The Infinitude of the Divine Attributes
by Venerable John Henry Newman, C.O.
"We all know well, and firmly hold, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the Cross in satisfaction for our sins. This truth is the great foundation of all our hopes, and the object of our most earnest faith and most loving worship. And yet, however well we know it, it is a subject which admits of drawing out, and insisting on in detail, in a way which most persons will feel profitable to themselves. I shall now attempt to do this in some measure, and to follow the reflections to which it leads; though at this season many words would be out of place.
Christ died for our sins, for the sins of the whole world; but He need not have died, for the Almighty God might have saved us all, might have saved the whole world, without His dying. He might have pardoned and brought to heaven every individual child of Adam without the incarnation and death of His Son. He might have saved us without any ransom and without any delay. He might have abolished original sin, and restored Adam at once. His word had been enough; with Him to say is to do. 'All things are possible to Thee,'was the very reason our Lord gave in His agony for asking that the chalice might pass from Him. As in the beginning He said, 'Let light be, and light was'; so might He have spoken again, and sin would have vanished from the soul, and guilt with it. Or He might have employed a mediator less powerful than His own Son; He might have accepted the imperfect satisfaction of some mere man. He wants not for resources; but He willed otherwise. He who ever does the best, saw in His infinite wisdom that it was expedient and fitting to take a ransom. As He has not hindered the reprobate from resisting His grace and rejecting redemption, so He has not pardoned any who are to enter His eternal kingdom, without a true and sufficient satisfaction for their sin. Both in the one case and the other, He has done, not what was possible merely, but what was best. And this is why the coming of the Word was necessary; for if a true satisfaction was to be made, then nothing could accomplish this, short of the incarnation of the All-holy.
You see, then, my brethren, how voluntary was the mission and death of our Lord; if an instance can be imagined of voluntary suffering, it is this. He came to die when He need not have died; He died to satisfy for what might have been pardoned without satisfaction; He paid a price which need not have been asked, nay, which needed to be accepted when paid. It may be said with truth, that, rigorously speaking, one being can never, by his own suffering, simply discharge the debt of another's sin . Accordingly, He died, not in order to exert a peremptory claim on the Divine justice, if I may so speak,—as if He were bargaining in the market-place, or pursuing a plea in a court of law,—but in a more loving, generous, munificent way, did He shed that blood, which was worth ten thousand lives of men, worth more than the blood of all the sons of Adam poured out together, in accordance with His Father's will, who, for wise reasons unrevealed, exacted it as the condition of their pardon. "
See the rest here.
by Venerable John Henry Newman, C.O.
"We all know well, and firmly hold, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the Cross in satisfaction for our sins. This truth is the great foundation of all our hopes, and the object of our most earnest faith and most loving worship. And yet, however well we know it, it is a subject which admits of drawing out, and insisting on in detail, in a way which most persons will feel profitable to themselves. I shall now attempt to do this in some measure, and to follow the reflections to which it leads; though at this season many words would be out of place.
Christ died for our sins, for the sins of the whole world; but He need not have died, for the Almighty God might have saved us all, might have saved the whole world, without His dying. He might have pardoned and brought to heaven every individual child of Adam without the incarnation and death of His Son. He might have saved us without any ransom and without any delay. He might have abolished original sin, and restored Adam at once. His word had been enough; with Him to say is to do. 'All things are possible to Thee,'was the very reason our Lord gave in His agony for asking that the chalice might pass from Him. As in the beginning He said, 'Let light be, and light was'; so might He have spoken again, and sin would have vanished from the soul, and guilt with it. Or He might have employed a mediator less powerful than His own Son; He might have accepted the imperfect satisfaction of some mere man. He wants not for resources; but He willed otherwise. He who ever does the best, saw in His infinite wisdom that it was expedient and fitting to take a ransom. As He has not hindered the reprobate from resisting His grace and rejecting redemption, so He has not pardoned any who are to enter His eternal kingdom, without a true and sufficient satisfaction for their sin. Both in the one case and the other, He has done, not what was possible merely, but what was best. And this is why the coming of the Word was necessary; for if a true satisfaction was to be made, then nothing could accomplish this, short of the incarnation of the All-holy.
You see, then, my brethren, how voluntary was the mission and death of our Lord; if an instance can be imagined of voluntary suffering, it is this. He came to die when He need not have died; He died to satisfy for what might have been pardoned without satisfaction; He paid a price which need not have been asked, nay, which needed to be accepted when paid. It may be said with truth, that, rigorously speaking, one being can never, by his own suffering, simply discharge the debt of another's sin . Accordingly, He died, not in order to exert a peremptory claim on the Divine justice, if I may so speak,—as if He were bargaining in the market-place, or pursuing a plea in a court of law,—but in a more loving, generous, munificent way, did He shed that blood, which was worth ten thousand lives of men, worth more than the blood of all the sons of Adam poured out together, in accordance with His Father's will, who, for wise reasons unrevealed, exacted it as the condition of their pardon. "
See the rest here.
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