The Atonement by Albert Barnes

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 3, 1861

The Atonement.

By Albert Barnes

BY ALBERT BARNES.

IS REPENTANCE A SUFFICIENT GROUND OF HOPE?

THE question which next occurs is, whether repentance for sin will of itself be a sufficient ground of hope without an atonement.

There can be no doubt that men often rely on this. Either as a sort of expiation for sin, or as recommending them to God, or as being all that is possible in the case, or as in some unknown way making it proper for God to pardon on that account, men do rely on this as a ground of hope. They would allege that they themselves are required to forgive an offending neighbor; that a parent should forgive a child; that it would be unjust, in the intercourse of man with man, to refuse to forgive when one who has offended is penitent; and, they ask, why may not God be expected to forgive in the same way? If it would be unjust in man not to forgive in such circumstances, why is it not equally unjust in God? They would refer, perhaps, to the fact that even in the Bible we are commanded to forgive an offending brother "not only seven times, but seventy times seven," if he turn and repent (Luke xvii, 4; Matt. xviii, 21, 22), and that without any atonement or reparation; and they would ask whether we are to suppose that God will act on a different principle from that which he requires in us. Thus, in a quotation before made, Dr. Priestley says, "We are commanded to forgive others as we ourselves hope to be forgiven, and to be merciful as our Father who is in heaven is merciful. But surely we are not thereby authorized to insist upon any atonement or satisfaction before we give up our resentments toward an offending brother. Indeed, how could it deserve the name of forgiveness if we did?"

The inquiry now is, whether this view is sustained by the actual course of events in the world so as to be a just foundation of hope for man; that is, whether it is a matter of fact under the divine administration that repentance for sin arrests the effects of transgression and restores the offender to the favor of God; whether it so re-instates him in the position in which he was before the offense was committed that he has no reason to dread any infliction of the penalty of law? If it does, then it may be argued with plausibility that it might be safe for man to trust to the effect of repentance without an atonement.

In reference to this inquiry, the following remarks may be made.

(1.) It is clear that repentance is not what the law demands. No law of God or of man contains this as a part of its requirement, that there shall be repentance for a fault; that is, that an offense may be tolerated by the law on condition that there shall be a suitable expression of penitence after the offense has been committed. In no country, barbarous or civilized, has such an article been inserted into a code of laws as a part of its provisions or as connected with its administration. No parent would feel that this was a safe principle in the field of domestic legislation, even with all the guarantees and securities that exist to secure the observance of law in the sanctity of the household. No friend would consent to this as one of the conditions of friendship,—that any or all the obligations of truth, kindness, respect, fidelity, might be disregarded; that the proposed friend might even invade the sanctity of conjugal life and rob him of domestic peace, on condition that there should be suitable repentance and reformation afterward. No man could make this a condition on which he would be willing to live with his fellow man; no neighborhood would be safe if these were the terms on which it was understood that neighbors were to keep up their intercourse with each other. Law knows but two things,—the absolute precept, and the penalty: the one to be obeyed, the other to be suffered. All else than this belongs to another system and cannot be regarded as any part of the demand of law. It could not be argued beforehand, therefore, that such an arrangement was to be expected in the divine legislation. In fact, there is no proof in the nature of things that such an arrangement exists in the divine constitution respecting those who are the subjects of law.

(2.) It is a matter of fact that mere repentance does not remove the effects of sin and restore an offender to the condition in which he was before he committed the offense. "The present conduct of the penitent will receive God's approbation, but the reformation of the sinner cannot have a retrospective effect. The agent may be changed, but his former sins cannot be thereby canceled: the convert and the sinner are the same individual person, and the agent must be answerable for his whole conduct." Even Cicero goes no further on this subject than to assert, Quem pœnitet peccasse, pene est innocens, 'The penitent is only almost innocent.' Does repentance bring back the property that has been squandered in gambling or dissipation, the health that has been ruined by debauchery and intemperance, the reputation that has been lost by fraud and dishonesty, the public favor that has been forfeited by forgery or fraud, the vigor of early years that has been wasted by profligacy? Will any penitence, however sincere or prolonged, bring up from the grave the man that has been murdered, and restore him to his family and friends? Will it call back to the ways of purity the young female that has been led into a career of sin by the acts of the seducer? No. All these are now fixed. They belong to the past. They cannot be changed. The health is permanently destroyed; the property is wasted; the sacred citadel of virtue has been taken; the murdered man is in his grave; the victim of seduction is ruined. No repentance on the part of him who has caused any of these things can ever change them; no repentance can place the offender himself in the situation in which he was before he committed the crime. By reformation a man may indeed regain an honorable position in society; but even under the most favorable circumstances this removes but a part of the evils caused by a sinful course. It brings back nothing that was lost; it changes no facts in the past; it furnishes no assurance of the divine favor. The consequences of a sinful course are not to be turned aside by floods of tears. The erring female cannot avert the effects of a criminal course by nights of weeping,—by the fact that the heart is broken by the remembrance of crime.

