 2 Corinthians 5:19; 2 Corinthians 5:21;
Ephesians 1:7; Ephesians 2:8; Php 3:9; Jeremiah 23:6); “the just [justified]
shall live by his faith” (Hebrews 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” (Romans 4:5;
Romans 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 dikaios1[Note: 1. δίκαιος = righteous] 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 dikaioō2[Note: 2. δικαιόω] 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” (Romans 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; Romans 4:5-7; Romans 5:1; Romans
5:9; Romans 8:30-33; 1 Corinthians 6:11; Galatians 2:16; Galatians 3:11). That
dikaioō3[Note: 3. δικαιόω] does not mean sanctifying or making just is proved by
its antithesis to “condemning” (Deuteronomy 25:1; Proverbs 17:15; Isaiah 5:23; 2
Chronicles 18:6-7) and by its equivalents “imputing righteousness” and “covering
sin” (Romans 4:3; Romans 4:6-8; 2 Corinthians 5:19; 2 Corinthians 5:21).4[Note:
4. WS: Möhler (Symbolics §13) contends that justificare means “to acquit” only
when applied to the innocent and holy and is inapplicable to a transgressor.
“The forgiveness of sin,” he says, “is undoubtedly a remission of the guilt and
the punishment which Christ has borne upon himself; but it is likewise the
transfusion of his Spirit into us.” But St. Paul expressly says that “God
justifies the ungodly” (Romans 4:5). So far as a person has infused
righteousness, he is not ungodly.]

In order to be justified or pronounced righteous, a person must possess a
righteousness (dikaiosynē)5[Note: 5. δικαιοσύνη] 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 [perfectly] does those things shall live by them”
(Romans 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; Galatians 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” (Romans 2:13).

2. Gratuitous or evangelical righteousness or that of the covenant of grace.
This is technically denominated “the righteousness of God” (Matthew 6:33; Romans
1:17; Romans 3:5; Romans 3:21-22; Romans 3:25-26; Romans 10:3; 2 Corinthians
5:21; Php 3:9; 2 Peter 1:1). The Old Testament teaches it: Lord our
righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:6; Jeremiah 33:16). It is so denominated to
distinguish it from the ordinary ethical or legal righteousness which is the
righteousness of man. In Romans 10:3 this latter is called idian
dikaiosynēn6[Note: 6. ἰδίαν δικαιοσύνην = one’s own righteousness] and in Php
3:9emēn dikaiosynēn.7[Note: 7. ἐμὴν δικαιοσύνην = my righteousness] 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 (Romans 4:6) as chōris
ergōn (i.e., anthrōpou).8[Note: 8. χωρὶς ἔργων (ἀνθρώπου) = without works (of
man)] 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” (Isaiah 55:1); “being justified
gratuitously (dōrean)9[Note: 9. δωρεάν] by his grace” (Romans 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” (Romans
4:6; Romans 4:9-10). 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)10[Note: 0 10. ἐλογίοθη] to him for
righteousness. Now to him that works not, but believes on him that justifies the
ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:3;
Romans 4:5); “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;11[Note: 1 11. faith is (a) work]
if I believe a thing because I am commanded, this is opus”12[Note: 2 12. WS: For
the Tridentine view of justification adopted partially by a Protestant, see
Jeremy Taylor’s sermon “Faith Working by Love.” Coleridge (Works 5.195) refers
to this defect in Jeremy Taylor. Yet in an earlier period in his life, he fell
into the same error himself; see “The Friend” in Works 2.288 (ed. Harper).]
(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 (Ephesians 2:8; Php 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 [ed. Bacon]). 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” (Romans 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.13[Note: 3 13. WS: Cf. Calvin 3.14.11; Shedd, History of Doctrine
2.318-32; Sermons to the SpiritualMan 1:1; Man 1:293-98.]

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” (Romans 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” (Hebrews 9:24-28; Hebrews
10:14). (See 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 [consciously] 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” (Psalms 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 (Hebrews 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”
(Psalms 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,14[Note: 4 14.
δωρέαν]chōris ergōn)15[Note: 5 15. χωρὶς ἔργων = apart from works] 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”
(Romans 5:19); “Christ is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and
sanctification” (1 Corinthians 1:30); “he made him to be sin for us, that we
might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). This
“righteousness” is complete and therefore includes a title to the reward of
righteousness: “You are complete in him” (Colossians 2:10); “he has made us
accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 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 [this is pardon], but shall have eternal
life [this is acceptance as righteous]” (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 proved by the fact that the reward of a
Christian is called an “inheritance” (Matthew 55:34; Acts 20:32; Galatians 3:18;
Ephesians 5:5; Colossians 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 Romans 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” (Matthew 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. (See 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 Corinthians 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” (Romans 8:30); do I condemn you [i.e., I pardon 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 [atone] me with hyssop; hide your face from my sins;
then will I teach transgressors your ways” (Psalms 51:7; Psalms 51:13).

S U P P L E M E N T S

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 Psalms
32:1-11, 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 Romans 4:1-25 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 Samuel 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’
(Leviticus 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 [of works] 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’ (Romans 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 [not
reward]; while this eternal life which is given to it is its [gracious] reward;
grace is for grace, as a [relative] 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.”


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  CHAPTER 41: 6.06.     SANCTIFICATION
========================================================================

Sanctification The term sanctify (hagiazein)1[Note: 1. ἁγιάζειν] 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” (Matthew 23:17); and (b) to purify and make holy: “But you
are washed, you are sanctified” (1 Corinthians 6:11; Hebrews 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” (Ephesians 1:4); “you are washed, you are
sanctified by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11); “God has chosen you
to salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit” (2 Thessalonians 2:13); “the
very God of peace sanctify you wholly” (1 Thessalonians 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” (Psalms
51:10; 2 Corinthians 4:16; Ephesians 4:23; Colossians 3:10; Romans 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” (Ezekiel 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 Thessalonians 5:23).2[Note: 2. WS: See Shedd onRomans 7:23; Romans
8:10for the meaning of this trichotomy.] Sanctification affects (a) the higher
rational and spiritual part of man’s nature, the pneuma,3[Note: 3. πνεῦμα =
spirit] because this has been corrupted by the fall (Titus 1:15; Romans 1:28;
Ephesians 4:18); (b) the inferior intelligence, the psychē;4[Note: 4. ψυχή =
soul] and (c) the body, sōma.5[Note: 5. σῶμα = body] As apostasy began in the
pneuma6[Note: 6. πνεῦμα] and affected the other parts of human nature, so
sanctification begins in the pneuma7[Note: 7. πνεῦμα] 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[Note: 8. πνεῦμα] restrains the appetites of the psychē9[Note: 9. ψυχή]
and sōma.10[Note: 0 10. σῶμα] If spiritual perception be dim, the bodily
appetite is strong. That the higher nature, denominated pneuma11[Note: 1 11.
πνεῦμα] or nous,12[Note: 2 12. νοῦς = mind] is depraved and needs to be
sanctified is proved by Romans 1:28; Romans 12:2; Ephesians 4:17; 2 Timothy 3:8;
Titus 1:15; Mark 1:23; 1 Thessalonians 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 Romans 7:14-25;
Romans 8:1-28. Romans 7:1-25; Romans 8:1-39 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”; Galatians 5:6), hope (“hope makes not
ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts”; Romans 5:5), joy
(“in whom you rejoice with joy unspeakable, receiving the end of your faith,
even the salvation of your souls”; 1 Peter 1:8-9), and peace (“the peace of God
shall keep your hearts and minds, through Christ Jesus”; Php 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 Peter 1:22-23; 1 Peter 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;
Romans 5:3-4; Hebrews 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 Corinthians
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” (Ephesians 6:16;
Ephesians 6:18); “work out your own salvation, for it is God who works in you”
(Php 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” (Ephesians 4:22-23); “make
you a new heart and a new spirit” (Ezekiel 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. (See 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; 1 John 1:10); “brethren, I count
not myself to have apprehended, but I press toward the mark” (Php 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” (Romans 7:18; Romans 7:23;
Galatians 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” (Hebrews
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 Corinthians 5:8); “Christ
loved the church that he might sanctify it and present it to himself a glorious
church not having spot or wrinkle” (Ephesians 5:27); “now we see through a glass
darkly; but when that which is perfect is come, face to face” (1 Corinthians
13:12); “the pure in heart shall see God” (Matthew 5:8); “blessed are the dead
who die in the Lord” (Revelation 14:13). (See 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” (Romans 11:29);
“he which has begun a good work in you will perform it unto the day of Jesus
Christ” (Php 1:6); believers are “kept by the power of God through faith unto
salvation” (1 Peter 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 Timothy 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.13[Note: 3 13.
WS: The situation inHebrews 6:4-6is hypothetical, as is proved by verse 9: “We
are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though
we thus speak.” A supposition which is not an actual or even a possible case is
sometimes made for the sake of illustrating or enforcing truth. In1 Corinthians
13:1-3Paul supposes the existence of Christian faith without that of Christian
charity. InGalatians 1:8he supposes that an angel from heaven may preach another
gospel than the true one. InMatthew 13:21-22the stony-ground hearer is not a
true believer. In2 Peter 2:20-21the “dog who turns to his own vomit” is a false
professor. His “knowing the way of righteousness” is superficial knowledge, like
that of the stony-ground hearer.]

That sanctification is never lost is proved also by its connection with
justification. Justification naturally tends to sanctification: “Faith works by
love” (Galatians 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 Corinthians 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 Corinthians 5:4). And the love meant is Christ’s
redeeming love: “Having these promises [of forgiveness], 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 Peter 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 Romans 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.14[Note: 4 14. WS: The seeming contradiction
between Paul and James disappears if James is understood to put, by metonymy,
the effect for the cause-the work of faith for faith itself. When he says that
“Abraham was justified by works” (James 2:21) and “Rachel was justified by
works” (2:25), he means that they were justified by a faith that produced works
or a working faith. Abraham’s “work” proved that his “faith” was genuine and
therefore might well stand for and represent it. It was a “work of faith” (1
Thessalonians 1:3) (Shedd, Sermons to the Spiritual Man, sermon 19).] (See
supplement 6.6.3.) S U P P L E M E N T S

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” (Romans 8:26); “I will pour out upon the house of David and
upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplications”
(Zechariah 12:10); “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the
Spirit” (Ephesians 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 [the Holy Spirit],” 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 [sincerely] 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 [ed. Russell]): “The work of first
conversion [regeneration] 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 [in the
regenerate]. 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 Peter 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
[working] 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’ [as
well as his recompense].” 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
(Galatians 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.”15[Note: 5 15. Hanc fidem, renovationem, et
remissionem peccatorum, sequentur bona opera. Dicimus praeterea, ubi non
sequuntur bona opera, ibi fidem esse falsam, et non veram.]

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 extra16[Note: 6 16. from the outside] 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
[spontaneously] 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” (Romans
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;17[Note: 7 17. σώζεσθαι] e.g.,
Ephesians 2:8) is expressed by James by the word dikaiousthai,18[Note: 8 18.
δικαιοῦσθαι = to be justified, declared righteous] 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.


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  CHAPTER 42: 6.07.     MEANS OF GRACE
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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.1[Note: 1. WS: When
the world of unregenerate men are said to have the means of grace, the means of
conviction under common grace, not of sanctification under special grace, are
intended: “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).] 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[Note: 2.
WS: Respecting the nature of the church, Calvin (dedication to the Institutes)
presents the Protestant view in two fundamental positions: (a) That the church
may exist without a visible form, because it is both invisible and visible. The
former is composed of all who are really united to Christ; the latter, of all
who profess to be united to Christ. The former has no false members; the latter
has, as the parables of the tares and the net show. (b) That the visible form of
the church is not distinguished by external splendor, but by the pure preaching
of God’s word and the legitimate administration of the sacraments. The Romanist
contends that the church exists only in a visible form and that this form is in
the see of Rome and her order of prelates alone. Rome makes the invisible and
visible churches identical and coterminous. For a concise and able statement of
the prelatical theory of the church, see Jeremy Taylor’s consecration sermon.]

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” (Matthew 10:32-33; Matthew
16:16-18). The use of this means of spiritual growth is often enjoined in the
epistles (Romans 10:9-10; Hebrews 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 18:43; John 18:47); “the natural man cannot know the
things of the Spirit because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians
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. (See supplement 6.7.1.) The sacraments are means of grace and
sanctification.3[Note: 3. WS: On this subject, see the thorough discussion of
Calvin 4.14.17.] 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.4[Note: 4. μυστήριον =
mystery] The sacrament was a “mystery.” The Vulgate translates mystērion5[Note:
5. μυστήριον = mystery] in Ephesians 1:9; Ephesians 3:23; Ephesians 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:6[Note: 6. Although in this section Shedd makes a few passing
references to baptism and the sacraments in general, he deals almost exclusively
with the Lord’s Supper. He treats baptism at length in the next section.]

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”
(Matthew 3:11); “by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body” (1 Corinthians
12:13); “let a man examine himself and so let him eat” (11:28); “neither is that
circumcision which is outward” (Romans 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 Peter 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
[i.e., represents]7[Note: 7. WS: The substantive verb in this passage has the
same signification as inGalatians 4:24: “These [women] are the two covenants.”]
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. (See 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 [wholly] 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.8[Note: 8. WS: The presence of Christ in the bread and wine themselves would
be a local and extended presence, because bread and wine are local and extended
substances. But the presence of Christ to “the faith of a believer” is a
presence in his soul, which is an illocal and spiritual presence, because the
soul is an illocal and spiritual substance.]

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 Faith9[Note: 9. Ratio fidei] 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[Note: 0 10. (1) Res sanctae et
venerandae, (2) testimonium rei gestae praebunt, (3) vice rerum sunt quas
significant, (4) res arduas significant.] (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).11[Note: 1 11. in the contemplation of faith] 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 Faith12[Note: 2 12. Ratio fidei] 4.63-64 [ed.
Niemeyer]). 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[Note: 3 13. Augustinus
dixit Christi corpus in aliquo coeli loco esse oportere, propter visi corporis
modum. Non est igitur Christi corpus magis in pluribus locis quam nostra
corpora.] (Confession of Faith 4.51 [ed. Niemeyer]).

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” (Galatians 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) (See
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” (Romans 1:20). The heavens are a symbol of God
because they “declare the glory of God” (Psalms 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.14[Note: 4 14. WS: The Lord’s Supper took the place of Jewish Passover:
“Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us” (2 Corinthians 5:7). The Passover was
a divinely appointed symbol, reminding of and setting forth the deliverance of
the firstborn by the sprinkling of blood. But the paschal lamb was also typical
of the Lamb of God. The visible emblem in the instance of both Passover and the
supper teaches the expiation of sin by Christ’s vicarious sacrifice.] 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.15[Note: 5 15. WS: On this point
see Calvin 4.17.9-12, 33, 36, 39.]

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 Romans 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”; Colossians 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. (See 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:16[Note: 6 16. WS:
Proselyte baptism included the whole family, males and females, adults and
infants. It was associated also with the circumcision of the males. Some time
before the advent, the whole nation of the Idumeans embraced Judaism rather than
be expelled from their country. Josephus says that Queen Helena of Adiatum and
her son became proselytes. On this subject, see Maimonides; Wall, History of
Baptism; Lightfoot; Hammond, On Baptism.] “The promise [of the gift of the Holy
Spirit; v. 38] is unto you and your children” (Acts 2:38-39); “if the root be
holy, so are the branches” (Romans 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 Corinthians 7:14);
“go teach [disciple] all nations, baptizing them” (Matthew 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 [namely, circumcision] 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.”17[Note: 7 17.
WS: Calvin 2.508-10, 516; Jeremy Taylor, Liberty of Prophesying, 18.]

