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The Vicarious Sacrifice, Grounded in Principles of Universal Obligation

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The Vicarious Sacrifice, Grounded in Principles of Universal Obligation The Vicarious Sacrifice, Grounded in Principles of Universal Obligation. Author(s): Bushnell, Horace (1802-1876) Publisher: Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library Description: Horace Bushnell (1802-1876), minister and theologian, is sometimes called ªthe father of American religious liberalism.º Influenced by Emerson, Coleridge, and Schleiermacher, the controversial Bushnell thoroughly critiqued the emphasis on the conversion experience so popular among the Christian revivalists of his time.With The Vicarious Sacrifice, he makes his contribution to Christian thoughts on Christology, the In- carnation, and the various theories of the atonement. Bush- nell employs careful, precise arguments that won the respect of others despite disagreement and controversy. For readers today, Bushnell's work provides a bridge between two diver- ging movements, conservative and liberal, in past and con- temporary American Christian theology. Kathleen O'Bannon CCEL Staff i Contents Title Page 1 Introduction. 3 Part I. Nothing Superlative in Vicarious Sacrifice, or Above the Universal Principles 15 of Right and Duty. Chapter I. The Meaning of Vicarious Sacrifice. 16 Chapter III. The Holy Spirit in Vicarious Sacrifice. 34 Chapter IV. The Good Angels in Vicarious Sacrifice. 42 Chapter V. All Souls Redeemed, to Be in Vicarious Sacrifice. 49 Part II. The Life and Sacrifce of Christ Is What He Does to Become a Renovating 60 and Saving Power. Chapter I. Uses and Relations of the Healing Ministry. 61 Chapter II. Christ’s Object is the Healing of Souls. 72 Chapter III. He is to Be God’s Power in Working Such Recovery. 81 Chapter IV. How He Becomes So Great a Power. 89 Part III. The Relations of God’s Law and Justice to His Saving Work in Christ. 111 Chapter I. The Law before Government. 112 Chapter II. Instituted Government. 121 Chapter III. The Antagonism between Justice and Mercy. 128 Chapter IV. The Law Precept Duly Sanctified. 143 Chapter V. Legal Enforcements not Diminished. 156 Chapter VI. God’s Rectoral Honor Effectively Maintained. 176 Chapter VII. Justification by Faith. 195 Part IV. Sacrifical Symbols and Their Uses. 217 Chapter I. Sacrifice and Blood and the Lustral Figures. 218 Chapter II. Atonement, Propitiation, and Expiation. 234 Chapter III. Practical Uses and Ways of Preaching. 255 Indexes 269 ii Index of Scripture References 270 Greek Words and Phrases 272 Latin Words and Phrases 273 Index of Pages of the Print Edition 274 iii This PDF file is from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, www.ccel.org. The mission of the CCEL is to make classic Christian books available to the world. • This book is available in PDF, HTML, and other formats. See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bushnell/vicarious.html. • Discuss this book online at http://www.ccel.org/node/3677. The CCEL makes CDs of classic Christian literature available around the world through the Web and through CDs. We have distributed thousands of such CDs free in developing countries. If you are in a developing country and would like to receive a free CD, please send a request by email to [email protected]. The Christian Classics Ethereal Library is a self supporting non-profit organization at Calvin College. If you wish to give of your time or money to support the CCEL, please visit http://www.ccel.org/give. This PDF file is copyrighted by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. It may be freely copied for non-commercial purposes as long as it is not modified. All other rights are re- served. Written permission is required for commercial use. iv Title Page Title Page THE i VICARIOUS SACRIFICE, GROUNDED IN PRINCIPLES OF UNIVERSAL OBLIGATION: BY HORACE BUSHNELL. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO., 654 BROADWAY. 1871 ii ENTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO., In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. 