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Having already covered his teaching on the subjects of original sin and justification in previous articles, in this issue of LifeLines we turn our attention to Charles Finney’s teaching on the atonement. Let me say at the outset that this is going to be far more difficult than the previous subjects we have addressed, for a number of reasons. There is a vast amount of material in Scripture on the subject of the atonement, that is, the substitutionary death of Christ and how it saves us. It is extremely difficult to get your arms around it all at once; whole volumes would not exhaust the subject. It involves some of the deepest concepts in Scripture, some of the deepest thoughts and ways of God, including much that remains a mystery or at least evades the utmost effort to understand fully: the complexity as well as the vastness of the subject makes it difficult. Finney’s terminology and style certainly doesn’t help. Then I must include something of the history of theories of the atonement, and besides all this, write in such a way that you can make some sense of it all. I will simply do my best with God’s help. You will have to do your best to prayerfully and thoughtfully consider what I (and the others I quote, including Finney) have to say.

As we have already noted, there are no subjects more crucial to the Christian faith than those on which we are concentrating—justification by faith, the atonement, and the new birth. Any error in Christianity is a matter for concern because God is a God of truth (Deut. 32:4); Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life (Jn. 14:6); the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth (Jn. 14:17); and the gospel is the way of truth (2 Pet. 2:2). Many errors, however, are of relatively minor consequence. With many issues in Christianity there is room for charitable disagreement owing to different perspectives, especially in those things about which there is not a great deal of information in the Bible or which occupy a relatively minor place of importance. Even with major subjects in Christianity, such as justification, the atonement, or the new birth, there may exist minor errors or disagreements which do not seriously effect one’s standing with God and which can and should be borne with tolerance. But the subjects upon which we are concentrating regarding Finney are so central and the errors which he holds concerning them are so great that the situation could not be more serious. It is necessary to refute them.

As we have also noted, justification, atonement, and the new birth are inseparably related to each other; how we view one will affect how we view the others. As we have seen, Finney denies that we are justified by faith in the Scriptural sense and insists instead that only entire obedience to the moral law is accepted by God as righteousness. It is no wonder, then, that, as we shall show, he should deny that Christ’s atoning death brought about our justification or salvation in any direct way. The common view of the atonement is that since death is the penalty for sin, Christ paid that penalty by dying for us, making it possible for God to forgive us and give us eternal life without violating His justice. Finney denies that Christ’s death was punishment and insists that the way His death saves us is by showing how seriously God takes sin and much He loves us, and that when we see this we are motivated to take sin seriously, too, love God in return, and live a holy life. This view of the atonement is not Finney’s personal creation. It is a combination of what are known as the "moral influence" and "governmental" theories. Of the "moral influence" view, B.B. Warfield writes in The New Schaff-Herzog Religious Encyclopedia:

The essence of all these theories [there are many slight variations of it] is that....the work of Christ takes immediate effect not on God but on man, leading him to a state of mind and heart which will be acceptable to God, through the medium of which alone can the work of Christ be said to affect God. At its highest level, this will mean that the work of Christ is directed to leading man to repentance and faith....The most popular form of the "moral influence" theories has always been that in which the stress is laid on the manifestation made in the total mission and work of Christ of the ineffable and searching love of God for sinners, which, being perceived, breaks down our opposition to God, melts our hearts, and brings us as prodigals home to the Father’s arms.....(The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge; Samuel Macauley Jackson, editor in chief; Baker Book House: Grand Rapids, MI; Vol.I, pp.352,353)

H. D. McDonald writes:

What has come to be called the moral influence theory of the atonement was first given formal expression by Peter Abelard [1079-1142]. (The Atonement of the Death of Christ, H.D. McDonald; Baker Book House: Grand Rapids, MI; 1985, p.174)

Abelard was a monk born in Britain but living most of his life in France, who, as most of those who later to adopted this view of the atonement, was a theological "liberal." Schaff-Herzog says of him:

His originality is seen in his doctrine of the Trinity and the Atonement....[He] does not limit inspiration to the writers of the Scriptures, but holds that it was imparted also to the Greek and Roman philosophers and to the Indian Brahmans [Hindus]. He...recognizes degrees of inspiration, and admits that prophets and apostles may make mistakes....As for his ethics, he teaches that moral good and ill inhere not in the act but in the motive....(Ibid., p.9)

