Christian Science and the Vicarious Atonement
By R.
During the past few months the SIGNS OF THE TIMES has published a number of articles on Christian Science. These articles have called out a response from a leading officer in the Christian Science Church, Mr. Alfred Farlow of Boston. His letter follows in its entirety: EDITOR SIGNS OF THE TIMES, Mountain View, California. DEAR SIR: In your issue of the 27th ult. you say, “Christian Science denies the vicarious atonement of Christ. It denies that His sufferings and death were, in a substitutional sense, sacrificial.” May I call your attention to the fact that Christian Science accords exactly with the vicarious atonement of Christ Jesus which is described in the Scriptures. The Master’s death was vicarious in the sense that He voluntarily allowed Himself to pass through the trying ordeal called death, when He might have escaped therefrom if He had disregarded the welfare of mankind. He said, “Thinkest thou that I can not now pray to My Father, and He shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels!” This implied that He might have been delivered from these testing experiences if He had considered no one but Himself. His experience was a pure sacrifice and demonstrated His unbounded love, while it also proved certain facts concerning the science of being which were necessary for mortals to understand in order to work out their salvation according to Scriptural admonition. It is useless to quibble over the nature of death. It is sufficient to know that it is the greatest calamity that befalls mortals, and that it is a part of the consequences of sin, which the Saviour came to destroy. While Christian Science recognizes the phenomena called death, it maintains that there can be no such thing as death, since God who is Life, is ever-present. Jesus recognized this fact when He said of the damsel, “She is not dead.” He positively denied death and He proved the truth of His proposition when He presented the damsel alive, having destroyed death through His understanding of divine Life. Christian Science agrees with the Scriptural teaching that “without shedding of blood there is no remission.” It only differs with some other theological beliefs as to the significance of the Scriptural words. Every step of the Master’s experience from birth to ascension was absolutely essential to the salvation of the world. The world is justified by the blood of Jesus Christ, because through His experience they were enabled to waken to spiritual understanding of truth, which practised, redeems mankind from sin, sickness, and death. In your issue of the 7th inst. you say, “It [Christian Science] denies that God has form, and thus reveals its kinship with pantheism.” Science does not deny the tangibility or infinite personality of God, although it does affirm that God is not person or form in the humanized sense. I would be pleased if the editor of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES would explain his own sense of the personality of God in order that we might be able to compare notes and determine whether or not we really differ. What does our good editor understand the characteristics and attributes of the infinite Spirit to be? Does he believe Spirit to be substance, and does he accept the Scriptural teaching, “God is everywhere present”? Does he believe David’s declaration: “If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me”? However, the teaching of Christian Science respecting the nature of God is not pantheism—all-god-ism. Christian Science does not teach that the universe is identical with God. It is not in harmony with the paradoxical teaching that the creation taken together as a whole constitutes the creator. Christian Science teaches that man forever retains his individuality as the likeness of God, that he is not a part of God, but the expression or image of God. It is impossible for us to take up everything in this letter. In fact it crowds the space of this issue of the SIGNS to present the matter at all. There are two main subjects touched in this letter; that of the atonement, and that of pantheism. We can at this time consider only the first. Mr. Farlow makes a very emphatic affirmation in the first part of his letter. He says, “Christian Science accords exactly with the vicarious atonement of Christ Jesus which is described in the Scriptures.” Following this statement he explains in what sense he considers the atonement vicarious. He explains that it was vicarious because voluntary and for man’s welfare. Now no one who understands the Scriptures at all will for a moment deny that Christ’s sacrifice was voluntary, or that it was for the welfare of humanity. To say no more than this, however, is to say what might be true of any good person. All voluntary sacrifices for the good or welfare of others are according to this definition vicarious, and the only difference in other persons and Christ would lie in the measure of their influence. There would be no difference in kind. But Christ’s atonement was vicarious because it was substitutional, and to use it in any lesser sense is misleading. For the substitutional idea of vicarious is its accepted standing in Christian usage. Let us briefly summarize the atonement as taught in the Scriptures: (1) Man sinned; that is, he transgressed the law. (2) The penalty of this transgression is death. (3) Christ to save man from death dies in the sinner’s stead. (4) The sinner escapes death by faith in Christ; that is, receives life through Christ. This is the plain outline as given in the Scriptures. We will quote enough evidence presently to more than prove it. Let us take up the matter again and repeat it step by step. 1. Man sinned. There is a mass of Scriptural evidence that may be offered. We content ourselves with the following: “There is none righteous, no, not one.” “We know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under [or accountable to] the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God.” “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Rom. 3:10, 19, 23. Now, where does Christian Science array itself on this point? If it accorded with the Scriptures, we would have no such strange anomaly as now presents itself under the double name of “Christian Science.” This modern teaching pooh-poohs the whole matter of sin as a mere bugaboo, an illusion, a