The Redemption

a) Meaning of Redemption

The term redemption ( from the Latin re-, “bach,” and emere “to buy”) means the act of buying back. This nominal definition squares well with the real definition of the term; for the real meaning of the Redemption is the act by which the God-Man bought back for mankind the opportunity lost by original sin, viz., the opportunity of attaining God and eternal happiness. The price paid for this purchase was the sufferings and death of the Redeemer.

b) The Need of Redemption

There is need of buying back only when a necessary thing has been lost or thrown away and cannot be recovered without the payment of a price. Now, by original sin man threw away his necessary opportunity of achieving God and Heaven; nor can man regain that opportunity except through the payment of an adequate price. By reason of original sin, therefore, redemption is necessary. To show the value of this reasoning we must study i. Original Sin as a Fact; and 2. The Price Required to Restore the Opportunity Lost by Original Sin. 1. Original Sin as a Fact.—We turn to Holy Scripture for an account of man’s first sin and its effect upon the human race; but reason and daily experience furnish an irrefragable confirmation of the same facts. While there is no purely rational proof of original sin apart from revelation, there is everything in human nature and in the experiences of life to suggest it, nay, to insist upon it. So true is this that one of the most clear-headed thinkers of our times has gone so far as to say that original sin is “the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.” His meaning is, of course, that this is, of all truths, the most evident in the inner and outer life of men, and is thus inevitably proved, even though a rational demonstration may not be formulated in metaphysical terms. For, if one clear demonstration cannot be made by reason alone, there are a million conditions, thoughts, emotions, feelings, situations, and traditions, which make the matter one that is impossible to deny. Consider the following remarks by Mr. G. K. Chesterton (The Everlasting Man, p. 42, and p. 98) : . original sin is really original. Not merely in theology but in history it is a thing rooted in the origins. Whatever else men have believed, they have all believed that there is something the matter with mankind. The sense of sin has made it impossible to be natural and have no clothes, just as it has made it impossible to be natural and have no laws.” . . there is a feeling [in the ancient pagans] that there is something higher than the gods; but because it is higher, it is also further away. Not yet could even Virgil have read the riddle and the paradox of that other divinity who is both higher and nearer. For them what was truly divine was very distant. … It had less and less to do with … mere mythology. Yet even in this there was a sort of tacit admission of its intangible purity, when we consider what most of the mythology is like. … In other words, there is something in the whole tone of the time suggesting that men had accepted a lower level, and were still half-conscious that it was a lower level.

It is hard to find words for these things; yet the one really just word stands ready. These men were conscious of the Fall; if they were conscious of nothing else; and the same is true of all heathen humanity.” Consider also the following remarks of the same gifted thinker (Orthodoxy, p. 24 f. and p. 268): “Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Rev. R. J. Campbell … admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. Rut they essentially deny human sin which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two conclusions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.”—“Science knows nothing whatever about pre-historic man; for the excellent reason that he is pre-historic. A few professors choose to conjecture that such things as human sacrifice were once innocent and general and that they gradually dwindled; but there is no direct evidence of it, and the small amount of indirect evidence is very much the other way. In the earliest legends we have, such as the tales of Isaac and Iphigenia, human sacrifice is not introduced as something old, but rather as something new; as a strange and frightful exception darkly demanded by the gods. History says nothing; and the legends all say that the earth was kinder in its earliest time. There is no tradition of progress; but the whole human race has a tradition of the Fall. Amusingly enough, the very dissemination of this idea is used against its authenticity. Learned men literally say that this pre-historic calamity cannot be true because every race of mankind remembers it. I cannot keep pace with these paradoxes.” The following points, chosen out of a thousand that could be mentioned, are listed as suggestions for thought upon the obvious character of original sin as a fact in human existence: (a) the phenomenon of shame with reference to the physical realities of our being; (b) the traditions of ancient peoples about a rebellion of men against God, as in the story of Prometheus and the Titans; in purifications as requisite for the newly blessed mother of children; in the notion that man had some former spiritual existence and was put into a body-prison in punishment for some primal sin; (c) the consciousness of miseries as punishments—a favorite idea with poets, philosophers, and people in all ancient times from Homer and Hesiod and Plato downward; (d) the various traditions of some Paradise Lost—Elysium, the Isles of the Blessed, Atlantis, the Golden Age, etc.;