Later the moral influence and governmental views of the atonement were adopted by liberal theologians because through these views they could keep something of the gospel while ridding it of, to them, distasteful aspects such as the judgment and wrath of God against sin. To them, God was all love and needed no propitiation or sacrifice to appease His wrath and make forgiveness possible. Finney adopts this same view of the atonement but for quite different reasons. For him, the moral and governmental views were convenient for destroying the false security of those who were sure that because of the atonement, they could sin with impunity. In his characteristic manner, he goes after the standard, age-old doctrines of the church, that is, the teaching of the Word of God itself, in order to remove the refuge of sinners. In his zeal for holiness, he removes every doctrine that may be construed as standing in the way, and in the process, leaves the believer as well as all mankind with nothing but free will and obedience to the moral law of God as our salvation. But this is to destroy the gospel itself. It is, as Paul put it concerning the Judaizers who threatened the Galatians, to preach "a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all" (Galatians 1:6,7).

Again, in characteristic fashion, Finney is moved by reason andpragmatism (he sees the woeful state of Christians and Christianity of his day regarding holiness). If the sinner will be punished forever in hell for his sins and the "believer" who continues in sin will meet the same judgment, then Christ must not in any real objective sense have borne our sins on the cross. Neither was He punished for them; otherwise how could God justly punish sinners for the same sins? Practical concerns and logic drive Finney’s theology, not Scripture. If Scripture seems to stand in the way of his logic and pragmatism, he has no scruples about changing Scripture by way of re-interpretation so as to fit his thinking. The end result, though through different means and from a different perspective and for different reasons, is the same as with liberal theologians who reject the authority of Scripture outright.

The liberal theologian Hastings Rashdall (1920) wrote in glowing praise of Abelard’s "moral influence" theory:

At last we have found a theory of the atonement which thoroughly appeals to reason and conscience..... [I]ntellectual, and still more religious, progress often consists simply in setting an idea free from a context which is really inconsistent with it. In the history of the atonement doctrine this task was accomplished by Abelard. For the first time—or rather for the first time since the days of the earliest and most philosophical Greek fathers—the doctrine of the atonement was stated in a way which had nothing unintelligible, arbitrary, illogical, or immoral about it....When we see in the death of Christ the most striking expression and symbol of the spirit which dominated His whole life, our recognition of the divine love which shines forth in that death ceases to be dependent upon our accepting any of those always difficult and sometimes repulsive theories of substitutive or expiative or objective efficacy which were once connected with it. (The Idea of Atonement in Christian Thought; London: Macmillan; 1920, pp.360-362; quoted in McDonald, op.cit., p.179)

Development of the moral influence view can be traced from Abelard on to Faustus Socinus (1539-1604) who wrote in vigorous opposition to the penal views of the Reformers:

The Socinian doctrine of atonement lies outside the mainstream of Protestant thought and is worked out in deliberate rejection of the thesis that Christ’s work satisfied a principle in God of divine justice. It is usual to speak of the Socinian doctrine of the atonement; but in truth this is a misnomer, for the whole effort of Socinus was to deny to Christ’s death any specific atoning value. And with his Arian view of the person of Christ and his Pelagian view of man’s sin, it follows that he can have no serious soteriology [doctrine of salvation]....Socinus puts forward a number of propositions which must, he thinks, make the penal doctrine of atonement void. His basic thesis is that the idea of satisfaction excludes the idea of mercy. He formulates the dilemma: if sin is punished, it is not forgiven; if it is forgiven, it is not punished....In Pelagian fashion, Socinus declared sin a personal matter; it cannot be set to another’s account....He argues that since the law threatens endless death, and thus each owes endless punishment, each must then have a substitute to pay his everlasting debt. It is evident that Christ did not endure such sufferings.... Socinus considers the penal theory to introduce an antagonism between God’s mercy and his justice. But he denies any such hostility....The cross draws us to accept divine mercy. "Though the intervention of the blood of Christ did not move God to grant us exemption from punishment of our sins, nevertheless it has moved us to accept the pardon offered and to put our faith in Christ himself—whence comes our justification—and has also in the highest way commended to us the ineffable love of God." (McDonald, op.cit., pp.196-199)

Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), in response to Socinus, is credited as the first to formally set forth what is called the "governmental" view of the atonement to which Finney subscribes. Grotius acknowledged some of the points made by Socinus against the penal view while at the same time trying to hold on to as much of the traditional view of the atonement as he could:

Grotius accepts with Socinus that justice is not an inherent necessity of the divine nature....Grotius consequently conceives of God as ruler rather than judge. This relationship of God to man as Governor over the governed has occasioned the title for its view, the governmental or rectorial theory of the atonement.... "[A]ll punishment presupposes some common good—the conservation and example of order." But it is unjust that the punishment should fall upon someone other than the doer of the evil....He accepts Socinus’s criticism of the penal doctrine of Christ’s sufferings as an exact equivalent for the divine penalty of sin....If...the law were completely abrogated, then its authority would be endangered and the forgiveness of sin regarded as too easy an affair. The government of God cannot be maintained unless there is reverence for law. The death of Christ is consequently a signal exhibition of this regard for the law and the heinous guilt of having broken it....Forgiveness cannot be so given as to make sin unimportant. Christ, however, did not bear the exact penalty but the substitute for a penalty.... (McDonald, op.cit., pp.203-205)

From Abelard, Socinus, and Grotius, the moral influence view flowed into a huge stream which went on to dominate liberal Protestantism. The 19th century German "rationalist" theologians (so called because they subjected everything, even the claim of the divine inspiration of the Scriptures to the rule of reason) adopted this view wholeheartedly with numerous minor variations. F.W. Robertson, Horace Bushnell, Albrecht Ritschl, John Young, W.N. Clarke, G.B. Stevens, and many others picked it up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was only with the appearance of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics in 1936 that this flood was somewhat checked, and since then many scholarly works have defended the traditional penal view. Finney, while he could not be classified with rationalist or iberal theologians, nevertheless marshalled for his own particular purpose their view of the atonement which was the rage in his time. With some slight modifications, the view of Finney is that of Abelard and Grotius. He writes in his Lectures on Theology:

[A] leading design of penal sanctions is prevention.... [D]isobedience cannot be pardoned unless some equally efficient preventive be substituted for the execution of law....[I]n all cases of disobedience the executive is bound to inflict the penalty of the law, or see that some equivalent is rendered to public justice. The only equivalent that can be rendered to public justice is some governmental measure that will as fully illustrate and manifest the righteousness of the government, as the execution of law would do. The execution of law acts as a preventive, by demonstrating the righteousness of the law-giver, and thus begetting confidence and heart obedience....(p.211)

The English word Atonement is synonymous with the Hebrew word Cofer. This is a noun from the verb caufer, to cover....The term properly means substitution. An examination of these original words, in the connection in which they stand, will show that the Atonement is the substitution of the sufferings of Christ in the place of the sufferings of sinners. It is a covering of their sins, by his sufferings....(p.212)

Public justice required either that an Atonement should be made, or that the law should be executed upon every offender. By public justice is intended, that due administration of law, that shall secure in the highest manner the nature of the case admits, private and public interests, and establish the order and well-being of the universe....(p.213)

An atonement was needed, to present overpowering motives to repentance....that the offer of pardon might not seem like connivance at sin....to manifest the sincerity of God, in his legal enactments....[and] to make it safe to present the offer and promise of pardon....(p.214)

