Archive for January 18th, 2013
For the Southern Presbyterian
Dr Dabney on the Plan of Union.
CONTINUED
5. But the most serious objection of all seems to be made to § 3. Of art. 1, touching the atonement which offends in many points. Great exception is taken again and again, to the sentence which repudiates the opinion that “the atonement was so limited only, that if God had designed to redeem more Christ must have suffered more, or differently.” The fault here, says the Southern Presbyterian, is not that the error thus repudiated is not an error; but that it was needless to notice it, because he never heard of anybody who held it. “There are real errors enough in the world: Let us not fight shadows.” And again:
Dr Waddell intimates that the committees know of somebody, somewhere, who holds the absurd error condemned in the report, in regard to the amount of our Lord’s sufferings. Of course we are open to better information on that point, and would recommend that the party holding such an error be exhibited as a curiosity. But it seems curious that whole monstrous and dangerous errors on the great doctrine of the atonement abound on all sides of us, the report should pass them by, and select for condemnation an absurd and obscure dogma, which can be held by at most very few, and they people can do no harm.
We will venture to give a little of the information asked for about them. One of those absurd, harmless, and almost un-heard-of people, was Fautus Socinus, (former of a sect with flattered itself it had made some noise in the world ever since), who in his work De Servatore, argues at length that if we hold to particular redemption, and proper vicarious satisfaction for guilt, our Surety would have to suffer so much the more for every additional number redeemed. And there was an orthodox theologians, who used to be read a long while ago, who thought this an objection ingenious enough, to give it a labored answer, both on his treatise in theology, and in his controversial tracts. His name was Francis Turretin. When the New England theology was fashioned, in the earlier part of our own generation [1] this error was revived and charged on Calvinists, as a necessary consequence of their premises; and so successfully, that some of the Old School actually accepted it as a just and necessary consequence. This class Dr. Baxter usually characterized as the Gethsemane school. For instance, this was the view of a man who used to be heard occasionally in his day. Dr. Ezra Styles Ely. But to come nearer; there was a man named Nathan S. Beman, a little notorious in his prime, as a leader of the New School party on the floor of our Assembly, with whom we believe “the men of 1837" had some trouble. A few years ago, he wrote a book on the atonement, in which he has such statements as these. The Old School are represented as teaching that “the Son of God endured the exact amount of suffering due on legal principles, to sinners” (page 100). Again: “The amount of Christ’s suffering must consequently be the same as the aggregate sufferings included in the eternal condemnation of all those who are saved by his Merit,” (page 107). “If one soul were saved by the atonement, Christ must sustain an amount of suffering equal to that involved in the eternal condemnation of that one soul; and if a thousand were to be saved, a thousand times that amount and in the same proportion for any greater number who are to be rescued from perdition and exalted to glory,” (page 146). And this book was written by a leader of the New School, and was judged of importance enough to be answered at length by one Charles Hodge, who, a very few years ago, was a little known, as the man who did the thinking for the Old School. He takes a good deal of pains to disclaim and refute this doctrine of the book, among others. Such are a few instances of these “curiosities.” [2]