Chapter XXXVI: Section II: The Person Of Christ (1)

The redemption of mankind from sin was to be effected through a Mediator who should unite in himself both the human nature and the divine, in order that he might reconcile God to man and man to God. To facilitate an understanding of the Scriptural doctrine under consideration, it will be desirable at the outset to present a brief historical survey of views respecting the Person of Christ.

In the history of doctrine, as we have seen, beliefs held in
solution at the beginning are only gradually precipitated and
crystallized into definite formulas. The first question which
Christians naturally asked themselves was “_What think ye of the
Christ_” (_Mat 22:42_); then his relation to the Father; then, in
due succession, the nature of sin, of atonement, of justification,
of regeneration. Connecting these questions with the names of the
great leaders who sought respectively to answer them, we have: 1.
the Person of Christ, treated by Gregory Nazianzen (328); 2. the
Trinity, by Athanasius (325-373); 3. Sin, by Augustine (353-430);
4. Atonement, by Anselm (1033-1109); 5. Justification by faith, by
Luther (1485-1560); 6. Regeneration, by John Wesley
(1703-1791);—six weekdays of theology, leaving only a seventh, for
the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, which may be the work of our age.
_John 10:36_—“_him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the
world_”—hints at some mysterious process by which the Son was
prepared for his mission. Athanasius: “If the Word of God is in
the _world_, as in a body, what is there strange in affirming that
he has also entered into _humanity_?” This is the natural end of
evolution from lower to higher. See Medd, Bampton Lectures for
1882, on The One Mediator: The Operation of the Son of God in
Nature and in Grace; Orr, God’s Image in Man.

I. Historical Survey of Views Respecting the Person of Christ.

1. _The Ebionites_ (אביון = “poor”; A. D. 107?) denied the reality of Christ’s divine nature, and held him to be merely man, whether naturally or supernaturally conceived. This man, however, held a peculiar relation to God, in that, from the time of his baptism, an unmeasured fulness of the divine Spirit rested upon him. Ebionism was simply Judaism within the pale of the Christian church, and its denial of Christ’s godhood was occasioned by the apparent incompatibility of this doctrine with monotheism.

Fürst (Heb. Lexicon) derives the name “Ebionite” from the word
signifying “poor”; see _Is. 25:4_—“_thou hast been a stronghold to
the poor_”; _Mat 5:3_—“_Blessed are the poor in spirit._” It means
“oppressed, pious souls.” Epiphanius traces them back to the
Christians who took refuge, A. D. 66, at Pella, just before the
destruction of Jerusalem. They lasted down to the fourth century.
Dorner can assign no age for the formation of the sect, nor any
historically ascertained person as its head. It was not Judaic
Christianity, but only a fraction of this. There were two
divisions of the Ebionites:

(_a_) The Nazarenes, who held to the supernatural birth of Christ,
while they would not go to the length of admitting the preëxisting
hypostasis of the Son. They are said to have had the gospel of
Matthew, in Hebrew.

(_b_) The Cerinthian Ebionites, who put the baptism of Christ in
place of his supernatural birth, and made the ethical sonship the
cause of the physical. It seemed to them a heathenish fable that
the Son of God should be born of the Virgin. There was no personal
union between the divine and human in Christ. Christ, as distinct
from Jesus, was not a merely impersonal power descending upon
Jesus, but a preëxisting hypostasis above the world-creating
powers. The Cerinthian Ebionites, who on the whole best represent
the spirit of Ebionism, approximated to Pharisaic Judaism, and
were hostile to the writings of Paul. The Epistle to the Hebrews,
in fact, is intended to counteract an Ebionitic tendency to
overstrain law and to underrate Christ. In a complete view,
however, should also be mentioned:

(_c_) The Gnostic Ebionism of the pseudo-Clementines, which in
order to destroy the deity of Christ and save the pure monotheism,
so-called, of primitive religion, gave up even the best part of
the Old Testament. In all its forms, Ebionism conceives of God and
man as external to each other. God could not become man. Christ
was no more than a prophet or teacher, who, as the reward of his
virtue, was from the time of his baptism specially endowed with
the Spirit. After his death he was exalted to kingship. But that
would not justify the worship which the church paid him. A merely
creaturely mediator would separate us from God, instead of uniting
us to him. See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:305-307 (Syst. Doct.,
3:201-204), and Hist. Doct. Person Christ, A.1:187-217; Reuss,
Hist. Christ. Theol., 1:100-107; Schaff, Ch. Hist., 1:213-215.

2. _The Docetæ_ (δοκέω—“to seem,” “to appear”; A. D. 70-170), like most of the Gnostics in the second century and the Manichees in the third, denied the reality of Christ’s human body. This view was the logical sequence of their assumption of the inherent evil of matter. If matter is evil and Christ was pure, then Christ’s human body must have been merely phantasmal. Docetism was simply pagan philosophy introduced into the church.

The Gnostic Basilides held to a real human Christ, with whom the
divine νοῦς became united at the baptism; but the followers of
Basilides became Docetæ. To them, the body of Christ was merely a
seeming one. There was no real life or death. Valentinus made the
Æon, Christ, with a body purely pneumatic and worthy of himself,
pass through the body of the Virgin, as water through a reed,
taking up into himself nothing of the human nature through which
he passed; or as a ray of light through colored glass which only
imparts to the light a portion of its own darkness. Christ’s life
was simply a theophany. The Patripassians and Sabellians, who are
only sects of the Docetæ, denied all real humanity to Christ.
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 141—“He treads the thorns of death and
shame ‘like a triumphal path,’ of which he never felt the
sharpness. There was development only externally and in
appearance. No ignorance can be ascribed to him amidst the
omniscience of the Godhead.” Shelley: “A mortal shape to him Was
as the vapor dim Which the orient planet animates with light.” The
strong argument against Docetism was found in _Heb. 2:14_—“_Since
then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself
in like manner partook of the same._”

That Docetism appeared so early, shows that the impression Christ
made was that of a superhuman being. Among many of the Gnostics,
the philosophy which lay at the basis of their Docetism was a
pantheistic apotheosis of the world. God did not need to become
man, for man was essentially divine. This view, and the opposite
error of Judaism, already mentioned, both showed their
insufficiency by attempts to combine with each other, as in the
Alexandrian philosophy. See Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person Christ,
A.1:218-253, and Glaubenslehre, 2:307-310 (Syst. Doct.,
3:204-206); Neander, Ch. Hist, 1:387.

