By James Denney
DETAILED CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Conception of the New Testament, its unity not artificial, Misused distinctions, historical and dogmatic, biblical and systematic, material and formal, The death of Christ a real subject in the New Testament.
OUTLINE OF STUDY
Chapter 1
The Synoptic Gospels
The mind of Christ and the mind of the evangelists, The idea that Our Lord's death must have been foreign to His mind when He entered on His work, Relation to this idea of the narratives of His Baptism and Temptation, Significance of the Baptism in particular, The first suggestions of our Lord's death and allusions to it, The taking away of the Bridegroom (Mark 2:19), and the sign of Jonah (Matthew 12:40), The express predictions of the Passion: critical questions connected with them, (Mark 8:31, Mark 3:81, Mark 10:32, and parallels) -- their historicity, Sense in which Christ's death was necessary:
(a) Inevitable?
(b) Indispensable?
Relation of these two conceptions in the mind of Jesus, Bearing of Old Testament Scripture on this point, What the unintelligence of the disciples meant,
The Ransom saying:
Its historical context, Its interpretation -- (a) Hellmann's view criticized, (b) Wendt's
Clue to the meaning --(a) In other words of Jesus, (b) In passages of the Old Testament,
The meaning of Kopher the equivalent of lutron, The Lord's Supper: Views of Spitta and Hellmann criticized, The idea of covenant-blood: relation of sacrifice in general to propitiation, Exodus 24 and Jeremiah 21. In relation to the words of Jesus, The idea that the remission of sins' in Matthew 26:28 is put into a relation to Christ's death which is inconsistent with His teaching as a whole, Propitiation, a mode of mediation.
Chapter 2
The Earliest Christian Preaching
Results of last chapter in relation to our Lord's experience in Gethsemane and on the Cross -- not refuted but illustrated, Original attitude of the disciples to the words of Jesus, The Resurrection: the intercourse of the Risen Christ with the disciples according to the New Testament -- critical problems,
The great commission: Matthew 28: 18 ff., Mark 16: 15 f., Luke 24:47 f. and John 20: 21 f.. Refers either
(a) to Baptism or
(b) to Forgiveness.
In the New Testament these are inter-related and related to the death of Jesus, Importance of this for the unity of the New Testament.
The opening chapters of Acts:
Critical problems again, Primitive character of the Christology, Prominence of the Resurrection -- why? Refutation of the idea that the death of the Messiah is only an offense which the Resurrection enables the disciples to overcome, How the earliest Christian preaching made the death of Christ intelligible, Its connection
(1) with a divine purpose, (2) with the prophecy of the Servant of the Lord, (3) with the forgiveness of sins, The Sacraments in Acts, and their significance in this connection.
The First Epistle of St. Peter:
Its Pauline' features, A witness' to the sufferings of Christ, The important passages: (1) The salutation, 1:1 f. -- the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ -- relation to Exodus 24, (2) Redeemed from a vain conversation,' 1:18 f. -- originality of this idea -- what it leaves unexplained, (3) Who Himself bore our sins,' 2:20 ff. -- mingling of prophecy and testimony -- Christ's sufferings exemplary, yet more -- what it is to bear sin -- sin-bearing and substitution -- the purpose of Christ in bearing our sins, (4) Who died for sins once, the just for the unjust' -- aim of this: to conduct us to God Imitation of Christ conditioned by the consciousness of redemption, The Second Epistle ascribed to Peter.
Chapter 3
The Epistles of St. Paul
Preliminary considerations affecting the estimate of St. Paul's whole treatment of this subject:
(1) The assurance with which he preaches a gospel in which Christ's death is fundamental -- his intolerance,'
(2) The relation of his doctrine to the common Christian tradition,
(3) Alleged development in his teaching, and inferences from such development
(4) Experimental' and apologetic' elements in it -- testimony' and theology' -- fact' and theory': these distinctions criticized,
(5) Connection in St. Paul's mind of Christ's death and resurrection.
Relations in which St. Paul defines Christ's death: (1) To the love of God (2) To the love of Christ (3) To the sons of men. Connection of sin and death as He conceived it -- death must be interpreted through the conscience -- Menegoz on an alleged incoherence of the apostle.