(3.) Equally clear is it that mere repentance does not remove the effects of crime on the conscience of the offender himself. Even though all the external consequences of sin could be averted by an act of penitence, still, there would be consequences of guilt on the mind itself which would not be removed. Remorse, the sense of self-dissatisfaction, the apprehension of what may occur hereafter, would still remain. There is nothing in the bitterest repentance that has any effect in silencing the deep self-disapprobation which arises from the commission of crime. That springs up in the mind entirely irrespective of the apprehension of the consequences of guilt and the dread of the future,—however it may, as a secondary effect, suggest that there is much to dread hereafter. That feeling of self-disapprobation or remorse

is one quite independent of any loss of health or property or reputation as the effect of the deed done. It stands by itself. It springs directly out of the crime. It would exist if there were no future to be dreaded, and would exist in view of the crime itself if it had done nothing to waste health, to destroy property, or to injure reputation. And this is in no manner affected by mere repentance. An offender, no matter how much he weeps, no matter how bitter or how prolonged may be his penitence, cannot, does not, feel that the crime which he has committed is in any way affected by his sorrow for it. It is none the less; it seems to him none the less. Even should he wholly reform, and become eminently virtuous, that would not affect his own sense of the evil of the sin, except to deepen his sense of that evil. The same thing is true in his apprehension of what is to come as the reward of sin; for sin not only produces remorse in view of the past, but it directs the mind on to that which is to come. By a law of our nature, the apprehension of what is to occur beyond the grave springs up in the mind just as the feeling of remorse does,—an apprehension quite separate from remorse, indeed, in its nature, though conjoined with it in fact. It is so separate that it must be dealt with in its own way, and be removed by an arrangement that shall have a special adaptation to it. And this is not removed by repentance. The mind of the guilty man does not feel any assurance, however deep the penitence, that there will be no consequences of sin to be apprehended in a future world. After all the tears that he may shed; after the keenest mental sorrow that his mind can experience at the remembrance of guilt, it is still true that the apprehension in regard to the world to come will not be lessened. There is a conviction that the crime deserves a deeper retribution than the mere shedding of tears; and there will be a conviction that nothing has been done by repentance to furnish any security that the sin will not draw on fearful consequences in the future world. No act of penitence, no tears or mental sorrow, can remove from the mind the consciousness of guilt; none can remove the apprehension of the wrath to come. No such act can secure to a guilty man peace on a bed of death; none, therefore, can accomplish what is needful to have accomplished in behalf of the guilty.

It is clear, therefore, that there is no reason why men should rely on repentance as a ground of hope in regard to the remission of sin. It is certain that there is no such ground of hope given by God himself to mankind; for the rejector of revelation pretends to no promise of this kind, and no such promise is made to man in the Bible. It is equally certain that the course of events furnishes no such ground of hope; for, as we have seen, mere repentance does not remove the effects of guilt and restore the offender to his former position, does not take away remorse from the mind, and does not remove the dread of the wrath to come. And it is equally certain that it has not been one of the principles of natural religion that mankind would be restored to the divine favor on mere repentance; for, if there has been any one thing more unequivocally declared by the conduct of mankind than any other, it is that something more than this is necessary. All nations have believed in the necessity of sacrifices for sin. Everywhere upon the earth bloody offerings have been presented to the gods as an expiation for guilt. Penances and pilgrimages, fastings and tortures, have been added to penitence. Bullocks, rams, goats, prisoners of war, old men and children, have been sacrificed to the gods to expiate crime and to secure the efficacy of repentance; and from the light of nature it is impossible to demonstrate;—and therefore it is wrong to assume—that mere repentance will restore an offender to the divine favor. Hence on this ground we argue the necessity of an atonement. That the atonement of Christ would meet the difficulties in the case, and would accomplish the effects necessary to be secured, is a point which a rejector of revelation may fairly require us to demonstrate.

The next inquiry is, whether an expiation for sin can be so made by punishment as to answer the ends of law and to render an atonement unnecessary; that is, whether a sinner may so rely on the sufferings which come upon him as the fruit of sin that an atonement is not necessary in his case. In other words, is sin sufficiently expiated by the sufferings endured in the world as the consequence of transgression?

In considering this question, it will be necessary to examine the subject of punishment.

