05.05. Chapter Fourth.

Chapter Fourth.—The Proper Nature And Province Of Typology—3. God’s Work In Creation, How Related To The Incarnation And Kingdom Of Christ. THE analogy presented near the close of the preceding chapter—in an extract from Hugh Miller^[48]—between pre-Adamite formations in the animal kingdom, rising successively above each other, and those subsequent arrangements in the religious sphere which were intended to herald and prepare for the personal appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ, is stated with becoming caution and reserve. It keeps strictly within the limits of revelation, and assumes the existence of nothing in the work of creation itself, with respect to typical forms or otherwise, such as could, even to the most profound intelligences of the universe, have suggested the idea of a further and more complete manifestation of God in connection with humanity. The commencement of the new school of prophecy, allying itself to type and symbol of another kind than had yet appeared, is dated from the era of Adam’s fall, as that which at once furnished the occasion and opened the way for their employment; while still, in the mind of Deity itself, or “in the eternal decrees,” as it is expressed in the extract, it had been for ever determined that there should yet be a closer union between the Creator and creation than was accomplished in Adam. In other words, God had from eternity purposed the Incarnation; though the events in providence which were to exhibit its need, and give rise to the prophetic announcements and foreshadowing symbols which should in due time point the eye of hope toward it came in subsequently to creation, and by reason of sin; so that the Incarnation was predestined, because the fall was foreseen.

[48] See page 107. The same caution, however, has not been always observed not even in ancient, and still less in recent times. The spirit of Christian speculation, in proportion as the circumstances of particular times have called it into play, has striven to connect in some more distinct and formal manner God’s work in creation with a higher destiny for man in the future; but the modes of doing so have characteristically differed. Among the patristic writers the tendency of this speculation was to find in the original constitution of things pre-intimations or pledges of a higher and more ethereal condition to be reached by Adam and his posterity, as the reward of obedience to the will of God, and perseverance in holiness. The sense of various passages upon the subject gathered out of their writings has been thus expressed: “That Paradise was to Adam a type of heaven; and that the never-ending life of happiness promised to our first parents, if they had continued obedient, and grown up to perfection under that economy wherein they were placed, should not have continued in the earthly paradise, but only have commenced there, and been perpetuated in a higher state.”^[49] It is impossible to say that such should not have been the case; for what in the event supposed might have been the ultimate intentions of God respecting the destinies of mankind, since revelation is entirely silent upon the subject, can be matter only of uncertain conjecture, or, at the very most, of probable inference. It is quite conceivable that some other region might have been prepared for their reception, where, free from any formal test of obedience, free even from the conditions of flesh and blood, and “made like unto the angels,” they should have reaped the fruits of immortality. But it is equally conceivable, that this earth itself, which “the Lord hath given to the children of men,” might have become every way suited to the occasion; that as, on the hypothesis in question, it should have escaped the blighting influence of sin, so other and happier changes might have passed over it, and the condition of its inhabitants, not only than they have actually undergone, but than any we can distinctly apprehend; until by successive developments of latent energies, as well of a natural as of a moral kind, the highest attainable good for creation might have been reached. For anything we can tell, there may have been powers and susceptibilities inherent in the original constitution of things, which, under the benign and fostering care of its Creator, were capable of being conducted through such an indefinite course of progressive elevation. But everything of this sort belongs to speculation, not to theology; it lies outside the record which contains the revelation of God’s mind and will to man; and to designate paradise simply, and in its relation to our first parents, a type of heaven, is even more than to speak without warrant of Scripture,—it is to regard paradise and man’s relation to it in another light than Scripture has actually presented them. For there the original frame and constitution of things appears as in due accordance with the Divine ideal,—in itself good, therefore relatively perfect; and not a hint is dropped, or, so far as we know, an indication of any kind given, that could beget in man’s bosom the expectation or desire of another state of being and enjoyment than that which he actually possessed—none, till the entrance of sin had created new wants in his condition, and opened a new channel for the display of God’s perfections in regard to him. It was the influence of the ancient philosophy, which associated with matter in every form the elements of evil, or, at least, of imperfection, that so readily disposed the Fathers of the Christian Church to see in what was at first given to Adam only the image of some higher and better inheritance destined for him elsewhere. They did not consider what refinements matter itself might possibly undergo, in order to its adaptation to the most exalted state of being. But the same influence naturally kept them from connecting with this prospective elevation to a higher sphere the necessary or probable incarnation of the Word; since rather by detaching the human more from the environments of matter, than by bringing the divine into closer contact with it, did the prospect of a higher and more perfect condition for man seem possible to their apprehensions. Hence, also, in what may be fitly called the great symbol of the early Church’s faith respecting the incarnation—the Nicene creed—goes no farther than this, that “for us men, and for the sake of our salvation, the Word was made flesh.”^[50]

^[49] This proposition, with the authorities that support it, may be found in the discourses of Bishop Bull, Works, Vol. II., p. 67. His proofs from the earlier Fathers—Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenaeus—are somewhat inadequate. The first explicit testimony is from Theophilus of Antioch, who speaks of Adam being “at length canonized or consecrated and ascending to heaven,” if he had gone on to perfection. The testimony becomes more full, as the speculative tendency of the Greek philosophy gains strength in the Church. And Clement of Alexandria expressly says in his Liturgy, that “if Adam had kept the commandments, he would have received immortality as the reward of his obedience,” meaning thereby, eternal life in a higher sphere.

