The Divine Reason of the Cross

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 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.