Chapter XXXVII: Section II: The Person Of Christ (2)

(_e_) A human nature germinal, and capable of self-communication,—so constituting him the spiritual head and beginning of a new race, the second Adam from whom fallen man individually and collectively derives new and holy life.

In _Is. 9:6_, Christ is called “_Everlasting Father_.” In _Is.
53:10_, it is said that “_he shall see his seed_.” In _Rev.
22:16_, he calls himself “_the root_” as well as “_the offspring
of David_.” See also _John 5.21_—“_the Son also giveth life to
whom he will_”; _15:1_—“_I am the true vine_”—whose roots are
planted in heaven, not on earth; the vine-man, from whom as its
stock the new life of humanity is to spring, and into whom the
half-withered branches of the old humanity are to be grafted that
they may have life divine. See Trench, Sermon on Christ, the True
Vine, in Hulsean Lectures. _John 17:2_—“_thou gavest him authority
over all flesh, that to all whom thou hast given him, he should
give eternal life_”; _1 Cor. 15:45_—“_the last Adam became a
life-giving spirit_”—here “_spirit_” = not the Holy Spirit, nor
Christ’s divine nature, but “the ego of his total divine-human
personality.”

_Eph. 5:23_—“_Christ also is the head of the church_” = the head
to which all the members are united, and from which they derive
life and power. Christ calls the disciples his “_little children_”
(_John 13:33_); when he leaves them they are “_orphans_” (_14:18_
marg.). “He represents himself as a father of children, no less
than as a brother” (_20:17_—“_my brethren_”; _cf._ _Heb.
2:11_—“_brethren_”, and _13_—“_Behold, I and the children whom God
hath given me_”; see Westcott, Com. on _John 13:33_). The new race
is propagated after the analogy of the old; the first Adam is the
source of the physical, the second Adam of spiritual, life; the
first Adam the source of corruption, the second of holiness. Hence
_John 12:24_—“_if it die, it beareth much fruit_”; _Mat. 10:37_
and _Luke 14:26_—“_He that loveth father or mother more than me is
not worthy of me_” = none is worthy of me, who prefers his old
natural ancestry to his new spiritual descent and relationship.
Thus Christ is not simply the noblest embodiment of the old
humanity, but also the fountain-head and beginning of a new
humanity, the new source of life for the race. _Cf._ _1 Tim.
2:15_—“_she shall be saved through the child-bearing_”—which
brought Christ into the world. See Wilberforce, Incarnation,
227-241; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 638-664; Dorner, Glaubenslehre,
2:451 _sq._ (Syst. Doct., 3:349 _sq._).

Lightfoot on _Col. 1:18_—“_who is the beginning, the fruits from
the dead_”—“Here ἀρχή = 1. priority in time. Christ was first
fruits of the dead (_1 Cor. 15:20, 23_); 2. originating power, not
only _principium principiatum_, but also _principium principians_.
As he _is_ first with respect to the universe, so he _becomes_
first with respect to the church; _cf._ _Heb. 7:15, 16_—‘_another
priest, who hath been made, not after the law of a carnal
commandment but after the power of an endless life_’.” Paul
teaches that “_the head of every man is Christ_” (_1 Cor. 11:3_),
and that “_in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily_”
(_Col. 2:9_). Whiton, Gloria Patri, 88-92, remarks on _Eph. 1:10_,
that God’s purpose is “_to sum up all things in Christ, the things
in the heavens, and the things upon the earth_”—to bring all
things to a head (ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι). History is a perpetually
increasing incarnation of life, whose climax and crown is the
divine fulness of life in Christ. In him the before unconscious
sonship of the world awakes to consciousness of the Father. He is
worthiest to bear the name of _the_ Son of God, in a preëminent,
but not exclusive right. We agree with these words of Whiton, if
they mean that Christ is the only giver of life to man as he is
the only giver of life to the universe.

Hence Christ is the only ultimate authority in religion. He
reveals himself in nature, in man, in history, in Scripture, but
each of these is only a mirror which reflects _him_ to us. In each
case the mirror is more or less blurred and the image obscured,
yet _he_ appears in the mirror notwithstanding. The mirror is
useless unless there is an eye to look into it, and an object to
be seen in it. The Holy Spirit gives the eyesight, while Christ
himself, living and present, furnishes the object (_James
1:23-25_; _2 Cor. 3:18_; _1 Cor. 13:12_).