[50] The divines of the Reformation very commonly concurred, to a certain extent, in the view of the Fathers, and hence the position is defended by Turretine, that Adam had the promise of being carried to heaven and enjoying eternal life there as the reward of his obedience (Loc. Oct., Qwest. VI.). But he admits that Scripture makes no distinct mention of this, and that it is only matter of inference. The grounds of inference are in this case, however, rather far to seek. In recent times the speculative tendency, especially among the German divines, has shown a disposition to take the other direction—namely, to make the incarnation of itself, and apart altogether from the fall of man, the necessary and, from the first, the contemplated medium of man’s elevation to the final state of perfection and blessedness destined for him. Some of the scholastic theologians had already signalized themselves by the advocacy of this opinion—in particular, Rupprecht of Deutz, Alexander of Hales, Aquinas, Duns Scotus; but it was so strongly discountenanced by Calvin and the leading divines of the Reformation, who denounced the idea (propounded afresh by Osiander) of an incarnation without a fall as rash and groundless,^[51] that it sunk into general oblivion, till the turn given to speculative thought by the revival of the pantheistic theology served, among other results, to bring it again into favour. This philosophy, while resisted by all believing theologians in its strivings to represent the created universe as but the self-evolution and the varied form of Deity, has still left its impress on the views of many of them as to the nature of the connection between Creator and creature—as if an actual commingling between the two were, in a sense, mutually essential; since a personal indwelling of Godhead in the form of humanity is conceived necessary to complete the manifestation of Godhead begun in Adam, and only by such a personal indwelling could the work of creation attain its end, either in regard to the true ideal of humanity, on the one side, or to the revealed character of God and the religion identified with it, on the other. Adam, therefore, in his formation after the divine image, was the type of the God-man, or the God-man was the true archetype and only proper realization of the idea exhibited in Adam; the fall, with its attendant consequences, only determined the mode of Christ’s appearance among men, but by no means originated the necessity of his appearing.

[51] See, for example, Calvin’s Inst. L. ii. 12, 5. Maestricht, Theol. Lib. v., c. 4, § 17. The representatives of this transcendental school of Typology, as it may not inaptly be called— which undoubtedly includes some of the most learned theologians of the present day—differ to some extent in their mode of setting forth and vindicating the view they hold in common, according to the particular aspect of it which more especially strikes them as important. To give only a few specimens—Martensen presents the incarnation in its relation to the nature of God: the true idea of God is that of the absolute personality; and as the union of Christ with God is a personal union, the individual with whom God historically entered into an absolute union, must be free from everything individually subjective—he must reveal nothing save the absolute personality. Christ is not to be subsumed under the idea of humanity, but, inversely, humanity must be subsumed under Him, since it was He in whom and for whom all things were created (Colossians 1:15). He is at once the centre of humanity and the revealed centre of Deity—the point at which God and God’s kingdom are personally united, and who reveals in fulness what the kingdom of God reveals in distinct and manifold forms. The second Adam is both the redeeming and the world-completing principle; the incarnate Logos, and as such the head not merely of the human race, but of all creation, which was made by Him and for Him, and is again to be recapitulated in Him.^[52] Lange makes his starting-point the final issues of the incarnation, and from these argues its primary and essential place in the scheme of the Divine manifestations. The post-temporal, eternal glory of the humanity of Christ points back to its eternal, ideal existence in God. The eternal Son of God cannot, in the course of His temporal existence, have saddled Himself (behaftet sich) for ever with something accidental; or have assumed a form which, as purely historical, does not correspond to His eternal essence. We must therefore distinguish between incarnation and assumption of the form of a servant (so as, he means, to place the latter alone in a relation of dependence to the fall of man); must also learn to understand the eternal beginnings of Christ’s humanity, in order to perceive how intimate a connection it has with the past—with the work of creation, with primeval times, and the history of the Old Testament. The whole that appeared in these of good is to be regarded as so many vital evolutions of the Divine life that is in Christ; but in Him alone is the idea of it fully realized.^[53] Both of the writers just referred to, also Liebner, Kothe, and, greater than them all, Dorner, lay special stress on the argument derived from the headship of humanity indissolubly linked to Christ. Humanity, according to Dorner, as it appears before God—redeemed humanity—is not merely a mass or heap of unconnected individuals, but an organism, forming, with the world of higher spirits and nature, which is to be glorified for and through it, a complete and perfect organic unity. Even the natural world is an unity, solely because there is indissolubly united with it a principle which stands above it and comprises it within itself—namely, the Divine Logos, by whom the world was formed and is sustained, who is the vehicle and the representative of its eternal idea. But in a higher sense the world of humanity and spirits is an unity, because through the God-man who stands over it, and by His personal self-communication of Godhead-fulness pervades it, its creaturely susceptibility to God is filled; it now enters into the circle of the Divine life, and stands in living harmony with the centre of all good. But a matter so essential to the proper idea of humanity cannot belong to the sphere of contingency; it must be viewed as inseparably connected with the purpose of God in creation. And there is another thought, which Dorner conceives establishes beyond doubt the belief, that the incarnation had not its sole ground in sin, but had a deeper, an eternal, and abiding necessity in the wise and free love of God,—namely, that Christianity is the perfect religion, the religion absolutely, the eternal Gospel; and that for this religion Christ is the centre, without which it cannot be so much as conceived. Whoso, says he, maintains that Adam might have become perfect even without Christ, inasmuch as no one can deem it possible to conceive of perfection without the perfect religion, maintains, either consciously or unconsciously, two absolute religions, one without, and one with Christ—which is a bare contradiction. No Christian, he thinks, will deny that it makes an essential difference, whether Christ, or only God in general, is the central point of a religion. At the same time, with Christian candour he admits, that the necessity of the truth he advocates will not so readily commend itself to theologians, who are wont to proceed in an experimental and anthropological manner (that is, who look at the matter as it has been evolved in the history and experience of mankind), as it must, and actually does, to those who recognise both the possibility and the necessity of a Christian speculation, that takes the conception of God for its starting-point.^{[54] [52]} Dogmatik, § 130, 131.