The witness of the epistles on these points:
1 Thessalonians 5:10, Who died for us that whether we wake or sleep we should live together with Him.
1 Corinthians -- general references -- the word of the Cross' -- bought with a price' -- the passages on the Sacraments in ch. 10 and ch. 11. -- extreme importance of these -- Christ our Passover.
2 Corinthians -- the sufferings of Christ' and the dying of Jesus' in ch. 1 and ch. 4, The locus classicus in 5:14 ff. -- professedly contains a theory: Christ died our death. Meaning of katallage (Reconciliation) in St. Paul -- Christ's finished work -- necessity for evangelizing that there should be such a work, Christ made sin for us: meaning and purpose of this, Religious and ethical theological and psychological, expressions of the same idea: how they support each other,
Galatians -- exclusively occupied with this subject -- Christianity asserted as the sum of the effects produced by Christ's death, and by that alone, Rationale of this as St. Paul's experience: how Christ's death is conceived and preached so as to have the power which produces such effects, Conception of Christ under the law': what it means, The law (a) as expressing God's will for men, (b) as expressing God's judgment on men. The last is necessary to explain Galatians 3:13, and to make it intelligible that Christ's death is a demonstration of love to the sinful,
Evasions of this argument (1) Only the ceremonial laws in question in Galatians, (2) Only the Jews are in question, (3) Curse is only equivalent to Cross, The ethical passages in Galatians 5:24 and 6:14.
Romans -- the Righteousness of God demonstrated at the Cross, 3:21 ff., The Righteousness of God includes: (1) the fact that He is Himself righteous, (2) that He justifies (or holds as righteous) him who believes in Jesus.
Jesus Christ set forth in propitiatory power in His blood is the demonstration of this righteousness in both its elements
Attempts to obliterate the distinction: (1) Those which do not see the problem with which the apostle is dealing, (2) Those which profess to find the key to St. Paul in 2 Isaiah and the Psalms -- Ritschl's idea that the righteousness of God always has its correlate in the righteousness of His people, (3) Seeberg's view, that God to be righteous is bound to provide for fellowship between Himself and men, and is pleased to do it in this way,
To understand St. Paul, we must discern Law and Necessity in the relation of Christ's death to sin, Manner in which St. Paul deduces all Christianity from Christ set forth in His blood as a propitiation,
Criticism of the current idea that he has two doctrines of reconciliation, a juridical' and an ethico-mystical' one: views of Weiss, Ritschl, Holtzmann,
True relation of Romans 6 to Romans 3, Faith in Christ Who died includes in it a death: (1) to sin, (2) to the flesh, (3) to law, Place of the Spirit in St. Paul's teaching in this connection, The Epistles of the Imprisonment -- reconciliation extended from man to the universe, Spiritual beings whose fortunes are bound up with those of men: the Scripture support for such an idea, An imaginative expression for the absoluteness of the Christian religion, Reconciliation of men to each other as a fruit of Christ's death, The Pastoral Epistles.
Chapter 4
The Epistle to the Hebrews
Various affinities of this epistle: primitive Christianity, Paulinism, Alexandrian thought,
The most theological writing of the New Testament: its use of aionios
Relations of Christ's Person and work in it according as we start from:
(a) the Incarnation -- Westcott,
(b) the Priesthood -- Seeberg,
Christ's death defined by relation to God and His love: (a) directly, 2:9, (b) indirectly by allusion (1) to His commission, (2) to His obedience, Christ's death defined by relation to sin (1:4 and passim): it is everywhere a sacrificial death, Sacrifice in this epistle to be interpreted in connection with Priesthood, Priesthood represents, embodies, and makes possible a fellowship of God and man, A priest is necessary in religion to deal with sin by way of sacrifice, Ways of interpreting this:
(1) Nature of the relation between Christ's death and sin deduced from the effect on man ascribed to the death -- meaning of hagiazein, teleioun and katharizein in Hebrews,
(2) The effect on man deduced from the conception of Christ's sacrificial death as a finished work.
