in. To
the word atonement, as currently pronounced, and as, until a half
century ago, almost universally apprehended, the notion of that which is
sacrificial attached. To the life and death of Jesus, as revelation of
God and Saviour of men, we can no longer attach any sacrificial meaning
whatsoever. There is indeed the perfectly general sense in which so
beautiful a life and so heroic a death were, of course, a grand
exemplification of self-sacrifice. Yet this is a sense so different from
the other and in itself so obvious, that one hesitates to use the same
word in the immediate context with that other, lest it should appear
that the intention was to obscure rather than to make clear the meaning.
For atonement in a sense different from that of reconciliation, we have
no significance whatever. Reconciliation and atonement describe one and
the same fact. In the dogma the words were as far as possible from being
synonyms. They referred to two facts, the one of which was the means and
essential prerequisite of the other. The vicarious sacrifice was the
antecedent condition of the reconciling of God. In our thought it is not
a reconciliation of God which is aimed at. No sacrifice is necessary. No
sacrifice such as that postulated is possible. Of the reconciliation of
man to God the only condition is the revelation of the love of God in
the life and death of Jesus and the obedient acceptance of that
revelation on the part of men.

CHAPTER IV

THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT

It has been said that in Christian times the relation of philosophy and
religion may be determined by the attitude of reason toward a single
matter, namely, the churchly doctrine of revelation.[4] There are three
possible relations of reason to this doctrine. First, it may be affirmed
that the content of religion and theology is matter communicated to man
in extraordinary fashion, truth otherwise unattainable, on which it is
beyond the competence of reason to sit in judgment. We have then the two
spheres arbitrarily separated. As regards their relation, theology is at
first supreme. Reason is the handmaiden of faith. It is occupied in
applying the principles which it receives at the hands of theology.
These are the so-called Ages of Faith. Notably was this the attitude of
the Middle Age. But in the long run either authoritative revelation,
thus conceived, must extinguish reason altogether, or else reason must
claim the whole man. After al