(e) the consciousness common to all men of a tendency to do wrong even in defiance of the knowledge of what is right. All these things show that “there is something the matter with mankind,” that something valuable has been lost through man’s own fault, and that he is suffering for it, that man has thrown something away and is hapless without it; in a word, that original sin is a fact. Original sin was the failure of man at some primal trial. Holy Scripture (Book of Genesis) gives a detailed account of man’s trial and failure. The word of Scripture is the word of God, and Scripture is moreover a reliable historical document, humanly considered. Therefore, we must accept the Scriptural testimony. Still, even if Scripture had nothing .to tell us in this matter, reason would assure 11s that some such trial must have taken place, even as experience and the common consciousness of the race assurers that man failed in the trial. It is interesting and profitable for us to consider what human reason has to say on this subject, and we proceed to do so. Reason asserts that man’s faculties (i.e., capacities for action) and, in particular, man’s finest and noblest faculties, were given to him that he might use ‘them in the attainment of his last end, the purpose of his being. Now man’s noblest~facuities are .his intellect or understanding and his free-will. By these, above other faculties of minor nature, man was meant to attain to God and Heaven, his last end. But man exercises faculty of of intellect by acquiring rational knowledge; and he exercises his free-will by choosing what that knowledge evidences to him as good. To achieve God, therefore, man had to know God and God’s will, and freely choose to love God and perform God’s will. Therefore, the very first man, the father of all ha3 to represent his race, as he. in a manner, contained his rarf He had to have some perfectly free opportunity of choosing or rejecting God—otherwise, in spite of the splendid faculties of intellect and free-will, man would be necessitated in his acts, and his finest faculties would be vain„..and useless. In a word, man bad to stand some tes-some trial, where his faculties of intellect and free-will would be exercised as they should be, or, if man freely proved perverse, the trial would be in vain. Man failed in the trial. Original sin became a fact. And by original sin—the first man outraged and defiled his nature; he rejected the true end of his being; he forfeited the supernatural gifts and helps with which the Creator had provided him. As a result, man stood in the world as an alien and an outcast, an exile banished from his true home, unable to attain or to claim the end for which he had been made. Crippled in the finest faculties of his being, stripped of supernatural aids, his birthright sold and forfeited, man was literally in the state of a cripple who stands at the foot of a stairway which he is unable to climb, looking helplessly upward to a door which he longs to enter, but which his own perversity has closed and locked against him. His need is twofold: he requires help up the stairway, and he requires that the door at the head of the stairway be opened again to him. For these needs to be supplied, man required a redeemer. who would open heaven (the locked door), and give him help to get there (help up the stairway). Now, man outraged his nature, injuring its finest faculties, by the original sin. And this injured nature he passed on to his descendants. The first man forfeited God and happiness. The forfeit affected all of his descendants. Just as a father whose wealth is immense may leave his children poor (even though it is no fault of their own) by squandering his goods, so did the first parent leave his children-poor by of supernatural grace and natural perfections. A question may here arise. It will be admitted that man must have had some primal trial. It will be admitted that man failed at the trial. It will be admitted that every race of mankind has an inner consciousness of that failure. But is there not some further word to be said, to show that all men of all races are truly children of the one father who sinned in the beginning ? Such a further word shall indeed be said. The whole of mankind is descended from a single pair of parents, and this is the fact indicated in the expressions, the solidarity of the human race, and the unity of the human race. Despite various vague evolutionary doctrines, the assertion of this unity is scientific. For consider: human beings are specifically the same; human nature is the same in men of all colors, cultures, dispositions; all men have the same physiological and psychological operations, the same laws of generation and birth, the same facility of inter-racial fecundity, the same power of reasoning, the same faculty of speech, the same moral conscience, the same need of religion. Thus is the revealed doctrine that a single pair of human Parents is the source of all mankind, corroborated by the findings of science. Further, the common consciousness of all men ofthe original shipwreck of human nature is a strong, a compelling, argument for the fact that all men are of one single stock. Two things then are certain: (a) The first man sinned, and (&) The first man is the father of all men. In him all sinned, for in him, in a manner, all men were contained. The injured nature of the first sinful man came to all men. Even as the first man required a redeemer; so do all men require a redeemer. In passing, we must mention the fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary was exempt from the common heritage of original sin, and was never, at any moment, stained with its guilt. It is unthinkable that the maternal source of the human nature of the God-Man should be in any way whatever tainted or evil. We call this exemption of the Blessed Mother her Immaculate Conception, and declare it to be an immunity from all trace of original sin, wrought in her behalf by the special providence of God, in view of the merits to be won by her Divine Son. The matter is divinely revealed, but, as we see here, it is also clearly approved by reason. 2. The Price Lost by Original Sin.