CHAPTER III: PERSON OF CHRIST.
PERSON OF CHRIST. __________________________________________________________________
§ 1. Preliminary Remarks.
1. The most mysterious and the most familiar fact of consciousness and experience is the union of soul and body in the constitution of our nature. According to the common faith of mankind and of the Church, man consists of two distinct substances, soul and body. By substance is meant that which is. It is the entity in which properties, attributes, and qualities inhere, and of which they are the manifestations. It is therefore something more than mere force. It is something more than a collective name for a certain number of properties which appear in combination. It is that which continues, and remains unchanged under all the varying phenomena of which it may be the subject. The substance which we designate the soul, is immaterial, that is, it has none of the properties of matter. It is spiritual, i.e., it has all the properties of a spirit. It is a self-conscious, intelligent, voluntary agent. The substance which we call the body, on the other hand, is material. That is, it has all the properties of matter and none of the properties of mind or spirit. This is the first fact universally admitted concerning the constitution of our nature.
2. The second fact concerns the nature of the union between the soul and body. It is, (a.) A personal union. Soul and body constitute one individual man, or human person. There is but one consciousness. It is the man or person who is conscious of sensations and of thoughts, of affections of the body and of the acts of the mind. (b.) It is a union without mixture or confusion. The soul remains spirit, and the body remains matter. Copper and zinc combined form brass. The constituent elements lose their distinctive characteristics, and produce a third substance. There is no such mixture in the union of the soul and body. The two remain distinct. Neither is there a transfer of any of the properties of the one to the other. No property of the mind is transferred to the body; and no property of the body is transferred to the mind. (c.) Nevertheless the union is not a mere inhabitation, a union of contact or in space. The soul does not dwell in the body as a man dwells in a house or in his garments. The body is part of himself, and is necessary to his completeness as a man. He is in every part of it, and is conscious of the slightest change in the state of even the least important of its members.
3. Thirdly, the consequences of this union of the soul and body are, (a.) A koinonia idiomaton, or communion of attributes. That is, the person is the possessor of all the attributes both of the soul and of the body. We may predicate of the man whatever may be predicated of his body; and we may predicate of him whatever may be predicated of his soul. We say of the man that he is tall or short; that he is sick or well; that he is handsome or deformed. In like manner, we may say that he is judicious, wise, good, benevolent, or learned. Whatever is true of either element of his constitution is true of the man. What is true of the one, however, is not true of the other. When the body is wounded or burnt it is not the soul that is the subject of these accidents; and when the soul is penitent or believing, or enlightened and informed, the body is not the subject spoken of. Each has its properties and changes, but the person or man is the subject of them all. (b.) Hence, inconsistent, or apparently contradictory affirmations may be made of the same person. We may say that he is weak and that he is strong; that he is mortal and immortal; that he is a spirit, and that he is dust and ashes. (c.) We may designate the man from one element of his nature when what we predicate of him is true only of the other element. We may call him a spirit and yet say that he hungers and thirsts. We may call him a worm of the dust when we speak of him as the subject of regeneration. That is, the person may be designated from either nature when the predicate belongs to the other. (d.) As in virtue of the personal union of the soul and body all the properties of either are properties of the man, so all the acts of either are the acts of the man. Some of our acts are purely mental, as thinking, repenting, and believing; some are purely bodily, as the processes of digestion, assimilation, and the circulation of the blood; some are mixed, as all voluntary acts, as walking, speaking, and writing. In these there is a direct concurrence or cooperation of the mind and body. These several classes of acts are acts of the man. It is the man who thinks; it is the man who speaks and writes; and the man who digests and assimilates his food. (e.) A fifth consequence of this hypostatic union is the exaltation of the body. The reason why the body of a man and its life are so immeasurably exalted above those of a brute is that it is in personal union with a rational and immortal soul. It is this also which gives the body its dignity and beauty. The gorgeous plumage of the bird, or the graceful symmetry of the antelope, are as nothing compared to the erect figure and intellectual beauty of man. The mind irradiates the body, and imparts to it a dignity and value which no configuration of mere matter could possess. At the same time the soul is not degraded by its union with the body. It was so arrayed before the fall, and is to be clothed with a body in its glorified state in heaven.
The union of soul and body in the constitution of man is the analogue of the union of the divine and human natures in the person of Christ. No analogy is expected to answer in all points. There is in this case enough of resemblance to sustain faith and rebuke unbelief. There is nothing in the one more mysterious or inscrutable than in the other. And as the difficulties to the understanding in the union of two distinct substances, matter and mind, in the person of man have induced many to deny the plainest facts of consciousness, so the difficulties of the same kind attending the doctrine of the union of two natures, the one human and the other divine in the person of Christ, have led many to reject the plainest facts of Scripture. __________________________________________________________________
§ 2. The Scriptural Facts concerning the Person of Christ.
The facts which the Bible teaches concerning the person of Christ are, first, that He was truly man, i.e., He had a perfect or complete human nature. Hence everything that can be predicated of man (that is, of man as man, and not of man as fallen) can be predicated of Christ. Secondly, He was truly God, or had a perfect divine nature. Hence everything that can be predicated of God can be predicated of Christ. Thirdly, He was one person. The same person, self, or Ego, who said, "I thirst," said, "Before Abraham was, I am." This is the whole doctrine of the incarnation as it lies in the Scriptures and in the faith of the Church.
Proof of the Doctrine.
The proof of this doctrine includes three distinct classes of passages of Scripture, or may be presented in three different forms. First, the proof of the several elements of the doctrine separately. Secondly, the current language of the Scriptures which speak of Christ, from beginning to end, sometimes as man and sometimes as God; and combine the two modes of statement, or pass from the one to the other as naturally and as easily as they do where speaking of man as mortal and immortal, or as corporeal and as spiritual. Thirdly, there are certain passages of Scripture in which the doctrine of the incarnation is formally presented and dogmatically asserted.
First Argument, all the Elements of the Doctrine separately taught.
First, the Scriptures teach that Christ was truly man, or had a complete human nature. That is, He had a true body and a rational soul.
Christ had a True Body.
By a true body is meant a material body, composed of flesh and blood, in everything essential like the bodies of ordinary men. It was not a phantasm, or mere semblance of a body. Nor was it fashioned out of any heavenly or ethereal substance. This is plain because He was born of a woman. He was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, nourished of her substance so as to be consubstantial with her. His body increased in stature, passing through the ordinary process of development from infancy to manhood. It was subject to all the affections of a human body. It was subject to pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, fatigue, suffering, and death. It could be seen, felt, and handled. The Scriptures declare it to have been flesh and blood. "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same." (Hebrews ii. 14.) Our Lord said to his terrified disciples, "A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." (Luke xxiv. 39.) He was predicted in the Old Testament as the seed of the woman; the seed of Abraham; the Son of David. He was declared to be a man; a man of sorrows; the man Christ Jesus; and He called Himself the Son of Man. This designation occurs some eighty times in the Gospel. Nothing, therefore, is revealed concerning Christ more distinctly than that He had a true body.
Christ had a Rational Soul.
It is no less plain that He had a rational soul. He thought, reasoned, and felt; was joyful and sorrowful; He increased in wisdom; He was ignorant of the time when the day of judgment should come. He must, therefore, have had a finite human intelligence. These two elements, a true body and a rational soul, constitute a perfect or complete human nature, which is thus proved to have entered into the composition of Christ's person.
Christ is truly God.
Secondly, the Scriptures, with equal clearness, declare that Christ was truly God. This has been already proved at length. All divine names and titles are applied to Him. He is called God, the mighty God, the great God, God over all; Jehovah; Lord; the Lord of lords and the King of kings. All divine attributes are ascribed to Him. He is declared to be omnipresent, omniscient, almighty, and immutable, the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is set forth as the creator and upholder and ruler of the universe. All things were created by Him and for Him; and by Him all things consist. He is the object of worship to all intelligent creatures, even the highest; all the angels (i.e., all creatures between man and God) are commanded to prostrate themselves before Him. He is the object of all the religious sentiments; of reverence, love, faith, and devotion. To Him men and angels are responsible for their character and conduct. He required that men should honour Him as they honoured the Father; that they should exercise the same faith in Him that they do in God. He declares that He and the Father are one; that those who had seen Him had seen the Father also. He calls all men unto him; promises to forgive their sins; to send them the Holy Spirit; to give them rest and peace; to raise them up at the last day; and to give them eternal life. God is not more, and cannot promise more, or do more than Christ is said to be, to promise, and to do. He has, therefore, been the Christian's God from the beginning, in all ages and in all places.
Christ One Person.
Thirdly, He was, nevertheless, although perfect man and perfect God, but one person. There is, in the first place, the absence of all evidence of a twofold personality in Christ. The Scriptures reveal the Father, Son, and Spirit as distinct persons in the Godhead, because they use the personal pronouns in reference to each other. The Father says Thou to the Son, and the Son says Thou to the Father. The Father says to the Son, "I will give thee; and the Son says, "Lo, I come to do thy will." Moreover the one is objective to the other. The Father loves and sends the Son; the Son loves and obeys the Father. The same is true of the Spirit. There is nothing analogous to this in the case of Christ. The one nature is never distinguished from the other as a distinct person. The Son of God never addresses the Son of Man as a different person from Himself. The Scriptures reveal but one Christ. In the second place, besides this negative proof, the Bible affords all the evidence of the individual personality of our Lord that the case admits of. He always says I, me, mine. He is always addressed as Thou, thee, thine. He is always spoken of as He, his, him. It was the same person to whom it was said, "Thou art not yet fifty years old;" and "Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thine hands." The individual personality of Christ is set forth as clearly and as variously as that of any other personage of whose history the Scriptures give us the record. In teaching that Christ had a perfect human and a perfect divine nature, and is one person, the Bible teaches the whole doctrine of the incarnation as it has entered into the faith of the Church from the beginning.
Second Argument, from the Current Representations of Scripture.
The current language of Scripture concerning Christ proves that He was at once divine and human. In the Old Testament, He is set forth as the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah anti the family of David; as to be born of a virgin in the town of Bethlehem; as a man of sorrows; as meek and lowly; as bearing the chastisement of our sins, and pouring out his soul unto death. He is everywhere represented as a man. At the same time He is everywhere represented as God; He is called the Son of God, Immanuel, the Mighty God, Jehovah our righteousness; and He is spoken of as from everlasting; as enthroned in heaven and receiving the adoration of angels.
In the New Testament, the same mode of representation is continued. Our Lord, in speaking of Himself, and the Apostles when speaking of Him, uniformly speak of Him as a man. The New Testament gives his genealogy to prove that He was of the house and lineage of David. It records his birth, life, and death. It calls Him the Son of Man, the man Christ Jesus. But with like uniformity our Lord assumes, and the Apostles attribute to Him a divine nature. He declares Himself to be the Son of God, existing from eternity, having all power in heaven and in earth, entitled to all the reverence, love, and obedience due to God. The Apostles worship Him; they call Him the great God and Saviour; they acknowledge their dependence upon Him and responsibility to Him; and they look to Him for pardon, sanctification, and eternal life. These conflicting representations, this constant setting forth the same person as man and also as God, admits of no solution but in the doctrine of the incarnation. This is the key to the whole Bible. If this doctrine be denied all is confusion and contradiction. If it be admitted all is light, harmony, and power. Christ is both God and man, in two distinct natures, and one person forever. This is the great mystery of Godliness. God manifest in the flesh is the distinguishing doctrine of the religion of the Bible, without which it is a cold and lifeless corpse.
Third Argument, from Particular Passages of Scriptures.
Although, as appears from what has already been said, the doctrine of the incarnation does not rest on isolated proof-texts, but upon the broad basis of the whole revelation of God concerning the person and work of his Son, yet there are some passages in which this doctrine is so clearly stated in all its elements, that they cannot be properly overlooked in treating of this subject.
To this class of passages belongs, --
1. The first chapter of John, verses 1-14. It is here taught concerning the Logos, (1.) That He existed in eternity. (2.) That He was in intimate relation to God. (3.) That He was God. (4.) That He was the Creator of all things. (5.) In Him was life. Having life in himself, He is the source of life to all that live. That is, He is the source of natural, of intellectual, and of spiritual life. (6.) And, therefore, He is the true light; that is, the fountain of all knowledge and all holiness. (7.) He came into the world, and the world although made by Him, did not recognize Him. (8.) He came to his own people, and even they did not receive Him. (9.) He became flesh, i.e., He assumed our nature, so that He dwelt among us as a man. (10.) And, says the Apostle, we saw his glory, a glory which revealed Him to be the only begotten of the Father. It is here taught that a truly divine person, the eternal Word, the Creator of the world, became man, dwelt among men, and revealed Himself to those who had eyes to see, as the eternal Son of God. Here is the whole doctrine of the incarnation, taught in the most explicit terms.
2. A second passage to the same effect is found in 1 John i. 1-3. It is there taught that what was in the beginning, what was with God, what was eternal, what was essentially life, appeared on earth, so as to be seen, heard, looked upon, and handled. Here, again, a divine, invisible, eternal person, is said to have assumed our nature, a real body and a rational soul. He could be seen and touched as well as heard. This is the main idea of this epistle. The incarnation is declared to be the characteristic and essential doctrine of the gospel. "Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God: and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world."
3. In Romans i. 2-5, the Apostle says that the gospel concerns the Son of God, who is our Lord Jesus Christ, who, as to his human nature, kata sarka, is the Son of David, but as to his divine nature, kata pneuma, is the Son of God. Here also the two natures and one person of the Redeemer are clearly asserted. The parallel passage to this is Romans ix. 5, where Christ is said kata sarka to be descended from the fathers, but at the same time to be God over all and blessed forever. The same person is declared to be the supreme God and a child of Abraham, a member of the Hebrew nation by natural descent.
4. In 1 Timothy iii. 16, we are taught that God was "manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." In this passage the reading is indeed doubtful. The common text which has Theos has the support of almost all the cursive, and of some of the uncial manuscripts, of several of the versions, and of many of the Greek fathers. But whether we read Theos or hos, the meaning is substantially the same. Two things are plain: first, that all the predicates in this verse belong to one subject; and secondly, that that subject is Christ. He, his person, is the great mystery of Godliness. He was manifested in the flesh (i.e., in our nature); He, as thus manifested, the Theanthropos, was justified, i.e., proved to be just, i.e., to be what He claimed to be (namely, the Son of God), by the Spirit, either by the divine nature or majesty dwelling in Him, or by the Holy Ghost, whose office it is to take the things of Christ and reveal them unto us. He, this incarnate God, was seen, i.e., recognized and served by angels; preached among the Gentiles as the Son of God and Saviour of men; believed upon as such; and finally received up into glory. All that the Church teaches concerning the person of Christ, is here taught by the Apostle.
5. No passage, however, is more full and explicit on this subject than Philippians ii. 6-11. Of one and the same subject or person, it is here taught, (1.) That He was God, or existed in the form of God. The form of a thing is the mode in which it reveals itself; and that is determined by its nature. It is not necessary to assume that morphe has here, as it appears to have in some other cases, the sense of phusis; the latter is implied in the former. No one can appear, or exist in view of others in the form of God, i.e., manifesting all divine perfections, who is not God. (2.) Hence it is asserted that the person spoken of was equal to God. (3.) He became a man like other men, and assumed the form of a servant, i.e., appeared among men as a servant. (4.) He submitted to die upon the cross. (5.) He has been exalted above all created beings, and invested with universal and absolute authority. Christ, therefore, of whom this passage treats, has a divine nature, and a human nature, and is one person.
6. In Hebrews ii. 14, the same doctrine concerning the person of Christ is clearly taught. In the first chapter of that Epistle the Son is declared to be the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of his substance (i.e., of what the Father is). By Him the worlds were made. He upholds all things by the word of his power. He is higher than the angels, i.e., than all intelligent creatures. They are bound to worship Him. They are addressed as mere instruments; but the Son as God. He made the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. He is eternal and immutable. He is associated with God in glory and dominion. He, the person of whom all this is said in the first chapter, in the second chapter is declared to be a man. In Him was fulfilled as the sacred writer in the eighth Psalm had taught concerning the universal dominion assigned to man. Men are declared to be his brethren, because He and they are of one nature. As they are partakers of flesh and blood, He also took part in the same, in order that He might die, and by death redeem his people from all the evils of sin.
Nothing can be plainer than that the Scriptures do teach that Christ is truly God, that He is truly man, and that He is one person. They assert of Him whatever may be said of God, and everything that can be said of a sinless man. They enter into no explanations. They assume it as a certain fact that Christ is God and man in one person, just as they assume that a man is a soul and body in one person.
Here the subject might be left. All the ends of the spiritual life of the believer, are answered by this simple statement of the doctrine concerning Christ's person as it is presented in the Scriptures. False explanations, however, create the necessity for a correct one. Errorists in all ages have so explained the facts recorded concerning Christ, as either to deny the truth concerning his divine nature, or the integrity of his human nature, or the unity of his person. Hence the Church has been constrained to teach what the Bible doctrine involves: first, as to the nature of the union of the two natures in Christ; and secondly, as to the consequences of that union. __________________________________________________________________
§ 3. The Hypostatical Union.
Two Natures in Christ.
There is a union. The elements united are the divine and human nature. By nature, in this connection is meant substance. In Greek the corresponding words are phosis and ousia; in Latin, natura and substantia. The idea of substance is a necessary one. We are constrained to believe that where we see the manifestation of force, there is something, an objective entity which acts, and of which such force is the manifestation. It is self-evident that a non-ens cannot act. It may be well here to call to mind a few admitted principles which have already been repeatedly adverted to. (1.) It is intuitively certain that attributes, properties, and power or force, necessarily imply a substance of which they are manifestations. Of nothing, nothing can be predicated. That of which we can predicate the attributes either of matter or mind, must of necessity be a reality. (2.) It is no less certain that where the attributes are incompatible, the substances must be different and distinct. That which is extended cannot be unextended. That which is divisible cannot be indivisible. That which is incapable of thought cannot think. That which is finite cannot be infinite. (3.) Equally certain is it that attributes cannot exist distinct and separate from substance. There cannot be accidentia sine subjecto; otherwise there might be extension without anything extended, and thought without anything that thinks. (4.) Again, it is intuitively certain that the attributes of one substance cannot be transferred to another. Matter cannot be endowed with the attributes of mind; for then it would cease to be matter. Mind cannot be invested with the properties of matter, for then it would cease to be mind, neither can humanity be possessed of the attributes of divinity, for then it would cease to be humanity. This is only saying that the finite cannot be infinite. Speaking in general terms, in the whole history of human thought, these principles have been recognized as axiomatic; and their denial puts an end to discussion.
If the above mentioned principles be admitted, then it follows that in setting forth his Son as clothed in all the attributes of humanity, with a body that was born of a woman, which increased an stature, which was seen, felt, and handled; and with a soul that was troubled, joyful, and sorrowful, that increased in wisdom and was ignorant of certain things, God intends and requires that we should believe that He was a true man, -- not a phantom, not an abstraction, -- not the complex of properties without the substance of humanity, but a true or real man, like other men, yet without sin. In like manner when He is declared to be God over all, to be omniscient, almighty, and eternal, it is no less evident that He has a truly divine nature; that the substance of God in Him is the subject in which these divine attributes inhere. This being so, we are taught that the elements combined in the constitution of his person, namely, humanity and divinity, are two distinct natures, or substances. Such has been the faith of the Church universal. In those ancient creeds which are adopted by the Greek, Latin and Protestant Churches, it is declared that Christ as to his humanity is consubstantial with us, and as to his divinity, consubstantial with the Father. In the Council of Chalcedon, the Church declared our Lord to be, [305] Theon alethos kai anthropon alethos ton auton ek psuches logikes kai somatos, omoousion to patri kata ten theoteta kai homoousion ton auton hemin kata ten anthropoteta.