god of human manufacture. Under objections answered on page 347 of the 1907 edition of “Science and Health,” “sin, sickness, and death” are denominated “popular gods,” “Christ, Truth . . . destroys these evils, and so proves their nothingness,” “the nothingness of sin and death.” On page 472 of this same book we read, “The only reality of sin, sickness, or death is the awful fact that unrealities seem real to human, erring belief, until God strips off their disguise.” This is but to say as is said on page 480: “Evil is but an illusion, and it has no real basis. Evil is a false belief.” On this interpretation, sin entered, as Christian Science infers, by humanity’s becoming illusioned, deceived on appearances. And the point of it all is that nothing in the Bible ever expresses a line that gives the slightest figment of basis for such an idea. If sin is but an illusion of mortal mind, God could have said so in so many words in His Book. If sin is but a false belief, the Being who spoke as never man spoke, had enough grasp of language to have couched the fact in just so many words. But He spoke of sin as a reality. He referred to sinners as men whose deeds were evil, “workers of iniquity.” But here in this last age of the world’s history the statement comes clear, blunt, seemingly authoritative, “Sin is an illusion.” But the Word of God is true. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His Word is not in us.” 1 John 1:8-10. 2. In this matter of atonement, we find in the Word that man has sinned, and for his sins must die. Here is the Scriptural evidence: “As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” Rom. 5:12. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” “For his iniquity that he hath done shall he die.” Eze. 18:20, 26. “Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” James 1:15. “The wages of sin is death.” Rom. 6:23. Thus the Word plainly shows that transgression of God’s law is sin, and that it brings death. Judging by the Word, both sin and death are real and awful. 3. The third step in the atonement as pointed out in the Scriptures is that Christ becomes the substitute for the sinner, thus releasing the sinner from the penalty of his sin, which is death. But Christian Science teaches another way of salvation. We9are but to realize, according to its teachings, the illusion of sin and death. We are to prove their nothingness; we are to deny their reality. By this sort of emancipation proclamation against the unreality of sin and death, we are to escape them and thus be saved. The value of Christ’s life and death in all this, according to Christian Science, is that He becomes a Way-shower, an Example, by which the process is made plain; this He does, but no more. As Mr. Farlow says in his letter, “The world is justified by the blood of Jesus Christ, because through His experience they were enabled to awaken to spiritual understanding of truth, which practised, redeems mankind from sin, sickness, and death.” Putting it bluntly, Mr. Farlow means to teach that Christ’s work disillusions us with reference to sin and death, and we are to practise this truth, as he calls it, that sin and death are illusions. This “redeems mankind from sin, sickness, and death.” This is the Christian Science way of salvation. And this is perfectly in harmony with the textbook of Christian Science; for “Science and Health” avers that “one sacrifice, however great, is insufficient to pay the debt of sin.”—Page 23. In contrast to this we place the Word of God, “Now once in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” Heb. 9:26. Further, “Science and Health” declares, “The material blood of Jesus was no more efficacious to cleanse from sin, when it was shed upon ‘the accursed tree,’ than when it was flowing through His veins as He went daily about His Father’s business.” Against this statement of Christian Science we place the plain declaration of the Word of God that without shedding of blood there is no remission. Heb. 9:22. And now we come to the real point in all this question, and here again we have the Scriptures and the statement of Christian Science directly at variance. The Scriptures aver that, man having sinned, death awaits him as a penalty, but Christ as a substitute voluntarily took the sinner’s place, received the sinner’s death, that the sinner believing might receive the Saviour’s life. This plain Christian, Scriptural teaching Christian Science denies in the following words: “That God’s wrath should be vented upon His Son is divinely unnatural. Such a theory is man-made.” Now let us look at the Scriptural evidence on this point and weigh it carefully. God’s wrath primarily is against sin—sin wherever it may be. “Behold then the goodness and severity of God: toward them that fell, severity; but toward thee, God’s goodness, if thou continue in His goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.” Rom. 11:22. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hinder the truth in unrighteousness.” Rom. 1:18. “But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who will render to every man according to his works: to them that by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and incorruption, eternal life: but unto them that are factious, and obey not the truth, but obey unrighteousness, shall be wrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that worketh evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Greek.” Rom. 2:5-9. Jesus had no sin; He “knew no sin.” 2 Cor. 5:21. He was not a sinner. But He took the place of sinners that sinners might take His place; and as a sinner, substituting Himself for the sinner, God dealt with Him as though He were a sinner, as though sin resided in Him. He was forsaken of God, as He said upon the cross, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Christ was dealing with real conditions. Darkness enshrouded Him. The Father’s face was turned away. This was all necessary, not because God hates His creatures, but because of the enormity of sin which must be dealt with. “Him who knew no sin He made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” 2 Cor. 5:21. “Who His own self bare our sins in His body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed.” 1 Peter 2:24. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” Isa. 53:6. 