Dear Mr. Editor,
Dr. Bonar's book was sent to me, I know not by whom, with some passages marked. I send you the notes I made in reading it, for that is all that which follows pretends to be, though reviewing the work. The importance of the doctrine in question will justify my taking it up.
“The altar is the only place of expiation, and it is death that is the wages of sin.” (Page 37.) “Justified by His blood is the apostolic declaration; and, as the result of this, saved from wrath through Him. Here we rest.... It is at and by the cross that God justifies the ungodly. By His stripes we are healed, and the symbol of the brazen serpent visibly declares this truth. It was the serpent when uplifted that healed the deadly bite.” (Page 38.) “Reconciled to God by the death of His Son, is another of the many testimonies to the value and efficacy of the cross.... The peace was made by the blood of the cross.... What can be more explicit than these three passages, which announce justification by the blood, reconciliation by the death, and peace by the blood of the cross?” (Page 39.) “This sweet savor came from the brazen altar, or altar of burnt-offering. It was the sweet odor of that sacrifice that ascended to God and that encompassed the worshipper, so that he was covered all over with this sacrificial fragrance, presenting him perfect before God, and making his own conscience feel that he was accepted as such, and treated as such.” (Page 40.) “In so far, then, as substitution is concerned we have to do with the cross alone.” (Page 41.) “The justifying fact—the death of Him whose name is Jehovah our righteousness.” (Page 79.) Compare also page 219.
Thus speaks Dr. Bonar, and justly and well as far as it goes. But who would have thought that these are the statements of a book, one main object of which is to prove that it is not so, but that Christ was a sin-bearer all His life, and our presentation perfect before God depended upon His sin-bearing all His life, and that He only finished that work upon the cross? “They who own the doctrine of Christ suffering for sin, the just for the unjust, will listen to those bitter cries (those uttered during His life), as to the very voice of the Substitute, and learn from them the completeness of the work of satisfaction, for the accomplishment of which He took our flesh, and lived our life, and died our death upon the tree. But the completeness of the substitution comes out more fully at the cross.... Then the work was done, 'It is finished.’” (Page 36.)
Now it is quite true that in the previous quotations, except the last and more important one from p. 79, Dr. B. is resisting justification by resurrection (an idea I never heard of till I saw it in this book, and which has no sense if speaking of the value of the thing in itself). But in his zeal against this imaginary enemy, he has, I hope with his true and better feelings of faith, declared that by the cross, and blood, and death of Christ only, we are justified and reconciled. The rest of his substitutory work is then only studied theology, not personal faith.
As to argument, Dr. B. so mixes up one truth with another, is guilty of such excessive carelessness, and exhibits such incapacity for seeing, not only what another says, but the force of what he says himself, and, I am afraid I must say, such ignorance of scripture on the subject, that it is difficult to deal with his reasonings. Christ's bearing our sins and our dying with Christ are confounded together; law and Christ's suffering life; accounting righteous or guilty is substitution; the actual transfer of guilt turns out to be only something available for everybody. But into these I will enter.
I regret to have to notice his book in such a way, for he pleads real and full atonement, and the need of it as against rationalists, and assurance of salvation, if not in the clearest way, yet so honestly and fully that I should regret sincerely anything that might weaken his arguments as to this. But he has so lowered the gospel, so hidden God's love in “courts of law,” though not denying it, so confounds propitiation and substitution, and so totally does away the real value of the latter by his missing altogether and falsifying its true character, that I feel it well to take it up and review his book. He has accepted, I see, the force of ἀνήνεγκ: so we may hope for acceptance of other truths; but he has not learned to be more careful in other statements. Let us see if a review of them may lead him on here too.
That Luther may have taken up imputing legal righteousness, as others did, may be all true. But though he admits doubts and distress come from law, that he never knew real deliverance from it his famous treatise on Galatians clearly proves, as other parts of his life and his death. But Dr. Bonar's “Luther's Rock, the righteousness of God,” is an unhappy blunder. He carefully excluded the word from his translation of the New Testament. He always puts, “the righteousness available before God,” Die Gerechtigkeit die vor Gott gilt: an unwarrantable and mischievous change, which destroys the whole nature and character of the scriptural statement. Luther was an eminent instrument of God in His work: we have all to be thankful for it. But the word of God is above all price.
Dr. B.'s style is full of effort, and tedious by repetition, and turgid, sometimes descending very low in the effort, as when he says, “Possessed of this preciousness (imputed still ours), we go into the heavenly market and buy what we need without stint. We get everything upon the credit of His name.... In His name we carry on all our transactions with God.” But my business is with doctrine, not with words. And it seems to me that the whole tone of the book falsifies, even where there is truth mixed up, the entire presentation of the gospel in scripture.
