Liberty of Conscience (Donald MacLeod)

Donald MacLeod is currently Principal of Free Church College in Edinburgh, Scotland. He has taught and continues to teach Systematic Theology in the college. He has written The Person of Christ in the “Contours of Christian Theology” series. In the 1990s, controversy over some of his remarks in an interview led some to question if he has loosened his grip on “evangelical” Christianity. I understand he has clarified his position on some of the issues surrounding the controversy though not to everyone’s satisfaction. I have done no in-depth study of the said controversy so am unable to comment on it. I have chosen to post this article not because I agree with his doctrinal position on every count; I have done so because I believe this is a worthwhile article on the subject. This article first appeared in The Banner of Truth magazine, issues 94-95, July-August 1971.

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“God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to his word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship.” These words of the Westminster Confession [Chapter XX, 2] enshrine one of the most fundamental emphases of Puritan theology. Unfortunately, in subsequent Evangelical thinking this aspect of truth has been at a discount and the lives of many Christians today are set in a framework of legalism which has nothing to commend it but the consensus of denominational opinion. The loss is immense, both for the individual Christian and for the Church.

This question was already in dispute in our Lord's controversy with the Pharisees. They made the Word of God of none effect by their tradition, taught for doctrines the commandments of men and applied even to questions of far-reaching importance the principle, “It was said by them of old time.” The subject is explicitly raised again in the Pauline epistles. In Romans 14.3-4, for example, the Apostle addresses the believer who condemns the eating of certain meats and says, “Let not him that eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him. Who art thou that judgest another man's servant?” The same problem was at Colosse, in a more serious form, and Paul expresses his astonishment that believers, once emancipated, should ever subject themselves again to vexatious prohibitions which were no more than human impositions [Col. 2.20-23]. But it was the situation in Galatia which disturbed the Apostle most of all and perhaps first alerted him to the perilous tendencies of the remnant legalism of the Christian heart. “But now”, he writes, “after that ye have known God or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days and months and times and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain . . . We are not children of the bond-woman but of the free. Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” [Gal. 4.9-11, 4.31-5.1].

The theological basis of this liberty is three-fold. It arises, first of all, out of the sonship of believers. God has sent forth His Son; and that Advent has issued in two great results — it has redeemed us from the curse of the law and it has secured for us adoption as sons [Gal. 4.5]. That is our status. We are not slaves, accountable to the steward. We are sons, accountable to God alone. The Father’s will is normative for us. But only the Father’s. For any outside party — be it an individual or an institution — to attempt to dictate to us would be an intolerable meddling with the domestic economy of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is this understanding that lies behind Paul’s challenge, “God bath received him. Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? To his own master he ‘standeth or falleth’” [Rom. 14.4-5]. And when we realise the price with which this adoption and its implied liberty were secured — that Christ was made under the law and was made a curse to this very end — that Christ died to make us free — then we see how magnificent is our privilege. “For freedom Christ has made us free” [Gal. 5.1], and to deprive others of this liberty or allow our own to be infringed is to frustrate the very purpose of redemption.

Secondly, this liberty is grounded in the fact that God alone is Lord of the conscience. This means at once that conscience is not autonomous. No man has an absolute and unlimited right to believe and act simply as his conscience dictates. The liberty of conscience is limited by the authority of God, and this is true whether or not the individual is a Christian. The divine sovereignty is not affected by our recognition or non-recognition of it. But conscience has no other Lord; God can bind it by precept and prohibition. But none other can. No institution, state or tradition may declare lawful what He forbids; or require compliance with laws or prejudices which conflict with privileges which He has conferred; or prevent or hinder obedience to obligations which He has imposed.

Thirdly, and above all, Christian liberty is based upon the supremacy and sufficiency of Scripture as the only rule of faith and life. It is here that the heavenly Father reveals His will and that the Lord of conscience expresses His authority. All that is revealed in Scripture is mandatory. We must believe and obey. Our consciences are bound. But nothing that is contrary to Scripture can bind us; and where Church or State violate this principle the Christian believer has no choice but to state emphatically, “I must obey God rather than men.” But we must go even further. The Christian is free not only from precepts contrary to Scripture but also from precepts which are beside it in matters of faith and worship. This is the so-called Puritan principle. Certainly it was the kernel of Puritanism, which was primarily not a theological or doctrinal tendency but a very definite ecclesiological stand-point. The Church must have positive Biblical warrant for all that it prescribes in the realm of faith and worship. It cannot bind the consciences of its members by saying, “You must do this because it is not forbidden by Scripture.” It must be able to say, “You have to do this because it is commanded in Scripture.” We may not feel as strongly on this matter as did John Owen, who once wrote, “That principle, that the Church hath power to institute or appoint any thing or ceremony belonging to the worship of God, either as to matter or to manner, lies at the bottom of all the horrible superstition and idolatry, of all the confusion, blood, persecution and wars, that have for so long a season spread themselves over the face of the Christian world” [Works, Vol. 1 p. xxvii]. We may not feel quite so strongly as this. But the principle is the very essence of Puritanism and of first-rate importance. The Church must not lay down as a principle of Christian conduct or as a condition of Church membership anything that is not revealed as such in the Word of God.

There is no need to linger over the practical outworking of this principle. It applies, first of all, in the realm of doctrine. The Church cannot impose as an article of faith anything contrary to the Word of God or anything not revealed in the Word of God. We might instance the Roman dogmas of the infallibility of the Papacy, the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary. It applies, again, in the realm of Church order, where it means that the Christian conscience cannot be bound by such non-biblical forms of government as Diocesan Episcopacy. It applies, yet again, in the realm of worship. The power of the Church is abused when it insists on the use of such things as vestments, instrumental music, incense, forms of prayer and kneeling at Communion. The Word of God has not bound His children to such observances. And above all the principle applies in the realm of conduct. There are many rules and prohibitions which have no Biblical authority but are so firmly embedded in the evangelical tradition that many Christians are emotionally unable to distinguish them from the will of God. They forbid — to mention a few examples — the use of alcoholic liquor, participation in many forms of recreation, certain modes of dress and even membership of political parties. Stern, negative attitudes on these and associated questions are too often almost constitutive of evangelicalism.

We must, therefore, continually remind ourselves that we are not servants but sons; and school ourselves in the habit of asking: These doctrines, these offices, these forms of worship, these rules and prohibitions — are they from Scripture? are they from our Father? are they from the Lord of conscience? And if not, by what authority do men impose them upon those whom Christ has redeemed by His blood? Why do they make sad the hearts of those whom the Lord has not made sad? This is not something peripheral. It is, from one side, interference with an inalienable and fundamental right of the Christian believer; and from the other an irreverent intermeddling with the household of God and an affront to His sovereignty. Moreover, once the principle is abandoned the process of erosion will go on unchecked. “When once the conscience is entangled in the net,” wrote Calvin, “it enters a long and inextricable labyrinth, from which it is afterwards most difficult to escape. When a man begins to doubt whether it is lawful to use linen for sheets, shirts, napkins and handkerchiefs, he will not long be secure as to hemp, and will at last have doubts as to tow. In fine, he will come to this, that he will deem it criminal to trample on a straw lying in his way” [Institutes III, 19, 7].

It is clear, however, that we exercise this liberty under certain restrictions. It is a privilege that can be abused. Paul reminds us of this in “Use not this liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.” We can wrest this doctrine, apply to it the logic of the pit and turn it into a licence for self- indulgence and an instrument of self-destruction. It is a dangerous principle and some may be disposed to reject it for that reason, fearing that it may unsettle the inexperienced and remove the sanctions necessary to the inculcation of holiness. But this anxiety, however well-intentioned, is misplaced. The logic is wrong. The premise certainly is correct. The doctrine is dangerous. But the conclusion is false. The doctrine is not wrong. It is almost a hallmark of the great evangelical doctrines that in the wrong hands they are lethal. The doctrine of justification by faith alone is easily perverted by the inference, “Let us sin that grace may abound.” The sovereignty of God in salvation, working through election and calling, leads easily to the irreverent question, “Why doth he yet find fault?” Peter indicates very clearly that some men were wresting Paul’s teaching to their own destruction [2 Pet. 3.16]. But he does not suggest that Paul should modify his teaching in the light of that. I think we must face frankly the possibility that the principle of Christian liberty may destroy certain people. But it is not for that reason to be abandoned.

The danger is unnecessarily heightened, however, when it is allied to a misunderstanding of another of Paul’s great emphases, “Ye are not under the law but under grace” [Rom. 6.14]. This is sometimes interpreted as if it meant that the law had no place in the life of a Christian man. But this is a complete misunderstanding. The Christian is free from the ceremonial law and in a certain sense he is free also from the moral law. But only in a certain sense. He is free from its curse and he is free from it as covenant of works insisting on perfect obedience as the condition of God's approbation. Christ is the end of the law for justification to every believing man [Rom. 10.4]. We may even go further and say that in a certain sense we are not under the law for sanctification. We are not dependent upon it. In order to sanctification we have resources other than the illumination of the law or the constraint of its sanctions. We have the operations of grace, the power of God, perfected in our weakness, supernaturally, irresistibly and invincibly sanctifying. Yet the law is indispensable. It is the rule of Christian conduct, the expression of the Lordship of Christ and of the Fatherhood of God and compliance with its mandates is the very essence of holiness. The liberty that we have, even as sons, is the liberty of the servants of the Lord, to whom the law of the Creator-Redeemer is not an irksome restraint but a delight [Ps. 40.8].

The New Testament is not content, however, to leave us with the general consideration that our liberty is limited by the authority of divine law. It affords us more detailed guidance.

In the first place, our liberty is qualified by civil and ecclesiastical authority, lawfully exercised. The Westminster Confession is very explicit about this. “And because the powers which God hath ordained, and the liberty which Christ hath purchased, are not intended to destroy, but mutually to uphold and preserve one another, they who upon pretence of Christian liberty shall oppose any lawful power or the lawful exercise of it, whether it be civil or ecclesiastical, resist the ordinance of God” [Chapter XX, 4]. This is little more than a transcription of Paul’s injunction in Romans 13.1-2, “Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God.” Valuable as these statements are they leave unanswered some questions on which we urgency need guidance. How, for example, are we to recognise the civil or ecclesiastical power which is lawful? And when is that power not lawfully exercised? But the general meaning is clear: In ordinary circumstances the Christian is bound to obey the enactments of the de facto authority both in Church and State and proscribed from subverting the peace or order of either. On the other hand, however, the authority of the powers that be is also limited. Their enactments are of no validity when they violate divine law or when they trespass beyond their province. The State must not interfere in the internal affairs of the Church nor the Church with the legitimate operations of Civil government; and neither may invade the privacy of the family or intrude into matters which are between a man and his Maker.

Our liberty is qualified, secondly, by the principle enunciated in Hebrews 12.1 “Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.” There are many things not sinful in themselves and not condemned by Scripture which are wrong for the individual Christian in his individual circumstances. “We must always remember to distinguish what God allows us,” writes Calvin. “There are some things lawful in themselves but whose use by us is forbidden because of the circumstances of time or place or other things. In enjoying all the blessings of this present life we must always have regard to the fact that they should be aids to our following God and not hindrances” [Comm. on Heb. 11.26]. One of the great premises of our personal spiritual strategy must be what Paul speaks of in Romans 8.26 as “our infirmities”. In the believer, that is, in his flesh, there dwells no good thing. He is easily tempted. The edge of his devotion is soon blunted. He must therefore avoid places and practices which, although not intrinsically sinful are yet hindrances to his personal spiritual effectiveness. But in this area no believer can prescribe for another. Liberty of conscience prevents that. Each must work out for himself what are those things which are lawful in themselves but inexpedient for him. What are the lawful pursuits which in our case weaken faith, dampen zeal and set aflame the remaining depravity of our hearts?