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 (Deuteronomy 10:16; Deuteronomy 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” (Genesis 17:7); “the
promise [of the gift of the Holy Spirit; v. 38] 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. (See 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 (Exodus 24:6-8; Hebrews 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” (Numbers 8:7). (c)
Lepers and defiled persons when restored to the congregation were baptized by
sprinkling (Leviticus 14:4-7; Leviticus 14:49-53; Numbers 19:18-19; Numbers
31:19; Numbers 31:22-23; Luke 5:14). (d) Gentiles when admitted to the Jewish
church were baptized by sprinkling (Numbers 31:12; Numbers 31:19). 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” (Matthew 3:11). This baptism is never by
immersion: “He shall sprinkle many nations” (Isaiah 52:15); “then will I
sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean; a new heart will I give
you” (Ezekiel 36:25); “let us draw near to God, having our hearts sprinkled
(rherantismenoi)18[Note: 8 18. ῥεραντισμένοι] from an evil conscience” (Hebrews
10:22); “the blood of sprinkling (rhantismou)19[Note: 9 19. ῥαντισμοῦ] that
speaks better things than the blood of Abel” (12:24); “elect unto sprinkling of
the blood of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:2); “until the Spirit be poured upon us
from on high” (Isaiah 32:15; Joel 2:28); “I will pour out my Spirit unto you”
(Proverbs 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)20[Note: 0 20. ἐβαπτίσθη] before dinner” (Luke 11:38); “when
they come from the market, except they wash (baptisōntai21[Note: 1 21.
βαπτίσωνται] in A, D, F, Textus Receptus, Tischendorf; rhantisōntai22[Note: 2
22.ῥαντίσωνται = to be sprinkled] 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)23[Note: 3 23. βαπτισμούς] 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 Numbers 19:18 : “A
clean person shall sprinkle water upon the tent and upon all the vessels of the
unclean person.”24[Note: 4 24. WS: Whether the baptism of Naaman (2 Kings 5:10;
2 Kings 5:14) was sacramental or ceremonial is doubtful. If it was sacramental,
like that of the restored leper under the levitical economy, it wasperformed by
a priest or his deputy and was administered by sprinkling. This is the view of
Baird, Bible History of Baptism, 157. He explains the command go wash (2 Kings
5:10) byActs 22:16: Ananias said to Saul, “Rise, baptize yourself (baptisai,
βάπτισαι), and wash away your sins.” Here the baptism is described as
self-administered, as it is in Naaman’s case, though really administered by
another. If, on the other hand, Naaman’s baptism was ceremonial, like the
ceremonial washing of the blind man in thepool of Siloam (John 9:7), it was by
pouring.]

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).25[Note: 5 25. WS: On Old Testament
baptism, see the valuable treatise of Baird, Bible History of Baptism; Mosheim,
Commentaries 1.89-90.] (See 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 baptō26[Note: 6 26.
βάπτω = to dip] and baptizō.27[Note: 7 27. βαπτίζω = to dip]

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 baptō28[Note: 8 28. βάπτω] and
baptizō,29[Note: 9 29. βαπτίζω] 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,30[Note: 0 30. κάθαρσις = purifying rite] and the Romans theirs
lustratio. Sprinkling was the mode in both. The nouns baptismos,31[Note: 1 31.
βαπτίσμος = washing, cleansing]baptisma,32[Note: 2 32. βαπτίσμα = dipping,
baptism] and baptistēs33[Note: 3 33. βαπτίστης = baptizer] are not in the
classical vocabulary. They were coined by Jews and Christians from
baptizō34[Note: 4 34. βαπτίζω] 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[Note: 5 35. WS: In the later time of the Roman Empire, when public
baths were erected, the bathing tub (labrum) was called baptisterium. The term
was probably borrowed from Christian usage. But the labrum was not large enough
to immerse the whole body. Water was taken from it and poured upon the head of
the person standing in it or beside it (“Baths” in Anthon’s Dictionary of
Antiquities, 148).]

The classical meaning of baptō36[Note: 6 36. βάπτω] and baptizō37[Note: 7 37.
βαπτίζω] 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, baptō38[Note: 8 38. βάπτω] and baptizō39[Note: 9 39.
βαπτίζω] 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, baptō40[Note: 0
40. βάπτω] and baptizō,41[Note: 1 41. βαπτίζω] 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 baptō42[Note: 2
42. βάπτω] and baptizō43[Note: 3 43. βαπτίζω] 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
baptizō44[Note: 4 44. βαπτίζω] 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[Note: 5 45. WS: An example of the
application of the term baptize to a wetting of theperson that is not immersion
is found inDaniel 4:33: Nebuchadnezzar’s “body was wet (ebaphē, ἐβάφη) with the
dew of heaven.” Another is found inJdt 12:7: Judith “washed herself (ebaptizeto,
ἐβαπτίζετο) in a fountain of water by the camp.” That this wasnot an immersion
is highly certain, because the fountain would be used for drinking and culinary
purposes. And though the washing was “in the night,” yet in a camp there would
be nearly as little privacy by night as by day.] 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 baptizō46[Note: 6 46. βαπτίζω] 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),47[Note: 7 47.
τὸ ὕδωρ] 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.48[Note:
8 48. WS: The preposition eis (εἰς) rendered in the Authorized Version “into”
(Acts 8:38) and “in” (Mark 1:9) might be rendered “unto” or “at” (cf.Acts 8:40)
equally well. So, likewise, apo (ἀπό) and ek (ἐκ) may be rendered “from” or “out
of” inMatthew 3:16;Mark 1:10;Acts 8:39. The clause were baptized in the Jordan
(en tō iordanē, ἐν τῷ ἰορδάνῃ) does not necessarily denote immersion, any more
than the phrase he lives in the Connecticut does.]

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”
(Matthew 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; Acts 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.49[Note: 9 49. WS: There is an apparent
exception to this inActs 19:5. Bengel’s explanation is that these persons “had
not known that they were bound by the baptism of repentance to faith in Jesus
Christ.” John’s baptism had not been administered to them with an intelligent
understanding on their part of the meaning of the rite. Had it been, they would
not have been “baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.” Says Bengel (onActs
19:5), “The baptism which is mentioned inMatthew 3:6; Matthew 28:19was one;
otherwise, there would not have been ‘the beginning of the gospel’ in John the
Baptist (Mark 1:1-3), and the Lord’s Supper inMatthew 26:1-75would be older than
baptism inMatthew 28:1-20.”]

Immersion has been supported by the equivocal rendering of the verb
synthaptō50[Note: 0 50. συνθάπτω = to bury with] in Romans 6:4 and Colossians
2:12. In Romans 6:4 the rendering is “buried by baptism”; in Colossians 2:12
“buried in baptism.” The English word bury is applicable either to burial in
earth or in water; but the Greek word synthaptō51[Note: 1 51. συνθάπτω] 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 synthaptō52[Note: 2 52. συνθάπτω] 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 Romans 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 [in a tomb]. As Christ was buried [in a tomb] that he might rise again to
a new and more heavenly life, so we are, in baptism, buried [in a tomb], that
is, cut off from the life of sin that we may rise again to a new life of faith
and love.

S U P P L E M E N T S

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 Corinthians 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
(Matthew 5:21-48; Romans 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 (Psalms 1:2; Psalms 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 (Genesis 1:26-27; Genesis 2:16-17; Genesis 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 (Galatians 5:17; Romans 7:21; Romans 7:23).
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 Corinthians 9:27; Romans 6:12;
Galatians 6:14; Psalms 119:1-2; Hebrews 12:1; Hebrews 13:21).”

6.7.2 (see p. 811). Augustine (Tractates inJohn 26:1 [ed. Migne]), 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.”53[Note: 3 53.
Daturus Dominus Spiritum sanctum, dixit se panem qui de coelo descendit, hortans
ut credamus in eum. Credere enim in eum, hoc est manducare panem vivum. Qui
credit, manducat: invisibiliter saginatur, quia invisibiliter renascitur.] 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 [spiritually] his flesh nor drinks his blood
[even though he literally eats (premat dentibus), carnally and visibly, the
sacrament of Christ’s body and blood].”54[Note: 4 54. Hoc est ergo manducare
illam escam, et illum bibere potum, in Christo manere, et illum manentem in se
habere. Ac per hoc qui non manet in Christo, et in quo non manet Christus,
procul dubio nec manducat (spiritualiter) carnem ejus, nec bibit ejus sanguinem
(licet carnaliter et visibiliter premat dentibus sacramentum corporis et
sanguinis Christi).] 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.”55[Note: 5 55. In coena Domini naturale ac substantiale istud corpus
Christi, quo et hic passus est et nunc in coelis ad dexteram patris sedet, not
naturaliter atque per essentiam editur, sed spiritualiter tantum. Spiritualiter
edere corpus Christi, nihil aliud quam spiritu ac mente niti misericordia et
bonitate Dei per Christum. Sacramentaliter edere corpus Christi, cum proprie
volumus loqui, est, adjuncto sacremento, mente et spiritu corpus Christi edere.]
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 6:1-71.
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
[statements] 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.’
”56[Note: 6 56. Manducatatio non est unius generis. Est enim manducatio
corporalis, qua cibus in os percipitur ab homine, dentibus atterritur et in
ventrem deglutitur. Hoc manducationis genere intellexerunt olim Capernaitae sibi
manducandam carnem Domini, sed refutantur ab ipso, Joann. cap. 6. Est et
spiritualis manducatio corporis Christi, non ea quidem, qua existememus cibum
mutari in spiritum, sed qua, manente in sua essentia et proprietate corpore et
sanguine Domini, ea nobis communicantur spiritualiter, utique non corporali
modo, sed spirituali, per Spiritum Sanctum, qui videlicet ea quae per carnem et
sanguinem Domini pro nobis in mortem tradita parata sunt, ipsam, inquam,
remissionem peccatorum, liberationem et vitam aeternam, applicat et confert
nobis, ita ut Christus in nobis vivat et nos in ipso vivamus. Ex quibus omnibus
claret, nos per spiritualem cibum minime intellegere imaginarium, nescio quem,
cibum, sed ipsum Domini corpus pro nobis traditum, quod tamen percipiatur a
fidelibus, non corporaliter, sed spiritualiter per fidem. In qua re sequimur per
omnia doctrinam ipsius Salvatoris Christi Domini, dicentis apud Joann. 6:63,
“Caro (nimirum corporaliter manducatio) non prodest quidquam, spiritus est qui
vivificat. Verba quae loquor vobis spiritus et vita sunt.” Fit autem hic esus et
potus spiritualis etiam extra Domini coenam, et quoties, aut ubicunque homo in
Christum crediderit. Quo fortassis illud Augustini pertinet: “Quid paras dentem
et ventrem? Crede et manducasti.”] 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 [i.e., his real and actual sacrifice for sin]; 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 [as the
sacrifice for sin] 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 [as the
oblation for sin] 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 [or aspect]; not in general [as in the Scriptures
generally], but under this consideration [or aspect], 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 [in the sacrament]. 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 [spiritually] 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
[fictitious] 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);57[Note: 7 57. εὐλογία] (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 [first] believes and is
baptized [in profession and sign of his faith] shall be saved” (Mark 16:16). The
Apostle Peter declares that “baptism saves us by the resurrection of Jesus
Christ” (1 Peter 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 toward God.”
The 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)58[Note:8 58. εἰς] Jesus Christ were
baptized with reference to (eis)59[Note: 9 59. εἰς] his [atoning] 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 1:1-51 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.”


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  CHAPTER 43: 7.00. PART 7: ESCHATOLOGY
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PART 7

Eschatology


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  CHAPTER 44: 7.01.     INTERMEDIATE OR DISEMBODIED STATE
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Intermediate or Disembodied State Summary of the Doctrine

Eschatology (eschatōn logos)1[Note: 1. ἐσχάτων λόγος = a word/discourse about
the end-times] 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).”2[Note: 2. WS: It is often difficult to say
positively and without qualification what the opinion of a church father really
was upon the subject of hades, owing to the unsettled state of opinion. One and
the same writer, like Tertullian or Augustine, for example, makes different
statements at different times. This accounts for the conflicting representations
of dogmatic historians. One thing, however, is certain: the nearer we approach
the days of the apostles, the less do we hear about an underworld and of
Christ’s descent into it. Little is said concerning hades by the apostolic
fathers. In the longer recension of Ignatius’s To the Smyrnaeans 9, they are
exhorted to “repent while yet there is opportunity, for in hades no one can
confess his sins.” Justin Martyr (Trypho 5) simply says that “the souls of the
pious remain in a better place, while those of the wicked are in a worse,
waiting for the time of judgment.” The extracts from the fathers in Huidekoper’s
volume Christ’s Mission to the Underworld show the uncertainty that prevailed.
The same is true of those in König’s Christi Höllenfahrt (Christ’s descent into
hell), notwithstanding the bias of the author. For proof of the unsettled state
of opinion among the fathers on many points of doctrine, see Jeremy Taylor’s
Liberty of Prophesying, 8.]

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 limbus3[Note: 3. fringe, border] 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.4[Note: 4.
fringe, border] 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 [Westminster Larger Catechism 86 and Westminster Confession 1 say: into
the highest heavens]; 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 [trans.
Marsh]), “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 hadēs5[Note:
5. ᾅδης = hades] for all, consisting of two subterranean divisions: Elysium and
Tartarus.6[Note: 6. WS: The pagan nomenclature is self-consistent, but the
pagan-Christian is not. In the pagan scheme, hades is a general term having two
special terms under it: Elysium and Tartarus. But in the paganized Christian
scheme, hades does double duty, being both a general and a special term. When
the pagan is asked, “Of what does hades consist?” he answers, “Of Elysium and
Tartarus.” But when the mythological Christian is asked, “Of what does hades
consist?” he must answer, “Of paradise and hades.” He cannot answer, “Of
paradise and Tartarus,” because the latter is gehenna, which he denies to be in
hades. Hence he converts the whole into a part of itself. To say that hades is
made up of paradise and hades is like saying that New York City is made up of
Central Park and New York City.] 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 2Ma 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.7[Note: 7. WS: On the influence of Hellenism on later
Judaism, see Edersheim, Messianic Prophecy and History, lect. 9.]

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.8[Note: 8. WS: The
strong tendency of the later Jews to adopt both the customs and opinions of the
heathen nations is noticed by Chemnitz in his learned and thorough examination
of the Tridentine doctrine of purgatory (Examination concerning Purgatory, 2):
“Ex philosophorum ratiocinationibus, et ex superstitiosis gentium sacrificiis,
quae ubique usitata erant, cum, quidem, sicut de caris absentibus ita etiam de
mortuis naturalis quaedem cura et sollicitudo animis nostris insita est, ad
Judaeos etiam hujus opinionis contagium quoddam, inclinato jam Judaismo, serpere
coepit. Quanquam enim incisio carnis, et evulsio capillorum, in luctu mortuorum,
expresse prohibita erant (Leviticus 19:1-37,Deuteronomy 14:1-29), ex
conversatione tamen inter gentes, Israelitis etiam prophetarum tempore illa
usurpari coepta fuisse, ex Jeremiae, cap. 16, non obscure colligitur. Sicut a
gentibus etiam tibicines in funerum curatione mutauti sunt (Matthew 9:1-38),
juxta versum poetae: ‘cantabat moestis tibia funeribus.’ Eadem ratione tandem
post prophetarum tempora, etiam orationes et sacrificia pro mortuis, Judaei
imitari coeperunt circa annum 170 ante natum Christum, cujus exemplum extat 2
Maccabaeorum 12. Id quod tum fieri coepit, cum collapsa doctrina, et rebus
omnibus, cum in imperio tum in templo, perturbatissimis, Judaei una cum
foederibus, etiam lingua, appellationibus, moribus, et ritibus, conformitatem
cum gentibus quaererent et affectarent: sicut tota historia Maccabaeorum
ostendit.” [AG: With Judaism already in a state of decline, a certain infection
of this opinion began to creep in among the Jews from the reasonings of the
philosophers and from the superstitious sacrifices of the heathen, which were
everywhere customary. Indeed, just as a certain natural care and solicitude is
implanted in our souls concerning beloved ones who are absent, so likewise (this
carried over into a concern for) the dead. For although the cutting of the flesh
and the pulling out of the hair in the mourning of the dead was expressly
prohibited (Leviticus 19:1-37;Deuteronomy 14:1-29), nevertheless, it is clearly
inferred fromJeremiah 16:1-21that, due to regular contact with the heathen,
those things had begun to be practiced by the Israelites even in the time of the
prophets. Thus, they even borrowed from the heathen the use of flute players in
conducting their funerals (Matthew 9:1-38), according to the verse of the poet,
“The flute was playing at the sad funerals.” In the same way, at length after
the time of the prophets, the Jews began to imitate (around 170 b.c.) also the
prayers and sacrifices for the dead-an example of which is found in2Ma 12:1-45.
With the collapse of teaching and with everything in disarray-both in government
and in the temple-it happened at that time that the Jews together with their
covenants (note: Kramer renders una cum foederibus as “together with their
confederates”-though lexically foedus means “covenant” or “agreement”) sought
and aspired to conformity with the heathen also in speech, names, customs, and
rites. This is shown by the entire history of the Maccabeans.]]

