Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser MysteriesBesant, Annie
Religion
Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries
Besant, Annie
Christianity -- Miscellanea; Mysticism; Theosophy
The general teaching in the Early Church on the doctrine of the
Atonement was that Christ, as the Representative of Humanity, faced and
conquered Satan, the representative of the Dark Powers, who held
humanity in bondage, wrested his captive from him, and set him free.
Slowly, as Christian teachers lost touch with spiritual truths, and they
reflected their own increasing intolerance and harshness on the pure and
loving Father of the teachings of the Christ, they represented Him as
angry with man, and the Christ was made to save man from the wrath of
God instead of from the bondage of evil. Then legal phrases intruded,
still further materialising the once spiritual idea, and the "scheme of
redemption" was forensically outlined. "The seal was set on the
'redemption scheme' by Anselm in his great work, _Cur Deus Homo_, and
the doctrine which had been slowly growing into the theology of
Christendom was thenceforward stamped with the signet of the Church.
Roman Catholics and Protestants, at the time of the Reformation, alike
believed in the vicarious and substitutionary character of the atonement
wrought by Christ. There is no dispute between them on this point. I
prefer to allow the Christian divines to speak for themselves as to the
character of the atonement.... Luther teaches that 'Christ did truly and
effectually feel for all mankind the wrath of God, malediction, and
death.' Flavel says that 'to wrath, to the wrath of an infinite God
without mixture, to the very torments of hell, was Christ delivered, and
that by the hand of his own father.' The Anglican homily preaches that
'sin did pluck God out of heaven to make him feel the horrors and pains
of death,' and that man, being a firebrand of hell and a bondsman of the
devil, 'was ransomed by the death of his only and well-beloved son'; the
'heat of his wrath,' 'his burning wrath,' could only be 'pacified' by
Jesus, 'so pleasant was the sacrifice and oblation of his son's death.'
Edwards, being logical, saw that there was a gross injustice in sin
being twice punished, and in the pains of hell, the penalty of sin,
being twice inflicted, first on Jesus, the substitute of mankind, and
then on the lost, a portion of mankind; so he, in common with most
Calvinists, finds himself compelled to restrict the atonement to the
elect, and declared that Christ bore the sins, not of the world, but of
the chosen out of the world; he suffers 'not for the world, but for them
whom thou hast given me.' But Edwards adheres firmly to the belief in
substitution, and rejects the universal atonement for the very reason
that 'to believe Christ died for all is the surest way of proving that
he died for none in the sense Christians have hitherto believed.' He
declares that 'Christ suffered the wrath of God for men's sins'; that
'God imposed his wrath due unto, and Christ underwent the pains of hell
for,' sin. Owen regards Christ's sufferings as 'a full valuable
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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