The third restriction upon our liberty is the claim of the weaker brother. This personage figures prominently in Romans 14 and I Corinthians 8, “Him that is weak in the faith receive ye”; “We that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak”; “Take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that are weak”; “Through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died?” [Rom. 14.1, 15.1; I Cor. 8.9, 11]. The basic difficulty here is that of identification. Who is the weak brother? He is not the sensitive person whose feelings are easily hurt. Probably he is usually sensitive but that is not the weakness which Paul has in mind here. He is thinking in terms of spiritual weakness. This person is easily destroyed. He is easily tempted and falls. In this weakness there are three elements — he is weak in faith [Rom. 14.1], weak in knowledge [1 Cor. 8.7], and weak in conscience [1 Cor. 8.12]. The weakness in faith which Paul refers to is probably related to the principle laid down in Romans 14.14, “Nothing is unclean in itself.” The weak brother is unable to grasp the positive idea which underlies this, namely, that “every creature of God is good.” He is unable to believe, with Calvin, that we are to “use the gifts of God without any scruple of conscience, without any perturbation of mind, for the purpose for which he gave them.” Weakness in knowledge, in the concrete instance of Paul’s context, is the inability to understand that an idol is a nonentity. In eating meat offered to idols some men cannot disabuse their minds of the idea that this god actually exists, has been affected by the consecration of the meat to him and will be affected by their eating it. The weak conscience is one which, almost afraid of the responsibilities of emancipation, continues to submit to regulations from which Christ has made us free. Since the individual believes that they are still in force any departure from them involves for him violation of belief and conscience.

How then are the strong to treat this believer with his weak knowledge, weak faith and weak conscience? First, he must not despise him [Rom. 14.3]. Secondly, he must not destroy him [1 Cor. 8.11]. It is clear at once that this is quite a different idea from not giving offence. Paul is not saying that we must not hurt the feelings of other Christians. Nine times out of ten that is true. “It must be admitted”, writes Professor Murray, “that weak believers do often experience acute pain of heart when they observe others exercise liberties that in their esteem are improper, and a strong believer actuated by love will seek to spare his fellow-believer this pain” [The Epistle to the Romans, ad 14.15]. But situations are bound to arise in which for conscience’s sake we must hurt the feelings of our brother believers. Sometimes we must do it for no other reason than the maintenance of Christian liberty against the encroachments of legalism. Offence taken by Pharisees, says Calvin, is not to be regarded. Moreover, we must not overlook the fact that the weak is under obligation so far as regards his attitude to the strong just as surely as the strong is under obligation as regards his attitude to the weak. “Let not him that eateth not judge him that eateth.” The tendency of the weak to pass censorious judgement on the strong is as reprehensible as the tendency of the strong to treat the weak with contempt.

The injunction, “Destroy not”, implies, I think, two things. First, the strong must not put a stumbling-block in the way of the weak [Rom. 14.13]. Some believers are able, through grace, to live to the glory of God while engaged in activities in which temptations abound. But our own ability to survive is not the only criterion. What of the weaker brother who follows our example? Will he fall and be destroyed? Secondly — and this is what Paul is immediately concerned with — the strong must not embolden the weak to violate his conscience. To enlighten and liberate conscience is one thing. To constrain to its violation is another. “To him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean to him it is unclean,” [Rom. 14.14], and consideration for the religious interests of the weak demands that we must never induce him to do what his conscience denounces as wrong.

In the fourth place our freedom is limited by the demands of edification. “All things are lawful for me,” writes Paul, “but all things edify not” [1 Cor. 10.23]. We are not only free men. We are also members of the body of Christ and of the Christian household and bound therefore by love to serve one another. Each must seek not his own but another’s wealth. This means that with regard to our liberty we must ask not, “How may we indulge it?” but “How can we consecrate it?” It must be used for the upbuilding of the body of Christ. Any exercise of Christian liberty which is harmful to the Church is wrong. We must be motivated all the time by a loving concern for the strength, peace, effectiveness and purity of the Christian community. This is especially important in relation to the Church’s commission, “Go ye therefore and teach all nations.” This is something about which Paul is very emphatic. He speaks of pleasing “all men in all things; not seeking mine own profit but the profit of many, that they may be saved” [1 Cor. 10.33]. “We have not used this power,” he writes elsewhere, “but suffer all things lest we should hinder the Gospel of Christ” [1 Cor. 9.12]. Or again: “Though I be free from all men, yet I have made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more” [1 Cor. 9.19]. Christians are free. That is their inalienable right. But they must not use their liberty in such a way that evangelism is hindered. They must be prepared to forego its exercise if that is going to contribute to the effectiveness of their testimony. This was the way that Paul behaved at Corinth. He believed that the Lord had decreed that those who preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel and should be supported by those who benefit from their spiritual ministrations. But at Corinth he deliberately renounced this privilege, so that “when I preach the Gospel I may make the Gospel of Christ without charge” [1 Cor. 9.18]. He speaks to the same effect in the oft-quoted statement, “I am made all things to all men that I might by all means save some” [1 Cor. 9.22]. The Christian is not bound by the purely cultural and ideological manners of local communities, but he may choose, in the interests of evangelistic effectiveness, to observe them carefully lest he diminish the value of his testimony by giving unnecessary offence.

But over-riding all these factors is the great positive consideration of which Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 10.31, “Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” Our freedom is in order to this. We must hallow the Name. We are identified with it, and in us it is exposed to compromise and disgrace. We must, in the exercise of our liberty, so bear ourselves that men glorify our Father who is in heaven. It is not enough, then, that a thing is not forbidden. It must glorify God. It must admit of being consecrated to Him. This rules out the pursuit of the trivial and the frivolous as well as the pursuit of the unlawful. We must lay on others no burdens. But for ourselves we must conscientiously pursue what is to the praise of the glory of His grace.

The Bible and the Cross (J Gresham Machen)

This is the third of three radio addresses given by John Gresham Machen on three consecutive Sundays just before his death on January 1, 1937. The first two, posted just before this here, are entitled, The Doctrine of the Atonement and The Active Obedience of Christ.

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Having observed last week what are the leading views that have been held regarding the cross of Christ, we turn now to the Bible in order to discover which of these views is right.

Did Jesus on the cross really take our place, paying the penalty of God’s law which justly rested upon us? That is the orthodox or substitutionary view of the atonement.

Or did He merely exert a good moral influence upon us by His death, either by giving us an exhibition of the love of God or by inspiring us to sacrifice our lives for the welfare of others as He sacrificed Himself? That is the so-called moral-influence theory of the atonement.

Or did He by His death merely conserve the good discipline of the world by showing that, in the interests of the welfare of the greatest number, God cannot simply allow His law to be transgressed with complete impunity? That is the so-called governmental theory of the atonement.

We shall try to test these three views of the cross of Christ by comparing them with what the Bible actually says. But before we do so, there are two preliminary remarks that we ought to make.

Our first remark is that the three views of the atonement really reduce themselves to two. Both the moral-influence and the governmental view of the atonement really make the work of Christ terminate upon man, rather than upon God. They both proceed on the assumption that, in order that man shall be forgiven, nothing but man’s repentance is required. They both of them deny, at least by implication, that there is such a thing as an eternal principle of justice, not based merely upon the interests of the creature but rooted in the nature of God — an eternal principle of justice demanding that sin shall be punished. They both of them favour the notion that the ethical attributes of God may be summed up in the one attribute — benevolence. They both of them tend to distort the great Scriptural assertion that ‘God is love’ into the very different assertion that God is nothing but love. They both of them tend to find the supreme end of the creation in the happiness or well-being of the creature. They both of them fail utterly to attain to any high notion of the awful holiness of God.

No doubt the governmental theory disguises these tendencies more than the moral-influence theory does. It does show some recognition of the moral chaos which would result if men got the notion that the law of God could be transgressed with complete impunity.

But, after all, even the governmental theory denies that there is any real underlying necessity for the punishment of sin. Punishment, it holds, is merely remedial and deterrent. It is intended merely to prevent future sin, not to expiate past sin. So the tragedy on Calvary, according to the advocates of the governmental view, was intended by God merely to shock sinners out of their complacency; it was intended merely to show what terrible effects sin has so that sinners by observing those terrible effects might be led to stop sinning. The governmental view, therefore, like the moral-influence view, has at its centre the notion that a moral effect exerted upon man was the sole purpose of the cross of Christ.

Very different is the substitutionary view. According to that view, not a mere moral effect upon man but the satisfaction of the eternal justice of God was the primary end for which Christ died. Hence the substitutionary view of the atonement stands sharply over against the other two. The other two belong in one category; the substitutionary view belongs in an entirely different category. That is the first remark that we desire to make before we begin to consider the Biblical teaching in detail.

That remark, however, would be decidedly misleading unless we went on to make a second remark. Our second remark is that the substitutionary view of the atonement, though it makes the work of Christ in dying upon the cross terminate primarily upon God, yet does at the same time most emphatically make it terminate also upon man. What a distortion of the substitutionary view it would be to say that Christ, when He died, did not die to produce a moral effect upon man!

Of course He died to produce a moral effect upon man! If He had not died, man would have continued to lead a life of sin; but as it is, those for whom He died cease to lead a life of sin and begin to lead a life of holiness. They do not lead that life of holiness perfectly in this world, but they will most certainly lead it in the world to come, and it was in order that they might lead that life of holiness that Christ died for them. No man for whom Christ died continues to live in sin as he lived before. All who receive the benefits of the cross of Christ turn from sin unto righteousness. In holding that that is the case, the substitutionary view of the atonement is quite in accord with the moral-influence theory and with the governmental theory.

Well, then, is it correct to say that the moral-influence theory and the governmental theory are correct as far as they go and merely differ from the substitutionary view in being inadequate or incomplete?

No, I do not think that that is correct at all. You see, the heart and core of the moral-influence theory and the governmental theory is found in the denial that Christ on the cross took our place and paid the just penalty of our sins that we might be right with God. Denying that, the moral-influence theory and the exhibit the necessity of some deterrent against sin in the interests of an orderly world, or did He die on the cross in order to pay the penalty of our sin and make us right with the holy God?

Which of these three views is right? That is the question which we shall seek to answer by an examination of the Word of God.

At the beginning of the examination there is one fact which stares us in the face. It has sometimes been strangely neglected. It is the fact of the enormous emphasis which the Bible lays upon the death of Christ.

Have you ever stopped to consider how strange that emphasis is? In the case of other great men, it is the birth that is celebrated and not the death. Washington’s birthday is celebrated by a grateful American people on the twenty-second day of February, but who remembers on what day of the year it was that Washington died? Who ever thought of making the day of his death into a national holiday?

Well, there are some men whose death might indeed be celebrated by a national holiday, but they are not good men like George Washington; they are, on the contrary, men whose taking off was a blessing to their people. It would be a small compliment to the father of his country if we celebrated with national rejoicing the day when he was taken from us. Instead of that, we celebrate his birth. Yet in the case of Jesus it is the death and not the birth that we chiefly commemorate in the Christian church.