[53] See the outline of his views in Dorner on the Person of Christ, note 23, Vol. II., P. II. Of the original, note 34 of the Eng. Trans.

[54] Person of Christ, Vol. II., Pt. II., p. 1241. Eng. Trans., Div. II., Vol. III., p. 232, sq.

While this mode of contemplating the incarnation of Christ, and of connecting it with the idea of creation, has in its recent development had its origin in the philosophy, and its formal exhibition in the theology, of Germany, it is no longer confined to that country; and both the view itself, and its application to the Typology of Scripture, have already found a place in our own. theological literature. Dean Trench, in his Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge, although he advances nothing strictly new upon the subject, yet he speaks not less decidedly respecting the necessity of the incarnation, apart altogether from the fall, to enable the race of Adam “to attain the end of its creation, the place among the families of God, for which from the first it was designed.” Special stress is laid by him, as by Lange, on the issues of the incarnation, as reflecting light on its original intention: “The taking on Himself of our flesh by the Eternal Word was no makeshift to meet a mighty, yet still a particular, emergent need; a need which, conceding the liberty of man’s will, and that it was possible for him to have continued in his first state of obedience, might never have occurred. It was not a mere result and reparation of the fall,—such an act as, except for that, would never have been; but lay bedded at a far deeper depth in the counsels of God for the glory of His Son, and the exaltation of that race formed in His image and His likeness. For, against those who regard the incarnation as an arbitrary, or as merely an historic event, and not an ideal one as well, we may well urge this weighty consideration, that the Son of God did not, in and after His ascension, strip off this human nature again; He did not regard His humanity as a robe, to be worn for a while and then laid aside; the convenient form of His manifestation, so long; as He was conversing with men on earth, but the fitness of which had with that manifestation passed away. So far from this, we know, on the contrary, that He assumed our nature for ever, married it to Himself, glorified it with His own glory, carried it as the form of His eternal subsistence into the world of angels, before the presence of His Father. Had there been anything accidental here, had the assumption of our nature been an afterthought (I speak as a man), this marriage of the Son of God with that nature could scarcely be conceived. He could hardly have so taken it, unless it had possessed an ideal as well as an historic fitness; unless pre-established harmonies had existed, such harmonies as only a divine intention could have brought about between the one and the other.” The application of the view to Typology is apparent from the very statement of it; but it has also been formally made, and so as to combine the results obtained from the geological territory, with those of a more strictly theological nature. Thus, the late Mr Macdonald^[55] speaks of “the scheme of nature, read from the memorials of creation inscribed on the earth’s crust, or recorded in the opening pages of Genesis, as progressive, and from its very outset prophetic;” and a little farther on he says, “There is no reason whatever for confining the typical to the events and institutions subsequent to the fall. The cause of this arbitrary limitation lies in regarding as typical only what strictly prefigured redemption, instead of connecting it with God’s manifestation of Himself and His purposes in all His acts and administrations, which, however varied, had from the very first one specific and expressed object in view—His own glory through man, at first created in the Divine image, and since the fall to be transformed into it; inasmuch as that moral disorder rendered such a change necessary. The whole of the Divine acts and arrangements from the beginning formed parts of one system; for, as antecedent creations reached their end in man, so man himself in his original constitution prefigured a new and higher relation of the race than the incipient place reached in creation” (p. 457). The fall is consequently to be understood, and is expressly represented, merely as a kind of interruption or break in the march of providence toward its aim, in nature akin to such events as the death of Abel and the flood in after times; while the Divine plan not the less proceeded on its course, only with special adaptations to the altered state of things.

