GREENWICH, DECEMBER 24TH, 1889
GREENWICH, DECEMBER 24TH, 1889
Mr. C. Stanley.
My Dear Brother, — Mr. Stoney has sent on to me a letter of yours bearing no date — nor am I sure to whom it is written — but I feel I cannot allow it to pass without sending a line to remonstrate against the injustice both of its basis and of its reasonings and conclusions. All is based on extracts of letters obtained from me by a brother eighteen months ago, and these extracts (which you have not taken the trouble to authenticate) are treated as though they were a careful exposition of a [p. 12] system of doctrine. I never knew a brother judged before on such premises. Then as to the reasoning, I venture to say that in regard to both subjects in question it is fallacious, and leads to unjust conclusions. Eternal life is said to be the eternal Person of the ever blessed Son of God. Thus the Son of God and eternal life are made strictly equivalent, and expressions used in reference to the latter are tested by their applicability to the former, I am sure such reasoning will not hold. On the one hand the Son of God is more than eternal life, He is God the Giver of eternal life — and on the other hand expressions may be used in speaking of eternal life which cannot be applied to Christ personally. The righteous go into eternal life, you cannot here substitute Son of God. John in his first epistle declares unto us eternal life — manifested in the Son of God — in the character in which we possess it here. It is God’s Son and we are in Him that is true. He is the true God and eternal life. It is what He is to christians. Eternal life viewed as a subject by itself has also other bearings. Further, as to divine righteousness. It is reasoned that because it is maintained that divine righteousness in its fullest sense sets and displays us in glory in the life and state of Christ, that therefore that life and state are held to constitute our righteousness before God. This latter idea is, I believe, Cluffism, but never had a place in my thoughts. The former I have no doubt is the truth, and gives the fullest place to redemption. The righteousness of God which is upon us (Romans 3) has reference to our responsibility, we are freely justified in His grace through redemption, but this is not beyond the brass of the tabernacle. The glad tidings of God’s glory are far beyond the question of our responsibility, and through righteousness set us in a wholly new state and place for man — and here we come to the gold of the tabernacle. It is the fruit of Christ having been made sin for us. This is 2 Corinthians 5:21. We [p. 13] have a place and state in Him who is righteous and holy, in the holiest of all. Anyone reading without prejudice my letters to Mr. Bradstock would see that the tenor of them is that eternal life means for us an entirely new order of things which has come to pass in man in the Son of God having become Man and into which we have entrance through His death and in the Person of the Holy Spirit, the Son being our life, and that as to 2 Corinthians 5:21, the complete answer to Christ having been made sin for us is in our being perfected after His order in glory. And now I add a word or two as to the details of your letter. On page 2 you endeavour to make me say that Christ is a sphere, and by inference that Christ is a myth. What I did say is that eternal life is in the Son, He is it, is eternal life. As I have shown at the beginning of my letter I do not accept your method of reasoning as to eternal life and Christ, and I add here that if eternal life does not denote to the believer a new sphere and order of blessing he knows very little about it experimentally, “This is life eternal that they might know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent”. (John 17:3) It is for us a wholly new order. The effort to charge me with Cluffism I wholly repudiate. I never had an idea that anything in us constituted our righteousness before God — Christ is made that to us — and I should have maintained this as strenuously as any. Hence the charge of undiluted Romanism means nothing, any more than the being robbed of a certainty as to reconciliation. The ministry of reconciliation is based on what has been done — the death of God’s Son, His having been made sin for us and hence reconciliation is ever ‘now’ though the state consequent on it, holy and unblameable and unreproveable, be in its consummation future. I suppose I have in my measure urged this as strongly as most. In conclusion I must say that the attacks made on me present ideas so foreign to my whole habit of [p. 14] thought, are so erroneous in reasoning, and in violence are so utterly out of proportion to the offence given, or the weight of the person implicated, that I am unable to recognise in them the work of the Spirit of God, and am very grieved for those who have taken part in them.
Believe me, etc.,
F. E. Raven.