Reconciliation

The general doctrine of the Atonement has been dealt with under that title (vol. i. p. 197), and the biblical phraseology under Propitiation (p. 128). The present art. is concerned with the reconciliation made by Christ between God and men ; and the question specially to be investigated is, whethei it is subjective only, our reconciliation to God, o/ EECOXCILIATIOX RFXOXCILIATION 201 objective also, God's reconciliation to us. The Gr. word occurs four times in NT, Ko 5" 11'° and 2 Co 518. i9_ and in ^n these places it is used objectively to describe the new relation between God and humanity broujrht about by the work of Christ (see Cremer, Bihl.-Theol. Lex. s.v.). This is, perhai)s, most clearly seen in Ro 5" Ji' ov vdf tt)v KaTaXK!xyT]v {\i^o)ur, ' through whom we have now received the reconciliation.' The reconciliation must have been already an accom|)lislied fact before it could be received, i.e. before faith or feeling could have anything to do with it. So in Ro 11" the kut. Kuj/xou is plainly the favourable attitude of God towards tne world through His turning away from Israel. In 2 Co 5"- '" the oiaxoi'ia ttjs KaraX- \ayrjs and the Xiyor tt)! (caraXXaYi/s are the means appointed by God to bring men to a knowledge of what He has done for them in Christ. And what is that ? What is ' the word of reconciliation ' ? It is ' that God was in Christ, reconciling the world nnto himself.' That this refers to an objective matter of f.ict, not a subjective state of feeling, is plain from the exhortation based on it : ' Be ye reconciled to God.' Besides, how was God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself? By ' not imputing unto men their trespasse.s.' But this was only the negative side of it. The positive is reserved to clinch the argument at the close : ' For God made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him' (2 Co 5-'). But if this is the meaning of the reconciliation in the two most important of the passages that bear on it, — the doing on God's part of all that needed to be done to make it right lor Ilim to receive us back into favour, — the re- conciliation cannot have respect to us alone, nor can the whole purpose of the work of Christ be exhausted in the moral effect it has upon us as a ji.athetic disjilay of the love of God. Moreover, according to Ro 3, , the primary object of the work of Christ was not to display the love, but the riijht- eousne.is of God. That righteousness h.id been obscured by the forbearance of God in the past, and might still further be obscured in the future by His forgiving men on the ground of their faith in Jesus. They had been tempted, and might again be tempted, to doubt the reality of His wrath against sin, unless it were made clear that in forgiving it to men God had dealt seriously with it in tliu propitiatory work of Christ. 1. 'J'/te Need of Reconciliation on the part of God. —The siibject has already so far been di-scussed, and passages have been cited both from OT and NT ascribing anger, wrath, indignation, jealousy, and even hate to God (see art. ANGER OF GoD in vol. i. J). 97 tr.). But something may be added to what IS there said of the reluctance theologians have long shown to take such passages seriously. In their recoil from the extreme anthropomorphism of liery writers like TertuUian, they have, from Origen downwards, often nished to the oi)posite extreme, and conceived of God not only as a Being ' without parts,' but also 'witliout pnssi(ms.' But anlhro{>omorphism has at the heart of it a truth of priceless worth, for man was miule in tlio image of God (Gn !■), and therefore, spiritually considered, I h>ir natures are essentially akin. As we ai>prcci- alo and apply this truth in Cliristology, we make it easier to see the jiossibility of an Incarnation. If the Divine and the human natures were dis- parate, it is hard to see how there could be a union of God and man ; but if they are essentially akin, the dilhculty is at least sensibly relieved. But if this helj) is available for Chnstology, it is available for Theology also. For then, what Edward White calls ' the Buddhism of the West,' according to which God is conceived a« a Being of passionless repose, sublimely raised above all the fluctuations of feeling to which we are suhject, gives )ilace to a truer conception of IJod, more human and therefore more Divine. (See the Ex- cursus on the ' Sen^ibility of God ' in Ed. White's Life in Cliriit, p. 2.")'), and Bushnell's Sermon on ' the Power of God in Self-.Sacrilice' in Tlic S<:w Life). We are here concerned, however, not with tlii^ Divine sensibility in general, but with that