[55] Introd. To the Pent., Vol. II., p. 451.

I. It is this more special bearing of the subject, its relation to a well-grounded and properly adjusted Scriptural Typology, with which we have here chiefly to do; and to this, accordingly, we shall primarily address ourselves. In doing so, we neither directly question nor defend the truth of the view under consideration; we leave its title to a place in the deductions of a scientific theology for the present in abeyance; and merely regard it in the light in which it is put by its most learned and thoughtful advocates, as a matter of inference from some of the later testimonies of Scripture concerning the purposes of God; and this, too, only as informed and guided by a spirit of Christian speculation, having for its starting-point the conception of God.

Now the matter standing thus, it would, as appears to us, be extremely unwise to lay such a view at the foundation of a typological system, or even to give it in such a system a distinctly recognised place. For this were plainly to bring a certain measure of uncertainty into the very structure of the system—founding upon a few incidental hints and speculative considerations concerning the final purposes of God, in which it were vain to expect a general concurrence among theologians, rather than upon the broad stream and current of His revelations. It were also, as previously noticed (p. 58), to make our Typology, in a very important respect, return to the fundamental error of the Cocceian school; that is, would inevitably lead to the too predominant contemplation of everything in the earlier dispensations of God as from the Divine point of view, and with respect to the great archetypal idea in Christ, as from the beginning foreseen and set up in prospect. This tendency, indeed, has already in a remarkable manner discovered itself among the divines who bring into the fore ground of God’s manifestations of Himself the idea of the God-man. Lange, for instance, has given representations of the “Divine-human life” in the patriarchs and worthies of ancient times, which seem to leave no very distinctive difference between the action of divinity in them and in the person of Jesus.

Nägelsbach (in his work Der Gottmensch) even represents our first parent as Elohim-Adam (God-man), on the ground of his spiritual essence being of a divine nature; and both in Adam after the fall, and the better class who succeeded, there was what he calls an artificial realization of the idea of the God-manhood attempted, and in part accomplished. Hence, not without reason has Dorner delivered a caution to those who coincide with him in his view respecting the incarnation, to beware of darkening the preparation for Christ by throwing into their delineation of early times too much of Christ Himself, or of becoming so absorbed in the typical as to overlook the historical life and struggles of the people of the Old Covenant.^[56] The caution, we are persuaded, will be of little avail, so long as the idea of the incarnation is placed in immediate relationship with God’s work in creation; for in that case it must ever seem natural to make that idea shine forth in all the more peculiar instruments and operations of God, and generally to assimilate humanity in its better phases too closely to the altogether singular and mysterious person of Immanuel—to find in it, in short, a kind of God-manhood, whereby the God-man hood itself would inevitably come to be in danger of gliding into the shadowy form of a Sabellian manifestation.

[56] Vol. II., Ft. II., No. 23, or Eng. Trans., No. 34.