I do not mean that it is wrong for us to commemorate the birth of Jesus. We have just celebrated Christmas, and it is right for us so to do. Happy at this Christmas season through which we have just passed have been those to whom it has not been just a time of worldly festivity but a time of commemoration of the coming of our blessed Saviour into this world. Happy have been those men and women and little children who have heard, underlying all their Christmas joys, and have heard in simple and childlike faith, the sweet story that is told us in Matthew and Luke. Happy have been those celebrants of Christmas to whom the angels have brought again, in the reading of the Word of God, their good tidings of great joy.

Yes, I say, thank God for the Christmas season; thank God for the softening that it brings to stony hearts; thank God for the recognition that it brings for the little children whom Jesus took into His arms; thank God even for the strange, sweet sadness that it brings to us together with its joys, as we think of the loved ones who are gone. Yes, it is well that we should celebrate the Christmas season; and may God ever give us a childlike heart that we may celebrate it aright.

But after all, my friends, it is not Christmas that is the greatest anniversary in the Christian church. It is not the birth of Jesus that the church chiefly celebrates, but the death.

Did you know that long centuries went by in the history of the church before there is any record of the celebration of Christmas? Jesus was born in the days of Herod the King — that is, at some time before 4 B.C., when Herod died. Not till centuries later do we find evidence that the church celebrated any anniversary regarded as the anniversary of His birth.

Well, then, if that is so with regard to the commemoration of Jesus’ birth, how is it with regard to the commemoration of His death? Was the commemoration of that also so long postponed? Well, listen to what is said on that subject by the Apostle Paul. ‘For as often as ye eat this bread,’ he says, ‘and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.’ That was written only about twenty-five years after the death of Christ and after the founding of the church in Jerusalem. Even in those early days the death of Christ was commemorated by the church in the most solemn service in which it engaged — namely, in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

Indeed that commemoration of the death of Christ was definitely provided for by Jesus Himself. ‘This cup is the New Testament in my blood,’ said Jesus: ‘this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.’ In those words of institution of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus carefully provided that His church should commemorate His death.

Thus the Bible makes no definite provision for the commemoration of the birth of Jesus, but provides in the most definite and solemn way for the commemoration of His death.

What is the reason for that contrast, which at first sight might seem to be very strange? I think the answer is fairly clear. The birth of Jesus was important not in itself but because it made possible His death. Jesus came into this world to die, and it is to His death that the sinner turns when He seeks salvation for his soul. Truly the familiar hymn is right when it says about the cross of Christ:

All the light of sacred story

Gathers round its head sublime.

The whole Bible centres in the story of the death of Christ. The Old Testament looks forward to it; the New Testament looks back upon it; and the truly Biblical preacher of the gospel says always with Paul: ‘I determined to know nothing among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified.’

I ask you, then, which of the theories of the atonement suits this supreme emphasis which the Bible puts upon the cross.

Does the moral-influence theory suit it? I think not, my friends. If Jesus died on the cross merely to give us a good example of self-sacrifice or merely to exhibit, without underlying necessity, the love of God, then the Bible does seem strangely overwrought in the way in which it speaks of the death of Christ. Then indeed all the talk in the Bible about the blood of Christ and the blood of the sacrificial victims that were prophecies of Him becomes just about as distasteful as so many modern men hold it to be. Some very much greater significance must be attributed to the death of Christ than a mere hallowing of some universal law of self-sacrifice or a mere pedagogic exhibition of God’s love, if we are to explain the way in which the Bible makes everything to centre in the event that took place on Calvary.

The case is not essentially different when we consider the governmental theory. It is true, the governmental theory does seek, as over against the moral-influence theory, to do justice to the emphasis which the Bible places just on the death of Christ. It regards the tragic horror of the cross not as merely incidental to the meaning of what Christ did but as essential to it. It regards that tragic horror as being the thing that shocks sinners out of their complacency and makes them recognise the seriousness of sin. Hence it seeks to show why just the death of Christ and not some other exhibition of self-sacrificing love was necessary.

But, after all, what a short way such considerations go towards explaining the Biblical emphasis on the cross of Christ! The truth is that there is just one real explanation of such emphasis. It is found in the fact that Christ on the cross did something absolutely necessary if we sinners are to be forgiven by a righteous God. Once recognise the enormous barrier which sin sets up between the offender and his God, once recognise the fact that that barrier is rooted not merely in the sinner’s mind but in the eternal justice of God, and then once recognise that the cross, as the full payment of the penalty of sin, has broken down the barrier and made the sinner right with God — once recognise these things and then only will you understand the strange pre-eminence which the Bible attributes to the cross of Christ.

Thus even the mere prominence of the death of Christ in the Bible, to say nothing of what the Bible says about the death of Christ in detail, is a mighty argument against all minimising theories of the significance of the death of Christ and a mighty argument in favour of the view that Christ on the cross really died in our stead, paying the dread penalty of our sin, that He might present us, saved by grace, before the throne.

In presenting what the Bible says in detail about the death of Christ, I want to speak first of all of those passages where Christ’s death upon the cross is represented as a ransom, then about those passages where it is spoken of as a sacrifice, then about those passages where, without the use of either of these representations, its substitutionary or representative character is plainly brought out.

The first passage that we shall speak of, next Sunday afternoon, is that great passage in the tenth chapter of the Gospel according to Mark where our Lord says that the Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for many.

On this last Sunday of the old year, I just want to say to you who have been listening in on these Sunday afternoons how much encouraged I have been by your interest and by your Christian fellowship. I trust that you have had a very joyous Christmas and I trust that the new year which is so soon to begin may be to you a very blessed year under the mercy of God.

The Active Obedience Of Christ (J Gresham Machen)

This is the second of three radio addresses given by John Gresham Machen on three consecutive Sundays just before his death on January 1, 1937. The first, posted just before this here, is entitled, The Doctrine of the Atonement. This second address has a poignancy of its own. On the very day he died, Machen mustered the strength to send a telegram to John Murray, his friend and colleague at Westminster Theological Seminary. It was his last recorded words: “I’m so thankful for [the] active obedience of Christ. No hope without it.”

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Last Sunday afternoon, in outlining the Biblical teaching about the work of Christ in satisfying for us the claims of God’s law, I said nothing about one very important part of that work. I pointed out that Christ by His death in our stead on the cross paid the just penalty of our sin, but I said nothing of another thing that He did for us. I said nothing about what Christ did for us by His active obedience to God’s law. It is very important that we should fill out that part of the outline before we go one step further.

Suppose Christ had done for us merely what we said last Sunday afternoon that He did. Suppose He had merely paid the just penalty of the law that was resting upon us for our sin, and had done nothing more than that; where would we then be? Well, I think we can say — if indeed it is legitimate to separate one part of the work of Christ even in thought from the rest — that if Christ had merely paid the penalty of sin for us and had done nothing more we should be at best back in the situation in which Adam found himself when God placed him under the covenant of works.

That covenant of works was a probation. If Adam kept the law of God for a certain period, he was to have eternal life. If he disobeyed he was to have death. Well, he disobeyed, and the penalty of death was inflicted upon him and his posterity. Then Christ by His death on the cross paid that penalty for those whom God had chosen.

Well and good. But if that were all that Christ did for us, do you not see that we should be back in just the situation in which Adam was before he sinned? The penalty of his sinning would have been removed from us because it had all been paid by Christ. But for the future the attainment of eternal life would have been dependent upon our perfect obedience to the law of God. We should simply have been back in the probation again.

Moreover, we should have been back in that probation in a very much less hopeful way than that in which Adam was originally placed in it. Everything was in Adam’s favour when he was placed in the probation. He had been created in knowledge, righteousness and holiness. He had been created positively good. Yet despite all that, he fell. How much more likely would we be to fall — nay, how certain to fall — if all that Christ had done for us were merely to remove from us the guilt of past sin, leaving it then to our own efforts to win the reward which God has pronounced upon perfect obedience!

But I really must decline to speculate any further about what might have been if Christ had done something less for us than that which He has actually done. As a matter of fact, He has not merely paid the penalty of Adam’s first sin, and the penalty of the sins which we individually have committed, but also He has positively merited for us eternal life. He was, in other words, our representative both in penalty paying and in probation keeping. He paid the penalty of sin for us, and He stood the probation for us.

That is the reason why those who have been saved by the Lord Jesus Christ are in a far more blessed condition than was Adam before he fell. Adam before he fell was righteous in the sight of God, but he was still under the possibility of becoming unrighteous. Those who have been saved by the Lord Jesus Christ not only are righteous in the sight of God but they are beyond the possibility of becoming unrighteous. In their case, the probation is over. It is not over because they have stood it successfully. It is not over because they have themselves earned the reward of assured blessedness which God promised on condition of perfect obedience. But it is over because Christ has stood it for them; it is over because Christ has merited for them the reward by His perfect obedience to God’s law.

I think I can make the matter plain if I imagine a dialogue between the law of God and a sinful man saved by grace.

‘Man,’ says the law of God, ‘have you obeyed my commands?’

‘No,’ says the sinner saved by grace. ‘I have disobeyed them, not only in the person of my representative Adam in his first sin, but also in that I myself have sinned in thought, word and deed.’

‘Well, then, sinner,’ says the law of God, ‘have you paid the penalty which I pronounced upon disobedience?’

‘No,’ says the sinner, ‘I have not paid the penalty myself; but Christ has paid it for me. He was my representative when He died there on the cross. Hence, so far as the penalty is concerned, I am clear.’

‘Well, then, sinner,’ says the law of God, ‘how about the conditions which God has pronounced for the attainment of assured blessedness? Have you stood the test? Have you merited eternal life by perfect obedience during the period of probation?’

‘No,’ says the sinner, ‘I have not merited eternal life by my own perfect obedience. God knows and my own conscience knows that even after I became a Christian I have sinned in thought, word and deed. But although I have not merited eternal life by any obedience of my own, Christ has merited it for me by His perfect obedience. He was not for Himself subject to the law. No obedience was required of Him for Himself, since He was Lord of all. That obedience, then, which He rendered to the law when He was on earth was rendered by Him as my representative. I have no righteousness of my own, but clad in Christ’s perfect righteousness, imputed to me and received by faith alone, I can glory in the fact that so far as I am concerned the probation has been kept and as God is true there awaits me the glorious reward which Christ thus earned for me.’

Such, put in bald, simple form, is the dialogue between every Christian and the law of God. How gloriously complete is the salvation wrought for us by Christ! Christ paid the penalty, and He merited the reward. Those are the two great things that He has done for us.

Theologians are accustomed to distinguish those two parts of the saving work of Christ by calling one of them His passive obedience and the other of them His active obedience. By His passive obedience — that is, by suffering in our stead — He paid the penalty for us; by His active obedience — that is, by doing what the law of God required — He has merited for us the reward.

I like that terminology well enough. I think it does set forth as well as can be done in human language the two aspects of Christ’s work. And yet a danger lurks in it if it leads us to think that one of the two parts of Christ’s work can be separated from the other.

How shall we distinguish Christ’s active obedience from His passive obedience? Shall we say that He accomplished His active obedience by His life and accomplished His passive obedience by His death? No, that will not do at all. During every moment of His life upon earth Christ was engaged in His passive obedience. It was all for Him humiliation, was it not? It was all suffering. It was all part of His payment of the penalty of sin. On the other hand, we cannot say that His death was passive obedience and not active obedience. On the contrary, His death was the crown of His active obedience. It was the crown of that obedience to the law of God by which He merited eternal life for those whom He came to save.