3. _The Arians_ (Arius, condemned at Nice, 325) denied the integrity of the divine nature in Christ. They regarded the Logos who united himself to humanity in Jesus Christ, not as possessed of absolute godhood, but as the first and highest of created beings. This view originated in a misinterpretation of the Scriptural accounts of Christ’s state of humiliation, and in mistaking temporary subordination for original and permanent inequality.

Arianism is called by Dorner a reaction from Sabellianism.
Sabellius had reduced the incarnation of Christ to a temporary
phenomenon. Arius thought to lay stress on the hypostasis of the
Son, and to give it fixity and substance. But, to his mind, the
reality of Sonship seemed to require subordination to the Father.
Origen had taught the subordination of the Son to the Father, in
connection with his doctrine of eternal generation. Arius held to
the subordination, and also to the generation, but this last, he
declared, could not be eternal, but must be in time. See Dorner,
Person Christ, A.2:227-244, and Glaubenslehre, 2:307, 312, 313
(Syst. Doct., 3:203, 207-210); Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.:
Arianismus. See also this Compendium, Vol. I:328-330.

4. _The Apollinarians_ (Apollinaris, condemned at Constantinople, 381) denied the integrity of Christ’s human nature. According to this view, Christ had no human νοῦς or πνεῦμα, other than that which was furnished by the divine nature. Christ had only the human σῶμα and ψυχή; the place of the human νοῦς or πνεῦμα was filled by the divine Logos. Apollinarism is an attempt to construe the doctrine of Christ’s person in the forms of the Platonic trichotomy.

Lest divinity should seem a foreign element, when added to this
curtailed manhood, Apollinaris said that there was an eternal
tendency to the human in the Logos himself; that in God was the
true manhood; that the Logos is the eternal, archetypal man. But
here is no _becoming_ man—only a manifestation in flesh of what
the Logos already _was_. So we have a Christ of great head and
dwarfed body. Justin Martyr preceded Apollinaris in this view. In
opposing it, the church Fathers said that “what the Son of God has
not taken to himself, he has not sanctified”—τὸ ἀπρόσληπτον καὶ
ἀθεράπευτον. See Dorner, Jahrbuch f. d. Theol., 1:397-408—“The
impossibility, on the Arian theory, of making two finite souls
into one, finally led to the [Apollinarian] denial of any human
soul in Christ”; see also, Dorner, Person Christ, A.2:352-399, and
Glaubenslehre, 2:310 (Syst. Doct., 3:206, 207); Shedd, Hist.
Doctrine, 1:394.

Apollinaris taught that the eternal Word took into union with
himself, not a complete human nature, but an irrational human
animal. Simon, Reconciliation, 329, comes near to being an
Apollinarian, when he maintains that the incarnate Logos was
human, but was not a man. He is the constituter of man,
self-limited, in order that he may save that to which he has given
life. Gore, Incarnation, 93—“Apollinaris suggested that the
archetype of manhood exists in God, who made man in his own image,
so that man’s nature in some sense preëxisted in God. The Son of
God was eternally human, and he could fill the place of the human
mind in Christ without his ceasing to be in some sense divine....
This the church negatived,—man is not God, nor God man. The first
principle of theism is that manhood at the bottom is not the same
thing as Godhead. This is a principle intimately bound up with
man’s responsibility and the reality of sin. The interests of
theism were at stake.”

5. _The Nestorians_ (Nestorius, removed from the Patriarchate of Constantinople, 431) denied the real union between the divine and the human natures in Christ, making it rather a moral than an organic one. They refused therefore to attribute to the resultant unity the attributes of each nature, and regarded Christ as a man in very near relation to God. Thus they virtually held to two natures and two persons, instead of two natures in one person.

Nestorius disliked the phrase: “Mary, mother of God.” The
Chalcedon statement asserted its truth, with the significant
addition: “as to his humanity.” Nestorius made Christ a peculiar
temple of God. He believed in συνάφεια, not ἕνωσις,—junction and
indwelling, but not absolute union. He made too much of the
analogy of the union of the believer with Christ, and separated as
much as possible the divine and the human. The two natures were,
in his view, ἄλλος καὶ ἄλλος, instead of being ἄλλο καὶ ἄλλο,
which together constitute εἶς—one personality. The union which he
accepted was a moral union, which makes Christ simply God and man,
instead of the God-man.

John of Damascus compared the passion of Christ to the felling of
a tree on which the sun shines. The axe fells the tree, but does
no harm to the sunbeams. So the blows which struck Christ’s
humanity caused no harm to his deity; while the flesh suffered,
the deity remained impassible. This leaves, however, no divine
efficacy of the human sufferings, and no personal union of the
human with the divine. The error of Nestorius arose from a
philosophic nominalism, which refused to conceive of nature
without personality. He believed in nothing more than a local or
moral union, like the marriage union, in which two become one; or
like the state, which is sometimes called a moral person, because
having a unity composed of many persons. See Dorner, Person
Christ, B.1:53-79, and Glaubenslehre, 2:315, 316 (Syst. Doct.,
3:211-213); Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:210; Wilberforce,
Incarnation, 152-154.

“There was no need here of the virgin-birth,—to secure a sinless
father as well as mother would have been enough. Nestorianism
holds to no real incarnation—only to an alliance between God and
man. After the fashion of the Siamese twins, Chang and Eng, man
and God are joined together. But the incarnation is not merely a
higher degree of the mystical union.” Gore, Incarnation,
94—“Nestorius adopted and popularized the doctrine of the famous
commentator, Theodore of Mopsuestia. But the Christ of Nestorius
was simply a deified man, not God incarnate,—he was from below,
not from above. If he was exalted to union with the divine
essence, his exaltation was only that of one individual man.”