Thomas Aquinas says, [306] "Humana natura in Christo quamvis sit substantia particularis: qui tamen venit in unionem cujusdam completi, scilicet totius Christi, prout est Deus et homo, non potest dici hypostasis vel suppositum: Sed illum completum ad quod concurrit, dicitur esse hypostasis vel suppositum." In all the creeds of the Reformation the same doctrine is presented. In the "Augsburg Confession" [307] it is said, "Filius Dei assumpsit humanam naturam in utero beatæ Mariæ virginis, ut sint duæ naturæ, divina et humana, in unitate personæ inseparabiliter conjunctæ, unus Christus, vere Deus et vere homo." "Natura (phusis, ousia) in Christo est substantia vel divinitatis vel humanitatis. Persona (hupostasis, prosopon) Christi est individuum ex utraque natura et divina et humana, conjuncta, non mixta, concretum." [308] In the "Second Helvetic Confession" [309] it is said, "Agnoscimus in uno atque eodem Domino nostro Jesu Christo, duas naturas (for natura, substantia is used in other parts of the chapter), divinam et humanam. . . . . In una persona unitæ vel conjunctæ [sunt]: ita ut unum Christum Dominum, non duos veneremur: unum inquam verum Deum, et hominem, juxta divinam naturam Patri, juxta humanam vero nobis hominibus consubstantialem, et per omnia similem, peccato excepto." Therefore the theologians teach, [310] "Natura divina est essentia divina, qua Christus Patri et Spiritui Sancto coessentialis est. Natura humana est essentia seu substantia humana, qua Christus nobis hominibus coessentialis est." Or as stated in the ancient creeds, Christ is not allos kai allos (one person and another person), but allo kai allo (one substance and another substance).
The Two Natures are united but not mingled or confounded.
We have seen that the first important point concerning the person of Christ is, that the elements united or combined in his person are two distinct substances, humanity and divinity; that He has in his constitution the same essence or substance which constitutes us men, and the same substance which makes God infinite, eternal, and immutable in all his perfections. The second point is, that this union is not by mixture so that a new, third substance is produced, which is neither humanity nor divinity but possessing the properties of both. This is an impossibility, because the properties in question are incompatible. We cannot mingle mind and matter so as to make a substance which is neither mind nor matter, but spiritual matter, for that would be a contradiction. It would amount to unextended extension, tangible intangibility, or visible invisibility. Neither is it possible that the divine and human natures should be so mingled as to result in a third, which is neither purely human nor purely divine, but theanthropic. Christ's person is theanthropic, but not his nature; for that would make the finite infinite, and the infinite finite. Christ would be neither God nor man; but the Scriptures constantly declare Him to be both God and man. In all Christian creeds therefore, it is declared that the two natures in Christ retain each its own properties and attributes. They all teach that the natures are not confounded, "Sed salvis potius et permanentibus naturarum proprietatibus in una persona unitæ vel conjunctæ."
As therefore the human body retains all its properties as matter, and the soul all its attributes as spirit in their union in our persons; so humanity and divinity retain each its peculiar properties in their union in the person of Christ. And as intelligence, sensibility, and will are the properties of the human soul, without which it ceases to be a soul, it follows that the human soul of Christ retained its intelligence, sensibility, and will. But intelligence and will are no less the essential properties of the divine nature, and therefore were retained after its union with the human nature in Christ. In teaching, therefore, that Christ was truly man and truly God, the Scriptures teach that He had a finite intelligence and will, and also an infinite intelligence. In Him, therefore, as the Church has ever maintained, there were and are two wills, two energeiai or operations. His human intellect increased, his divine intelligence was, and is infinite. His human will had only human power, his divine will was, and is almighty. Mysterious and inscrutable as all this is, it is not more so than the union of the discordant elements of mind and matter in our own constitution.
There is no Transfer of the Attributes of one Nature to the Other.
The third point in relation to the person of Christ, is that no attribute of the one nature is transferred to the other, This is virtually included in what has already been said. There are those, however, who admit that the two natures in Christ are not mixed or confounded, who yet maintain that the attributes of the one are transferred to the other. But the properties or attributes of a substance constitute its essence, so that if they be removed or if others of a different nature be added to them, the substance itself is changed. If you take rationality from mind it ceases to be mind. If you add rationality to matter it ceases to be matter. If you make that extended which in itself is incapable of extension the identity of the thing is lost. If therefore infinity be conferred in the finite, it ceases to be finite. If divine attributes be conferred on man, he ceases to be man; and if human attributes be transferred to God, he ceases to be God. The Scriptures teach that the human nature of Christ remained in its integrity after the incarnation; and that the divine nature remained divine. The Bible never requires us to receive as true anything which the constitution of our nature given to us by God himself, forces us to believe to be false or impossible.
The Union is a Personal Union.
Thc union of the two natures in Christ is a personal or hypostatic union. By this is meant, in the first place, that it is not a mere indwelling of the divine nature analogous to the indwelling of the Spirit of God in his people. Much less is it a mere moral or sympathetic union; or a temporary and mutable relation between the two. In the second place, it is intended to affirm that the union is such that Christ is but one person. As the union of the soul and body constitutes a man one person, so the union of the Son of God with our nature constitutes Him one person. And as in man the personality is in the soul and not in the body, so the personality of Christ is in the divine nature. Both of these points are abundantly evident from Scripture. The former, or the unity of Christ's person, has already been proved; and the latter is proved by the fact that the Logos, or Son, was from all eternity a distinct person in the Godhead. It was a divine person, not merely a divine nature, that assumed humanity, or became incarnate. Hence it follows that the human nature of Christ, separately considered, is impersonal. To this, indeed, it is objected that intelligence and will constitute personality, and as these belong to Christ's human nature personality cannot be denied to it. A person, however, is a suppositum intelligens, but the human nature of Christ is not a suppositum or subsistence. To personality both rational substance and distinct subsistence are essential. The latter the human nature of Christ never possessed. The Son of God did not unite Himself with a human person, but with a human nature. The proof of this is that Christ is but one person. The possibility of such a union cannot rationally be denied. Realists believe that generic humanity, although intelligent and voluntary, is impersonal, existing personally only in individual men. Although realism may not be a correct philosophy, the fact of its wide and long continued prevalence may be taken as a proof that it does not involve any palpable contradiction. Human nature, therefore, although endowed with intelligence and will, may be, and in fact is, in the person of Christ impersonal. That it is so is the plain doctrine of Scripture, for the Son of God, a divine person, assumed a perfect human nature, and, nevertheless, remains one person.
The facts, therefore, revealed in Scripture concerning Christ constrain us to believe, (1.) That in his person two natures, the divine and the human, are inseparably united; and the word nature in this connection means substance. (2.) That these two natures or substances are not mixed or confounded so as to form a third, which is neither the one nor the other. Each nature retains all its own properties unchanged; so that in Christ there is a finite intelligence and infinite intelligence, a finite will or energy, and an infinite will. (3.) That no property of the divine nature is transferred to the human, and much less is any property of the human transferred to the divine. Humanity in Christ is not deified, nor is the divinity reduced to the limitations of humanity. (4.) The union of the natures is not mere contact or occupancy of the same portion of space. It is not an indwelling, or a simple control of the divine nature over the operations of the human, but a personal union; such a union that its result is that Christ is one person with two distinct natures forever; at once God and man. __________________________________________________________________
[305] Actio Quinta, Binius, Concilia Generalia, vol. ii. part 1, p. 253, e.
[306] Summa, III. quæst. ii. art 3, edit. Cologne, 1640, p. 5 of fourth set.
[307] III.; Hase, Libri Symbolici, p. 10.
[308] Hase's Hutterus Redivivus, sixth edition, p. 224.
[309] Cap. XI.; Niemeyer, Collectio Confessionum, p. 484.
[310] Polanus, Syntagma Theologiæ, vi. 12, Hanoviæ, 1625, p. 362, a, b. __________________________________________________________________
§ 4. Consequences of the Hypostatical Union.
Communion of Attributes.
The first and most obvious of these consequences is, the koinonia idiomaton, or communion of attributes. By this is not meant that the one nature participates in the attributes of the other, but simply that the person is the koinonos, or partaker of the attributes of both natures; so that whatever may be affirmed of either nature may be affirmed of the person. As of a man can be affirmed whatever is true of his body and whatever is true of his soul, so of Christ may be affirmed whatever is true of his human nature and whatever is true of his divinity; as we can say of a man that he is mortal and immortal; that he is a creature of the dust and the child of God: so we may say of Christ that He is finite and infinite; that He is ignorant and omniscient; that He is less than God and equal with God; that He existed from eternity and that He was born in time; that He created all things and that He was a man of sorrows. It is on this principle, that what is true of either nature is true of the person, that a multitude of passages of Scripture are to be explained. These passages are of different kinds.
1. Those in which the predicate belongs to the whole person. This is the most numerous class. Thus when Christ is called our Redeemer, our Lord, our King, Prophet, or Priest, our Shepherd, etc., all these things are true of Him not as the Logos, or Son, nor as the man Christ Jesus, but as the Theanthropos, the God-man. And in like manner, when He is said to have been humbled, to have given Himself for us, to be the head of the Church, to be our life, and to be our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, this is true of Christ as a person. The same may be said with regard to those passages in which He is said to be exalted above all principalities and powers; to sit at the right hand of God; and to come to judge the world.
2. There are many passages in which the person is the subject, but the predicate is true only of the divine nature, or of the Logos. As when our Lord said, "Before Abraham was I am;" "The glory which I had with thee before the foundation of the world; or when it is said, "Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the world, and the heavens are the work of thine hands."
3. Passages in which the person is the subject, but the predicate is true only of the human nature. As when Christ said, "I thirst;" "My soul is sorrowful even unto death." And when we read that "Jesus wept." So all those passages which speak of our Lord as walking, eating, and sleeping; and as being seen, touched, and handled. There are two classes of passages under this general head which are of special interest. First, those in which the person is designated from the divine nature when the predicate is true only of the human nature. "The Church of God which He purchased with his blood." "The Lord of glory was crucified." The Son knows not the time when the final judgment is to come. (Mark xiii. 32.) The forms of expression, therefore, long prevalent in the Church, "the blood of God," "God the mighty maker died," etc., are in accordance with Scriptural usage. And if it be right to say "God died," it is right to say "He was born." The person born of the Virgin Mary was a divine person. He was the Son of God. It is, therefore, correct to say that Mary was the mother of God. For, as we have seen, the person of Christ is in Scripture often designated from the divine nature, when the predicate is true only of the human nature. On this particular form of expression, which, from its abuse, is generally offensive to Protestant ears, Turrettin remarks: "Maria potest dici vere theotokos seu Mater Dei, Deipara, si vox Dei sumatur concrete pro toto personali Christi, quod constat ex persona Logou et natura humana, quo sensu vocatur Mater Domini Luc. i. 43, sed non precise et abstracte ratione Deitatis." [311] The second class of passages under this head are of the opposite kind, namely, those in which the person is denominated from the human nature when the predicate is true only of the divine nature. Thus Christ is called the Son of man who is in heaven. Here the denomination "Son of man" is from the human, while the predicate (ubiquity) is true only of the divine nature. So our Lord says, "What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before?" (John vi. 62.) In Romans ix. 5, He who was of the fathers (the seed of Abraham and son of David) is declared to be God over all and blessed forever.
4. There is a fourth class of passages which come under the first general head mentioned above, but have the peculiarity that the denomination is derived from the divine nature, when the predicate is not true of the divine nature itself, but only of the Theanthropos. Thus it is said, "The Son also himself shall be subject to him who put all things under him." Here the designation Son is from the divine nature, but the subjection predicated is not of the Son as such, or of the Logos, nor is it simply of the human nature, but officially of the God-man. So our Lord says, "The Father is greater than I." The Father is not greater than the Son, for they are the same in substance and equal in power and glory. It is as God-man that He is economically subject to the Father. Perhaps the passage in John v. 26 may belong to this class. "As the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself." This may be understood of the eternal communication of life from the first to the second person of the Trinity (i.e., of eternal generation); or it may refer to the constitution of Christ's person. And then the term Son would designate, not the Logos, but the Theanthropos, and the communication of life would not be from the Father to the Son, but from God to the Theanthropos. It pleased the Father that Christ should have a divine nature possessed of inherent life in order that He might be the source of life to his people.
It is instructive to notice here how easily and naturally the sacred writers predicate of our Lord the attributes of humanity and those of divinity, however his person may be denominated. They call Him Lord, or Son, and attribute to Him, often in the same sentence, what is true of Him only as God, what is true only of his humanity, and what is true of Him only as the God-man. Thus in the beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews it is said, God hath spoken unto us by his Son. Here Son means the incarnate Logos. In the next clause, "By whom he made the world," what is said is true only of the eternal Son. So also what immediately follows, Who is "the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, and upholding all things (the universe) by the word of his power." But in the next clause, "When he had by himself (i.e., by his sacrificial death) purged away our sins," the reference is to his human nature, as the body only died. And then it is added, He "sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high," which is true of the God-man.
The Acts of Christ.
The second consequence of the hypostatical union relates to the acts of Christ. As a man is one person, and because he is one person all his acts are the acts of that person, so all the acts of Christ are the acts of his whole person. But, as was before remarked, the acts of a man are of three classes: such as are purely mental, as thought; such as belong exclusively to the body, as digestion and assimilation; and such as are mixed, i.e., both mental and corporeal, as all voluntary acts, as speaking, writing, etc. Yet all are equally the acts of the man. It is the man who thinks who digests his food, and who speaks. So of the acts of Christ. Some are purely divine, as creation and preservation; some are purely human, as eating, drinking, and sleeping; some are theanthropic, i.e., those in which both natures concur, as in the work of redemption. Yet all these acts are the acts of Christ, of one and the same person. It was Christ who created the world. It was Christ who ate and drank. And it is Christ who redeems us from the power of darkness.
Here also, as in the case of the attributes of Christ, his person may be denominated from one nature when the act ascribed to Him belongs to the other nature. He is called God, the Son of God, the Lord of glory, when his delivering Himself unto death is spoken of. And He is called man, or the Son of man, when the acts ascribed to Him involve the exercise of divine power or authority. It is the Son of man who forgives sins; who is Lord of the Sabbath; who raises the dead; and who is to send forth his angels to gather his elect.
Such being the Scriptural doctrine concerning the person of Christ, it follows that although the divine nature is immutable and impassible, and therefore neither the obedience nor the suffering of Christ was the obedience or suffering of the divine nature, yet they were none the less the obedience and suffering of a divine person. The soul of man cannot be wounded or burnt, but when the body is injured it is the man who suffers. In like manner the obedience of Christ was the righteousness of God, and the blood of Christ was the blood of God. It is to this fact that the infinite merit and efficiency of his work are due. This is distinctly asserted in the Scriptures. It is impossible, says the Apostle, that the blood of bulls and of goats could take away sin. It was because Christ was possessed of an eternal Spirit that He by the one offering of Himself hath perfected forever them who are sanctified. This is the main idea insisted upon in the Epistle to the Hebrews. This is the reason given why the sacrifice of Christ need never be repeated, and why it is infinitely more efficacious than those of the old dispensation. This truth has been graven on the hearts of believers in all ages. Every such believer says from his heart, "Jesus, my God, thy blood alone has power sufficient to atone."
The Man Christ Jesus the object of Worship.
Another obvious inference from this doctrine is that the man Christ Jesus is the object of religious worship. To worship, in the religious sense of the word, is to ascribe divine perfections to its object. The possession of those perfections, is, therefore, the only proper ground for such worship. The humanity of Christ, consequently, is not the ground of worship, but it enters into the constitution of that person who, being God over all and blessed forever, is the object of adoration to saints and angels. We accordingly find that it was He whom they saw, felt, and handled, that the Apostles worshipped as their Lord and God; whom they loved supremely, and to whom they consecrated themselves as a living sacrifice.
Christ can sympathize with his People.
A third inference which the Apostles drew from this doctrine is. that Christ is a merciful and faithful high-priest. He is just the Saviour we need. God as God, the eternal Logos, could neither be nor do what our necessities demand. Much less could any mere man, however wise, holy, or benevolent, meet the wants of our souls. It is only a Saviour who is both God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever, who is all we need and all we can desire. As God He is ever present, almighty and infinite in all his resources to save and bless; and as man, or being also a man, He can be touched with a sense of our infirmities, was tempted as we are, was subject to the law which we violated, and endured the penalty which we had incurred. In Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead, in a bodily form, in fashion as a man, so as to be accessible to us, and so that from his fulness we can all partake. We are therefore complete in Him, wanting nothing.
The Incarnate Logos the Source of Life.
The Scriptures teach that the Logos is everlasting life, having life in Himself, and the source of life, physical, intellectual, and spiritual. They further teach that his incarnation was the necessary condition of the communication of spiritual life to the children of men. He, therefore, is the only Saviour, the only source of life to us. We become partakers of this life, by union with Him. This union is partly federal established in the councils of eternity partly vital by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit; and partly voluntary and conscious by faith. It is to those who believe, to those who receive Him as God manifest in the flesh, that He becomes eternal life. For it is not they who live, but Christ who liveth in them. (Gal. ii. 20.) The life of the believer is not a corporate life, conditioned on union with any outward organization, called the Church, for whosoever calls on the name of the Lord, that is, whosoever religiously worships Him and looks to Him as his God and Saviour, shall be saved, whether in a dungeon or alone in a desert.
The Exaltation of the Human Nature of Christ.
Another consequence of the hypostatical union is the exaltation of the humanity of Christ. As the human body in virtue of its vital union with an immortal soul, is immeasurably exalted above any mere material organization in the universe (so far as known or revealed), so the humanity of Christ in virtue of its union with his divine nature is immeasurably exalted in dignity and worth, and even power over all intelligent creatures. The human body, however, is not now, and will not be, even when made like to Christ's glorious body, so exalted as to cease to be material. In like manner the humanity of Christ is not so exalted by its union with his divine nature as to cease to be human. This would break the bond of sympathy between Him and us. It has been the pious fault of some Christians that they merge his humanity in his Godhead. This is as real, if not so fatal an error, as merging his Godhead in his humanity. We must hold fast to both. "The Man Christ Jesus," and "The God over all blessed forever," is the one undivided inseparable object of the adoration, love, and confidence of the people of God; who can each say, --
"Jesus, my God, I know his name,
His name is all my trust;
Nor will He put my soul to shame,
Nor let my hope be lost." __________________________________________________________________
[311] Locus XVIII. quæst. v. 18, edit. Edinburgh, 1847, vol. ii. pp. 273, 274. __________________________________________________________________
§ 5. Erroneous and Heretical Doctrines on the Person of Christ.
Plainly as all the truths above mentioned concerning the person of Christ, seem now to us to be revealed in the Holy Scriptures, it was not until after the conflict of six centuries that they came to be fully stated so as to secure the general assent of the Church. We must indeed always bear in mind the difference between the speculations of theologians and the faith of the great body of the people if God. It is a false assumption that the doctrines taught by the ecclesiastical writers of a particular age, constituted the faith of believers of that age. The doctrines of theologians are largely determined by their antecedents and by the current philosophy of the day in which they live. This is unavoidable. The faith of the common people is determined by the Word of God, by the worship of the sanctuary, and by the teachings of the Spirit. They remain in a great measure ignorant of, or indifferent to, the speculations of theologians. It cannot be doubted that the great body of the people from the beginning believed that Christ was truly a man, was truly God, and is one person. They could not read and believe the Scriptures without having these truths engraved on their hearts. All the records of their confessions, hymns, and prayers, prove them to have been the worshippers of Him who died for their sins. And in this light they were regarded and described by all contemporary heathen writers. But while the people thus rested in these essential facts, the theologians were forced from without and from within, to ask, How can these things be? How can the same person be both God and man? How does the Godhead in the person of Christ stand related to his humanity? It was in the answers given to these questions that difficulty and controversy occurred. To avoid the great and obvious difficulties connected with the doctrine of the incarnation of God, some denied his true divinity; others denied the reality or completeness of his human nature; others so explained the nature and effects of the union as to interfere either with the integrity of the divine or of the human nature of Christ or with the unity of his person.
The Ebionites.