Besides making of substitution a false and inefficacious unreality, the bringing the questions into God's courts of law is an idea wholly foreign to the scriptures. That law has been established by faith—that Christ has magnified it and made it honorable—is most true; but scripture does not describe the gospel as bringing men into courts of law. There is a solemn bringing in of unrepentant sinners into a court of judgment hereafter (yea, all shall give an account of themselves), and there is a reconciling of persons now: Dr. B. speaks of neither. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. This is the very opposite of bringing them into courts of law. As such He was rejected, and the full sinfulness of man brought out. But it was mercy, not law, brought it” out, the rejection of One come not to judge but to save. With Israel some such figure might be used, He was in the way with them as an adverse party; but then the result was in government on earth and judgment. The nation was set aside (as it will be till it has paid the last farthing—and even then its restoration is sovereign grace), that the apostolic embassy of the gospel might go forth, still beseeching to be reconciled to God, and grace reign through righteousness. He who knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. God is revealed as reconciling the world, or as beseeching men to be reconciled, He having been made sin for us, not bringing them into His courts of law.
The notion that He of whom it is said, “who knew no sin,” is God as such, and that He was made sin in incarnation, which is Dr. Bonar's interpretation, is too monstrous and too offensive as well as absurd to need reply. God has made God, who as God did not know sin, to become sin by being a man: can any Christian taught of God receive such a thought? God does know sin perfectly: to apply it to His not knowing it in conscience is blasphemy; to affirm it of One who was in the likeness of sinful flesh is of vital importance. “Which of you convinceth me of sin?” In Him is no sin. -Is God's making God become sin (vicariously of course I admit) any better? The Lord declares He comes to do God's will and that His law is in His heart. It was the Lamb, the spot less Lamb, the victim that was made sin. Nor does scripture speak of God or the Father making the Word become flesh. Jehovah prepared a body. Then He says, Lo I come, in the same willing and blessed love. It is an interpretation which outrages all spiritual intelligence. I should call it blasphemous, but that I am sure Dr. Bonar has no such intention. He is blind to the force of what he says; but it falsifies the whole force of God's coming into the world in grace, making Himself of no reputation (ἐλένωσεν ἑαυτόν), when the Word made flesh dwelt among us full of grace and truth. This for Dr. Bonar is only Christ, the law, and we, when willing to go too, brought into courts of law to judge about the case! Besides, if this took place in the life of Christ, why have ambassadors? If it referred to Christ's death and His then going away, it required others to announce it. The whole force of the passage in every aspect is set aside by this ruinous idea. It is miserable doctrine: and Dr. Bonar's mind does not rest on the reconciliation of the sinner (I may say not at all even in result; for it is only available to him: he is not reconciled). “Law and love must be reconciled.” (Page 4.) “The reconciliation God has accomplished;” and as man's consent is required, the reconciliation God has accomplished must be effected before that. Man did not consent to this way of reconciliation when accomplished, save in rejecting and crucifying Christ. “God has done it all and He has done it effectually and irreversibly.....He has done it by removing the whole case into His own courts of law.... God comes into court bringing man and man's whole case along with Him, that, upon righteous principles and in a legal way, the case may be settled at once in favor of man and in favor of God.” Now this not only gives a representation of this matter of which there is no trace in scripture, and falsifies the character of the gospel, but it is alike absurd and misleading. Who is judge of the court? Nor is this all. Man is brought into court; but, in reconciling law and love, no individual man at all is reconciled. It is the reconciliation, not of a sinner, but of law and love. Perhaps no man may accept it.
“The consent of parties to the acceptance of the basis is required in court.” (Page 6.) Now where was this reconciliation of law and love on the cross? Man was only accomplishing his sin there, yet there law and love were reconciled. When the whole thing is settled, man's consent is asked—to what? To a reconciliation already accomplished? God, we were told in page 5, has done it all; and He has done it effectually and irreversibly. Done what? “Reconciled law and love.” (Page 4.) But here there is no substitution, or any one reconciled: God has done it all before man has accepted anything. It is an accomplished thing, all done, finished, and yet no man reconciled; so that it is no reconciliation of persons at all. What was the principle of the work? “Transference of guilt, from one who could not bear the penalty without being eternally lost, to One who could bear it” (page 17), and again the transference of the wrath from the sinner to the representative (page 21); and so often. Now whose guilt was transferred? the wrath resting on what sinners was transferred to the representative?
