Erskine on God's purpose for creating humanity

The following essay is an adaptation of Chapter III of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen’s last book "The Spiritual Order and Other Papers." Erskine requested that it be published after his death (in 1870) and prefaced with these words (emphasis added): 

I regard the principle here set forth as forming the very basis of the Gospel; proclaiming, as it does, God’s eternal and unchanging Purpose for man—to raise him by education into fellowship with Himself — to make him a partaker in His own righteousness and His own blessedness.

A new edition of "The Spiritual Order" with notes by Richard Leimbach and an introductory essay by C. Baxter Kruger is being readied for publication and expected to be out in early 2025. 

Thomas Erskine of Linlathen

Is it a correct description of man’s state in this world to call it “a state of probation”? Undoubtedly, there are few phrases in popular theology more generally accepted than this, but does it give a true explanation of our condition? Are we actually placed here for the purpose of being tested whether we will walk in God’s way or in our own? Is this God’s final word to us, “I have given you a certain amount of light and certain powers of using that light, and I will see whether you are faithful to this trust or no and will judge you accordingly”? 

Most assuredly our lives are full of trial. At every step good and evil are set before us, and we are called upon to choose between them, and we are conscious that a judgment is passed upon us in every case according as our choice is right or wrong. It would be folly to question this, but I will ask whether this is all and whether God has not a purpose to serve by this trial beyond that of merely trying and judging us? And if He has such a purpose, ought not the whole process to take its name from that purpose rather than from the means by which it is attained? But what can we suppose that purpose to be? Is it not the right and blessed development of all our faculties? Is it not education? 

These two views of human life are in principle opposed to each other and lead to opposing conceptions of the character of God and of the relation in which we stand to Him. If we come to a conclusion that we are here simply upon trial or under probation, we cannot but regard God merely as a Judge who is keeping as it were a debtor and creditor account with us and who will judge us according to that account. If this be indeed our conclusion, we may in word call Him Father, and we may in word ascribe love to Him, but we cannot really regard Him as a Father, nor trust in His love, nor feel ourselves safe in His hands. 

In fact, this idea of probation corresponds exactly to the idea of Law which occupies so large a space in the epistles of St. Paul and which is by him contrasted with the idea of Gospel. It narrows our conception of all that we have to look for from God to strict impartiality, and therefore, any hope of a favorable judgment from Him must necessarily rest on the estimate we form of our own obedience—our own conformity to the standard of the law. And when the truth is at last forced upon us that the law requires nothing short of unselfish love to God and man in thought, word, and deed, all hope founded on obedience is utterly swept away because we discover that we have not only in time past been living in neglect of this great commandment but that we cannot obey it by any efforts in our power. We are thus, as it were, shut up into hopeless condemnation both as regards the past and the future. Evidently, in such circumstances we can find no help from the character of God. It is a mere terror to us making filial trust, which in the light of the eternal Sonship is seen to be the proper righteousness of man, absolutely impossible. 

On the mere principle of Law there is no place for forgiveness, and thus, when we become conscious of having sinned, we see no outlet from condemnation. This is our inevitable condition so long as we believe ourselves to be merely in a state of probation. We have no hope in ourselves for we feel that we are sinners, and we have no hope in God for we see in Him only an impartial retributive justice. This dark view of the character of God and of the relation in which He stands to us—resulting from the idea of our being in a state of probation—has unquestionably affected to a considerable extent the religious mind of our country, and so long as this idea is retained, it even robs the Gospel of its healing virtue suggesting as it does that this revelation brings no unconditional blessing but only varies the form of our trial for it now suspends the final award, not indeed on perfect obedience, but on the answer to this question, Are you a believer? And thus, it forces us to seek our confidence, not in the Father's forgiving love revealed in the gift of His Son—but in our performance of the task of believing—an undefinable task substituted for a free salvation and which no man whilst thus contemplating it ever knows whether he has accomplished or not.

And there are other evils resulting from this idea which are of no small moment. Amongst these, perhaps, the most perilous is that it suggests the wish that the standard of righteousness were lowered. Then, again, it almost necessarily makes us more occupied with the punishment of sin than with its moral evil—with the thought of how we may obtain forgiveness than with the thought of becoming righteous. And hence, also the life and death of Christ have come to be regarded rather as a propitiation to divine justice through which mercy may be extended to the guilty than as a manifestation of that righteousness which God desires to see in us and of His own righteous love which, whilst it can never cease to condemn our sin, can never cease to seek our deliverance from it. 