Even if this serious error could be avoided, another and slighter form of the same erroneous tendency would be sure to prevail,—if the incarnation, as the archetypal idea of creation, were formally introduced, and made the guiding-star of our Typology. It would inevitably lead us, in our endeavours to read out the meaning of God’s working in creation and providence, to put a certain strain upon the things which appear, in order to bring out what is conceived to have been the ultimate design in them; we should be inclined to view them rather as an artificial representation of what God predestined and foresaw, than a natural and needed exhibition of things to be believed or hoped for by partially enlightened but God-fearing men. The Divine here must not be viewed as moving in a kind of lofty isolation of its own; it should rather be contemplated as letting itself down into the human. We should feel that we have to do, not simply with Heaven’s plan as it exists in the mind and is grasped by the all-comprehending eye of God, but with this plan as gradually evolving itself in the sphere of human responsibility, and developed step by step, in the manner most fitly adapted to carry forward the corporate growth of the Church toward its destined completeness, yet so as, at the same time, to mould the character and direct the hopes of successive generations in conformity with existing relations and duties. It is the proper aim and business of Typology to trace the progress of this development, and to show how, amid many outward diversities of form and ever-varying measures of light, there were great principles steadily at work, and in their operations forecasting, with growing clearness and certainty, the appearance and kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. To such a method also, Typology must owe much of the interest with which it may be able to invest its proper line of inquiry, and its success in throwing light on the history and mutual interconnection of the Divine dispensations. But it were to depart from this safe and profitable course, if we should attempt to bring all that, by dint of inference and speculation, expatiating in the strictly Divine sphere of things, we might find it possible to connect with the earlier acts and operations of God. These should rather be brought out in the aspect and relation they bore to those whom they immediately respected; in order that, from the effect they were designed and fitted to produce in the spiritual instruction and training of men who had in their respective generations to maintain the cause and manifest the life of God, the place and purpose may be learned that properly belonged to them in the general scheme of a progressive revelation. The statement of Mr Macdonald may be referred to in proof of what is likely to happen from the neglect of such considerations, and from attempting to carry the matter higher. The scheme of God, he says, as well that which commenced with Adam as the preceding one which culminated in him, was “from the outset prophetic;” and again: “The whole of the Divine acts and arrangements from the beginning formed parts of one system; for, as antecedent creations reached their end in man, so man himself, in his original constitution, prefigured a new and higher relation of the race to the Creator, than the incipient place reached in creation.” Now, taking the terms here used in their ordinary sense, we must understand by this statement that the work of creation in Adam carried in its very constitution the signs and indications of better things to come for man; for, to speak of it as being prophetic, or having a pre-figuration of a higher relation to the Creator than then actually existed, imports more than that such a destiny was in the purpose and decrees of the Almighty (which no one will dispute): it denotes, that the creation itself was of such a kind as to proclaim its own relative imperfection, and at the same time, by means of certain higher elements interwoven with it, to give promise of a state in which such imperfection should be done away. The question, then, is, How did it do so, or for whom?The Lord Himself, at the close of creation, pronounced it all very good; and the charge given to Adam and his partner spake only of a continuance of that good as the end they were to aim at, and of the loss of it as the evil they were to shun. What ground is there for supposing that more was either meant on God’s part, or perceived on man’s, than what thus appears on the broad and simple testimony of the divine record?Adam, indeed, was made, and doubtless knew that he was made, in the image of God; as such he was set over God’s works, and appointed in God’s name, to exercise the rights of a terrestrial lordship; but how should he have imagined from this, that it was in the purposes of Heaven to enter into some closer relationship with humanity, and that he, as the image of God, was but the figure of one who should be actually God and man united? Yet, supposing he could not. Might he not have been so in fact without himself knowing it, as in subsequent times we find prefigurations of Gospel realities, which were but imperfectly, sometimes perhaps not at all, understood in that character by those who had directly to do with them? But the cases are by no means parallel. For, in regard to those later prefigurations, the promise had already entered of a restored and perfected condition; and believing men were not only warranted, but in a sense bound, to search into them for signs and indications of the better future. If they failed to perceive them, it was because of their feebleness of faith and defect of spiritual discernment. In the primeval constitution of things it was quite otherwise: man was altogether upright, and creation apparently in all respects as it should be; the Creator Himself rested with satisfaction in the works of His hand, and by the special consecration of the seventh day invited His earthly representative to do the same. How, in such a case, should the thought of imperfection and deficiency have entered, or any prospect for the future seemed natural, save such as might associate itself with the progressive development and expansion of that which already existed? Beyond this, whatever there might be in the purpose and decrees of God, it is hard to conceive how room could yet have been found for any expression being given by Him, or hope cherished on the part of man.

Unquestionably there was much beyond in the Divine mind and purpose. “Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world.” With infallible certainty He foresaw ere time began the issues of that constitution of things which was to be set up in Adam; foresaw also, and predetermined, the introduction of that covenant of grace by which other and hap Her issues for humanity were to be secured. On this account it is said of Christ, as the destined Mediator of that covenant, that He was “fore-ordained before the foundation of the world;” and of those who were ultimately to share in the fruits of His mediation, that they also were chosen in Him before the world was made (1 Peter 1:20; Ephesians 1:4). But it is one thing to assign a place to such ulterior thoughts and purposes in the eternal counsels of the Godhead, and another thing to regard them as entering into the objective revelation He gave of His mind and will at the creation of the world, so as to bring them within the ken of His intelligent creatures. In doing the one, we have both the warrant of Scripture and the reason of things to guide us; while the other would involve the introduction, out of due time, of those secret things which as yet belonged only to the Lord.

