The most recent period of discussion of this doctrine has been marked by the effort to rid it of 'artificial' elements in favor of the ethical. Among the protagonists of this period must be mentioned John AI'Leod Campbell (Nature of the Atonement, Cambridge, 1356). II is views are as follows: The work of the Son of God, who came to do and did the will of His Father, must, in view of the deliverance which Ile wrought, be regarded as twofold—first, as dealing with man on behalf of God, and, second, as dealing with God on behalf of man.
In dealing with man on behalf of God, Christ revealed to us the Father in His relation to a sinful world; showed us what our sins were to God; vindicated in the world the Father's name, and witnessed to the excellency of that will against which we were rebelling. In thus re vealing the will of the Father toward sinful men, He necessarily became a man of sorrow and suffering: but these arose naturally out of what Ile was, and the relation in which He stood to those for whom Ile suffered; and to the holiness and love of His very nature must we refer their awful intensity and immeasurable amount. He suffered what He suffered just through seeing sin and sinners with God's eyes, and feeling in reference to them with God's heart. By what He suffered lie condemned sin, and revealed the wrath of God against it. His holiness and love, taking the form of suffering, compose the very essence and adequacy of His sacrifice for sin.
Again, in dealing with God on behalf of man, the oneness of mind with the Father, which toward man took the form of condemnation of sin, became in His dealing with the Father in relation to us, a perfect confession of our sins. which was a perfect Amen in humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man. Such an Amen was due in the truth of all things: due on our behalf, though we could not render it; due from Him as in our nature and our true brother. He who was the truth, could not be in humanity and not utter it: and it was neces sarily a first step in dealing with the Father on our behalf. This confession of our sins by Him who, as the Son of God and the son of man in one person, could perfectly realize the evil of man's alienation, was a peculiar development of the holy sorrow in which He bore the burden of our sins; and which, like Ilis sufferings in confessing His Father before men, had a severity and intensity of its own. But apart from the sufferings present in that confession, this Amen from the depths of the humanity of Christ to the divine condemnation of sin is necessarily conditioned by the reception of the full appre hension and realization of the wrath of God, as well as of the sin against which it collies forth into Ilis soul and spirit, into the bosom of the divine humanity; and, so receiving it, He re sponds to it with a perfect response, and 'in that perfect response He absorbs it. For that re
sponse has all the elements of a perfect repent ance in humanity for all the sin of man—a per fect sorrow—a perfect contrition—all the ele ments of such a repentance, and that in abso lute perfection; all—excepting the personal eon seiousness of sin; and by that perfect response or Amen to the mind of God in relation to sin is the wrath of God rightly met, and that is awarded to divine justice which is its due, and could alone satisfy it.
This confession of the world's sill by the head and representative of humanity was followed up by His intercession as a part of the full response of the mind of the Son to the mind of the Father—a part of that utterance in hu manity which propitiated the divine mercy by the righteous way in which it laid hold of the hope for man which was in God. He bore the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." But the most influential effort to put the doctrine upon a purely ethical basis was that made by Horace Bushnell. His final theory was presented in two works, Vicarious Sacrifice (New York, 1865) and Forgiveness andLaw (NewYork, IS74). The theory is founded upon the almost complete identification of man's moral nature with God's. Christ was under obligation to Him self to do all that He did, and neither in this re spect nor in regard to the definite things which He did was He in a situation essentially different from that which we should have occupied. His great work in coining into the world is to bring men back to God by producing a moral revolution in their souls. He effects this by 'exercising upon them his moral power, gained by what He showed Himself to be. But He cannot thus save them without entering sympathetically into their lot, and having 'His heart burdened with a sense' of it. This was His vicarious (sympathetic) sacrifice. it involved death, be cause He could not engage in this work without incurring the rancorous and murderous enmity of sinful men. The death of Christ was also necessary upon God's account. As we cannot for give unless we have so suffered for the sinner as to lose our 'disgusts' at his sin by the energy of our loving effort to make him better and convert him into a friend, so with God. The suffering of the death of Christ enables God to put away all His disgusts, and thus really pro pitiates Him. It is His self-propitiation. This theory seems to he gaining greatly in influence. One of the best recent statements of it is by W. N. Clarke, Outline of Christian Theology (New York, 1897).