What gives Christ's death its propitiatory power? Examination of ch. 9:14: He offered Himself through eternal spirit,' The author held the common Christian view of the relation of death and sin, Examination of the passage in 10:1-10 to do Thy will, O God,' In what sense obedience is the principle of the Atonement, Connection between the work of Christ and man's salvation by it: the relation of the ideas expressed by Substitute and Representative, Place and meaning of faith in this epistle.
Chapter 5
The Johannine Writings
Critical considerations,
1. The Apocalypse:
The doxology in 1:5 f.: what inspires the Christian praise of Christ, The Lamb as it had been slain (5:6-14), The Blood of the Lamb (7:14, 12:11) -- connecting links in thought, The Lamb's Book of Life.
2. The Gospel:
General representation: redemption through revelation rather than revelation through redemption -- current contrasts of St. Paul and St. John criticized, Place of Christ's death in the gospel often underestimated, Examination of explicit references:
(1) 1: 29: Behold the Lamb of God, etc., (2) 2:19: Destroy this Temple, (3) 3:14, 8:28, 12:32: The lifting up' of the Son of Man death as glorifying, (4) 6:51 f.: My flesh for the life of the world,' (5) 10:11 f. The Good Shepherd, (6) 11:49: The prophecy of Caiaphas, (7) 12:24, 27: The corn of wheat, etc., (8) 12:38: The quotation of Isaiah 53., (9) 15:13: Greater love hath no man than this,' (10) 17:19: For their sakes I sanctify Myself,' (11) 18-19: The story of the Passion, All this interpreted in relation to the love of God and the necessity of men as sinners liable to die in their sins in comparison with St. Paul.
3. The Epistle:
Comparison and contrast with the Gospel,
(1) It defines Christ's death more explicitly by relation to sin, 1:7; 2:1 f.; 3:5; 4:10. Criticism of Westcott's interpretation of the blood of Christ,'.(2) Conception of Christ as hilasmos -- the correlatives of hilasmos are sacrifice, intercession, and law, (3) Propitiation and the love of God definable only through each other, Place of the Sacraments in the Gospel and First Epistle of St. John -- examination of 1 John 5:6 f., Relation of the historical and the spiritual in Christianity generally, The death of Christ in St. John as a victory over Satan.
Chapter 6
The Importance of the Death of Christ in Preaching and in Theology
No abstract distinction to be drawn between theology and preaching Considerations in relation to preaching:
(1) No gospel without Atonement The sense of debt to Christ in the New Testament. The characteristics of the Atonement must be reflected in the gospel:
(a) Perfection -- full salvation now,' (b) Assurance -- Romish and Protestant tendencies (c) Finality -- what justification means.
(2) There may be various ways of approaching this central truth of the Christian faith -- our Lord's method with His disciples, Kierkegaard on the sense in which the Father comes before the Son, though no man comes to the Father but through the Son, Relation in Christ of Example and Reconciler -- what is our point of contact with Christ?
(3) St. Paul's meaning in delivering first of all' that Christ died for our sins
(4) Sense of sin in relation to the Atonement (a) as the condition of accepting or understanding it; (b) as its fruit,
(5) The issues of this gospel -- life or death,
Theological considerations:
(1) The Atonement is the key to the unity and therefore to the inspiration of Scripture. The inspiration of Scripture and its unity are correlative terms,
(2) The Atonement is the proper evangelical foundation for a doctrine of the Person of Christ. Harnack's attempt to dispense with Christology -- why it is impracticable,
(3) The Incarnation not intelligible or credible, except when defined by relation to the Atonement -- speculative, ethical, and dogmatic reasons alleged against this -- view of Westcott carried to its logical issue by Archdeacon Wilson. Grounds for rejecting this view:
(a) It shifts the center of gravity in the New Testament, (b) It puts metaphysical questions in the place of moral ones, (c) It displaces passion by sentimentalism,
(4) The Atonement is the basis for all adequate doctrine of God -- sense in which the New Testament teaches that God is love -- sin as that which is proof against such love,
(5) The Atonement at the foundation of Christian ethics as of Christian life -- Law glorified in the Passion and made an irresistible, ethical impulses.