The errors which disturbed the peace of the early Church on this, as on other subjects, arose either from Judaism or from heathen philosophy. The Jews who professed themselves Christians, were not able, in many instances, as we learn from the New Testament itself, to emancipate themselves from their former opinions and prejudices. They had by the misinterpretation of their Scriptures been led to expect a Messiah who was to be the head of their nation as David and Solomon had been. They, therefore, as a body, rejected Christ, who came as a man of sorrows, not having anywhere to lay his head. And of those who were constrained by his doctrines and miracles to acknowledge Him as the promised Messiah, many believed Him to be a mere man, the son of Joseph and Mary, distinguished from other men only by his holiness and his extraordinary endowments. This was the case with the sect known as Ebionites. Why so called is a matter of doubt. Although as a body, and characteristically, they entertained this low, humanitarian view of the person of Christ, yet it appears from the fragmentary records of the ancient writers, that they differed much among themselves, and were divided into different classes. Some had mingled with their Jewish opinions more or less of the elements of the Gnostic philosophy. This was the more natural, as many of the teachers of Gnosticism were Jews. The fathers, therefore, speak both of Jewish, and of Gnostic Ebionites. So far as their views of Christ's person were modified by Gnosticism, they ceased to be distinctly the views of the Ebionites as a body.
Another class of nominal Jewish Christians is known as Nazarenes. They differed but little from the Jewish Ebionites. Both insisted on the continued obligation of the Mosaic law, and both regarded Christ as a mere man. But the Nazarenes acknowledged his miraculous conception, and thus elevated Him above all other men, and regarded Him as the Son of God in a peculiar sense. The acknowledgment of the divinity of Christ, and the ability and willingness to unite in worship of which He was the object, was from the beginning the one indispensable condition of Christian fellowship. These Jewish sects, therefore, who denied his divinity, existed outside of the Church, and were not recognized as Christians.
The Gnostics.
As the Ebionites denied the divinity, so the Gnostics in different ways denied his humanity. They were led to this denial by their views of the origin of evil. God is the source only of good. As evil exists it must have its origin not only outside of Him, but independently of Him. He is, however, the source of all spiritual existences. By emanation from his substance spiritual beings are produced; from them other emanations proceed, and from those still others in ever increasing deterioration according to their distance from the primal fountain. Evil arises from matter. The world was created, not by God, but by an inferior spirit, the Demiourgos, whom some sects of the Gnostics regarded as the God of the Jews. Man consists of a spirit derived from God combined with a material body and an animal soul. By this union of the spiritual with the material, the spirit is defiled and enslaved. Its redemption consists in its emancipation from the body, so as to enable it to reenter the sphere of pure spirits, or to be lost in God. To effect this redemption, Christ, one of the highest emanations from God (or Æons), came into the world. It was necessary that He should appear "in fashion as a man," but it was impossible He should become a man, without subjecting Himself to the pollution and bondage from which He came to deliver men. To meet this difficulty various theories were adopted. Some held that Christ had no real body or human soul. His earthly manifestation is human form was a phantasm, a mere appearance without substance or reality. Hence they were called Docetæ, from the Greek verb dokeo, which means to appear, to seem to be. According to this class of the Gnostics, Christ's whole earthly life was an illusion. He was not born, nor did he suffer or die. Others admitted that he had a real body, but denied that it was material. They taught that it was formed of some ethereal or celestial substance, and brought by Christ into the world. Although born of the virgin Mary, it was not of her substance, but only through her as the mould in which this ethereal substance was cast. Hence in the ancient creeds it is said that Christ was born, not per, but ex Maria virgine, which is explained to mean ex substantia matris suæ. It was also in opposition to this Gnostic heresy that the ancient creeds emphasized the declaration that Christ, as to his human nature, is consubstantial with us. Others, as the Cerinthians, held that Jesus and Christ were distinct. Jesus was an ordinary man, the son of Joseph and Mary. Christ was a spirit or power which descended on Jesus at his baptism, and became his guide and guardian, and enabled Him to work miracles. At the time of his passion, the Christ departed, returning into heaven, leaving the man Jesus to suffer alone. As nothing is more distinctly revealed in Scripture, and nothing is more essential to Christ's being the Saviour of men, than that he should be truly a man, all these Gnostic theories were rejected as heretical.
The Apollinarian Doctrine.
As the Gnostic doctrine which denied entirely the human nature of Christ was rejected, the next attempt was directed against the integrity of that nature. Many of the early fathers, especially of the Alexandrian school, had presented views of this element of Christ's person, which removed Him more or less from the class of ordinary men. They nevertheless maintained that He was truly a man. The Apollinarians, so called from Apollinaris, a distinguished bishop of Laodicea, adopting the Platonic distinction between the soma, psuche, and pneuma, as three distinct subjects or principles in the constitution of man, admitted that Christ had a true body (soma) and animal soul (psuche), but not a rational spirit, or mind (pneuma or nous). In Him the eternal Son, or Logos, supplied the place of the human intelligence. The Apollinarians were led to the adoption of this theory partly from the difficulty of conceiving how two complete natures can be united in one life and consciousness. If Christ be God, or the divine Logos, He must have an infinite intelligence and an almighty will. If a perfect man, He must have a finite intelligence and a human will. How then can He be one person? This is indeed incomprehensible; but it involves no contradiction. Apollinaris admitted that the psuche, and pneuma in ordinary men, although two distinct principles, are united in one life and consciousness. The psuche, has its own life and intelligence, and so has the pneuma, and yet the two are one. But a second and strong inducement to adopting the Apollinarian theory, was the doctrine then held, by many, at least, of the Platonizing fathers, that reason in man is part of the divine Logos or universal reason. So that the difference between man and God, so far as man's intelligence is concerned, is merely quantitive. If this be so, it is indeed difficult to conceive how there should be in Christ both a part of the Logos and the entire Logos. The part would be necessarily superseded by the whole, or comprehended in it. But notwithstanding the force of this ad hominem argument as directed against some of his opponents, the conviction of the Church was so strong that Christ was a perfect man, possessing within Himself all the elements of our nature, that the Apollinarian doctrine was condemned in the general council held in Constantinople, A.D. 381, and soon disappeared.
Nestorianism.
The integrity of the two natures in Christ having been thus asserted and declared to be the faith of the Church, the next question which arose concerned the relations of the two natures, the one to the other, in the one person of Christ. Nestorianism is the designation adopted in church history, for the doctrine which either affirms, or implies a twofold personality in our Lord. The divine Logos was represented as dwelling in the man Christ Jesus, so that the union between the two natures was somewhat analogous to the indwelling of the Spirit. The true divinity of Christ was thus endangered. He was distinguished from other men in whom God dwelt, only by the plenitude of the divine presence, and the absolute control of the divine over the human. This was not the avowed or real doctrine of Nestorius, but it was the doctrine charged upon him, and was the conclusion to which his principles were supposed to lead. Nestorius was a man of great excellence and eminence; first a presbyter in Antioch, and afterwards Patriarch of Constantinople. The controversy on this subject arose from his defending one of his presbyters who denied that the Virgin Mary could properly be called the Mother of God. As this designation of the blessed Virgin had already received the sanction of the Church, and was familiar and dear to the people, Nestorius's objection to its use excited general and violent opposition. He was on this account alone accused of heresy. As, however, there is a sense in which Mary was the Mother of God, and a sense in which such a designation is blasphemous, everything depends on the real meaning attached to the terms. What Nestorius meant, according to his own statement, was simply that God, the divine nature, could neither be born nor die. In his third letter to Coelestin, Bishop of Rome, he said, "Ego autem ad hanc quidem vocem, quæ est theotokos, nisi secundum Apollinaris et Arii furorem ad confusionem naturarum proferatur, volentibus dicere non resisto; nec tamen ambigo quia hæc vox theotokos illi voci cedat, quæ est christotokos, tanquam prolatæ ab Angelis et evangelistis." What he asserted was, "Non peperit creatura creatorem, sed peperit hominem deitatis instrumentum. . . . . Spiritus sanctus . . . Deo Verbo templum fabricatus est, quod habitaret, ex virgine." Nevertheless, he obviously carried the distinction of natures too far, for neither he nor his followers could bring themselves to use the Scriptural language, "The Church of God which he purchased with his blood." The Syriac version used by the Nestorians, reads Christos instead of Theos in Acts xx. 28. The principal opponent of Nestorius was Cyril of Alexandria, who secured his condemnation by violent means in the Synod of Ephesus in A.D. 431. This irregular decision was resisted by the Greek and Syrian bishops, so that the controversy, for a time at least, was a conflict between these two sections of the Church. Ultimately Nestorius was deposed and banished, and died A.D. 440. His followers removed eastward to Persia, and organized themselves into a separate communion, which continues until this day.
Eutychianism.
As Nestorius so divided the two natures in Christ as almost to necessitate the assumption of two persons, his opponents were led to the opposite extreme. Instead of two, they insisted that there was but one nature in Christ. Cyril himself had taught what clearly implied this idea. According to Cyril there is but one nature in Christ because by the incarnation, or hypostatical union the human was changed into the divine. [312] With the extreme Alexandrian theologians, the humanity of Christ was ignored. It was the Logos who was born, the Logos who suffered and died. All about Christ was divine, even his body. [313] The opposition between the Syrian and Egyptian bishops (Antioch and Alexandria) became so pronounced, that any distinction of natures in Christ was by the latter denounced as Nestorianism. It was Eutyches, however, a presbyter of Constantinople, one of the most strenuous advocates of the views of Cyril and an opponent of Nestorius, who became the representative of this doctrine which has since gone by his name. He was accused of heresy on this account, and condemned in a Council called by the Patriarch of Constantinople. Eutyches admitted that before the incarnation there were. two natures, but afterwards only one. Homologo ek duo phuseon gegennesthai ton kurion hemon pro tes henoseos, meta de ten henosin, mian phusin homologo. But what was that nature which resulted from the union of the two? The human might be exalted into the divine, or lost in it, as a drop of vinegar (to use one of the illustrations then employed) in the ocean. Then Christ ceased to be a man. And as the union of the two natures commenced from the beginning, the whole of Christ's human earthly life became an illusion, or empty show. Where then are his redeeming work, and his bond of union or sympathy with us? Or the effect of the union might be to merge the divine into the human, so that the one nature was after all only the nature of man. Then the true divinity of Christ was denied, and we have only a human saviour. Or the effect of the union of the two natures was the production of a third, which was neither human nor divine, but theanthropic, as in chemical combinations an acid and an alkali when united, produce a substance which is no longer either acid or alkaline. Then Christ instead of being God and man, is neither God nor man. This being contrary to the Scriptures, and placing Christ out of the range of human sympathies, was opposed to the intimate convictions of the Church.
The condemnation of Eutyches at Constantinople greatly incensed Dioscurus, bishop of Alexandria, and his associates. Through his influence a general synod was convened at Ephesus in 449 A.D., from which the opposers of Eutyches were forcibly excluded, and his doctrine of one nature in Christ formally sanctioned. The Council proceeded to excommunicate those who taught a contrary doctrine, and Eutyches was restored to office. The doctrines of the Council (known in history as "the robber council") were sanctioned by the emperor Theodosius. But as he died in the following year, his successor being hostile to Dioscurus, summoned another general synod, which met at Chalcedon, A.D.
451. Here Dioscurus was deposed, and the letter of Leo of Rome to Flavian of Constantinople was adopted as a true exposition of the faith of the Church. Agreeably to the distinctions contained in that letter the Council framed its confession, in which it is said, [314] "We teach that Jesus Christ is perfect as respects Godhead, and perfect as respects manhood; that He is truly God, and truly a man consisting of a rational soul and a body; that He is consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity, and consubstantial with us as to his humanity, and like us in all respects, sin excepted. He was begotten of the Father before creation (pro aionon) as to his deity; but in these last days He, for us, and for our salvation, was born of Mary the Virgin, the mother of God as to his humanity. He is one and the same Christ, Lord, only begotten, existing in two natures without mixture, without change, without division, without separation; the diversity of the two natures not being at all destroyed by their union in the one person, but rather the peculiar property of each nature being preserved, and concurring to one person, and one subsistence." This was one of the six general Councils in whose doctrinal decisions all Protestants, at the time of the Reformation, professed their agreement. The Latin Church received this confession of the Council of Chalcedon cheerfully, but it met with great opposition in some parts, and especially in Palestine and Egypt, and therefore did not bring the controversy on this subject to an end. This conflict resulted in great disorders and bloodshed in Palestine and Egypt, and in Constantinople even in revolution; one Emperor was deposed, and another enthroned. After nearly two centuries of controversy, the Emperor Heraclius endeavoured to effect a reconciliation by getting both parties to admit that there are two natures in Christ, but only one will and operation, mia theandrike energeia. This effort was so far successful that a portion of the Monophysites assented to this modification of the creed of the Council of Chalcedon; but the more determined of that party and the great body of the orthodox refused. The controversy turned after this specially on the question whether there is one only, or two wills in Christ. If only one, then, as the orthodox asserted, there could be but one nature, for will is one of the essential elements or faculties of a rational nature. To deny Christ a human will, was to deny that He had a human nature, or was truly a man. Besides, it precluded the possibility of his having been tempted, and therefore contradicted the Scriptures, and separated Him so far from his people that He could not sympathize with them in their temptations. The effort of Heraclius therefore proved abortive, and the controversy continued with unabated acrimony, until finally the sixth general council held at Constantinople, A.D. 681, authoritatively decided in favour of the doctrine that in the one person of Christ, as there are two distinct natures, human and divine, there are of necessity two intelligences and two wills, the one fallible and finite, the other immutable and infinite. Christ was tempted, and there was, therefore, the metaphysical possibility that He should have yielded. According to this Council the person of Christ was not only formed, [315] ek duo phuseon, but consists since the hypostatic union ek duo phusesi, and it says in the name of the Church that there are duo phusikas theleseis etoi thelemata en auto, kai duo phusikas energeias adiairetos, atrettos, ameristos, asunchutos kata ten ton hagion pateron didaskalian hosautos keruttomen. The Monothelites being thus condemned were persecuted and driven eastward, where they have perpetuated themselves in the sect of the Maronites.
With this council the conflict on this doctrine so far ceased that there has since been no further modification of the Church doctrine. The decision against Nestorius, in which the unity of Christ's person was asserted; that against Eutyches, affirming the distinction of natures; and that against the Monothelites, declaring that the possession of a human nature involves of necessity the possession of a human will, have been received as the true faith by the Church universal, the Greek, Latin, and Protestant.
During the Middle Ages, although the person of Christ was the subject of diverse speculations on the part of individual writers, there was no open or organized opposition to the decisions of the above named councils. __________________________________________________________________
[312] See Dorner, Hagenbach, and Münscher, on this controversy.
[313] Neander, Dogmengeschichte, vol. i. p. 349.
[314] Acta Quinta, Binius. Concilia Generalia, vol. ii. part I. p. 253, e. f.
[315] Binius, Concilia Generalia, 1618, vol. iii. part I. sect. i. pp. 230, 231. __________________________________________________________________
§ 6. Doctrine of the Reformed Churches.
At the time of the Reformation the Reformed adhered strictly to the doctrine of the early Church. This is apparent from the different Confessions adopted by the several Reformed bodies, especially from the Second Helvetic Confession, which, as will be seen, reviews and rejects all the ancient heresies on this subjects and repeats and adopts the language of the ancient creeds. In this Confession it is said: [316] "Credimus præterea et docemus filium Dei Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum ab æterno prædestinatum vel præordinatum esse, a Patre, salvatorem mundi: credimusque hunc esse genitum, non tantum, cum ex virgine Maria carnem assumsit, nec tantum ante jacta fundamenta mundi, sed ante omnem æternitatem, et quidem, a Patre, ineffabiliter. . . . . Proinde Filius est Patri juxta divinitatem coæqualis et consubstantialis, Deus verus non nuncupatione, aut adoptione, aut ulla dignatione, sed substantia atque natura. . . . . Abominamur ergo Arii et omnium Arianorum impiam contra filium Dei doctrinam. . . . . Eundem quoque æterni Dei æternum filium credimus et docemus hominis factum esse filium, ex semine Abrahæ atque Davidis, non ex viri coitu, quod Hebion dixit, sed conceptum purissime ex Spiritn Sancto, et natum ex Maria semper virgine: . . . . Caro ergo Christi, nec phantastica fuit, nec coelitus allata, sicuti Valentinus et Martion somniabant. Præterea anima fuit Domino nostro non absque sensu et ratione, ut Apollinaris sentiebat, neque caro absque anima, ut Eunomius docebat, sed anima cum ratione sua, et caro cum sensibus suis, per quos sensus, veros dolores tempore passionis suæ sustinuit. . . . . Agnoscimus ergo in uno atque eodem Domino nostro Jesu Christo, duas naturas [vel substantias, as it is in several editions], divinam et humanam: et has ita dicimus conjunctas et unitas esse, ut absorptæ, aut confusæ, aut immixtæ non sint: sed salvis potius et permanentibus naturarum proprietatibus, in una persona, unitæ et conjunctæ: ita ut unum Christum Dominum, non duos veneremur: unum inquam verum Deum et hominem, juxta divinam naturam Patri, juxta humanam vero nobis hominibus consubstantialem, et per omnia similem, peccato excepto. Etenim, ut Nestorianum dogma ex uno Christo duos faciens, et unionem personæ dissolvens, abominamur: ita Eutychetis et Monothelitarum vel Monophysicorum vesaniam, expungentem naturæ humanæ proprietatem execramur penitus. Ergo minime docemus naturam in Christo divinam passam esse, aut Christum secundum humanam naturam adhuc esse in hoc mundo, adeoque esse ubique. Neque enim vel sentimus, vel docemus veritatem corporis Christi a clarificatione desiisse, aut deificatam, adeoque sic deificatam esse, ut suas proprietates, quoad corpus et animam, deposuerit, ac prorsus in naturam divinam abierat, unaque duntaxat substantia esse coeperit. . . . . Præterea credimus Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum, vere passum et mortuum esse pro nobis. . . . . Interim non negamus et Dominum gloriæ, juxta verba Pauli, crucifixum esse pro nobis. Nam communicationem idiomatum, ex scripturis petitam, et ab universa vetustate in explicandis componendisque scripturarum locis in speciem pugnantibus usurpatam, religiose et reverenter recipimus et usurpamus."
It thus appears that the Reformed distinctly rejected all the errors concerning the person of Christ, condemned in the early Church; the Arian, the Ebionitic, the Gnostic, the Apollinarian, the Nestorian, the Eutychian, and the Monothelite, as well as the peculiar Lutheran doctrine introduced at the time of the Reformation. The Reformed taught what the first six general councils taught, and what the Church universal received, -- neither more nor less. With this agrees the beautifully clear and precise statement of the Westminster Confession: "The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance, and equal with the Father, did, when the fulness of time was come, take upon Him man's nature, and all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin: being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary, of her substance. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and man." [317] __________________________________________________________________
[316] XI.; Niemeyer, Collectio Confessionum, pp. 483-485.
[317] Chap. viii. § 2. __________________________________________________________________
§ 7. Lutheran Doctrine.
The Lutherans in their symbols adopt all the doctrinal decisions of the early Church respecting the person of Christ. They therefore hold, (1.) That Christ is very God and very man. (2.) That He has two distinct natures, a human and divine; that as to the latter He is consubstantial with the Father, and as to the former He is consubstantial with men. (3.) That He is one person. There is one Christ and not two. (4.) That the two natures are intimately united, but without confusion or change. Each nature retains its own peculiar properties. Nevertheless they hold that the attributes of the one nature were communicated to the other. They admit a "communio idiomatum" in the sense that whatever is true of either nature is true of the person. But beyond this they insist upon a "communicatio naturarum." And by nature, in this connection, they mean essence. In their symbols and writings the formula "natura, seu substantia, seu essentia" is of frequent occurrence. The divine essence is communicated to the human. The one interpenetrates the other. They "are mixed" (commiscentur). They do not become one essence, but remain two; yet where the one is the other is; what the one does the ether does. The human is as truly divine as the eternal essence of the Godhead, except that it is not divine ex se, but by communication. (5.) As however it would be derogatory to the divine nature to suppose it to be subject to the limitations and infirmities of humanity, this communication of attributes is said to be confined to the human nature. It receives divine perfections; but the divine receives nothing from the human. (6.) The human nature of Christ, therefore, is almighty, omniscient, and everywhere present both as to soul and body. (7.) As this transfer of divine attributes from the divine to the human nature is the consequence of the incarnation, or rather constitutes it, it began when the incarnation began, and consequently in the womb of the Virgin Mary. (8.) The humiliation of Christ consisted mainly in the hiding or not using the divine perfections of his human nature while here on earth; and his exaltation in the manifestation of the divine glory of his humanity. On this subject the "Form of Concord" [318] says, "Eamque Majestatem, ratione unionis personalis, semper Christus habuit: sed in statu suæ humiliationis sese exinanivit; qua de causa revera ætate, sapientia et gratia apud Deum atque homines profecit. Quare majestatem illam non semper, sed quoties ipsi visum fuit, exseruit, donec formam servi, non autem naturam humanam, post resurrectionem plene et prorsus deponeret, ut in plenariam usurpationem, manifestationem et declarationem divinæ majestatis collocaretur, et hoc modo in gloriam suam ingrederetur." (9.) Nevertheless Christ while here on earth, and even when in the womb of the Virgin, was as to his soul and body everywhere present.