—If man was to have the opportunity of attaining his last end restored to him.ji price had to be paid for that restoration. God could, indeed, by His absolute power, have forgiven the sin outright; but this would have been in conflict with divine wisdom. For, had no price been exacted, man could attain his last end without merit. The greatest virtue, the most sublime devotion, the most unflagging service to God, could never deserve a reward; man could never merit, never earn any grace. He might indeed, God freely bestowing the first grace, establish a kind of claim-to further grace by good use of the first, but this claim would not be a claim in strict justice. Now, we know that divine love and wisdom wishes man, if he is to attain his end at all, to work out, to earn, his way thereto. A rich and kind employer hires a laborer: the laborer cannot earn the position, but once he is given the place, given the work to do and the tools required to do it, he can earn recompense. Surely He would not wish it otherwise. God made man in His image to live here on earth and work out his salvation, the purpose of his being. Man could not earn existence. nor could he earn the first grace, but given these, surely he could earn recompense of further grace for the good use he made of the first. Man sinned. God could have left him so, reduced in sin, his end unachievable. But revelation, as well as the voice of human hearts speaking universally, proclaims that God did not leave man so. He promised to redeem man, to buy him back the opportunity of working out his true destiny, of earning grace by use of grace, of earning Heaven at the last. In a word, God wanted man to merit, and to merit in justice, the end He had set for him. Of course, man could not merit existence, he could not merit the first graces, he could not merit an absolute assurance of his own unflinching fidelity and perseverance unto the end; buthe could merit graces after the first grace was given, and he could merit right up to the end, if he remained faithful to the use of grace, and so could merit Heaven and his last end. Now, since God wished man to be able to merit grace and Heaven in the way described (and Scripture testifies that He did and does), then the injury wrought towards God by man’s sin had to be wiped out, paid for, fully atoned for—otherwise there might be talk of mercy, but there could be none of justice, for the claims of man. Justice bears an even balance. Restoration in the measure of justice is an equal restoration. A restoration in justice for man’s sin must have the extent of man’s sin; or rather, the price paid for restoration must be as valuable as that which man’s sin had taken away. Now, man’s sin was infinite in malice: it did an infinite injury to God; it was an affront which was an infinite indignity to God. How, you may say, could poor, finite man commit an infinite offence? Consider: “Injury is in the person iniured.’’ The first measure of offence is the person offended. If a soldier, in the ranks strikes a fellow-soldier, the offence is not very serious; if the private soldier strikes his lieutenant, the offence is more serious; if the private soldier strikes his general, the offence is still more serious, and so on. Yet the thing done was precisely the same in all cases—a blow struck. The measure of the offence is, first and foremost, in the personage offended; secondarily, it is in the status of the offender, and the lower or more dependent that status, the greater is the offence. Now, sin is an offence against God. whose maiestv is infinite, and hence sin is infinite. It is an infinite injury done to God, not indeed that it hurts or maims the divine substance itself, but that it outrages the divine majesty and dignity. Then sin is done by man, most favored by God, heaped with gifts, given existence, kept in existence, all by the goodness of God. Man is totally dependent upon God. Hence, when man offends God, the offence is ingratitude unspeakable, impertinence unthinkable. So, man’s first sin was an infinite offence: infinite in outraging infinite majesty, infinite in unfathomable ingratitude and impertinence. And, lastly, the very nature of man’s first sin shows that it was a very serious thing in itseljL God forbade man to eat a certain fruit. It was a simple, easy obedience that was exacted. But God made it plain that the obligation was not a light one; for He declared that death would follow upon disobedience — and so it did, and passed upon all men, so that all must die, and in the moment of sin our first parents died the spiritual death, which consists in the loss of that gift of infinite value, grace. Sin, then, has an infinite malice or badness. How, therefore, should finite man atone for it in justice, so that the extent of the offence should be equaled by the extent of the atonement? You may say, if man could commit an infinite offence, could he not effect an infinite work of reparation? No, for just as “injury is in the person injured,” so atonement is measured by the person making it. The offence was measured by the infinite majesty of God; the atonement, in so far as man might offer to make it, would be measured by the finite capacity of man. Man could not atone in the measure exacted by justice. Yet man should atone, for man did the offence. Here, then, is an impasse: man owes an infinite debt and cannot pay it; God can pay an infinite price, but does not owe it. Is this the end, then ? Is the redemption impossible ? No; for the wisdom and power of God now shine forth in a work that passes far beyond the wildest hopes and thoughts of man: God gives a Redeemer who is both God and. Man - He is God, and can pay the infinite price of redemption in the measure of justice. He is man, and of the race that should pay that price. God became man in the Incarnation, the act by which the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, remaining God, remaining one single Person, assumed to Himself human nature, becoming true man as well as true God — the nature of God and the nature of man being perfectly united in the One undivided Person of the Son of God. The Incarnation was necessary, given God’s will to receive for man’s fall an equal atonement in justice. There is need of redemption for man; there is need of a Redeemer who is both God and Man.