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),9[Note: 9. ùÑÀàåÉì = sheol] known to both [the later]
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)10[Note: 0 10. WS: As an example
of the degree to which the mythological view of the condition of the dead had
worked itself into the Christian church in the first part of the third century,
see the fanciful description of hades by Hippolytus in a fragment of his
Discourse against the Greeks.]

According to this hellenized conception of the intermediate state, at death all
souls go down to hades: in inferna loca11[Note: 1 11. into the infernal/lower
parts] or ad inferos homines.12[Note: 2 12. to the men below] 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 Corinthians 12:1; 2 Corinthians 12:4), 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 [and the saints
that have been with him] in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:17; cf. 2 Thessalonians
4:14; Ephesians 4:8; John 17:24; Acts 7:25; Luke 23:42-43; Luke 23:46; Proverbs
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)13[Note: 3 13. ἀνακλιθήσονται] with
Abraham in the kingdom of heaven.” Paradise is separated from hades by a “great
chasm” (Luke 16:26). The word chasma14[Note: 4 14. χάσμα] 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[Note: 5 15. Maxime dicitur de spatio quod e loco superiore ad
inferiorem extenditur (Schleusner, entry “chasma”).] Hades is in
infernis;16[Note: 6 16. in the lower parts/regions] Abraham’s bosom or paradise
is in superis;17[Note: 7 17. in the upper parts/regions] and heaven proper is in
excelsis or summis.18[Note: 8 18. in the highest]

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 Corinthians 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.19[Note: 9 19. WS: Respecting the entire separation between the good and
the evil, see1 Samuel 25:29;Psalms 26:9; Psalms 28:3.] 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. (See 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 [hades] 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
Psalms 9:18, Origen remarks that “as paradise is the residence of the just, so
hades is the place of punishment (kolastērion)20[Note: 0 20. κολαστήριον] 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 Psalms 6:1-10 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).21[Note: 1
21. some part of the lower regions] 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 ofGenesis
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),22[Note: 2 22. ἐν ὑποχθόνιοις] or the places under
the earth in paradise; or that those infernal places (ta hypochthonia)23[Note: 3
23. τὰ ὑποχθόνια] 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.”24[Note: 4 24. Insontes supra, sontes
infra. Insontes in coelo, sontes in profundo. Insontes in manu dei, sontes in
manu diaboli.] 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[Note: 5
25. WS: The Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-39), composed of Greek and Latin
bishops, which attempted to unite the Latin and Greek churches, decided “that
the souls of the saints are received immediately into heaven and behold God
himself as he is, three in one” (Taylor, Liberty of Prophesying, 8).] (See
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” (Proverbs 15:24). When Samuel is represented as “coming up from
the earth” (1 Samuel 28:7-20), it is because the body reanimated rises from the
grave.26[Note: 6 26. WS: In the narrative concerning the witch of Endor, the
term sheol is not once used.] 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” (Ephesians
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 [down from paradise, not up from hades]” (2 Thessalonians
4:14). 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 Thessalonians 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 Peter 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 Matthew
12:40; Acts 2:27; Romans 10:7; 1 Peter 3:18-20; 1 Peter 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.27[Note: 7 27. he
descended into hell] 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.28[Note: 8 28. WS: Coleridge (Works
5.278) remarks: “This clause was not inserted into the Apostles’ Creed till the
sixth century after Christ. I believe the original intention of the clause was
no more than vere mortuus est (he truly died), in contradiction to the
hypothesis of a trance or suspended animation.”]

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 inferos29[Note: 9 29. descent into hell] must
be rejected as an interpolation. (See 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.30[Note: 0 30. WS: See Hagenbach,
History of Doctrine §§77-78, 141-42 (ed. Smith).] 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)31[Note: 1
31. ᾅδης = hades] was never taken in Scripture in a good sense to denote the
abode of the righteous.”32[Note: 2 32. WS: Notwithstanding the currency which
the view of hades as the abode of the good and evil between death and the
resurrection has obtained, it would shock the feelings, should a clergyman say
to mourning friends: “Dry your tears, the departed saint has gone down to
hades.”] 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.33[Note: 3 33. WS: The Episcopal church
does not regard the descent into hell as a necessary part of the Christian
faith. In the order for evening prayer, it is said that “any churches may omit
the words he descended into hell.” The Forty-two Articles of Edward VI explain
the clause to mean a descent into hades and preaching to the Old Testament
saints in prison there. The Elizabethan Thirty-nine Articles give no
explanation, but contain both clauses. Hence Pearson concludes that the
Episcopalian has some liberty in the interpretation of this article. His own
method is, first, to explain the Scripture and then to explain the creed as it
now reads in its modern form. His explanation of Scripture is that in the clause
you will not leave my soul in hell soul is metonymically put for body and hell
means the grave because (a) soul is frequently put for body in the Hebrew, (b)
sheol means grave in many places, and (c) the Aquileian Creed so intended.
Still, he says, “Though this may be a probable interpretation if the words of
David, yet it cannot pretend to be an exposition of the creed as it now stands”
in the Thirty-nine Articles, that is, as containing both clauses. When both
clauses are retained, as in the Thirty-nine Articles, the second must be more
than a mere repetition and explanation of the first. For if one merely explains
the other, one would be omitted, as Rufinus says was the case in the Aquileian
Creed and as is the case in the Athanasian Creed. Hence Pearson decides that the
form of this article as it is adopted in the Thirty-nine Articles requires to be
explained as the descensus ad inferos (descent into hell) in order to avoid
tautology. But the form itself he shows to be a late addition to the Apostles’
Creed. If both clauses are retained, the explanation proposed by Whitby (onActs
2:26-27) is consistent with Scripture: “The Scripture does assure us that the
soul of the holy Jesus, being separated from his body, went to paradise (Luke
23:43), and from thence it must descend into the grave or sepulcher to be united
to his body that this might be revived. And thus it may be truly said: was dead
and buried; his soul descended afterward into hades (the grave) to be united to
his body; and his body being thus revived, he rose again the third day.’ ”]
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.34[Note: 4 34. WS: Baumgarten-Crusius (History of
Doctrine 2.109) finds three stadia in the development of the dogma of the
descent to hades: (1) the descent was the burial itself put into an imaginative
form; (2) the descent was a particular condition or status of Christ resulting
from his burial; and (3) the descent was entirely separate from the burial,
being another and wholly distinct thing. Van Oosterzee’s history of the clause
he descended into hell is as follows: “As concerns the history of this article,
the conviction was expressed even by some of the earliest of the fathers-Justin
Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, and others-that Jesus, after
his burial, actually tarried in the world of spirits and by some of them, also,
that he there preached the gospel, while the romantic manner in which this
mysterious subject is presented in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus is well
known. Gnosticism, especially, warmly espoused this idea; according to Marcion,
this activity of the Lord was directed to delivering the victims of the demiurge
and leading them upward with himself. From the creeds of the Semiarians, this
much-debated article appears to have passed over to those of the orthodox
church, according to some, with a view to controvert Apollinarianism. In the
Exposition of the Aquileian Symbol of Rufinus, this formula is found, and
especially through his influence it appears also to have passed over into other
confessions of faith; although it is remarkable that in the Nicene Creed mention
is made only of ‘was buried’; in the Athanasian Creed, on the other hand, only
of ‘descended into hell.’ It is manifest from this, that both expressions were
first employed by many interchangeably, though very soon greater stress was laid
upon the latter, and its contents regarded as the indication of a special
remedial activity of the Lord. As the doctrine of purgatory became more
developed, the conception found wider acceptance that the Lord had descended
into the lower world in order to deliver the souls of the Old Testament
believers from their subterranean abode, the limbus patrum. Especially under the
influence of Thomas Aquinas was developed the doctrine of the Romish church that
the whole Christ, both as to his divine and human nature, voluntarily repaired
thither to assure to the above-mentioned saints the fruits of his death on the
cross and to raise them out of this prisonhouse to the full enjoyment of
heavenly blessedness. According to Luther, on the other hand, who regards the
descensus as the first step in the path of the exaltation, the Lord, after his
being made alive according to the spirit and immediately upon his return from
the grave, descended, body and soul, into hell, there to celebrate his triumph
over the devil and his powers (Colossians 2:15) and to proclaim to them
condemnation and judgment. Reformed theologians either understood the expression
in the sense of ‘buried’ or explained it of the final anguish and dismay of the
suffering Christ. This latter is the view of Calvin 2.16 and of Heidelberg
Catechism A. 44. Some divines, for example, the Lutheran Aepinus, even
maintained that the reference is to the sufferings of hell, which Christ endured
in his soul, while his body was lying in the grave. No wonder that the Formula
of Concord declared this article to be one “qui neque sensibus, neque ratione
nostra comprehendi queat, solo autem fide acceptandus sit” [AG: which neither
can be understood with the senses nor with our reason, but only is to be
accepted on faith alone], which, however, did not prevent its being possible to
say, on the other side, that “there are almost as many dissertations concerning
the descensus as there are flies in the height of summer” (Witsius). Left by the
supranaturalism of the past century entirely in a misty obscurity, it was wholly
rejected by the Rationalists as the fruit of an exploded popular notion, to
which, according to Schleiermacher, nothing but a fact wholly unnoticed by the
apostles (unbezeugte Thatsache) served as a basis. Only in our day has the tide
turned and theologians of different schools have begun to return with increased
interest, yea, with manifest preference to this dogma and to bring it into
direct connection not only with soteriology, but also with eschatology.” In the
face of this historical account, Van Oosterzee proceeds to defend the doctrine
of a local descent to hades, founding onPsalms 16:10;Acts 2:25-31; Acts
13:33-37;Ephesians 4:8-10;1 Peter 3:19-21; 1 Peter 4:6; Dogmatics 2.558-59.]
(See 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 Corinthians 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.35[Note: 5 35. WS: Augustine, Bede, Aquinas, Erasmus,
Beza, Gerhard, Hottinger, Clericus, Leighton, Pearson, Secker, Hammond,
Hoffmann, and most Reformed theologians explain1 Peter 3:18-20to mean that
Christ preached by Noah to men who were “disobedient” in the days of Noah and
who for this cause were “spirits in prison” at the time of Peter’s writing. The
particle pote (πότε = when), qualifying apeithēsasi (ἀπειθήσασι = having been
disobedient), shows that the disobedience (or disbelief) occurred “when the ark
was preparing.” But the preaching must have been contemporaneous with the
disobedience or disbelief. What else was thereto disobey or disbelieve? Says
Pearson (On the Creed, art. 2): “Christ was really before the flood, for he
preached to them that lived before it. This is evident from the words of St.
Peter (1 Peter 3:18-20). From which words it appears, first, that Christ
preached by the same Spirit by the virtue of which he was raised from the dead:
but that Spirit was not his [human] soul, but something of a greater power;
second, that those to whom he preached were such as were disobedient; third,
that the time when they were disobedient was the time before the flood, when the
ark was preparing. The plain interpretation is to be acknowledged for the true,
that Christ did preach unto those men which lived before the flood, even while
they lived, and consequently that he was before it. For though this was not done
by an immediate act of the Son of God, as if he personally had appeared on earth
and actually preached to that world, but by the ministry of a prophet, by the
sending of Noah ‘the eighth preacher of righteousness’: yet to do anything by
another not able to perform it without him as much demonstrates the existence of
the principal cause as if he did it himself without any intervening instrument.”
Another proof of the correctness of this interpretation is the fact that
Christ’s preaching to “the spirits in prison” was pneumati (πνεύματι = in the
spirit) only. The total theanthrōpos (θεάνθρωπος = God-man) did not preach. The
sarx (σάρξ) or human nature of Christ had no part in the act. But Christ’s
personal and local preaching in hades would require his whole divine-human
person, as much so as his preaching in Galilee or Jerusalem. Formula of Concord
9.2 so understands and teaches: “Credimus quod tota persona, deus et homo, post
sepulturam, ad inferos descenderit, Satanam devicerit” [AG: We believe that the
entire person, God and man, after he was buried, descended into hell, thoroughly
conquered Satan]. Christ’s preaching through Noah-“a preacher of righteousness”
(2 Peter 2:5) and therefore an “ambassador of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:20)-might
be done through his divinity alone. SeeEphesians 4:20-21;Acts 26:23;John
10:16for instances in which Christ’s preaching by others is called his
preaching. It is objected that the phrase he went and preached (poreutheis
ekēryxen,πορευθεὶς ἐκήρυξεν) in1 Peter 3:19would not apply to a preaching that
was instrumental and spiritual. But the same use is found inEphesians 2:17:
Christ “came and preached (elthōn euangelisato, ἐλθὼν εὐαγγελίσατο) to you which
were afar off.” The reference is to Christ’spreaching to the Gentile world by
his apostles. Christ, in his own person, did not preach to them which were “afar
off”; and he forbade his disciples to do so until the time appointed by the
Father (Matthew 10:5;Acts 1:4). The objection that actually living men upon
earth would not be called “spirits” is met byRomans 13:1;1 John 4:1; 1 John
4:3and by the fact that at the time of Peter’s writing the persons meant are
disembodied spirits.1 Peter 4:6, sometimes cited in proof of the descensus ad
inferos, refers tothe preaching of the gospel to the spiritually “dead in
trespasses and sins.” This is Augustine’s interpretation (Letter 6.21 to
Euodius). InEphesians 4:9ta katōtera merē tēs gēs (τὰ κατώτερα μέρη τῆς γῆς =
the lower parts of the earth) to which Christ “descended” from “on high”
signifies this lower world of earth. St. Paul is speaking here of the
incarnation. The incarnate Logos did not descend from heaven to hades or ascend
from hades to heaven. Cf.Isaiah 44:23: “Shout, you lower parts of the earth.”
This isthe opposite of the “heavens,” which are bidden to “sing.” InActs
2:19this world is called hē gē katō (ἡγῆ κάτω = the earth below). Hades would be
ta katōtata merē tēs gēs (τὰ κατώτατα μέρη τῆς γῆς = the lower parts of the
earth). InRomans 10:7Christ’s descent “into the deep (abysson, ἄβυσσον)” is
shown by the context to be his descent into the grave. Whatever be the
interpretation of1 Peter 3:18-20, such a remarkable doctrine as the descent to
hades should have more foundation than a single disputed text. The doctrine
itself is so obscure that it has had five different forms of statement: (1)
Christ virtually descended into hades, because his death was efficacious upon
the souls there; (2) Christ actually descended into hades; (3) Christ’s descent
into hades was his suffering the torments of hell; (4) Christ’s descent into
hades was his burial in the grave; and (5) Christ’s descent into hades was his
remaining in the state of the dead for a season. Westminster Larger Catechism 50
combines the last two: “Christ’s humiliation after his death consisted in his
being buried and continuing in the state of the dead and under the power of
death, till the third day, which has been otherwise expressed in the words he
descended into hell.”]

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” (Genesis 49:33); “oh that I had given up the ghost” (Job 10:18; Job
11:20; Job 14:20); “she has given up the ghost” (Jeremiah 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” (Ecclesiastes 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” (Matthew 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
Corinthians 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 Peter 1:14);
“I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus”
(Revelation 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 Deuteronomy 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” (Genesis 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,36[Note: 6 36. first gospel (a term used to refer to the first
indications of a gospel of salvation)] 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” (Psalms 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” (Isaiah 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” (Psalms 39:5; Psalms 39:7). 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” (Genesis 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” (Exodus 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?” (Deuteronomy 33:3;
Deuteronomy 33:29); “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” (Isaiah 33:22); “are you not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my
Holy One? we shall not die?” (Habakkuk 1:12); “into your hand I commit my
spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord God of truth” (Psalms 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
Corinthians 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” (Genesis 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.”37[Note: 7 37. WS: Cf. Mozley, Essay on Job.]

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 Corinthians 12:2; 2 Corinthians 12:4); “to him that overcomes
will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the center of the paradise
of God” (Revelation 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)38[Note: 8 38. ἀνακλιθήσονται] with Abraham and Isaac
and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 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 Corinthians 5:8); am in a strait between two, having a desire to depart
and to be with Christ, which is far better” (Php 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 Thessalonians 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” (Genesis
5:24); “let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his”
(Numbers 23:10); the dying Jacob confidently says, “I have waited for your
salvation, O Lord” (Genesis 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” (Psalms 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” (Isaiah 25:8, quoted by St. Paul in 1
Corinthians 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” (Hosea 13:14, cited by St.
Paul in 1 Corinthians 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” (Daniel 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).39[Note: 9 39. WS: The common opinion of the
church, ancient, medieval, and modern, is that this passage teaches both
immortality and the resurrection. De Wette, Ewald, and even Renan find the
doctrine of immortality in it (see Perowne, On Immortality, n. 3).] 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 [of the resurrection],
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; Acts
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” (Hebrews 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. (See 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; Luke 16:25).
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.40[Note: 0
40. WS: Müller regards it as so unquestionable, from the description in the
parable of Dives and Lazarus, that hades is not a place for repentance and
salvation that he places future redemption after the day of judgment. He asserts
that “those theories of apokatastasis (ἀποκατάστασις = restoration) which
represent it as taking place in the interval between death and the general
resurrection directly violate the New Testament eschatology. If, therefore, the
idea of an apokatastasis pantōn (ἀποκατάστασις πάντων = restoration of all
things) is to be maintained, it must be referred to a period lying beyond the
general resurrection” (Sin 2.426).]