Do you not see, then, what the true state of the case is? Christ’s active obedience and His passive obedience are not two divisions of His work, some of the events of His earthly life being His active obedience and other events of His life being His passive obedience; but every event of His life was both active obedience and passive obedience. Every event of His life was a part of His payment of the penalty of sin, and every event of His life was a part of that glorious keeping of the law of God by which He earned for His people the reward of eternal life. The two aspects of His work, in other words, are inextricably intertwined. Neither was performed apart from the other. Together they constitute the wonderful, full salvation which was wrought for us by Christ our Redeemer.

We can put it briefly by saying that Christ took our place with respect to the law of God. He paid for us the law’s penalty, and He obeyed for us the law’s commands. He saved us from hell, and He earned for us our entrance into heaven. All that we have, then, we owe unto Him. There is no blessing that we have in this world or the next for which we should not give Christ thanks.

As I say that, I am fully conscious of the inadequacy of my words. I have tried to summarise the teaching of the Bible about the saving work of Christ; yet how cold and dry seems any mere human summary — even if it were far better than mine — in comparison with the marvellous richness and warmth of the Bible itself. It is to the Bible itself that I am going to ask you to turn with me next Sunday afternoon. Having tried to summarise the Bible’s teaching in order that we may take each part of the Bible in proper relation to other parts, I am going to ask you next Sunday to turn with me to the great texts themselves, in order that we may test our summary, and every human summary, by what God Himself has told us in His Word. Ah, when we do that, what refreshment it is to our souls! How infinitely superior is God’s Word to all human attempts to summarise its teaching! Those attempts are necessary; we could not do without them; everyone who is really true to the Bible will engage in them. But it is the very words of the Bible that touch the heart, and everything that we — or for the matter of that even the great theologians — say in summary of the Bible must be compared ever anew with the Bible itself.

This afternoon, however, just in order that next Sunday we may begin our searching of the Scriptures in the most intelligent possible way, I am going to ask you to glance with me at one or two of the different views that men have held regarding the cross of Christ.

I have already summarised for you the orthodox view. According to that view, Christ took our place on the cross, paying the penalty of am that we deserved to pay. That view can be put in very simple language. We deserved eternal death because of sin; Jesus, because He loved us, took our place and died in our stead on the cross. Call that view repulsive if you will. It is indeed repulsive to the natural man. But do not call it difficult to understand. A little child can understand it, and can receive it to the salvation of his soul.

Rejecting that substitutionary view, many men have advanced other views. Many are the theories of the atonement. Yet I do think that their bewildering variety may be reduced to something like order if we observe that they fall into a very few general divisions.

Most common among them is the theory that Christ’s death upon the cross had merely a moral effect upon man. Man is by nature a child of God, say the advocates of that view. But unfortunately he is not making full use of his high privilege. He has fallen into terrible degradation, and having fallen into terrible degradation he has become estranged from God. He no longer lives in that intimate relationship of sonship with God in which he ought to live.

How shall this estrangement between man and God be removed; how shall man be brought back into fellowship with God? Why, say the advocates of the view of which we are now speaking, simply by inducing man to turn from his evil ways and make full use of his high privilege as a child of God. There is certainly no barrier on God’s side; the only barrier lies in man’s foolish and wicked heart. Once overcome that barrier and all will be well. Once touch man’s stony heart so that he will come to see again that God is his Father, once lead him also to overcome any fear of God as though God were not always more ready to forgive than man is to be forgiven; and at once the true relationship between God and man can be restored and man can go forward joyously to the use, in holy living, of his high privilege as a child of the loving heavenly Father.

But how can man’s heart be touched, that he may be led to return to his Father’s house and live as befits a son of God? By the contemplation of the cross of Christ, say the advocates of the view that we are now presenting. Jesus Christ was truly a son of God. Indeed, He was a son of God in such a unique way that He may be called in some sort the Son of God. When therefore God gave Him to die upon the cross and when He willingly gave Himself to die, that was a wonderful manifestation of God’s love for sinning, erring humanity. In the presence of that love all opposition in man’s heart should be broken down. He should recognise at last the fact that God is indeed his Father, and recognising that, he should make use of his high privilege of living the life that befits a child of God.

Such is the so-called ‘moral-influence theory’ of the atonement. It is held in a thousand different forms, and it is held by thousands of people who have not the slightest notion that they are holding it.

Some of those who have held it have tried to maintain with it something like a real belief in the deity of Christ. If Christ was really the eternal Son of God, then the gift of Him on the cross becomes all the greater evidence of the love of God. But the overwhelming majority of those who hold the moral-influence view of the atonement have given up all real belief in the deity of Christ. These persons hold simply that Jesus on the cross gave us a supreme example of self-sacrifice. By that example we are inspired to do likewise. We are inspired to sacrifice our lives, either in actual martyrdom in some holy cause or in sacrificial service. Sacrificing thus our lives, we discover that we have thereby attained a higher life than ever before. Thus the cross of Christ has been the pathway that leads us to moral heights.

Read most of the popular books on religion of the present day, and then tell me whether you do not think that that is at bottom what they mean. Some of them speak about the cross of Christ. Some of them say that Christ’s sufferings were redemptive. But the trouble is they hold that the cross of Christ is not merely Christ’s cross but our cross; and that while Christ’s sufferings were redemptive our sufferings are redemptive too. All they really mean is that Christ on Calvary pointed out a way that we follow. He hallowed the pathway of self-sacrifice. We follow in that path and thus we obtain a higher life for our souls.

That is the great central and all-pervading vice of most modern books that deal with the cross. They make the cross of Christ merely an example of a general principle of self-sacrifice. And if they talk still of salvation, they tell us that we are saved by walking in the way of the cross. It is thus, according to this view, not Christ’s cross but our cross that saves us. The way of the cross leads us to God. Christ may have a great influence in leading us to walk in that way of the cross, that way of self-sacrifice; but it is our walking in it and not Christ’s walking in it which really saves us. Thus we are saved by our own efforts, not by Christ’s blood after all. It is the same old notion that sinful man can save himself. It is that notion just decked out in new garments and making use of Christian terminology.

Such is the moral-influence theory of the atonement. In addition to it, we find what is sometimes called the governmental theory. What a strange, compromising, tortuous thing that governmental theory is, to be sure!

According to the governmental view, the death of Christ was not necessary in order that any eternal justice of God, rooted in the divine nature, might be satisfied. So far the governmental view goes with the advocates of the moral-influence theory. But, it holds, the death of Christ was necessary in order that good discipline might be maintained in the world. If sinners were allowed to get the notion that sin could go altogether unpunished, there would be no adequate deterrent from sin. Being thus undeterred from sin, men would go on sinning and the world would be thrown into confusion. But if the world were thus thrown into moral confusion that would not be for the best interests of the greatest number. Therefore God held up the death of Christ on the cross as an indication of how serious a thing sin is, so that men may be deterred from sinning and so order in the world may be preserved.

Having thus indicated — so the governmental theory runs — how serious a thing sin is, God proceeded to offer salvation to men on easier terms than those on which He had originally offered it. He had originally offered it on the basis of perfect obedience. Now He offered it on the basis of faith. He could safely offer it on those easier terms, and He could safely remit the penalty originally pronounced upon sin, because in the awful spectacle of the cross of Christ He had sufficiently indicated to men that sin is a serious offence and that if it is committed something or other has to be done about the matter in order that the good order of the universe may be conserved.

Such is the governmental theory. But do you not see that really at bottom it is just a form of the moral-influence theory? Like the moral-influence theory, it holds that the only obstacle to fellowship between man and God is found in man’s will. Like the moral-influence theory it denies that there is any eternal justice of God, rooted in His being, and it denies that the eternal justice of God demands the punishment of sin. Like the moral-influence theory it plays fast and loose with God’s holiness, and like the moral-influence theory, we may add, it loses sight of the real depths of God’s love. No man who holds the light view of sin that is involved in these man-made theories has the slightest notion of what it cost when the eternal Son of God took our place upon the accursed tree.

People sometimes say, indeed, that it makes little difference what theory of the atonement we may hold. Ah, my friends, it makes all the difference in the world. When you contemplate the cross of Christ, do you say merely, with modern theorists, ‘What a noble example of self-sacrifice; I am going to attain favour with God by sacrificing myself as well as He.’ Or do you say with the Bible, ‘He loved me and gave Himself for me; He took my place; He bore my curse; He bought me with His own most precious blood.’ That is the most momentous question that can come to any human soul. I want you all to turn with me next Sunday afternoon to the Word of God in order that we may answer that question aright.

The Doctrine Of The Atonement (J Gresham Machen)

I owe a great debt to John Gresham Machen for my understanding of Paul’s theology. At a time when I was uncertain about some aspects of Paul’s theology, his The Origin of Paul’s Religion came to my rescue. I consider it a classic alongside Herman Ridderbos’ Paul: An Outline of His Theology. Over the years, I have purchased and read some more of Machen’s books and I have found everyone of them helpful, stimulating and, not least of all, strengthening. Let me name a few here which should grace our bookshelves: The Virgin Birth of Christ, Christianity and Liberalism, The New Testament: An Introduction To Its Literature and History, What is Faith?, and The Christian Faith in the Modern World. What is evident in all his books is the obvious spiritual struggle he himself faced at a time when “liberalism” was overtaking the evangelical faith in the 1920s-1930s. He felt then that he had to stand for the evangelical faith, and stand he did. He quitted his post at Princeton Seminary (which was becoming more liberal) and founded Westminster Theological Seminary. He also was a founding member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in USA. Machen was a sturdy “defender of the faith” because his own faith as a young seminarian had been attacked and tested by “liberalism” while pursuing theological studies in Germany. By God’s grace, he not only clung to his evangelical faith; his own experience informed him that he must defend the evangelical faith even though he knew it would make him unpopular. By the way, Machen had a great admiration for B B Warfield who taught him while he was a student at Princeton Seminary. He described Warfield as the greatest man he has ever met. I am not surprised that having read and found Warfield so helpful, I should find the same with Machen. They both were, in their own ways, great defenders of the evangelical faith.

This post is the first of three addresses which Machen broadcasted on the radio on three consecutive Sundays just before his death on January 1, 1937. They sum up in a very poignant way what he believed was the essence of the evangelical faith. The next two addresses will follow in future postings.

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The priestly work of Christ, or at least that part of it in which He offered Himself up as a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God, is commonly called the atonement, and the doctrine which sets it forth is commonly called the doctrine of the atonement. That doctrine is at the very heart of what is taught in the Word of God. Before we present that doctrine, we ought to observe that the term by which it is ordinarily designated is not altogether free from objection.

When I say that the term ‘atonement’ is open to objection, I am not referring to the fact that it occurs only once in the King James Version of the New Testament, and is therefore, so far as New Testament usage is concerned, not a common Biblical term. A good many other terms which are rare in the Bible are nevertheless admirable terms when one comes to summarise Biblical teaching. As a matter of fact this term is rather common in the Old Testament (though it occurs only that once in the New Testament), but that fact would not be necessary to commend it if it were satisfactory in other ways. Even if it were not common in either Testament it still might be exactly the term for us to use to designate by one word what the Bible teaches in a number of words.

The real objection to it is of an entirely different kind. It is a twofold objection. The word atonement in the first place, is ambiguous, and in the second place, it is not broad enough.

The one place where the word occurs in the King James Version of the New Testament is Romans 5:11, where Paul says:

And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.