(1.) The first point relates to the views which prevail among men in regard to the design of punishment.

The prevailing views on that subject are the following:

(a.) That it is to protect the community from a repetition of the offense.

(b.) That it is to deter others, by example, from the commission of the same offense.

(c.) That it is to reform the offender.

In these views there would be found no element in the notion of punishment based on the idea that it is an expression of the sense entertained by the community of the evil of crime as such; or that it is a carrying out of the idea involved in the phrase that the offender ought to be punished.

What, then, is the design of punishment? I answer: While it has as a subordinate design the purpose of deterring others from the commission of the same offense and securing the safety of the community, it has a much higher end as its main design. It is an expression of the sense entertained of the value of the law, and is the measure of the sense which is entertained of that value. It is inflicted because it is right that it should be inflicted. It is inflicted because the offense deserves such an expression. There is, back of any idea of restraining others, or of reforming the offender himself, or of protecting the community, the feeling that it is right that the offender should be made to suffer; that he ought to be punished; that it would be wrong if he were not punished. And, when we see a man justly punished, we think of this not as tending to reform him, or as designed to protect the community, or to be an example to deter others; but we think of him as suffering that which our nature tells us is right, whatever may be the consequences in these other respects; and in that view of the matter we acquiesce in the infliction. We may rejoice in the belief that these incidental effects will follow from the infliction of the punishment; but we should regard it as a violation of justice if these views should guide the magistrate in determining the amount of punishment; that is, if it were only so much as would best tend to reform the offender, or to deter others, or to protect the community. We demand something more: we demand that which will in some proper sense express what the crime deserves. The sufferer in the case, in our apprehension, is not a martyr: he is a criminal. The sufferings do not make an appeal to our compassion: for just so far as they do they are either unjust, or our feelings are wrong. Our nature teaches us to discriminate carefully between the ills which one suffers by misfortune and the ills which he suffers by crime; between the sufferings of the martyr and the sufferings of the murderer; between the man who languishes in prison under an unjust sentence and the man who lies there under a just sentence of law. In nothing are our feelings more accurately defined than they are in making this distinction; in nothing do we, when we set out our nature, discriminate more accurately than in the feelings which we have toward the innocent who suffer, and the guilty. And just so far as the same emotions come to be cherished in a community in regard to the sufferings of the innocent and of the guilty,—just so far as the feelings which we have in respect to the martyr becomes our prevailing feelings toward the man who is suffering the penalty of the law for his crime,—just so far as the distinction between a just compassion for an innocent sufferer and the feeling of approbation which we have on the proper infliction of the penalty of the law on the guilty shall be obliterated in public sentiment,—just so far will all the proper ends of justice be defeated, and the processes of justice become a mockery. If there is anything that is deeply fixed in the nature of man, it is the conviction that certain courses of conduct deserve certain results; that when crimes are committed they should excite in us the feeling that they deserve punishment and are not mere objects of sympathy; that they should be treated as crimes, and not as virtues; and that they who have committed them should be treated as criminals, and not as martyrs.

There is one more consideration to be suggested in regard to the hope cherished by men that salvation may be secured as the effect of punishment without an atonement. It is this: If salvation is to be attained in that way, it must be by having endured the full penalty of the law. If that were done, it is to be admitted that salvation would follow as a matter of course. If the entire penalty of the law is exhausted, if all that sin deserves has been expiated, the law can have no further demands, and the offender might claim salvation. But he would be saved by justice—not by mercy. He would assert a right to admission to heaven; he would not go there by grace. This is the opinion of a portion of those who believe in the doctrine of 'universal salvation.' The foundation of their belief is that men will suffer according to their deserts in a future state; that the degree and the duration of their sufferings will be different according to the different degrees of their guilt; but that all will ultimately exhaust the penalty of the law, and having suffered all that their sins deserve, will then be saved. That is, they will be saved by justice; and to them an atonement would be useless. And, if the full penalty of the law was endured, they would undoubtedly be saved. But who can demonstrate that the full penalty of the law has been borne in any case? Who would undertake to bear it as the basis of his own hope of heaven? It is certainly possible that the penalty of the law may be everlasting punishment; and no one who undertakes to endure the penalty of the law can demonstrate that this is not what the law of God denounces against sin. No one can prove that at a given point in the future he could assume that he had endured all that the law demands and could therefore assert a right to be saved. No one can refer to a promise or an intimation that such a period will ever arrive. But, unless this can be done, then an atonement is absolutely necessary for the salvation of the sinner; that is, something is required which will answer the ends of the penalty of the law, and make it proper to release the offender as if he had himself borne the penalty.