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”
(Matthew 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” (Matthew 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” (Revelation 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.41[Note: 1 41. WS: If hades in this passage
means an underworld, it would include paradise, and thus paradise would be cast
into the lake of fire.]

5. Hades is inseparably connected with spiritual and eternal death: “I have the
keys of hades and of death” (Revelation 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
Corinthians 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” (Revelation 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; Acts 2:31; 1 Corinthians
15:55. In 1 Corinthians 15:55, א, A, B, C, D, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Hort, and
Revised Version read thanate.42[Note: 2 42. θάνατε = O death]

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
[Hebrew: for a soul]” (Leviticus 21:1); “you shall not make any cuttings in your
flesh for the dead [Hebrew: for a soul]” (19:28); “he shall come at no dead body
[Hebrew: dead soul]” (Numbers 6:6; cf. Leviticus 5:2; Leviticus 22:4; Numbers
18:11; Numbers 18:13; Haggai 2:13; see p. 857 n. 51 [Note: . 51 51. WS: In
support of this interpretation of these words, we avail ourselves of the
unquestioned learning and accuracy of Pearson. After remarking that the
explanation which makes the clause he descended into hell to mean “that Christ
in his body was laid in the grave” is “ordinarily rejected by denying that
‘soul’ is ever taken for ‘body’ or ‘hell’ for the ‘grave,’ ” he proceeds to say
that “this denial is in vain: for it must be acknowledged that sometimes the
Scriptures are rightly so, and cannot otherwise be, understood. First, the same
word in the Hebrew, which the psalmist used, and in the Greek, which the apostle
used and we translate ‘the soul,’ is elsewhere used for the body of a dead man
and rendered so in the English version. Both nepeš (ðÆôÆùÑ = life, soul) and
psychē (ψυχή = soul) are used for the body of a dead man in the Hebrew and
Septuagint ofNumbers 6:6: ‘He shall come at no dead body (nepeš mēt,ðÆôÆùÑ îÅú =
dead soul).’ The same usage is found inLeviticus 5:2; Leviticus 19:28; Leviticus
21:1; Leviticus 21:11; Leviticus 22:4;Numbers 18:11; Numbers 18:13;Haggai 2:13.
Thus, several times, nepeš (ðÆôÆùÑ = life, soul) and psychē (ψυχή = soul) are
taken for the body of a dead man, that body which polluted a man under the law
by the touch thereof. And Maimonides has observed that there is no pollution
from the body till the soulbe departed. Therefore nepeš (ðÆôÆùÑ = life, soul)
and psychē (ψυχή = soul) did signify the body after the separation of the soul.
And it was anciently observed by St. Augustine that the soul may be taken for
the body only: “Animae nomine corpus solum posse significari, modo quodam
locutionis ostenditur, quo significatur per id quod continetur illud quod
continet” [AG: That the word soul can signify the body alone is shown in a
certain manner of speaking, in which the thing contained signifies the
container]; Letter 157 al. 190 to Optatus; Concerning the Origin of Souls 5.19.
Second, Hebrew šĕ˒ôl (ùÑÀàåÉì = sheol), which the psalmist used, and the Greek
word hadēs (ᾅδης), which the apostle employed and is translated ‘hell’ in the
English version, does certainly in some other places signify no more than the
‘grave’ and is translated so. As when Ainsworth follows the word, ‘For I will go
down unto my son, mourning, to hell’; our translation, arriving at the sense,
renders it, ‘For I will go down into the grave, unto my son, mourning’ (Genesis
37:35). So again he renders, ‘You shall bring down my gray hairs with sorrow
unto hell,’ that is, ‘to the grave’ (Genesis 42:38). And in this sense we say,
‘The Lord kills and makes alive: he brings down to the grave and brings up’ (1
Samuel 2:6). It is observed by Jewish commentators that those Christians are
mistaken who interpret those words spoken by Jacob, ‘I will go down into sheol,’
of hell [in the sense of underworld], declaring that sheol there is nothing but
the grave” (Pearson, On the Creed, art. 5). The position that nepeš (ðÆôÆùÑ =
life, soul) is sometimes put for a dead body and that sheol in such a connection
denotes the grave was also taken by Ussher (as it had been by Beza onActs 2:27,
before him) and is supported with his remarkable philological and patristic
learning; see his discussion of the limbus patrum and Christ’s descent into hell
in his Answer to a Challenge of a Jesuit in Ireland in Works, vol. 3. This
metonymy of “soul” for “body” is as natural an idiom in English as it is in
Hebrew and Greek. It is easier for one to say that “the ship sank with a hundred
souls” than to say that it “sank with a hundred bodies.” And yet the latter is
the real fact in the case.] for Pearson’s proof of this metonymy). That soul is
put metonymically for body and that hades means the grave in Psalms 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.43[Note: 3 43. ἡ
ψυχή αὐτοῦ = his soul]

Meaning of the WordSheol The Old Testament term for the future abode of the
wicked and the place of future punishment is sheol (šĕ˒ôl).44[Note: 4 44.
ùÑÀàåÉì] This word, which is translated by hades (hadēs)45[Note: 5 45. ᾅδης] 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.46[Note: 6 46.
WS: In committing themselves to the position that sheol and hades “signify the
abode of departed spirits and correspond to the Greek hades or the underworld”
(preface to the Old Testament) and that neither term denotes either the place of
punishment or the grave, the Revised Version translators have placed themselves
in doctrinal opposition, on a very important subject, to James’s translators, to
Luther and the authors of the principal European versions, and to the missionary
translators generally. In all these versions, sheol and hades are understood to
mean either hell or the grave and never an underworld containing all spirits
good and bad. The view of the Reformers on this point is stated in the following
extract from “Hades” in the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia: “The Protestant churches
rejected, with purgatory and its abuses, the whole idea of a middle state and
taught simply two states and places-heaven for believers and hell for
unbelievers. Hades was identified with gehenna, and hence both terms were
translated alike in the Protestant versions. The English (as also Luther’s
German) version of the New Testament translates hades and gehenna by the same
word hell and thus obliterates the important distinction between the realm of
the dead (or netherworld, spirit world) and the place of torment or eternal
punishment; but in the Revision of 1881 the distinction is restored and the term
hades introduced.”]

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” (Psalms 9:17); “her steps take
hold on sheol” (Proverbs 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”
(Deuteronomy 32:22); “if I ascend up into heaven, you are there; if I make my
bed in sheol [the contrary of heaven], behold you are there” (Psalms 139:8);
“the way of life is above to the wise, that he may depart from sheol beneath”
(Proverbs 15:24); “sheol is naked before him, and destruction [Revised Version:
Abaddon] has no covering” (Job 26:6); “sheol and destruction [Revised Version:
Abaddon] are before the Lord” (Proverbs 15:11); “sheol and destruction [Revised
Version: Abaddon] 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” (Revelation 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 Thessalonians 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” (Revelation 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.47[Note: 7 47. WS: “The meaning of Hebrew šĕ˒ôl is doubtful, but
I have not hesitated to translate it hell. I do not find fault with those who
translate it grave, but it is certain that the prophet means something more than
common death; otherwise he would say nothing else concerning the wicked than
what would also happen to all the faithful in common with them” (Calvin onPsalms
9:17).] 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” (Psalms 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” (Genesis 2:17). And the interpretation which eliminates the idea of
endless punishment from the former, to be consistent, should eliminate it from
the latter. (See 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?” (Genesis 18:25); “to me belongs
vengeance and recompense; their feet shall slide in due time” (Deuteronomy
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 1:14-15); “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”
(Psalms 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”
(Proverbs 16:25); “God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for there is a
time for every purpose and every work” (Ecclesiastes 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?” (Isaiah 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” (Daniel
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” (Malachi 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” (Revelation 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” (Numbers 23:5; Numbers 23:10). 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” (Psalms
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, Isaiah 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” (Proverbs
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?” (Hebrews 11:16; Hebrews
11:35). 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 Genesis
2:17. The death there threatened is the very same thanatos48[Note: 8 48. θάνατος
= death] to which St. Paul refers in Romans 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”
(Deuteronomy 30:15); “I set before you the way of life and the way of death”
(Jeremiah 21:8); “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the
wicked turn from his way and live” (Ezekiel 18:32; Ezekiel 33:11); “all they
that hate me love death” (Proverbs 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”
(Psalms 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”
(Proverbs 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” (Romans 1:32) and that “the
end of those things is death” (6:21). Eternal death and sheol are as inseparably
joined in Proverbs 5:5 as eternal death and hades are in Revelation 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 [dead] son mourning” (Genesis
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” (Ecclesiastes 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” (Matthew 12:40)
refers to the burial of his body, not to the residence of his soul.49[Note: 9
49. WS: That “the heart of the earth” means the grave, Witsius (Apostles’ Creed,
diss. 17) argues in the following manner: “Jonah says that, while he was in the
bowels of the fish, he was ‘in the belly of hell’ or of the grave and ‘in the
middle [Hebrew: heart] of the sea’: and in this respect he was a figure of
Christ placed in the heart of the earth. This does not mean the hell of the
damned, which, as Jerome says, is commonly said to be ‘in the middle of the
earth’; but an earthen receptacle which has earth above, below, and on every
side; or more briefly, which is within the earth. As the Scripture places Tyre
‘in the heart of the sea,’ that is, surrounded by the sea, as ‘the way of a ship
is in the heart of the sea’ when it is surrounded on all sides by the sea, as
Absalom was ‘alive in the heart of the oak,’ that is, in the oak, within its
branches-so the grave is ‘the heart of the earth.’ Chrysostom remarks that ‘the
sacred writer does not say in the earth, but in the heart of the earth, that the
expression might clearly denote the grave, and that no one might suspect a mere
appearance [of death].’ ”] 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 Thessalonians 4:16); “our
conversation is in heaven, from which we look for our Savior the Lord Jesus”
(Php 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 Corinthians 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 Samuel
2:6); “your servants shall bring down the gray hairs of your servant our father
with sorrow to sheol” (Genesis 44:31);50[Note: 0 50. WS: This text andGenesis
42:38are parallel to 37:35 and explain Jacob’s words: “I will go down mourning
into sheol unto my son.” “Gray hairs” are matter and cannot go into a world of
spirits. It is objected that sheol does not mean the “grave” because there is a
word (qeber,


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  CHAPTER 45: 7.02.     CHRIST'S SECOND ADVENT
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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”
(Matthew 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” (Revelation 1:7). The passages of Scripture which must chiefly be
relied upon in constructing the doctrine of the second advent are Matthew
25:1-46; Matthew 26:64; 1 Corinthians 15:1-58; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-17;
Revelation 20:1-15; Revelation 21:1-27. 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 Revelation 20:4-5; the second, that of both the
righteous and the wicked at the end of the world, taught in Matthew 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 [Phrygia] 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 Revelation 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 Matthew 25:1-46. Christ himself here gives an
account of his own final advent, and he speaks of only one corporeal
resurrection. In order to harmonize Matthew 25:1-46 with Revelation 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)1[Note: 1. ψύχας] of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus,
and they lived (ezēsan)2[Note: 2. ἔζησαν] 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,3[Note: 3. ἀνίστημι = to raise, raise up] as is the case in
the New Testament generally, and not the verb zō4[Note: 4. ζῶ = to make alive]
or anazō.5[Note: 5. ἀναζῶ = to make alive again] 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” (Ephesians
2:1). Having thus “risen with Christ” (Colossians 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” (Matthew 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” (Romans 6:4); “arise from the dead, and
Christ shall give you life” (Ephesians 5:14); “if you be risen with Christ, seek
those things that are above” (Colossians 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” (Ephesians 2:6); “entombed with him in baptism, wherein also you
are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God” (Colossians 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 [he does not say: and now is], 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” (Romans 8:11). It should be
noticed that while Christ in John 5:25-29 directly mentions both resurrections,
St. John in Revelation 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. (See supplement 7.2.1.) In Revelation 20:5 it is said that “the
rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished.”6[Note:
6. WS: Tischendorf, Hort, A,B, and Vulgate read ezēsan (ἔζησαν = lived) instead
of anezēsan (ἀνέζησαν = lived again) in Textus Receptus. The Revised Version
omits “again.”] The remainder of the believing dead do not “live [and reign with
Christ]” 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).

S U P P L E M E N T

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 Revelation
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 Corinthians 15:26; 1 Corinthians
15:54-55; 1 Timothy 1:10; Hebrews 2:14); the “second death” is indestructible
(Revelation 20:14; Revelation 20:10). 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 Peter 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’ (Revelation 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.”


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  CHAPTER 46: 7.03.     RESURRECTION
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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.” (See 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)1[Note: 1. σῶμα ψυχικόν] and the spiritual body (sōma
pneumatikon).2[Note: 2. σῶμα πνευματικόν]