The above statement is believed to be a correct exhibition of the doctrine of the Lutheran Church as presented in the eighth chapter of the "Form of Concord." There is, however, no little difficulty in determining what the Lutheran doctrine really is. The Christology of Luther, although very clear and pronounced on certain points, was indefinite and doubtful in others. His successors differed seriously among themselves. It was one of the principal objects of the "Form of Concord" to settle the matters in dispute. This was done by compromise. Both parties made concessions, and yet both insisted upon the assertion of their peculiar views in one part or other of that document. It is, therefore, difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile some portions of the "Form of Concord" with others. It did not in fact put an end to the divisions which it was designed to heal.
Different Views among the Lutherans.
The principal points of difference among the Lutheran divines concerning the person of Christ were the following: The nature and effects of the union of natures in Christ; the ground of that union; and the time of its occurrence. The Reformed Church in adhering to the doctrine as it had been settled in the Council of Chalcedon, maintained that there is such an essential difference between the divine and human natures that the one could not become the other, and that the one was not capable of receiving the attributes of the other. If God became the subject of the limitations of humanity He would cease to be God; and if man received the attributes of God he would cease to be man. This was regarded as a self-evident truth. The "communion of attributes" which the Reformed, in accordance with the common faith of the Church, admitted, concerned only the person and not the natures of Christ. Christ possessed all the attributes of humanity and of divinity, but the two natures remained distinct; just as a man is the subject of all that can be predicated of his body and of his soul, although the attributes of the one are not predicable of the other. The Lutherans maintained that, according to this view, the two natures were as separate as duo asseres agglutinatos. This they pronounced to be no real incarnation. The Reformed acknowledged that Jesus Christ the son of the Virgin Mary is a divine person, but denied that his human nature was divine. The Lutherans maintained that man became God, and that the human did become divine. Otherwise, Christ as clothed in our nature, could not be an object of divine worship. As though we could not reverence a man unless we believed that the attributes of his mind were transferred to his body.
Although the Lutheran theologians agree as to the fact that the man Christ Jesus became God, they differ as to the mode in which this was accomplished. Their language as to the fact is as strong as it can be made. Thus Brentius, the friend of Luther and the Reformer of Würtemberg, in his work "De Personali Unione," says, If the Logos "did not intend to remain either personally or with his nature outside of Christ, but purposed to become man, He must needs exalt the humanity into his own majesty. Therein, in fact, consists the incarnation, that the man Christ not merely never existed or worked without the Logos, but also that the Logos never existed or worked without the man, whom He had assumed; and is this was only possible though the elevation of the humanity to equal dignity with the Logos, the incarnation consists precisely in this elevation, -- the one is identical with the other."
[319] "According to the philosophy of Zwingli, there is no proportion between the finite and the infinite; but in the philosophy of God, finite humanity also may become infinite." [320] The human nature of Christ, therefore, possesses all divine attributes. It fills heaven and earth. It is omniscient and almighty. In the "Form of Concord" [321] it is said, "Itaque non tantum ut Deus, verum etiam ut homo, omnia novit, omnia potest, omnibus creaturis præsens est, et omnia, quæ in coelis, in terris et sub terra sunt, sub pedibus suis et in manu sua habet." And again, [322] "Non in Christo sunt duæ separatæ personæ, sed unica tantum est persona. Ubicunque ea est, ibi est unica tantum et indivisa persona. Et ubicunque recte dixeris: hic est Deus, ibi fateri oportet, et dicere, ergo etiam Christus homo adest." This being the case, it being admitted that man becomes God, that the human becomes divine, the finite infinite, the question arises, How can this be? How is divinity thus communicated to humanity? It is in the answer to these questions that the diversities and inconsistencies in the views not only of theologians but also of the symbolical books, appear. It was a principle with the Wittenberg school of the Lutheran theologians that human nature is not capable of divinity. This is true also of Chemnitz, the greatest of the divines of the age after the Reformation. In his work "De Duabus Naturis in Christo, de Hypostatica Earum Unione, de Communicatione Idiomatum," etc., says Dorner, "he controverts in the most vigorous manner, a physica, naturalis communicatio,' or transfusio idiomatum;' and no less earnestly does he deny the capacitas' of a natura finita' for the infinitum,' if it signify more than that the divine can dwell and work in man." [323] As to the ubiquity of Christ's body, the dissent was still more decided. [324] Yet this idea of the capacity of human nature for divinity became the formative idea in the Lutheran doctrine of the person of Christ.
No less diversity appears in the answer to the question, What is meant by the communication of natures? Sometimes it is said to be a communication of the essence of God to the human nature of Christ; sometimes a communication of divine attributes; and sometimes it is said to mean nothing more than that the human is made the organ of the divine. [325] The first has symbolical authority in its favour, and is the most consistent with the theory. It is the proper meaning of the words, for as natura in the "Form of Concord" is constantly in this connection explained by the words substantia and essentia, a communication of nature is a communication of essence. The one is not changed into the other, but they are intermingled and mixed without being confounded. [326]
The favorite illustration of this union of two natures was derived from heated iron. In that case (according to the theory of heat then in vogue) two substances are united. The one interpenetrates the other. The iron receives the attributes of the caloric. It glows and burns. Where the iron is, there the caloric is. Yet the one is not changed into the other. The iron remains iron, and the heat remains heat. This is very ingenious; but, as is often the case, the analogy fails in the very point to be illustrated. The fact to be explained is how man becomes God and God man; how the human becomes divine, and the finite becomes infinite. In the illustration the heat does not become iron nor the iron heat. The only relation between the two is juxtaposition in space. But in the doctrine the human does become divine; man does become God.
A second and minor point of difference was that some referred the communion of the attributes of the two natures to the hypostatical union, while others held that that union was the result of the communication of the divine nature to the human.
The main difficulty, however, and the principal source of diversity related to the time and manner of the union of the two natures. We have already seen that one party held that this union took place at the moment of the "miraculous conception." The conception was the ascension. As the union of the divine with the human nature rendered the human divine, it became instanter omnipresent, almighty, and infinitely exalted. The effect of the incarnation was that the logos no longer existed extra carnem, neither was the caro extra logon. Whatever the one is the other is; whatever the one knows the other knows; whatever the one does the other does; and whatever majesty, glory, or blessedness the one has the other also has. "So certainly as the act of incarnation communicates the divine essence to humanity, even so certainly must this actual omnipresence, and not merely its potence, which does not exist, be communicated to the flesh of Christ." [327] The "Form of Concord" teaches the same doctrine; [328] it says, "Ex eodem etiam fundamento credimus, docemus et confitemur, Filium hominis ad dexteram omnipotentis majestatis et virtutis Dei, realiter, hoc est, vere et reipsa, secundum humanam suam naturam, esse exaltatum, cum homo ille in Deum assumptus fuerit, quamprimum in utero matris a Spiritu Sancto est confectus, ejusque humanitas jam tum cum Filio Dei altissimi personaliter fuerit unita." This, however, supposes the whole earthly life of Christ to be an illusion. There could be no growth or development of his human nature. He was omniscient and omnipotent when an unborn infant. The Bible says He increased in knowledge; this theory says that He knew all things from the beginning; that He was the ruler of the universe cooperating in all the activity of the Logos when in the womb of the Virgin; that He was supremely blessed as to his human nature when in the garden and upon the cross; and that as to soul and body He was living while lying in the grave. If this be so He never suffered or died, and there has been no redemption through his blood.
To avoid these fatal consequences of their theory, the Lutherans were driven to different and conflicting subtle explanations. According to some there was no actual communication of the divine essence and attributes to the human nature until after his resurrection. The Logos was in Him only potentially. There was on the part of the divine nature a retractio, or hesuchazein, or quiescence, so that it was as though it were not there. According to others, there was a voluntary krupsis or veiling of itself or of its divine glory on the part of the humanity of Christ. According to others, this humiliation was rather the act of the Godman, who only occasionally revealed the fact that the human nature was divine. No explanation could meet the difficulties of the case, because they are inseparable from the assumption that the human nature of Christ was replete with divine attributes from the moment of its miraculous conception. It is a contradiction to say that the same individual mind was omniscient and yet was ignorant and increased in knowledge; that the same rational soul was supremely happy and exceeding sorrowful, at the same time; that the same body was potentially alive and yet actually dead. From the nature of the case there can be no difference between the ktesis and chresis of such divine attributes as omniscience and omnipresence. It would require a volume to give the details of the controversies between the different schools of the Lutheran divines on these and kindred points. This general outline is all that can here be expected. [329]
Remarks on the Lutheran Doctrine.
1. The first remark which suggests itself on this Lutheran doctrine is its contrast with the simplicity of the gospel. The New Testament predicates of our Lord Jesus Christ all that can be predicated of a sinless man, and all that can be predicated of a divine person. It is only stating this fact in another form to say that the Bible teaches that the eternal Son of God became man taking to Himself a true body and a reasonable soul, and so was, and continues to be, God and man, in two entire distinct natures and one person forever. Whatever is beyond this, is mere speculation. Not content with admitting the fact that two natures are united in the one person of Christ, the Lutheran theologians insist on explaining that fact. They are willing to acknowledge that two natures or substances, soul and body, are united in the one person in man, without pretending to explain the essential nature of the union. Why then can they not receive the fact that two natures are united in Christ without philosophizing about it? The first objection, therefore, is that the Lutheran doctrine is an attempt to explain the inscrutable.
2. A second objection is that the character of the explanation was determined by the peculiar views of Luther as to the Lord's Supper. He believed that the body and blood of Christ are really and locally present in the Eucharist. And when asked, How can the body of Christ which is in heaven be in many different places at the same time? He answered that the body of Christ is everywhere. And when asked, How can that be? His only answer was, That in virtue of the incarnation the attributes of the divine nature were communicated to the human, so that wherever the Logos is there the soul and body of Christ must be.
There are two things specially prominent in Luther as a theologian. The one is his entire subjection to the authority of Scripture, as he understood it. He seemed, moreover, never to doubt the correctness of his interpretations, nor was he willing to tolerate doubt in others. As to matters not clearly determined in the Bible, according to his view, he was exceedingly tolerant and liberal. But with regard to points which he believed to be taught in the Word of God, he allowed neither hesitation nor dissent. The other marked trait in his character was his power of faith. He could believe not only what was repugnant to his feelings, but what was directly opposed to his system, and even what was in its own nature impossible. His cardinal doctrine was "justification by faith alone," as he translated Romans iii. 28. He constantly taught not only that no man could be saved without faith in Christ, but that faith alone was necessary. Yet as he understood our Lord in John iii. 5, to teach that baptism is essential to salvation, he asserted its absolute necessity, although sorely against his will. To reconcile this with his doctrine of the necessity and sufficiency of faith, he held that new-born infants, when baptized, exercised faith although he meant by faith the intelligent, voluntary, and cordial reception of Christ as He is offered in the gospel. In like manner he hated the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation, and was bitterly opposed to all the subtleties of scholasticism. Yet as he understood our Lord's words, "This is my body," literally, he adopted all the subtleties, inconsistencies, and, we may say, impossibilities, involved in the doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ's body. Body includes the idea of form as well as of substance. A man's body is not the water, ammonia, and lime of which it is composed. It is certainly a strong objection to any doctrine that it owes its existence mainly to the desire to support a false interpretation of Scripture.
Lutherans, indeed, deny that their doctrine concerning the person of Christ is thus subordinate to their views of the Lord's Supper. Even Dorner, in one place, seems to take the same ground. Elsewhere, however, he fully admits the fact. Thus when speaking of Luther, he says that he "did not develop his deep and full Christological intuitions in a connected doctrinal form. His controversy with the Swiss, on the contrary, had led him, as we have shown, to the adoption of single divergent principles, which aided in reducing Christology to the rank of a follower in the train of another doctrine, instead of conceding to it an independent life and sphere of its own." [330] And on the next page he says, "Even the champions of peace between the evangelical parties put their Christology in a position of dependence on the doctrine of the Eucharist, which almost involved the entire loss of the grand features of Luther's doctrine."
3. It is to be objected to the Lutheran doctrine, not only that it undertakes to explain what is an inscrutable mystery, and that the explanation derives its character from Luther's views of the Eucharist, but also that the explanation itself is utterly unsatisfactory. In the first place, it is one sided. It insists on a communication of natures and a communion of attributes. Lutherans maintain that God became man as truly, and in the same sense that man became God. Yet they deny that the divine nature received anything from the human, or that God was in any way subject to the limitations of humanity. Nevertheless, such limitation appears to be involved in the Lutheran doctrine of Christ's humiliation. The idea is that after the incarnation the Logos is not extra carnem, that all his activity is with and through the activity of his humanity; and yet it is affirmed that the humanity did not exercise, while on earth, except occasionally, its divine perfections. This seems of necessity to involve the admission that the Logos did not exercise those perfections during the period of the humiliation. That is, while Christ was on earth, the knowledge and power of the Logos were measured and circumscribed by the knowledge and power of the human soul of Christ. This is the modern doctrine of kenosis which Luther rejected. He refused, says Dorner, "to purchase an actual growth of the divine-human vital unity at the price of a depotentiation or self-emptying of the Logos." [331]
In the second place, the doctrine in question is destitute of any Scriptural support. Almost all the arguments derived from the Scriptures, urged by Lutherans, are founded on passages in which the person of Christ is denominated from his human nature when divine attributes or prerogatives are ascribed to Him; whence it is inferred that those attributes and prerogatives belong to his humanity. Thus because it is said, "The Son of Man is in heaven," it is inferred that the human nature, i.e., the soul and body of Christ, were in heaven while He was on earth. But they do not carry out the principle, and argue that because Christ is denominated from his divine nature when the limitations of humanity are ascribed to Him, that therefore his divine nature is limited. But if his being called God when He is said to have purchased the Church with his blood, does not prove that the divine nature suffered death, neither does his being called the Son of Man when He is said to be in heaven, prove the ubiquity of his humanity. Still less force is due to the argument from passages in which the Theanthropos is the subject to which divine perfections and prerogatives are ascribed. That our Lord said, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth," no more proves that his human nature is almighty, than his saying, "Before Abraham was I am," proves that his humanity is eternal. If saying that man is a rational creature does not imply that his body thinks, saying that Jesus Christ is God, does not imply that his human nature is divine. If the personal union between the soul and body in man, does not imply that the attributes of the soul are communicated to the body, then the personal union of the two natures in Christ does not imply that the divine attributes are communicated to his humanity.
In the third place, the Lutheran doctrine destroys the integrity of the human nature of Christ. A body which fills immensity is not a human body. A soul which is omniscient, omnipresent, and almighty, is not a human soul. The Christ of the Bible and of the human heart is lost if this doctrine be true.
In the fourth place, the Lutheran doctrine is contrary to the entire drift of the teaching of the Word of God, and of the whole Church. If anything is plainly revealed in the Scriptures concerning our Lord, and if there is anything to which the heart of the believer instinctively clings, it is that although He is God over all and blessed forever, He is nevertheless a man like ourselves; bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh; one who can be touched with a sense of our infirmities; and who knows from his own experience and present consciousness, what a weak and infirm thing human nature is. He became and continues a man that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God. But a man whose body and soul fill immensity, who "as man" is omniscient and omnipotent, as just said, ceases to be a man. His humanity is merged into divinity, and He becomes not God and man, but simply God, and we have lost our Saviour, the Jesus of the Bible, who was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, who was one with us in his humanity, and therefore can sympathize with us and save us.
Finally, it is a fatal objection to the doctrine under consideration that it involves the physical impossibility that attributes are separable from the substances of which they are the manifestation. This is the same kind of impossibility as action without something acting; or, motion without something moving. It is an objection urged by Lutherans as well as others against the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation that it supposes the accidents, or attributes of the bread and wine in the Eucharist, to continue when their substance no longer exists. In like manner, according to the Lutheran doctrine, the attributes of the divine nature or essence are transferred to another essence. If there be no such transfer or communication, then the human nature of Christ is no more omniscient or almighty, than the worker of a miracle is omnipotent. If the divine nature only exercises its omnipotence in connection with the activity of the humanity, then the humanity is the mere organ or instrument of the divine nature. This idea, however, the Lutherans repudiate. They admit that for God to exercise his power, when Peter said the lame man, "Rise up and walk," was something entirely different from rendering Peter omnipotent. Besides, omnipresence and omniscience are not attributes of which a creature can be made the organ. Knowledge is something subjective. If a mind knows everything, then that mind, and not another in connection with it, is omniscient, If Christ's body is everywhere present, then it is the substance of that body, and not the essence of God that is omnipresent. The Lutheran doctrine is, however, that the essential attributes or properties of the two natures remain unchanged after the hypostatical union. The properties of the divine essence do not become the properties of the human. Then the humanity of Christ has the attributes of his divinity without its essence, and yet those attributes or, properties do not inhere in his human substance. [332]
It seems a plain contradiction in terms, to say that the human becomes divine, that the finite becomes infinite; and no less a contradiction to say that the humanity of Christ has infinite attributes and yet itself is not infinite.
The Lutheran doctrine of the Person of Christ has never been disconnected from the Lutheran doctrine of he Lord's Supper. Both are peculiar to that Church and form no part of Catholic Christianity. __________________________________________________________________
[318] VIII. 16; Hase, Libri Symbolici, p. 608.
[319] History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ, by Dr. J. A. Dorner. Translated by Rev. D. W. Simon. Edinburgh,
T. and T. Clark, 1862. Division II. vol. ii. p. 180.
[320] Ibid. p. 183.
[321] VIII. 16; Hase, Libri Symbolici, p. 608.
[322] VIII. 82; Ibid. p. 784.
[323] Dorner, Div. II. vol. ii. p. 200.
[324] On this point, Dorner, on page 240, note, says, "Selnekker designates the Ubiquitas absoluta figmentum Sathanæ' (Chemnitz, a monstrum' and portentum'), and yet subscribed the Bergian formula which included Luther's words, -- omnia in universum plena esse Christi etiam juxta humanam naturam,' -- which repeatedly says, Whoso believeth not that where the Logos is there also is the humanity of Christ, divideth the person; and which assumes Luther's doctrine of the three modes of existence of the body of Christ, -- that also according to which Christi corpus repletive, absolute ut Deus, in omnibus creaturis sit.'"
[325] Dorner says of Chemnitz, "In his highest Christological utterances, the Son of man is nothing more than a God-moved organ: -- a representation to which even the Wittenbergers objected." Person of Christ, div. II. vol. ii. p. 203, note.
