The question of the method of salvation deserves a better answer than is commonly given to it; and certainly an answer that does not destroy the atonement. Indeed, such an answer must be given, if... More > the evangelical faith is to stand, if our rational hold on the grounds of salvation is to be maintained, and if we are to strengthen the faith of others. It cannot be that that Cross which is declared to be “the wisdom of God,” will not commend itself as wise in the method of its working, as well as effective in power, to a spiritually taught insight. The way of salvation must be supremely rational.Customary as it is for many to say that they have “no theory” of the atonement, yet all men who think about it at all do have some theory, whether they intelligibly define it or not. This habit of speaking of having “no theory” on the subject, while holding to the saving value in the fact of Christ’s death, is the fashion of the hour ... Doubtless some are in suspense what to believe.< Less
While gifted minds in various periods have profoundly studied the subject (redemption), and have written upon it immortal treatises, yet even the best of these at some points are ever in need of... More > restatement. The controversies which have raged concerning the subject have generally left some clouds of obscurity peculiar to all controversy. Language from its inherent weakness as implying too much or too little is so capable of being misunderstood, that any statement made in a given generation requires a somewhat altered phrasing for the generation following. Then the very conceptions of Scripture being often paradoxical or symbolic, carry in them meanings which lie below the surface. The most vital implications of Scripture never clearly appear except to an insight born of deep, spiritual experience; and this element is ever a variable one. To real insight the mysteries of the Divine Word increasingly become open secrets.< Less
The writer has long felt it to be unfortunate for Christian thought, that in the emphasis put upon Christ as mediator, however necessary some form of the concept be, He has sometimes been made to... More > appear as a real third party, outside of both God and man, on whom God arbitrarily imposed the exclusive cost of redeeming suffering, instead of Himself sharing all the Son endured. The work of Christ has thus been represented as an arrangement to save us from God, instead of (as a more reflective study of the Scriptures would lead us to see), a self-manifestation of God in the flesh, which brings us home to God ... the atonement, in some such form as he has presented it here,—as a cosmic reconciliation—is the basic truth; and that it concerns primarily the reconcilement, through the suffering of the whole Deity for sin, of the two rapports, or polarities expressed by holiness and love in the one triune God; and that the personal, subjective at-one-ment of God and man is but its corollary.< Less