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; Mark 12:23). Passages that teach it are
“your dead men shall live; together with my dead body shall they arise” (Isaiah
26:19); “my flesh also shall rest in hope” (Psalms 16:9); “many that sleep in
the dust of the earth shall awake” (Daniel 12:2). The parable of a spiritual
resurrection implies a bodily resurrection (Ezekiel 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 (Genesis 49:29). The Apocrypha
teaches the resurrection (2Ma 7:9; 2Ma 7:23). (See 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 (Matthew 25:3-32; John 5:28-29; Acts
24:15; 1 Thessalonians 4:16). The generation living upon earth at the time of
the resurrection will instantaneously be reembodied (1 Thessalonians 4:17
compared with 1 Corinthians 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 Corinthians 15:44; 1
Corinthians 15:53). By sōma pneumatikon3[Note: 3. σῶμα πνευματικόν] is meant a
spiritlike body, that is, a body adapted to the future spiritual world. It is
antithetic to the sōma psychikon4[Note: 4. σῶμα ψυχικόν] or the “flesh and
blood” spoken of in 1 Corinthians 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”5[Note: 5. Aliud est corpus fieri spirituale quoad qualitates ratione
claritatis, agilitatis, subtilitatis, et similium; aliud vero fieri spiritum,
seu mutari in naturam spiritus.] (Turretin 13.19.19). In denominating the
present body psychikon6[Note: 6. ψυχικόν = natural] and the future body
pneumatikon,7[Note: 7. πνευματικόν = spiritual] St. Paul distinguishes between
psychē8[Note: 8. ψυχή = soul] and pneuma9[Note: 9. πνεῦμα = spirit] in the same
way that he does in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews 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)10[Note: 0 10. ψυχή] in distinction from the body (sōma)11[Note: 1
11. σῶμα] and are sometimes designated in their unity by pneuma12[Note: 2 12.
πνεῦμα] and sometimes by psychē.13[Note: 3 13. ψυχή] 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 Corinthians 15:44; 1 Thessalonians 5:23;
and Hebrews 4:12 St. Paul requires the distinction between the “animal” and the
“rational” soul for the purposes of his discussion and accordingly makes
it14[Note: 4 14. WS: The trichometry inHebrews 4:12is one of the coincidences
with Paul’s usage in his undoubted epistles which go to prove that he is the
author, directly or indirectly, of Hebrews.] (Shedd on Romans 8:10). (See
supplement 7.3.3.) The sōma psychikon15[Note: 5 15. σῶμα ψυχικόν] or “natural”
body is marked by the qualities of the psychē16[Note: 6 16. ψυχή] 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
pneuma17[Note: 7 17. πνεῦμα] or “rational soul.” It will not be composed of
flesh and blood, but of a substance which is more like pneuma18[Note: 8 18.
πνεῦμα] than like psychē,19[Note: 9 19. ψυχή] 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” (Matthew 22:30); “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1
Corinthians 15:50); “they hunger no more, neither thirst any more” (Revelation
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”
(Daniel 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 Corinthians 15:40); that of the lost is not.
(b) It is a “glorified” body (1 Corinthians 15:43; Php 3:21); that of the lost
is not. (c) It is a “resplendent” body (“the righteous shall shine forth as the
sun”; Matthew 13:43); that of the lost is not. The difference between the
blessed and the miserable resurrection is also marked by exanastasis20[Note: 0
20. ἐξανάστασις = resurrection] instead of anastasis21[Note: 1 21. ἀνάστασις =
resurrection] (Php 3:11), by the phrase tēs ek nekrōn22[Note: 2 22. τῆς ἐκ
νεκρῶν = from the dead] (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 Corinthians 15:23; Cudworth, Intellectual System
3.315 [ed. Tegg]). (See 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 Corinthians 15:44; 1 Corinthians 15:53). 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; John 20:16-17; John 20:20); Christ
prepares a place for his people and receives them individually: “I shall go to
him, but he shall not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23); “Jacob was gathered unto
his people” (Genesis 49:33); “Abraham died and was gathered to his people”
(25:8). (See 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 Corinthians 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 Thessalonians 5:23, man is a
synthesis of pneuma,23[Note: 3 23. πνεῦμα]psychē,24[Note: 4 24. ψυχή] and
sōma.25[Note: 5 25. σῶμα] The brute is a synthesis of only psychē26[Note: 6 26.
ψυχή] and sōma.27[Note: 7 27. σῶμα] 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 Genesis 2:7; Genesis
1:20-21; Genesis 1:24. In the first passage, a living soul (nepeš ḥayyâ)28[Note:
8 28. ðÆôÆùÑ çÇéÌÈä] 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[Note: 9 29. πνεῦμα/ψυχή] from the sōma,30[Note: 0 30. σῶμα]
the continued conscious existence of the former and the decomposition of the
latter. The substance of the sōma31[Note: 1 31. σῶμα] is mortal and dissolves
and “returns to dust as it was.” The substance of the pneuma-psychē32[Note: 2
32. πνεῦμα/ψυχή] is immortal and is not changed in the least by being separated
from the sōma.33[Note: 3 33. σῶμα] In this pneuma-psychē34[Note: 4 34.
πνεῦμα/ψυχή] 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,35[Note:
5 35. ψυχή] which is united with the pneuma36[Note: 6 36. πνεῦμα] and
constitutes one indivisible principle with it, is the inner reality of the body
or the sōma,37[Note: 7 37. σῶμα] standing for and representing it in the
interval between death and the resurrection.38[Note: 8 38. WS: Howe (Vanity of
Man) denominates the soul “the statique individuating principle” of the body.]
Though the sōma39[Note: 9 39. σῶμα] 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 psychē40[Note: 0 40. ψυχή] -the organic and constructing
principle of the sōma41[Note: 1 41. σῶμα] -is still united with the
pneuma.42[Note: 2 42. πνεῦμα] And in the instance of the believer, the
pneuma-psychē43[Note: 3 43. πνεῦμα/ψυχή] 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” (Psalms 141:7). Says Poor (in Lange’s
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:35-40; cf. a similar statement in Hodge, Theology
3.779): The rational soul, the pneuma-psychē,44[Note: 4 44. πνεῦμα/ψυχή] 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-psychē45[Note: 5 45. πνεῦμα/ψυχή] 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.46[Note: 6 46. WS: In1 Corinthians 2:14fallen man is denominated
anthrōpos psychikos (ἀνθρώπος ψυχικός = soulish [i.e., natural] man) because he
is ruled by the animal rather than the rational soul. In saying that “that was
not first which was spiritual, but that which is natural” (15:46), the order as
it now exists after apostasy, and not the original order, is given. Sin is prior
to salvation and is presupposed by redemption. But by creation, man is first
“spiritual” and holy and afterward becomes “natural,” and sinful.] (See
supplement 7.3.6.) S U P P L E M E N T S

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,47[Note: 7 47. from “not to be” to “not to be
able” (i.e., to argue from nonexistence in fact to the impossibility of
existence in principle)] 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 [material] can be my
instrument which is not first the subject of my [mental] 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 [thinking and loving], though because being done in the body there is
conjunct with them an agitation of the spirits in the brain and heart [in modern
phrase, a molecular motion of their particles], it yet seems to me more
reasonable that as to these agitations the spirits [molecular motions] 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 [molecular
motion]; [this is illustrated by the priority of the mental feeling of shame to
the bodily flush that accompanies it: the felling is antecedent to the blush or
molecular motion and causes it; not the blush antecedent to the felling and its
cause]; 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 [molecular motions] 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)”48[Note: 8
48. φωτίσαντος ζωὴν καὶ ἀφθαρσίαν διὰ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου] (2 Timothy 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 mĕbbĕśārî49[Note: 9 49. îÀáÌÀùÒÈøÄé]
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 dichometry50[Note: 0
50. See glossary 1.] 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 (Enchiridion 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 [anima], so then the body shall be
called spiritual, though it shall be a body and not a spirit (1 Corinthians
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’ (Revelation 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 [providential] 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 Corinthians 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;
Mark 16:14; 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.”


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  CHAPTER 47: 7.04.     FINAL JUDGMENT
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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 Corinthians 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” (Ecclesiastes
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 Corinthians 13:12; cf. Psalms 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” (Romans 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” (Hebrews 9:27).1[Note:
1. WS: In this passage, krisis (κρίσις = judgment) is anarthrous. The writer
does not say that the judgment immediately succeeds the death of the body, but
that a judgment does.] 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; John 8:24).
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” (Isaiah
66:2); “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”
(Matthew 5:3). Every man who at death is destitute of the publican’s feeling is
unforgiven: “The proud he knows afar off” (Psalms 138:6); “the day of the Lord
of hosts shall be upon everyone that is proud and lofty” (Isaiah 2:12). Every
penitent pagan is saved, every impenitent nominal Christian is lost. (See
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” (Matthew 11:22; Matthew 11:24); “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; John 6:44); “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” (Romans 2:16); “that day when I make up my jewels”
(Malachi 3:17); “for all these things God will bring you into judgment”
(Ecclesiastes 11:9); “God shall bring every work into judgment, with every
secret thing” (12:14; Genesis 18:25; Deuteronomy 32:35; Job 21:30; Psalms 1:5-6;
Psalms 58:11; Psalms 90:11; Psalms 94:1-2; Proverbs 16:25; Ecclesiastes 3:17;
Isaiah 34:14; Isaiah 66:24; Daniel 7:9-10; Daniel 12:2; Jude 1:14-15). 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 (Matthew 25:31; Revelation 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 (Matthew 25:32;
Romans 14:10; Revelation 21:12).

3. The separation of the evil from the good (Matthew 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 (Matthew 25:34-46): “God
shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ” (Romans 2:16); “all things are
naked and opened (tetrachēliōena)2[Note: 2. τετραχηλιομένα] unto the eyes of him
with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13); “the Lord will bring to light the
hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts” (1
Corinthians 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.”
(See supplement 7.4.2.) S U P P L E M E N T S

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’
(Hebrews 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’ (Romans 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 (Romans 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’ (Psalms 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’ (Psalms 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.”


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  CHAPTER 48: 7.05.     HEAVEN
========================================================================

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.1[Note: 1. not to be able to
sin and to die (see posse peccare et non posse peccare in glossary 1)] 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” (Ephesians 5:27); the “armies” of heaven are “clothed in fine linen,
white and clean” (Revelation 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”
(Romans 8:21); “the spirits of just men made perfect” are in the “heavenly
Jerusalem” (Hebrews 12:23).

2. It is marked by impeccability or indefectibility (Romans 8:35-39): “We shall
ever be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17); “a rest remains to the people of
God” (Hebrews 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 Corinthians 13:12); “we
shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2); “whom I shall see for myself” (Job 19:27;
Revelation 4:10-11; Revelation 4:5; Revelation 7:9-10; Revelation 21:3-4;
Revelation 22:4): “I shall behold your face in righteousness” (Psalms 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” (Revelation 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).


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  CHAPTER 49: 7.06.     HELL
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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 [namely, restorationism] 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.”1[Note: 1. WS: “Qui existimabat posse se
miserum esse, beatus non erit” [AG: he who considers that it is possible for him
to be unhappy will not be happy]; Cicero, On Ends 2.27.] “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.” (See 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 Matthew 25:46; Mark 9:44; and John 5:29 are figurative.

2. 1 Corinthians 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.2[Note: 2. WS: In Milton’s Paradise Lost 2.274-78, Satan suggests that
custom may mitigate the pains of hell: Our torments also may, in length of time,
Become our elements; these piercing fires As soft as now severe; our temper
changed Into their temper; which must needs remove The sensible of pain.] 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.3[Note: 3. WS: Respecting this very common
objection, Müller (Sin 1.239) makes the following remark: “The primary meaning
of krisis (κρίσις = judgment) is discrimination and separation and implies that
themain contrast between man and man in relation to the future state is made
manifest by the cessation of intercourse between those who obey God and those
who resist him. Beings whose relations to God are diametrically opposite, and
persistently so, differ so greatly from each other that other ties of
relationship become as nothing in comparison. Bonds of union among men arising
out of the relationships of natural life must give way of themselves, if the tie
which binds man’s spiritual consciousness and will to his Creator be on either
side wholly severed. For those bonds have not in themselves an eternal
significance, save so far as they are included in that relation to God which is
of everlasting importance.”]

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 Peter 3:19, which speaks of the
“preaching to the spirits in prison”; and Hebrews 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.”4[Note: 4. WS: In placing the time of
repentance “between death and the judgment” (2.425), Müller appears to
contradict what he says in 2.426, 429: “It is clear that those theories of an
apokatastasis (ἀποκατάστασις = restoration) which represent it as taking place
in the interval between death and the general resurrection directly violate the
New Testament eschatology. If the idea, therefore, is to be maintained, it must
be referred to a period lying beyond the general resurrection. The aiōn mellōn
(αἰών μέλλων = world to come) does not mean the time and state immediately
ensuing upon death, but the period when the kingdom of the Messiah shall be
fully realized and revealed: the period which follows the resurrection and the
judgment. Christ’s words [Matthew 12:32], therefore, inspire the glorious hope
that in ‘the world to come,’ in far distant eons, they who here harden their
hearts against God’s revelation and can expect only a verdict of condemnation in
the day of judgment shall find forgiveness and salvation.”] 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.” (See 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
Romans 5:18 (“as judgment came upon all men unto condemnation, so the free gift
came upon all men unto justification”) and 1 Corinthians 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 Matthew 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.5[Note: 5. WS: Edersheim (Life of Jesus
2.789) asserts that the schools of Shammai and Hillel both taught the doctrine
of eternal punishment: “These schools represented the theological teaching in
the time of Christ and his apostles, showing that the doctrine of eternal
punishment was held in the days of our Lord, however it may have been afterward
modified.” Edersheim adds that “the doctrine of the eternity of punishment seems
to have been held by the synagogue throughout the whole first century. In the
second century, there is a decided difference in rabbinic opinion; some denying
the doctrine of endless retribution. In the third century, there is a reaction
and a return to former views.”] And the threatening would have been foolish,
because it would have been a brutum fulmen,6[Note: 6. an unfeeling thunder
(i.e., an empty threat)] 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! (See 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. (Matthew 25:31-33; Matthew 25:41;
Matthew 25:46)

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. (Matthew 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. (Matthew
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. (Matthew 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? (Matthew 23:16; Matthew 23:33)

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. (Matthew 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. (Matthew 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. (Matthew 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” (Matthew 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” (Jeremiah 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.7[Note: 7. WS: There is no dispute that gehenna denotes the place of
retributive suffering. It is employed seven times in Matthew’s Gospel, thrice in
Mark’s, and once in Luke’s. In every one of these instances, it is Christ who
uses the term. The only other person who has used it is James (3:6). It is
derived from gê hinnōm (âÌÅé äÄðÌÉí) = valley of Hinnom; Aramaic gĕhinnām
(âÌÀäÄðÌÈí) = geenna (γέεννα); Septuagint hennom (ἑννομ). It was a valley
southeast of Jerusalem, in which Molech worship was practiced (2 Kings
23:10;Ezekiel 23:37; Ezekiel 23:39). It was called Tophet (abomination)
inJeremiah 31:32. King Josiah caused the filth of Jerusalem to be carried
thither and burned (2 Kings 23:10). Robinson asserts that there is no evidence
that the place was used in Christ’s day for the deposit and burning of offal.
Gehenna at the time of the advent had become a technical term for endless
torment; as paradise and Abraham’s bosom had for endless blessedness.]

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)8[Note: 8. αἰώνιος] punishment” (Matthew 25:46),
“everlasting (aiōnios)9[Note: 9. αἰώνιος] fire” (18:8), “the fire that never
shall be quenched” (Mark 9:45), “the worm that dies not” (9:46), “flaming fire”
(2 Thessalonians 1:8), “everlasting (aidios)10[Note: 0 10. ἀΐδιος] chains” (Jude
1:6), “eternal (aiōnios)11[Note: 1 11. αἰώνιος] fire” (Jude 1:7), “the blackness
of darkness forever” (Jude 1:13), “the smoke of torment ascending up forever and
ever” (Revelation 14:11; Revelation 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.”
(See supplement 7.6.4.) The epithet aiōnios12[Note: 2 12. αἰώνιος] (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[Note: 3 13. αἰών]
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
aiōn14[Note: 4 14. αἰών] and the creature has an aiōn,15[Note: 5 15. αἰών] 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” (Psalms
39:5). In reference to man and his existence, the Scriptures speak of two and
only two aiōnes16[Note: 6 16. αἰώνες] or ages: one finite and one infinite, one
limited and one endless, the latter succeeding the former.17[Note: 7 17. WS: The
common phrase here and hereafter denotes that human existence divides into only
two sections. When Faust sells his soul to Mephistopheles, both parties
understand that there are only two worlds: the temporal and the eternal. The
latter covenants with the former as follows:

I to thy service here agree to bind me, To run and never rest at call of you;
When over yonder you shalt find me, Then you shalt do as much for me. The same
tremendous truth, that after the temporal the endless follows, is taught in the
“mighty line” of Marlowe, in which he describes the emotions of Faustus as “the
clock strikes eleven”:

Ah, Faustus, Now hast you but one bare hour to live, And then you must be damn’d
perpetually!

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease, and
midnight never come;

Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise again, and make Perpetual day; or let this hour be
but A year, a month, a week, a natural day, That Faustus may repent and save his
soul!