par- ticular form of it implied in the anger or wrath of God. What is meant by that? Our answer to tiju question will turn in part on the view we take of the way in which God governs the world, and in part on the view we take of our own nature in comjjarison with God's. If we think that God administers a law above and apart from Himscli', as a judge administers the law of his country, we must interpret all that Scripture says of llis anger or wrath in some nun-natural sense, for these are emotions which, even if ho had them, a judge would not betray. Thi; more perfect he is as a judge, the more carefully will lie sup]press them. His decisions will tell us nothing of his personal feelings, but only of his determination to uphold the law of the land. Now tliis is just how the great majority of theologians, from Origen and Augustine down to our own day, have dealt with the language of Scripture about the anger of God. They have taken it in a thoroughly non-natural sense, as if it told us nothing of the personal feeling of God, but only of His judicial determination to punish and put down wickedness (see Simon, Rcdeimitiun of Man, PI). 223-229). But this is not how the Scrip- tures speak, and therefore we may be sure it is not the view they take of God's relation to the world. They give free vent to God's personal feel- ings regarding the cliaracter and conduct of men, from which we may safely infer that they did not regard Him primarily as our Judge, but as our Father, the Father of our spirits, and our Judge in virtue of His Fatherhood ; for as every father is head over his own house, so is God Head over all (1 P 1"). In other words, His relations to us are personal, and His government direct. There is no law over and above Him, or between Him and us. The law He ui)holds is that of His own life, and therefore of ours, for our life is but our linite share in His. llonce His Divine displeasure, when we do anything to disturb it. It is Him and not merely ourselves we grieve, when we fall out of right relations to Him ; and against Him we chielly oli'end, even when we do wrong to others. ' Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in thy sight ' (Ps .51''). The nearest human analogue we liave to the moral government of God is that of the family, and the best clue we have to the feeling of (!od when we deliberately do wrong is the bitter disappointment of a father who has loved and lived for his children, when they have rebelled against him, until the filial bond between them is strained almost to the breaking. And the Divine Father feels it the more, because, though we may ceaso in spirit to be His children. He cannot ceaso to be our Father. He cannot con.sent to stand in any lower relation to us, and can only express His astonishment that we should behave as we have done. 'Hear, (> heavens, and give car, O earth, for the Lord liatli spoken: I have nourished and brought up chihlnn, and they have rebelled against mo' (Is V). Thai is what sin means to God. Is it any wonder that He should hate it, and plead with His rebellions children as He dues: 'Oil, ilo not this abominable thing which I hate' (Jcr 41'). But even pathos like that will bo lost on us, unless we further see what the Fatherhood of God involves, namely, that His nature and ours are essentially akin, so that, allowance being made for our moral imiierfection, from our own experience wc m:iy 206 KECONCILIATION RECOXCILIATION safely infer His. If man was marie in the image of God, a <'ood man must be a good guide to right thoughts about God. If a good man may be angry, so may God. A good man's anger wiil never be mere blind rage, nor mere personal resentment, but as moral indignation it may rise to any heiglit ; and the better he is, the higher it will ri.se, in the presence of deliberate wrong-doing. And that being so, it were surely strange to conclude that if he were altogether perfect, his anger would entirelj' disapi)ear. There would disappear from it only what deliled it before — the smolce, but not the flame ; as we see in the one perfect Man of the whole race — the Man, Christ Jesus. Was He never angry? Did not He look round on His enemies ' with anger, being grieved for the hard- ness of their hearts'? (Mk 3''). And can we con- ceive Him denouncing the hypocrites of His day in cold, nnirapassioned language ? Is not His indict- ment against them instinct Avith moral indignation, the fire of which we feel as we read it still ? We cannot doubt the reality of His anger. Why, then, should we doubt the reality of God's ? Was not God in Christ denouncing the Pharisees, as well as reconciling the world to Himself? And does not the one fact go far to determine how the other should be understood ? 