[T]he public service which he has rendered the universe by laying down his life for the support of the divine government, has rendered it eminently wise that all who are united to him by faith should be treated as righteous for his sake....The nature or kind of his sufferings. 1. His sufferings were not those of a sinner....2. He could not have endured the literal penalty of the law of God, for this we have seen in a former skeleton was eternal death. 3. He did not endure the displeasure of God. On the contrary, God expressly affirmed that he was his "beloved Son in whom he was well pleased." 4. But a substitute for the curse due to sinners fell on him. In other words, he endured such sufferings, as our substitute, both in kind and degree, as fully to meet the demand of public justice....The amount of his sufferings. 1. He did not suffer all that was due to sinners on the ground of retributive justice. This was naturally impossible, as each sinner deserved eternal death. 2. Inflicting upon him this amount of suffering would have been unjust, as his sufferings were infinitely more valuable than the sufferings of sinners....5. Neither wisdom nor enlightened benevolence could consent that an innocent being should suffer, as a substitute for a guilty one, the same amount that was justly due to the guilty....The atonement was not a commercial transaction. Some have regarded the Atonement simply in the light of the payment of a debt and have represented Christ as purchasing the elect of the Father and paying down the same amount of suffering in his own person that justice would have executed of them. To this I answer: 1. It is naturally impossible, as it would require that satisfaction should be made to retributive justice. 2. But as we have seen in a former lecture, retributive justice must have inflicted on them eternal death. To suppose, therefore, that Christ suffered in amount all that was due to the elect, is to suppose that he suffered an eternal punishment multiplied by the whole number of the elect....The Atonement of Christ was intended as a satisfaction of public justice....Public justice requires that penalties....shall be inflicted for the public good, as an expression of the law-giver’s regard to the law, of his determination to support public order, and by a due administration of justice to secure the highest well being of the public. As has been seen in a former lecture, a leading design of the sanctions of law is prevention; and the execution of penal sanctions, both remuneratory [fines] and vindicatory [imprisonments, etc.], is to prevent disobedience and secure obedience or universal happiness....Atonement is, therefore, a part, and a most influential part of moral government....Atonement is an expedient above law, not contrary to it, which adds new and vastly influential motives to induce obedience. I have said it is an auxiliary to law, adding to the precept and sanction of law an overpowering exhibition of love and compassion. The Atonement is an illustrious exhibition of commutative justice, in which the government of God, by an act of infinite grace, commutes or substitutes the sufferings of Christ for the eternal damnation of sinners....[T]he work of the Atonement was the most interesting and impressive exhibition of God that ever was made in this world and probably in the universe....the highest means of promoting virtue that exists in this world, perhaps the universe....(pp.220-223)

1. ...[T]he value of the Atonement consists in its moral power or tendency to promote virtue and happiness. 2. Moral power is the power of motive. 3. The highest moral power is the influence of example....7. Christ is God. In the Atonement God has given us the influence of his own example, has exhibited his own love, his own compassion, his own self-denial, his own patience, his own long-suffering, under abuse from enemies....[He gave] the whole weight of his own example in favor of all the virtues which he requires of man....The value of the atonement may be estimated, by its moral influence in the promotion of holiness among all holy beings [angels]....The value of the atonement may be estimated, by considering the fact that it provides for the pardon of sin, in a way that forbids the hope of impunity in any other case....If sin is to be forgiven at all, under the government of God, it should be known to be forgiven upon principles that will by no means encourage rebellion, or hold out the least hope of impunity, should rebellion break out in any other part of the universe [among the angels]....We have reason to believe, that Christ, by his Atonement, is not only the Savior of this world, but the Savior of the universe in an important sense....The exhibition of God has proved itself, not merely able to prevent rebellion among holy beings, but to reclaim and reform rebels....This world is to be turned back to its allegiance to God, and the blessed Atonement of Christ has so unbosomed God before the universe, as, no doubt, not only to save other worlds from going into rebellion, but to save myriads of our already rebellious race from the depths of an eternal hell....(pp.224-227)

Objections....The Atonement, as we have seen, had respect simply to public, and not at all to retributive justice. Christ suffered what was necessary to illustrate the feelings of God towards sin and towards his law. But the amount of his sufferings had no respect to the amount of punishment that might have justly been inflicted on the wicked. 2. The punishment of sinners is just as much deserved by them as if Christ had not suffered at all. 3. Their forgiveness, therefore, is just as much an act of mercy as if there had been no Atonement. IV. It is objected that it is unjust to punish an innocent being instead of the guilty. Ans. 1. Yes, it would not only be unjust, but it is impossible to punish an innocent individual at all. Punishment implies guilt. An innocent being may suffer, but he cannot be punished....X. It is objected that if the Atonement was not a payment of the debt of sinners, but general in its nature, as we have mentioned, it secures the salvation of no one. Ans. It is true the Atonement itself does not secure the salvation of any one: but the promise and oath of God that Christ shall have a seed to serve him does.... (pp.231,232,234)