6. _The Eutychians_ (condemned at Chalcedon, 451) denied the distinction and coëxistence of the two natures, and held to a mingling of both into one, which constituted a _tertium quid_, or third nature. Since in this case the divine must overpower the human, it follows that the human was really absorbed into or transmuted into the divine, although the divine was not in all respects the same, after the union, that it was before. Hence the Eutychians were often called Monophysites, because they virtually reduced the two natures to one.

They were an Alexandrian school, which included monks of
Constantinople and Egypt. They used the words σύγχυσις,
μεταβολή—confounding, transformation—to describe the union of the
two natures in Christ. Humanity joined to deity was as a drop of
honey mingled with the ocean. There was a change in either
element, but as when a stone attracts the earth, or a meteorite
the sun, or when a small boat pulls a ship, all the movement was
virtually on the part of the smaller object. Humanity was so
absorbed in deity, as to be altogether lost. The union was
illustrated by electron, a metal compounded of silver and gold. A
more modern illustration would be that of the chemical union of an
acid and an alkali, to form a salt unlike either of the
constituents.

In effect this theory denied the human element, and, with this,
the possibility of atonement, on the part of human nature, as well
as of real union of man with God. Such a magical union of the two
natures as Eutyches described is inconsistent with any real
_becoming man_ on the part of the Logos,—the manhood is well-nigh
as illusory as upon the theory of the Docetæ. Mason, Faith of the
Gospel, 140—“This turns not the Godhead only but the manhood also
into something foreign—into some nameless nature, betwixt and
between—the fabulous nature of a semi-human demigod,” like the
Centaur.

The author of “The German Theology” says that “Christ’s human
nature was utterly bereft of self, and was nothing else but a
house and habitation of God.” The Mystics would have human
personality so completely the organ of the divine that “we may be
to God what man’s hand is to a man,” and that “I” and “mine” may
cease to have any meaning. Both these views savor of Eutychianism.
On the other hand, the Unitarian says that Christ was “a mere
man.” But there cannot be such a thing as a mere man, exclusive of
aught above and beyond him, self-centered and self-moved. The
Trinitarian sometimes declares himself as believing that Christ is
God and man, thus implying the existence of two substances. Better
say that Christ is the God-man, who manifests all the divine
powers and qualities of which all men and all nature are partial
embodiments. See Dorner, Person of Christ, B.1:83-93, and
Glaubenslehre, 2:318, 319 (Syst. Doct., 3:214-216); Guericke, Ch.
History, 1:356-360.

The foregoing survey would seem to show that history had exhausted the possibilities of heresy, and that the future denials of the doctrine of Christ’s person must be, in essence, forms of the views already mentioned. All controversies with regard to the person of Christ must, of necessity, hinge upon one of three points: first, the reality of the two natures; secondly, the integrity of the two natures; thirdly, the union of the two natures in one person. Of these points, Ebionism and Docetism deny the reality of the natures; Arianism and Apollinarianism deny their integrity; while Nestorianism and Eutychianism deny their proper union. In opposition to all these errors, the orthodox doctrine held its ground and maintains it to this day.

We may apply to this subject what Dr. A. P. Peabody said in a
different connection: “The canon of infidelity was closed almost
as soon as that of the Scriptures”—modern unbelievers having, for
the most part, repeated the objections of their ancient
predecessors. Brooks, Foundations of Zoölogy, 126—“As a shell
which has failed to burst is picked up on some old battle-field,
by some one on whom experience is thrown away, and is exploded by
him in the bosom of his approving family, with disastrous results,
so one of these abandoned beliefs may be dug up by the head of
some intellectual family, to the confusion of those who follow him
as their leader.”

7. _The Orthodox doctrine_ (promulgated at Chalcedon, 451) holds that in the one person Jesus Christ there are two natures, a human nature and a divine nature, each in its completeness and integrity, and that these two natures are organically and indissolubly united, yet so that no third nature is formed thereby. In brief, to use the antiquated dictum, orthodox doctrine forbids us either to divide the person or to confound the natures.

That this doctrine is Scriptural and rational, we have yet to show. We may most easily arrange our proofs by reducing the three points mentioned to two, namely: first, the reality and integrity of the two natures; secondly, the union of the two natures in one person.

The formula of Chalcedon is negative, with the exception of its
assertion of a ἕνωσις ὑποστατική. It proceeds from the natures,
and regards the result of the union to be the person. Each of the
two natures is regarded as in movement toward the other. The
symbol says nothing of an ἀνυποστασία of the human nature, nor
does it say that the Logos furnishes the ego in the personality.
John of Damascus, however, pushed forward to these conclusions,
and his work, translated into Latin, was used by Peter Lombard,
and determined the views of the Western church of the Middle Ages.
Dorner regards this as having given rise to the Mariolatry,
saint-invocation, and transubstantiation of the Roman Catholic
Church. See Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:189 _sq._; Dorner, Person
Christ, B.1:93-119, and Glaubenslehre, 2:320-328 (Syst. Doct.,
3:216-223), in which last passage may be found valuable matter
with regard to the changing uses of the words πρόσωπον, ὑπόστασις,
οὐσία, _etc._

Gore, Incarnation, 96, 101—“These decisions simply express in a
new form, without substantial addition, the apostolic teaching as
it is represented in the New Testament. They express it in a new
form for protective purposes, as a legal enactment protects a
moral principle. They are developments only in the sense that they
represent the apostolic teaching worked out into formulas by the
aid of a terminology which was supplied by Greek dialectics....
What the church borrowed from Greek thought was her terminology,
not the substance of her creed. Even in regard to her terminology
we must make one important reservation; for Christianity laid all
stress on the personality of God and man, of which Hellenism had
thought but little.”