4. And this brings us to the last step in the atonement. It saves the sinner from wrath and death, if he by faith accepts Christ as his substitute. “For while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth His own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by His blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by His life; and not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.” Rom. 5:6-11. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” Gal. 3:13. This is the way of salvation as brought to us in the atonement of Christ. This is the means which God has provided for the sinner if he will believe. God’s wrath throughout is directed against sin. Evil throughout is dealt with as a reality, the penalty, the consequence, of which is met by Christ, and being met by Him we may go free, if we accept the Substitute. If we do not accept the Substitute, we must meet the penalty of our own sins. But according to the Christian Science way of salvation, one is to be saved by denying the reality of sin and death; thus he escapes the horrid thing, or thinks he does, by denial of it, and all the value he finds in Christ is in the profit of a good example. Thus Christ is by no means a substitute for him. The individual goes through the battle for himself as he thinks Christ did it. Thus he atones for his own sins, and this is only a human atonement; but the law of God which has been transgressed is a transcript of the character of God, and a human atonement can never satisfy its just demands. The noted Blackstone has said that a law without a penalty is nugatory; and even God’s law can not slight sin. It proclaims death against the transgressor. There are only two ways of satisfying its just demands. One is to accept the death of Christ; the other is to refuse that substitute and die—actually die, one’s self, and thus end existence. Merely suffering is not paying the penalty of the transgressed law, altho Mrs. Eddy says over and over again in her book that it is. For example, the Word of God says that what Christ suffered sets us free from sin and death. Rom. 8:1, 2. But Christian Science says, “Another’s suffering [Christ’s, for example] can not lessen our own liability.”—“Science and Health,” page 40. In fact, the textbook of Christian Science denies that Christ ever died. “His disciples believed Jesus to be dead while He was hidden in the sepulcher, whereas He was alive.”—Page 44. “Jesus’ unchanged physical condition after what seemed to be death, was followed by His exaltation.”—Page 46. And this idea is carried out in “Science and Health” to the extent that one of the strongest Scriptures in the Bible with reference to the death of Christ, is made to say just exactly opposite to what it says as given in the Bible. On page 45 we find this statement: “Paul writes, ‘For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the [seeming] death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.’” Thus the death of Christ is plainly denied, no matter what the Bible may say, and Mr. Farlow is consistent with all this in his letter in saying there is no such thing as death, and seeks to bolster it up by Christ’s figure of speech when He spoke of the damsel, “She is not dead.” We know that Jesus said this because He was about to raise her from the dead, just as He did Lazarus. But reading the rest of the Scriptures, we find that Christ in both these statements was bringing hope to His disciples through a resurrection which He Himself would bring, and not through a Christian Science method of denying death. And now last of all we wish to emphasize the fact that the Christian Science teaching is emphatically that every man is his own saviour, tho they may couch the statement of it in more delicate language and cloak it in most pleasing guise. For example, we take these statements from “Science and Health:” “Jesus suffered for our sins, not to annul the divine sentence for an individual sin, but because sin brings inevitable suffering.”—Page 11. Here is the plain denial that Christ’s atonement is vicarious, that it is substitutional. The suffering of Christ was merely a consequence of our sins. It released us no whit from the divine sentence of penalty, if we believe the words of Christian Science. In other words, “We can not escape the penalty due for sin.”—“Science and Health,” page 6. Against this we place the Scripture: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.” Rom. 8:1, 2. “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might become rich.” 2 Cor. 8:9. Again Christian Science makes the plain statement that “Prayer is not to be used as a confessional to cancel sin.”—Page 5. And against this we place the plain statement of 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Again “Science and Health” says, “To get rid of sin through science is to divest sin of any supposed mind or reality.”—“Science and Health,” page 339. And against this we contrast the Scripture: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His Word is not in us.” 1 John 1:8-10. Mr. Farlow says in his letter, “The world is justified by the blood of Jesus Christ, because through His experience they were enabled to waken to spiritual understanding of truth, which practised, redeems mankind from sin, sickness, and death.” Or as Mrs. Eddy says, “The efficacy of the crucifixion lay in the practical affection and goodness it demonstrated for mankind.” Now we ask you after all this to read 1 John 2:1, 2: “My little children, these things write I unto you that ye may not sin. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.” And so here we have the Christian Science way of salvation, the way in which Christian Science admits Christ’s atonement to be vicarious; and altho His atonement so presented is not at all vicarious, taken in the accepted meaning of the term, all that we have charged against Christian Science Mr. Farlow admits in this letter. Again we have plainly stated the case as given both by him and by Mrs. Eddy, and against it we have contrasted the plain teachings of the Scriptures. Reader, you may have your choice. As for us, we want none of Christian Science salvation. We trust in Christ. He saves from sin. He saves from death. Beside Him there is no Saviour. We have already consumed far more space than the paper could afford to spare. The other point in Mr. Farlow’s letter on pantheism we will refer to in a later issue. R.