Sinners will not give up their enmity against God, nor believe that his is disinterested love, until they realize that he actually died as their substitute. In this can be seen the exceeding strength of unbelief and prejudice against God. But faith in the Atonement of Christ rolls a mountain weight of crushing considerations upon the heart of the sinner. Thus the blood of Christ when apprehended and believed in, cleanses from all sin....From this you can see the indispensable necessity of faith in the Atonement of Christ, and why it is that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation only to every one that believeth. If the Atonement is not believed, it is to that mind no revelation of God at all, and with such a mind the gospel has no moral power. But the Atonement tends in the highest manner to beget in the believer the spirit of entire and universal consecration to God. (pp.234,235) (The Heart of Truth, Charles Finney, formerly titled Finney’s Lectures on Theology [1968] and originally issued as Skeletons of a Course of Theological Lectures [1840]; Bethany Fellowship: Minneapolis,MN; pp.211-235)

Of course I have had to greatly abbreviate Finney’s comments for the sake of space, but I have included, I believe, the gist of his position. I have not excluded, in other words, all that he said in agreement of the standard position of the church on the atonement, because he doesn’t give any. This is it. This is his view of the atonement. The major ideas that constitute the atonement in the traditional sense are simply absent. I have also tried to be fair and not omit some point that would strengthen his argument.

Someone might ask if Finney cites Scripture for his views. He does cite Scripture, but only in a very telling and characteristic way. In the section from which I quoted, pp. 211-235, he lumps up together Isaiah chapter 53, Hebrews 2:10,17,18; 4:15, without comment on pp.218-219, but only to show that, "The sufferings of Christ, and especially his death, constituted the Atonement," which contributes nothing to his particular views concerning it. Then again on pp. 220-221 he quotes Isaiah 53:4-12 (again), and Romans 4:25; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 9:28; and 1 Peter 2:24; and also Isaiah 53:11,12 (again) and Romans 3:24-26 on p. 222, in both cases immediately after pronouncing two more times that Jesus suffered "as to fully meet the demands of public justice." Of course, none of the verses cited have any reference whatsoever to "public justice." In fact, they can be used to show just the opposite of what he claims, that Jesus did indeed suffer the penalty of law, that is death, for our sins. He also quotes 1 John 2:2; John 3:17; Hebrews 2:9; and John 3:16 on pp. 232-233 in support of the fact that Christ died for all men, not just the elect as Calvinists claim. But this is not distinctive to his views on the atonement at all—it is the standard Arminian position. Except for these few places, there are no Scriptural references at all (as far as I can see). All of this is tell-tale and characteristic of Finney’s theology as a whole and demonstrates its inherent weakness. He is not primarily concerned with exegesis of Scripture, but is led by reason and a preconceived agenda. It is also enlightening to note that when he has a solid case from Scripture, i.e., the bare fact that Christ’s death constitutes the atonement (without any reference as to how it does this, which is what his presentation is primarily designed to do) and the fact that Christ died for everyone, not just the elect, he is quite capable of noting those Scripture references that plainly prove the case. But when he makes his statements concerning how the atonement works according to his particular brand of the moral influence/governmental view, which makes up the main bulk of comments in this section, he either cites no Scripture at all or makes no case at all from the few verses he does cite (in only two places, both after the same point, his "public justice" claim) to show that they back up his statements. This is very telling. Further, he actually goes so far as to say in one place right in the middle of this section on the atonement:

These various positions might be sustained by numerous quotations from scripture, but in this skeleton form they cannot conveniently be given; and besides, it is no part of my design to dispense with the necessity of your searching the Bible for the proof of these positions yourselves. (Ibid., p.223)

Surely this is sheer evasion. Corroborative Scriptures for his views "cannot conveniently be given" here? Then why are they given when it comes to the mere fact that Christ’s death constitutes the atonement and that it was universal? The case is exactly the same in His Systematic Theology, where Scripture references certainly could be conveniently given. It’s not that we won’t have anything left to do if he quotes Scripture for his views. The real reason he doesn’t quote Scripture is that he knows full well that there is no real case for these views from Scripture. He argues first and foremost from his own reasoning, his own supposed axioms, and his own prejudiced set of "cannot’s" and "must be’s." Moral government people are still trying to carry his water for him and do the foot work searching the Scriptures for his views, but it is awful to behold because the Bible teaches no such things. The best they can do is, if they give a hard enough twist to the Scriptures on the atonement, one might be able to see how they might be interpreted in a way that is consistent with their views.

Although my space is limited, I will offer a point by point rebuttal of Finney’s thesis.