II. The two Natures of Christ,—their Reality and Integrity.

1. The Humanity of Christ.

A. Its Reality.—This may be shown as follows:

(_a_) He expressly called himself, and was called, “man.”

_John 8:40_—“_ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the
truth_”; _Acts 2:22_—“_Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God
unto you_”; _Rom. 5:15_—“_the one man, Jesus Christ_”; _1 Cor.
15:21_—“_by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of
the dead_”; _1 Tim. 2:5_—“_one mediator also between God and man,
himself man, Christ Jesus._” Compare the genealogies in _Mat.
1:1-17_ and _Luke 3:23-38_, the former of which proves Jesus to be
in the royal line, and the latter of which proves him to be in the
natural line, of succession from David; the former tracing back
his lineage to Abraham, and the latter to Adam. Christ is
therefore the son of David, and of the stock of Israel. Compare
also the phrase “_Son of man_,” _e. g._, in _Mat. 20:28_, which,
however much it may mean in addition, certainly indicates the
veritable humanity of Jesus. Compare, finally, the term “_flesh_”
(= human nature), applied to him in _John 1:14_—“_And the Word
became flesh_” and in _1 John 4:2_—“_every spirit that confesseth
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God._”

“Jesus is the true Son of man whom he proclaimed himself to be.
This implies that he is the representative of all humanity.
Consider for a moment what is implied in your being a man. How
many parents had you? You answer, Two. How many grandparents? You
answer, Four. How many great-grandparents? Eight. How many
great-great-grandparents? Sixteen. So the number of your ancestors
increases as you go further back, and if you take in only twenty
generations, you will have to reckon yourself as the outcome of
more than a million progenitors. The name Smith, or Jones, which
you bear, represents only one strain of all those million; you
might almost as well bear any other name; your existence is more
an expression of the race at large than of any particular family
or line. What is true of you, was true, on the human side, of the
Lord Jesus. In him all the lines of our common humanity converged.
He was the Son of man, far more than he was Son of Mary”; see A.
H. Strong, Sermon before the London Baptist Congress.

(_b_) He possessed the essential elements of human nature as at present constituted—a material body and a rational soul.

_Mat. 26:38_—“_My soul is exceeding sorrowful_”; _John 11:33_—“_he
groaned in the spirit_”; _Mat. 26:26_—“_this is my body_”;
_28_—“_this is my blood_”; _Luke 24:39_—“_a spirit hath not flesh
and bones, as ye behold me having_”; _Heb. 2:14_—“_Since then the
children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself in like
manner partook of the same_”; _1 John 1:1_—“_that which we have
heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we
beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life_”;
_4:2_—“_every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in
the flesh is of God._”

Yet Christ was not all men in one, and he did not illustrate the
development of all human powers. Laughter, painting, literature,
marriage—these provinces he did not invade. Yet we do not regard
these as absent from the ideal man. The perfection of Jesus was
the perfection of self-limiting love. For our sakes he sanctified
himself (_John 17:19_), or separated himself from much that in an
ordinary man would have been excellence and delight. He became an
example to us, by doing God’s will and reflecting God’s character
in his particular environment and in his particular mission—that
of the world’s Redeemer; see H. E. Robins, Ethics of the Christian
Life, 259-303.

Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 86-105—“Christ was not a man
only amongst men. His relation to the human race is not that he
was another specimen, differing, by being another, from every one
but himself. His relation to the race was not a differentiating
but a consummating relation. He was not generically but
inclusively man.... The only relation that can at all directly
compare with it is that of Adam, who in a real sense was
humanity.... That complete indwelling and possessing of even one
other, which the yearnings of man toward man imperfectly approach,
is only possible, in any fulness of the words, to that spirit of
man which is the Spirit of God: to the Spirit of God become,
through incarnation, the spirit of man.... If Christ’s humanity
were not the humanity of Deity, it could not stand in the wide,
inclusive, consummating relation, in which it stands, in fact, to
the humanity of all other men.... Yet the centre of Christ’s being
as man was not in himself but in God. He was the expression, by
willing reflection, of Another.”

(_c_) He was moved by the instinctive principles, and he exercised the active powers, which belong to a normal and developed humanity (hunger, thirst, weariness, sleep, love, compassion, anger, anxiety, fear, groaning, weeping, prayer).

_Mat 4:2_—“_he afterward hungered_”; _John 19:28_—“_I thirst_”;
_4:6_—“_Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus
by the well_”; _Mat 8:24_—“_the boat was covered with the waves:
but he was asleep_”; _Mark 10:21_—“_Jesus looking upon him loved
him_”; _Mat. 9:36_—“_when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with
compassion for them_”; _Mark 3:5_—“_looked round about on them
with anger, being grieved at the hardening of their heart_”; _Heb.
5:7_—“_supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that
was able to save him from death_”; _John 12:27_—“_Now is my soul
troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour_”;
_11:33_—“_he groaned in the spirit_”; _35_—“_Jesus wept_”; _Mat
14:23_—“_he went up into the mountain apart to pray._” _Heb.
2:16_—“_For it is not doubtless angels whom he rescueth, but he
rescueth the seed of Abraham_” (Kendrick).

Prof. J. P. Silvernail, on The Elocution of Jesus, finds the
following intimations as to his delivery. It was characterized by
1. Naturalness (sitting, as at Capernaum); 2. Deliberation
(cultivates responsiveness in his hearers); 3. Circumspection (he
looked at Peter); 4. Dramatic action (woman taken in adultery); 5.
Self-control (authority, poise, no vociferation, denunciation of
Scribes and Pharisees). All these are manifestations of truly
human qualities and virtues. The epistle of James, the brother of
our Lord, with its exaltation of a meek, quiet and holy life, may
be an unconscious reflection of the character of Jesus, as it had
appeared to James during the early days at Nazareth. So John the
Baptist’s exclamation, “_I have need to be baptized of thee_”
(_Mat 3:14_), may be an inference from his intercourse with Jesus
in childhood and youth.

