The Christadelphian, November 1894, Robert Roberts

“Bro Andrew’s ‘Retospect’”

Brother Andrew has seen fit to write a seven-page tract, which is nominally a review of the various controversies in which he has taken part on the sacrifice of Christ, but really an endeavour to prove that I have changed my mind, and that a “serious condition of things has arisen for the truth” in consequence.

Left to myself I should refrain from answering such a false and foolish imputation, but others more immediately affected by the turmoil brother Andrew has caused in London think it well I should reply. It needs no lengthy remarks from me to do so effectually, always premising that I have no desire to inflict pain on brother Andrew, and that he could not possibly impose a more disagreeable task on me than to antagonise him. He has been the aggressor from the beginning, and has left me no alternative.

If the writers of the Scriptures were in the land of the living to be appealed to as to the true meaning of Scripture statements apparently in conflict, controversy would speedily cease so far as the Scriptures are concerned. We are not in this position with regard to the Scriptures; but we are in this position with regard to the matters debated in this tract. What I have written is brought into question. Brother Andrew tries to convict me of change by quoting me against myself. But I know I have not changed, and I am here to explain what may seem contradictory when presented in an artificial juxtaposition. I know my state of mind. I know the meaning of my utterances, and I deny the meanings attributed to me. I repudiate the periphrastic manipulation of my words and sentences. I reject brother Andrew’s interpretation of my case as a serious misinterpretation, He says I have changed my position “in order to justify” my belief in the resurrection of rejectors, and in order “to enable me to present a plausible case in support” of it. If I had not been accustomed to slanderous misrepresentation for years, and if I did not habitually endeavour to conform to Peter’s injunction to “take it patiently” when we do well and suffer for it, I should feel such words to go very deep and to stir powerful resentments. They are absolutely untrue. I have believed in the resurrection of rejectors from the beginning of my knowledge of the truth, because Christ explicitly affirms it in words that cannot be put aside by any amount of far-fetched inference-drawing. The evidence that I have done so, if evidence beyond my own assertion be necessary, is in the hands of possessors of the thirty back volumes of the Ambassador and Christadelphian. The fact that I have done so is proof that there has been no need to change in any other direction. As a matter of fact I have made no change in any direction. It is most distasteful to me to have to appear to parade such an assertion, but the necessity is thrust on me. I presume that on a question of what brother Roberts thinks, or has thought, brother Roberts is a better authority than brother Andrew. If any choose to doubt my word I have no answer but the silent appeal to my Judge, which is the last resort of outraged integrity.

This direct and personal mode of confutation is applicable with peculiar and irresistible force to brother Andrew’s surmise in the case of a pamphlet issued some years ago by one Cornish. He says “it was a matter of surprise to some” that I did not answer that pamphlet. “The ‘enigma,’” he says, “is now explained.” There was “an enigma,” it seems. I was not aware of it, for I had no reason for not replying to it beyond the reason that has led me to take no notice in scores of other pamphleteering exploits—namely, that the thing was not important enough for a weary brain to tackle—not that the subject was not important enough, please, but the treatment of it. But others thought there was “an enigma”—presumably brother Andrew among the number. Very well: and it is “now explained.” What is the explanation? The explanation is that, on this point, the Cornish pamphlet expressed my mind! Well, well, this is a surprise, to be sure. It is an enormous blunder. Two witnesses will prove it. First, I tender myself. The pamphlet did not, and does not, express my mind at all. Who should know so well as the writer of the pamphlet? So far is the writer of the pamphlet from thinking that I agree with him that he is offering at this moment to come all the way from Australia to convert me. Look on the cover of the Christadelphian for October (current). You will find a note to G. C., the very man. I can produce his letter, if necessary, to show how far he considers me from agreeing with him. He at least had no suspicion there was any enigma in my silence.

Thus, I confute brother Andrew’s inference in a matter within personal knowledge. The comment I make is this, that if brother Andrew can thus blunder in a matter capable of being put to the test, there is the gravest reason for distrusting his circuitous and nebulous inferences on remoter matters that cannot in the same way be brought to the test. If in this matter I am unable to produce an unimpeachable witness that brother Andrew’s thought of me is wrong, I am entitled without immodesty to pit my word against his as to whether I have changed or not.

