Cited by bro Roberts as evidence of his consistent position on Christ in relation to his sacrifice in The Christadelphian September 1894

The Christadelphian March 1874, Robert Roberts

“Gone Back to Babylon”

“Gone back to Babylon:” yes! it is a sad but true story, as will presently appear.

Mistress Roma (the Babylon of Apocalyptic vision) has done more than all other influences and agencies put together, to alienate the human mind from “revelation” and turn men to Atheism. This effect may not be so visible among the unthinking “masses,” though even among them it is not imperceptible. It is more particularly among the intellectual and the reflective that faith has been killed and hope withered by the operation of Papistical doctrines. These doctrines (modified in Protestantism), are advanced in the name of Bible religion; and being, in the main, put forward in Bible words and phrases, they are taken for Bible sentiment by the common run of people who are but superficially acquainted with the Bible themselves. Hence, any conclusions they arrive at in the process of reflection, with regard to the doctrines, are set down also against the Bible with the result of excluding the Bible itself from belief or attention.

The revival of the truth in our day has shown us that these doctrines are only apparently scriptural, and that the things signified by the forms of speech used from the Bible in support of them, are of a totally different character, presenting none of those stultifications of reason and justice which embarrass the reception of the Papal dogmas with all reasoning minds, whether expounded by Roman Catholic priest or dissenting preacher.

Among these doctrines, none have more effectually caused intelligence of the higher order to stumble at the Word than those expressed by the phrases “original sin” and “substitutionary atonement.” By the first, it is taught that God holds the human race guilty of Adam’s transgression, and that even children, “a span long,” will be punished because of it. Apart altogether from the question of eternal torments, men have agonised themselves in vain to reconcile this holding of an innocent person guilty, with the revealed character of the Creator, who says, “The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son.”—(Ezek. 18:20.) An innocent person is not guilty; and to hold innocent multitudes guilty of an offence which they never committed, is a proceeding so contrary to even human conceptions of truth and justice, that men of thought have stumbled when asked to believe that God is guilty of that which in a man no language would be considered too strong to denounce. They have asked: “Am I to believe that mortal man is more just than God? that God is less righteous than man? am I to believe that He holds me guilty of eating an apple I never had in my mouth, and disobeying a commandment that was never given to me and that I never had the opportunity of obeying?” And there they have stumbled and lain. They have stumbled over a stumbling stone of artificial creation. The priests put the stone in the road that caused them to fall. In their ignorance, the priests interpreted the ways of God as if he were a man, and invented a lie that has killed many.

In our day, the stone has been put out of the way. John Thomas has shown us that the stumbling stone is no part of the king’s highway, that God does not hold us guilty of Adam’s transgression, but that he held Adam guilty of his own transgression, and sentenced him to death for it; and that as to our sharing that death, death becoming a physical law of Adam’s being, we could not as his children, partake of his nature without inheriting the law of it; that thus has death passed on all men “who have not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression;” that so far as they are concerned, their inheritance of death is an innocent calamity, a something they are not responsible for, a something they would easily be delivered from if they were not themselves transgressors; that so far as our individual destiny is concerned, we will never be subjected to the vulgar clerical injustice of being held “guilty (!) of original sin,” but will be judged on our own individual relation to the law of life, that has since that time come into force.

This has removed a great difficulty, and thinking men, with a breath of relief, have, with much comfort, said, “Oh, I see, that is certainly reasonable: I see nothing inconsistent in that.” They have gone on to place the other elements of truth, one by one, like bricks in a building, till the beautiful edifice they have seen is complete, and have taken up their abode there.

The other doctrine mentioned—“substitutionary atonement”—has also, like the doctrine of “original sin,” slain many strong men, who are now in those chambers of death to which the steps of Mistress Roma decline. It has propounded for human belief that God has punished the innocent instead of the guilty, and will let the guilty go free if they recognise the fact. The class in question have said “What! You tell me the Creator is just and immutable in all His ways, and will by no means clear the guilty; and yet that in the largest and most important of His dealings with men, He perpetrates the most flagrant injustice it is possible to conceive, in winking at the escape of the guilty on consideration of an innocent victim falling a prey to His demands (!)” Astounded intelligence has said, “I can understand a human monster satisfying cravings for vengeance in such a way; but don’t tell me that a Being so holy and perfect and just and equal and unchangeable as the Creator must be, could so tarnish His highest work.”