First, he begins and ends with God as Governor, whose main concern is the good of his subjects. Certainly God is described as King in Scripture, but this is not His only role any more than benevolence is, in essence, His only attribute as Finney (and the liberals) maintains. God is also a Judge who punishes sin, not just to teach the universe a lesson about morals and motivate them to obey, but simply because it deserves punishment. Finney restricts his view of God to Governor (and not Judge) for the very same reason that Grotius did before him—so he can put his governmental or rectorial view of the atonement in place of the penal view which considers God primarily as a Judge.

The teaching on atonement in the Bible does not depict God as a Governor, but as a Judge set on punishing sin and Who cannot acquit the sinner except on the grounds of Christ’s bearing the punishment for sin in the sinner’s stead. This is the whole line of argument in the book of Romans, for example:

1) "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godliness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness" (1:18).

2) After one of his characteristic lists of sins, Paul adds, "Although they know God’s righteous decree ["judgment," KJV] that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them" (1:32).

3) The entire second chapter is devoted to the judgment and wrath of God against sin: "Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth" (2:2). And what is the judgment of God against men for their sin?— "...that those who do such things deserve death." The context of chapter two makes it plain that this is a reference to the fact that the law of Moses required the death penalty for heinous offences. Clearly the view of God in chapters 1-3 is that of a Judge who is angry with sinners and punishes them with death because they deserve it, not as a Governor whose concern is to benevolently rule the world (2:2,3,5,7-12; 3:4-6).

4) Next Paul proves that all men, Jews as well as Gentiles are sinners before God and therefore come under His decree that they must die (2:12,17-24; 3:9-18). They cannot be saved by observing the law—it can only increase their guilt and culpability (3:19,20). "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (3:23).

5) "Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God" (3:19,KJV; "may be brought under the judgment of God,"ASV). The scene here is taken from the court room, in keeping with the motif of these chapters which depicts God as Judge. All men have sinned and are convicted, condemned, and sentenced by God the Judge to death as the penalty for breaking His law.

6) Then how may they be justified, forgiven? By the satisfaction made to the penal justice of God in the death of Jesus Christ: "Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth (to be) a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God; for the showing, (I say), of his righteousness at this present season: that he might himself be just, and the ustifier of him that hath faith in Jesus" (3:24-26, ASV). The Greek word for "redemption" is equivalent to "ransoming" and means "deliverance by the payment of a price." It was abundantly common in everyday use in Paul’s day for the freeing of slaves by payment of ransom. And what was the price paid in this case to set us free from sin and death? The blood of Christ, whom Paul thus calls a "propitiation." I don’t have the space to go into it here, but the word definitely means a sacrifice that appeases wrath. This certainly fits the context of Paul’s argument in these three chapters. All men are sinners incurring God’s wrath and deserve death, but God, who is Love as well as Justice, sets forth His own Son as a sacrifice that appeases His wrath and makes forgiveness possible.

This concept of Christ’s sacrifice as a propitiation is supported by the Old Testament sacrifices which prefigured it. In Numbers 15 Israel committed fornication and idolatry with Moabite women. An Israelite prince brought his Moabite princess lover into the camp. God’s wrath broke out against the people for passively allowing this, and He sent a plague killing thousands of the Israelites and threatening the rest. Phinehas went in to the couple’s tent and thrust them both through with a spear. "Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, has turned my anger away from the Israelites; for he was as zealous as I am for my honor among them, so that in my zeal I did not put an end to them....he was zealous for the honor of his God and made atonement for the Israelites." God commends Phinehas for killing the offenders and says he "made atonement," "turning His anger away," and bringing about the sparing from death of the Israelites. Atonement is a propitiation that turns aside wrath and saves from death. This is not an isolated case in the Old Testament—all the sin offerings were satisfactions or expiations, propitiations. Indeed, this is the nature of atonement. There is no idea of "public justice" in the word "propitiation." And the sacrifice is made, not to move men to repent, but to enable God to forgive sins. God would not have been just if He had forgiven sins without the redemption and propitiation made in Christ Jesus. "He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification" (4:25). It was God who set Jesus forth as a propitiation; it was God who delivered Him over to death for our sins. It is much easier to mistake or intentionally misrepresent the meaning of isolated Bible texts, but these verses in Romans chapters 1-5 are not isolated texts but form the gist of Paul’s argument. Who can read this and not think that His death was penal, carrying out a judicial sentence? Obviously only a lawyerly Pelagian mind and those under its influence.

