Catherine Booth Was Recognised As the Co-Founder, with Her Husband William, of the Salvation Army

Fourth and finally, Catherine Booth was recognised as the co-founder, with her husband William, of The Salvation Army. Catherine was a wise counsellor who guided William Booth and his inner circle of leaders in their decision making; she was an apologist for the movement to society’s opinion formers and decision makers; but most of all she was the visionary thinker, the principal architect of the Army’s theology, and the one who gave it coherent and eloquent expression. Catherine’s son Bramwell Booth described her contribution to the Army’s development: While [William] had the creative genius, [Catherine] had the analytical mind. […] He inspired the Army […] she thought out the why and wherefore of it all, and in her more cultured sphere justified the Army’s methods to circles which, accustomed to conventional religious expression, were shocked by ours. And further, she enhanced the reasonableness and beauty and value of the work we were doing in our own eyes. She discerned, and helped us to discern, the philosophy behind the roughness and awkwardness and seeming contradictions of the struggle, and strengthened the Founder’s hands in a hundred ways. 6 After her death Bramwell reflected sadly, ‘Her voice is silent now, and her chair in the inner counsels is empty. It is a terrible and irreparable loss.’ 7 The Atonement When I first began my research into Catherine Booth’s theology I had no idea what I would find. My greatest concern was that either I would find nothing at all or else what I found would be second hand and second rate and I would discover that Catherine Booth was as confused and ignorant about doctrine and theology as some people have believed and said she was. It wasn’t too hard to find negative comments. Roger Green, an American Salvationist and theologian, who wrote one of the major books on Catherine said, ‘For all her reading and native intelligence, Catherine did not have Wesley’s comprehensive depth or theological vision […] neither did she deal with many of the finer details of Wesley’s theology […] neither in her writing nor her preaching did Catherine demonstrate a command of these and other detailed and precise theological issues and she could not have been expected to do so.’ 8 Roger Green was very sympathetic towards Catherine and yet he seems to believe she didn’t really have a strong grasp of theology, even the Wesleyan theology she was brought up in. Krista Valtanen completed a PhD study on Catherine Booth in 2005 at Exeter University, and yet she too, seemed not to have found any strong or distinctive theology at the heart of Catherine’s writings. In fact Valtanen says no polished theology or systematic scheme can be found in Catherine’s writings. She also says that in spite of the claims of many Salvationists that Catherine Booth’s views were foundational for the Army, her influence can not be proved from her writings and therefore they do not show her to be the Mother of The Salvation Army in this sense at all. The American scholar Pamela Walker, who is even more sympathetic towards Catherine than Roger Green, simply said that Catherine’s theology was a mixture of Methodism and Revivalism. Page 2 of 14 So right at the beginning I thought it was going to be difficult to show that some distinctive, interesting and important ideas lay behind Catherine Booth’s preaching and teaching. In fact I thought what I might end up doing was to prove, once and for all, that the critics and sceptics were right, and Catherine Booth’s theology, and consequently the theology of the early Salvation Army, was just a vague, wishy washy, and sometimes contradictory mixture of Methodism and American Revivalism. The first clue I found that there was something more than that to be discovered in Catherine Booth’s writings was when I read her views on the Atonement. I discovered she held very strong views about the Atonement and she was very critical of some of the so-called theories of the Atonement. Some, if not most of you will have studied the theories of the Atonement as part of your doctrine course when you were cadets at the training college; but I am absolutely sure that you will never have heard that Catherine Booth and the first Salvationists believed in a particular, or special, way of understanding what the death of Jesus meant. Maybe you can remember the titles of some of the theories of the Atonement - Satisfaction, Moral Influence, Ransom, Sacrifice, Christus Victor, Penal Substitution? What these theories attempt to do is to answer the question: ‘Why did Christ die for us?’, and the associated questions such as: ‘Why couldn’t God just forgive us?’, ‘Was this the only possible way we could be saved?’, ‘What difference does it make to us today that this one man was executed by the Romans two thousand years ago?’, ‘How does his death make us one with God, reconciled to God?’, ‘How can his death do anything at all about my sin?’. Discussion Question: Why did Christ die? Although there are quite a few different theories of the Atonement there are usually thought to be two main ones: Substitution theories and Moral Influence theories. Substitution theories say that Jesus died in my place. He bore the penalty of my sin. Because we have sinned we are subject to the wrath of God and eternal damnation. Stuart Townend’s song ‘In Christ Alone’ contains the lines: ‘Till on that cross as Jesus died, The wrath of God was satisfied - For every sin on Him was laid; Here in the death of Christ I live.’ Substitution theories are sometimes called ‘objective’ theories, because the theory says that the death of Jesus does something objective about the way God sees you and me. Because of the death of Jesus the debt of my sin is completely paid, the penalty and punishment due to me for my sin is completely borne by Jesus, and this means that I no longer have to do anything about it. I am saved from my sin. Very often, those who believe in what is often called the penal substitution theory go on to say that because Jesus bore the penalty not just for my past sin, but for all my sin, they believe in the active imputation of Christ’s righteousness. That is, they believe that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, so that when God the Father looks at us, he doesn’t see our sin and unrighteousness, he only sees Christ’s righteousness. Although our own righteousness, no matter how hard we might try to be good, is just filthy rags, Page 3 of 14 that doesn’t matter because no matter how badly we fail in our efforts to be good, Christ’s righteousness is all that counts, and is all that God cares about. Moral Influence theories are a reaction to this view. These theories say ‘If God wants to forgive us, he can forgive us, all we have to do is truly repent of our sins’. The problem is we don’t want to repent, we hang on to our sin, we don’t think well about God. These theories are often called ‘subjective’ theories because the problem is with us, not with God. God doesn’t have to do anything to himself to make Him love us and wish to save us. The Atonement doesn’t have to change God’s attitude to us, but our attitude to God. God is love and if we turn to Him and love Him in return that’s all that is required. The atonement changes us. The death of Jesus on the cross is a demonstration of how much God loves us. God didn’t send Jesus to earth to show us how much he hated our sin, and to kill his Son as a punishment for our sin. God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son, and the Cross proves it, God loves us so much that he would stop at nothing to show that love and that love has the power to change us, to save us. In the words of Isaac Watt’s old song: See from His head, His hands, His feet, Sorrow and love flow mingled down! Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, Or thorns compose so rich a crown? And when we truly see this love we can’t help but respond: Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were a present far too small; Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all.’ The problem with both sets of theories is that they tend to undermine and contradict each other. The idea of a wrathful Father sacrificing his loving Son undermines the idea that God sent His Son to change us by showing us how much He loves us. And yet this is the plain teaching of the Bible. However the idea that Jesus did not die in our place, as a substitute, for our sins, also seems to contradict the plain teaching of the apostle Paul, as well as the prophecy of Isaiah which declares: ‘But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.’ (Isaiah 53:5) Catherine Booth spoke of ‘false and contradictory theories’ which ‘shocked and insulted’ people’s reason, and she thought they could put people off Christianity altogether.

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