Atonement and Personality

CONTENTS

All our experience is of imperfect punishment (or penitence, or
forgiveness). The object is to see what these would mean
-not as imperfect, but in their own reality

What is punishment? Dr Dale's View.

Pain-inflicted-

because of wrong. Further statement; Pain-related to
the sufferer's capacity of self-consciousness of wrong—as
an effect of righteousness. It is only possible in a person,
or explicable in reference to personality. It is a moral
means to a moral end. The “retributive” aspect belongs to
the necessary imperfectness of human justice. Justice that
is not omniscient can only be a very rough figure of what
absolute justice would be. The "equation" theory is a
corollary from the imperfectness of the "retributive".
Is there, then, no punishment which is not restorative? This
view contradicts both experience on earth, and the possi-
bility of Hell. But all punishment begins as moral
discipline, and only in proportion as it fails to moralize,
becomes ultimately “vengeance." Different as these are,
the difference lies in the reception of punishment by the
punished, not in the punisher. Limits within which it is
right to conceive of a "punisher" at all

Guilt has two streams of consequence, (a) vengeance, (b)

remorse. Endurance of vengeance, as such, has no atoning

tendency whatever. But even such endurance can become

an element, or education, towards penitence. Punishment

taken up into the suffering personality as penitence, really

tends to diminish guiltiness. Such penitence, however

little it can on earth avert punishment, can quite trans-

form its inner character. Punishment is meant to be trans-

xvil

muted into penitence; and it is only as penitence that it
has any restorative or atoning quality.

Punishment, as retribution, cannot be predicated of Christ.
Our own attitude towards punishment

CHAPTER II

PENITENCE

Penitence is as wide as humanity—yet distinctively Christian.
It can only be personal-a condition of personality, under
sin, yet made for, and capable of, righteousness. All
conscious wretchedness is capacity of penitence. Penitence
as love and as belief. Penitence is a real change of self.
It is the triumph of righteousness within
All experienced penitence is imperfect. Sin has affected the
central self, past, present, and future. Real deliverance
from sin must touch all three. How the present includes
the future and the past. Perfect penitence would be such
a change of self, as would, by contradiction, make the past
dead, and re-identify the self with righteousness. Ex-
perienced penitence, though imperfect, bears clear witness
to the nature of penitence. Its climax would be personal
self-identity with holiness; and righteousness and love
would be one in embracing it
Such penitence is impossible. Sin once for all has marred the
capacity of it. Its climax would only be really possible to
one who, personally, was really sinless

On second thoughts, it is not only the climax of penitence, but
any reality of it, that is, to sinful nature, impossible. Yet
Christian experience is so full of it, that it may almost
be said to constitute Christian experience. And the ex-
perience of its unconsummated reality is the pledge of the
real possibility of its consummation
Whence then comes it? It is the indwelling Spirit of the
Crucified

CHAPTER III

FORGIVENESS

All Christian hope-and duty-hinges on "forgiveness." What
is forgiveness? "Remission of penalty" a first stage of
thought, which experience must begin with, and must

transcend. The true forgiveness is right forgiveness, i.e.
the forgiveness of Righteousness.
Forgiveness is not simply not punishing: or treating as if
innocent or regarding as innocent. These things are not
even moral, apart from a justifying cause. Forgiveness is
only possible towards a person; and must have its justifi-
cation in his personality. It is exactly correlative to
"forgiveableness"; not arbitrary nor optional but (as it
were) self-acting.

Does this empty the word "forgiveness" of all meaning? not if
man's "forgiveableness" is itself God's work, not man's.
In any case the logical difficulty is not greater on this
view than on any which makes God's forgiveness other than
irrational. But in fact all experienced forgiveness is pro-
visional-a means to an end. The unforgiving servant.
Forgiveness is not a transaction, but an attitude. It is=
love. But love is called "forgiveness" just in the stage
when it is still anticipatory, ie. just when, and because,
it provisionally outruns the capacity of deserving, or of any
real correspondence with love
Human forgiveness is to correspond with Divine. The nearest
analogue is a parent's forgiveness of a little one. Postulates
involved in this. They do not directly apply to the case
of a man outraged by his fellows. What is forgiveness in
him?-(a) a turning from them to God, (b) a looking, and,
if possible, a working, towards their personal recovery to
holiness. His relation may possibly become almost
parental

Forgiveness not finally consummated till the consummation of

holiness. Then it is wholly merged in love. All Christian

hope of "forgiveness" must necessarily mean hope of

personal holiness.

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CHAPTER IV

THE PERSON OF THE MEDIATOR

That the unholy may become holy, how can any mediation be

relevant? In experience, which is deeper than logic, a

friend who will bear is the best practical hope of the

sinner's reformation

The impossibility seems most absolute in the forensic atmosphere.

Some mitigations of it perhaps just conceivable even here

-In proportion as he who would suffer is (a) uniquely
capable of identification with the punished, and (6) uniquely
capable of identification with the punisher
Illustration of a father with an erring child, and the mother
between them bearing the weight of penitence, carries our
thought further—yet breaks down at the point; for each is
still not the other .

Just here Catholic doctrine comes in. Christ Is God-not generi-
cally but identically. Tendency of thought to fall short of this
truth. Popular Tri-theism. Dread of Sabellianism deters
"orthodox" thought from adequate insistence on the unity
of Deity

sense.

Again, there is a real unity of humanity; and Christ is Man-
not generically but inclusively. Only Adam besides could
ever be Man inclusively and even Adam in an inferior
The Humanity of Christ is the Humanity of Deity.
Hence its unique capacity of universal relation-through
Spirit. If we realize very imperfectly what this means, so
we do what our own personal being means. Yet the prin-
ciple that Christians are one with, and are in, Christ, is
inseparable from the whole New Testament; and is the
basis of the Sacramental, which is the characteristic,
worship and life of the Church

Christ then is not an intervening third term; because He is
simply identical with the first, and simply identical with the
second also .

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