7) "Christ died for the ungodly....God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!" (5:6,8,9). Considering what has gone before in chapters 1-4, what can this possibly mean but that Christ died our death, the death we owed because of our sin, that He died as our substitute in the fullest sense of the word? We stood before God the Judge convicted, condemned, and sentenced to death by His law; but what does Christ do? He takes our place and carries out our sentence, dying in our stead! How can anyone read this argument in Romans and maintain that Christ’s death or sufferings were not penal or punishment? This would be to divorce Jesus’ death from the whole argument of the first three chapters. We were sentenced to death by the law for our sin, but Christ’s death in our stead was not the carrying out of that sentence? Nonsense. We sinned; we were subject to God’s wrath; God set Jesus forth as a sacrifice to appease that wrath by carrying out the penal sentence imposed on us by God for our sin—death—so that we have now been justified and are saved from God’s wrath. It takes a lot of work, a lot of supplying words in between the words as well as ignoring the meaning of some of the words, to reduce these plain statements into Christ’s death being a satisfaction of "public justice" which moves us to repent and obey God so that we will be forgiven and not encounter God’s wrath. Objections from liberals (and from Finney) that there is something inherently illogical or impossible or immoral or disgusting or whatever in this plain setting forth by Paul of the atonement and how it saves avail absolutely nothing. "Let God be true, and every man a liar. As it is written: ‘So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge’" (3:4).

Second, the moral influence/governmental view of Finney has atonement terminating primarily on man in a subjective fashion, not on God in an objective fashion. According to his view God is affected by the atonement only indirectly by our repentance and obedience once we see the atonement. But all this also is quite contrary to the whole testimony of the Scriptures on atonement. "And walk in love, just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma" (Ephesians 5:2,NAS). "How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" (Hebrews 9:14,NAS). What is true of Christ’s sacrifice is true also of the Old Testament sacrifices which typified it—they were all offered to God and terminated upon Him, not man. This can be seen from the fact that sin offerings could only be offered by a priest on an altar in front of the door to the tabernacle/temple where God’s manifest presence dwelt. Over and over again it is expressed in the law that there was a direct connection, not an indirect one, between the offering of the victim on the altar by a priest for the sinner and the sinner’s forgiveness. "And [the priest will] do with this bull just as he did with the bull for the sin offering. In this way the priest will make atonement for them, and they will be forgiven" (Leviticus 4:20; plus 4:26,31,35; 5:6,10,13,16,18; 6:7; 19:22; Numbers 15:25-26, 28). In Leviticus 17 God expressly forbid the Israelites to eat blood because, "The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement" (17:11,NAS). The blood itself made atonement on the altar that had been consecrated to God. The atonement made was Godward, affecting Him and making it the grounds of the forgiveness that was received in return instead of the death of the sinner. Hebrews sums up the whole of Old Testament sacrifices, which are expressly said to typify Christ’s sacrifice, this way: "In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" (9:22). Are we to understand that the Israelites brought those sacrifices to the temple, but the real reason was not to propitiate offended Justice but to be moved by the sight to repentance and obedience? Nonsense. The blood on the altar made atonement for their souls. It is the same with the Anti-type, Christ, then. In 1 John 1:7 we read, "The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses us from all sin." To insert, as Finney’s view would have it, "The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, when we are moved by the sight of it to repent and obey and are therefore forgiven, cleanses us from all sin," is to create one’s own personal Amplified Bible and destroy the simple and plain meaning in the process. When the Israelites put the blood of the sacrificial lamb on the door posts of their houses in Exodus 12, was it so the Israelites would see it and repent or so that God would see it and relent of His judgment, sparing the death of their firstborn? Well, it was God who said, "...[W]hen I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt" (12:13,NAS). Just so, my friends, as in the type, so in the Anti-type. "Christ, our passover, is sacrificed for us" (1 Corinthians 5:7,KJV). It is when God saw the blood of Christ pouring from His veins that atonement was made, and when He sees it appropriated by us by faith, we are forgiven and spared. The atonement terminates primarily on God and only secondarily on man. Sure, when we see His great love and sacrifice we are moved to repentance and obedience. But this is one effect of the atonement, not its core meaning as Finney mistakenly maintains. It has this affect on us because we know that He has taken our place and died our death for our sins. Now it is I who feels like the lawyer. Why can’t I just rest my case? But I will go on, I guess.