Chapter 7
The Atonement and the Modern Mind
Sense in which the Atonement and the Christian religion are equivalent, Sympathy and antipathy of the mind in relation to Christianity, The Atonement historically revealed, The modern mind and authority, ' Simplest expression for the Atonement: its basis in experience, The appeal against it to the Prodigal Son, Characteristics of the modern mind affecting its attitude to atonement, Those induced by the influence of physical and particularly of biological study -- some favorable, some the reverse -- Relation to the consciousness of sin, Those induced by the idealist movement in philosophy -- disinclination or inability to take Christ at His own estimate, Those induced by the historical method of study -- relativity of all things-- no revelation of the eternal in time -- this temper within the Church -- significance of the Johannine books,
Two just requirements of the modern mind:
(1) Everything must be based on experience,
(2) Everything in religion must be ethically construed.
Chapter 8
Sin and the Divine Reaction against it
The situation to which the Atonement is related: that of sinful men, The relations of God and men are personal, But they are also ethical, i. e., determined by something of universal import -- by law, This does not mean that they are forensic' or legal', St. Paul's view on this point, The ethical relations of God and man have been disordered by sin, No theory of the origin of sin needed evolution and a fall universal experiences,
The reaction against sin:
(a) in conscience,
(b) in nature,
Ultimate unity of the natural and the moral order presupposed in the Scripture view of sin and atonement, Many arguments against atonement based on unreal separation of the natural and the moral order, Biblical Doctrine of Sin and Death: its real meaning, Not refuted by insensibility to death, Nor even by the ethical transformation of death into martyrdom.
Chapter 9
Christ and Man in the Atonement
Possible ideas about sin and forgiveness:
(1) Forgiveness is impossible,
(2) It may be taken for granted,
The Christian doctrine: it is mediated through atonement, The divine necessity for the Atonement -- Athanasius and Anselm give imperfect expression to it -- Paul on the endeixis te dikaiosunes tou theou in the propitiation, The human necessity for it -- regenerative repentance the fruit of the Atonement,
Relation of the divine and the human necessity to each other, Definition of Christ's relation to man in the Atonement, The conceptions of substitution and representation, The true relation of these two conceptions, Analogies to Christ's Atonement, and their limits, Sense in which Christ's life is absorbed in His death, Significance of the Resurrection in a true appreciation of the Atonement, Wrong inferences from Colossians 1:24: Christ never ceases to be Redeemer, nor believers to be the redeemed.
INTRODUCTION
Two assumptions must be made by any one who writes on the death of Christ in the New Testament. The first is, that there is such a thing as a New Testament; and the second, that the death of Christ is a subject which has a real place and importance in it. The first may be said to be the more important of the two, for the denial of it carries with it the denial of the other.
At the present moment there is a strong tendency in certain quarters to depreciate the idea of a New Testament in the sense in which it has rightly or wrongly been established in the Church. It is pointed out that the books which compose our New Testament are in no real sense a unity. They were not written with a view to forming the volume in which we now find them, nor with any view of being related to each other at all. At first, indeed, they had no such relation. They are merely the chief fragments that have survived from a primitive Christian literature which must have been indefinitely larger, not to say richer. The unity which they now possess, and in virtue of which they constitute the New Testament, does not belong to them inherently; it is factitious; it is the artificial, and to a considerable extent the illusive result of the action of the Church in bestowing upon them canonical authority. The age to which they historically belong is an age at which the Church had no New Testament,' and hence what is called New Testament theology is an exhibition of the manner in which Christians thought before a New Testament existed. As a self-contradictory thing, therefore, it ought to be abolished. The dogma' of the New Testament, and the factitious unity which it has created, ought to be superseded, and instead of New Testament theology we should aim at a history of primitive Christian thought and life. It would not be necessary for the purposes of such a history to make any assumptions as to the unity of the New Testament' books; but though they would not form a holy island in the sea of history, they would gain in life and reality in proportion as the dogmatic tie which binds them to each other was broken, and their living relations to the general phenomena of history revealed. [1]