O lente, lente currite, noctis equi! [O slowly, slowly run you horses of the
night!] The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The devil will
come, and Faustus must be damned.] 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 aiōnōn18[Note: 8 18. τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων =
forever and ever] for ton aiōna,19[Note: 9 19. τόν αἰῶνα] 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)20[Note: 0 20. αἰών] nor in the world (aiōn)21[Note: 1 21. αἰών] to come”
(Matthew 12:32); “he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time
(kairos),22[Note: 2 22. καιρός] and in the world (aiōn)23[Note: 3 23. αἰών] to
come eternal life” (Mark 10:30); “he shall receive manifold more in this present
time (kairos),24[Note: 4 24. καιρός] and in the world (aiōn)25[Note: 5 25. αἰών]
to come life everlasting” (Luke 18:30); “above every name that is named, not
only in this world (aiōn)26[Note: 6 26. αἰών] but also in that which is to come”
(Ephesians 1:21). The “things present” and the “things to come” mentioned in
Romans 8:38 and 1 Corinthians 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.”27[Note: 7 27. WS: It is relative, not absolute eternity; eternity a
parte post [AG: in the direction of what comes after; i.e., looking forward in
time], not a parte ante [AG: in the direction of what comes before; i.e.,
looking backward in time]. The future eon or age has a beginning, but no ending.
This is the meaning when in common phrase it is said that “a man has gone into
eternity” and that his happiness or misery is “eternal.” The absolutely eternal
has no beginning as well as no ending; it is the eternity of God. The relatively
eternal has a beginning but no end; it is the immortality of man and angel. The
Schoolmen called the former eternitas; the latter sempiternitas. Scripture
designates the absolute eternity of God by the phrase from everlasting to
everlasting (Psalms 90:2). The punishment of the wicked is more properly endless
than eternal.] (See supplement 7.6.5.) The present finite and limited age or eon
is denominated in Scripture “this world” (ho aiōn houtos)28[Note: 8 28. ὁαἰών
οὗτος] or ˓ôlāmḥzzeh29[Note: 9 29. òåÉìÈí äÇæÌÆä] (Matthew 12:32; Matthew 13:22;
Luke 16:8; Luke 20:34; Romans 12:2; 1 Corinthians 1:20; 1 Corinthians 2:6).
Another designation is “this present world” (ho nyn aiōn30[Note: 0 30. ὁνῦν
αἰών] or ho enestōs aiōn)31[Note: 1 31. ὁ ἐνεστώς αἰών] (1 Timothy 6:17; 2
Timothy 4:10; Titus 2:12; Galatians 1:4). Sometimes the present limited age or
eon is denoted by aiōn32[Note: 2 32. αἰών] without the article: “Which he spoke
by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began (ap’
aiōnos)”33[Note: 3 33. ἀπ᾽αἰῶνος] (Luke 1:70); “it was not heard since the world
began (ap’ aiōnos)”34[Note: 4 34. ἀπ᾽αἰῶνος] (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)”35[Note:
5 35. πρό τῶν αἰώνων] (1 Corinthians 2:7; cf. Ephesians 3:9; Colossians 1:26).
In 1 Timothy 1:17 God is denominated basileus tōn aiōnōn36[Note: 6 36. βασιλεύς
τῶν αἰώνων] (king of the ages of time) and therefore “the king eternal”
(Authorized Version). In Romans 16:25 a “mystery” is said to have been kept
secret chronois aiōniois37[Note: 7 37. χρόνοις αἰωνίοις] (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 aiōniōn38[Note: 8 38.
πρὸχρόνων αἰωνίων] (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[Note: 9
39. WS: The Revisers make the reference to be to the unlimited eon or to
eternity. Their rendering ofTitus 1:2by “before times eternal” involves the
absurdity that a divine promise is made prior to eternity and ofRomans 16:25by
“through times eternal” represents the mystery as concealed during eternity;
that is to say, as forever concealed.] 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.40[Note: 0 40. WS: The phrases end of the
ages (telē tōn aiōnōn,τέλη τῶν αἰώνων;1 Corinthians 10:11), fullness of the time
(Galatians 4:4), fullness of times (Ephesians 1:10), and these last days
(eschatos tōn hēmerōn toutōn,ἐσχάτος τῶνἡμερῶν τούτων;Hebrews 1:2) denote the
time of the Messiah’s first advent, that epoch in the temporal aiōn (αἰών) when
the incarnation occurred (Hodge onEphesians 1:10).] (See 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
mellōn41[Note: 1 41. αἰώνὁμέλλων] or ˓ôlām habbā˒;42[Note: 2 42. òåÉìÈí
äÇáÌÈà]Matthew 12:32; Hebrews 2:5; Hebrews 6:5). Another designation is “the
world to come” (aiōn ho erchomenos;43[Note: 3 43. αἰώνὁ ἐρχόμενος]Mark 10:30;
Luke 18:30). Still another designation is “that world” (aiōn ekeinos;44[Note: 4
44. αἰώνἐκεῖνος]Luke 20:35). Frequently, the endless age is denoted by
aiōn45[Note: 5 45. αἰών] simply, but with the article for emphasis (ho
aiōn):46[Note: 6 46. ὁαἰών] “Has never forgiveness (eis ton aiōna)”47[Note: 7
47. εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα = unto eternity] (Mark 3:29; cf. Matthew 51:29; John 4:14;
John 6:51; John 6:58; John 8:35; John 8:51-52; John 10:28; John 11:26; John
12:34; John 13:8; John 14:16; 2 Corinthians 9:9; Hebrews 5:6; Hebrews 6:20;
Hebrews 7:17; 2 Peter 2:17; 1 John 2:17; Jude 1:13). 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 aiōn48[Note: 8 48. αἰών] is
represented as made up of lesser aiōnes49[Note: 9 49. αἰώνες] 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)”50[Note: 0 50. εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας] (Romans 1:25; Romans 9:5;
Romans 11:36; Romans 16:27; 2 Corinthians 11:31; Php 4:20; Galatians 1:5 [eis
tous aiōnas tōn aiōnōn];51[Note: 1 51. εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων = lit., unto
the ages of the ages]1 Timothy 1:17; Revelation 1:6; Revelation 1:18; Revelation
4:9-10; Revelation 5:13; Revelation 7:12). The phrases eis tous aiōnas52[Note: 2
52. εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας = forever] and eis tous aiōnas tōn aiōnōn53[Note: 3 53. εἰς
τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων = forever and ever (lit., unto the ages of the ages)] are
equivalent to eis ton aiōna.54[Note: 4 54. εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα = forever] All alike
denote the one infinite and endless eon or age.

Since the word eon (aiōn)55[Note: 5 55. αἰών] 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),56[Note: 6 56. αἰώνιος] 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)57[Note: 7 57. αἰών] of
“time,” and when he is called an eonian or “everlasting” (aiōnios)58[Note: 8 58.
αἰώνιος] 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)59[Note: 9 59. αἰώνια] in the sense that they endure as
long as the finite world (aiōn)60[Note: 0 60. αἰών] of which they are a part
endures. God, on the other hand, is a being that exists in the infinite
aiōn61[Note: 1 61. αἰών] and is therefore aiōnios62[Note: 2 62. αἰώνιος] 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[Note: 3 63. WS: “Aiōn [αἰών] de quocunque temporis
spatio ita dicitur, ut, quale sit, judicari debeat in singulis locis ex
orationis serie et mente scriptoris, rebus adeo et personis de quibus sermo est”
[AG: The word eon is used for any duration of time, which must be judged in each
individual passage from the flow (serie) of the language, from the mind of the
writer, and from the matters and persons thus far under discussion]; Schleusner,
entry aiōn.]

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” (Exodus 21:6). Sometimes it means as long as the Jewish
state should last. The ceremonial laws were to be statutes “forever” (Leviticus
16:34). Sometimes it means as long as the world stands: “One generation passes
away, and another generation comes; but the earth abides forever” (Ecclesiastes
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)64[Note: 4 64. αἰώνιος] servant and that the hills
are “everlasting” (aiōnia)65[Note: 5 65. αἰώνια] 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 aiōnios66[Note: 6 66. αἰώνιος] or “eonian” denotes “that
which belongs to an age,” it cannot mean endless rests upon the assumption that
there is no endless aiōn67[Note: 7 67. αἰών] 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
aiōnios68[Note: 8 68. αἰώνιος] 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 aiōn69[Note: 9 69. αἰών]
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,70[Note: 0 70. κοσμός] not
aiōn.71[Note:1 71. αἰών] It is only when this world in the sense of the time of
its continuance is intended that aiōn72[Note: 2 72. αἰών] is employed. St. Paul
combines both meanings in Ephesians 2:2 : the heathen, he says, “walk according
to the course [duration] of this world [of matter] (kata ton aiōna tou kosmou
toutou).”73[Note: 3 73. κατὰτὸν αἰώνα τοῦκόσμου τούτου] In Hebrews 1:2; Hebrews
11:3, where aiōnes74[Note: 4 74. αἰώνες] 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, aiōn75[Note: 5 75. αἰών] and aiōnios76[Note: 6 76. αἰώνιος]
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):

Aiōnios77[Note: 7 77. αἰώνιος] is employed 66 times in the New Testament. Of
these, 51 relate to the future happiness of the righteous; 7 relate to future
punishment (Matthew 18:8; Matthew 25:41; Matthew 25:46; Mark 3:29; 1
Thessalonians 1:9; Hebrews 6:2; Jude 1:6); 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 aiōnios78[Note: 8 78. αἰώνιος] refers to future duration, it
denotes endless duration; saying nothing of the instances in which it refers to
future punishment. Hebrew ˓ôlām79[Note: 9 79. òåÉìÈí = eternity] is translated
in the Septuagint by aiōn80[Note: 0 80. αἰών] 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[Note: 1 81. αἰών] 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,82[Note: 2 82. αἰών]
reckoning the reduplications of it, as aiōnes tōn aiōnōn,83[Note: 3 83. αἰώνες
τῶν αἰώνων = forever and ever] 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
aiōnios84[Note: 4 84. αἰώνιος = everlasting] 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” (Matthew 25:41). These are represented in Scripture as
hopelessly lost: “The devil that deceived them shall be tormented day and night
forever and ever” (Revelation 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” (Hebrews 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”
(Revelation 14:11); “fear has torment” (1 John 4:18); and the lost fear “the
wrath of the Lamb” (Revelation 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.85[Note: 5 85. WS: This theory was presented by Dodwell, Epistolary
Discourse: That the Soul Is a Principle Naturally Mortal Immortalized by the
Pleasure of God (London, 1706).] 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.

-Faery Queen 3.6 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 Corinthians 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 [spiritual]
life, and he that has not the Son has not [spiritual] 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” (Genesis 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” (Ephesians 2:1-2); “she that lives in pleasure is dead
while she lives” (1 Timothy 5:6); “you being dead in your sins has he forgiven”
(Colossians 2:13); “you live and are dead” (Revelation 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 Romans 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 houtos86[Note: 6 86. ὁαἰών οὗτος = this age] and aiōn ho mellōn.87[Note: 7
87. αἰώνὁμέλλων = the age to come] 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);88[Note: 8 88. ὁνῦν αἰών] after death, he is in “the
future world” (aiōn ho mellōn).89[Note: 9 89. αἰώνὁμέλλων] 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” (Hebrews 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; John 8:24). 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 Thessalonians 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” (Matthew 10:22; Matthew
24:13); “Jesus Christ shall confirm you unto the end” (1 Corinthians 1:8);
“whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the
hope firm unto the end” (Hebrews 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” (Revelation 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 telos90[Note: 0 90. τέλος = end] or
telous91[Note: 1 91. τέλους = end] 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 [at death]; but the righteous has hope in his death”
(Proverbs 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?” (Psalms 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” (Ecclesiastes 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 no [happy]
remembrance of God [if there has been none in life]”; “the dead shall not arise
and praise God [in the next world, if they have not done so in this world]”;
“shall God declare his loving-kindness [to one] in the grave [if he has not
declared it to him when upon earth]?” (See 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 Corinthians 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 [opposing] rule and all [opposing] 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).92[Note: 2 92. βασιλείαν] 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 Corinthians 15:24-25).
All of Christ’s redeemed “stand before his throne” (Revelation 14:3; Revelation
19:4-7; Revelation 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 Corinthians 15:28);
not that “God even the Father may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 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 [temporarily] given in heaven and upon
earth” (Matthew 28:29) 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 Corinthians 15:24). In
this reference, as believers “are Christ’s,” so “Christ is God’s” (1 Corinthians
3:23); and as “the head of the woman is the man,” so “the head of Christ is God”
(1 Corinthians 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)93[Note: 3 93. βασιλείαν] 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 [Revised Version: forever] strive with man, for that he
also is [sinful] flesh; yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years”
(Genesis 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” (Deuteronomy 32:29); “teach us so to
number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Psalms 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” (Proverbs 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” (Ecclesiastes 9:10); “seek the
Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near” (Isaiah 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” (Matthew 24:42; Matthew 24:50); “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 Corinthians 6:2); “today if you will hear his voice, harden not
your hearts” (Hebrews 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 [of impenitence], 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” (Revelation
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.94[Note: 4 94. WS: The strange position has
recently been taken that the rejection of Christ is the only sin that brings
eternal death. “No one,” says Dorner (Christian Doctrine 4.167), “will be damned
merely on account of the common sin and guilt. But everyone is definitely
brought to [guilty] personal decision only through the gospel.” Says a writer in
the Dec. 1885 Andover Review: 574: “No one can be lost without the knowledge of
Christ.” This implies that man’s sin against the moral law is not sufficient to
condemn him to eternal death. He must sin against the gospel before he can be so
condemned. Neither original sin nor actual transgression, neither evil
inclination nor outward disobedience, both of which are sins against the law,
expose a man to hell. This is an entirely new position, not to be found in the
history of eschatology and invented, apparently, to furnish a basis for the
doctrine of a future offer of redemption. The objections to it are the
following: (a) It contradicts the whole tenor of Scripture. Christ teaches that
he came to call actual and guilty sinners to repentance (Luke 5:32); that he
came to seek and save that which was really and truly lost (19:10); that he did
not come into the world to condemn the world, because it was already condemned,
but to save the world (John 3:17-18). St. Paul affirms that the whole world,
prior to redemption and irrespective of it, is guilty before God (Romans 3:19).
St. John asserts that the whole world, Gentile and Jewish, unevangelized and
evangelized, lies in wickedness (1 John 5:19). To quote all the passages in
which the Bible teaches that men are exposed to eternal death on account of
their transgression of the law of God would be to quote a large part of the
Bible. The rejection of the gospel adds a new sin and a very aggravating one to
the already existing sin against divine law (John 15:22), but it is not the
primary and original ground of condemnation. Men are punished, first of all,
because they “have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). (b)
Unless man has first sinned against the law, he cannot sin against the gospel.
If he has not previously committed a damning sin for which Christ has atoned, he
cannot reject Christ’s atonement any more than an innocent angel can. The
rejection of salvation is meaningless if no damnation has been incurred. If
there is no disease, there can be no cure nor rejection of a cure. (c) If no
human soul is in danger of perdition until it has rejected Christ, then if
Christ had never been offered to man no man would be lost. For if he were not
offered, he could not be rejected. In this case, it would have been infinitely
better for mankind had Christ never come into the world on an errand of
salvation. Had he remained unincarnate, as he had been from eternity, no one
could have refused belief in him, and as unbelief is the only damning sin no one
could have been damned. (d) If “no man can be lost without the knowledge of
Christ,” then none of the past heathen world who died without this knowledge
incurred perdition for the “deeds done in the body,” and none of the existing
heathen world who are destitute of this knowledge are liable to perdition from
this cause. In this case, it is matter of rejoicing that the past generations of
pagans never heard of the Redeemer, and it should be an earnest endeavor of the
church to prevent all of the present generation of pagans from hearing of him.
Dorner’s theory that “no one will be damned merely on account of the common sin
and guilt” is full of inconsistency and self-contradiction. First, he holds that
man is in a state of “common sin and guilt,” but it is a species of sin and
guilt that does not deserve endless punishment and is not in danger of it.
Second, he holds that man needs “salvation” from such an unendangered state.
Third, he holds that God is bound in justice to provide “salvation” from such an
unendangered state. “The gospel,” he says (4.167), “repentance, and forgiveness
of sins are to be preached to all nations. This cannot refer merely to nations
as unities, but must refer also to every individual; for otherwise the
universality of the gracious purpose would not be sincerely meant; and if God
refused what is indispensable to salvation to the individual, condemnation would
be impossible.” Fourth, he holds that God exhibits mercy when he does what he is
obligated to do. To all this self-stultifying soteriology, the principle
enunciated by St. Paul (Romans 11:6) is a conclusive reply: “If by grace, then
it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works,
then it is no more grace; otherwise work is no more work.” If man’s “common sin
and guilt” is not damning, then it is no more sin and guilt; otherwise sin and
guilt are no more sin and guilt. If Christ’s salvation is not from death and
hell, then it is no more salvation; otherwise salvation is no more salvation.
And if Godmercy is justly due to man, then it is no more mercy; otherwise mercy
is no more mercy. Julius Müller, though holding (on the ground ofMatthew 12:32)
“the glorious hope that in the world to come, in far distant eons, some who here
harden their hearts against God’s revelation and can expect only a verdict of
condemnation in the day of judgment, shall find forgiveness and salvation” (Sin
2.437), denies and combats Dorner’s position that sin against the gospel is the
only damning sin (Sin 2.400). For a very able argument in proof that both evil
inclination and outward transgression are damning, see Sin 1.198-214.]
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” (Romans 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.95[Note: 5 95. WS: Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, sermon 18.]

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.96[Note: 6 96. WS: The merit of
Müller, in particular, in respect to a profound and true view of sin is very
great. No theological treatise of the nineteenth century has more value on this
subject than his.] 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”
(Romans 1:32); “there is no respect of persons with God; for as many as have
sinned without [written] law shall also perish without [written] 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” (Ephesians 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” (Revelation 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.97[Note: 7 97. WS: “The distinction,” says Müller (Sin 1.207),
“between superable and insuperable ignorance will affect our calculation of the
degree of guilt. A man cannot be reproached on account of ignorance regarding
things accidental and changeable; but to be ignorant of those fundamental truths
whereof conscience informs him, and of their bearing upon conduct, is the sign
of a sinful perversion of the inner life. If, from the moment when he first
heard the voice of conscience, his aim always had been simply and solely to know
what that voice tells him and unconditionally to obey, there would be no sins of
ignorance to be laid to his charge. But the sinfulness of human nature, in this
respect, prevents our exculpating him thus from the guilt of particular sins. It
is the unrighteousness of man that hinders the development of truth in his
consciousness (Romans 1:18). And hence we find that savages, when they have been
converted from the abominations of idolatry-from lust and murder and unbridled
selfish impulse-to the faith of Christ never excuse themselves on the ground of
ignorance, but in deep humiliation feel the reproaches of an awakened
conscience. St. Paul recognizes the mitigation of guilt in the case of the
heathen, when he says that ‘God overlooked’ the chronoi tēs agnoias (χρόνοι
τῆςἀγνοίας = times of ignorance) (Acts 17:30) but he by no means considers the
sinful heathen to be free from guilt.” For a powerful description of heathen
depravity, see Thucydides, History 2.53; 3.82. And for a powerful specimen of
human depravity, see the “Plebeian’s Speech” in Machiavelli, History of Florence
3.3.]

