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4. The Perfect Penitent
We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we are
talking about either was (and is) just what He said or else a lunatic, or
something worse. Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic
nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it
may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. God has landed
on this enemy-occupied world in human form.
And now, what was the purpose of it all? What did He come to do? Well,
to teach, of course; but as soon as you look into the New Testament or any
other Christian writing you will find they are constantly talking about
something different-about His death and His coming to life again. It is
obvious that Christians think the chief point of the story lies here. They
think the main thing He came to earth to do was to suffer and be killed.
Now before I became a Christian I was under the impression that the
first thing Christians had to believe was one particular theory as to what
the point of this dying was. According to that theory God wanted to punish
men for having deserted and joined the Great Rebel, but Christ volunteered
to be punished instead, and so God let us off. Now I admit that even this
theory does not seem to me quite so immoral and so silly as it used to; but
that is not the point I want to make. What I came to see later on was that
neither this theory nor any other is Christianity. The central Christian
belief is that Christ's death has somehow put us right with God and given us
a fresh start Theories as to how it did this are another matter. A good many
different theories have been held as to how it works; what all Christians
are agreed on is that it does work. I will tell you what I think it is like.
All sensible people know that if you are tired and hungry a meal will do you
good. But the modern theory of nourishment-all about the vitamins and
proteins-is a different thing. People ate their dinners and felt better long
before the theory of vitamins was ever heard of: and if the theory of
vitamins is some day abandoned they will go on eating their dinners just the
same. Theories about Christ's death are not Christianity: they are
explanations about how it works. Christians would not all agree as to how
important these theories are. My own church-the Church of England-does not
lay down any one of them as the right one. The Church of Rome goes a bit
further. But I think they will all agree that the thing itself is infinitely
more important than any explanations that theologians have produced. I think
they would probably admit that no explanation will ever be quite adequate to
the reality. But as I said in the preface to this book, I am only a layman,
and at this point we are getting into deep water. I can only tell you, for
what it is worth, how I, personally, look at the matter.
On my view the theories are not themselves the thing you are asked to
accept. Many of you no doubt have read Jeans or Eddington. What they do when
they want to explain the atom, or something of that sort, is to give you a
description out of which you can make a mental picture. But then they warn
you that this picture is not what the scientists actually believe. What the
scientists believe is a mathematical formula. The pictures are there only to
help you to understand the formula. They are not really true in the way the
formula is; they do not give you the real thing but only something more or
less like it. They are only meant to help, and if they do not help you can
drop them. The thing itself cannot be pictured, it can only be expressed
mathematically. We are in the same boat here. We believe that the death of
Christ is just that point in history at which something absolutely
unimaginable from outside shows through into our own world. And if we cannot
picture even the atoms of which our own world is built, of course we are not
going to be able to picture this. Indeed, if we found that we could fully
understand it, that very fact would show it was not what it professes to
be-the inconceivable, the uncreated, the thing from beyond nature, striking
down into nature like lightning. You may ask what good will it be to us if
we do not understand it. But that is easily answered. A man can eat his
dinner without understanding exactly how food nourishes him. A man can
accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works: indeed, he
certainly would not know how it works until he has accepted it.
We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed
out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the
formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. Any theories
we build up as to how Christ's death did all this are, in my view, quite
secondary: mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they do not help us,
and, even if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself. All
the same, some of these theories are worth looking at.
The one most people have heard is the one I mentioned before -the one
about our being let off because Christ had volunteered to bear a punishment
instead of us. Now on the face of it that is a very silly theory. If God was
prepared to let us off, why on earth did He not do so? And what possible
point could there be in punishing an innocent person instead? None at all
that I can see, if you are thinking of punishment in the police-court sense.
On the other hand, if you think of a debt, there is plenty of point in a
person who has some assets paying it on behalf of someone who has not. Or if
you take "paying the penalty," not in the sense of being punished, but in
the more general sense of "standing the racket" or "footing the bill," then,
of course, it is a matter of common experience that, when one person has got
himself into a hole, the trouble of getting him out usually falls on a kind
friend. Now what was the sort of "hole" man had got himself into? He had
tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other
words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement:
he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying down your arms,
surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the
wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground
floor-that is the only way out of a "hole." This process of surrender-this
movement full speed astern-is what Christians call repentance. Now
repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating
humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we
have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing
part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man
to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only
a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it
and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would
be a perfect person-and he would not need it.
Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a
kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you
back and which He could let you off if He chose: it is simply a description
of what going back to Him is like. If you ask God to take you back without
it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It
cannot hap pen. Very well, then, we must go through with it. But the same
badness which makes us need it, makes us unable to do it. Can we do it if
God helps us? Yes, but what do we mean when we talk of God helping us? We
mean God putting into us a bit of Himself, so to speak. He lends us a little
of His reasoning powers and that is how we think: He puts a little of His
love into us and that is how we love one another. When you teach a child
writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the
letters because you are forming them. We love and reason because God loves
and reasons and holds our hand while we do it. Now if we had not fallen,
that would be all plain sailing. But unfortunately we now need God's help in
order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all-to
surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God's nature corresponds
to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need God's
leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked.
God can share only what He has: this thing, in His own nature, He has not.
But supposing God became a man-suppose our human nature which can
suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person-then that
person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die,
because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and
I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it
only if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we
men share in God's dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it
is a drop out of the ocean of His intelligence: but we cannot share God's
dying unless God dies; and He cannot die except by being a man. That is the
sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not
suffer at all.
I have heard some people complain that if Jesus was God as well as man,
then His sufferings and death lose all value in their eyes, "because it must
have been so easy for him." Others may (very rightly) rebuke the ingratitude
and ungraciousness of this objection; what staggers me is the
misunderstanding it betrays. In one sense, of course, those who make it are
right. They have even understated their own case. The perfect submission,
the perfect suffering, the perfect death were not only easier to Jesus
because He was God, but were possible only because He was God. But surely
that is a very odd reason for not accepting them? The teacher is able to
form the letters for the child because the teacher is grown-up and knows how
to write. That, of course, makes it easier for the teacher, and only because
it is easier for him can he help the child. If it rejected him because "it's
easy for grown-ups" and waited to learn writing from another child who could
not write itself (and so had no "unfair" advantage), it would not get on
very quickly. If I am drowning in a rapid river, a man who still has one
foot on the bank may give me a hand which saves my life. Ought I to shout
back (between my gasps) "No, it's not fair! You have an advantage! You're
keeping one foot on the bank"? That advantage-call it "unfair" if you
like-is the only reason why he can be of any use to me. To what will you
look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?
Such is my own way of looking at what Christians call the Atonement.
But remember this is only one more picture. Do not mistake it for the thing
itself: and if it does not help you, drop it