Substitution is never spoken of in this vague way in scripture. All through, Dr. B, confounds propitiation and substitution. Substitution is one taking really the place of another; reconciling law and love has nothing to do with substitution. Was anything substituted for law or for love? Clearly not. They were both maintained and glorified. Were then everybody's sins transferred to Christ? If so, all are saved, or His having borne the wrath due to them is ineffectual and reversible. The whole argument of the book shows Dr. Bonar has confounded substitution which does suppose transference of guilt and crime from the guilty to another, a substitution of one person for another, as when a debt is paid (the illustration Dr. B. gives); while propitiation is to God ward. But one pas-sago will suffice to show this confusion. “God has introduced the principle of substitution into His courts.... presenting a divine surety as a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed.” Here they are clearly treated as one and the same thing.
Now on the great day of atonement there was the Lord's lot and the people's lot. The blood of the Lord's lot was put on the mercy-seat. God's righteousness and love, and majesty and truth, all that He is, were perfectly glorified. Besides this, there was the scape-goat, both goats representing Christ in the same great sacrifice; but the high priest represented the people, and their sins were confessed on the head of the goat, and carried away, never to be found. Now here there was representation, transfer, substitution, and the work was effectual for those represented. In scripture all is simple and clear; and, though in the mere shadow only for the year, yet it was effectual and irreversible. Substitution is simple and intelligible; the sins were confessed on the head of the goat, the people's sins, and they were gone. But in Dr. Bonar's substitution the man may not consent, many also (we know) do not. Were their sins transferred to the Substitute and the wrath borne effectually and irreversibly, and yet they reject Christ and die in their sins? Dr. Bonar's substitution is no substitution at all, for nobody's sins were really borne, and no people really represented. Christ is a propitiation for the whole world; but this is the Lord's lot, the blood, in which God has been perfectly glorified in all He is, presented to God and accepted of Him. Now, says the Lord, is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in Him; and if God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him. And so it was and is.
Propitiation is presenting to a holy God what the righteousness and holiness of that God necessarily claim, while infinite love has provided, and infinite love has offered, the spotless sacrifice.
Substitution is for people whom the substitute represents; it is one man or person substituted for another, and taking actually the consequences of the conduct or position of him whom he represents. I speak merely of the meaning of substitution, not of the value of the Substitute, as Dr. B. says. The propitiation refers to the holy righteous nature and glory of God (and Dr. Bonar cannot too earnestly insist on its necessity); substitution, to those whose place Christ has taken. He was substituted for them and took the consequence in sovereign grace; and they are saved. He cannot charge as a judge the sins which He has Himself borne and expiated on those for whom He Himself has already borne them.
But not only does Dr. Bonar confound these two great scripture truths, but a third with them, namely, our dying with Christ, which scripture applies to quite another purpose (see page 42). Probably Dr. Bonar has never learned to make the difference between sin and sins (so clear in the Epistle to the Romans, on which indeed its whole structure depends); one referring to actual guilt, what we have done; the other to our lost estate, what we are.
But at any rate, “The transference of our guilt to the divine Substitute, and the transference of that Substitute's righteousness or perfection to us, must stand or fall together.” (Page 29.) When then a man's guilt has been transferred to Christ, he becomes the righteousness of God. Yet the man may after all not consent and dies in his sins, though the righteousness of God is transferred to him. If it be said, man was represented in Christ, and He consented—consented to the transfer, then our consent is immaterial; and we are not brought into court, and saved all with no consent at all.
But now see the frail and inconsistent statement of Dr. Bonar. “The one man's offense rests upon all men to condemnation, so the one man's righteousness, as the counteraction or removal of this condemnation, is available and efficacious unto justification of life.” Now he has changed the passage.
“Rests upon” in the first clause is exactly the same expression in Greek as is “available” in the second. And why this? And still more, if transference of guilt involves transference of righteousness, how is it only “available?” If it be said, yes; but the substitution is not efficacious unless it be accepted"; then there was no real transference of guilt. If it is transferred and gone, and if He has suffered, it is irreversible. The truth is, it is a denial of real substitution, and substitution is confounded with propitiation. The whole teaching is confusion and darkness; for Dr. B. tells us that substitution is the transference of the penalty from him who had incurred it to one who had not. How is this available for any, if the penalty have not been transferred? If it have, why not effectual for all by a judicial process, a legal title?
