He

The father

Paul's atonement teaching is not fundamental, but the vicarious. And this Jesus teaches as clearly as Paul. could not do less and be a teacher of truth. of the Prodigal suffered with and for his wayward son. In all human forgiveness there is an element of selfsacrifice, which justifies the numerous sayings to the effect that Jesus bore the sins of men and gave himself in their behalf. The error has been in pouring the emotional and highly figurative language of prophets and poets into the mould of hard, precise theologic definition.

Vicarious suffering cannot be questioned. It runs all through life. Everywhere the innocent suffers for the guilty, not as his substitute, but as his partner. This is the price that men pay for the great blessings of family and social relations. A man can no more escape suffering from the sins of others than he can prevent their suffering for his sins. This is the meaning of brotherhood, the indelible truth of the old clan ethics: we are one race, and the sins of each are the sins of all. By sharing our humanity, the Son of God obligated himself to bear our griefs and sorrows. The solidarity of the race compels such suffering, and Jesus could not have escaped if he would. By so much as his office as Messiah and Deliverer set him above other men, by so much was his burden of the sins and sorrows of mankind increased.

It follows, therefore, that Jesus bore the sins of the world in a sense unique and to a degree unexampled. Partaker of our nature, he was not actual partaker of our sins, yet he bore them. He bore our sins as a hater of sin and a lover of men-sin offended his moral purity, it debased those dear to him. He bore our sin as one who tries to put it away, to destroy it. He did this as our fellowman; he did it as the Man in whom God dwelt most richly of all men, so that he became an expression of God and what God did he did through him. This was "the joy set before him" that enabled him to endure the

cross, despising shame: the noble gladness of knowing that his endurance of sin was the deliverance of others. His suffering was truly redemptive, because in all the ages it has led men to forsake evil and seek the noble life and the true. The voluntary suffering of love that we see in him makes all other suffering for sin appear poor and

small.

How can the innocent suffer the penalty of others' guilt? Because of his purity of soul Jesus must have lived under the most powerful consciousness of the nature of moral wrong and its effects on life and character. In that was a far more acute suffering than the mere consciousness of personal ill desert could have caused. He bore our sins, therefore, because he lived under the crushing weight of the world's sinfulness, took upon his soul the burden of all human souls. His life and death were a solemn testimony, out of the depths of this bitter experience, to the hatefulness of everything evil; and equally solemn testimony to the excellence of all the good. It was a vindication of the divine character, of the divine standards of conduct. And that he, in whom God visibly dwelt, should undergo this experience, was the highest possible testimony to God's love for a lost world.

"God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself." In these words Paul has given us his highest conception of atonement. Other attempts to explain are on a distinctly lower ethical plane. Indeed we should do well to banish the word "atonement" from religious literature altogether, and use instead the word "reconciliation," which is both more Scriptural and more rational. It may be granted that there is no single, uniform explanation of the work of Christ in the New Testament, or even in the writings of Paul. There has already been too much "systematizing," that has been the root of many evils. Still, "reconciliation" is the best word, if not the exclusive word, to describe our loftiest ideal of Christ's work. Reconcilia

tion is the bringing of God and men into moral unity and mutual fellowship. It is not a doctrine, but a fact of history and experience, that Jesus in his death has been the supreme means of reconciling men to God. All schools of theology will grant that. What they differ about is. the process by which reconciliation has been accomplished. It is matter of comparative indifference how reconciliation is accounted for, provided we hold fast to the fundamental thing: this is not primarily a question of law and government, but of relation between persons.

One other word that Paul uses has been seriously misinterpreted, "propitiation." This has almost uniformly been seized upon and employed by theologians to support their ideas of sacrifice and substitution, which we have seen to be ethically untenable. In this they have done injustice to Paul. True, in the spoken Greek of apostolic times, it was not uncommon to describe propitiatory gifts to the gods as iλaoτnoia (1) and Paul may have been acquainted with this usage of the word. But he was certainly much better acquainted with its use in the Septuagint, where it invariably (2) denotes the kapporeth, or cover of the ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle. Here, between the wings of the cherubim, was the shekinah, the radiance or glory of Jehovah, visible symbol of his presence with his people and his willingness to forgive sins. Since the time of Tyndale, the term "mercy-seat" has been found in all English versions as the equivalent of laoτnotov. Paul (3) and the letter to the Hebrews() use this word metaphorically of Jesus. It is inconceivable that they should have had in mind the heathen sense of it, rather than the thought it would instantly suggest to every Jew. No, they intended to say of Jesus that he is our "mercy-seat," the meeting-place of (1) Deissmann, Biblical Studies, p. 131.

(2) Ex. 25:17, 22; 26:34; 40:20; Lev. 16:2, 13; Num. 7:89. (3) Rom. 3:25.

(1) Heb. 9:5; 2:17.

God and man, the visible symbol of God's presence with his people and the surety of the divine forgiveness. (1) In this sense, the only interpretation that accords with probability, the word is fully in accord with the ideal of reconciliation, and certainly suggests nothing of sacrifice or expiation or substitution. (2)

(1) The kindred word ihɑouós, found in 1 John 2:2, 4:10, will bear the same interpretation without violence.

(2) For a full conspectus of the Scripture passages relating to atonement, see Appendix.

CHAPTER X

WHAT THEN IS CHRISTIANITY?

I

WHAT is Christianity? Is it chiefly a life or chiefly an institution? Is Christianity the Church, historic, present or possible?

According to Jesus, Christianity is the Kingdom of God. He cherished a social ideal, a vision of a reconstructed world, a new human society, composed of regenerated men, a society of which good will to others, mutual service and helpfulness, was to be the law. To be a member of the Kingdom was to undertake the Great Adventure of the spirit, which may involve much privation and pain, but leads to the heights of achievement and blessedness. The teaching of Jesus affords no hint of purpose to establish an organization, though he must have known (since any man of good sense would know it) that something of the sort would almost certainly grow out of his teaching. Indeed, he must have been sensible that without organized propaganda his words would be evanescent, and his influence as a teacher would prove no more than a ripple on the world's life. Yet he seemed utterly careless about organization; his to supply the spirit, others might provide the body, of his new society.

Paul occasionally mentions the Kingdom, but only occasionally and only mentions. He does not use the word in the gospel sense, but rather as something pertaining to the future life. Even in the fourth Gospel the ideal of Jesus has visibly faded from the consciousness of his