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Reconciliation (2)

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(καταλλαγή)

‘Reconciliation’ is the elect word in the apostolic literature to denote the changed relations issuing in the restoration, brought about by means of the Person and work of Jesus Christ, of the fellowship between God and man, which sin had interrupted. The Greek term is based upon the idea of exchange, especially the exchange of equivalent values; this passes, through the ideas of exchange of sympathy, mutual understanding and reciprocal confidence, into the notion of reconciliation, and thus becomes a term expressive of personal relations, with the implication that a previous hostility of mind or heart is now put away. Whilst the English ‘reconciliation’ (and its German equivalent Versöhnung) implies a mutual putting away of hostility, the Greek term is frequently used where only one person ceases to be angry with another and receives him into favour (see Thayer Grimm’s Gr.-Eng. Lexicon of the NT², Edinburgh, 1890, p. 333). In the apostolic writings it is used both where the enmity is one-sided and where it is mutual; in the former case the context must show on which side the active enmity exists; the word in and of itself cannot declare on which side the adjustment is required or whether the hostility is mutual. ‘Reconciliation’ is the redemptive term specially acceptable to the modern mind, which seeks to interpret the Atonement in terms of personality; because it states the apostolic thought on the redemptive relations of God and man in personal and therefore in ethical terms, and not in terms of law or of sacrifice. The practical value of the term, and the immediacy of its application to living experience, make a similar appeal; for in the apostolic teaching it is directly and organically connected with ‘the ministry of reconciliation’ and ‘the word of reconciliation’ (2 Corinthians 5:18 f.) which constituted the essence of the apostolic preaching. Moreover, it presents ‘at-one-ment’ as the result of atonement; it brings the mystery of a past ‘propitiation’ into the light of present and abiding personal relations God ward and manward; for it declares a restored communion to be a permanent attitude of God to man, and at the same time a progressively realized experience in man himself; ‘God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation,’ is also ‘in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses, and having committed unto us the word of reconciliation’ (2 Corinthians 5:18 f.).

Unlike ‘propitiation,’ ‘reconciliation’ is a term without direct ancestry in OT usage, and in the NT it is a redemptive term peculiar to the writings of St. Paul. The Pauline usage is found in Romans 5:10 f., Romans 11:15, 2 Corinthians 5:14 ff., Ephesians 2:16, Colossians 1:20 f. (cf. also 1 Corinthians 7:11 and Jeremiah 31:39 [Septuagint ], 2 Maccabees 1:5; 2 Maccabees 7:33; 2 Maccabees 8:29, Matthew 5:24). In Romans 5:10 f. the context distinctly shows that the reconciliation spoken of is that of God to man; it is something received by man as an accomplished fact; and, although the act of man in ‘receiving’ the reconciliation by obedient faith is implicitly recognized as perfecting the Divine purpose by his becoming himself reconciled to God, the clear Pauline contention is that there is a reconciliation on the part of God that is not only antecedent to any reception of it on the part of man, but is independent of any change of feeling on the part of man brought about by the Divine redemption; it is not an alteration in his relation to God accomplished by man. God is regarded as having established anew a relation of peace by putting away His hostility towards man in his sin (cf. Romans 11:15, Ephesians 1:6). ‘While we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son’ (Romans 5:10); ‘enemies’ (ἐχθροί), whilst it is a term used both actively, denoting hostility towards God, and passively, denoting hostility from God, almost certainly includes the latter in this place as it obviously does in Romans 11:28, where it is correlated with ‘beloved’ (ἀγαπητοί), which is certainly passive-‘beloved of God’; the verb ‘were reconciled’ (κατηλλἀγημεν, Romans 5:10) is a real passive; men are primarily the objects, not the subjects, of the reconciliation. Otherwise the force of St. Paul’s great argument that God’s ‘own love towards us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us’ (v. 3) was sufficiently strong to account for this changed attitude would be of little value. He can exalt the love only by pointing to what God has done, not to what we have done; our laying aside our hostility, though ultimately required to make the reconciliation complete, is wisely and intentionally ignored here; it has no place in the demonstration of the transcendent and undeserved love of God in providing the means of reconciliation and in establishing with men a relation of peace. Both in this passage and in 11:15, Colossians 1:20 f., Ephesians 2:16 this distinctively Pauline sense prevails-and it is the most direct indication we have of the general apostolic thought-that reconciliation is a work complete on God’s side before man’s share in it begins, a work wrought by God in Christ and made available for the world, which men are besought to ‘receive’ in order that it may become effective in them individually. That this is the Pauline teaching is acknowledged by the great body of NT exegetes, although some distinguished scholars seriously question it (e.g. A. Ritschl, Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, ii. 230 ff.; J. B. Lightfoot, Colossians 3, London, 1879, p. 159; B. F. Westcott, Epistles of St. John 3, do., 1892, p. 85; cf. also Askwith in Cambr. Theol. Essays, p. 206). Some others, who personally disagree with St. Paul, frankly acknowledge that the hostility overcome by the reconciliation is regarded by him as mutual, and ‘hence any reconciliation which is accomplished between God and man must be two-sided. Not only must man renounce his hostility to God, but God must change His attitude toward man-must relinquish His wrath and resentment’ (Stevens, Christian Doctrine of Salvation p. 59). Cremer thus states the case in favour of the same position: ‘As this view is grammatically as possible as the other; as, further, there are no lexical difficulties in its way; and as, finally, it is indicated by the context of both passages (Romans 5:11; Romans 11:15)-no solid objection can be raised against it; whereas the other quits the biblical circle of thought, and has merely a hortatory character, but no force as evidence, such as is required, especially in Romans 5’ (Bibl.-Theol. Lex.³, p. 92). A reasoned theological defence of the same situation is given in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) iv. 205 ff. (cf. also Sanday-Headlam, International Critical Commentary , ‘Romans’⁵, p. 129 f.; J. Denney, Expositor’s Greek Testament , ‘Romans,’ 1900, p. 625 f.; B. Weiss, Biblical Theology of the NT, Eng. translation , 1882-83, i. 428 ff.).