Here the word is used to translate a Greek word meaning ‘reconciliation.’ This usage seems to be very close to the etymological meaning of the word, for it does seem to be true that the English word ‘atonement’ means ‘atonement.’ It is, therefore, according to its derivation, a natural word to designate the state of reconciliation between two parties formerly at variance.

In the Old Testament, on the other hand, where the word occurs in the King James Version not once, but forty or fifty times, it has a different meaning; it has the meaning of ‘propitiation.’ Thus we read in Leviticus 1:4, regarding a man who brings a bullock to be killed as a burnt offering:

And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.

So also the word occurs some eight times in the King James Version in the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus, where the provisions of the law are set forth regarding the great day of atonement. Take, for example, the following verses in that chapter:

And Aaron shall offer his bullock of the sin offering, which is for himself, and make an atonement for himself, and for his house (Lev. 16:6).

Then shall he kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people, and bring his blood within the veil, and do with that blood as he did with the blood of the bullock, and sprinkle it upon the mercy seat: And he shall make atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins: and so shall he do for the tabernacle of the congregation, that remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness (Lev. 16:15f.).

In these passages the meaning of the word is clear. God has been offended because of the sins of the people or of individuals among His people. The priest kills the animal which is brought as a sacrifice. God is thereby propitiated, and those who have offended God are forgiven.

I am not now asking whether those Old Testament sacrifices brought forgiveness in themselves, or merely as prophecies of a greater sacrifice to come; I am not now considering the significant limitations which the Old Testament law attributes to their efficacy. We shall try to deal with those matters in some subsequent talk. All that I am here interested in is the use of the word ‘atonement’ in the English Bible. All that I am saying is that that word in the Old Testament clearly conveys the notion of something that is done to satisfy God in order that the sins of men may be forgiven and their communion with God restored.

Somewhat akin to this Old Testament use of the word ‘atonement’ is the use of it in our everyday parlance where religion is not at all in view. Thus we often say that someone in his youth was guilty of a grievous fault but has fully ‘atoned’ for it or made full ‘atonement’ for it by a long and useful life. We mean by that that the person in question has — if we may use a colloquial phrase — ‘made up for’ his youthful indiscretion by his subsequent life of usefulness and rectitude. Mind you, I am not at all saying that a man can really ‘make up for’ or ‘atone for’ a youthful sin by a subsequent life of usefulness and rectitude; but I am just saying that that indicates the way in which the English word is used. In our ordinary usage the word certainly conveys the idea of something like compensation for some wrong that has been done.

It certainly conveys that notion also in those Old Testament passages. Of course that is not the only notion that it conveys in those passages. There the use of the word is very much more specific. The compensation which is indicated by the word is a compensation rendered to God, and it is a compensation that has become necessary because of an offence committed against God. Still, the notion of compensation or satisfaction is clearly in the word. God is offended because of sin; satisfaction is made to Him in some way by the sacrifice; and so His favour is restored.

Thus in the English Bible the word ‘atonement’ is used in two rather distinct senses. In its one occurrence in the New Testament it designates the particular means by which such reconciliation is effected — namely, the sacrifice which God is pleased to accept in order that man may again be received into favour.

Now of these two uses of the word it is unquestionably the Old Testament use which is followed when we speak of the ‘doctrine of the atonement.’ We mean by the word, when we thus use it in theology, not the reconciliation between God and man, not the ‘at-onement’ between God and man, but specifically the means by which that reconciliation is effected — namely, the death of Christ as something that was necessary in order that sinful man might be received into communion with God.

I do not see any great objection to the use of the word in that way — provided only that we are perfectly clear that we are using it in that way. Certainly it has acquired too firm a place in Christian theology and has gathered around it too many precious associations for us to think, now, of trying to dislodge it.

However, there is another word which would in itself have been much better, and it is really a great pity that it has not come into more general use in this connection. That is the word ‘satisfaction.’ If we only had acquired the habit of saying that Christ made full satisfaction to God for man that would have conveyed a more adequate account of Christ’s priestly work as our Redeemer than the word ‘atonement’ can convey. It designates what the word ‘atonement’ — rightly understood — designates, and it also designates something more. We shall see what that something more is in a subsequent talk.

But it is time now for us to enter definitely into our great subject. Men were estranged from God by sin; Christ as their great high priest has brought them back into communion with God. How has He done so? That is the question with which we shall be dealing in a number of the talks that now follow.

This afternoon all that I can do is to try to state the Scripture doctrine in bare summary (or begin to state it), leaving it to subsequent talks to show how that Scripture doctrine is actually taught in the Scriptures, to defend it against objections, and to distinguish it clearly from various unscriptural theories.

What then in bare outline does the Bible teach about the ‘atonement’? What does it teach — to use a better term — about the satisfaction which Christ presented to God in order that sinful man might be received into God’s favour?

I cannot possibly answer this question even in bare summary unless I call your attention to the Biblical doctrine of sin with which we dealt last winter. You cannot possibly understand what the Bible says about salvation unless you understand what the Bible says about the thing from which we are saved.

If then we ask what is the Biblical doctrine of sin, we observe, in the first place, that according to the Bible all men are sinners.

Well, then, that being so, it becomes important to ask what this sin is which has affected all mankind. Is it just an excusable imperfection; is it something that can be transcended as a man can transcend the immaturity of his youthful years? Or, supposing it to be more than imperfection, supposing it to be something like a definite stain, is it a stain that can easily be removed as writing is erased from a slate?

The Bible leaves us in no doubt as to the answer to these questions. Sin, it tells us, is disobedience to the law of God, and the law of God is entirely irrevocable.

Why is the law of God irrevocable? The Bible makes that plain. Because it is rooted in the nature of God! God is righteous and that is the reason why His law is righteous. Can He then revoke His law or allow it to be disregarded? Well, there is of course no external compulsion upon Him to prevent Him from doing these things. There is none who can say to Him, ‘What doest thou?’ In that sense He can do all things. But the point is, He cannot revoke His law and still remain God. He cannot, without Himself becoming unrighteous, make His law either forbid righteousness or condone unrighteousness. When the law of God says, ‘The soul that sinneth it shall die,’ that awful penalty of death is, indeed, imposed by God’s will; but God’s will is determined by God’s nature, and God’s nature being unchangeably holy the penalty must run its course. God would be untrue to Himself, in other words, if sin were not punished; and that God should be untrue to Himself is the most impossible thing that can possibly be conceived.

Under that majestic law of God man was placed in the estate wherein he was created. Man was placed in a probation, which theologians call the covenant of works. If he obeyed the law during a certain limited period, his probation was to be over; he would be given eternal life without any further possibility of loss. If, on the other hand, he disobeyed the law, he would have death — physical death and eternal death in hell.

Man entered into that probation with every advantage. He was created in knowledge, righteousness and holiness. He was created not merely neutral with respect to goodness; he was created positively good. Yet he fell. He failed to make his goodness an assured and eternal goodness; he failed to progress from the goodness of innocency to the confirmed goodness which would have been the reward for standing the test. He transgressed the commandment of God, and so came under the awful curse of the law.

Under that curse came all mankind. That covenant of works had been made with the first man, Adam, not only for himself but for his posterity. He had stood, in that probation, in a representative capacity; he had stood — to use a better terminology — as the federal head of the race, having been made the federal head of the race by divine appointment. If he had successfully met the test, all mankind descended from him would have been born in a state of confirmed righteousness and blessedness, without any possibility of falling into sin or of losing eternal life. But as a matter of fact Adam did not successfully meet the test. He transgressed the commandment of God, and since he was the federal head, the divinely appointed representative of the race, all mankind sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression.

Thus all mankind, descended from Adam by ordinary generation, are themselves under the dreadful penalty of the law of God. They are under that penalty at birth, before they have done anything either good or bad. Part of that penalty is the want of the righteousness with which man was created, and a dreadful corruption which is called original sin. Proceeding from that corruption when men grow to years of discretion come individual acts of transgression.

Can the penalty of sin resting upon all mankind be remitted? Plainly not, if God is to remain God. That penalty of sin was ordained in the law of God, and the law of God was no mere arbitrary and changeable arrangement but an expression of the nature of God Himself. If the penalty of sin were remitted, God would become unrighteous, and that God will not become unrighteous is the most certain thing that can possibly be conceived.

How then can sinful men be saved? In one way only. Only if a substitute is provided who shall pay for them the just penalty of God’s law.

The Bible teaches that such a substitute has as a matter of fact been provided. The substitute is Jesus Christ. The law’s demands of penalty must be satisfied. There is no escaping that. But Jesus Christ satisfied those demands for us when He died instead of us on the cross.

I have used the word ‘satisfied’ advisedly. It is very important for us to observe that when Jesus died upon the cross He made a full satisfaction for our sins; He paid the penalty which the law pronounces upon our sin, not in part but in full.

In saying that, there are several misunderstandings which need to be guarded against in the most careful possible way. Only by distinguishing the Scripture doctrine carefully from several distortions of it can we understand clearly what the Scripture doctrine is. I want to point out, therefore, several things that we do not mean when we say that Christ paid the penalty of our sin by dying instead of us on the cross.

In the first place, we do not mean that when Christ took our place He became Himself a sinner. Of course He did not become a sinner. Never was His glorious righteousness and goodness more wonderfully seen than when He bore the curse of God’s law upon the cross. He was not deserving of that curse. Far from it! He was deserving of all praise.

What we mean, therefore, when we say that Christ bore our guilt is not that He became guilty, but that He paid the penalty that we so richly deserved.

In the second place, we do not mean that Christ’s sufferings were the same as the sufferings that we should have endured if we had paid the penalty of our own sins. Obviously they were not the same. Part of the sufferings that we should have endured would have been the dreadful suffering of remorse. Christ did not endure that suffering, for He had done no wrong. Moreover, our sufferings would have endured to all eternity, whereas Christ’s sufferings on the cross endured but a few hours. Plainly then His sufferings were not the same as ours would have been.

In the third place, however, an opposite error must also be warded off. If Christ’s sufferings were not the same as ours, it is also quite untrue to say that He paid only a part of the penalty that was due to us because of our sin. Some theologians have fallen into that error. When man incurred the penalty of the law, they have said, God was pleased to take some other and lesser thing — namely, the sufferings of Christ on the cross — instead of exacting the full penalty. Thus, according to these theologians, the demands of the law were not really satisfied by the death of Christ, but God was simply pleased, in arbitrary fashion, to accept something less than full satisfaction.

That is a very serious error indeed. Instead of falling into it we shall, if we are true to the Scriptures, insist that Christ on the cross paid the full and just penalty for our sin. The error arose because of a confusion between the payment of a debt and the payment of a penalty. In the case of a debt it does not make any difference who pays; all that is essential is that the creditor shall receive what is owed him. What is essential is that just the same thing shall be paid as that which stood in the bond.

But in the case of the payment of a penalty it does make a difference who pays. The law demanded that we should suffer eternal death because of our sin. Christ paid the penalty of the law in our stead. But for Him to suffer was not the same as for us to suffer. He is God, and not merely man. Therefore if He had suffered to all eternity as we should have suffered, that would not have been to pay the just penalty of the sin, but it would have been an unjust exaction of vastly more. In other words, we must get rid of merely quantitative notions in thinking of the sufferings of Christ. What He suffered on the cross was what the law of God truly demanded not of any person but of such a person as Himself when He became our substitute in paying the penalty of sin. He did therefore make full and not merely partial satisfaction for the claims of the law against us.