We may conclude, then, that this conception of our relation to God as interpreted by the idea of probation is really opposed to the spirit of Christianity for there is nothing in it which answers to the announcement that God is the loving Father of all men—nothing which can help us to love Him and to flee to Him and trust Him under a sense of sin and pollution, under the pressure of weariness and weakness, of sorrow and suffering—nothing which can really help us to be righteous with the righteousness of filial trust. 

But let us now look at the other side of the question and consider ourselves as having been created for the purpose of being educated into fellowship with God and into a participation of His character and blessedness and as ever living under the action of this purpose. If we adopt this view of our condition, the darkness passes away and all becomes light. We no longer feel ourselves under the cold eye of a Judge but under the loving and encouraging eye of a Father who “willeth not the death of a sinner, but that he should turn from his wickedness and live.” There can be no doubt that this purpose carries in itself a continual assurance of God’s fatherly love to us and of His substantial forgiveness of all past sin, imparting its own loving character to all the circumstances of our lot, and even to the punishments and sufferings which our Father may see fit to send. “He afflicteth not willingly but for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness.” And, further, there can be no doubt that the belief that this is indeed God’s purpose is a continual call and help towards growth in righteousness, inasmuch as it is fitted to inspire an unextinguishable trust in Him, which, as we have already seen, is itself the right state of the creature in relation to the Creator and the only spiritual condition which can lead to the sacrifice of self by which sacrifice alone sin is put away. 

I would say, then, that this idea of the purpose of our Creator is the very basis of all true thoughts of Him and of our relation to Him. Without it Christianity may retain its name of gospel but it ceases to be a gospel and loses its fundamental meaning inasmuch as the redemption through Christ is in very deed the manifestation of this purpose and of the way in which it is to be accomplished. 

But all desirable as it is for us that such a purpose should exist in the heart of God and all reasonable as it seems to be that it should exist there—yet is it possible to reconcile the aspect of the world with the existence of such a purpose? When we look around us, we see by far the largest portion of mankind engaged in simply warding off the pressure of physical wants, and of those who are raised above this abject condition, almost all are taken up with merely selfish pursuits—with the endeavor to secure wealth or power or pleasure or ease. This does not look like a purpose to educate men in goodness, yet how are we to judge of the purpose of God but by what we actually see taking place under His providential government? When we see the evil everywhere so far exceeding the good, are we justified in believing that He really condemns and abhors it, that He really prefers good to evil, righteousness to unrighteousness, and that He really has the purpose of educating all men into a participation of His own righteousness and blessedness? Would it not be more logical to suppose that He is quite indifferent or rather prefers evil to good? 

There is an answer to these questions which fully satisfies my reason, and it is this. I am conscious in my own inner man of an over-shadowing of evil, just as I see it in the outer world, but I am also most distinctly conscious of the divine condemnation resting upon it all and of a call on me to take part with God in His condemnation of it and His conflict with it. I am sure that this is the true account of the world within me, and I am constrained by reason and conscience to interpret by it the state of the world without me. I am sure that the condemnation of God rests on all sin there too, however unchecked it may seem to be, and I am also sure that this same witness of God against all evil, which I feel within myself, is really in the heart of every human being, unheard and unattended to though it may be, and I cannot otherwise interpret this witness than as the expression of God's purpose of unchanging love, which will never cease its striving till it has engaged every child of man to take part with Him in this contest. 

In coming to this conclusion, it is manifest that I am constrained to adopt the assurance that this purpose follows man out from his present life through all stages of being that lie before him unto its full accomplishment. And, indeed, unless we accept this hope, we must give up the idea that the purpose of God in creating man was to educate him as it can no otherwise be maintained.

But verily it seems to me that in giving up this idea, we are actually giving up the idea of God altogether and surrendering ourselves to atheism as well as desperation. For what is true theism but the belief that the ruling Power in the universe, the only absolute Power that exists or can exist in space or in duration, is a Being whose nature is righteous love and who is therefore the enemy of all sin, as the opposite of all righteousness and true blessedness, and who will therefore never cease His endeavors to extinguish it and establish righteousness throughout His moral creation? 

There can be no real gospel, no real good news for man which does not hold out this assurance. In point of fact, no one who believes in a righteous God at all can conceive the possibility of His ever ceasing to condemn sin, and surely His condemnation of our sin necessarily implies His demand for our righteousness just as the condemnation of darkness necessarily implies a demand for light. This has not been sufficiently considered by theologians who have generally represented the holiness of God as an attribute rather fitted to quench the hopes of a sinner than to encourage them, although it is the very attribute in which the old prophet Habakkuk first seems to have found a light and a power enabling him to realize for himself and his countrymen that the purpose of God in sending affliction is not to destroy but to correct, that is, to educate. “Art Thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, Thou hast ordained them for judgment; and O mighty God, Thou hast established them for correction” (Hab 1:12).