Here again the truth, by the hand of that sturdy digger after the hidden treasures of divine wisdom, who now rests in his grave, has come to the aid of all who are made to stumble thus in the presence of the misrepresented wisdom of God in the sacrifice of Christ. He has shewn us that this is also a block of unhewn stuff placed on the king’s highway by the bewitching emissaries of the nation-inebriating Harlot who sits on the Seven Hills. He has shewn us that the death of Christ is no substitutionary atonement at all; but heaven’s etiquette in the process of receiving back the members of a fallen race into favour and life. He has enabled us to see that insubordination against the Eternal Self-existent Upholder of all things (expressed by the word “sin,” in its primary sense) is, on the part of creatures who exist by His permission, so great an offence that it cannot be overlooked in any scheme of kindness; that God’s authority must be vindicated in a way that will be visible through eternity; that God’s appointments towards men must be upheld; that nothing He has done in justice must be set aside in kindness; that His law must be carried out, not on a substitute, which would not be carrying it out, but setting it aside; that it must be carried out on the very race proposed to be admitted to favour; that since, however, its execution on them, (as matters stood before his provision in Christ) would destroy them, because they are not only mortal by Adam, but guilty of “many offences,” He introduced an element in the situation which admitted of its being done in a way permitting of recovery. He himself, by the Spirit, made one among them and of them, a man, a mortal man, in the identical nature of man, but an obedient man, who suffered the operation of the law working in all men, and survived it in a resurrection because of his obedience; that the divine law being thus vindicated in him, to Him was given the power to give and raise to life all who bow before him as the vindication of God’s broken law, recognising themselves as crucified with him and baptised into his death, in being buried with him by baptism.

Again, thinking men, who have thirsted for something higher than human things, but have been staggered and held back by the monstrous fables of Mistress Roma, have thanked God for this relief, and been able to see that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not on the principle of substitutionary atonement (so called) but on the principle of an upholding of the majesty of His authority as the foundation of offered favour. For this, they have thanked God, and reaching forth the hand of grateful faith, (grateful for liberty to be able to believe in the way of God without surrendering their reason), have laid hold of the hope set before them in the gospel.

But now, what do we ’see? Lamentable spectacle! Some who had tasted this glorious liberty (if ever they really understood and enjoyed it), have turned their backs on the banner of truth, and are on the full march back to Babylon. For what is their doctrine but a revival of the Roman fables of “original sin” and “substitutionary atonement?” They say Christ was exempt from our inherited mortality. When in answer to this they are confronted by the fact that Christ was identical in nature with ourselves, they see they will be obliged to admit that he was under our hereditary law of death, if that hereditary law be an actual in working physical law of our nature. They see that this conclusion cannot be evaded: and so they try to escape the difficulty by teaching that death is not an inworking physical law, but a thing of “relation,” by which they mean that in God’s mind, we are condemned, but not in our nature: and that consequently Christ’s partaking of our nature did not involve his participation in our condemnation. This is ingenious, but what does it mean as regards the moral bearings of the question? It means that we are condemned, not because of physical extraction from Adam, but because God holds us guilty of Adam’s transgression. What is this but the priestly doctrine of “original sin?” Indeed the principal advocate of this revived heresy gravely speaks of our being “guilty of original sin!” Therefore, this Renunciationism means “Back to Babylon;” back to the priestly fable of “original sin;” back to the clouds and darkness which obscure the face of divine justice and charge iniquity against the Most High; back to the horrid entanglements that rack the soul with dreadful and despairing efforts to reconcile the dealings of the Deity with His revealed character in all His word.

So with the death of Christ: in this theory (which with much fair speech, causes the simple to yield), the law of mortality had no hold on Christ; and, therefore, in dying, he died as a substitute—“instead of” those who ought to have died. And thus we are landed back in the doctrine of “substitutionary atonement,” one of the lies and blasphemies uttered by the apostacy against the wisdom of God. Back to Babylon! Back to the yoke of bondage! back to the unutterable degradation and vulgarity which represents the Immutable Deity as a compromiser of His own law and a trafficker in commercial exchange!

And it is easy to go back; for on the surface, this lie of Babylon commends itself. It is in harmony with human ways. It comes down to the level of carnal rules of action. It makes God act like a man; and, therefore, the mere-man mind takes quickly to it. It is the fashionable religious lie of the day, expounded in every church and conventicle. No wonder that those just emerged from these dens of darkness should be easily re-entrapped. It is a great test, in these times, that a prominent professor of the truth should renounce the truth and bend his energies, with all the strength that comes from malignant objects, to revive and re-bewilder the minds of the brethren with this exploded fable.

Those who fall before the trial must not be surprised that those who know and appreciate the liberty wherewith the truth has made them free, cling tenaciously to their position, and refuse to join them in their march back to Babylon. If they will go, they must go by themselves. The friends of the truth will wash their hands of all complicity with their treason, and wait in patience the coming day.