According to what may be called the palpable and prevailing testimony of Scripture on the subject, the work of God in creation is to be regarded as the adequate reflection of His own infinite wisdom and goodness, adapted in all respects to the special purposes for which it was designed; but the sin of man through the cunning of the tempter presently broke in to mar the good; and following thereupon the predestined plan of grace began to give intimation of its purpose, and to open for itself a path whereby the lost good should be won back, and the destroyer be himself destroyed. This plan starts on its course with the avowed aim of rectifying the evil which originated in man’s defection; and it not less avowedly reaches its end when the restitution, or bringing back again, of all things is accomplished (Acts 3:21). It carries throughout the aspect of a remedial scheme, or restoration of that which had come forth in the freshness and beauty of life from the hand of God. A rise, no doubt, accompanies the process; and the work of God at its consummation shall assuredly be found on a much higher level than at the beginning, as it shall also present a much fuller and grander exhibition of the Divine character and perfections. But still, in the Scriptural form of representation, the original work continues to occupy the position of the proper ideal: all things return, in a manner, whence they came; and a new heavens and a new earth, with paradise restored and perennial springs of life and blessing, appear in prospect as the glorious completion to which the whole scheme is gradually tending. Since thus the things of creation are exhibited in a relation so markedly different to those of redemption, from that possessed by the preliminary, to the final processes of redemption itself, it were surely to intro duce an unjustifiable departure from the method of Scripture, and also to confound things that materially differ, were we, in a typological respect, to throw all into one and the same category. Creation cannot possibly be the norm or pattern of redemption, after the same manner that an imperfect or provisional execution of God’s work in grace is to that work in its full development and ripened form. Yet, for the very reason that redemption assumes the aspect of a restoration, not the introduction of something absolutely new, creation assuredly is a norm or pattern, to which the Divine agency in redemption assimilates its operations and results: the one bases itself upon the other, and does not aim at supplanting, but only at rectifying, reconstructing, and perfecting it. Twin-ideals they may be called, and as such they cannot but present many points of agreement, bespeaking the unity of one contriving and all-directing mind, which it may well become us on proper occasions to mark. But the distinct ground this relationship occupies in Scripture should also find its correspondence in our mode of treating the things that belong to it; and for the province of Typology proper, we cannot but deem it on every account wise, expedient, and fitting that it should confine itself to what pertains to God’s work in grace, and should move simply in the sphere of “the regeneration.”

II. Passing now to the more general aspect of the view in question respecting the incarnation and kingdom of Christ, or its title to rank among the deductions of theological inquiry, it would be out of place here to go into a lengthened examination of it; and the indication of a few leading points is all that we shall actually attempt. The direction already taken on the typological bearing of the subject, is that also which I feel constrained to take regarding its general aspect. For, though it scarcely professes to be more than a speculation, and one purposely intended to exalt the doctrine of the incarnation, yet the tendency of it, I am persuaded, cannot be unattended with danger, as it seems in various respects opposed to the form of sound doctrine delivered to us in Scripture.

1. First of all, it implies, as already stated, a view of creation not only discountenanced by the general current of Scriptural representation, but not easily reconcileable with the perfect wisdom and goodness of the Creator. As a matter of fact, creation in Adam certainly fell short of its design; or, to express it otherwise, humanity, as constituted in our first parent, failed to realize its idea. But as so constituted, was it not endowed with all competent powers and resources for attaining the end in view? Was it absolutely and inherently incapable of doing so apart from the incarnation? In that case, one does not see how either the work of God could possess that character of relative perfection constantly ascribed to it in Scripture, or the defection of man should have drawn after it such fearful penalties. Both God’s work and man’s, on the hypothesis in question, seem to take a position different from what properly belongs to them; and the manifestation of God’s moral character in this world enters on its course amid difficulties of a very peculiar and embarrassing kind. The perplexity thus arising is not relieved by the supposition, that mankind will be raised to a higher state of perfection and blessedness through the medium of the incarnation than had otherwise been possible, and that this was hence implied in creation as the means necessary to creation’s end; for we have here to do with the character of God’s work considered by itself, and what immediately sprang from it. Nor is it by any means certain, or we may even say probable, that if humanity had stood faithful to its engagements, the ultimate destiny of its members would have been in any respect lower than that which they may attain through sin and redemption. But on such a theme we have no sure light to guide us.