[326] The Form of Concord (VIII. 17-19; Hase, Libri Symbolici, p. 765) says, "Catholica Christi ecclesia semper, omnibusque temporibus simplicissime credidit et sensit, humanam et divinam naturam in persona Christi eo modo unitas esse, ut veram inter se communicationem habeant. Neque tamen ideo naturæ in unam essentiam, sed ut D. Lutherus loquitur, in unam personam conveniunt et commiscentur. Et propter hanc hypostaticam unionem et communicationem veteres orthodoxi ecclesiæ doctores sæpe admodum, non modo ante, verum etiam est, Chalcedonense concilium, vocabulo (mixtionis), in pia tamen sententia et vero discrimine, usi sunt. . . . . Et quidem erudita antiquitas unionem hypostaticam et naturarum communicationem similitudine animæ et corporis, item ferri candentis, aliquo modo declarvit. Anima enim et corpus (quemadmodum etiam ignis et ferrum) non tantum per phrasin aut modum loquendi, aut verbaliter, sed vere et realiter communicationem inter se habent: neque tamen hoc modo confusio aut naturarum exæquatio introducitur, qualis fieri solet, cum ex melle et aqua mulsum conficitur; talis enim potus non amplius aut aqua est mera, aut mel merum sed mixtus quidam ex utroque potus. Longe certe aliter se res mulla divinæ et humanæ naturæ unione (in persona Christi) habent: longe enim sublimior est, et plane ineffabilis communicatio et unio divinæ et humanæ naturæ, in persona Christi, propter quam unionem et communicationem Deus homo est, et homo Deus. Nec tames hac unione et communicatione naturam vel ipsæ naturæ, vel harum proprietates confunduntur: sed utraque natura essentiam et proprietates suas retinet."
[327] Dorner, div. II. vol. ii. p. 284. Dorner makes the remark quoted in the text, in special reference to the doctrine of the Tübingen divines. It applies, however, to every form of the Lutheran theory.
[328] VIII. x.; Hase, Libri Symbolici, p. 608.
[329] These details may be found at length in the larger work of Dorner on the Person of Christ, already frequently referred to, and in the work entitled Christi Person und Werk, Darstellung der evangelisch-lutherischen Dogmatik vom Mittelpunkte der Christologie aus Von G. Thomasius D. und ord. Professor der Theologie an der Universität Erlangen. In two volumes, 1853, and 1857. See also The Conservative Reformation and its Theology, as represented in the Augsburg Confession, and in the History and Literature of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. By Charles P. Krauth, D. D., Norton Professor of Theology in the Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary, and Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1871, 8 vo, pp. 840. This is a very able and instructive book, and presents the Lutheran doctrine in the most plausible form of which it admits.
[330] Dorner's History of the Doctrine on the Person of Christ, div. II. vol. ii, p. 172.
[331] Dorner's History of the Doctrine on the Person of Christ, div. II. vol ii. p. 97.
[332] The Form of Concord, chap. viii. sections 6 and 7, Epitome; Hase, Libri Symbolici, p. 606, says "Credimus, docemus et confitemur, divinam et humanam naturas non in unam substantiam commixtas, nec unam in alteram mutatam esse, sed utramque naturam retinere suas proprietates essentiales, ut quæ alterius naturæ proprietates fiere nequeant. "Proprietates divinæ naturæ sunt: esse omnipotentem, æternam, infinitam, et secundum naturæ naturalisque suæ essentiæ proprietatem, per se, ubique presentem esse, omnis novices, etc. Hæc omnia neque sunt neque unquam fiunt humanæ naturæ proprietates." __________________________________________________________________
§ 8. Later Forms of the Doctrine.
During the period between the Reformation and the present time, the doctrine concerning the Person of Christ was constantly under discussion. The views advanced however were, for the most part, referrible to the one or other of the forms of the doctrine already considered. The only theories calling for special notice are Socinianism and that of the Preëxistent Humanity of Christ.
Socinianism.
Socinus was an Italian, born of a noble family at Siena, in 1539. The earlier part of his life was not devoted to learning. Being a favourite of the Grand Duke, he passed twelve years at his court, and then removed to Basel that he might prosecute his theological studies, in which he had become deeply interested. After a few years he removed to Poland and settled at Cracow. There and in its vicinity he passed the greater part of his active life. He died in 1604.
The early Socinians erected a college at Racovia, in Lesser Poland, which attained so high a reputation that it attracted students from among Protestants and Romanists. It was however suppressed by the government in 1658, and the followers of Socinus, after having suffered a protracted persecution, were expelled from the kingdom.
Socinus and his followers admitted the divine authority of the Scriptures. The sacred writers, they said, wrote, divino Spiritu impulsi eoque dictante. They admitted that the Bible contained doctrines above, but not contrary to reason. Of this contrariety reason was to judge. On this ground they rejected many doctrines held by the Church universal, especially the doctrines of the Trinity and of the Atonement. Socinus said that as there is but one divine essence there can be but one divine person. He denied that there is any such thing as natural religion or natural theology. Supernatural revelation he regarded as the only source of our knowledge of God and of divine things. The only religion was the Christian, which he defined to be "Via divinitus proposita et patefacta perveniendi ad immortalitatem, seu æternam vitam." [333] This is the answer to the first question of the "Brevissima Institutio," of which Socinus was the author.
All men having sinned they became subject to the penalty of eternal death, which Socinus understood to be annihilation. To deliver men from this penalty God sent Christ into the world, and it is only through Him that immortality can be secured. Concerning Christ, he taught that He was in Himself and by nature a mere man, having had no existence prior to his being born of the Virgin Mary. He was, however, distinguished from all other men, --
1. By his miraculous conception. [334]
2. Although peccable and liable to be tempted, He was entirely free from sin.
3. He received a special baptism of the Holy Ghost, that is, of the divine efficiency.
4. Some time before entering upon his public ministry He was taken up into heaven that He might see God and be instructed immediately by Him. There are two passages which speak of Christ's having been in heaven (John iii. 13, and John vi. 62). "In priore loco," says Socinus, "ex Græco ita verba Christi legi possunt, ut dicat, filium hominis non quidem esse in coelo, sed fuisse. Vox enim Græca ?on quæ per præsens tempus reddita fuit, potest, ut doctissimi aliqui interpretes annotarunt (Erasmus et Beza), reddi per præteritum imperfectum; ut legatur non qui est, sed, qui erat in coelo." [335] As no preëxistence of Christ was admitted, these passages were regarded as direct assertions of his being taken up into heaven during his earthly life.
5. The great distinction of Christ is that since his resurrection and ascension all power in heaven and in earth has been committed to Him. He is exalted above all creatures, and constituted God's viceroy over the whole universe. The question is asked, "Quid tamen istud ejus divinum imperium nominatim complectitur?" To which the answer is, "Propter id quod jam dictum est, nempe quod hoc potestatem complectitur plenissimam et absolutissimam in verum Dei populum, hinc necessario sequitur, eodem divino imperio contineri potestatem et dominationem in omnes angelos et spiritus tam malos, quam bonos." [336] And again: "Nonne ex eadem tua ratiocinatione sequitur, Jesum Christum in omnes homines plenum dominatum habere? Sine dubio; nec solum in omnes homines sed præter ipsum unum Deum 1 Cor. xv. 27, prorsus in alia omnia, quemadmodum divina testimonia nos diserte docent." [337]
6. On account of this exaltation and authority Christ is properly called God, and is to be worshipped. Socinus would recognize no man as a Christian who was not a worshipper of Christ. The answer to Question 246 in the Racovian Catechism, declares those "qui Christum non invocant nec adorandum censent," to be no Christians, because in fact they have no Christ. [338]
7. Socinus acknowledges that men owe their salvation to Christ. He saves them not only in his character of prophet by teaching them the truth; not only in his character of priest by interceding for them; but especially in virtue of his kingly office. He exercises the divine and absolute power and authority granted to Him for their protection and assistance. He operates not only over them and for them, but also within them, so that it is through Him that immortality or eternal life is secured.
From all this it appears that Socinus and his early followers held much more exalted views of Christ than those who in Great Britain and America are called Socinians, by whom our Lord is regarded as an ordinary man. The term Unitarian, especially in this country, is used in a sense which includes all who deny the doctrine of the Trinity and retain the name of Christians. It therefore includes Arians, Semi-Arians, genuine Socinians, and Humanitarians.
Preëxistence of Christ's Humanity.
Swedenborg.
This theory has been held in different forms. The doctrine of Swedenborg is so mystical that it is very difficult to be clearly understood, and it has been modified in a greater or less degree by his recognized disciples. Swedenborg was the son of a Swedish bishop. He was born in January, 1688, and died in March, 1772. He enjoyed every advantage of early education. He manifested extraordinary precocity, and made such attainments in every branch of learning as to gain the highest rank among the literati of that day. He wrote numerous works in all the departments of science before he turned his attention to matters of religion. Believing that the existing Church in all its forms had failed to arrive at the true sense of Scripture, he regarded himself as called by God, in an extraordinary or miraculous manner, to reveal the hidden meaning of the Word of God and found a new Church.
1. Concerning God, he taught that He was not only essence but form, and that that form was human. He called God "the eternal God-man." There are two kinds of bodies, material and spiritual. Every man, besides his external material body has another which is internal and spiritual. The latter has all the organs of the former, so that it can see, hear, and feel. At death the outer body is laid aside, and the soul thereafter acts through the ethereal or spiritual vestment. This is the only resurrection which Swedenborg admitted. There is no rising again of the bodies laid in the grave. As however the spiritual corresponds to the material, those who know each other in this world will enjoy mutual recognition in the world to come. This feature of his anthropology is connected with his doctrine concerning God. For as the soul from its nature forms for itself a body for action ad extra, so the essence of God forms for itself a spiritual body for external manifestation.
As there is but one divine essence, Swedenborg maintained that there can be but one divine person. The Church doctrine of the Trinity he regarded as Tritheistic. He admitted a Trinity of principles, but not of persons. As soul and body in man are one person, and from them proceeds the activity which operates without, so in God the divine and human are the Father and the Son, as one person, and the Holy Spirit is their efficiency or sanctifying influence.
2. Concerning man, Swedenborg taught that he was created in the image of God, and was a creature of a very exalted nature. The Scriptural account of the fall he understood allegorically of the apostasy of the Church. Men, however, he admits, are sinful, and are even born with a bias to evil, but they have not lost their ability to do good. They consequently need redemption. They are susceptible of being delivered from evil not only because they retain their moral liberty, but also because in virtue of the inward spiritual body they are capable of intercourse with spiritual beings. As man by means of his material body is conversant with the world of sense, so in virtue of his spiritual body he is capable of intercourse with the inhabitants of the spiritual world. Swedenborg reports many instances in which he conversed with God and angels, good and bad. By angels, however, he meant men who had departed this life. He did not admit the existence of any created intelligence other than man.
3. Christ he held to be Jehovah, the only living and true God, the creator, preserver, and ruler of the world. As this divine person was God and man from eternity, his incarnation, or manifestation in the flesh, consisted in his assuming a material body with its psychical life in the womb of the Virgin Mary. This was the body which grew, suffered, and died. In the case of ordinary men the material body is left forever in the grave, but in the case of Christ the outward body was gradually refined and glorified until it was lost in that which is spiritual and eternal. This idea of a twofold body in Christ is not by any means peculiar to Swedenborg. Barclay, the representative theologian of the Quakers, says: "As there was the outward visible body and temple of Jesus Christ, which took its origin from the Virgin Mary: there is also the spiritual body of Christ, by and through which He that was the Word in the beginning with God, and was and is God, did reveal Himself to the sons of men in all ages, and whereby men in all ages come to be made partakers of eternal life, and to have communion and fellowship with God and Christ." [339] And again, P. Poiret, of Amsterdam, teaches that "La Majesté divine voulut couvrir son corps glorieux de notre chair mortelle, qu'il voulut prendre dans le sein d'une Vierge." "Le corps de Jésus Christ, se revêtant de la chair et du sang de la bien heureuse Vierge, fera aussi peu un composé de deux corps différents, qu'un habit blanc et lumineux plongé dans un vase de couleur chargée et obscure, ou il se charge de la matière, qui produit cette opacité, ne devient pour cela un habit double ou deux habits, au lieu d'un." [340]
4. Christ's redemptive work does not consist in his bearing our sins upon the tree, or in making satisfaction to the justice of God for our offences. All idea of such satisfaction Swedenborg rejects. The work of salvation is entirely subjective. Justification is pardon granted on repentance. The people of God are made inwardly righteous, and being thus holy are admitted to the presence of God and holy spirits in heaven. His peculiar views of the state of the departed, or of Heaven and Hell, do not call for consideration in this place. [341]
Isaac Watts.
No one familiar with Dr. Watts' "Psalms and Hymns," can doubt his being a devout worshipper of our Lord Jesus Christ, or call in question his belief in the doctrine of the Trinity. Yet on account of his peculiar views on the person of Christ, there is a vague impression that he had in some way departed from the faith of the Church. It is, indeed, often said that he was Arian. In his works, [342] however, there is a dissertation on "The Christian Doctrine of the Trinity: or, Father, Son, and Spirit, three persons and one God, asserted and proved, with their divine Rights and Honors vindicated, by plain evidence of Scripture, without the aid or incumbrance of human Schemes. Written chiefly for the use of private Christians." In that dissertation the common Church doctrine is presented in the usual form, and sustained by the common arguments, with singular perspicuity and force.
His peculiar views on the person of Christ are brought out in three discourses on "The Glory of Christ as God-man," [343] published in
1746. In the first of these he refers to the "visible appearances of Christ, as God before his incarnation," and brings into view all the texts in which He is called Jehovah, God, and Lord, and those in which divine attributes and prerogatives are ascribed to Him.
In the second, he treats of the "extensive powers of the human nature of Christ in its present glorified state." In a previous essay he took the position that the "human soul of Christ is the first, the greatest, the wisest, the holiest, and the best of all created spirits." [344] He argues this point from all those passages of Scripture which speak of the exaltation of Christ and of the gift to Him of absolutely universal dominion. As the divine nature of Christ does not admit of exaltation or of receiving anything as a gift, he inferred that these passages must be understood of his human nature, and therefore that Christ as a man must be regarded as exalted over all created beings. To the objection, "How is it possible that a human spirit should be endued with powers of so vast an extent?" he answers, first, that the power in question is not infinite; and secondly, that if the doctrine of the infinite divisibility of matter be true, we cannot fix the minimum of smallness, and how then can we determine the maximum of greatness. "Why," he asks, "may not the human soul of Christ be as well appointed to govern the world, as the soul of man is appointed to govern his body, when it is evident the soul of man does not know one thousandth part of the fine branchings of the muscles and nerves, and the more refined vapour or animal spirits which are parts of this body?" [345] Thirdly, we can hardly set a limit even to our own capacity; and yet the "soul of Christ may be reasonably supposed in its own nature to transcend the powers of all other souls as far as an angel exceeds an idiot, and yet be but a human soul still, for gradus non mutant speciem." [346] Fourthly, if the powers of the soul of Christ were not in his state of humiliation sufficient for the purposes of government and judgment, that does not prove that they are not now sufficient in his glorified estate. "Who knows what amazing enlargement may attend all the natural powers of man when advanced to a state of glory?" [347] Fifthly and mainly, this supreme exaltation of the power of the human soul of Christ is due to its union with the divine nature. It was because of this union that when the soul of Christ, while here on earth, willed to perform a miracle, the effect immediately followed. So "the man Christ may give forth all the commands of God whereby the world is governed." [348] "Upon this representation of things," he adds, "the various language of Scripture appears to be true, and is made very intelligible. Christ says He can do nothing of himself, He knew not the day of judgment' when He was here on earth, etc., and yet He is said to know the hearts of men, and to know all things'; for as fast as the divine mind united to Him was pleased to communicate all these ideas, so fast was his human nature capable of receiving them."
[349]
The third discourse is devoted to proving the preëxistence of the human soul of Christ. He argues from the fact that there are many expressions in the Bible, which seem to imply that He had a dependent nature before He came into this world. He is called the angel or messenger of God, and is represented as sent to execute his will. He urges also the fact that He is said to be the image of God. But the divine essence or nature cannot be the image of itself. That term can only apply to a created nature united to the divine, so that the "complex person" thus constituted, should reveal what God is. An argument is also drawn from all those passages in which Christ is said to have humbled Himself, to have become poor, to have made Himself of no reputation. All this cannot, he says, be properly understood of the divine nature, but is perfectly intelligible and full of meaning if referred to the human soul of our Lord. It was an act of unspeakable condescension for the highest intelligent creature to "empty Himself" and become as ignorant and feeble as an infant, and to submit not only to grow in wisdom, but to subject Himself to the infirmities and sufferings of our mortal state. If asked how so exalted an intellect can be reduced to the condition or state of an infant, he answers, that something analogous to this not unfrequently occurs, even in human experience. Men of mature age and of extensive learning have lost all their knowledge, and have been reduced to the necessity of learning it all over again, though in some cases it has returned suddenly. It was the same nature that emptied itself that was afterwards filled with glory as a recompense. Another argument for the preëxistence of the soul of Christ, he says, may be drawn from the fact that his incarnation "is always expressed in some corporeal language, such as denotes his taking on Him animal nature, or body, or flesh, without the least mention of taking a soul.'" [350]
Again, [351] "The covenant betwixt God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ for the redemption of mankind, is represented in Scripture as being made and agreed upon from or before the foundation of the world. Is it not then most proper that both real parties should be actually present, and that this should not be transacted merely within the divine essence by such sort of distinct personalities as have no distinct mind and will? The essence of God is generally agreed by our Protestant divines to be the same single numerical essence in all three personalities, and therefore it can be but one conscious mind or spirit. Now can one single understanding and will make such a covenant as Scripture represents? I grant the divine nature which is in Christ from eternity contrived and agreed all the parts of this covenant. But does it not add a lustre and glory, and more conspicuous equity, to this covenant, to suppose the man Christ Jesus who is most properly the mediator according to 1 Tim. ii. 5, to be also present before the world was made, to be chosen and appointed as the redeemer or reconciler of mankind, to be then ordained the head of his future people, to receive promises, grace, and blessings in their name, and to accept the solemn and weighty trust from the hand of his Father, that is, to take care of millions of souls?"
He also argues from what the Bible teaches of the Sonship of Christ. "When He is called a Son, a begotten Son, this seems to imply derivation and dependency; and perhaps the Sonship of Christ, and his being the only begotten of the Father, may be better explained by attributing it to his human soul, existing by some peculiar and immediate manner of creation, formation, or derivation from the Father, before other creatures were formed; especially if we include in the same idea of Sonship his union to the divine nature, and if we add also his exaltation to the office of the Messiah, as King and Lord of all."
[352]
Dr. Watts explains clearly what he means by the preëxistence of the humanity of Christ, when he says: [353] "All the idea which I have of a human soul is this, namely, a created mind or spirit which hath understanding and will, and rational powers, and which is fit to be united to a human body, in such a manner as to exert the powers of a man, to feel the appetites and sensibilities and passions of a man, as to receive impressions or sensations, whether pleasant or painful, by the means of that body, and is also able to actuate and influence all the animal powers of that body in a way agreeable to human nature."
The above is very far from being a full exposition of the considerations urged by Dr. Watts in support of his theory. It is simply a selection of the more plausible of his arguments presented in order that his doctrine may be properly understood.
It appears that he believed in the eternal Godhead of the Logos as the second person of the Trinity; and that God, before any other creatures were called into existence, created a human soul in personal union with the Logos of such exalted powers as to render him the greatest of all created spirits; that the incarnation consisted in this complex person assuming a material human body with its animal life; that the humiliation of Christ consisted in his human soul thus exalted in its own nature, emptying itself of its knowledge, power, and glory, and submitting not only to the gradual development of his humanity, but also to all that made our Lord while here on earth a man of sorrows. His exaltation consisted in the enlargement of the powers of his soul during his state of humiliation, and in his resurrection and ascension to the right hand of God.
Objections.
The more obvious objections to this theory are, --
1. That it is contrary to the common faith of the Church, and, therefore, to the obvious sense of Scripture. The Bible in teaching that the Son of God became man, thereby teaches that He assumed a true body and a rational soul. For neither a soul without a body, nor a body without a soul, is a man in the Scriptural sense of the term. It was the Logos which became man; and not a God-man that assumed a material body.
2. The passages of Scripture cited in its support are interpreted, for the most part, in violation of the recognized principle that whatever is true of either nature in Christ, may be predicated of his person. As Christ could say, "I thirst," without implying that his divine nature was subject to the wants of a material body; so He could say, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth," without teaching that such power vests in his humanity.
