Untitled article by J. H. Waggoner

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, November 19, 1867

“WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?”

By J. H. Waggoner

Some time since I published in the Review some remarks made in a meeting of Unitarians in New York city. A friend took exceptions, claiming that I had done injustice to that denomination. Some one, to me unknown, sent me a copy of a paper containing a sermon by a Unitarian minister in New York, more Orthodox in its statements than anything I had, or have elsewhere, seen from that people, and for a time I really feared I might, unintentionally, have done some injustice to the Unitarians. This led me to further examine their faith, and I could not find anything to demand a change of my original statement. I have certainly no desire or intention to injure or misrepresent them. I believe the Trinitarian views are unscriptural, and greatly disparage the atonement by denying that the Son of God died; and if the Unitarians were endeavoring to shield the plan of salvation from such violence we could joyfully bid them Godspeed. But they run to the opposite extreme, and are full as far from a scriptural view of the atonement as the Trinitarians, and I think farther.

This same subject was up in the N. Y. Independent some time since, and several efforts were offered and noticed, but none that really relieved them from “the low humanitarian view.” One sent to that paper a part of “a statement of Christian faith which has been adopted by many churches in Massachusetts, and is believed to represent the views of a majority of the denominations there.” This statement was indefinite in its expressions on this point, so far as the divinity of Christ, his vicarious death, and atonement by his blood are concerned. I think no one can determine their faith from the “statement.”

As an example of the indefiniteness of Unitarian writers and speakers on this subject, even where definite speech is required and to be expected, I copy the following quotation and accompanying remarks from the Independent:

“Rev. Walker Wilson, of Pittsburg, Pa., has lately published in The Christian Inquirer a sermon on “the

Unitarian Position,” in which he speaks of Christ in this wise: “It has been invidiously said, that ‘as the Epicureans had a deism without a God, so the Unitarians have a Christianity without a Christ, and a Jesus, but no Saviour.’ To this we reply, We do not need any such Saviour as the author of this pious slander finds described in his creed. We thank God for every means of instruction and help afforded us; for the precepts and example of every noble soul that has ever walked the earth. We are never weary of contemplating the moral sublimity and spiritual grandeur of the character of Jesus; we never study his precepts without finding some new truth in them, the depth of which we are unable to fathom. And we say to all: Would you see the perfection of moral and religious teaching, or as much of it as words can embody? Read the precepts of Jesus, as they are recorded by his biographers. Would you behold the most godlike type of human nature that ever graced the earth, and found a place of commemoration in human records? Read the life of Jesus in the New Testament. Would you know the significance of that life, and the power of those precepts? Then you must live them; and if you do this, you will find the Saviour you need. Those precepts mean little or much to you, just in proportion as you live them. You are saved or unsaved, just in proportion as you assimilate your moral character to the highest ideal of perfection of which you can gain any knowledge.’

“This writer does not recognize any relation of the death of Christ to the salvation of the world. He stands on a higher platform than Mr. May, but would hardly assent to the statement given above as an exponent of the faith of many Unitarians in Massachusetts—yet he professes to define “the Unitarian position.” It seems to us more and more important that ministers and churches in the Unitarian body that have a positive and scriptural faith, should avow it in unmistakable terms.”

No one stood higher in that denomination than Dr. Channing. Unitarianism never had an abler advocate. The following remarks which I copy from his printed sermons, set aside the merits of Christ’s blood as a propitiatory offering; and to this must all come who deny his divinity, for none less than the Son of God could overcome Satan, and redeem a fallen, guilty race:—

“Unitarianism promotes piety, by meeting the wants of man as a sinner. The wants of the sinner may be expressed almost in one word. He wants assurance of mercy in his Creator. He wants pledges that God is love in its purest form; that is, that he has a goodness so disinterested, free, full, strong, and immutable, that the ingratitude and disobedience of his creatures cannot overcome it. This unconquerable love, which in Scripture is denominated grace, and which waits not for merit to call it forth, but flows out to the most guilty, is the sinner’s only hope, and it is fitted to call forth the most devoted gratitude. Unitarianism will not listen for a moment to the common error by which this bright attribute is obscured. It will not hear of a vindictive wrath in God which must be quenched by blood; or of a justice which binds his mercy with an iron chain, until its demands are satisfied to the full.”—From a dedication sermon, N. Y.*

If the above is true in all its terms, for what did Christ die? And if the justice of God needs no vindication in the sinner’s behalf, as this extract teaches, it is no matter whether Christ is divine or human, or whether he ever died at all.

Is it not an absurdity, both by reason and Scripture, that the sinner wants nothing but an assurance of God’s mercy? Would God’s mercy be any less, or less available, if the sinner were not assured of it, according to that theory? God has revealed himself as a being so just that he will “by no means clear the guilty,” and because the guilty deserve to die, for “the wages of sin is death,” Jesus Christ shed his blood as a propitiation that God might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. Rom. iii. These scripture truths are ignored by the Unitarian system. If the necessity of his death be overthrown, the nature of his death, or the nature he bore when he died, is no longer of consequence.

A denial of the immutable justice of God seems to be incorporated into all the false systems of the day, and is evidently a part of the great scheme of the enemy to set aside the law of God.

J. H. WAGGONER. Clyde, O., Nov. 7, 1867.