(_d_) He was subject to the ordinary laws of human development, both in body and soul (grew and waxed strong in spirit; asked questions; grew in wisdom and stature; learned obedience; suffered being tempted; was made perfect through sufferings).

_Luke 2:40_—“_the child grew, and waxed strong, filled with
wisdom_”; _46_—“_sitting in the midst of the teachers, both
hearing them, and asking them questions_” (here, at his twelfth
year, he appears first to become fully conscious that he is the
Sent of God, the Son of God); _49_—“_know ye not that I must be in
my Father’s house?_” (lit. “in the things of my Father”);
_52_—“_advanced in wisdom and stature_”; _Heb. 5:8_—“_learned
obedience by the things which he suffered_”; _2:18_—“_in that he
himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them
that are tempted_”; _10_—“_it became him ... to make the author of
their salvation perfect through sufferings._”

Keble: “Was not our Lord a little child, Taught by degrees to
pray; By father dear and mother mild Instructed day by day?”
Adamson, The Mind in Christ: “To Henry Drummond Christianity was
the crown of the evolution of the whole universe. Jesus’ growth in
stature and in favor with God and men is a picture in miniature of
the age-long evolutionary process.” Forrest, Christ of History and
of Experience, 185—“The incarnation of the Son was not his one
revelation of God, but the interpretation to sinful humanity of
all his other revelations of God in nature and history and moral
experience, which had been darkened by sin.... The Logos,
incarnate or not, is the τέλος as well as the ἀρχή of creation.”

Andrew Murray, Spirit of Christ, 26, 27—“Though now baptized
himself, he cannot yet baptize others. He must first, in the power
of his baptism, meet temptation and overcome it; must learn
obedience and suffer; yea, through the eternal Spirit, offer
himself a sacrifice to God and his Will; then only could he afresh
receive the Holy Spirit as the reward of obedience, with the power
to baptize all who belong to him”; see _Acts 2:33_—“_Being
therefore by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of
the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he hath poured forth
this, which ye see and hear._”

(_e_) He suffered and died (bloody sweat; gave up his spirit; his side pierced, and straightway there came out blood and water).

_Luke 22:44_—“_being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his
sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling down upon the
ground_”; _John 19:30_—“_he bowed his head, and gave up his
spirit_”; _34_—“_one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his
side, and straightway there came out blood and water_”—held by
Stroud, Physical Cause of our Lord’s Death, to be proof that Jesus
died of a broken heart.

Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, 1:9-19—“The Lord is said to have grown in
wisdom and favor with God, not because it was so, but because he
acted as if it were so. So he was exalted after death, as if this
exaltation were on account of death.” But we may reply: Resolve
all signs of humanity into mere appearance, and you lose the
divine nature as well as the human; for God is truth and cannot
act a lie. The babe, the child, even the man, in certain respects,
was ignorant. Jesus, the boy, was not making crosses, as in
Overbeck’s picture, but rather yokes and plows, as Justin Martyr
relates—serving a real apprenticeship in Joseph’s workshop: _Mark
6:3_—“_Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?_”

See Holman Hunt’s picture, “The Shadow of the Cross”—in which not
Jesus, but only Mary, sees the shadow of the cross upon the wall.
He lived a life of faith, as well as of prayer (_Heb.
12:2_—“_Jesus the author_ [captain, prince] _and perfecter of our
faith_”), dependent upon Scripture, which was much of it, as _Ps.
16_ and _118_, and _Is. 49, 50, 61,_ written for him, as well as
about him. See Park, Discourses, 297-327; Deutsch, Remains,
131—“The boldest transcendental flight of the Talmud is its
saying: ‘God prays.’ ” In Christ’s humanity, united as it is to
deity, we have the fact answering to this piece of Talmudic
poetry.

B. Its Integrity. We here use the term “integrity” to signify, not merely completeness, but perfection. That which is perfect is, _a fortiori_, complete in all its parts. Christ’s human nature was:

(_a_) Supernaturally conceived; since the denial of his supernatural conception involves either a denial of the purity of Mary, his mother, or a denial of the truthfulness of Matthew’s and Luke’s narratives.

_Luke 1:34, 35_—“_And Mary said unto the angel, How shall this be,
seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her,
The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most
High shall overshadow thee._” The “_seed of the woman_” (_Gen.
3:15_) was one who had no earthly father. “_Eve_” = life, not only
as being the source of physical life to the race, but also as
bringing into the world him who was to be its spiritual life.
Julius Müller, Proof-texts, 29—Jesus Christ “had no earthly
father; his birth was a creative act of God, breaking through the
chain of human generation.” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:447 (Syst.
Doct., 3:345)—“The new science recognizes manifold methods of
propagation, and that too even in one and the same species.”

Professor Loeb has found that the unfertilized egg of the
sea-urchin may be made by chemical treatment to produce thrifty
young, and he thinks it probable that the same effect may be
produced among the mammalia. Thus parthenogenesis in the highest
order of life is placed among the scientific possibilities.
Romanes, even while he was an agnostic, affirmed that a
virgin-birth even in the human race would be by no means out of
the range of possibility; see his Darwin and After Darwin, 119,
footnote—“Even if a virgin has ever conceived and borne a son, and
even if such a fact in the human species has been unique, it would
not betoken any breach of physiological continuity.” Only a new
impulse from the Creator could save the Redeemer from the long
accruing fatalities of human generation. But the new creation of
humanity in Christ is scientifically quite as possible as its
first creation in Adam; and in both cases there may have been no
violation of natural law, but only a unique revelation of its
possibilities. “Birth from a virgin made it clear that a new thing
was taking place in the earth, and that One was coming into the
world who was not simply man.” A. B. Bruce: “Thoroughgoing
naturalism excludes the virgin life as well as the virgin birth.”
See Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 254-270; A. H. Strong,
Christ in Creation, 176.