There is not the least real indication of change in the quotations he has made. Of these there are two classes. (1.) The quotations from matter written in 1873 in answer to the Free Life arguments, and (2), those from answers given during the recent debate in London.

As to the first, I have to say that I endorse every one of them—absolutely, and without any qualification or modification. I have not, since 1862, thought anything else than what these quotations affirm, one and all.

As to the second, I have to complain that they are, for the most part, paraphrases and not quotations, and that if they were given in full, with their context, without manipulation, they would not even seem discrepant with the statements of 1873. There is a difference that just judgment will always draw between colloquial rejoinders to specific questions and the deliberate formulations of propositions. The colour and meaning of the colloquial rejoinders depend in very great measure upon the context and the surroundings—the manner of the interlocutor and the style of his interrogatories. Many of my answers were mere protests against the unnatural and sometimes meaningless phraseologies that brother Andrew employed in his questions. Such answers are not to be treated as an exhaustive or even the precise definition of the particular matter in question considered on its own merits. Brother Andrew’s vague technicalites are responsible for some things which he now uses as stumbling blocks, “alienation” and “anger,” for example, as applied to babes. “Alienated by wicked works,” or “alienated through ignorance,” is the style of the apostolic usage where that phrase is concerned, and I naturally could not allow that such a definition could be applicable to a babe who had and could do no wicked works. But I did not therefore mean that a babe does not inherit the sentence of death from Adam, or that it is not made of that sinful flesh whose motions Paul himself found so troublesome, and which is the common stock of hereditary human nature. Let the several parts of truth be allowed for, and there will be no ground for the laboured effort made by brother Andrew to try and make out contradiction where there is none. I have never contended or said that “Adam’s descendants do not come under condemnation until they individually commit sin.” They inherit the sentence of death passed upon Adam, and are in that sense “condemned already”; but this is an affair of physical inheritance; an affair of nature made mortal by condemnation. The sentence was passed on Adam: “Because thou hast done this, thou shall return to dust.” The sentence becomes ours in this way, that under the sentence, Adam’s body (which was Adam) became mortal, and every body derived from Adam was necessarily mortal, too, and from the same cause, and therefore “death reigned” over them all. In this there is nothing difficult to understand. The difficulty begins when unscriptural statements are made and ideas imported into the situation that stultify reason, such as being “held guilty of Adam’s sin,” “Adam’s sin imputed to his posterity,” “children of wrath at birth,” &c. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven “against all unrighteousness of men” and not against misfortune.

The difficulty is to hold the balance level in the collisions of different ideas that may have more or less truth in them. Brother Andrew appears at various times to have had a series of controversies in London which did not affect other parts of the country. These controversies gave birth, it seems, to the various articles which have appeared from him from time to time in the Christadelphian during the past 25 years. I was not aware they had a polemical origin when handed to me for publication. I supposed they were the spontaneous efforts of loving constructive study. It would have lessened their value in my eyes had I known they were the offspring of personal encounters; for my experience is that the system of perpetual discussion is generative of extreme views and expressions on both sides. The truth is a thing calling for quiet mental action. It is great, like the sky. I have always shrunk from the chafes and frictions of polemic minds that lead to polemic scintillations rather than to the calm and comprehensive grasp of spiritual truth. Most controversies originate in the use of terms that are elastic from their vagueness. There are terms that are suitable enough as the casual description of some passing phase of truth, but which become sources of coufusion when used as a precise and leading term of definition. Technicalities, also, that are serviceable enough when they represent an understood and accepted meaning, become causes of mere bewilderment if used for demonstration in controversy. In all controversy, ideas ought to be expressed in the language of literal precision. When they cannot be so expressed in a case of dispute, and when, instead of literal definition, technicalities are pressed forward in the argument, it is the indication of a mental vacuum in that case, and a cause of mere jangle to disputants. There is much of this in brother Andrew’s writing. The mind is wearied and distressed by a mechanical use of Bible terms. The mind cannot be satisfied with words when they fail to convey ideas.