2. The view presented by this theory of the mission of Christ, however, is a still more objectionable feature in it; for, exalting the incarnation as of itself necessary to the higher ends of creation, apart from the concerns of sin and redemption, it inevitably tends to depress the importance of these, and gives to something else, which was no way essentially connected with them, the place of greatest moment for the interests of humanity. The earlier Socinians, it is well known, on this very ground favoured the scholastic speculations on the subject; they espoused the view, not, indeed, of an incarnation without a fall (for in no proper sense did they hold what these terms import), but of the necessity of the mission of Christ, independently of the sin of Adam and the consequences thence arising; in this they appeared to find some countenance for the comparatively small account they made alike of the evil of sin, and of the wondrous grace and glory of redemption. And to a simple, unbiassed mind it must be all but incredible, that if the incarnation of our Lord were traceable to some higher and more fundamental reason than that occasioned by the fall, no explicit mention should have been made of it, even in a single passage of Scripture. All the more direct statements presented there respecting the design and purpose of our Lord’s appearance among men stand inseparably connected with their deliverance from the ruin of sin, and restoration to peace and blessing. The distinctive name He bore (Jesus) proclaimed SALVATION to be the grand burden of His undertaking; or, as He Himself puts it, “He came to save the lost,” “to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 18:11; Matthew 20:28); or still again, “that men might have life, and might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). He was made of a woman, made under the law, in order that He might redeem them who were held under the condemnation of law (Galatians 4:4). He took part of flesh and blood, in order that by His death He might destroy him that had the power of death was made like in all things to His brethren, as it behoved Him to be, that He might be for them a faithful high priest and make reconciliation for their sins (Hebrews 2:14-17). It is but another form of the same mode of representation, when St John says of Christ, that He was manifested to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8); and that as the gift of God’s love to the world, it was to the end that men might not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16). In the Supper also, the most distinctive ordinance of the Gospel, not the incarnation, but redemption is presented as the central fact of Christianity. Such is the common testimony of Scripture: redemption in some one or other of its aspects is perpetually associated with the purpose which Christ assumed our nature to accomplish; and the greatness of the remedy is made to throw light upon the greatness of the evil which required its intervention. But according to the view we now oppose, “both the consequences of sin and the value of redemption are lowered, since not the incarnation, but only its special form, is traceable to sin. That God became man is in itself the greatest humiliation; and yet this adorable mystery of divine love is not to stand in any [necessary] connection with sin! Only the comparatively smaller fact, that that man in whom God would at any rate have become incarnate had undergone sufferings and death, is due to sin! And what is even more dangerous, redemption ceases to be a free act of Divine pity, and is represented as a necessity implied in creation, which would have taken place whether man had remained obedient or not. Thus sin is not the sole cause of man’s present state; and however the incarnation might remain an adorable mystery of love, redemption could no longer do so, since it had been involved in the decree of the incarnation, and could not be regarded as proceeding solely from divine mercy and compassion toward fallen man.”^{[57] [57]} Kurtz, Bible and Astronomy, Chap. II., § 12. Trans.

There are passages of Scripture sometimes appealed to on the other side, but they have no real bearing on the point which they are adduced to establish. One of these is Ephesians 1:10, in which the purpose of God is represented as having this for its object, that “in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth.” The passage simply indicates, among the final issues of Christ’s work, the recapitulating or summing up (ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι) of all things in Him, heavenly as well as earthly; but it is the historical Christ that is spoken of—the Christ in whom (as is stated immediately before) believers have redemption through His blood, and are predestinated to life eternal; and there is not a hint conveyed of the purpose or predestination of God, except in connection with the salvation of fallen man, and the work of reconciliation necessary to secure it. What might have been the Divine purpose apart from this, we may indeed conjecture, but it must be without any warrant whatever from the passage before us; and, as Calvin has justly said, not without the audacity of seeking to go beyond the immutable ordination of God, and attempting to know more of Christ than was predestinated concerning Him even in the Divine decree (Inst., B. ii., c. 12, § 5). The somewhat corresponding but more comprehensive passage in Colossians 1:15-17, has been also referred to in this connection, but with no better result. For though expressions are there applied to Christ, which, if isolated from the context, might with some plausibility be explained to countenance the idea of an incarnation irrespective of a fall, yet when taken in their proper connection they contain nothing to justify such an application. The starting-point here also is redemption (Colossians 1:14, “in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins”); and the statements in what immediately follows (Colossians 1:15-17), have evidently for their main object the setting forth of the divine greatness of Him by whom it is effected—as the One by whom and for whom all things were created Himself,—consequently, prior to them all, and infinitely exalted above them. But this plainly refers to Christ as the Logos, or Word, through whom as such the agency is carried on, and the works are performed, by which the Godhead is revealed and brought out to the view of finite intelligence. In that respect He is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15); because in Him exists with perfect fulness, and from Him goes forth into actual embodiment, that which forms a just representation of the mind and character of the Eternal. On the same account also, and with reference simply to His creative agency, He is “the first-born of every creature;” being the causal beginning, whence the whole sprang into existence, and the natural head, under whom all its orders of being must ever stand ranged before God. His divine Sonship is consequently the living root, in which the filial relationship of men and angels had its immediate ground; and His image of Godhead that which reflected itself in their original righteousness and purity. Hence, as all things came from Him at first in the character of the revealing Word, so they shall be again recapitulated in Him as the Word made flesh—though in degrees of affinity to Him, and with diverse results corresponding to the relations they respectively occupied to His redemptive agency. Hence, also, the Divine image, which by Him as the Creator was imparted to Adam, is again restored upon all who become related to Him as the Redeemer: they are renewed after the image of Him that created them (Colossians 3:10, Ephesians 4:24); implying that His work in redemption, as to its practical effect on the soul, is a substantial reproduction of that which proceeded from Him at creation.

We have looked at the only passages worth naming which have been pressed in support of the theory under consideration; and can see nothing in them, when fairly interpreted, that seems at variance with the general tenor of the testimony of Scripture on the subject. But this so distinctly and constantly associates the incarnation of Christ with the scheme of redemption, that to treat it otherwise must be held to be essentially anti-scriptural.