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.98[Note: 8
98. WS: The following extract from Witsius (Apostles’ Creed, diss. 2) exhibits
the hopeful view which the elder Calvinism took of the possible extent to which
God’s decree of election reaches: “Doctrines may be said to be necessary either
to salvation or to religion or to the church. A doctrine, without the knowledge
and belief of which God does not save persons who have come to years of moral
consciousness, is necessary to salvation; a doctrine, without the profession and
practice of which no one can be considered religious, is necessary to religion;
and a doctrine, without which no one is admitted to the communion of the visible
church, is necessary to the church. There may be articles without which persons
ought not to be admitted to the fellowship of the church, that should not, for
that reason, be regarded as absolutely essential either to religion or to
salvation. Although we might not dare to pronounce a sentence of condemnation
against a particular man, we ought not, in defiance of order and discretion, to
receive him forthwith into the bosom of our church, whatever sentiments he might
hold and to whatever sect he might belong. And with respect to religion, what
falls within the sphere of duty is manifest. But how far it may please a
gracious God or how far it may be possible for him in consistency with his
perfections and character to extend his forbearance to anyone and save his soul,
notwithstanding his errors and sins; or, in short, what are the lowest
attainments without which no man is saved-who can tell? For this distinction in
doctrines, I am indebted to the celebrated Hoornbeck (Confutation of Socinianism
1.209). Again, the knowledge of those doctrines which are necessary to salvation
admits various degrees. It is in different measures of clearness, abundance, and
efficacy that divine revelation, the means of grace, and the communications of
the Spirit are enjoyed; and a corresponding diversity takes place in the degrees
of knowledge which the saints attain. In some it is clear, distinct, steady, and
accompanied with a very firm and decided assent; in others it is more confused,
more implicit and latent, subject to occasional wavering, and attended with an
assent that is yielded with difficulty. The command of God indeed lays an
indispensable obligation upon all men to make every possible effort to attain a
most clear, distinct, and assured knowledge of divine truth. It cannot, however,
be questioned that the deity in his unbounded goodness receives many to the
abodes of bliss whose knowledge even of the principal articles is very
indistinct and such as they are hardly capable of expressing in their own words.
The smallest measure of the requisite knowledge appears to be this, namely, that
when an article of faith is explained, the mind so far at least apprehends it as
to recognize and embrace it as true. Furthermore, times must be distinguished.
It admits no doubt that under the bright dispensation of the gospel, a more
extensive and explicit knowledge is necessary to salvation than was required
under the Old Testament economy; for it is reasonable that both knowledge and
the necessity of knowledge should increase in proportion to the measure of
revelation afforded. Under the old dispensation, nay, during the time of our
Savior’s abode on the earth, it was possible for a man to be a true believer and
in a state of grace who was ignorant of the sufferings, the death, and the
resurrection of Christ and who even presumed to object to the testimony of
Christ himself respecting these momentous topics, as is clear from the instance
of Peter (Matthew 16:21-23), or who, though he believed in general in the
Messiah, yet knew not that Jesus is the Christ, as appears from the history of
Cornelius the centurion (Acts 10:2-4). No one, however, I suppose, would now
acknowledge any person [in Christendom] as a true believer who should discover
ignorance of these truths respecting the Lord Jesus, and still less a person who
should contradict them when represented to him. On this subject, the remark of
Thomas Aquinas (Summa 2.2.1.7) deserves to be quoted: ‘The articles of faith,’
says he, ‘have increased with the lapse of time, not indeed with respect to the
faith itself, but with respect to explicit and express profession. The same
things which are believed explicitly and under a greater number of articles by
the saints in latter days were all believed implicitly and under a smaller
number by the fathers in ancient times.’ ”] 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.”99[Note: 9 99. Agnoscimus, interim, deum illuminare
posse homines etiam sine externo ministerio, quo et quando velit: id quod ejus
potentiae est.] 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 [regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit] 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” (Romans 9:6) and
that “they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham” (Galatians
3:7). It is taught also in Matthew 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 [those who have had the
written word] 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” (Matthew 8:5-10).100[Note: 00 100. WS: “It is a very significant fact
that the subject of the Book of Ruth is a heathen woman; she is, indeed, the
third heathen woman in the genealogy of David and Christ, being preceded by the
Canaanitess Tamar (Genesis 38:1-30) and the Canaanitess Rahab. Ruth is the most
noble of all; a consecrated flower of paganism turning with a longing desire to
the light and salvation of Israel. The fact that these three females are brought
forward and engrafted on the chosen line or family conveys a very expressive
lesson to the Israelites, abases their national pride, and bears testimony (by
being both a fulfillment and a type) to all that had been promised to Abraham
respecting his seed, namely, that in him should ‘all families of the earth be
blessed’ (Genesis 12:3). Of those who are blessed in the seed of Abraham, Naomi
represents the people of God who are to proceed from the ancient people of the
covenant, and Ruth represents those proceeding from the heathen world” (Kurtz,
Sacred History §66).]

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” (Isaiah 66:2);
“blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew
5:3). (See 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” (Mark 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.101[Note: 01 101. WS: The passage “in every
nation, he that fears God and works righteousness is accepted with him” (Acts
10:35) is often explained as teaching that there are in every nation some who
live virtuous and exemplary lives and upon this ground obtain the rewards and
blessedness of the future. This would be salvation by works, which is
impossible, according to St. Paul. This is the error in the question put by
Dante to the “eagle” (Paradise 19.66-67): A man Is born on Indus’ banks, and
none is there Who speaks of Christ, nor who doth read nor write; And all his
inclinations and his acts, As far as human reason sees, are good; And he
offendeth not in word or deed: But unbaptized he dies, and void of faith. Where
is the justice that condemns him? This is an imaginary case of perfect
obedience. There is no such man. It is with reference to such an interpretation
of this text, that Westminster Confession 10.4 asserts that “men not professing
the Christian religion cannot be saved in any other way whatever, be they never
so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature and the law of
that religion which they do profess,” because their “diligence” is a failure.
The Thirty-nine Articles §18 assert that no man, either in Christendom or
heathendom, can be saved by his morality and virtue: “They also are to be had
accursed that presume to say 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 the
law and the light of nature. For Holy Scripture does set out unto us only the
name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must be saved.” In the passage above cited,
the phrases fearer of God and worker of righteousness are employed technically
by St. Peter to denote a man inquiring after the way of salvation: somewhat as
it was among the Jews, to signify a proselyte of the gate (Güricke, Church
History, 29). This is evident from the fact that to this “devout” Cornelius who
“feared God with all his house” (Acts 10:2), the apostle preached Christ as the
Savior of sinners, “through whose name, whosoever believes in him shall receive
remission of sins,” and that Cornelius believed and was baptized (10:36-48). He
would not have done this had he expected that his “fearing God” and “working
righteousness,” in other words his own morality and virtue, would save him. In
13:26 the “fearers of God” (hoi phoboumenoi ton theon, οἱφοβούμενοι τὸν θεόν)
are distinguished from “the stock of Abraham” or native-born Jews. They were the
proselytes of the gate. Into this class of “fearers of God” fall the “devout
Greeks” (hoi sebōenoi hellēnes,οἱσεβόμενοιἑλλήνες; 17:4), the “devout persons”
(hoi sebōenoi,οἱσεβόμενοι; 17:17), and Lydia, “a worshiper of God” (sebōenē ton
theon,σεβομένη τὸν θεόν; 16:14). Lydia went to the Jewish oratory
(proseuchē,προσεύχη) in which the audience was divided into Jews and proselytes,
each class occupying seats by themselves. As examples of inquirers after
salvation, take Augustine and his friends Alypius and Nebridius (Confessions
6.10).]

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” (Romans 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.102[Note: 02
102. WS: Cf. Augustine, City of God 21.12.] 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” (Revelation 7:9; Revelation
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
[their Redeemer]” (Luke 18:16); “the promise [of salvation] 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.103[Note: 03
103. WS: “Quamvis infantes non sint legis capaces quoad actum, sunt tamen quoad
habitum, utpote creaturae rationales, quibus lex praescribit omnimodam
sanctitatem, tam habitualem quam actualem” [AG: Although infants are not capable
of the law with respect to action, they nevertheless are with respect to
disposition (habitus), seeing that they are rational creatures to whom the law
prescribes every kind of holiness, both dispositional (habitualem) and actual];
Turretin 9.1.9.] 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.104[Note: 04 104. WS: Toplady, one of the highest Calvinists of
the Church of England, remarks as follows respecting the salvation of all
infants dying in infancy: “The rubric of the Church of England declares that ‘it
is certain by God’s word that children which are baptized, dying before they
commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved.’ I believe firmly the same. Nay, I
believe more. I am convinced that the souls of all departed infants whatever,
whether baptized or unbaptized, are with God in glory. And I think my belief
warranted by an authority which cannot err:Matthew 18:14” (Church of England
Vindicated). The elder Alexander remarks on this point: “As the Holy Scriptures
have not informed us that any of the human family departing in infancy will be
lost, we are permitted to hope that all such will be saved” (Life, 585).] (See
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. (See
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.105[Note: 05 105. WS: Many of the
arguments constructed against the doctrine of endless punishment proceed upon
the supposition that original sin, or man’s evil inclination, is the work of
God: that because man is born in sin (Psalms 51:5), he was created in sin. All
the strength and plausibility of John Foster’s celebrated letter lies in the
assumption that the moral corruption and impotence of the sinner, whereby it is
impossible for him to save himself from eternal death, is not self-originated
and self-determined, but infused by his maker. “If,” says he, “the very nature
of man, as created by the sovereign power, be in such desperate disorder that
there is no possibility of conversion and salvation except in instances where
that power interposes with a special and redeeming efficacy, how can we conceive
that the main portion of the race, thus morally impotent (that is, really and
absolutely impotent), will be eternally punished for the inevitable result of
this moral impotence?” If this assumption of concreated depravity and impotence
is correct, Foster’s objection to eternal retribution is conclusive and fatal.]

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.106[Note: 06 106. WS: For a discriminating and thorough statement of the
aim of punishment and its distinction from chastisement, see Müller, Sin
1.244-51.]

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?”
(Hebrews 11:6-7). 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.107[Note: 07 107. with this, not therefore on account of this. The
meaning here is that an action may effect results that lie beyond the purpose
for which the action was performed. The unintended results are connected “with”
the action, but the action was not performed “on account of” or so as to effect
these results.] 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 [ed. Rosenkranz]): 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.108[Note: 08 108. WS: Beccaria and Bentham are the principal modern
advocates of the contrary theory that punishment is founded on utility and
expediency. Beccaria’s position is that the standard of crime is the injury
which it does to society. He refers exclusively to the public good and never
appeals to the moral sentiment (“Beccaria” in Penny Cyclopaedia). Bentham takes
the same view, connecting it with the utilitarian ethics. From these writers,
this theory has passed considerably into modern jurisprudence. Austin, a popular
writer on law, follows Bentham. Hobbes (Leviathan 2.28) maintains it. The theory
which founds morality upon righteousness and punishment upon justice is
historical. Plato (Laws 10.904-5) held that punishment is righteous and
retributive. Cicero (On the Laws 1.14-15) contends that true virtue has regard
to essential justice, not to utility. Grotius defines penalty as “the evil of
suffering which is inflicted on account of the evil of doing.” The great English
jurists Coke, Bacon, Selden, and Blackstone explain punishment by crime, not by
expediency. Kant, Herbart, Stahl, Hartenstein, Rothe, and Woolsey define
punishment as requital for the satisfaction of law and justice (Woolsey,
Political Science 2.8; cf. Coleridge, Works 5.447).]

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,109[Note: 09 109. WS: Hence, those who found punishment upon utility and
deny that is it retributive endeavor to abolish capital punishment. And if their
theory of penalty is true, they are right in their endeavor.] 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.110[Note: 10 110.
WS: See the remarks of Graves (Pentateuch 2.2) on the excellence of the Mosaic
code in this particular.]

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. (See 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.111[Note: 11 111. after the reason ceases, the law
itself ceases] 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” (Psalms
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” (Romans 12:19);
“vengeance belongs unto me, I will recompense, says the Lord” (Hebrews 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” (Romans
13:1; Romans 13:4). 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.112[Note: 12 112. WS: The intrinsic
endlessness of guilt is vividly described by Carlyle: “From the purpose of crime
to the act of crime there is an abyss, wonderful to think of. The finger lies on
the pistol; but the man is not yet a murderer: nay, his whole nature staggering
at such a consummation, is there not a confused pause rather-one last instant of
possibility for him? Not yet a murderer; it is at the mercy of light trifles
whether the most fixed idea may not yet become unfixed. One slight twitch of a
muscle, the death-flash bursts; and he is it and will for eternity be it; and
earth has become a penal Tartarus for him; his horizon girdled now not with
golden hope, but with red flames of remorse; voices from the depths of nature
sounding, Woe, woe on him! Of such stuff are we all made; on such powder mines
of bottomless guilt and criminality-‘if God restrained not,’ as is well
said-does the purest of us walk? There are depths in man that go to the length
of lowest hell, as there are heights that reach highest heaven-for are not both
heaven and hell made out of him, made by him, everlasting miracle and mystery as
he is?” (French Revolution 3.1.4).]

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.113[Note: 13 113. WS: It must be remembered
that it is the degree, together with the endlessness of suffering, that
constitutes the justice of it. We can conceive of an endless suffering that is
marked by little intensity in the degree of it. Such, according to Augustine, is
the suffering of unbaptized infants (mitissima omnium = the mildest of all). It
is negative banishment, not positive infliction. An evil that is inflicted in a
few hours may be greater than one inflicted in endless time. One day of such
torment as that of Satan would be a greater distress than a slight physical pain
lasting forever. The infinite incarnate God suffered more agony in Gethsemane
than the whole finite human race could suffer in endless duration. Consequently,
the uniformity in the endlessness must be combined with a variety in the
intensity of suffering in order to adjust the future punishment to the different
grades of sin (see p. 738).]

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.114[Note: 14 114. WS: “Human laws,” says Paley (Moral Philosophy 1.3),
“omit many duties, such as piety to God, bounty to the poor, forgiveness of
injuries, education of children, gratitude to benefactors. And they permit or,
which is the same thing, suffer to go unpunished many crimes, such as luxury,
prodigality, caprice in the disposition of property by will, disrespect to
parents, and a multitude of similar examples.”] 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” (Matthew 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; Matthew 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” (Romans 12:19; Matthew 25:41; Matthew 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 Thessalonians 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 [clearly] and did not according to his will shall be beaten with
many stripes; but he that knew not [clearly] and did commit things worthy of
stripes shall be beaten with few stripes. As many have sinned without [written]
law shall also perish without [written] law; and as many as have sinned under
[written] law shall be judged by the [written] law” (Luke 12:47-48; Romans
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 [exact] 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 [exact] 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 [exact] 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
[exact] 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” (Romans 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 (Romans 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 (Hebrews 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 Thessalonians 4:13). Unconverted Gentiles “have no hope and
are without God in the world” (Ephesians 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.115[Note: 15 115. WS: “If,” says Pearson
(On the Creed, art. 5), “we should imagine any damned soul to have received an
express promise of God that after ten thousand years he would release him from
those torments and make him everlastingly happy and to have a true faith in that
promise and a firm hope of receiving eternal life, we could not say that that
man was in the same condition with the rest of the damned or that he felt all
that hell which they were sensible of or all that pain which was due unto his
sins, because hope and confidence and relying upon God would not only mitigate
all other pains but wholly take away the bitter anguish of despair.” It is
obvious that if God makes any such promise in his word, either expressly or by
implication, despair is not only impossible to the believer of Scripture, but is
a sin. No man should despair. And if God does not make any such promise, but man
makes it to his fellow sinner in saying, as Satan did to Eve, “you shall not
surely die,” and the human promise is believed, the effect will be the same.
There will be no despair until the reckless human falsehood is corrected by the
awful demonstration at death.] 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” (Zechariah 9:2); “now is the accepted time; now is the
day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 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?” (Romans 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.”116[Note: 16 116. WS: The words of Paul in1 Corinthians 13:13are sometimes
cited to prove the eternity of hope, because it “abides.” But in this passage,
“faith, hope, and charity” are contrasted with the supernatural charismata of1
Corinthians 12:1-31. These latter are transitory, but the former “abide,”
because they are essential to the Christian life here on earth. But in respect
to the eternity of “faith,” St. Paul teaches that it is converted into “sight”
(2 Corinthians 5:7) and that “hope” is converted into “fruition” (Romans 8:24).
Charity is “greater” than faith and hope, because it is not changed into
something else, but is eternal.]