3. The doctrine that Christ's human soul was the first and most exalted of created spirits, raises Him beyond the reach of human sympathies. He is, as man, farther from us than the angel Gabriel. We need, and the Bible reveals to us a, so to speak, more circumscribed Saviour, one who, although true God, is nevertheless a man like unto his brethren, whom we can embrace in the arms of our faith and love. [354] __________________________________________________________________
[333] Christianæ Religionis brevissima Institutio per Interrogationes et Responsiones, quam Cathechismum vulgo vocant. Scripta a Fausto Socino Senensi. Irenopoli, Post annum 1656. It makes a part of the first volume of the works of Faustus Socinus, as published in the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, pp. 651-676.
[334] On this point, Socinus, in the Brevissima Institutio, says, "De Christi essentia ita statuo illum esse hominem Rom. v. 15, in Virginis utero et sic sine viri ope, divini Spiritus vi conceptum ac formatum, Matt. i. 20-23; Luc. i. 35, indeque genitum, primum quidem patibilem ac mortalem 2 Cor. xiii. 4 donec scilicet munus sibi a Deo demandatum hic in terris obivit; deinde vero postquam in coelum ascendit, impatibilem et immortalem tactum Rom. vi. 9." Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, Fausti Socini Opera, vol. i. p. 654.
[335] Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, Fausti Socini Opera, vol. i. p. 674.
[336] Ibid. vol. i. p. 656.
[337] Ibid.
[338] In answer to this question, "Numquid humanæ naturæ in Christo exaltationem recta percipere non prorsus necessariam esse statuis?" the Brevissima Institutio answers (Ibid. p. 655). "Eatenus rectam cognitionem istam prorsus necessariam esse statuo, quatenus quis sine illa non esset Christo Jesu divinum cultum exhibiturus, ob eam causam, quam antes dixi: nimirum, quod Deus ut id a nobis fiat, omnino requirit." Socinus also says that they are not Christians who deny that Christ understands our thoughts when we pray. Ibid, 656.
[339] An Apology for the True Christian Divinity. Prop. XIII. 2; edit. Philadelphia, 1805, p. 463.
[340] OEconomie du Rétablissement après l'Incarnation de Jésus Christ, chap. ii. §§ 11, 12. Quoted by Dorner, Person of Christ, div. II. vol. ii., p. 328.
[341] Swedenborg's doctrines are most clearly and concisely presented in his book, Vera Christiana Religio. Amsterdam, 1771. It has been frequently translated. An English version was published in Boston in 1833, in one volume, 8 vo. pp. 576. As an illustration of the way in which Swedenborg speaks of his intercourse with the spirit-world, a few sentences may be quoted from the thirtieth page of the work just mentioned. He says that when he was astonished at the multitude of persons who merged God into nature, an angel stood at his side and said, "What are you meditating about?' and I replied, About the multitude of such persons as believe that nature is of itself, and thus the creator of the universe.' And the angel said to me, All hell is of such, and they are called there satans and devils: satans, who have confirmed themselves in favour of nature, and thence have denied God; devils, who have lived wickedly, and thus have rejected from their hearts all acknowledgement of God.'"
[342] Watts' Works, edit. London, 1753, vol. vi. pp. 413-492.
[343] Watts, Works, ut supra, vol. vi. pp. 721-855.
[344] Ibid. p. 706.
[345] Ibid. p. 786.
[346] Ibid. p. 787.
[347] Ibid. p. 789.
[348] Watts, Works, ut supra, vol. vi. p. 795.
[349] Ibid. p. 796.
[350] Watts, Works, vol. vi. p. 820.
[351] Ibid. p. 819.
[352] Ibid. p. 825.
[353] Ibid. p. 844.
[354] Dr. Watts, vol. vi. pp. 853, 854, refers to several distinguished writers and theologians as agreeing with him as to his doctrine of the preëxistence of the soul of Christ. Among them are Dr. Henry More, Mystery of Godliness; Dr. Edward Fowler, Bishop of Gloucester, in his Discourse of the descent of the man Christ Jesus from Heaven; Dr. Francis Gastrell, Bishop of Chester, in his Remarks on Dr. Clarke's Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity; Dr. Thomas Burnet, of the Charter House, in his book, De Statu Mortuorum et Resurgentium. __________________________________________________________________
§ 9. Modern Forms of the Doctrine.
Dorner, in the first edition of his work on the "Person of Christ," says that the Lutheran theology carried the attempt to preserve the unity of Christ's person, on the Church assumption that He possessed two distinct natures, to the utmost extreme. If that attempt be a failure, nothing more remains. He holds it to be a failure not only because it involves the impossible assumption of a transfer of attributes without a change of substance, but also because it is one-sided. It refuses to admit of the communication of human attributes to the divine nature, whilst it insists on the transfer of divine perfections to the human nature. And moreover, he urges, that admitting all the Lutheran theory claims, the union of the two natures remains just as unreal as it is on the Church doctrine. Any distinction of natures, in the ordinary sense of the words, must, he says, be given up. It is on this assumption that the modern views of the person of Christ are founded. These views may be divided into two classes, the Pantheistical and the Theistical. These two classes, however, have a good deal in common. Both are founded on the principle of the oneness of God and man. This is admitted on all sides. "The characteristic feature of all recent Christologies," says Dorner, "is the endeavour to point out the essential unity of the divine and human." [355] The heading of the section in which this admission occurs, is, "The Foundations of the New Christology laid by Schelling, Hegel, Schleiermacher." This is equivalent to saying that the New Christology is founded on the principles of the pantheistic philosophy. Baur [356] says the same thing. He entitles the last division of his work on the Trinity, "Die gegenseitige Durchdringung der Philosophie und der Theologie," i.e., The mutual interpenetration of Philosophy and Theology. The latter is merged into the former. Dr. Ullmann says, the doctrine of the oneness of God and man, which he represents as the fundamental idea of Schleiermacher's theology and of Christianity itself, is not entirely new. It was inculcated by the German Mystics of the Middle Ages. [357] Hegel says that what the Bible teaches of Christ is not true of an individual, but only of mankind as a whole; and Hegel's Christological ideas, Dr. John Nevin of Mercersburg, says, "are very significant and full of instruction." [358] The objection that these principles are pantheistical, he pronounces "a mere sound without any force whatever," and adds that we need a Christian pantheism to oppose the antichristian pantheism of the day. Schleiermacher says that a pantheism which holds to the formula "One and All" ("the all-one-doctrine") is perfectly consistent with religion, and differs little in its effects from Monotheism! Similar avowals might be adduced without number. Theologians of this class deny that God and man are essentially different. They repeat, almost with every breath, that God and man are one, and they make this the fundamental idea of Christianity, and especially of Christology
Pantheistical Christology.
As Christian theology purports to be an exhibition of the theology of the Bible, every theory which involves the denial of a personal God, properly lies beyond its sphere. In modern systems, however, there is such a blending of pantheistic principles with theistic doctrines, that the two cannot be kept entirely separate. Pantheistical and theistical theologians, of the modern school, unite in asserting "the oneness of God and man." They understand that doctrine, however, in different senses. With the former it is understood to mean identity, so that man is only the highest existence-form of God; with the others, it often means nothing more than that "natura humana capax est naturæ divinæ." The human is capable of receiving the attributes of the divine. Man may become God.
It follows, in the first place, from the doctrine, that God is the only real Being of which the world is the ever changing phenomenon, that "die Menschwerdung Gottes ist eine Menschwerdung von Ewigkeit." The incarnation of God is from eternity. And, in the second place, that this process is continuous, complete in no one instance, but only in the whole. Every man is a form of the life of God, but the infinite is never fully realized or revealed in any one manifestation. Some of these philosophers were willing to say that God was more fully manifested in Christ than in any other individual of our race, but the difference between Him and other men is only one of degree. Others say that the peculiar distinction of Christ was that He had a clearer view and a deeper conviction of the identity of God and man than any other man. It all amounts to the summation of the doctrine as given by Strauss. [359] "If," says he, "the idea of the oneness of the divine and human natures, of God and man, be a reality, does it follow that this reality is effected or manifested once for all in a single individual, as never before and never after him? . . . . An idea is never exhibited in all its fulness in a single exemplar; and in all others only imperfectly. An idea is always realized in a variety and multiplicity of exemplars, which complement each other; its richness being diffused by the constant change of individuals, one succeeding or supplanting another. . . . . Mankind, the human race, is the God-man. The key to a true Christology is that the predicates which the Church applies to Christ, as an individual, belong to an idea, or to a generic whole." So Blasche [360] says, "We understand by God's becoming man, not the revelation of Himself in one or more of the most perfect of men, but the manifestation of Himself in the race of men (in der ganzen Menschheit)."
Theistical Christology.
We have the authority of Dorner for saying that the modern speculations on Christology are founded on the two principles that there is but one nature in Christ, and that human nature is capax naturæ divinæ, is capable of being made divine. To this must be added a third, although Dorner himself does not hold it, that the divine is capable of becoming human.
The advocates of these principles agree, First, in admitting that there was a true growth of the man Christ Jesus. When an infant He was as feeble, as ignorant, and as unconscious of moral character as other infants. When a child He had no more intellectual or physical strength than other children. There is, however, a difference in their mode of statement as to what Christ was during the maturity of his earthly life. According to some, He had no superhuman knowledge or power. All He knew was communicated to Him, some say by the Father, others say by the Logos. The miracles which He wrought were not by his own power, but by the power of God. At the grave of Lazarus He prayed for power to restore his friend to life, or rather that God would raise him from the dead; and He gave thanks that his prayer was heard.
Secondly, they agree that the development of the humanity of our Lord was without sin. He was from the beginning holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. Nevertheless He had to contend with all the infirmities of our nature, and to resist all the temptations arising from the flesh, the world, and the devil, with which his people have to contend. He was liable to sin. As He was subject to hunger, thirst, weariness, and pain, as He had feelings capable of being wounded by ingratitude and insult, He was liable to the impatience and resentment which suffering or injury is adapted to produce. As He was susceptible of pleasure from the love and admiration of others, He was exposed to the temptation of seeking the honour which comes from men. In all things, however, He was without sin.
Thirdly, they agree that it was only gradually that Christ came to the knowledge that He was a divine person, and into the possession and use of divine attributes. Communications of knowledge and power were made to Him from time to time from on high, so that both the knowledge of what He was and the consciousness of the possession of divine perfections came to Him by degrees. Christ's exaltation, therefore, began and was carried on while He was here on earth, but it was not until his resurrection and ascension that He became truly and forever divine.
Fourthly, since his ascension and session at the right hand of God, He is still a man, and only a man. Nevertheless He is an infinite man. A man with all the characteristics of a human soul possessed of all the perfections of the Godhead. Since his ascension, as Gess expresses it, a man has been taken into the adorable Trinity. "As the glorified Son remains man, a man is thus received into the trinitarian life of the Deity from and by the glorification of the Son." [361] Thomasius says the same thing. "Die immanente Lebensbewegung der drei Personen ist nunmehr gewissermassen eine göttlich-menschhiche geworden; . . . . So tief ist in der Person Christi die Menschheit in den Kreis der Trinität hereingenommen -- und zwar nicht auf vorübergehende Weise, sondern für immer. Denn der Sohn bleibt ewig Mensch." [362] That is: The immanent life movement of the three persons has now become in a measure divine-human; . . . . so deep has humanity in the person of Christ been taken into the sphere of the Trinity, -- and that not in a temporary manner, but forever. For the Son remains man eternally. On the following page he says that humanity, or manhood (Menschsein), has become the permanent existence-form of God the Son. And again [363] he says that humanity (das menschliche Geschlecht) is "exalted to full equality with God" (schlecht Gott selbst gleichgesetzt). This would be absolutely impossible were not human nature in its original constitution capable of receiving all divine perfections and of becoming absolutely divine. Accordingly, in this connection, Thomasius says that man is of all creatures the nearest to God. [364] "He must from his nature be capable of full participation in the divine glory; he must be the organ into which the entire fulness of the divine love can be poured, and through which it can adequately act, otherwise we cannot understand how God could appropriate human nature as his own permanent form of existence."
The result of the incarnation, therefore, is that God becomes man in such a sense that the Son of God has no life or activity, no knowledge, presence, or power outside of or apart from his humanity. In Christ there is but one life, one activity, one consciousness. Every act of the incarnate Logos is a human act, and every experience of the humanity of Christ, all his sorrows, infirmities, and pains, were the experience of the Logos. "The absolute life, which is the being of God, exists in the narrow limits of an earthly-human life; absolute holiness and truth, the essential attributes of God, develop themselves in the form of human thinking and willing; absolute love has assumed a human form, it lives as human feeling, as human sensibility in the heart of this man; absolute freedom has the form of human self-determination. The Son of God has not reserved for Himself a special existence form (ein besonderes Fürsichseyn), a special consciousness, a special sphere or power of action; He does not exist anywhere outside of the flesh (nec Verbum extra carnem nec caro extra Verbum). He has in the totality of his being become man, his existence-and-life-form is that of a corporeal-spiritual man subject to the limitations of time and space. The other side of this relation is that the human nature is taken up entirely into the divine, and is pervaded by it. It has neither a special human consciousness nor a special human activity of the will for itself in distinction from that of the Logos, just as the latter has nothing which does not belong to the former; in the human thinking, willing, and acting, the Logos thinks, wills, and acts. All dualism of a divine and human existence-form, of a divine and human consciousness, of a concomitancy of divine and human action, is of necessity excluded; as is also any successive communication (Hineinbildung) of one to the other; it is an identical living, activity, sensibility, and development, because it is one Ego, one divine human personality (unio, communio, communicatio, naturarum)." [365]
As to the manner in which this complete identification of the human and divine in the person of Christ is effected, there are, as above intimated, two opinions. According to Dorner there is a human soul to begin with, to which the Eternal Logos, without subjecting Himself to any change, from time to time communicates his divinity, as the human becomes more and more capable of receiving the perfections of God, until at last it becomes completely divine. With this Dorner connected a philosophical theory concerning the relation of Christ to the universe, and especially to the whole spiritual world. [366]
The other view of the subject is, that the Eternal Logos, by a process of self-limitation, divested Himself of all his divine attributes. He ceased to be omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. He reduced Himself, so to speak, to the dimensions of a man. While an infant, as before said, He had no knowledge or power which does not belong to any other human infant. He went through the regular process of growth and development, and had all the experiences of ordinary men, yet without sin. But as the substance of the Logos was the substance of the infant born of the Virgin, it continued to develop not only until it reached a height of excellence and glory to which no other man ever attained, but until it ultimately culminated in full equality with God.
On this point Thomasius says, First, that if the Eternal Son, after the assumption of humanity, retained his divine perfections and prerogatives, He did not become man, nor did He unite Himself with humanity. He hovered over it; and included it as a larger circle does a smaller. But there was no real contact or communication. Secondly, if at the moment of the incarnation the divine nature in the fulness of its being and perfection was communicated to the humanity, then Christ could not have had a human existence. The historical life is gone; and all bond of relationship and sympathy with us is destroyed. Thirdly, the only way in which the great end in view could be answered was that God Himself by a process of depotentiation, or self-limitation, should become man; that He should take upon Himself a form of existence subject to the limitations of time and space, and pass through the ordinary and regular process of human development, and take part in all the sinless experiences of a human life and death. [367]
Ebrard.
Ebrard puts the doctrine in a somewhat different form. He molds that the Logos reduced Himself to the dimensions of a man; but at the same time retained and exercised his divine perfections as the second person of the Trinity. In answer to the question, How human and divine attributes can be united in the same person, he says the solution of the difficulty is to be found in the original constitution and destiny of humanity. Man was designed for this supreme dominion, perfect holiness, and boundless knowledge. "The glorification of God as Son in time is identical with the acme of the normal development of man." It is held by many, not by all of the advocates of this theory, that the incarnation would have taken place had men never sinned. It entered into the divine purpose in reference to man that he should thus attain oneness with Himself.
As to the still more difficult question, How can the Son as the second person of the Trinity retain his divine perfections (as Ebrard holds that He does), and yet, as revealed on earth, lay them aside? "The one is world-ruling and omniscient, and the other is not," he says we must understand the problem. It is not that two natures become one nature. "Two natures as two things (Stücken) are out of the question." The Logos is not one nature, and the incarnate Son of God, Jesus, another; but the incarnate Son possesses the properties of both natures. The question only is, How can the incarnate Logos, since He has not the one nature, the divine, in the form of God (in der Ewigkeitsform), be one with the world-governing Logos who is in the form of God? This question, which is equivalent to asking, How the same individual mind can be finite and infinite at the same time, he answers by saying, first, that the continuity of existence does not depend upon continuity of consciousness. A man in a swoon or in a state of magnetic sleep, is the same person, although his consciousness be suspended or abnormal. That is true, but the question is, How the same mind can be conscious and unconscious at the same time, How th same individual Logos can be a feeble infant and at the same time the intelligently active world-governing God. Secondly, he admits that the above answer does not fully meet the case, and therefore adds that the whole difficulty disappears when we remember (dass die Ewigkeit nicht eine der Zeit parallellaufende Linie ist), that Eternity and Time are not parallel lines. But, thirdly, seeing that this is not enough, he says that the Eternal Logos overlooks his human form of existence with one glance (mit einem Schlage), whereas the incarnate Logos does not, but with true human consciousness, looks forward and backward. All this avails nothing. The contradiction remains. The theory assumes that the same individual mind can be conscious and unconscious, finite and infinite, ignorant and omniscient, at the same time. [368]
Gess.
Gess admits the contradiction involved in the doctrine as presented by Ebrard, and therefore adopts the common form of the theory. He holds that the Eternal Son at the incarnation laid aside the Godhead and became a man. The substance of the Logos remained; but that substance was in the form of an infant, and had nothing beyond an infant's knowledge or power. In the Trinity, the Father is God of Himself; the Son is God by the communication of the divine life from the Father. During the earthly career of the Logos the communication of the divine life was suspended. The Logos reduced to the limitations of manhood, received from the Father such communications of supernatural power as He needed. When He ascended and sat down at the right hand of God, He received the divine life in all its fulness as He had possessed it before He came into the world. "The same substance," he says, "slumbered in the womb of the Virgin, without self-consciousness, which thirty-four years after yielded itself a sacrifice, without blemish and spot, to the Father, having previously revealed to mankind the truth, which it had perfectly comprehended. At the time of this slumber there already existed in this substance that indestructible life by virtue of which it had a accomplished our redemption (Heb. vii. 16), as well as the power to know the Father as no other knows Him (Matt. xi. 27), but it was unconscious life. Moreover, the same substance which now slumbered in unconsciousness, had before existed with the Father as the Logos, by whom the Father had created, governed, and preserved the world, but it was no longer aware of this." [369] On the opposite page, it is said, that it is the self-conscious will of a man that calls all his powers into action. "When this sinks into slumber, all the powers of the soul fall asleep. It was the substance of the Logos which in itself had the power to call the world into existence, to uphold and enlighten it; but when the Logos sank into the slumber of unconsciousness, his eternal holiness, his omniscience, his omnipresence, and all his really divine attributes were gone; it being the self-conscious will of the Logos through which all the divine powers abiding in Him had been called into action. They were gone, i.e., suspended, -- existing still, but only potentially. Further, a man when he awakes from sleep is at once in full possession of all his powers and faculties; but when consciousness burst upon Jesus it was not that of the eternal Logos, but a really human self-consciousness, which develops by degrees and preserves its identity only through constant changes. . . . . It was this human form of self-conscious existence which the Logos chose in his act of self-divestiture. Hence it plainly appears that omniscience, which sees and knows all things at once, and from one central point, and the unchangeable merging of the will into the Father's, or divine holiness, are not to be attributed to Jesus while on earth; and the same with the unchangeable bliss of the divine life. Nor was it only eternal self-consciousness which the Son laid aside, but He also went out from the Father.' We are not to understand that the indwelling of the Father, Son, and Spirit in each other had been dissolved, but that the Father's giving the Son to have life in Himself, as the Father has, was suspended. Having laid aside his self-consciousness and activity, He lost with this the capacity of receiving into Himself the stream of life from the Father, and sending it forth again; in other words, He was no longer omnipotent. Equally lost, or laid aside, was his omnipresence, which must not, at all events, be considered as universally diffused, but as dependent on the self-conscious will." [370]
Remarks.