Paul Lobstein, Incarnation of our Lord, 217—“That which is unknown
to the teachings of St. Peter and St. Paul, St. John and St.
James, and our Lord himself, and is absent from the earliest and
the latest gospels, cannot be so essential as many people have
supposed.” This argument from silence is sufficiently met by the
considerations that Mark passes over thirty years of our Lord’s
life in silence; that John presupposes the narratives of Matthew
and of Luke; that Paul does not deal with the story of Jesus’
life. The facts were known at first only to Mary and to Joseph;
their very nature involved reticence until Jesus was demonstrated
to be “_the Son of God with power ... by the resurrection from the
dead_” (_Rom. 1:4_); meantime the natural development of Jesus and
his refusal to set up an earthly kingdom may have made the
miraculous events of thirty years ago seem to Mary like a
wonderful dream; so only gradually the marvellous tale of the
mother of the Lord found its way into the gospel tradition and
creeds of the church, and into the inmost hearts of Christians of
all countries; see F. L. Anderson, in Baptist Review and
Expositor, 1904:25-44, and Machen, on the N. T. Account of the
Birth of Jesus, in Princeton Theol. Rev., Oct. 1905, and Jan.
1906.

Cooke, on The Virgin Birth of our Lord, in Methodist Rev., Nov.
1904:849-857—“If there is a moral taint in the human race, if in
the very blood and constitution of humanity there is an
ineradicable tendency to sin, then it is utterly inconceivable
that any one born in the race by natural means should escape the
taint of that race. And, finally, if the virgin birth is not
historical, then a difficulty greater than any that destructive
criticism has yet evolved from documents, interpolations,
psychological improbabilities and unconscious contradictions
confronts the reason and upsets all the long results of scientific
observation,—that a sinful and deliberately sinning and unmarried
pair should have given life to the purest human being that ever
lived or of whom the human race has ever dreamed, and that he,
knowing and forgiving the sins of others, never knew the shame of
his own origin.” See also Gore, Dissertations, 1-68, on the Virgin
Birth of our Lord, J. Armitage Robinson, Some Thoughts on the
Incarnation, 42, both of whom show that without assuming the
reality of the virgin birth we cannot account for the origin of
the narratives of Matthew and of Luke, nor for the acceptance of
the virgin birth by the early Christians. _Per contra_, see Hoben,
in Am. Jour. Theol., 1902:478-506, 709-752. For both sides of the
controversy, see Symposium by Bacon, Zenos, Rhees and Warfield, in
Am. Jour. Theol., Jan. 1906:1-30; and especially Orr, Virgin Birth
of Christ.

(_b_) Free, both from hereditary depravity, and from actual sin; as is shown by his never offering sacrifice, never praying for forgiveness, teaching that all but he needed the new birth, challenging all to convict him of a single sin.

Jesus frequently went up to the temple, but he never offered
sacrifice. He prayed: “_Father, forgive them_” (_Luke 23:34_); but
he never prayed: “Father, forgive _me_.” He said: “_Ye must be
born anew_” (_John 3:7_); but the words indicated that _he_ had no
such need. “At no moment in all that life could a single detail
have been altered, except for the worse.” He not only _yielded_ to
God’s will when made known to him, but he _sought_ it: “_I seek
not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me_” (_John
5:30_). The anger which he showed was no passionate or selfish or
vindictive anger, but the indignation of righteousness against
hypocrisy and cruelty—an indignation accompanied with grief:
“_looked round about on them with anger, being grieved at the
hardening of their heart_” (_Mark 3:5_). F. W. H. Myers, St. Paul,
19, 53—“Thou with strong prayer and very much entreating Willest
be asked, and thou wilt answer then, Show the hid heart beneath
creation beating, Smile with kind eyes and be a man with men....
Yea, through life, death, through sorrow and through sinning, He
shall suffice me, for he hath sufficed: Christ is the end, for
Christ was the beginning, Christ the beginning, for the end is
Christ.” Not personal experience of sin, but resistance to it,
fitted him to deliver us from it.

_Luke 1:35_—“_wherefore also the holy thing which is begotten
shall be called the Son of God_”; _John 8:46_—“_Which of you
convicteth me of sin?_” _14:30_—“_the prince of the world cometh:
and he hath nothing in me_” = not the slightest evil inclination
upon which his temptations can lay hold; _Rom. 8:3_—“_in the
likeness of sinful flesh_” = in flesh, but without the sin which
in other men clings to the flesh; _2 Cor. 5:21_—“_Him who knew no
sin_”; _Heb. 4:15_—“_in all points tempted like as we are, yet
without sin_”; _7:26_—“_holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from
sinners_”—by the fact of his immaculate conception;
_9:14_—“_through the eternal Spirit offered himself without
blemish unto God_”; _1 Pet. 1:19_—“_precious blood, as of a lamb
without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ_”;
_2:22_—“_who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth_”;
_1 John 3:5, 7_—“_in him is no sin ... he is righteous._”

Julius Müller, Proof-texts, 29—“Had Christ been only human nature,
he could not have been without sin. But _life_ can draw out of the
putrescent clod materials for its own living. Divine life
appropriates the human.” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:446 (Syst.
Doct., 3:344)—“What with us is regeneration, is with him the
incarnation of God.” In this origin of Jesus’ sinlessness from his
union with God, we see the absurdity, both doctrinally and
practically, of speaking of an immaculate conception of the
Virgin, and of making her sinlessness precede that of her Son. On
the Roman Catholic doctrine of the immaculate conception of the
Virgin, see H. B. Smith, System, 389-392; Mason, Faith of the
Gospel, 129-131—“It makes the regeneration of humanity begin, not
with Christ, but with the Virgin. It breaks his connection with
the race. Instead of springing sinless from the sinful race, he
derives his humanity from something not like the rest of us.”
Thomas Aquinas and Liguori both call Mary the Queen of Mercy, as
Jesus her Son is King of Justice; see Thomas, Præf. in Sept. Cath.
Ep., Comment on Esther, 5:3, and Liguori, Glories of Mary, 1:80
(Dublin version of 1866). Bradford, Heredity, 289—“The Roman
church has almost apotheosized Mary; but it must not be forgotten
that the process began with Jesus. From what he was, an inference
was drawn concerning what his mother must have been.”