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 Corinthians 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. (See
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 Corinthians 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.117[Note: 17 117. WS:

O fearful thought! one act of sin Within itself contains the power of endless
hate of God, And everlasting pains.

-Faber, Hymn on Predestination]

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” (Romans 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.118[Note: 18 118. WS: It is related of Dr. Scudder that on his
return from his mission in India, after a long absence, he was standing on the
deck of a steamer with his son, a youth, when he heard a person using loud and
profane language. “See, friend,” said the doctor, accosting the swearer, “this
boy, my son, was born and brought up in a heathen country and a land of pagan
idolatry; but in all his life he never heard a man blaspheme his maker until
now.”] 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 akolasia119[Note: 19 119. ἀκολασία =
viciousness] and akrasia,120[Note: 20 120. ἀκρασία = weakness] 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” (Proverbs
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” (Revelation
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.”121[Note: 21 121. WS: Müller (Sin 1.246) exposes the error of
supposing that punishment is remedial in its nature and adapted to produce
penitence and reformation, in the following terms: “The distinctive purpose of
divine punishment cannot be the improvement of the person punished, because this
is the object of redemption. If punishment were the means appropriate to this
end, there would be no need for redemption; or rather, if this object is
attained by redemption, of what use is the severity of punishment? Are we to
suppose that when redemption proves ineffectual for the improvement of man,
punishment must be resorted to, to attain the object? It would then follow that
punishment is more effectual for man’s regeneration than redemption. The
conflict between the sphere of punishment and that of redemption becomes all the
more perplexing when we recollect that the main feature of redemption is the
doing away with punishment by the forgiveness of sins. If punishment be
remedial, is it a kindness to free man from it before it has accomplished its
work? And how is it possible that redemption, which is the removal of
punishment, should renovate, if punishment itself does so also? And yet the
influence of punishment in preserving and reestablishing the power of moral
goodness in the sufferer must not be wholly denied. Punishment, on the one hand,
acts as a barrier against the desolating inroads of sin by reasserting the fixed
ordainments of the law; and, on the other hand, it bears witness to the sinner
of the crushing power wherewith evil recoils upon himself and makes him tremble
when he surrenders himself to it. In these two ways, it prepares man for the
work of redemption. But in its own distinctive nature, it is not adapted or
calculated to produce a true improvement, an inward renovation of the sinner. On
the contrary, the two spheres, that of redemption, which alone can accomplish a
true renewal, and that of punishment, mutually exclude one another. Whenever a
living participation in the blessings of redemption begins, punishment, properly
so called-dikē (δίκη = punishment, vengeance), ekdikēsis (ἐκδίκησις = vengeance,
punishment), timōria (τιμωρία = punishment)-ceases; but, so long as man
continues to be the subject of God’s righteous punishment, he is excluded from
those blessings (John 3:36).” Twesten (Dogmatik 2.39) argues in the same manner:
“Punishment is not a proper means of reformation; for true reformation can issue
only from free self-determination. It is voluntary in its nature. But a
self-determination that is brought about by the fear of pain would not be moral
and of the nature of virtue. Any reformation effected from a selfish motive is
not genuine reformation. Furthermore if true reformation could be produced by
punishment, why should not the legal and punitive method of the Old Testament
have been the only one? The old economy was full of threatenings and penalties
and of fearful examples of their actual execution. Why did God send his Son and
make a new covenant and economy of mercy? Of what use is redemption or the
remission of punishment if punishment is in itself healing and remedial? The
Scriptures never represent punishment as reformatory. The proper punishment of
sin is death (Romans 6:23). As temporal death, which is the extreme penalty in
human legislation, is not intended to reform the criminal and reinstate him in
human society, but forever cut him off from it, so eternal death in the biblical
representation is not intended to be a means of educating the sinner and fitting
him for the kingdom of heaven, but forever banishing and excluding him from
it.”]

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?”122[Note: 22 122. WS: Those
who deny the position that sin is an infinite evil forget that the principle
upon which it rests is one of the commonplaces of jurisprudence: the principle,
namely, that crime depends upon the object against whom it is committed as well
as upon the subject who commits it. The merely subjective reference of an act is
not sufficient to determine whether it is a crime. The act may have been the
voluntary act of a person, but unless it is also an offense against another
person, it is no crime. To strike is a voluntary act; but to strike a post or a
stone is not a culpable act. Furthermore, not only crime, but degrees of crime
depend upon the objective reference of a personal act. Estimated only by the
subjective reference, there can be not only no culpability, but no difference in
culpability. Killing a dog is no worse than killing a man, if merely the subject
who kills and not the object killed is considered. Both alike are voluntary acts
and of one and the same person. If, therefore, the gravity of the act is to be
measured solely by the nature of the person committing it and not by that of the
thing against whom it is committed, killing a dog is as heinous as killing a
man. Now this principle of jurisprudence is carried into theology by the
theologian. The violation of the moral law is sin and guilt, only when viewed
objectively in reference to God primarily and to man secondarily. Viewed merely
and wholly in reference to the transgressor himself, it is not sin and guilt at
all. It is sin only as committed against God or man. Again, it is only the
objective reference that will yield degrees of sin. One and the same act may be
simultaneously an offense against an individual, a family, a state, and God.
Measured by the nature and qualities of the offender himself, it has no degrees.
But measured by the nature and qualities of these moral objects against whom it
is committed, it has degrees of turpitude. As the first three are only finite in
worth and dignity, the culpability is only certain degrees of the finite. As the
last is infinite in worth and dignity, the culpability is infinite also. Cf.
Edwards, Justice of God in Works 4.228.]

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
Timothy 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.123[Note: 23 123. WS: It ought
to be noticed that the “hatred” of himself and of his Father, which Christ
attributes to “the world” (John 15:18-19) and which is a distinguishing element
in impenitence, does not necessarily imply sensuality and vice. Sin may be
wholly intellectual: what St. Paul denominates “spiritual wickedness” (Ephesians
6:12). The most profound of Shakespearean critics calls attention to “the
passionless character of Iago. It is all will in intellect” (Coleridge, Works
4.180). The “carnal mind” manifests itself in two ways. The proud spirit of the
moralist is one phase of it; the self-indulgent spirit of the voluptuary is the
other. The Pharisee represents the first; Dives the last. Both alike confess no
sin and implore no forgiveness. In illustration of the former, consider the
temper of a certain class of intellectual men toward the cross of Christ. They
are perhaps austerely moral. By temperament, taste, study, and occupation, they
have even an antipathy to sensuality. They “scorn delights and live laborious
days.” But present for their acceptance those truths of the New Testament which
involve the broken and contrite heart, and their whole inward being rises in
vehement recoil. Of the effect of the doctrine of election, Calvin remarks that
“when the human mind hears of it, its irritation breaks all restraint, and it
discovers as serious and violent agitation as if alarmed by the sound of a
martial trumpet” (3.22.1). So, too, when the authoritative demand of Jesus
Christ to confess sin and beg remission through atoning blood is made to David
Hume or David Strauss or John Stuart Mill, none of whom were sensualists, it
wakens intense mental hostility. Now without asserting which theory in religion
is true, that of the New Testament or that of the skeptic, is it not clear that
if there be another life and if the teaching of the New Testament shall prove to
be the absolute truth, the latter person must be classed with the “haters of
God?” Will not the temper of this unsensual and intellectual man toward what is
found, in the end, to be eternal verity be as thoroughly of the nature of enmity
as that of the most immoral and hardened debauchee? Müller alludes to unsensual
and intellectual sin in the following terms: “That which makes sin to be sin and
which is the evil of evil is the selfish isolation of the man which it involves.
There are cases … where a man keeps himself free from wild ungovernable passions
and only seldom is guilty of overt acts which conscience recognizes as sins; yet
in his inmost heart ‘the I, that gloomy despot,’ rules supreme; he stands alone
in the world, shut up within himself and in a chaos of selfish endeavors,
preferences, antipathies, without any true participation in the joys and sorrows
of mankind, estranged from God. In such a state, the principle of sin, though
shut up within, rules with no less real power than where its dominion is
manifest in glaring wickedness and vice and a wild disorder of the outward life”
(Sin 1.136). Müller also notices that mere intellectuality is no certain
preservative against sensuality and vice: “A superficial observation of life has
led to the conclusion that immorality decreases in proportion as the growth of
the intellectual nature increases, and the ‘children of this generation’ pride
themselves in no small degree upon the discovery that culture and not
Christianity is the means of true freedom and the panacea for all the disorders
of the world. But a single unbiased and penetrating glance at life will suffice
to dissipate these illusions. We oftentimes find the deepest moral degradation
and disorder in the very highest stages of culture, a frivolity of mind
resolving all the relations of life into rottenness and utter insensibility to
every impulse of holy love and a cold, calculating, self-conscious egotism,
which puts from it the call to sacrifice any one of its own interests as
something altogether absurd-the men with whom it comes in contact being regarded
merely as ciphers, by whose help its own aggrandizement may be attained. Mental
culture does not eradicate a single tendency of moral depravity; it only veils
and refines them all; and so far from redeeming the man, if it be not sanctified
by a higher principle, it really confirms within him the dominion of sin” (Sin
1.306-7). In corroboration of this, see the discriminating remarks of Thomas
Arnold on the character of Sylla in “Roman Republic, 21” in Encyclopaedia
Metropolitana.]

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” (Genesis 18:25); that God will not evil good and good evil nor put
darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isaiah 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” (Ecclesiastes
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.124[Note: 24 124. WS: “There is this certainty,”
says Hooker (Polity 5.49), “that life and death divide between them the whole
body of mankind. What portion either of the two has, God himself knows; for us
he has left no sufficient means to comprehend and for that cause has not given
any leave to search in particular who are infallibly the heirs of the kingdom of
God and who are castaways. Howbeit, concerning the state of all men with whom we
live, we may till the world’s end always presume, that as far as in us there is
power to discern what others are and as far as any duty of ours depends upon the
notice of their condition in respect to God, the safest axioms for charity to
rest itself upon are these: ‘He which believes already is the child of God; and
he which believes not as yet may become the child of God.’ It becomes not us,
during life, altogether to condemn any man, seeing that for anything we know
there is hope of every man’s forgiveness, the possibility of whose repentance is
not cut off by death. And therefore charity, which ‘hopes all things,’ prays
also for all men.” To the same effect says Zanchi (Predestination, 3): “I grant
that there are some particular persons mentioned in the divine word, of whose
reprobation no doubt can be made; such as Esau and Judas. But now the canon of
Scripture is completed, we dare not, we must not pronounce any man living to be
nonelect, be he at present ever so wicked. The vilest sinner may, for aught we
can tell, appertain to the election of grace and be one day wrought upon by the
Spirit of God. This we know, that those who die in unbelief and are finally
unsanctified cannot be saved: because God in his word tells us so and has
represented these as marks of reprobation. But to say that such and such
individuals, whom perhaps we now see dead in sins, shall never be converted to
Christ, would be a most presumptuous assertion, as well as an inexcusable breach
of the charity which hopes all things.”] 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”
(Psalms 68:17); “the Lord came from Sinai and shined forth from Mount Paran, and
he came with ten thousands of his saints” (Deuteronomy 22:2); “the Lord has
prepared his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all” (Psalms
103:21); “yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory” (Matthew 6:13). The
Lord Christ “must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet” (1
Corinthians 15:25). St. John “heard a voice from heaven as the voice of many
waters and as the voice of a great thunder” (Revelation 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.”125[Note: 25 125. WS: Calvin, explaining the
elect “seven thousand” inRomans 11:4, remarks that “though this stands for an
indefinite number, it was the Lord’s design to specify a great multitude. Since,
then, the grace of God prevails so much in an extreme state of things, let us
not lightly give over to the devil all those whose piety does not openly appear
to us.” Zwingli thought that all who died in early childhood are regenerated and
saved. Edwards (Against Chauncy, 14) denies that it is an article of his faith
that “only a small part of the human race will finally be saved.” Hopkins
(Future State, 5) asserts that “there is reason to believe that many more of
mankind will be saved than lost; yea, it may be many thousands to one.” Hodge
(Theology 3.879) says that “we have reason to believe that the number of the
finally lost, in comparison with the whole number of the saved, will be very
inconsiderable.”] (See 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.126[Note: 26 126. WS: Said one of
the deepest and most profoundly penitent of human spirits: “I have had more than
a glimpse of what is meant by death and outer darkness and the worm that dies
not-and that all the hell of the reprobate is no more inconsistent with the love
[benevolence] of God than the blindness of one who has occasioned loathsome and
guilty diseases to eat out his eyes is inconsistent with the light of the sun”
(Cottle, Reminiscences of Coleridge, 282).]

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. (See 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” (Exodus 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” (Nehemiah 9:17). The psalmist declares that
“the Lord is ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy unto all that call upon
him” (Psalms 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” (Psalms 33:18); “whoso confesses and forsakes his sins shall have mercy”
(Proverbs 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” (Matthew 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” (Genesis 32:10; Genesis 32:24;
Genesis 32:28). 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” (Jeremiah 31:18; Jeremiah 31:20).127[Note: 27 127. WS:
Beatrice expresses the same truth to Dante:

Whene’er the sinner’s cheek Breaks forth into the precious-streaming tears Of
self-accusing, in our court the wheel Of justice does run counter to the edge.

-Purgatory 31.36]

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. (See 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 Peter 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.

S U P P L E M E N T S

7.6.1 (see p. 885). 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 Romans 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 Matthew 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 mellōn128[Note: 28 128. αἰὼν μέλλων = age to come] 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,129[Note: 29
129. αἰὼν οὗτος = this age] 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)130[Note: 30 130. αἰών] 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?’ (Psalms 88:18-18; Psalms
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’ (Isaiah 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 (Hebrews 11:13). David himself (Psalms 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. Leviticus 25:23; 1 Chronicles 29:15;
Psalms 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 [as it does to the generality of mankind
today]. 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 Psalms 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 Peter 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
Corinthians 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 (Revelation
21:1-27); 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 [i.e., baptism], 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 [English] church, agreeable to the
Scripture affirming the desert of original sin to be God’s wrath and damnation.”

Matthew Henry (on 2 Samuel 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)131[Note: 31 131. ëÌÉôÆø] for the life of
a murderer which is guilty of death; but he shall surely be put to death”
(Numbers 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” (Psalms 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’132[Note: 32 132. In verbis quidem
figura optantis apparet, sed intelligitur praescientia nuntiantis.] (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 Exodus
23:4-5; Leviticus 19:18; Job 31:29; Proverbs 24:17-18; Proverbs 24:29; Proverbs
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’ (Psalms 101:1-8).
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 [God] 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 Psalms 5:11-12; Psalms 9:20-20; Psalms 12:9; Psalms
22:23-31; Psalms 28:4-5; Psalms 35:24; Psalms 40:17; Psalms 59:14; Psalms
109:27; Psalms 142:8. 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’ (Matthew 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 Psalms
137:8-9, there may have been some blending of the unhallowed flame of personal
passion with the holy fire.” In his comment upon Psalms 5:10, Tholuck thus
explains: “ ‘Make them [consciously] 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 (Deuteronomy
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 Samuel 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’ (Zechariah 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’ (Psalms 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 Corinthians 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” (Psalms
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” (Revelation 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.”133[Note: 33 133. Ut enim Deus non est causa
peccati, ita non est (causa) poenae.] 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” (Revelation 16:8-11).
Lost men “despise the goodness and forbearance and long-suffering of God that
lead to repentance” and “in proportion to (kata)134[Note: 34 134. κατά] their
hardness and impenitent heart treasure up wrath against the day of wrath”
(Romans 2:4-5).


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