1 Title Page STEREOTYPED BY R H. HOBBS, Hartford, Conn. iii 2 Introduction. Introduction. INTRODUCTION. IT will commonly be found that half the merit of an argument lies in the genuineness of its aim, or object. If it is a campaign raised against some principle or doctrine established by the general consent of ages, there will always be a certain lightness in the matter of it that amounts to a doom of failure. If it is, instead, a contribution rather of such help as may forward the settlement of a doctrine never yet fully matured, or at least not supposed to be, the genuineness of the purpose may be taken as a weighty pledge for the solidity of the ma- terial. Nothing, meantime, steadies the vigor and fixes the tenacity of an argument, like that real insight which distinguishes accurately the present stage of the question, and the issue that begins already to be dimly foretokened. It quiets, too, in like manner, the confidence of the public addressed, and steadies the patience of their judgments, if they can discover beforehand, that it is no mere innovator that asks their attention, but one who is trying, in good faith, to make up some deficit, more or less consciously felt by every body, and bring on just that stage of progress in the truth, which its own past ages of history have been steadily preparing and asking for. No investigator appears, in this view, to be quite fair to himself, who does not somehow raise the suspicion, beforehand, that a hasty judgment al- lowed against him may be a real injustice to the truth. Under impressions like these, I undertook, at first, to pre pare, and actually prepared for the treatise that follows, a long, carefully studied, historical chapter, showing, as accurately 14 as I was able, the precise point of progress at which we have now arrived, as regards the subject of it. In this investigation, I was able, as I believe, to make out these two very import- ant conclusions: (1.) That no doctrine of the atonement or reconciling work of Christ, has ever yet been developed, that can be said to have received the consent of the Christian world. (2.) That attempts have been made, in all ages, and continually renewed, in spite of continually successive failures, to assert, in one form or another, what is called “the moral view” of the atonement, and resolve it by the power it wields in human character; and that Christian expectation just now presses in this direction more strongly than ever; raising a clear presumption, that the final doctrine of the subject will emerge at this point and be concluded in this form. Probably it may be so enlarged and qualified as to practically include much that is valued in current modes of belief supposed to be the true orthodoxy, but the grand ruling conception finally established will be, that Christ, by his suffering life and ministry, becomes a reconciling power in character, the power of God unto salvation. Or if it should still be said that he reconciles God to men by his death, that kind of declaration will be taken as being only a more popular, objective way of saying, that God is in him, re- conciling men to Himself. 3 Introduction. Having shown the steadily converging movement of history on this point, I was prom- ising myself, as an advantage thus gained, that I should be regarded, in the treatise that fol- lows, rather as fulfilling the history, than as raising a conflict with it. And yet, on further reflection, I have concluded to sur. render so great a hope of advantage and sacrifice the labor I had thus expended. I do it because the history made out, however satisfactorily to myself, is likely to be controverted by others—as what matter of dogmatic history is not?—and 15 then I shall only have it upon me, before the public, to maintain a double issue, first of history, and then of truth; when I should evince a confidence worthier of the truth, in staking every thing on this issue by itself. The result of such a canvassing of history was just now indicated, and that must be enough. Relinquishing thus every adventitious help beyond this mere suggestion, I consent to let the doctrine I may offer stand by its own inherent merits. At the same time it will be so convenient, in the course of my argument, to refer occa- sionally to Anselm’s really wonderful treatise, Cur Deus Homo, that I am tempted briefly to review the doctrine he gives. This treatise was the first of all the deliberately attempted ex- positions of the work of Christ. It is the seed view, in a sense, of the almost annual harvest that has followed; and as all choice seedlings are apt to degenerate in their successive propagations, we are obliged to admit that this original, first form of the doctrine was in- comparably better than almost any of the revisions, or enlarged expositions of it since given. It is a great deal better, too, than the multitude of these theologic revisions and dogmatic expositions ever conceive it to be. No writer was ever more unfortunate than Anselm is, in the feeble, undiscerning constructions put upon his argument, by the immense following that has accepted his mastership. They take what he says of debt, as if it were a matter of book-account that Christ has come to settle; or what he says of justice, as if he were engaged to even up the score of penalty; or, what he says of pay, as if he had come to bring in some compensative quantity of suffering valuable for the total amount, and not in any sense valuable for the quality or expression, by which it may restore the honors of God infringed by disobedience.
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