“Christ took human nature in such a way that this nature, without
sin, bore the consequences of sin.” That portion of human nature
which the Logos took into union with himself was, in the very
instant and by the fact of his taking it, purged from all its
inherent depravity. But if in Christ there was no sin, or tendency
to sin, how could he be tempted? In the same way, we reply, that
Adam was tempted. Christ was not omniscient: _Mark 13:32_—“_of
that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in
heaven, neither the Son, but the Father._” Only at the close of
the first temptation does Jesus recognize Satan as the adversary
of souls: _Mat. 4:10_—“_Get thee hence, Satan._” Jesus could be
tempted, not only because he was not omniscient, but also because
he had the keenest susceptibility to all the forms of innocent
desire. To these desires temptation may appeal. Sin consists, not
in these desires, but in the gratification of them out of God’s
order, and contrary to God’s will. Meyer: “Lust is appetite run
wild. There is no harm in any natural appetite, considered in
itself. But appetite has been spoiled by the Fall.” So Satan
appealed (_Mat. 4:1-11_) to our Lord’s desire for food, for
applause, for power; to “Ueberglaube, Aberglaude, Unglaube”
(Kurtz); _cf._ _Mat. 26:39; 27:42; 26:53_. All temptation must be
addressed either to desire or fear; so Christ “_was in all points
tempted like as we are_” (_Heb. 4:15_). The first temptation, in
the wilderness, was addressed to desire; the second, in the
garden, was addressed to fear. Satan, after the first, “_departed
from him for a season_” (_Luke 4:13_); but he returned, in
Gethsemane—“_the prince of the world cometh: and he hath nothing
in me_” (_John 14:30_)—If possible, to deter Jesus from his work,
by rousing within him vast and agonizing fears of the suffering
and death that lay before him. Yet, in spite of both the desire
and the fear with which his holy soul was moved, he was “_without
sin_” (_Heb. 4:15_). The tree on the edge of the precipice is
fiercely blown by the winds: the strain upon the roots is
tremendous, but the roots hold. Even in Gethsemane and on Calvary,
Christ never prays for forgiveness, he only imparts it to others.
See Ullman, Sinlessness of Jesus; Thomasius, Christi Person und
Werk, 2:7-17, 126-136, esp. 135, 136; Schaff, Person of Christ,
51-72; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 3:330-349.

(_c_) Ideal human nature,—furnishing the moral pattern which man is progressively to realize, although within limitations of knowledge and of activity required by his vocation as the world’s Redeemer.

_Psalm 8:4-8_—“_thou hast made him but little lower than God, And
crownest him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have
dominion over the works of thy hands; Thou hast put all things
under his feet_”—a description of the ideal man, which finds its
realization only in Christ. _Heb. 2:6-10_—“_But now we see not yet
all things subjected to him. But we behold him who hath been made
a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the
suffering of death crowned with glory and honor._” _1 Cor.
15:45_—“_The first ... Adam ... The last Adam_”—implies that the
second Adam realized the full concept of humanity, which failed to
be realized in the first Adam; so _verse 49_—“_as we have borne
the image of the earthly_ [man], _we shall also bear the image of
the heavenly_” [man]. _2 Cor. 3:18_—“_the glory of the Lord_” is
the pattern, into whose likeness we are to be changed. _Phil
3:21_—“_who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that
it may be conformed to the body of his glory_”; _Col. 1:18_—“_that
in all things he might have the pre-eminence_”; _1 Pet.
2:21_—“_suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should
follow his steps_”; _1 John 3:3_—“_every one that hath this hope
set on him purifieth himself, even as he is pure._”

The phrase “_Son of man_” (_John 5:27_; _cf._ _Dan. 7:13_, Com. of
Pusey, _in loco_, and Westcott, in Bible Com. on John, 32-35)
seems to intimate that Christ answers to the perfect idea of
humanity, as it at first existed in the mind of God. Not that he
was surpassingly beautiful in physical form; for the only way to
reconcile the seemingly conflicting intimations is to suppose that
in all outward respects he took our average humanity—at one time
appearing without form or comeliness (_Is. 52:2_), and aged before
his time (_John 8:57_—“_Thou art not yet fifty years old_”), at
another time revealing so much of his inward grace and glory that
men were attracted and awed (_Ps. 45:2_—“_Thou art fairer than the
children of men_”; _Luke 4:22_—“_the words of grace which
proceeded out of his mouth_”; _Mark 10:32_—“_Jesus was going
before them: and they were amazed; and they that followed were
afraid_”; _Mat. 17:1-8_—the account of the transfiguration).
Compare the Byzantine pictures of Christ with those of the Italian
painters,—the former ascetic and emaciated, the latter types of
physical well-being. Modern pictures make Jesus too exclusively a
Jew. Yet there is a certain truth in the words of Mozoomdar:
“Jesus was an Oriental, and we Orientals understand him. He spoke
in figure. We understand him. He was a mystic. You take him
literally: you make an Englishman of him.” So Japanese Christians
will not swallow the Western system of theology, because they say
that this would be depriving the world of the Japanese view of
Christ.

But in all spiritual respects Christ was perfect. In him are
united all the excellences of both the sexes, of all temperaments
and nationalities and characters. He possesses, not simply passive
innocence, but positive and absolute holiness, triumphant through
temptation. He includes in himself all objects and reasons for
affection and worship; so that, in loving him, “love can never
love too much.” Christ’s human nature, therefore, and not human
nature as it is in us, is the true basis of ethics and of
theology. This absence of narrow individuality, this ideal,
universal manhood, could not have been secured by merely natural
laws of propagation,—it was secured by Christ’s miraculous
conception; see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:446 (Syst. Doct., 3:344).
John G. Whittier, on the Birmingham philanthropist, Joseph Sturge:
“Tender as woman, manliness and meekness In him were so allied,
That they who judged him by his strength or weakness Saw but a
single side.”

