The Christadelphian, April 1875, Robert Roberts

“The Renunicationist ‘Expostulation’ Considered”

Edward Turney has addressed you a week after I have been to Nottingham to present the truth prominently to the people in connection with the brethren there. His objects are sufficiently clear He has failed in the subversion of the brethren everywhere, Nottingham excepted, and a few handfuls here and there, and he would fain renew the attempt, under the guise of a “kindly expostulation,” but it is not in his power to do the mischief he did before. Yet lest you should be seduced into the indiscretion of listening to him, I offer a word or two of remark.

He refers to the meeting of August 29th, 1873, as “a large gathering,” at which he appeared “by the voluntary request of many.” He could not be expected to remind you that the gathering was large because it had been given out by one of his own organisers that he would answer questions, and because I was delegated to ask those questions. You know that he did not answer questions, and left no time for the putting of them, and further, that I, seeing there was no time for questions, then and there proposed to meet him in discussion during the ensuing week, and that he refused.

He protests the conscientiousness of his reasons and motives. This is nothing to the point. Moody and Sankey, and a thousand blind leaders of the blind, are conscientious enough many of them, but of what weight is that fact in the acceptance of their conclusions? Edward Turney told the “large gathering” to which he has referred, that for fifteen years he had been teaching what he did not understand. Is he more conscientious now than he was then? If he could conscientiously teach a borrowed theory for fifteen years, he can do the same now; and that is what he is doing, for his new theory is borrowed from David Handley, and not found by himself in the Word, where it is not to be found.

He fails to remind you also that after boasting at the said “large gathering” that he would meet me (seven months afterwards) after his return from a health-trip to Jersey, he ignominiously refused to do so, though I sent him a proposal immediately on his return, giving him the option of holding the discussion at Nottingham or Birmingham, and of selecting either the Socratic or ordinary form of debate. He tells you instead, of a proposal he made, burdened with absurd conditions and so framed as to fence off the very test he professed to be anxious to come to; but to which proposal I nevertheless assented, on condition he would first go through the discussion he had himself professed his willingness and anxiety to hold.

He tells you again what his theory is, but in new terms, intended to reflect injuriously on the convictions of those who oppose his plausible fiction. He says that Jesus “was not a slave to sin or through sin,” as much as to say that we say he was such a slave. We disown the terms altogether. What we say is, Christ, who died for sinners, was qualified to do so by being begotten by God of a sinful mother, and made partaker of her condemned nature, that through death he might destroy that in it having the power of death, that is, the diabolos. By the spirit, he was “of God made unto us righteousness,” (1 Cor. 1:30) by the flesh, he was made in all things like his brethren.—(Heb. 2:17.) He was thus a righteous wearer of the condemned nature of Adam, in whom the law of its condemnation could be carried out in sacrifice, and removed in resurrection. In this arrangement, there is place for all the testimonies and the silences referred to in Edward Turney’s circular; whereas in the old heresy, re-vamped by him, the wisdom of God is overthrown, in the introduction of substitution, and the obscuration of righteousness and grace, and the denial of the fact that Christ was the Son of David as well as the Son of God, and the Elder Brother instead of the substitute, of the family of God.

Then Edward Turney says Christ was a free-born son of God. In this he thinks he honours Christ. If it is a question of honour, why not go farther, and say he was “immaculate?” nay, spiritual and immortal? This would be still more “honouring” according to human conceptions. But the question is, what is true? From what was Christ born free? Was he born free from mortality? No; for Paul says he was the seed of David according to the flesh (Rom. 1:3); Matthew, that he was the son of Abraham (Matt. 1:1); Paul, that he partook of our flesh and blood, and had to be saved from death (Heb. 2:14; 5:7). As this mortality is our condemnation in Adam, to speak of Christ being born “free,” is to teach the unscriptural invention that he was free from his mother’s nature. He was without sin, truly, but not without sinful flesh, which is mortal flesh. And at the crisis of his sacrifice, was he free from the curse of the law, which says, “Cursed is he that hangeth on a tree?” It may seem “dishonouring,” but it is the truth and wisdom of God.

Edward Turney may exhort us to be calm and teachable, &c., but the exhortation is altogether misplaced. There are other virtues besides being calm. Ezra was not very calm when the princes made the congregation trespass (Ezra 9:3); nor Nehemiah when the Jews married the alien.—(Neh. 13:25.) We must earnestly contend for the faith against men crept in unawares (Jude 3); and we must not give a moment’s place to men who, by good words and fair speeches, seek to deceive the hearts of the simple. “They that forsake the law praise the wicked; but such as keep the law, contend with them.”—(Prov. 28:4.) “Cease, my son, to hearken to instruction that causeth to err from the words of knowledge.”—(Prov. 19:27).