c) The Fact of Redemption

That Jesus Christ is both true God and true Man we shall show in subsequent Chapters. That Christ is the true Redeemer we shall show in the next Article of the present Chapter. Here, for the sake of completeness in the study we have immediately in hand, we merely state the fact of the accomplished Redemption. Man needs a Redeemer. The Redeemer must be both God and Man. It is a matter of history as well as of revelation that the human race expected the coming of such a redeemer. When the time of expectation was accomplished, the Redeemer came—Jesus Christ was born. Christ spent thirty years in almost complete obscurity, and then for three years He was a public figure. He was indeed a Great Teacher. He taught Truth to men; but the chief work He had to do was to die, to offer His life in sacrifice to God, an infinite price for the infinite debt which man had incurred by sin. G. K. Chesterton says {The Everlasting Man, p. 253) : “Now … the life of Jesus of Nazareth went as swift and as straight as a thunderbolt … it did above all things consist in doing something that had to be done. It emphatically would not have been done, if Jesus had walked about the world for ever doing nothing except tell the truth… . The primary thing he was going to do was to die. He was going to do other things equally definite and objective … but from first to last the most definite fact is that he is going to die.” That Jesus Christ died is a fact of plain history. That He rose again from the dead is equally plain history, although there are some that are not allowed to believe it by their narrow and ugly philosophies, which reject a priori anything of a miraculous nature. Still, it is plain history, as we shall see in another Chapter. The results of this death and Resurrection were: the satisfaction of God’s justice for the sin of man. and the opening of grace (help to Heaven) for men. This, in very brief, is what is meant by the fact of Redemption. The sufferings and death of Christ (who is true God as well as true man) are atoning acts of God, and hence of infinite value. They are an infinite price paid for an infinite debt. Justice is satisfied. Justice is satisfied. Man has again the opportunity which he lost in the primal sin, viz., the opportunity of achieving the purpose of his being, of attaining of his last end. But, as we have seen, man is crippled in his finest faculties as a result of original sin. Of what use is the opening of Heaven if weakened and injured human nature cannot get there ? The Redeemer supplies the lack: He gains grace for men, He founds His Church to be the continual means and fount of grace unto men, and to guide them safely to Heaven. The Redemption, as a matter of fact, is a complete Redemption. Man has his opportunity once more; the accomplishment of his end is in his own hands; effort and good-will (with grace) will achieve it. But, as the whole of humanity stood at trial in the trial of Adam; so all humanity stands at trial in its individual members, As Adam had to choose God or reject Him ; each individual man has now to choose God or reject Him. And he who would choose God must inquire out the truth about the meaning of life, must know and practice the true religion, must avail himself of the means of grace. Thus only can men take advantage of the opportunity purchased for them in the Redemption.

Summary of the Article

In this lengthy Article we have learned the meaning of redemption, and have seen that, in view of original sin and its effect, man stands in need of redemption. We have seen that the Redeemer, to satisfy the even demands of justice in the work of redemption, must be man, and still must doing a work of infinite value which mere man cannot do; in a word, we have seen that while the Redeemer must be man, he must also be God. We have studied the historical events which constitute the Redemption as a fact, and have indicated its results for men.