But I will follow some of the details of Dr. Bonar on the subject, and we shall see the inconceivable carelessness as to scripture, and how little he seems to weigh anything he says. I can only account for it by excessive confidence in his own thoughts. Victory over our great enemy was not by substitution. The perfect work of Christ and His death gave Him a title to annul the power of Satan; but it was not as substituted for any one.
In all the other examples we shall find there is personal appropriation, not an available means in the air. The Lord accepted Abel and his offering. The typical victim was set between a known person and God. It was 'Abel's substitute,' but not something in the air available to some one who might accept it, in which case transference of penalty is an absurdity, as then the one to whom the penalty is due is relieved by its being transferred. Noah and Abraham are in the same case: only in Abraham's we have an example of the carelessness I speak of. There was no “consumption of Abraham's sacrifice by the divine fire” but quite a different thing, a burning lamp and a smoking furnace passed between the pieces—a well-known form of covenant engagement in Israel, and the covenant was of the land to Israel. If Dr. B. would seek excuse from a confusion with the sacrifice of Isaac, it is in vain. There we read, “Behold the fire and the wood, but where,” &c. In the passover those in the house were preserved. Dr. B.'s account of the sacrifices I cannot go into in detail: it would carry me too far; but there is the same inaccuracy. Remark only that, as to the burnt-offering, all is confusion. It is the perfection of the substitute presented in the room of our imperfections. A substitute for whom? If it was penalty transferred, whose penalty?
But what is more important, blood was shed, atonement was made. It is not merely that He loved God instead of us. That is not atonement by blood. No doubt the Substitute was perfect, but it was where He was made sin, glorifying God there. Imperfection is a strange word. The mind of the flesh is enmity against God. But why the perfection of the substitute only when Christ's bloodshedding is prefigured? For whom was He a substitute? In the meat-offering, save in the case of the extreme poor, there was no atonement. Nor is there a statement of God's feeding on it; in the peace-offering there is (Lev. 3:22And he shall lay his hand upon the head of his offering, and kill it at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation: and Aaron's sons the priests shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar round about. (Leviticus 3:2)), The meat-offering is much more the perfection of the substitute: in the burnt-offering there was a victim with blood-shedding.
In the sin and trespass-offerings we are told that sin-offerings were for unconscious sins—sins of ignorance; trespass-offerings, for conscious and willful sins. This is a mistake. All the trespass-offerings in chapter 5 are sins of ignorance unless verse 1. The only cases not of ignorance are wrongs done to a neigh-hour, when, besides the offering, be was to restore it and a fifth part more. All this shows how careless and superficial all the statements are.
As to the explanation of the drink-offering, I confess it is beyond me. Dr. B. connects it with the Lord's blood being drink indeed, why I know not; and my reader may remark how in all this the perfection” of the substitute is put for substitution? or what was the drink-offering a substitution? or how was it transferred penalty?
And now note the effect in the presentation of the gospel. It is not that precious blood is on the mercy seat, that God hath set Him forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood. It is this principle of substitution. “And as He [God] acts on it in receiving us; so does He invite us to act in coming to Him.” That is, the guilt of him who is invited has been transferred to the substitute, and so righteousness transferred to those guilty, so that it is not a sinner that is invited as such. Who can tell that to an unbelieving sinner in order to his coming to God? I must tell it evidently to every sinner, and every sinner is certainly saved, and righteousness is transferred to him. Christ was raised, according to Dr. Bonar, because that sinner had been justified by the cross; for so Dr. B. translates the passage. “It is this truth the gospel embodies, and it is this that we preach.” The belief of this gospel is eternal life; and yet it is only available. I repeat my question; was the guilt really transferred or not? Was Christ a substitute for every sinner to whom Dr. Bonar preaches, so that all his guilt was transferred to Christ? If so, he has already none; nay more, Christ's righteousness is transferred to him before I invite him, and it is effectual and irreversible.
In speaking of chapter iii. I feel the need of care not to offend when the solemn, deeply solemn subject, of the sufferings of the blessed Lord is before us. It is unpleasant to speak of the folly and contradictions of man's thoughts when what ought to move our inmost soul occupies us. But mischief and contradiction are there, the deep sense of wrath and of the curse is lost and trifled with, and man's rejection turned into God's forsaking and wrath, It is a medley which on such a subject offends—I am afraid I must say, disgusts. Sufferings in which we are called to follow Christ, and take a part, are confounded with that in which He was really a substitute, the perfection of Christ's obedience confounded with the part of bearing sin, because the being made sin took place in that in which the perfection of His obedience was accomplished.
(To be continued.)