Finally, it is very important to observe that the Bible’s teaching about the cross of Christ does not mean that God waited for someone else to pay the penalty of sin before He would forgive the sinner. So unbelievers constantly represent it, but that representation is radically wrong. No, God Himself paid the penalty of sin — God Himself in the Person of God the Son, who loved us and gave Himself for us, God Himself in the person of God the Father who so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son, God the Holy Spirit who applies to us the benefits of Christ’s death. God’s the cost and ours the marvellous gain! Who shall measure the depths of the love of God which was extended to us sinners when the Lord Jesus took our place and died in our stead upon the accursed tree?

What We Mean By 'Evangelical' (Leon Morris)

Leon Morris is no stranger to those of us who are students of the New Testament. He embodies for me a scholar who is not only able and judicious, but also warm and devotional. I have always found him helpful, and I seldom ever refuse to buy a book written by him. The first ever book of his I purchased was his commentary on the gospel of Luke (Tyndale NT Commentaries). I am particularly indebted to his The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, which I consider a Christian classic. His Apocalyptic came in very handy when I was having to deal with Ezekiel and Revelation. In all these and his other books, he demonstrates no aversion to engaging those who might differ from him while still maintaining a strong and clearly defined "evangelicalism". This short paper which I have reproduced below, to my mind, represents in a very succinct manner Morris' evangelical emphasis in all his writings, emphases such as the reality of human sin, the wonder of God's grace, the absolute necessity of Christ's sacrificial death on the cross, and the consequent fruit of all those who trust in Christ as their Saviour. "What We Mean By 'Evangelical'" was first published under the same title in Working Together (1998 Issue 4), the magazine of the Australian Evangelical Alliance.

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An evangelical is a gospel man, a gospel woman. “Evangelical” derives from ‘evangel’: “gospel”. By definition an evangelical is someone concerned for the gospel. This means more than that he preaches the gospel now and then. It means that for him the gospel of Christ is central. It is, of course, his message and he preaches it, constantly. But it is more than a subject of preaching. The gospel is at the centre of his thinking and living.

The Apostle Paul reminded the Corinthians of the gospel he had brought them by saying that it is of the first importance that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor.15:3). It seems to me that everything that matters to the evangelical arises from this basic proposition.
“Christ died.” The cross is the great, basic act of God. “For our sins.” That is the stubborn fact that made the cross necessary. It points to the truth that there is that in every member of the human race which makes for evil rather than for good. This has been caricatured as though evangelicals were saying that every member of the race is as bad as he can be. They are not. They are saying that none of us is perfect. None of us always does what deep in his heart of hearts he knows he ought to do. None of us measures up to God’s standard.

This stops the evangelical from being swept off his feet by the promise of any earthly utopia. He will join as readily as the next in any scheme for the betterment of others. It is part of the outworking of the love he sees on the cross that he does so. These days we are realizing more of the importance of this part of our duty to our neighbour than we used to. That is all to the good. But the evangelical does not put his trust in human endeavours. He is a pessimist. He sees that dictatorships of the left and dictatorships of the right alike end up in oppression. He sees that democracies all too often end up in muddle and soulless bureaucracy. He will do his best to make any system work, but his trust is not in systems. Every system has to work on the raw material of sinners. The evangelical is clear-sighted about this. That man is a sinner puts a firm limit on his ability to do good.

And it puts an end to the possibility of his attaining the ultimate good. The fact that he is a sinner means that he cannot work out his eternal salvation. Sin leaves its mark on life here and has consequences for the hereafter.

But the great, wonderful truth is that “Christ died for our sins.” What was impossible for men God in Christ has perfectly accomplished. He has defeated sin now and for eternity. The evangel is a message about a salvation with both temporal and eternal consequences.

Evangelicals insist with Scripture that the atonement is objective as well as subjective. It does have its effect on us, but its effect is not limited to our subjective experience. Whole books have been written on the atonement and they will doubtless continue to be written until Christ comes back. They help us understand a little of that great atoning act but none of them fully explains it. How can they? They are written by sinful people, people who are themselves immersed in the world’s evil and are making their own contribution to it. They cannot stand outside it and see what needs to be done about it. But for the evangelical the significant thing is not our inability to explain it. The significant thing is that Christ died for our sins. Whatever needed to be done He has done. Nothing can be added to that perfect divine work.

For that reason the evangelical will find himself called upon to protest from time to time against systems which claim to be Christian but which do try to add to Christ’s work, whether by calling on men to accomplish their salvation by their good deeds or by their liturgical observances or by anything else. Christ, no less than he Died, no less that. All our shabby shibboleths vanish before His sacrificial love.

Confronted with the cross I may respond and turn to Christ in faith and love. Or I may harden my heart. To respond to Christ’s love is to become a different person. The whole set of the life is changed. Evangelicals have always insisted on the necessity for conversion. This may happen in one sudden, blinding experience (as with Saul of Tarsus). Or it may happen gradually (as with Timothy). The time is immaterial. The turning is everything. And it happens to all who come to Christ. The evangelical despairs of no one. The evangelical is an optimist.

It is easy to see the cross as a magnificent incentive to laziness. Christ has done everything. I can do nothing. Therefore I will do nothing. But that is not the way the New Testament sees it. John can write, “Herein is love, not that we love God (we will never understand love if we start from the human end), but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Then he goes on, “Beloved, if God so loved us we ought to love one another, too” (1 Jn. 4:10-11). Notice John’s verb. We ought, we ‘owe it’ to love one another. Love is not an occupation for somewhat soppy and sentimental citizens with a distaste for determined action. It is a demand made on all God’s people as their response to His great love and it is love that overflows in activities for others as 1 Corinthians 13 makes clear for all time. Love is demanding. Christ did not die, as someone has put it, “for the flim-flam of respectable Christianity”. Away with that kind of nonsense! Christ died for our sins, died to put them away so that we become loving people.

We of the human race know a love for attractive people, for beautiful people, for those who love us. Christ’s love is for sinners (Rom. 5:8), a love which puts away sin and rebukes all our self centredness so that love becomes our mainspring. This means in the first instance that we love other believers. The evangelical sees the church, the beloved community, as an integral part of the purpose of God. And in the second instance it means loving those outside. It means being loving people, for we are the followers of Him who died for sinners. It means evangelism as we bring to sinners the best gift we have.

Evangelicals have sometimes been regarded as hard-liners, people without sympathy for those who deviate by a hairsbreadth from our respectable orthodoxy. Who can say that we are guiltless? “Envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness” are endemic in the human race and we have our share. Repentance for our past sins and a discovery of ways in which we can show that loving response which the New Testament sees as flowing from the cross is therefore an authentic part of evangelicalism.

But the cross speaks not only about love but about lowliness. Nowadays we are told that “small is beautiful”. Put in these terms the thought is new. But its essence has always been part of evangelical religion. The cross condemns all self-seeking. How can anyone who has entered into the meaning of the cross seek great things for himself? The evangelical is a servant of God’s people, a servant of the church, and a servant of the community of which is a part. He is one who has heard a call to take up his cross (Luke. 9:23). His life style is different because of what the cross means to him.

There is a further implication. The standard set before him is one he cannot reach. He knows that. But he knows too that on the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came down on the infant church in the likeness of cleansing fire and powerful wind. “It was not yet ‘spirit’”, John wrote concerning Jesus’ life, “because Jesus was not yet glorified” (Jn 7:39). But when Jesus had accomplished His great work the Spirit came. The indwelling and empowering of the Spirit is an integral part of the Christian life as the evangelical understands it. He uses words like ‘sanctification’ and ‘holiness’ which speak of the need for a standard he can never reach for himself but which speak also of what the Spirit does in the believer.

“Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” The reference to Scripture means that the death of Christ was in line with the will of the Father. A great divine purpose was worked out in the atonement, a purpose revealed in the Bible.

Evangelicals have always put a great emphasis on the place of the Bible. This has not been out of perverse dogmatism, but from a profound conviction that it is important to the Christian faith. Many religions in the world are religions of ideas. One could say that in those cases it is the ideas and not the people who originated them that matter. It could be said that it does not greatly matter whether Gautama Buddha or Muhammed ever lived. What matters is that there are certain great ideas associated with their names and that by those ideas millions of our fellow men live.

But this kind of reasoning does not apply to Christianity. It is true that Christianity has some great ideas and it does not matter greatly who originated them. But what Paul is telling us is something different. He is saying that something happened. Christ died. This is not simply an idea. It is a historical fact. The gospel message is that once God came into history in the person of Jesus Christ. He came to live a life of lowly service and to die on Calvary’s cross “for our sins”.

Christianity is a historical religion in a way that no other religion is. Unless we have access to the facts we are cut off from our roots. And our access is by way of “the Scriptures”. They are the means God has given us to bring us the gospel. So evangelicals have always thankfully received this good gift of God and have regarded it as of the utmost importance that we have a Bible on which we can rely. They point to the express teaching of our Lord himself and to that of the apostles. And they point to the necessity for the facts of the gospel to be reliably attested.

There are other things that evangelicals hold. I am not giving an exhaustive list of evangelical convictions. I am saying that they all stem from the evangel . The whole system of the evangelical is the outworking of the gospel. With whatever blunderings and mistakes the evangelical tries to unfold the implications of salvation through the cross and to live by them. The evangelical man or woman is, above all else, a product, and a bearer of the gospel.

Children's Worship (James Montgomery Boice)

I have posted this to stir a healthy “debate” on the subject of children in worship in our Churches. Whether you agree with Boice or not, the fact is his brief article is worth our attention for no other reason than that most churches I have been to and have been a part of much prefer the children not only “not to be heard” but also “not to be seen”. Thus, they are sent off either to Sunday School or a separate “Children’s Worship” when the preaching begins. I have often said that if children are not taught from birth to learn to worship together with the adults, we should not be surprised if they should find worship such a “boring” exercise when they become teenagers. Why? For they have not been taught and, therefore, are not used to the routine of listening to a sermon. I also believe with Boice that we adults underestimate the ability of children to be a part of our normal worship service. I can testify from personal experience that they can absorb more than we assume. I shall never forget an occasion when after having preached in a Church in the USA, a young girl of eight approached me after the service and asked if I had my sermons taped in Malaysia. She thought that if I did, she would like to have me send her some! Another young lady of eleven, as I was preaching through Romans, told me she could understand about 50 percent of my sermons. Mind you, there were adults then who complained that the sermons were too difficult! Does that not say something about the adults in many of our Churches? Surely our Lord knew what He was praying when He said in Matthew 11:25-26, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.” And are we not told that He was “indignant” when His disciples tried to prevent folks from bringing “little children” to Him (Mark 10:13-16)? And did He not warn His disciples that “if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matthew 18:6)? Perhaps it is time we adults begin to realize how much we can learn from little children and from having them with us in worship and from observing their simple faith and trust in Christ during worship. James Montgomery Boice was pastor of the renowned Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia and has authored many books, notably his sermons on Genesis, the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of John, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Minor Prophets, and Foundations of the Christian Faith (a series of studies on Christian doctrines modelled after John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion).

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I don’t do children’s sermons. I know they are popular with parents and that they are a staple in the Sunday services of most evangelical churches. But I don't like them, and I don't do them. Let me explain why.

My first reason is that children’s sermons distract people from the worship of God. They are meant to involve children in the worship service by offering something appropriate to their age. But the effect, whether intentional or not, is to focus the attention of the adults on the children, and that is not what we should be coming to church to do. We should be focusing on God. I find that when children are invited forward to hear some cute word from the minister, the adults perk up and begin to pay close attention to the children. They are amused. They laugh. It is a bright spot in the service. But it is not worship. Children’s sermons sidetrack worship even if it has been going on previously, which often it has not. In practice children’s sermons come dangerously close to idolatry since they invite worship of the fruit of our loins rather than the Lord.