1. The first remark to be made on this theory in all its forms is that it is a departure from the faith of the Church. This objection turns up first on every occasion, because that is its proper place. If the Bible be the only infallible rule of faith and practice; and if the Bible be a plain book, and if the Spirit guides the people of God (not the external church, or body of mere professing Christians) into the knowledge of the truth, then the presumption is invincible that what all true Christians believe to be the sense of Scripture is its sense. The whole Christian world has believed, and still does believe, that Christ was a true man; that He had a real body and a human soul. The Council of Chalcedon in formulating this article of the common faith, declared that Christ was, and is, God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever; that according to the one nature He is consubstantial (homoousios) within us, and according to the other He is consubstantial with the Father. There is no dispute as to the sense in which the Council used the word nature, because it has an established meaning in theology, and because it is explained by the use of the Latin word consubstantial, and the Greek word homoousios. Nor is it questioned that the decisions of that Council have been accepted by the whole Church. This doctrine of two natures in Christ the new theory rejects. This, as we have seen, Dorner expressly asserts. We have seen, also, that Ebrard says, that the idea of two natures in the sense of two substances (Stücke, concrete existences) is out of the question. The Logos did not assume human nature, but human attributes; He appeared in the fashion of a man. Gess, in his luminous book, teaches over and over, that it was the substance of the Logos that was the human soul of Christ. He speaks of his "Logos-nature;" of the "Logos being the life, or life-principle" of his humanity. He says, in so many words, [371] that the soul of Jesus was "not like that of other men, a soul created by God and for God, but the Logos in the form of human existence." It is consonant, he says, "to the nature of Christ's soul, as being the Logos existing in human form, that God should take possession of it in a peculiar manner." This idea is the very essence of the doctrine. For if the Logos "emptied" Himself, if He laid aside his omnipresence and omnipotence, and became a human soul, what need or what possibility remains of another newly created soul?
This is not Apollinarianism; for Apollinaris taught that the Logos supplied the place of a rational soul in the person of Christ. He did not become such a soul, but, retaining in actu as well as in potentia, the fulness of the divine perfections, took its place. Nor is it exactly Eutychianism. For Eutyches said that there were two natures before the union, and only one after it. The two were so united as to become one. This the theory before us denies, and affirms that from the beginning the Logos was the sole rational element in the constitution of the person of our Lord. It agrees, however, with both these ancient and Church-rejected errors in their essential principles. It agrees with the Apollinarians in saying that the Logos was the rational element in Christ; and it agrees with the Eutychians in saying that Christ had but one nature.
The doctrine is in still more obvious contradiction to the decisions of the Council of Constantinople on the Monothelite controversy. That Council decided that as there were two natures in Christ, there were of necessity two wills. The new theory in asserting the oneness of Christ's nature, denies that He had two wills. The acts, emotions, and sufferings of his earthly life, were the acts, emotions, and sufferings of the Logos. So far as Christian interest in the doctrine is concerned, it was to get at this conclusion the theory was adopted if not devised. It was to explain how that more than human value belongs to the sufferings of Christ, and more than human efficacy to his life, that so many Christian men were led to embrace the new doctrine. The Church doctrine. however, does not consider either the sufferings or the life of Christ as those of a mere man. He was a divine person, God manifest in the flesh; and his sufferings and life were those of that person. Christians can say, and always have said, with an intelligent and cordial faith, that God purchased the Church with his blood. It was because the person who died was possessed of an Eternal Spirit that his blood cleanses from all sin.
2. The arguments from Scripture in support of the theory are for the most part founded on the neglect of the principle so often referred to, that anything can be predicated of the person of Christ that can be predicated either of his human or of his divine nature. That the one person is said to be born and to suffer and die, no more proves that the Logos as such was born and suffered and died, than saying of a man that he is sick or wounded proves that his soul is diseased or injured. The same remark, of course, applies to the exaltation and dominion of the risen Redeemer. It is the one person who is the object of the worship of all created intelligences, and to whom their obedience is due; but this does not prove that Christ's human nature is possessed of divine attributes. Indeed, according to the modern doctrine of Kenosis, He has no human nature, as already proved.
3. The theory in question is inconsistent with the clear doctrine both of revealed and natural religion concerning the nature of God. He is a Spirit infinite, eternal, and immutable. Any theory, therefore, which assumes that God lays aside his omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, and becomes as feeble, ignorant, and circumscribed as an infant, contradicts the first principle of all religion, and, if it be pardonable to say so, shocks the common sense of men.
4. Instead of removing any difficulties attending the doctrine of the incarnation, it greatly increases them. According to Dorner's view we are called upon to believe that a human soul receives gradually increasing measures of the divine fulness, until at last it becomes infinite. This is equivalent to saying that it ceases to exist. It is only on the assumption that Dorner, when he says that the essential nature of God is love, and that the communication of the Godhead is the communication of the fulness of the divine love, means that God is purely ethical, an attribute, but not a substance, that we can attach any definite meaning to his doctrine. According to Ebrard we are required to believe that the one divine and infinite substance of the Logos was finite and infinite; conscious and unconscious; omnipresent, and confined within narrow limits in space; and that it was active in the exercise of omnipotence, and as feeble as an infant at one and the same time. According to the more common view of the subject, we are called upon to believe that the infinite God, in the person of his Son, can become ignorant and feeble, and then omniscient and almighty; that He can cease to be God, and then again become God. Gess says that God is not omnipotent unless He has power over Himself, power, that is, to cease to be God. If this be true of the Son it must be true of the Father and of the Spirit; that is, it must be true that the Triune Jehovah can annihilate Himself. And, then, what follows?
5. This doctrine destroys the humanity of Christ. He is not and never was a man. He never had a human soul or a human heart. It was the substance of the Logos invested with a human body that was born of the Virgin, and not a human soul. A being without a human soul is not a man. The Saviour which this theory offers us is the Infinite God with a spiritual body. In thus exalting the humanity of Christ to infinitude it is dissipated and lost.
Schleiermacher.
The prevalent Christology among a numerous and distinguished class of modern theologians, though not professedly pantheistic, is nevertheless founded on the assumption of the essential oneness of God and man. This class includes the school of Schleiermacher in all its modifications not only in Germany, but also in England and America. Schleiermacher is regarded as the most interesting as well as the most influential theologian of modern times. He was not and could not be self-consistent, as he attempted the reconciliation of contradictory doctrines. There are three things in his antecedents and circumstances necessary to be considered, in order to any just appreciation of the man or of his system. First, he passed the early part of his life among the Moravians, and imbibed something of their spirit, and especially of their reverence for Christ, who to the Moravians is almost the exclusive object of worship. This reverence for Christ, Schleiermacher retained all his life. In one of the discourses pronounced on the occasion of his death, it was said, "He gave up everything that he might save Christ." His philosophy, his historical criticism, everything, he was willing to make bend to the great aim of preserving to himself that cherished object of reverence and love. [372] Secondly, his academic culture led him to adopt a philosophical system whose principles and tendencies were decidedly pantheistic. And, thirdly, he succumbed to the attacks which rationalistic criticism had made against faith in the Bible. He could not receive it as a supernatural revelation from God. He did not regard it as containing doctrines which we are bound to believe on the authority of the sacred writers. Deprived, therefore, of the historical Christ, or at least deprived of the ordinary historical basis for faith in Christ, he determined to construct a Christology and a whole system of Christian theology from within; to weave it out of the materials furnished by his own religious consciousness. He said to the Rationalists that they might expunge what they pleased from the evangelical records; they might demolish the whole edifice of Church theology, he had a Christ and a Christianity in his own bosom. In the prosecution of the novel and difficult task of constructing a system of Christian theology out of the facts of Christian experience, he designed to secure for it a position unassailable by philosophy. Philosophy being a matter of knowledge, and religion a matter of feeling, the two belonged to distinct spheres, and therefore there need be no collision between them.
Schleiermacher's Christology.
He assumed, (1.) That religion in general, and Christianity in particular, was not a doctrine or system of doctrine; not a cultus, or a discipline; but a life, an inward spiritual power or force. (2.) That the true Christian is conscious of being the recipient of this new life. (3.) That he knows that it did not originate in himself, nor in the Church to which he belongs, because humanity neither in the individual nor in any of its organizations is capable of producing what is specifically new and higher and better than itself. (4.) This necessitates the assumption of a source, or author of this life, outside of the race of ordinary men or of humanity in its regular development. (5.) Hence he assumed the actual historical existence of a new, sinless, and absolutely perfect man by a new creative act. (6.) That man was Christ, from whom every Christian is conscious that he derives the new life of which he is the subject. (7.) Christ is the Urbild, or Ideal Man, in whom the idea of humanity is fully realized. (8.) He is nevertheless divine, or God in fashion as a man, because man is the modus existendi of God on the earth. In ordinary men, even in Adam, God, so to speak, was and is imperfectly developed. The God-consciousness, or God within, is overborne by our world-consciousness, or our consciousness as determined by things seen and temporal. (9.) In Christ this was not the case. In Him, without struggle or opposition, the God-consciousness, or God within, controlled his whole inward and outward life. (10.) Christ's preëminence over other men consisted in his absolute sinlessness and freedom from error. Of Him it is to be said, not simply potest non peccare, but non potest peccare. He could not be tempted for temptation supposes the possibility of sin, and the possibility of sin supposes less than perfection. (11.) The redeeming work and worth of Christ consists not in what He taught or in what He did, but in what He was. What He taught and what He did may be explained in different ways, or even explained away, but what He was, remains, and is the one all important fact. (12.) As He was thus perfect, thus the ideal and miraculously produced man, He is the source of life to others. He awakens the dormant God-consciousness in men, and gives it ascendency over the sensibility, or sensuous element of our nature, so that believers come to be, in the same sense, although ever in a less degree, what Christ was, God manifest in the flesh. This being the work of Christ, and this redeeming process being due to what He was, his resurrection, ascension, session at the right hand of God, etc., etc., may all be dispensed with. They may be admitted on historical grounds, good men having testified to them as facts, but they have no religious import or power. (13.) The new life of which Christ is the author, which in this country is commonly denominated "his human divine life," is the animating and constituting principle of the Church, and it is by union with the Church that this life passes over to individual believers.
Objections to this Theory.
This is a meagre outline of Schleiermacher's Christology. His doctrine concerning Christ is so implicated with his peculiar views on anthropology, on theology, and on the relation of God to the world, that it can neither be fully presented nor properly appreciated except as an integral part of his whole system.
Gladly as Schleiermacher's theory was embraced as a refuge by those who had been constrained to give up Christianity as a doctrine, and great as have been its popularity and influence, it was assailed from very different quarters and judged from many different standpoints. Here it can only be viewed from the position of Christian theology. It should be remembered that as the idealist does not feel and act according to his theory, so the inward life of a theologian may not be determined by his speculative doctrines. This does not render error less objectionable or less dangerous. It is nevertheless a fact, and enables us to condemn a system without wounding our charity for its author. Schleiermacher, however, was an exceptional case. As a general rule, a man's faith is the expression of his inward life.
1. The first objection to Schleiermacher's theory is that it is not and does not pretend to be Biblical. It is not founded upon the objective teachings of the Word of God. It assumes, indeed, that the religious experience of the Apostles and early Christians was substantially the same, and therefore involved the same truths, as the experience of Christians of the present day. Schleiermacher even admits that their experience was so pure and distinctly marked as to have the authority of a standard by which other believers are to judge of their own. But he denies that the interpretation which they gave of their experience has normal authority for us, that is, he says that we are not bound to believe what the Apostles believed. His appeals to the Scriptures in support of his peculiar doctrines are extremely rare, and merely incidental. He professes to build up a system independent of the Bible, founded on what Christians now find in the contents of their own consciousness.
2. The system is not what it purports to be. Schleiermacher professed to discard speculation from the province of religion. He undertook to construct a theory of Christianity with which philosophy should have nothing to do, and therefore one against which it could have no right to object. In point of fact his system is a matter of speculation from beginning to end. It could never have existed except as the product of a mind imbued with the principles of German philosophy. It has no coherence, no force, and indeed no meaning, unless you take for granted the correctness of his views of the nature of God, of the nature of man, and of the relation of God to the world. This objection was urged against his system by all parties in Germany. The supernaturalists, who believed in the Bible, charged him with substituting the conclusions of his own philosophy for the dictates of Christian consciousness. And the philosophers said he was true neither to his philosophy nor to his religion. He changed from one ground to the other just as it suited his purpose. On this subject Strauss [373] says that Schleiermacher first betrayed philosophy to theology, and then theology to philosophy; and that this half-and-halfness is characteristic of his whole position. Although this was said in a spirit of unkindness, it is nevertheless true. His speculative opinions, i.e., the conclusions at which he arrives by the way of speculation, are the basis of his whole system; and therefore those who adopt it receive it on this authority of reason, and not on that of revelation. It is a philosophical theory and nothing more. This will become apparent as we proceed.
Founded on Pantheistic Principles.
3. A third objection is that the system is essentially pantheistic. This is, indeed, an ambiguous term. It is here used, however, in its ordinary and proper sense. It is not meant that Schleiermacher held that the universe is God, or God the universe, but that he denied any proper dualism between God and the world, and between God and man. He held such views of God as were inconsistent with Theism in the true and accepted meaning of the word. That is, he did not admit the existence of a personal, extramundane God. This is a charge brought against his system from the beginning, even by avowed pantheists themselves. They say that while denying the existence of a personal God he nevertheless teaches doctrines inconsistent with that denial, i.e., with what they regard as the true view of the relation of the infinite to the finite. Theists brought the same objection. Dr. Braniss [374] says, "Die Annahme eines persönlichen Gottes ist in diesem System unmöglich," i.e., "The admission of a personal God is, in this system, impossible."
[375] This he proves, among other ways, by a reference to what Schleiermacher teaches of the attributes of God, which with him are not predicates of a subject; they tell us nothing as to what God is, they are only forms or states of our own consciousness, as determined by our relation to the system of things in their causal relation. Strauss, from another standpoint, says that Schleiermacher could never reconcile himself to the acknowledgment of a personal, extra-mundane God. Christ was the only God he had; and this, alas! was little more than an ideal God; one who had been; but whether He still is, he leaves undetermined, at least theoretically. Baur presents the inconsistency of Schleiermacher in different points of view. In one place he says that he swung to and fro between the idealism of Kant and Fichte, and the pantheism of Spinoza and Schelling, which he regarded only as the different poles of the same system (derselben Weltanschauung). [376] Again he says that the essential element of Schleiermacher's doctrine of God is the same immanence of God in the world that Spinoza taught.
[377] He endorses the criticism of Strauss, that all the main positions of the first part of Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre are intelligible only when translated into the formulas of Spinoza, whence they were derived; and adds that he made no greater difference between God and the world than Spinoza made between the natura naturans and the natura naturata. [378] A Schleiermacher wrote at the time when the dispute between the Rationalists and Supernaturalists was at its height. The one referred all events to natural causes; the other contended for the possibility of miracles and of a supernatural revelation. Both parties being Theists, the Rationalists had no ground to stand on. For if the existence of an extramundane, personal God, the creator of the world, be admitted, it is utterly unreasonable to deny that He may intervene with his immediate agency in the sequence of events. Schleiermacher cut the knot by denying the difference between the natural and supernatural. There is really no extramundane God, no other sphere of divine activity than the world, and no other law of his action than necessity. [379]
Involves the Rejection of the Doctrine of the Trinity.
4. Schleiermacher's system ignores the doctrine of the Trinity. With him God in the world, is the Father; God in Christ, the Son; God in the Church, the Spirit. All personal preëxistence of Christ is thus necessarily excluded. The Scriptures and the Church teach that the eternal Son of God, who was with the Father from eternity; who made the worlds; who could say, "Before Abraham was I am," became man, being born of a woman, yet without sin. This Schleiermacher denies. There was no Son of God, before the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. Then only, Christ began to be as a distinct person; He had no preëxistence beyond that which is common to all men.
5. This system makes Christ a mere man. He is constantly represented as the Ideal man, Urbild, a perfect man. In Him the idea of humanity is said to be fully realized. His life is said to be one; and that one a true human life. There was in Him but one nature, and that nature human. Now it matters little that with these representations Christ is said to be divine, and his life a divine life; for this is said on the ground that the divine is human, and the human divine. God and man are one. The difference between Christ and other men is simply one of degree. He is perfect, we are imperfect. He is, as Baur said, simply primus inter pares. Christ is the Urbild or archetypal man. But "the actuality of the archetypal does not go beyond our nature." [380] Even in the modified form in which his doctrine has been adopted in this country, this feature of the system has been retained. Dr. Nevin in his "Mystical Presence" is abundant in his assertion of the simple humanity of Christ. He says He had not one life of the body and another of the soul; nor one life of his humanity and another of his divinity. It is one life throughout, and it "is in all respects a true human life."
[381] "Christ is the archetypal man in whom the true idea of humanity is brought to view." He "is the ideal man." Our nature is said to be complete only in Him. This also is the staple of the "Mercersburg Review" in all its articles relating either to Anthropology or Soteriology. It is everywhere assumed that God and man are one; that divinity is the completed development of humanity. "The glorification of Christ was the full advancement of our human nature itself to the power of a divine life." There is nothing in Christ which does not belong to humanity. Steudel therefore says of the Christology of Schleiermacher that it makes Christ only "a finished man." Knapp says, that he deifies the human and renders human the divine. [382] Dorner says, "He believed the perfect being of God to be in Christ; and for this reason regarded Him as the complete man. And so, vice versa, because He is the complete man, the consciousness of God has become a being of God in Him." [383] That is, because He is a perfect man, He is God. And Strauss says, that according to Schleiermacher the creation of man imperfect in Adam was completed in Christ; and as Christ did not assume a true body and a reasonable soul, but generic humanity, human nature as a generic life is raised to the power of divinity, not in Him only but also in the Church. The incarnation of God is not a unique manifestation in the flesh, in the person of Christ, appearing on earth for thirty-three years and then transferred to heaven. This, it is said, would have been only "a sublime avatar, fantastically paraded thus long before men," without any further effect. On the contrary, it is the introduction of the life of God into humanity rendering it divine. It is natural that those who thus deify themselves, should look upon those who regard themselves as "worms of the dust," as very poor creatures. [384] The objection, however, to this system now in hand is not so much that it deifies man, as that it makes Christ nothing more than an ideal man. It is therefore utterly at variance with the teachings of Scripture, the faith of the Church, and the intimate convictions of the people of God.
Schleiermacher's Anthropology.
6. As the system under consideration is unscriptural in what it teaches concerning the nature of God, and the person of Christ, it is no less contrary to the Scriptures in what it teaches concerning man. Indeed, the theology and anthropology of the system are so related that they cannot be separately held. According to the Bible and the common faith both of the Church and of the world, man is a being created by the word of God's power, consisting of a material body and an immaterial soul. There are, therefore, in the constitution of his person, two distinct subjects or substances, each with its own properties; so that although intimately united in the present state of being, the soul is capable of conscious existence and activity, out of the body, or separated from it. The soul of man is therefore a distinct individual subsistence, and not the form, or modus existendi of a general life. According to Schleiermacher, "Man as such, or in himself, is the knowing (das Erkennen) of the earth in its eternal substance (Seyn) and in its ever changing development. Or the Spirit (der Geist, God) in the way or form in which it comes to self-consciousness in our earth." Der Mensch an sich ist das Erkennen der Erde in Seinem ewigen Seyn und in seinem immer wechselnden Werden: oder der Geist, der nach Art und Weise unserer Erde zum Selbstbewusstseyn sich gestaltet. [385] By the Mercersburg writers the idea is set forth in rather different terms but substantially to the same effect. [386] Thus it is said, "The world in its lower view is not simply the outward theatre or stage on which man is set to act his part as a candidate for heaven. In the widest of its different forms of existence, it is pervaded throughout with the power of a single life, which comes ultimately to its full sense and force only in the human person." And [387] "The world is an organic whole which completes itself in man; and humanity is regarded throughout as a single grand fact which is brought to pass, not at once, but in the way of history, unfolding always more its true interior sense, and reaching on to its final consummation." Again, "It is a universal property of life to unfold itself from within, by a self-organizing power, towards a certain end, which end is its own realization, or in other words, the actual exhibition and actualization in outward form of all the elements, functions, powers, and capacities which potentially it includes. Thus life may be said to be all at its commencement which it can become in the end."
