"THE CHRIST OF THE CROSS:" BY THE REV J. GIBSON SMITH.

Otago Witness, Issue 2840, 19 August 1908, Page 15

"THE CHRIST OF THE CROSS:" BY THE REV J. GIBSON SMITH.

A CRITICISM.

By Presetttjsros.

Theologically considered, this book is of little interest. It contains nothing that is new. The mediaeval rationale of Christ's atoning work is shown to be unscriptoral and "immoral ; but' that had been done before, done repeatedly, and better done. Such interest as the book possesses is in its nature personal and ecclesiastical. Mr Gibson Smith's theology, whatever the intrinsic quality of it, its soundness or nnsoundness, is admittedly not Presbyterian. Yet Mr Gibson Smith is a Presbyterian minister. Inevitably, then, by putting his theology into print, he raises once more the old issue : — What i§ the duty of a minister of religion who finds himself constrained by conscience to depart from the doctrinal standards of the communion in which he is a teacher?

With this question of ecclesiastical ethics the Presbyterians of Ota.go aresufficiently familiar. They remember, not without compunction, the strife of tongues that awoke amongst them when one of their leading ministers surrendered himself to the ideals of Eternal Hope and announced the fact in a printed pamphlet. Looking back at that incident after the lapse of yea^B, it cannot be said that the alarmists who raised the cry of The Kirk in danger! were justified, and it is certain that their direful predictions have come to naugjht. The minister they would have driven out still holds an honoured position amongst his brethren, and Presbyterianism is none the worse. in a review article which appeared at the time in these columns the ethical point is dealt with as follows : — It wall be said that when a minister finds himself obliged to contradict the doctrinal standards of his church he should desist from his ministry, or exercise it elsewhere. We are not 60 sure of that. Creeds and confessions of faith are not like the axioms of g>eometiy ; they are not final statements, proved true once for all, for ever after unchallengeable. At the best, a creed in its original form can only represent the opinions current at the time it was framed ; if it is to have anything better than a galvanic life, it must change from, time to time as opinion changes. As a matter of fact, the historic creeds of Christendom have been, modified again ajid again, .sometimes by retrenchment, sometimes by supplement. Belief in the sacrosanct inviolability of creeds is a superstition which might be- corrected, one would think, by a little study of church history. If a creed or confession of faith may be modified, a fortiori it may be discovered to be in need of modification. This seems to be the head and front of the impeached minister's offending, if offending it may be called. He has discovered that the doctrinal standard of the communion, of which he is a minister needs revising. In these circumstances ought he to go out or fctay in? We offer him xio unsolicited advice ; but on the abstract question as to the duty of a teacher of religion in his position it is open to anyone to form an opinion. Our own opinion is that the best service a clergyman at variance with the accepted standards ''an render to his denomination is to remain within it and use whatever influence he possesses

to promote reform.

Mutatis mutandis, these remarks are strictly apposite to the position of Mr Gibson Smith. The ethical canon governing the whole situation is that a preacher should preach what he believes to be true, leaving the standards to take care of themselves, — a thing which, as a rule, they are abundantly well able to do. If the preacher who diverges from the standards diverges at the same time from contemporary thought and belief, he will be prosecuted and condemned, possibly deprived. The standards will be vindicated. If, on the other hand, contemporary thought and belief are changing, the preaching that is at variance with the standards may be a product and sign of the change in process. When that is so, the end to which clamour and abortive prosecutions must inevitably conduct is change in the standards themselves.

It will be interesting to learn, as in due course we shall, whether Mr Gibson Smith's book is in any degree symptomatic of changes going on around him, changes in Presbyterian thought and belief. Dealing with the atonement, he rejects what he calls the "expiatory theory," the theory that Christ's sacrificial death made salvation possible by placating an angry Deity. The authorel>ip of this theory he correctly ascribes to 4pselm, an Archbishop of Canterbury in the eleventh century. A " Roman Catholic prelate," Mr Gibson Smith calls

him ; but Ansehn would jiot have -fecogv] nosed himself under that designation. In Magna Charta, an . almost contemporary document, the national church over which Anselm was chief is the EnglisTT Church. — " Ecclesia Anglicana." But, by whatever epithets we qualify him, Anselm belongs to about the darkest hour of the Dark Ages, the dead waste and middle of the night; wherefore it must be reckoned a curious fact that what is nowheld to be distinctively the "evangelical " view of the atonement should have no higher date, no better authority. It may be paralleled with another curious fact, — that the theologic influence which most has shaped, and in shaping limited, Scottish religious thought proceeds from a synod of English divines assembled at Westminster in the seventeenth century. With Anselm, in Ms treatise " Cur Deus Homo," the atonement is strictly an affair of book-keeping — so much debt on the one side, so much paid in to credit on the other ; at the bottom, when a balance is struck, a handsome surplus. His system is a philosophy, but its intellectual level may be judged by such details as these — that the object of human redemption was to make up the number of the angels, replacing the angels that had fallen: and that the Divine Son became incarnate and not the Divine Father because otherwise " there would be two grandsons in the Trinity." Modified somewhat since his time, the system of Anselm still determines the "evangelical" interpretation of the Cross. It is a system which brings to nothing the Fatherhood of God, and is hopelessly at war witih the most characteristic teachings of Jesus — the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It makes virtually two Gods, an" angry God and a pitying God ; hence, where it is pressed, its natural reaction is Unitarianism. At least so says Mr Gibson Smith. He would substitute for the ' ' expiatory theory" the " propitiatory theory," meaning that the effect of the atonement is not upon God but upon man. His antithesis of "expiatory" and "propitiatory " is puzzling, the terms being usually synonymous. But he has the authority of Bishop Westcott, who writes : " The ' propitiation ' acts on that which alienates God [i.e., sin], and not on God, whose love is unchanged throughout." It is hardly necessary to remark that Mr Gibson Smith's scheme of thought, however repugnant to the standards of hia own might elsewjhere be heldto fall well within the limits of orthodoxy. "Heresy," in any sense but a denominational sense, is out of the ques- i tion. The late Regius Professor of Pastoral Theology in the University of Oxford, the Rev. Dr Moberly, in his book " Atonement and Personality " affords warrant for" Mr Gibson Smith on every essential point. The atoning theories of populir Protestantism are derived, says Dr Moberly, from the "exaggerated or dieproportioned use of metaphorical expressions." such as Redemption, Ransom, Deliverance out of the dominion of Satan, Propitiation, Reconciliation, and Justification.

Out of these words have been drawn

—perversely enough — the conceptions of an enraged Father, a victimised Son, the unrighteous piinishment of the innocent, the unrighteous reward of the guilty, j the transfer of innocence and guilt by fictitious imputation, the adroit settlement of an artificial difficulty by an artificial, and strictly irrele-

vant transaction

With Dr Moberly might be bracketed, as bearing the same witness, another writer of equal responsibility, an American, Professor of Exegesis in the University of the South, the Rev. Dr Dv Bose, perhaps at this time the most influential theologian on his o^vn side of the Atlantic, author of " The Soteriology of the New Testament." "The Gospel in the Gospels," and " The Gospel according to St. Paul." It would be uoelees to cite these authorities for the purpose of justifying Mr Gibson Smith — lifeless, and indeed absurd ; but they help us to understand how he would appear if judged in the forum of the universal Church. The Gib.«on Smith hereby trial, if there should be one, will be strictly a domestic affair.