Brother Andrew, referring to one of the articles produced by one of his London controversies, lays emphasis on the fact that it was endorsed and commended by me, and that I had an opportunity of knowing the nature of the conflict that produced it, because I attended a meeting in London when a division was threatened over it. I have no very clear memory at this distant date of that occasion: but this is what brother F. G. Jannaway says about it, writing to me a few days ago:—“Carry your mind back to that memorable Friday evening in 1876, when you faced John Sydenham at 69, Upper Street. At the end of the cross-examination, you said to him, “If you mean what you have said, there is no need for a division,” at which brother Andrew was greatly chagrined, and saw you at the railway station on your departure, and made ex-parte statements to you, and then came back and said you had not fully understood Sydenham’s answers as to ‘sin-in-the-flesh,’ &c.—and that you had stated that, in view of J. J. A.’s explanation, there must be a division.”

Brother Andrew is wrong in saying that “the present conflict embraces substantially the same points as those discussed” at that time. The “present conflict” is on the question: What are the grounds of human responsibility to God? It is true that brother Andrew has introduced the question of Adam and the sacrifice of Christ; but I cannot admit that they have anything to do with the issue: and I had a strong feeling, especially at the debate, that their introduction (especially the question of Christ) acted as a mere diversion from the main issue. Their introduction in the responsibility question is artificial entirely.

The question is, Will those who knowingly reject the words of God come forth to punishment at the resurrection? The position of such men in Adam does not stand in the way by general consent: for even brother Andrew admits (as he is bound to admit) that the restoration of mortal life can take place “in Adam”—as shown many times over by the mortal resuscitation of persons who were not in Christ. I am astonished at the steady imperturbability with which this fact is ignored by those who make such an ado against the possibility of rebels rising to mortal punishment on the ground that they are “in Adam.”

So, also, with the question of Christ: it has no bearing, because whatever was accomplished in his case, had reference to the attainment of eternal life, and there can be no question of eternal life for rejectors.

There is no resurrection to eternal life out of Christ, but there is resurrection to mortal life out of Christ: it has happened over and over again. It is all a question of whether there is a divine object. To show His power was God’s object in the historical cases: to administer His justice will be its object in bringing back to mortal life the responsible rejectors and evil doers.

I have therefore felt that all controversy about the sentence of death on Adam and the shedding of the blood of Christ in confirmation of the everlasting covenant was outside the question of whether knowing rebels will rise to punishment.

The scriptures say that “He that believeth not the gospel” when credibly presented, and “He that rejects Christ and receives not his word will be judged at the last day.” By this I abide, all specious argument to the contrary notwithstanding.

The scriptures also define clearly the principle of this judgment. They say that light condemns: that to whom much is given of them much will be required; that men who are blind have no sin to answer for; but that when they “see,” their sin remains, and that they have no cloke for their sin when “they have seen and hated both Christ and the Father.” Brother Andrew says “No: they must have their sin taken away before they can come forth to judgment”—an extraordinary conclusion, which he deduces from imaginary postulates ingeniously dovetailed with assumed Mosaic significances. The conclusion is in direct collision with the explicit testimony, and I am unable to receive it.

Let him stand on his conviction if it still seem true to him, but let him abandon the vain and not honourable attempt to make out that the change is with me and not with him. The change is all with him. I am exactly where I was, and have been for forty years, in all points and particulars. He has publicly abandoned the revealed principle that light is the rule of human responsibility, and to justify this, he has had to make many extraordinary changes in long-received principles of divine truth. I do not wish to give him pain: but his tactics are incomprehensible to me. I must suppose that I have misunderstood him in time past. I have truly been conscious of negative currents all the time of our acquaintance, but I never could have believed the time would come when by such verbal subterfuges he would try to fasten on me a charge so notoriously inconsistent with facts and still worse, appeal to the brethren against the Christadelphian after many years arduous conflict with many adversaries: and still worse, judge his brother by indirectly proclaiming his rejection at the judgment seat in advance.

I can take it all calmly enough, though it is so painful. The work of the truth was being done before brother Andrew knew anything of it. I had the honour to assist in the opening of his eyes; and if he choose to persevere in his present antagonism, he will hurt himself, and not those who are walking now where he walked till very recently, and where they will continue to walk till the Lord Himself step forth as arbitrator of all things. He may even sin against God in fighting against those who have been serving the truth for a generation through evil and good report. Paul has left us a good example in his treatment of those who forsook him in the last hour. He said, “I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge.” I say, Amen!

ROBERT ROBERTS.