The legalistic misunderstanding of salvation and the death of Christ is based on and grounded in a legalistic misunderstanding of God. Since legalism is basically an absolutizing the law, either by identifying God with law or making the law stand by itself apart from God and above God, legalism is fundamentally a misunderstanding of God. It conceives of God entirely in terms of the law. The will and mind of God are subject to the law, whether the law is conceived as existing externally apart from God and above Him or as the eternal and essential nature of God. The law is the eternal, objective order, lex aeterna, to which the will and mind of God conforms as the Lawgiver and Judge. In legalistic Christian theologies, the law is not external and above God but is internal and in God, the very essential nature of God. The law is the essential being of God. According to these theologies God's will is immutably determined by His eternal and unchanging nature; it is the expression of His essential being. [1] God acts freely (?) in accordance with the inner law of His own essence. He does not will the good because it is good; for then the good would be above God. Neither is the good good because God wills it; for then the good would be arbitrary and changeable. God acts freely but not whimsically; He acts always in accordance with the inner law of His being. [2] Thus God's being is understood in terms of the law.
According to this understanding of God's being, the holiness and the righteousness of God is understood in terms of the law. The holiness of God is the eternal conformity of His will to His being which is law; it is the purity and moral perfection of God's being. [3] Holiness is accordingly the fundamental attribute or, more exactly, the consummate infinite moral perfection of all the attributes taken together. Each attribute has its own perfection; holiness is the infinite moral perfection of the whole together. It is not one attribute among others but is the total moral perfection of the Godhead that sets Him transcendently apart and above all the creatures. As such, holiness is the regulative principle of all of them. Accordingly God's love is holy love; His power is holy power; His will is a holy will. "Love must have a norm or standard, and this norm or standard can be found only in Holiness." [4] In His eternal and essential nature God is Holy.
Righteousness is understood legalistically to consist in the conformity to the law of right and wrong. [5] The absolute righteousness of God is the infinite moral perfection of God and as such is equivalent to the holiness of God. In His eternal and essential nature God is righteous. God is immutably determined by the law of His own being to act righteously in His relationships with man. This exercise of the divine will in relation to man, determined by God's infinite righteous nature, has been called the relative righteousness of God. [6] God's righteous nature expresses itself in the form of the law and in all its essential principles of right and wrong the law is an immutable transcript of the divine nature. This relative righteousness of God is called rectoral, when viewed as exercised in administering the affairs of His government, in providing for and governing His creatures. This relative righteousness of God is also called distributive, "when viewed as exercised in giving unto each creature his exact proportionate due of rewards and punishments. It is called punitive or vindicatory when viewed as demanding and inflicting the adequate and proportionate punishment of all sin, because of its intrinsic ill deserts." [7] God, because of His own eternal and essential righteousness, must reward all good because of its own intrinsic merit (remunerative justice) and He likewise must visit every sin with a proportionate punishment because of its own intrinsic demerit (retributive justice). According to this legalistic theology, to do otherwise God would be unrighteous and unjust. Absolute justice which is the eternal being of God requires and demands the reward of good and the punishment of sin. As the Judge, God shows His righteousness by visiting divine retribution upon sin and unrighteousness. No evildoer can escape; all will receive what is due to them and the precise deserts of their evil. Because of the holiness of the divine nature, God hates sin with a holy revulsion and is impelled by the demands of His righteousness to pour out His wrath. God must display His righteousness in judging and punishing sin; not to do so would be a reflection on His righteousness. [8]
There is little place in this view of God for love, mercy, or grace. These were totally absent from the legalistic philosophy of the Greek and Roman philosophers and have little place in the legalistic Christian theologies. [9] In the definition of God in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the goodness of God is mentioned but the love, mercy, and grace of God are totally absent.
"God is a spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His being,Where love is allowed a place in this legalistic view of God, it is reduced to an affection or emotion which must be subordinated to God's holiness and righteousness in order not to become sentimentalism, a sympathy which tolerates human imperfection. A. Hopkins Strong says in his Systematic Theology;
wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth." [10]
"The rationality of his [God's] love involves moreover
a subordination of the emotional element to a higher law than itself,
namely, that of holiness. Even God's self-love must have
a reason and a norm in the perfections of his own being...
The immanent love of God is a rational and voluntary affection
grounded in perfect reason and deliberate choice...
Love is not rightfully independent of the other faculties
but is subject to regulation and control...
In true religion love forms a copartnership with reason...
God's love is no arbitrary, willful, passionate torrent of emotion...
And we become like God by bringing our emotions, sympathies,
affections under the dominion of reason and conscience...
Since God's love is rational, it involves a subordination
of the emotional element to a higher law than itself,
namely, that of truth and holiness...
Love requires a rule or standard for its regulation.
This rule or standard is the holiness of God." [11]
According to this legalistic theology, God's love is conditioned and limited by his justice; that is, God cannot exercise His love to save man until His righteousness (justice) is satisfied. Since God's justice requires that sin be punished, God's love cannot save man until the penalty of sin has been paid, satisfying His justice. God's love is set in opposition to His righteousness, creating a tension and problem in God. How can God in His love save man from sin when His righteousness demands the punishment of sin? This is the problem that the death of Christ is supposed to solve. According to this legalistic theology, this is why Christ needed to die; he died to pay the penalty of man's sin and to satisfy the justice of God. The necessity of the atonement is the necessity of satisfying the justice of God; this necessity is in God rather than in man. And since this necessity is in God, it is a absolute necessity. If God is to save man, God must satisfy His justice before He can in love save man. It is not surprising that in the popular mind this abstract problem of the antinomy between love and justice in God is reduced to a concrete opposition between God the Father who wants to punish sin and God the Son who wants to forgive sin. That this is not true is clear from Scripture: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son" (John 3:16). But this is the way the popular mind has seen this abstract problem.
[1] Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1949), p. 154
(question 60), p. 411 (question 13).
[2] Ibid., p. 153 (question 58).
See also Henry Clarence Thiessen,
Introductory Lectures in Systematic Theology
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1949), p. 129.
[3] A. A. Hodge, Outlines in Theology, p. 163.
[4] A. Hopkins Strong, Systematic Theology
(Philadelphia: Judson, 1907), vol.1, p. x.
See also Carl F. H. Henry Notes on the Doctrine of God
(Boston: W. A. Wide Co., 1948), p. 113.
[5] James I. Packer, "Just, Justify, Justification," in
Baker's Dictionary of Theology, ed. Everett F. Harrison
(Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1960), p. 305.
[6] A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, pp. 153-4 (question 59).
[7] A. A. Hodge, Outline of Theology, p. 154, question 59 (underlining ERS).
[9] Note the brief treatments of the love of God in
Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. 1871;
A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 1878;
A. H. Strong, Systematic Theology, 1907;
Herman Bavinck, The Doctrine of God, 1918.
[10] Thiessen, Lectures in Systematic Theology, p. 54.
[11] Strong, Systematic Theology, pp. 264-265.
See also Henry, Notes on the Doctrine of God, chap. VIII.