Third, God does not punish sin primarily to teach a moral lesson to the "universe" (to bow to Finney’s goofy obsession with the term), but because He is Just. He hates sin for its own sinfulness and punishes people for it primarily because it is deserved. It follows then that the atonement of Christ was not primarily a moral lesson to move us to repent and obey but a satisfaction of Justice. Sin must be punished. If the punishment due us fell on us, then how could we be saved? The punishment, instead, falls on Christ and we are forgiven and saved. "He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed" (Isaiah 53:4,NAS). Capital punishment is proper for convicted murderers simply because it is just, regardless of whether it can be proved to everyone’s satisfaction that it is a deterrent.

Fourth, Finney’s distinction between "retributive" and "public" justice is just so much sophistry and semantics designed to make it appear he is retaining the truth of the common view of the atonement, that it was made to God’s justice, while at the same time destroying it. This approach is characteristic of that class of theorists in the nineteenth century who sympathized with but would not side entirely with the most liberal views of the atonement. They wanted to identify with the fashionable new rationalism while holding to as much of the Bible as they could. Does the believer hold the testamental cup in his hand and cry out, "Thank God that Jesus has satisfied ‘public justice!’"? Is this the meaning of the atonement according to the apostles? Wouldn’t Christ dying to satisfy "public justice" make a great theme for a classic hymn? Can’t you just hear the minister cry, "How many of you are glad tonight that Jesus died for public justice? Lift your hands and praise the Lord!"? "Public justice" is not found in God or anywhere else, so nothing could be offered to it. By "public justice" he simply means a deterrent. "Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him; he hath put him to grief....He shall see of the travail of his soul, (and) shall be satisfied..." (Isaiah 53:10,11,ASV). It was God, not "public justice" that saw the travail of His soul and was satisfied.

Fourth, if Christ’s death was not punishment for our sin as Finney contends, it has no real connection with our forgiveness. But we have already seen that it does. And how could Christ’s death be a deterrent for sin if it were not penal? How could His dying convince us that God takes sin seriously and is willing to punish it if it was not a punishment for sin? How could it be an "expression of the law-giver’s regard to the law" or "manifest the sincerity of God in his legal enactments"? "Public justice," he says, "require penal sanctions;" but if Christ’s death was not penal, how could it satisfy public justice? If Christ’s death was not penal, not punishment for our breaking God’s law, as Finney affirms ("atonement is an expedient above law") how, then, could Paul say that we died with Christ to the law? "So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ....[B]y dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code" (Romans 7:4,6). "For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ...." (Galatians 2:19,20). If we died to the law with Christ, then Christ must have died to the law. He died to the law and we with Him by carrying out its sentence against us. It is useless to argue that Paul here means only the part of the law called ceremonial, for he goes on to cite as an example of the law in Romans seven the tenth commandment—"Thou shalt not covet." Again, why can’t I rest my case?

Fifth, Finney says the atonement was made to deter sin, to motivate us to repent and obey, and "to make it safe for God to forgive sin." But if this is all there was to it, the atonement was not really necessary in the truest sense. God has other ways to deter sin and motivate us to repent; Christ’s atonement is just the most compelling one. And notice that he does not say that the atonement made it possible for God to forgive sin but only safe to do so. Forgiveness, according to this theory, is possible without the atonement, because forgiveness is really rooted in God’s mercy alone. The atonement, then, was not strictly necessary. But this flies in the face of that grand statement in Hebrews, "Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission."

I’m going to have to close for now, although I am by no means finished. Another difficulty with this subject is my format—18 or so little bitty pages. Can you "put your finger in this place" and wait for the next installment? You’ll have to keep this issue on hand because I can’t repeat all of Finney’s comments next time. And I’ll try my best not to review too much. I’ll also hold my concluding remarks until next time (if I can finish what I have to say on this in our next issue!).

I hope and pray, my dear friends, that you are trusting in the good old gospel way of salvation, the atonement made by our Lord Jesus Christ and not your own righteousness or works. All other ways but this will mean your eternal damnation, not your eternal salvation.

Until next time, God bless.

Leon Stump, Pastor of Victory Christian Center

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Background from Greenfield Graphics.