The theory is that there is an infinite, absolute, and universal something, spirit, life, life-power, substance, God, Urwesen, or whatever it may be called, which develops itself by an inward force, in all the forms of actual existence. Of these forms man is the highest. This development is by a necessary process, as much so as the growth of a plant or of an animal. The stem of the tree, its branches, foliage, and fruit, are not formed by sudden, creative acts, accomplishing the effect, by way of miracle. All is regular, a law-work, an uninterrupted force acting according to its internal nature. So in the self-evolution of the spirit, or principle of life, there is no room for special intervention, or creative acts. All goes on in the way of history, and by regular organic development. Here there is a fault in Schleiermacher's doctrine. He admitted a creative, supernatural act at the creation. And as the quantum of life, or spirit, communicated to man at first was insufficient to carry on his development to perfection, i.e., until it realized, or actualized all that is in that life of which he is the manifestation (i.e., in God), there was a necessity for a new creative act, by which in the person of Christ, a perfect man was produced. From Him, and after Him, the process goes on naturally, by regular development. [388] The life-power, the spirit, is quantitively increased and henceforth develops itself historically in the form of the Church. The Church, therefore, consists of those to whom this elevated principle of life has been communicated, and in whom it develops itself until it realizes all it includes. That is, until the essential oneness of God and man is in the Church fully realized.
There is another mode of representation current with the disciples of Schleiermacher, especially in this country. its advocates speak of humanity as a generic life. They define man to be the manifestation of this generic life in connection with a special corporeal organization, by which it is individualized and becomes personal. It was this generic humanity which sinned in Adam, and thenceforth was corrupt in all the individual men in whom it was manifested. It was this generic humanity that Christ assumed into personal union with his divinity, not as two distinct substances, but so united as to become one generic human life. This purified humanity now develops itself, by an inward force in the Church, just as from Adam generic humanity was developed in his posterity. All this, however, differs only in words from Schleiermacher's simpler and more philosophic statement. For it is still assumed as the fundamental idea of the gospel, that God and man are one. This generic humanity is only a form of the life of God. And as to its sinning in Adam, and being thenceforth corrupt, sin and corruption are only imperfect development. God, the universal life principle, as Dr. Nevin calls it, so variously manifested in the different existences in this world, is imperfectly or insufficiently manifested in man generally, but perfectly in Christ, and through Hun ultimately in like perfection in his people. Christ, therefore, according to Dorner, is a universal person. He comprises in Himself the whole of humanity. All that is separately revealed in others is summed up in Him. In this system "Der Mittelpunkt," says Schwarz, "christlicher Wahrheit, der christologische Kern der ganzen Dogmatik ist die Göschel-Dorner'sche monströse Vorstellung von der Allpersönlichkeit Christi, die ihm als dem Urmenschen zukommt. Es ist die Zusammenfassung des ganzen gegliederten Systems der natürlichen Gaben der Menschheit." [389] "The middle point of Christian truth, the kernel of dogmatic theology is Goschel's and Dorner's monstrous idea of the All-personality of Christ which belongs to Him as the Urmensch or archetypal man. He comprehends within Himself all the diversified forms or systems of the natural gifts of mankind." Göschel and Dorner, adds Schwarz, were driven to this view because they conceded to their opponent Strauss, that the Absolute could only reveal itself in the totality of individuals; and therefore as the Absolute was in Christ, he must embrace all individuals, because (the Gattungsbegriff) the true and total idea of humanity, the ideal man, or Urmensch, was revealed in Christ. The objection is constantly urged by his German critics, as Baur, Strauss, and Schwarz, that Schleiermacher admits that the Absolute is revealed in perfection in the totality of individuals, and yet is revealed perfectly in Christ, which according to Schleiermacher's own philosophy they pronounce to be a contradiction or impossibility. [390]
The design of the preceding paragraphs is simply to show the unscriptural character of Schleiermacher's Christology in all its modifications, because it is founded on a view of the nature of man entirely at variance with the Word of God. It assumes the oneness of God and man. It takes for granted that fully developed humanity is divine; that Christ in being the ideal, or perfect man, is God.
Schleiermacher's Theory perverts the Plan of Salvation.
7. It need hardly be remarked that the plan of salvation according to Schleiermacher's doctrine is entirely different from that revealed in the Bible and cherished by the Church in all ages. It is, in Germany at least, regarded as a rejection of the Church system, and as a substitute for it, and only in some of its forms as a reconciliation of the two, as to what is deemed absolutely essential. The system in all its forms rejects the doctrines of atonement or satisfaction to the justice of God; of regeneration and sanctification by the Holy Spirit; of justification as a judicial or forensic act; of faith in Christ, as a trusting to what He has done for us, as distinguished from what He does in us; in short, of all the great distinctive doctrines not merely of the Reformation but of the Catholic faith. By many of the followers of Schleiermacher these doctrines are rejected in so many words; by others the terms are more or less retained, but not in their received and established meaning. For the Scriptural system of salvation, another is substituted. Christ saves us not by what He teaches, or by what He does, but by what He is. He infuses a new principle of life into the Church and into the world. The universal life as communicated to, or revealed in Adam, has been struggling on, imperfectly developed in all his descendants. In Christ a new influx of this life is communicated to, or infused into the veins of humanity. From this as a new starting point, humanity enters on another stage of development, which is to issue in the full actualization of the divine life in the form of humanity. As from Adam human nature was developed from within by an inward force in a regular historical process; so from Christ, there is the same historical development from within. All is natural. There is nothing supernatural but the initial point; the first impulse, or the first infusion of the divine life. There is no place in the system for the work of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the very existence of the Holy Spirit as a personal being is by Schleiermacher expressly denied. By the Spirit he means the common life of the Church, that is, the divine life, or God as revealed in the Church. As we derive from Adam a quantitively deficient, and in that sense corrupt, nature, and have nothing more to do with him; so from Christ we receive a larger measure of life, spirit, or divine nature, and have nothing more to do with Him. His whole redeeming work is in the new leaven he has introduced into humanity, which diffuses itself in the way of natural development. This, as Baur says, comes after all to little more than the impression which his character has made on the world. He draws a parallel between Schleiermacher and Kant, between the "Glaubenslehre" of the former, and "Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft" of the latter; the clear rationalism of the one and the mystical obscurity of the other. Both admit that there is a good and a bad principle. Both say that man's redemption consists in the triumph of the good principle. Both say that the deliverance from evil or the work of redemption, is a purely natural process. Both refer the success of the struggle to the influence of Christ. The one says that He imparts to men a new life, the other says that He awakens the dormant good that is already in man's nature. Everything admits of a simple and of a mystical explanation. [391] In every great epoch some one man not only impresses his character and infuses his spirit into the men of his generation, but also transmits his influence from age to age. The whole body of Lutherans are what they are because Luther was what he was. The spirit of Ignatius Loyola is just as active in the Jesuits of our day as it was in his own person. The Scotch are what they are because of John Knox; and the Wesleyans owe not only their doctrines and discipline but their whole animus and character to John Wesley. To this category do the merciless German critics of Schleiermacher reduce his theory of the redemption of man by Jesus Christ. It is a matter of personal influence like that of other great men. This will be regarded by his disciples as a most degrading and unjust view of his doctrine. And it doubtless is unjust. For whatever may be true of his mere speculative system, he unquestionably in his heart regarded Christ as infinitely exalted above other men, and as the proper object of adoration and trust.
This Vermittelungstheologie (the mediating-theology), as it is called in Germany, is confessedly an attempt to combine the conclusions of modern speculation with Christian doctrine, or rather with Christianity. It is an attempt to mix incongruous elements which refuse to enter into combination. The modern speculative philosophy in all its forms insists on the denial of all real dualism; God and the world are correlata, the one supposes the other; without the world there is no God; creation is the self-evolution or self-manifestation of God: and is therefore necessary and eternal. God can no more be without the world, than mind without thought. The preservation, progress, and consummation of the world is by a necessary process of development, as in all the forms of life. There is no possibility of special intervention, on the part of God. Miracles whether spiritual or physical are an absurdity and an impossibility. [392] So is any agency of God in time, or otherwise than as a general life-power. This precludes the efficacy of prayer except as to its subjective influence. Schleiermacher shared in this horror of the supernatural, and this rejection of all miracles. In the case of Christ, he was forced to admit "a new creative act." But he apologized for this admission by representing it as only the completion of the original act of creation, and by saying that it was only for a moment, and that all thenceforth was natural.
Schwarz, himself a great admirer, although not a disciple of Schleiermacher, characterizes this "mediating theology" as an utter failure. It is neither one thing nor the other. It is neither true to its speculative principles, nor true to Christianity. It virtually rejects the Church system, yet endeavours to save Christianity by adopting at least its phraseology. Schwarz says it is a system of "phrases;" which endeavours to heal the wounds of orthodoxy by words which seem to mean much, but which may be made to mean much or little as the reader pleases. It speaks constantly of Christianity as a life, as the life of God, as developing itself organically and naturally, not by supernatural assistance, but by an inward life-power, as in other cases of organic development. It assumes to rise to the conception of the whole world as an organism, in which God is one of the factors; the world and God differing not in substance or life, but simply in functions. It concedes to "speculation" that the fundamental truth of philosophy and of Christianity is the oneness of God and man. Man is God living in a certain form, or state of development. While "the mediating theology" concedes all this, it nevertheless admits of a miraculous or supernatural beginning of the world and of the person of Christ, and thus gives up its whole philosophical system. At least the members of one wing of Schleiermacher's school are thus inconsistent; those of the other are more true to their principles.
As Christian theology is simply the exhibition and illustration of the facts and truths of the Bible in their due relations and proportions, it has nothing to do with these speculations. The "mediating theology" does not pretend to be founded on the Bible. It does not, at least in Germany, profess allegiance to the Church doctrine. It avowedly gives up Christianity as a doctrine to save it as a life. It is founded on "speculation" and not upon authority, whether of the Scriptures or of the Church. It affords therefore no other and no firmer foundation for our faith and hope, than any other philosophical system; and that, as all history proves, is a foundation of quick-sand, shifting and sinking from month to month and even from day to day. Schleiermacher has been dead little more than thirty years, and already there are eight or ten different classes of his general disciples who differ from each other almost as much as from the doctrines of the Reformation. Twesten and Ullmann, Liebner and Thomasius, Lange and Alexander, Schweizer, are wide apart, each having his own philosophical solvent of the doctrines of the Bible, and each producing a different residuum.
The simple, sublime, and saving Christology of the Bible and of the Church universal is: "That the eternal Son of God became man by taking to Himself a true body and a reasonable soul and so was and continues to be God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever." __________________________________________________________________
[355] Dorner, div. II. vol. iii. p. 101.
[356] Die christliche Lehre von der Dreieingkeit und Menschwerdung Gottes in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung. Von Dr. Ferdinand Christian Baur, Tübingen, 1843, vol. iii. p. 751.
[357] Dr. Ullman, Essay in the Studien und Kritiken for 1846.
[358] Mercersburg Review, January, 1851, pp. 58, 61, 73. Review of Liebner's Christology, by Rev. John W. Nevin, D. D., Professor of Theology in the Seminary of the German Reformed Church.
[359] Das Leben Jesu, § 149, 3d edit. Tübingen, 1839, vol. ii. pp. 766, 767; and Dogmatik, vol. ii. p. 214.
[360] Quoted by Strauss, Dogmatik, edit. Tübingen, 1841, vol. ii. p. 214.
[361] The Scripture Doctrine of the Person of Christ. Freely translated from the German of W. F. Gess, with many additions, by J. A. Reubelt,
D. D., Professor in Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind. Andover: Warren F. Draper, 1870, p. 414. This work is admirably translated, and presents the clearest outline of the modern doctrine of Kenosis which has yet appeared. The author expresses his satisfaction that he is sustained in his views arrived at by the study of the Scriptures, by the authority of Liebner and Thomasius, who reached substantially the same conclusions by the way of speculation. There is ground for this self-congratulation of the author, for his book is far more Scriptural in its treatment of the subject than any other book of the same class with which we are acquainted. It calls for a thorough review and candid criticism.
[362] Christi Person und Werk. Darstellung der evangelisch-lutherischen Dogmatik vom Mittelpunkte der Christologie aus. Von G. Thomasius, Dr. u. ord. Professor der Theologie an der Universität Erlangen. Zweite erweiterte Auflage, Erlangen, 1857, vol. ii. p. 295.
[363] Ibid. p. 299.
[364] Ibid. p. 296.
[365] Thomasius, ut supra, pp. 201, 202.
[366] Baur, in his Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit, vol. iii. p. 987, gives the following account of Dorner's theory: Wie der Mensch das Haupt und die Krone der natürlichen Schöpfung sei, so sei auch die Menscheit als die auseinandergetretene Vielheit eines höhern Ganzen, einer höhern Idee, zu betrachten, nämlich Christi. Und wie die Natur sich nicht blos in der Idee eines Menschen zur Einheit versammle, sondern im wirklichen Menschen, so fasse sich auch die Menschheit nicht zusammen in einer blossen Idee, einem idealen Christus, sondern in dem wirklichen Gottmenschen, der ihre Totalität persönlich darstelle, und aller einzelnen Individualitäten Urbilder oder ideale Persönlichkeiten in sich versammle. Und wenn die erste Zusammenfassung zerstreuter Momente in Adam, wenn auch selbst noch ein Naturwesen, doch eine unendlich höhere Gestalt dargestellt habe, als jedes der einzelnen Naturwesen, so stehe auch der zweite Adam, obwohl in sich eine Zusammenfassung der Menschheit und selbst noch ein Mensch, doch als eine unendlich höhere Gestalt da, denn alle einzelnen Darstellungen unserer Gattung. Sei Adam das Haupt der natürlichen Schöpfung gewesen, als solches aber bereits hinüberreichend mit seinem Wesen in das Reich des Geistes und hinübergreifend über die natürliche Welt, so sei Christus das Haupt der geistigen Schöpfung, als solches aber schon hinüberweisend von der Menschheit auf eine kosmische oder metaphysiche Bedeutung seiner Person.
[367] Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, vol. ii. pp. 141-143.
[368] Christliche Dogmatik. Von Johannes Heinrich August Ebrard, Doctor und ord. Professor der ref. Theologie zu Erlangen. Königsberg, 1852, vol. ii. §§ 391-394, pp. 142-149.
[369] The Scripture Doctrine of the Person of Christ. Translated from the German by J. A. Reubelt, D. D., p. 342.
[370] The Scripture Doctrine of the Person of Christ, pp. 343, 344.
[371] The Scripture Doctrine of the Person of Christ, p. 378.
[372] When in Berlin the writer often attended Schleiermacher's church. The hymns to be sung were printed on slips of paper and distributed at the doors. They were always evangelical and spiritual in an eminent degree, filled with praise and gratitude to our Redeemer. Tholuck said that Schleiermacher, when sitting in the evening with his family, would often say, "Hush, children: let us sing a hymn of praise to Christ." Can we doubt that he is singing those praises now? To whomsoever Christ is God, St. John assures us Christ is a Savior.
[373] Dogmatik, Tübingen, 1841, vol. ii. p. 176.
[374] Ueber Schleiermacher's Glaubenlehre, ein kritischer Versuch, p. 182.
[375] See Gess, Uebersicht über Schleiermacher's System, p. 185.
[376] Baur's Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit, vol. iii. p. 842.
[377] Ibid. p. 850.
[378] Baur's Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit, vol. ii. p. 851.
[379] See Baur, p. 858, who quotes Zeller (Theol. Jahrb. Bd. 1, H. 2,
S. 285) as saying that these principles, which appear everywhere in Schleiermacher's Dogmatik, contain the whole secret of Spinozism.
[380] Dorner's Person of Christ, div. II. vol. iii. p. 301.
[381] The Mystical Presence, Philadelphia, 1846, p. 167.
[382] Gess's Uebersicht über Schleiermachers System, p. 225.
[383] Dorner, ut supra, II. vol. iii. p. 194.
[384] At a session of the Academic Senate of the University of Berlin, Marheinecke called Neander a blockhead, and asked him, What right had he to an opinion on any philosophical question? Neander, on the other hand, said that Marheinecke's doctrine, Hegelianism, was to him ein Greuel, a disgusting horror. And no wonder, for a doctrine which makes men the highest existence form of God, is enough to shock even Satan.
[385] Dorner, first edition, p. 488.
[386] In the Mercersburg Review, 1850, p. 550.
[387] Page 7 of the same volume.
[388] Schleiermacher (Zweites Sendschreiben zu Lücke; Works, edit. Berlin, 1836, first part, vol. ii. p. 653), says: "Where the supernatural occurs with me, it is always a first; it becomes natural as a second. Thus the creation is supernatural, but afterwards it is a natural process (Naturzusammenhang). So Christ is supernatural as to his beginning, but He becomes natural as a simple or pure human person. The same is true of the Holy Spirit and of the Christian Church." In like manner Dr. Nevin repeatedly says, "The supernatural has become natural." This inconsistency in Schleiermacher's system, this collision between his philosophy and his theology is dwelt upon by all his German critics. Thus Schwarz (Geschichte des neuesten Theologie, p. 254), says, "Schleiermacher steht in seiner Ontologie und Kosmologie, in Dem, was er über das Verhältniss Gottes zur Welt in seiner Dialektik feststellt, ganz und gar auf dem Boden einer einheitlichen und zusammenhängenden Weltanschauung. Ebenso in der Lehre von der Schöpfung und Erhaltung der Welt, wie sie die Dogmatik ausführt. Gott und die Welt sind untrennbare Correlata; das Verhältniss Gottes zur Welt ist ein nothwendiges, stetiges, zusammenhängendes. Für ausserordentliche Actionen, für ein vereinzeltes Handeln Gottes auf die Welt ausserhalb des Naturgesetzes oder gegen dasselbe ist nirgends ein Ort. . . . . Aber -- es ist zuzugeben, -- diese die philosophische Grundanschauung bildende Immanenz wird von dem Theologen Schleiermacher nicht streng innegehalten, das aus der Ontologie und Kosmologie verbannte Wunder dringt durch die Christologie wieder ein. Die Person Christi in ihrer religiössittlichen Absolutheit ist ein Wunder, eine Ausnahme vom Naturgesetz, sie stehet einzig da. Ihr Eintreten in die Menschheit erfodert trotz aller Anschliessungen nach rückwärtz wie nach vorwärtz einen besondern göttlichen Anstoss, sie ist aus der geschichtlichen Entwickelung nicht hervorgegangen und nicht zu begreifen. Und dieser übernaturliche Anstoss ist es, welcher, so sehr er auch wieder in die Natürlichkeit einlenkt, doch mit dem religiös-moralischen Wunder auch die Möglichkeit der damit zusammenhängenden physischen Wunder offen lässt und so den ganzen Weltzusammenhang durchbricht."
[389] Schwarz, Geschichte der neuesten Theologie, p. 260.
[390] Baur's Christliche Lehre von der Versöhnung, p. 621-624.
[391] The writer was once sitting with Tholuck in a public garden, when the latter said, "I turn my eyes in the opposite direction, and still I am conscious of your presence. How is that?" The reply was, "You know the fact that I am here; and that knowledge produces the state of mind, you call a consciousness of my presence." Tholuck good naturedly rejoined, "O how stupid that is. Don't you believe that there is an influence which streams forth from me to you and from you to me?" The only answer was, "Perhaps so." Of all the genial, lovely, and loving men whom the writer in the course of a long life has met, Tholuck stands among the very first. The writer derived more good from him than from all other sources combined during his two years sojourn in Europe.
[392] "Eigentliche Mirakel anzunehmen, d. h. Unterbrechungen oder Aufhebungen der Naturordnung, dazu wird kein philosophischer Denker sich herablassen." J. H. Fichte, by Schwarz, p. 319. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________