2. The Possibility of Reconciliation on the part of God. — But many demur to a mutual recon- ciliation, not only because they doubt the reality of God's anger, and see no need of reconciliation on the part of God, but also because they doubt its possibility, for reconciliation implies a change of feeling, and there can be no change in God. This, however, is confusion of thought. It is to misunderstand the nature of God's unchangeable- ness. God is not a mere mechanical force, but a living, moral mind. It is His character that is unchangeable, not His feelings, nor His actions. These must change with the changing character and conduct of His creatures, just because He changeth not. In any relevant sense of the word, it is not He that changes, but we. If we obey not. He abideth faithful. He cannot deny Him- self, and therefore He must deny us, when we defy Him. In fact this apparent change in God proves His real unchangeableness, just as an apparent unchangeableness would prove a real change. (See Domer on ' the Divine Immutability ' in System of Chnstian Doctrine, i. 244 fi'., iv. 80). 1. But both the need and the possibility of recon- ciliation on the Divine side seem to many forbidden from another point of view. There seems no room for it in the Christian conception of God. God is Lo\ e, and love is incapable of anger or hostility. But if God is love, love must be more than a mere emotion. It is a character, and a character is made up of likes and dislikes, attractions and re- pulsions, according to its affinity for, or aversion to, the character and conduct of those with whom it comes in contact. In other words, God is a person, not a force. He can, and does, discrimin- ate between the righteous and the -(vicked. ' The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous . . . the face of the Lord is against them that do evil ' (Ps 34""). That does not mean that He does not love even them that do evil, but it does mean that His love is capable of hostility. How, indeed, can God love us for our good without showing His hostility to what would do us harm ? When a river is dammed back by some obstruction thrown in its way, it chafes against it, and poetically we say it is angry. But it is not mere poetry to say that when the Divine love is held Dack by our Bin, so that it can no longer flow forth to bless ns as it would, it chafes against the obstacle, and cannot bear to be balked of its benign purpose concerning us. Love is goodness in earnest to make others good, and when it cannot have its way it is grieveil, when it is deliberately thwarted it is angry, and, as Coleridge says — ' To be wroth with one you love Doth work Ukc niadntsji in the brain. It ia here that Simon (Redemption of Man, p. 216 ff,), who has done so much to define and defend the reality of God'a anger, has lost his wa.v. According to him, ' love and wrath are mutually exclusive ' ; that is, thry cannot both be felt for one and the same person at one and the same time, though the.v may both be felt by one and the same person towards different persons. A father may become angry with one of his children, and, to that extent, cease loving him, without therefore ceasing to love the rest. At the moment of intensest indignation with the one he may turn with tenderness to the rest. Not other- wise with God. It is true, he adds that a man who is angry because his love has been repelled, will also, even whilst angry, carefully search for means of vanquishing the indiffer- ence, and converting the contemptuous aversion into loving regard. This is what a lovin(/ being, a loving God, can do, hut it is misleading to ascribe it to love(iA. p. 201). But surely, as Scott Lidgett has pointed out (The Spiritual Principle oj the Atonement, p. 25U f.), it is contrary to the most familiar exTserience of life to say that love must either be requited or withdrawn. Life is full of unrequited and even outraged love that has never been withdrawn. Witness the way in which a mother will cling to a reprobate son, and for all the wrong he has done her never give him up while she Uves. Nor is the love that will not let him go love in general, but distinctively her love for him. How could her love for her other children supply the energy required to seek reconciliation with him from whom, by the supposition, it has been withdrawn? It is a moral impossibility. Simon's mistake is due to his making too much of love as a mere emotion, forgetting that in its deepest and divinest sense it is a character, a moral determination of the whole being towards another. As a character, love may survive the mere enjojiuent of \Vb own satisfaction. Satis- faction may give place to dissatisfaction and the severest dis- pleasure. These may be the only emotions proper to it for the time being, but it cannot enjoy these, cannot even endure them, and, in its own interest as well as that of its object, it will seek their removal, and, if possible, out of its own resources provide a propitiation. That is precisely what God has done for ua. * Herein is love, not that we love God, but that God loved ua, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins ' (1 Jn 4^0). 