My second reason is that children’s sermons are part of what I see as an overall bad direction in which services have been moving. They are a part of what we call “dumbing down” in other disciplines. Let me put it this way. The goal we should have with our children is to bring them up to the level of the adults; that is, to enable them to begin to function on an adult level in their relationships to God. But what we have succeeded in doing instead is to bring the adults down to the level of the children. In many churches the sermon is hardly suited to any genuinely adult mind, the praise choruses would fit better at a high school rally than in the worship of the Bible’s God, and the children’s sermons probably speak as much to adult immaturity as to the children. In fact, the children’s sermons are usually geared to the smallest children, and the older children are ignored.

The defense of this bad practice is probably that children cannot follow what goes on in church. But that is not true. They can. And even if they cannot follow what goes on at first, our task is to teach them so they both can and will. And why not? It does not require much more time to teach children to participate in the worship service than it does to prepare some of the children’s sermons I have heard.

We have thought about this challenge at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia and have developed a few ideas that we find work pretty well.

First, we keep the children in church from a much younger age than we used to do. We still take the very little ones out for the parents’ sake as much as for theirs. We don’t want excessive distractions for anyone. But we keep the children in church from the second grade up. They can read at this age as well as participate, and we think it is good for our families to be worshiping together.

Second, we prepare a children’s bulletin which the children pick up when the adults receive theirs. The children’s bulletin contains the text of such service items as the Apostles’ Creed, and there are side bars and added texts with arrows to explain what various words or phrases occurring in the service mean. The third page contains a one paragraph summary of the sermon with several questions about it for the older children and a “word alert” section for those who are younger. “Word alert” lists words they can listen for.

Third, both the organist and I come to the opening exercises of the Sunday School to talk about the sermon and the hymns. I explain what I am going to be talking about and what the children should look for. I even ask them to pray that people who are not Christians may hear what God has to say and be converted. The organist tells about the hymns we will sing, who wrote them, and why we sing them as we do.

By the way, we teach the children hymns instead of choruses, since they learn them easily at this age. We have them memorize a children’s catechism and large blocks of Scripture too, believing that it is a serious mistake to waste precious Sunday School time with mere games or trivia.

I would like to get pastors and other church leaders to rethink what we are doing with our children. There is more than one way of causing these little ones to stumble.

Copyright-James Montgomery Boice

The Theology of Unclean Food (Gordon J Wenham)

One aspect of the Old Testament which has constantly eluded ordinary Christians is the "food laws" spelled out especially in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. For Christians in the west, these laws may seem not only archaic but unnecessary. For those of us who have had contact with Jews or Muslims, we recognise that "food laws" are not only mandatory; in a profound sense, they define a very important tenet of their theology and, indeed, they form the "warp-and-woof" of daily living. In this article, Gordon Wenham offers much needed help for those of us who wish to understand the food laws in the Old Testament. I readily confess to a particular liking for Wenham as his writings have always left me with a clear "Christian" understanding of the Old Testament. He has his feet firmly planted on the necessity of understand the Old Testament within its own context, but without losing the necessary perspective offered by the fuller and more complete revelation offered by Christ and the apostles. This article is a wonderful example of what Wenham often does so well in that respect. It was originally published as Gordon J. Wenham, “The Theology of Unclean Food,” Evangelical Quarterly 53.1 (January/March 1981): 6-15.

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The problem of unclean foods was at the heart of the first great controversy in the early church (Acts 15). Did Gentile believers have to be circumcised and keep the laws of Moses about food? The conclusions of the council of Jerusalem are recorded in Acts, but there is little explanation of the theological reasoning behind the decisions. Commentators therefore tend to regard the decree (Acts 15:19-20) as little more than a pragmatic compromise between Judaizers and Hellenists.1

Since the theological principles determining the division of animals into clean and unclean are so obscure in the OT, it is not surprising that NT scholars have only been able to discern pragmatic reasons for the abolition of the distinction. Recent discussion of the OT material has at last brought some semblance of order into the apparent chaos of the food laws in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. These insights, it will be suggested, may also provide a clue to the thinking of the primitive church on these controversial issues.

I. TRADITIONAL EXPLANATIONS OF THE FOOD LAWS

1. Hygiene
Probably the most popular explanation of the food laws is hygiene. The unclean animals were recognized by the ancients as a danger to health, and were therefore pronounced unclean. This explanation is a very old one, but enjoyed its greatest vogue at the beginning of this century, with the great advances in medical knowledge. Moses was hailed as anticipating the findings of modern science. It still has its advocates today. R. E. Clements writes: “What we have here is a simple and comprehensive guidebook to food and personal hygiene.”2

Despite its inherent attractiveness the hygienic explanation faces four grave difficulties.3 First, other peoples have held and hold certain animals to be unclean, yet their demarcations seldom coincide with the biblical. Second, it is far from clear that all unclean animals mentioned in Leviticus are harmful to health. For example, the Arabs have long enjoyed the camel and its products. As for pork, if it is supposed that ancient Israel had discovered the risks in eating it, they could also have learnt that these risks could be avoided by cooking it thoroughly. Third, though motive clauses justifying particular rules are frequent in biblical law, there is no appeal to health in connection with the food rules. Yet this would surely have constituted an excellent reason for keeping them had it been recognized. Instead the motive clauses explain that certain animals may not be eaten, because of the way they travel or their eating habits (Lev. 11:3-12, 20-23, 26-31, etc.). Finally, if hygiene was the motive underlying the OT regulations, why did the early church allow their abolition in the first century AD? What was harmful when Leviticus 11 was drafted, would have been just as dangerous in the days of the early church.

2. Religious Associations
The second kind of explanation of the food laws is that the unclean animals were closely associated with non-Israelite religion.4 They were either used in sacrifice or the deities were supposed to manifest themselves in animal form. Israel was called to be the holy people of God and had therefore to disassociate itself from these pagan practices. For example, Isa. 65:4 speaks of people “who sit in tombs... who eat swine’s flesh”. And at various sites collections of pig bones have been found, which lends support to the notion that the pig was eaten in Canaanite rituals.5 Other animals banned as unclean by Leviticus were worshipped by the Egyptians.

This explanation of the distinction between clean and unclean animals has the merit of noting the biblical writers’ insistence that these regulations are designed to further the ideal of creating a holy nation (Lev. 11:44-5; Deut. 14:2). But its major weakness is that it can only explain a few of the regulations. In general, Israel used much the same animals for sacrifice as her neighbours. If use in contemporary religions were ground for making animals unclean, the bull should have been an abomination in Israel in view of its role in Canaanite and Egyptian culture. Yet in Israel the bull was the best and most valued of the sacrificial animals.

3. Carnivores
A third view is that the unclean animals are the carnivorous animals and the carrion-eating birds.6 This view finds support from the Mishnah,7 which suggests that the birds listed in Lev. 11:13-19 and Deut. 14:12-18 are birds of prey. The identification of some of these birds is still a matter of some doubt. But most commentators accept the Mishnah as basis for more precise identification. It is attractive to try and extend this logic to cover other branches of the animal kingdom. Obviously cloven-hoofed ruminants do not live on meat, whereas animals with paws (Lev. 11:27) such as cats and dogs are carnivorous.

This theory has greater merits than the first two, in that it covers more of the cases listed than they do. But it is noteworthy that in the lists of unclean animals it is never mentioned that they eat meat. Nor can some of the distinctions be explained on these grounds. Why should goats be clean, but pigs not? Why should locusts be thought edible, but no other insects? What is the thinking behind the division among water creatures?

Though inadequate as a total explanation of the uncleanness rules, G. R. Driver has drawn attention to an important aspect of biblical theology: the connection between man and the animal kingdom. Some of the animals are unclean because they do what is forbidden to man: they eat flesh with blood in it (Gen. 9:4-5; cf. Lev. 11:39). In the principle that the divisions among the animals and the way in which they behave mirror, at least to some extent, mankind’s divisions and behaviour, M. Douglas8 has found the key to these laws.

4. Symbolic Interpretations
The idea that different animals somehow symbolize men and their behaviour was a commonplace among older commentators. However, there is little agreement about what was symbolized. For example, one commentator9 suggests that chewing the cud makes an animal clean, because it reminded men to meditate on the law. Another10 suggested that the sheep is clean because it reminded the ancient Israelite that the LORD was his shepherd. But the dirty habits of the pig speak of the “filth of iniquity”. Other commentators11 have supposed that some animals are accounted unclean because of their associations with death or sin. This approach to the problem is intriguing and even entertaining, but it is little better than intuitive guesswork. The symbolism discovered depends largely on the commentator’s imagination, and there is no attempt to prove that the alleged symbolism really underlies the legal definitions. Unless greater discipline can be introduced into symbolist interpretation, it will always be more liable to represent the whims of the commentator than the purpose of the law.

II. AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH

The most recent attempt to interpret these laws is indeed symbolist, but it is based on a wideranging and empirical approach to the laws of Leviticus. In her book Purity and Danger Mary Douglas12 drew attention to the fact that in Leviticus holiness is not merely defined negatively as separation from evil, but positively as purity and wholeness and integrity. Holiness means purity in both the physical and moral sphere. Mixtures are abominated, whether they are mixed crops, mixed materials or mixed marriages (Lev. 18:23; 19:19; Deut. 7:3-6; 22:9-11). Holiness also means physical wholeness. The priests must not cut themselves, but “shall be holy to their God” (Lev. 21:5-6). They must. be physically unblemished; those who are lame, blind, or in any way deformed, may not officiate as priests (Lev. 21:5-6). Similar, though less stringent, regulations apply to laymen (Deut. 23:1-2―Heb. 2-3). Holiness also concerns the moral sphere. Wholeness, or integrity, is again of fundamental importance. Honesty and consistency in all one’s dealings are emphasized. Injunctions to this effect are found alongside those about purity and wholeness in Leviticus 19.

Douglas argues that the same insistence on wholeness underlies the uncleanness laws in Lev. 11/Deut. 14. The animal world is divided into three spheres: those that fly in the air, those that walk on the land, and those that swim in the seas (cf. Gen. 1:20-30). Each sphere has a particular mode of motion associated with it. Birds have two wings to fly with, and two feet for walking: fish have fins and scales to swim with; land animals have hooves to run with.

The clean animals are those that conform to these standard pure types. Those creatures which in some way transgress the boundaries are unclean. Thus fish without fins and scales are unclean (Lev. 11:10; Deut. 14:10). Insects which fly but which have many legs are unclean, whereas locusts which have wings and only two hopping legs are clean (Lev. 11:20-23). Animals with an indeterminate form of motion, i.e., which “swarm”, are unclean (Lev. 11:41-44). “Holiness requires that individuals shall conform to the class to which they belong.”13 In so far as some animals do not conform, they are unclean.