The reluctance to accept the Pauline view that reconciliation must deal with hostility on God’s side as well as on man’s arises mainly from two causes. (a) There is an exaggerated anthropomorphic interpretation of the significance of God’s anger against sin; it is set in opposition to His love, as if these were mutually exclusive, or it is made the expression of the purely judicial demand for punishment. This is not the apostolic view; for in it there is no conflict between the Divine wrath and the Divine love, nor do they dwell apart; they are expressions of the one perfect Personality whose name and nature is love. All the processes of redemption are traced in the Pauline discussion to God’s own love for sinful men. His anger is real; it is not simply official as the hostility of a law-giver in presence of a law-breaker; it is personal, but not a fitful personal resentment: it is the hot displeasure of a fatherly love in presence of all that disturbs the filial relations of His children with Himself, and destroys His ideal for their peace; it is love’s crowning sign, not its contradiction. His anger is the indication that His love discriminates; for righteousness and love are moral differences which would be lost in a love of God which was incapable of moral indignation and hostility to wrong. (b) There is the unethical conception of the Divine immutability, which leads to confusion of thought; as a true Personality God can and does change His feelings and attitudes; these must change to correspond with His moral activity towards the changing character and conduct of men; whilst behind the varying attitudes involved in a change from hostility to complacence, such as reconciliation supposes, lie the unchangeable character and the changeless moral purpose which give unity and consistency to all God does (cf. I. A. Dorner’s ‘Divine Immutability’ in A System of Christian Doctrine, Eng. translation , Edinburgh, 1880-82, i. 244, iv. 80; W. Adams Brown, Christian Theology in Outline, do., 1907, p. 117 f.).