There is not only some plausibility in this but some truth: all I am concerned to point out here is that it is not the whole truth, and possibly not the main truth. The unity which belongs to the books of the New Testament, whatever be its value, is certainly not fortuitous. The books did not come together by chance. They are not held together simply by the art of the bookbinder. It would be truer to say that they gravitated toward each other in the course of the first century of the Church's life, and imposed their unity on the Christian mind, than that the Church imposed on them by statute -- for when dogma' is used in the abstract sense which contrasts it with fact or history, this is what it means -- a unity to which they were inwardly strange. That they are at one in some essential respects is obvious. They have at least unity of subject, they are all concerned with Jesus Christ, and with the manifestation of God's redeeming love to men in Him. There is even a sense in which we may say there is unity of authorship; for all the books of the New Testament are works of faith. Whether the unity goes further, and if so how far, are questions not to be settled beforehand. It may extend to modes of thought, to fundamental beliefs or convictions, in regard to Christ and the meaning of His presence and work in the world. It is not assumed here that it does, but neither is it assumed that it does not. It is not assumed, with regard to the particular subject before us, that in the different New Testament writings we shall find independent, divergent, or inconsistent interpretations of Christ's death. The result of an unprejudiced investigation may be to show that on this subject the various writings which go to make up our New Testament are profoundly at one, and even that their oneness on this subject, a oneness not imposed nor artificial, but essential and inherent, justifies against the criticism referred to above the common Christian estimate of the New Testament as a whole.
Without entering on abstract or general grounds into a discussion in which no abstract or general conclusion can be reached, it may be permitted to say, in starting, that in the region with which the New Testament deals we should be on our guard against pressing too strongly some current distinctions which, within their limits, are real enough, but which, if carried beyond their limits, make everything in the New Testament unintelligible. The most important of these is the distinction of historical and dogmatic, or of historito-religious and dogmatico-religious. If the distinction between historical and dogmatic is pressed, it runs back into the distinction between thing and meaning, or between fact and theory; and this, as we shall have occasion to see, is a distinction which it is impossible to press. There is a point at which the two sides in such contrast pass into each other. He who does not see the meaning does not see the thing; or to use the more imposing words, he who refuses to take a dogmatic' view proves by doing so that he falls short of a completely historical' one. The same kind of consideration has sometimes to be applied to the distinction of Biblical, or New Testament' and systematic' theology. Biblical or New Testament theology deals with the thoughts, or the mode of thinking, of the various New Testament writers; systematic theology is the independent construction of Christianity as a whole in the mind of a later thinker. Here again there is a broad and valid distinction, but not an absolute one. It is the Christian thinking of the first century in the one case, and of the twentieth, let us say, in the other; but in both cases there is Christianity and there is thinking, and if there is truth in either there is bound to be a place at which the distinction disappears. It does not follow from the distinction, with the inevitable limitations, that nothing in the New Testament can be accepted by a modern mind simply as it stands. It does not follow that nothing in St. Paul or St. John -- nothing in their interpretation of the death of Jesus, for example -- has attained the character of finality. There may be something which has. The thing to be dealt with is one, and the mind, through the centuries, is one, and even in the first century it may have struck to a final truth which the twentieth will not transcend. Certainly we cannot deny this beforehand on the ground that Biblical theology is one thing and Systematic or Philosophical theology another. They may be taught in separate rooms in a theological school, but, except to the pedant or the dilettante, the distinction between them is a vanishing one. And the same may be said, finally, about the distinction of matter and form. There is such a distinction it is possible to put the same matter in different forms. But it does not follow that the form in which a truth or an experience is put by a New Testament writer is always unequal to the matter, or that the matter must always be fused again and cast into a new mold before it can be appropriated by us. The higher the reality with which we deal, the less the distinction of matter and form holds. If Christianity brings us into contact with the ultimate truth and reality, we may find that the form' into which it was cast at first is more essential to the matter than we had supposed. Just as it would be a rash act to venture to extract the matter of Lycidas, and to exhibit it in a more adequate form, it may be a rash act to venture to tell us what St. Paul or St. John meant in a form more equal to the meaning than the apostles themselves could supply. It is not necessary to say that it would be, but only that it may be. The mind seems to gain freedom and lucidity by working with such distinctions, but if we forget that they are our own distinctions, and that in the real world, in the very nature of things, a point is reached sooner or later at which they disappear, we are certain to be led astray. I do not argue against drawing them or using them, but against making them so absolute that in the long-run one of them must cease to be true, and forfeit all its rights in favor of the other. The chief use, for instance, to which many writers put them is to appeal to the historical against the dogmatic; the historical is employed to drive the dogmatic from the field. To do the reverse would of course be as bad, and my object in these introductory remarks is to deprecate both mistakes. It does not matter, outside the class-room, whether an interpretation is called historical or dogmatic, historico-religious or dogmatico-religious; it does not matter whether we put it under the head of Biblical or of philosophical theology; what we want to know is whether it is true. In the truth such distinctions are apt to disappear.