2. But this brings us, in the second place, to what seems to many the greatest difficulty of all. That God should both require and provide pro- pitiation seems to be a contradiction, and from tlie fact that God did provide it thej' infer that He did not require it — that is, did not need to be pro- pitiated. It was provided by but not for Him. God did not, and could not, propitiate Himself. So W. R. Dale puts it. 'God Himself provided the ransom ; He could not pay it to Himself ' (Atone- ment, p. 357). To Avhom, then, or to what, was it paid ? To the eternal law of righteousness, says Dale, as if there could be any such law above or apart from God, or as if propitiation had anything to do with impersonal law, or could be made at all outside personal relations. The difficulty is due to the assumption that God both pro<nided and offered the propitiation — an assumption very commonly made, and made decisive of the whole matter. Thus SV. N. Clarke says : ' If we wish to hold a doctrine that is real, we must choose between the two directions for the action in the work of Christ ; we cannot combine them. There may be action that takes eB'ect on God to influ- ence Him, but we may be sure that it originates somewhere else than m God Himself ; and there may be action that originates in God, but we may be sure that it takes effect upon some other. God does not influence Himself. If we choose or judge between these two directions, there can be no doubt as to the result. In the work of Christ, was God the actor, or was God acted upon ? For we are at war with reality if we attempt to affirm both. We cannot hesitate about our answer. God was the Actor' (Present-Day Papers, 1900, vol. iii. p. 238). But God was not the Actor in the whola transaction. God provided the propitiation, but He did not ofl'er it to Himself. Christ oflered it, acting not as God's representative, but as ours. (See Cremer on IXdcKfadai). God gave humanity in llim the means of making propitiation, but God RECORD RED HEIFER 20; dill not propitiate Himself. Nor is there any difficulty liere but sucli as meets us everywhere in the spiritual life. It is only the sujjreme example of a universal spiritual law. Thus, e.g., God both requires and gives repentance— or rather power to reiieut, for of course He does not repent for us. And so with every other grace, as the very word implies. The grace is in ns, but it is of GoA. God worketh in us both to will and to do of His good plea-sure. He neither wills nor acts for us, but enables us to will and act in the line of His own pood pleasure. So in the work of reconciliation. God made it possible to humanity by the gift of Christ, but Christ as the Head and Representative of the race actually accomplished it. The prin- ciple underlying it is identical with the principle wliich underlies our whole religious life, and finds instinctive e.\pression in the language of prayer, wherein we virtu.illy ask God to fulfil His own law in us, to fuUil in us all the good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with power. (See, e.«pecially, Simon, liedetnption of Man, ch. ix.). \i this is a paradox, it is a paradox inherent in our very existence, as finite creatures, who have yet a certain moral independence over against God ; and on its religious side it has never been better expressed than in Augustine's words : 'Da quod juhes, et jube quod vis' (Conf. x. 29). LrrKRATUKB. — Cremer, Bibl.-Theol. Lex., articles on «wt«x- iArrm, xxraXXttyr,, 't>.afx«/xtu, IXx^/j^ ; Trench, Si/noiif/ms on the same ; Thorn in Expos. Timt-jt, iv. 335 (. ; Sanday-Ueadlam, Komans, 129 f.; Sartorius, Dioiru Loot (Eng. tr.), 12811.; Lechler, Aitott. nnd J'oit-Apost. Times, ii. 39 ff., 141 ff. ; Bp. Ewing in Pres.-Day Papers, iiL; Gracev, 5m and Salvation, 238fF. ; T. Binney, Si-rmam, 11. 61 ff. ; Siinon, The Redemption of Man, ch. v., and lieconciliation by //wamation (1898) ; Scott Lidij'ett, The Spiriluai Principle 0/ the Atonement, ch. v. ; and OQ tiie Eng. word, Expos. Times, v. 632 ff. A. Adamson.