In 2 Corinthians 5:14-21, the locus classicus for the apostolic doctrine of reconciliation, St. Paul is supremely concerned with its practical results in the ethical and spiritual history of mankind and in the personal experience of the individual. These results are profoundly assured in the self-identification of God in Christ with mankind, whilst their blessedness is individually realized by the response of a reciprocal self-identification with God in Christ on the part of man; in this response the reconciliation is perfected. To achieve this end God in Christ has given a ‘word of reconciliation’ and inspires the tender persuasions of a ‘ministry of reconciliation,’ which are to us men the mystic wonder of the whole redemptive process: for they reveal a love of God which humbles itself to beseech sinful men, ‘as though God were intreating by us: we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God’ (2 Corinthians 5:20). But in this work of reconciliation the initiative is taken by God; and its cost in sacrificial self-giving is borne by Him. We never read that God has been reconciled; God Himself does the work of reconciliation in and through Christ, ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world (even a world) unto himself’ (2 Corinthians 5:19). The self-identification of God with men is made in Christ-it is truly God’s self-identification; the humanity of Christ is the humanity of Deity, which is made manifest in time. In His death particularly Christ identified Himself with men; He ‘died on behalf of all (ὑπὲρ πάντων), therefore all died’ (2 Corinthians 5:14). The death on behalf of all involved the death of all; because through His self-identification with all Christ was the Representative of all. As it was the death of all men which was died by Him, His self-identification with men, being real in the flesh as in the spirit, involved a true but mysterious fellowship in the deepest mystery of their experience in the flesh-their sin. ‘Him who knew no sin he [God] made to be sin on our behalf’ (2 Corinthians 5:21). His death on behalf of all was a death unto sin once for all, that in the flesh He might destroy sin in the flesh. Such a death on their behalf was virtually the death of mankind with whom He was self-identified. The further significance of His death on behalf of all is ‘that we might become the righteousness of God in him’ (2 Corinthians 5:21). ‘Because we thus judge … he died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again’ (2 Corinthians 5:15). The issue of this self-identification of God in Christ with man is that ‘he is a new creature, the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new’ (2 Corinthians 5:17). In this new creation of humanity with its new identities with God in Christ is found the reconciliation to which ‘the love of Christ constraineth us’ (2 Corinthians 5:14). But the justification as well as the source of all this is God-God Himself, not Christ apart from God; not man by his penitence or by the response of his submission to God. ‘All things are of God who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation’ (2 Corinthians 5:18). The heart of the apostles’ teaching, their gospel of reconciliation, is ‘all things are of God’. Reconciliation is a Divinely accomplished fact, done once for all. In the Apostolic Church it was believed that this reconciliation was the issue of that which God had done in the setting forth of Christ Jesus to be a ‘propitiation’ (Romans 3:25). Such a propitiation is the Divinely appointed sanction and constraint of the apostles’ doctrine (λόγος) of reconciliation-‘To wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses’ (2 Corinthians 5:19); see, further, Propitiation. But whatever may be the God-ward side of reconciliation, they proclaimed on its manward side, with beseeching urgency, a ministry of reconciliation. Their doctrine gave no countenance to the idea that man is secure in the Divine favour through something accomplished for him apart from the obedience of his own faith, by which the reconciliation is personally ‘received.’ The wistful word of their beseeching, ‘Be ye reconciled to God’ (2 Corinthians 5:20), is at one with the lingering pathos of their admonition, ‘and working together with him we intreat also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain’ (6:1). A man’s whole attitude towards sin must be changed, otherwise the incidence of this yearning admonition must rest upon him.

A careful examination of the apostolic documents available leaves an irresistible conviction that the Apostolic Church held the view that ‘reconciliation’ was a change from mutual hostility, resulting from the sinfulness of mankind, to mutual friendship between God and man; that this change was God’s own work accomplished in Christ through His life and death; but that it was also a process, carried on by God in Christ, requiring for its completion the receiving of it as a grace and the consequent participation in it as a Divine operation by men individually. Whether this view accords with the teaching of Jesus recorded in the Synoptics, and whether it is an interpretation of the experience of salvation binding permanently upon the faith of the Church are questions beyond the scope of this article.

Literature.-H. Cremer, Bibl.-Theol. Lexicon of NT Greek³, Edinburgh, 1880, p. 91 ff.; Sanday-Headlam, International Critical Commentary , ‘Romans’⁵, do., 1902, p. 129 f.; E. H. Askwith, ‘Sin, and the Need of Atonement,’ in Cambridge Theological Essays, London, 1905, p. 175; W. F. Lofthouse, Ethics and Atonement, do., 1906, pp. 82-179; F. R. M. Hitchcock, The Atonement and Modern Thought, do., 1911, pp. 255-283; J. Scott Lidgett, The Spiritual Principle of the Atonement, do., 1897, pp. 219-306; J. Denney, The Death of Christ, do., 1902, p. 139 ff.; G. B. Stevens, Christian Doctrine of Salvation, Edinburgh, 1905, p. 59 ff.; Expository Times iv. [1892-93] 335 f., v. [1893-94] 532 ff.; W. H. Moberly, ‘The Atonement,’ in Foundations, London, 1912, p. 265 ff.; A. Ritschl, Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung⁴, Bonn, 1895-1902, iii., Eng. translation , Justification and Reconciliation, Edinburgh, 1900; D. W. Simon, Reconciliation by Incarnation, do., 1898; W. L. Walker, The Gospel of Reconciliation, do., 1909; R. C. Moberly, Atonement and Personality, London, 1901; S. A. MacDowall, Evolution and the Need of Atonement, Cambridge, 1912; article ‘Reconciliation’ in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) and Dict. of Christ and the Gospels .

Frederic Platt.