Ethics & Atonement

W.F. Lofthouse

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138605695
• eBook ISBN: 9780429869211
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

First published in 1906, this book considers the concept of atonement and suggest that the doctrine of atonement is not an artificial theorem or an inexplicable or unethical dogma, but that it has roots in the foundations of all human life. Lofthouse further argues that the doctrine of atonement is the highest expression of the law of all moral and social progress; and that ethics in itself is of little use as a practical science, unless completed by atonement.

CHAPTER X

ATONEMENT AND THE RACE

WE have now found that the end of the path on which we were started by ethics is a doctrine of Atonement. In other words, we have found that the commands of ethics imply a personal relation ; that conquest over evil can only be secured by reconciliation; and that reconciliation, in its complete form, is only possible through the suffering of one who is distinct from the wrong-doer and yet has identified himself with him. Here, we might think, we have found a way of uniting morals adequately with religion, each being the necessary completion and supplement of the other. Religion without morality is not worth calling religion at all ; religion must go to morality constantly for her codes of rules ; while without religion, morality is but a voice crying in the wilderness, with no power to compel passers-by to obey or even to listen. Yet, even supposing that the adherents of “mere morality” and of religion will both go with us so far, there is still the ground for the old disagreement which perplexed us at the beginning of our journey. The moralist will still ask “Has anything which has gone before lessened the worth of a good act in itself, apart from the religious profession or belief of the agent, or the absence thereof?” while the champion of religion will rejoin, “whatever we have said, Christ’s words remain, ‘I am the door; no man cometh unto the Father but by me.’” It is still true, he will assert, that “without faith, it is impossible to please him.” The problem seems as far from solution as ever.

We may however state the problem in slightly different terms. Granted that apart from the truth of the Atonement, any theory of ethics must be incomplete, we may still ask, what is the value of good actions, apart from a conscious relation to Christ in the doer of them—a definite relation, that is, to the Atoning Christ, or, if we may borrow the Biblical phrase, to “Christ’s blood “? Christianity asserts that works without faith are dead ; all religion asserts the necessity of something more than a good act in itself; if that is so, must the religious man, and especially the Christian, refuse admiration and reverence to truth, honesty, purity, and self-denial, if they are not “mixed with faith”? On the other hand, if this admixture with faith is unnecessary, and if goodness is goodness, through whomsoever it is manifested, do we not at once assert Christ to be unnecessary, and so deny the value of the Atonement altogether?

This question has seldom been faced by theology except in the abstract, although the opponents of theology will always use it as a convenient weapon of attack. How then shall we understand the theological declaration that there is no goodness apart from Christ? It is as easy to lay down dogmatically that without faith in Christ there can be no real good, as to asseverate of men in general that “there is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one” ; and that “the heart is deceitful above all things.” But as soon as we apply such a generalisation to actual men and women around us, it has to be modified immediately. If this were for a single day accepted as true of the society in which we are living, the ordinary traffic of life would be impossible. The commonest business transactions are based on what we call credit, which is nothing but trust in the ordinary honesty of our fellowmen ; and our everyday intercourse, both with friends and stranger£, proceeds on the assumption that ingratitude and deceit are the exception and not the rule. Nor could such a sweeping statement be applied for a moment to the saints and heroes of the Old Testament. They had no conscious relation to any atonement, and certainly none to the Atonement of Christ. Sacrifice itself, as it enters into the lives of a David, a Samuel, or a Gideon, appears an element in the accepted form of worship, but contains no suggestion of vicarious satisfaction. Of a Son of God, as the only medium of righteousness, without which their own natural goodness would be but as filthy rags, they knew nothing. The womb of time still contained the secret.

Nor again can this assumption of universal evil apart from Christ be made indiscriminately when we are dealing with the characters of the pagan world before Christ. Socrates, Aristides, Epaminondas, will never be denied admiration, however deep be the heathen darkness which we imagine to have enveloped their spirit. And if Fabricius, Cincinnatus, and Laelius have served as models of patriotism and wisdom to Christian generations succeeding them, we must not surely find fault with their light because it shone out of a darkness which has since passed away. Was family affection a different thing in Cicero from what it is in a modern member of Parliament, because Cicero could not know that family relationship, properly understood, springs from the relationship of Christ to the Father? Does even a member of Parliament always bear in mind this truth? Was Brutus any less loyal to principle than Cavour or Pym, because behind the ideal of the State there could be for him no commonwealth which is in heaven, from whence he could look for a Saviour?

Again, if we look at pagans who lived after Christ, and therefore may be said to have rejected him, neither Aurelius nor even Julian need greatly fear comparison in kingly virtues with Edward the Confessor or ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• I. Ethics In The Bible.
• II. Ethics Outside The Bible.
• III. Duties And Persons.
• IV. Reconciliation.
• V. Mediation.
• VI. Anger And Forgiveness.
• VII. Symbolism And Reality.
• VIII. The God-Man.
• IX. Personality.
• X. Atonement And The Race.