Without assuming, therefore, the dogmatic unity of the New Testament, either in its representation of Christianity as a whole, or of the death of Christ in particular, we need not feel precluded from approaching it with a presumption that it will exhibit some kind of coherence. Granting that the Church canonized the books, consciously or unconsciously, it did not canonize them for nothing. It must have felt that they really represented and therefore safeguarded the Christian faith, and as the Church of the early days was acutely conscious of the distinction between what did and what did not belong to Christianity, it must have had some sense at least of a consistency in its Christian Scriptures. [2] They did not represent for it two gospels or ten, but one. The view Christians took of the books they valued was instinctively dogmatic without ceasing to be historical; or perhaps we may say, with a lively sense of their historical relations the Church had an instinctive feeling of the dogmatic import of the books in its New Testament. It is in this attitude, which is not blind to either side of the distinction, yet does not let either annul the other, that we ought to approach the study of New Testament problems.
It is hardly necessary to prove that in the New Testament the death of Christ is a real subject. It is distinctly present to the mind of New Testament writers, and they have much to say upon it. It is treated by them as a subject of central and permanent importance to the Christian faith, and it is incredible that it should have filled the place it does fill in the New Testament had it ever been regarded as of trifling consequence for the understanding, the acceptance, or the preaching of the Gospel. As little is it necessary to say that in using the expression the death of Christ,' we are not speaking of a thing, but of an experience. Whether we view it as action or as passion, whatever enters into personality has the significance and the worth of personality. The death of Christ in the New Testament is the death of one who is alive for evermore. To every New Testament writer Christ is the Lord, the living and exalted Lord, and it is impossible for them to think of His death except as an experience the result or virtue of which is perpetuated in His risen life. Nevertheless, Christ died. His death is in some sense the center and consummation of His work. It is because of it that His risen life is the hope which it is to sinful men; and it needs no apology, therefore, if one who thinks that it has less than its proper place in preaching and in theology endeavors to bring out as simply as possible its place and meaning in the New Testament. If our religion is to be Christian in any sense of the term which history will justify, it can never afford to ignore what, to say the least of it, is the primary confession of Christian faith.
The starting-point in our investigation must be the life and teaching of Jesus Himself. For this we shall depend in the first instance on the synoptic gospels. Next will come an examination of primitive Christian teaching as it bears on our subject. For this we can only make use of the early chapters in Acts, and with a reserve, which will be explained at the proper place, of the First Epistle of Peter. It will then be necessary to go into greater detail, in proportion as we have more material at command, in regard to the teaching of St. Paul. Of all New Testament writers he is the one who has most deliberately and continually reflected on Christ's death; if there is a conscious theology of it anywhere it is with him. A study of the epistle to the Hebrews and of the Johannine writings -- Apocalypse, Gospel, and Epistle -- will bring the subject proper to a close; but I shall venture to add, in a concluding chapter, some reflections on the importance of the New Testament conception of Christ's death alike to the evangelist and the theologian.
NOTES:
[1] As typical instances of this mode of thought, reference may be made to Wrede's Ueber Aufgabe und Methode der sogenannten neutestamentlichen Theologie, and G. Kruger's Das Dogma vom Neuen Testament.
[2] This, of course, does not exclude the idea that the native vigor of Christianity was shown in its power to assimilate as well as to reject extraneous matter.