This analysis explains the main divisions between clean and unclean, but it does not explain why pigs are unclean, but sheep and goats are reckoned to be clean. Douglas thinks a rationale for this differentiation may be discerned if the social background to the laws is borne in mind. Sheep and goats would have been the standard meat of pastoralists, so it was natural for them to be regarded as clean. But pigs and camels did not conform exactly to the norms of behaviour defined by sheep and goats and were therefore unclean. They transgress the boundaries of clean animals in not chewing the cud or in lacking cloven feet. In other words, there is a parallel between the holiness looked for in man and the cleanness of animals: man must conform to the norms of moral and physical perfection, and animals must conform to the standards of the animal group to which they belong.14

But this is far from establishing a close tie-up between the animal and human world. In an article published in 1972, Douglas attempted this.15 In a series of diagrams she demonstrates that each sphere of the animal world is structured in a very similar fashion to the human world. The divisions between different groups of animals parallel the divisions between different human groups. There is such a degree of isomorphism between these different spheres that it is likely that, in the Israelite mind at least, a connection was seen between one sphere and the other. The patterns repeat so clearly that someone living in that culture would probably have sensed the analogy and appreciated the symbolism.

Various texts in the OT explicitly express the notion that there is a close relationship between man and the animals. According to Gen. 1:29-30 man and the animals were both expected to be vegetarian. In 2:18-20 the animals were formed as man’s companions. According to the decalogue, domestic animals were expected to keep the sabbath along with their masters (Exod. 20:10; Deut. 5:14). If Israel kept the covenant law, both man and beast were to be blessed with offspring (Deut. 28:4); but if the nation proved faithless, both children and animals were to be destroyed (Lev. 26:22; Deut. 28:18, 50-57).

Very striking are the close analogies between the role of the first-born among men and the first-born among animals. Both are dedicated to God (Exod. 13:2; 22:29-30 (Heb. 28-29); 34:19). Both have to be redeemed (Exod. 13:13, 15; 34:20). The first-born of non-sacrificial animals like asses must be redeemed by sacrificial animals, such as lambs (Exod. 13:13). Ordinary first-born Israelites are redeemed by Levites (Num. 8:16-18). Another point of similarity is that no animal may be offered to God in sacrifice until it is seven days old (Exod. 22:30 (Heb. 29); Lev. 22:27), which parallels the rule that circumcision is not to be performed until the eighth day after birth (Gen. 17:12; Lev. 12:3). Finally, it may be noted that only perfect unblemished animals may be offered in sacrifice (Lev. 1-4); so too only unblemished priests may officiate in worship (Lev. 21:17-21; cf. 22:19-25).

These examples appear to substantiate Douglas’s contention that this symbolism was consciously felt in ancient Israel, that there was a system underlying the uncleanness regulations. They expressed an understanding of holiness, and of Israel’s special status as the holy people of God. The division into clean (edible) foods and unclean (inedible) foods corresponded to the division between holy Israel and the Gentile world. Among those animals that were clean there were a few types that could be offered in sacrifice. Similarly there was a group of men within Israel who could offer sacrifice, the priests. Through this system of symbolic laws Israelites were reminded at every meal of their redemption to be God’s people. Their diet was limited to certain meats in imitation of their God, who had restricted his choice among the nations to Israel. It served, too, to bring to mind Israel’s responsibilities to be a holy nation. As they distinguished between clean and unclean foods, they were reminded that holiness was more than a matter of meat and drink but a way of life characterized by purity and integrity.

III. THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE FOOD LAWS

In the OT the food laws symbolized and embodied Israel’s status as a covenant people. No doubt their consciousness of this symbolism waxed and waned in different periods, but during the exile and afterwards the ordinary Israelite must have been constantly reminded of his position as a stranger among the nations by these food laws, which made it difficult for him to eat with Gentile neighbours. It is therefore not surprising that in the NT era there was such controversy about the abolition of these rules. Circumcision was a private matter, but the food laws made one’s Jewish faith a public affair. Observance of the food laws was one of the outward marks of a practising Jew, and this in turn enhanced Jewish attachment to them as a reminder of their special status.

With Christianity OT Judaism was universalized to embrace all mankind. It is of a piece with this transformation that the food laws were dropped by the Christian church. With the incorporation of the Gentiles into the church, Israel was no longer regarded as the unique covenant people (Gal. 3:6-29; Eph. 2:11-16). To drop the laws that symbolized the peculiar status of Israel was not merely convenient if Gentiles were to be converted, it was also a step of theological logic. If the wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles was broken down, the distinction between clean and unclean food should also have been abolished. But was this theological logic apparent to the NT writers, or did the early church discard the food laws merely for pragmatic reasons to facilitate the conversion of the Gentiles? Were the early Christians really conscious of the symbolism of the levitical law? There are indications that they were.

1. The Synoptic Gospels
In the synoptic gospels one section deals with the question of unclean foods (Matt. 15:1-20/Mark 7:1-23). Jesus attacks the Pharisees for being so punctilious about washing their hands and vessels before meals while neglecting the more important aspects of the law. He insists that what a man eats does not defile him, but only what comes out of him; evil thoughts, murder, etc. In the Matthaean version this is merely a criticism of the Pharisaic concern with ritual washing. But Mark adds as comment in 7:19: “Thus he declared all meats clean”. In other words, if the principle just enunciated by Jesus is taken to its logical conclusion, it not only undermines the Pharisaic concern with clean hands but also the Levitical distinction between clean and unclean animals. But it is noteworthy that the evangelist does not explicitly attribute this conclusion to Jesus. This is of a piece with the synoptic writers’ presentation of Jesus’ mission as a mission to the Jews rather than to the Gentiles. If there was felt to be a connection between the inclusion of the Gentiles in the church and the end of the distinction of foods, we could expect neither or both to figure in the teaching of Jesus, but not one without the other. It seems that neither figures at least at all prominently in his preaching.

Nevertheless it is noteworthy that in both Matthew and Mark the section on uncleanness is immediately followed by the episode of the Syro-Phoenician woman. Jesus reluctantly heals the Greek woman’s daughter, though protesting that he was really sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. This suggests that at least in the mind of the evangelists there was a link between Jesus’ remarks on uncleanness and the extension of divine grace to the Gentiles.

2. John
John’s gospel seems to allude to the connection between unclean foods and the Gentiles. In this case, however, Jesus’ attitude to the question of uncleanness is implicit in his actions rather than in his words. He asks a drink of a Samaritan woman, which surprised her, for “Jews and Samaritans... do not use vessels in common” (John 4:9 NEB). By his request Jesus demonstrated his indifference to the uncleanness rules that were accepted by stricter Jews. The story goes on to tell how many Samaritans believed on Jesus. This tale seems to hint that in Christ both the laws on uncleanness and the dispute between Jews and Samaritans are superseded.

3. Acts
Acts 10 explicitly connects the incorporation of the Gentiles with the abolition of the food laws. In his vision Peter sees “all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air” (v.12). He is told to “rise, kill and eat” (v.13). But he refuses saying “ ‘No, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.’ And the voice came to him again a second time, ‘What God has cleansed, you must not call common’ ” (vv.14-15).

Mystified by the dream, he is told by the Spirit to go to the house of Cornelius (vv.19-20). Once there he realizes the significance of the vision: “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit any one of another nation; but God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean” (v.28). In other words the vision commanding Peter to eat unclean animals announces that God has now opened the way to intercourse between Jew and Gentile. Peter goes on to expound more fully the further theological implications of his vision. “God shows no partiality” (v.34); no longer is Israel the unique covenant people. In immediate demonstration of their new standing these Gentiles receive the Spirit like the Jews, and are then baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus (vv.44-48). Luke underlines the significance of this episode by mentioning it twice more in Acts 11 and 15. Again Peter justifies his new attitude to the Gentiles by referring to the vision of unclean animals (11:5-9; cf. 15:7-9).

Acts 15 tells how the apostles met in Jerusalem to discuss whether Gentile converts should be circumcised and keep the law of Moses; the account makes it plain that it is the food laws that are the controversial element in the law. Both unclean foods and circumcision were marks of distinction between Jew and Gentile. There were strong pragmatic reasons for not imposing circumcision and uncleanness rules on Gentile believers, and it is sometimes suggested that the decision of the council was dictated more by convenience than by theology. But as Luke presents the debate, the decision was the outcome of the Cornelius episode. For a third time we are reminded of what happened on that occasion (vv. 7-11). Then James argues that if the Gentiles are to be admitted to the church, it is logical to drop those laws which symbolized their exclusion. The only demands made of them are that they should abstain from idolatry, immorality, from eating blood and strangled animals. This last regulation was one that was traced back to Noah (Gen. 9:4). Antedating the election of Israel it could not be held to symbolize Israel’s unique status; as presented in Genesis it appears as a moral law binding on all mankind.

4. Paul
Paul discusses at some length which foods a Christian may eat (see Rom. 14; 1 Cor. 8; 10). He never suggests that any particular foods are prohibited. The OT distinctions between clean and unclean are never discussed. This is of course parallel to his attitude to the Gentiles; for him they are an integral part of the church (Rom. 11:17-19; Gal. 3:28). For Paul the only reason for abstaining from certain foods is love of one’s neighbour. In Romans 14 he has the plight of Jewish Christians in mind, who may be offended if Gentile Christians do not respect their scruples on food when they eat together. In 1 Cor. 8 love is again the motive for abstinence. But this time it is love for pagans who may be misled into supposing that there is no difference between following Christ and paganism if Christians eat food offered to idols.

SUMMARY
Running through the biblical laws on clean and unclean foods there is a coherent and consistent theology. In Leviticus the divisions within the animal kingdom express in elaborate symbolism the divisions among men, the most important of these being that between Israel and the Gentiles. The laws reminded Israel what sort of behaviour was expected of her, that she had been chosen to be holy in an unclean world. The reality behind this symbolism was reinforced in the national consciousness by its experience among the nations. With the incorporation of Gentiles on an equal footing with Jews in the Christian church, the food laws and circumcision lost their symbolic significance and were therefore dropped within the church. It would be too much to claim that every Jew in biblical times fully understood the symbolism expressed in the food laws, but it is suggested that wherever the Bible discusses unclean foods it is related to the uncleanness of the Gentiles under the old covenant.

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1 Cf. E. Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles (Oxford: Blackwell, 1971), 449; W. Neil, The Acts of the Apostles (London: Oliphants, 1973), 174.
2 R. E. Clements, Leviticus (Broadman Bible Commentary II; London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1971), 34; cf. W. F. Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan (New York: Doubleday, 1968), 177-180; G. Cansdale, Animals of Bible Lands (Exeter: Paternoster, 1970), 14.
3 F. J. Simoons, Eat Not This Flesh (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1961), 37-42.
4 M. Noth, Leviticus (London: SCM, 1965), 92, favoured this explanation.
5 R. de Vaux, BZAW 77 (1958), 250-265.
6 G. R. Driver, “Birds in the OT”, PEQ 87 (1955), 7. J. Milgrom, “The Biblical Diet Laws as an Ethical System”, Interpretation 17 (1963), 288-301, also emphasizes the importance of avoiding blood, but thinks hesitations about idolatry were also involved.
7 Hullin 3.6.
8 See below and footnotes 12-15.
9 So Kurtz quoted by C. F. Keil, Manual of Biblical Archaeology, II (Edinburgh: Clark, 1888), 121-2.
10 A. A. Bonar, A Commentary on Leviticus (London: Banner of Truth, 1846 reprinted 1972), 214-215.
11 E.g. D. Hoffmann, Das Buch Leviticus (Berlin: Poppelauer, 1905), 315-322.
12 M. Douglas, Purity and Danger (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 41-57.
13 Douglas, Purity, 53.
14 Douglas, Purity, 54-5.
15 “Deciphering a Meal”, Daedalus 101 (1972), 61-81, reprinted in Natural Symbols (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), 249-275.

© 1981 Gordon J. Wenham