3. The matter is virtually disposed of, in a theological point of view, when we have brought to bear upon it with apparent collusiveness the testimony of Scripture; nor is there anything in the collateral arguments employed by the advocates of the theory, as indicated in the outline formerly given of their views, which ought to shake our confidence in the result. That, for example, derived from the wonderful relationship, the personal and everlasting union, into which humanity has been brought with Godhead, as if the purpose concerning it should be turned into a kind of after-thought, and it should sink, in a manner derogatory to its high and unspeakably important nature, into something arbitrary and contingent, if placed in connection merely with the fall:—Such an argument derives all its plausibility from the limitations and defects inseparable from a human mode of contemplation. To the eye of Him who sees the end from the beginning, whose purpose, embracing the whole compass of the providential plan, was formed before even the beginning was effected, there could be nothing really contingent or uncertain in any part of the process. Nor, on the other hand, was the creation of man necessary (in the absolute sense of the term), any more than the fall of man: it depended on the movements of a will sovereignly free; and, hypothetically, must be placed among the things which, prior to their existence, might or might not, to human view, have taken place. Besides, since anyhow the mode of the incarnation was determined by the circumstances of the fall, and the mode, as well as the thing itself, decreed from the very first, how can we with propriety distinguish between the two? The one, as well as the other, has a most intimate connection with the perfections of Deity; and, for anything we know, the reality in any other form might not have approved itself to the infinitely wise and absolutely perfect mind of God. Otherwise than it is, we can have no right to say it would have been at all. The argument founded on the supposed necessity of the incarnation to the proper unity of the human race, is entitled to no greater weight than the one just noticed. It assumes a necessity which has not and cannot be proved to have existed. Situated as the human family now is, it may no doubt be fitly designated, with Dorner, “a mere mass,” an aggregate of individuals, without any pervading principle to constitute them into an organism. But this is itself one of the results of the fall; and no one is entitled to argue from what actually is, to what would have been, if the race had stood in its normal condition. In the transmission of Adam’s guilt to his posterity, with its fearful heritage of suffering, corruption, and death, we have continually before us the remains of a living organism,—the reverse side, as it were, of the original likeness of humanity. Why might there not have been, had its divinely constituted head proved stedfast to his engagements, the transmission through that head of a yet more powerful as well as happy influence to all the members of the family? We have no reason to affirm such a thing to have been impossible, especially as the human head was but the representative and medium of communication appointed by and for Him who was the causal or creative head of the family. Dorner himself admits, that even the natural world is an unity, because in the Divine Logos, as the world-former and preserver, who in Himself bears and represents its eternal idea, it has a principle which is above it, yet pervades it, and comprises it within itself.^[58] If so much can be said even now, how much more might it have been said of the world viewed as it came from the hand of its Maker,—with no moral barrier to intercept the flow of life and blessing from its Divine fountainhead, and paralyze the constitution of nature in its more vital functions! In that case the unity in diversity, which is now the organic principle of the Christian Church, might, and doubtless would, have been that also of the Adamic family: only, in the one case, having its recognised seat and effective power in Christ as the incarnate Redeemer; in the other, in Him as the eternal and creative Word. Indeed, from the general relation of the two economies to each other, we are warranted in assuming, that as, in regard to individuals, Christ, the Redeemer, restores the Divine image, which, as to all essential properties, was originally given by Christ, the Word, so in regard to the race (considered as the subject of blessing), He restores in the one capacity what, as to germ and principle, He had implanted in the other. There are, of course, gradations and differences, but with these also fundamental agreements.

[58] Vol. II, Pt. II., p. 1242; Eng. Trans., Div. II., Vol. III., p. 235. As to the argument that Christianity is the absolute religion, and that without an incarnation there could be no Christianity in the proper sense, little more need be said, than that it starts a problem which, in our present imperfect condition, we want the materials for solving,—if, indeed, we shall ever possess them. To speak of the absolute in connection with what, from its very nature, and with a view to its distinctive aims, must be inter woven with much that pertains to the individual and the relative, is to employ terms to which we find it impossible to attach a very definite meaning. But if a religion is entitled to be called absolute, it surely ought to be because it is alike adapted to all, who through it are to contemplate and adore God—the whole universe of intelligent and moral creatures. How this, however, could have been found in a revelation which had the incarnation for its central fact,—found precisely on this account, and no otherwise,—is hard to be understood, since, to say nothing of the incarnation as now indissolubly linked to the facts of redemption, even an incarnation dissociated from everything relating to a fall, must still be viewed as presenting aspects, and bearing a relation, to the human family, which it could not have done to angelic natures. But, apart from this apparent incongruity, if there be such a thing possible as a religion that can justly be entitled to the name of absolute, we know as yet too little of the created universe, and the relations in which other portions of its inhabitants stand to the Creator, to pronounce with confidence on the conditions which would be required to meet in it. We stand awed, too, by the solemn utterance, “No man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son may reveal Him;” and assured that the Son has nowhere revealed what, according to the mind of the Father, would be needed to constitute for all times and regions the absolute religion, we feel that on such a theme silence is our true wisdom.