Seth, Ethical Principles, 420—“The secret of the power of the
moral Ideal is the conviction which it carries with it that it is
no _mere_ ideal, but the expression of the supreme Reality.”
Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 364—“The _a priori_ only
outlines a _possible_, and does not determine what shall be
_actual_ within the limits of the possible. If experience is to be
possible, it must take on certain forms, but those forms are
compatible with an infinite variety of experience.” No _a priori_
truths or ideals can guarantee Christianity. We want a historical
basis, an actual Christ, a _realization_ of the divine ideal.
“Great men,” says Amiel, “are the true men.” Yes, we add, but only
Christ, the greatest man, shows what the true man is. The heavenly
perfection of Jesus discloses to us the greatness of our own
possible being, while at the same time it reveals our infinite
shortcoming and the source from which all restoration must come.

Gore, Incarnation, 168—“Jesus Christ is the catholic man. In a
sense, all the greatest men have overlapped the boundaries of
their time. ‘The truly great Have all one age, and from one
visible space Shed influence. They, both in power and act Are
permanent, and time is not with them, Save as it worketh for them,
they in it.’ But in a unique sense the manhood of Jesus is
catholic; because it is exempt, not from the limitations which
belong to manhood, but from the limitations which make our manhood
narrow and isolated, merely local or national.” Dale, Ephesians,
42—“Christ is a servant and something more. There is an ease, a
freedom, a grace, about his doing the will of God, which can
belong only to a Son.... There is nothing constrained ... he was
born to it.... He does the will of God as a child does the will of
its father, naturally, as a matter of course, almost without
thought.... No irreverent familiarity about his communion with the
Father, but also no trace of fear, or even of wonder.... Prophets
had fallen to the ground when the divine glory was revealed to
them, but Christ stands calm and erect. A subject may lose his
self-possession in the presence of his prince, but not a son.”

Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 148—“What once he had perceived, he
thenceforth knew. He had no opinions, no conjectures; we are never
told that he forgot, nor even that he remembered, which would
imply a degree of forgetting; we are not told that he arrived at
truths by the process of reasoning them out; but he reasons them
out for others. It is not recorded that he took counsel or formed
plans; but he desired, and he purposed, and he did one thing with
a view to another.” On Christ, as the ideal man, see
Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 307-336; F. W. Robertson,
Sermon on The Glory of the Divine Son, 2nd Series, Sermon XIX;
Wilberforce, Incarnation, 22-99; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 2:25;
Moorhouse, Nature and Revelation, 37; Tennyson, Introduction to In
Memoriam; Farrar, Life of Christ, 1:148-154, and 2:excursus iv;
Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 276-332; Thomas Hughes, The
Manliness of Christ; Hopkins, Scriptural Idea of Man, 121-145;
Tyler, in Bib. Sac., 22:51, 620; Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:451
_sq._

(_d_) A human nature that found its personality only in union with the divine nature,—in other words, a human nature impersonal, in the sense that it had no personality separate from the divine nature, and prior to its union therewith.

By the impersonality of Christ’s human nature, we mean only that
it had no personality before Christ took it, no personality before
its union with the divine. It was a human nature whose
consciousness and will were developed only in union with the
personality of the Logos. The Fathers therefore rejected the word
ἀνυποστασία, and substituted the word ἐνυποστασία,—they favored
not _un_personality but _in_personality. In still plainer terms,
the Logos did not take into union with himself an already
developed human person, such as James, Peter, or John, but human
nature before it had become personal or was capable of receiving a
name. It reached its personality only in union with his own divine
nature. Therefore we see in Christ not two persons—a human person
and a divine person—but one person, and that person possessed of a
human nature as well as of a divine. For proof of this, see pages
683-700, also Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:289-308.

Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 136—“We count it no defect in our
bodies that they have no personal subsistence apart from
ourselves, and that, if separated from ourselves, they are
nothing. They share in a true personal life because we, whose
bodies they are, are persons. What happens to them happens to us.”
In a similar manner the personality of the Logos furnished the
organizing principle of Jesus’ two-fold nature. As he looked
backward he could see himself dwelling in eternity with God, so
far as his divine nature was concerned. But as respects his
humanity he could remember that it was not eternal,—it had had its
beginnings in time. Yet this humanity had never had a separate
personal existence,—its personality had been developed only in
connection with the divine nature. Göschel, quoted in Dorner’s
Person of Christ, 5:170—“Christ _is_ humanity; we have it; he is
it entirely; we participate therein. His personality precedes and
lies at the basis of the personality of the race and its
individuals. As idea, he is implanted in the whole of humanity; he
lies at the basis of every human consciousness, without however
attaining realization in an individual; for this is only possible
in the entire race at the end of the times.”

Emma Marie Caillard, on Man in the Light of Evolution, in Contemp.
Rev., Dec. 1893: 873-881—“Christ is not only the goal of the race
which is to be conformed to him, but he is also the vital
principle which moulds each individual of that race into its own
similitude. The perfect type exists potentially through all the
intermediate stages by which it is more and more nearly
approached, and, if it did not exist, neither could they. There
could be no development of an absent life. The goal of man’s
evolution, the perfect type of manhood, is Christ. He exists and
always has existed potentially in the race and in the individual,
equally before as after his visible incarnation, equally in the
millions of those who do not, as in the far fewer millions of
those who do, bear his name. In the strictest sense of the words,
he is the life of man, and that in a far deeper and more intimate
sense than he can be said to be the life of the universe.” Dale,
Christian Fellowship, 159—“Christ’s incarnation was not an
isolated and abnormal wonder. It was God’s witness to the true and
ideal relation of all men to God.” The incarnation was no detached
event,—it was the issue of an eternal process of utterance on the
part of the Word “_whose goings forth are from of old, from
everlasting_” (_Micah 5:2_).