Over against mankind is Christ-kind; over against the fallen and
sinful race is the new race created by Christ’s indwelling.
Therefore only when he ascended with his perfected manhood could
he send the Holy Spirit, for the Holy Spirit which makes men
children of God is the Spirit of Christ. Christ’s humanity now, by
virtue of its perfect union with Deity, has become universally
communicable. It is as consonant with evolution to derive
spiritual gifts from the second Adam, a solitary source, as it is
to derive the natural man from the first Adam, a solitary source;
see George Harris, Moral Evolution, 409; and A. H. Strong, Christ
in Creation, 174.

Simon, Reconciliation, 308—“Every man is in a true sense
essentially of divine nature—even as Paul teaches, θεῖον γένος
(_Acts 17:29_).... At the centre, as it were, enswathed in fold
after fold, after the manner of a bulb, we discern the living
divine spark, impressing us qualitatively if not quantitatively,
with the absoluteness of the great sun to which it belongs.” The
idea of truth, beauty, right, has in it an absolute and divine
quality. It comes from God, yet from the depths of our own nature.
It is the evidence that Christ, “_the light that lighteth every
man_” (_John 1:9_), is present and is working within us.

Pfleiderer, Philos. of Religion, 1:272—“That the divine idea of
man as ‘_the son of his love_’ (_Col. 1:13_), and of humanity as
the kingdom of this Son of God, is the immanent final cause of all
existence and development even in the prior world of nature, this
has been the fundamental thought of the Christian Gnosis since the
apostolic age, and I think that no philosophy has yet been able to
shake or to surpass this thought—the corner stone of an idealistic
view of the world.” But Mead, Ritschl’s Place in the History of
Doctrine, 10, says of Pfleiderer and Ritschl: “Both recognize
Christ as morally perfect and as the head of the Christian Church.
Both deny his pre-existence and his essential Deity. Both reject
the traditional conception of Christ as an atoning Redeemer.
Ritschl calls Christ God, though inconsistently; Pfleiderer
declines to say one thing when he seems to mean another.”

The passages here alluded to abundantly confute the Docetic denial of Christ’s veritable human body, and the Apollinarian denial of Christ’s veritable human soul. More than this, they establish the reality and integrity of Christ’s human nature, as possessed of all the elements, faculties, and powers essential to humanity.

2. The Deity of Christ.

The reality and integrity of Christ’s divine nature have been sufficiently proved in a former chapter (see pages 305-315). We need only refer to the evidence there given, that, during his earthly ministry, Christ:

(_a_) Possessed a knowledge of his own deity.

_John 3:13_—“_the Son of man, who is in heaven_”—a passage with
clearly indicates Christ’s consciousness, at certain times in his
earthly life at least, that he was not confined to earth but was
also in heaven [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and B,
omit ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ; for advocacy of the common reading, see
Broadus, in Hovey’s Com. on _John 3:13_]; _8:58_—“_Before Abraham
was born, I am_”—here Jesus declares that there is a respect in
which the idea of birth and beginning does not apply to him, but
in which he can apply to himself the name “_I am_” of the eternal
God; _14:9, 10_—“_Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou
not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father;
how sayest thou, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am
in the Father, and the Father in me?_”

Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 24-49, gives the following instances
of Jesus’ supernatural knowledge: 1. Jesus’ knowledge of Peter
(_John 1:42_); 2. his finding of Philip (_1:43_); 3. his
recognition of Nathanael (_1:47-50_); 4. of the woman of Samaria
(_4:17-19, 39_); 5. miraculous draughts of fishes (_Luke 5:6-9_;
_John 21:6_); 6. death of Lazarus (_John 11:14_); 7. of the ass’s
colt (_Mat. 21:2_); 8. of the upper room (_Mark 14:15_); 9. of
Peter’s denial (_Mat. 26:34_); 10. of the manner of his own death
(_John 12:33_; _18:32_); 11. of the manner of Peter’s death (_John
21:19_); 12. of the fall of Jerusalem (_Mat. 24:2_).

Jesus does not say “our Father” but “_my Father_” (_John 20:17_).
Rejection of him is a greater sin than rejection of the prophets,
because he is the “_beloved Son_” of God (_Luke 20:13_). He knows
God’s purposes better than the angels, because he is the Son of
God (_Mark 13:32_). As Son of God, he alone knows, and he alone
can reveal, the Father (_Mat. __ 11:27_). There to clearly
something more in his Sonship than in that of his disciples (_John
1:14_—“_only begotten_”; _Heb. 1:6_—“_first begotten_”). See
Chapman, Jesus Christ and the Present Age, 37; Denney, Studies in
Theology, 33.

(b) Exercised divine powers and prerogatives.

_John 2:24, 25_—“_But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for
that he knew all man, and because he needed not that any one
should bear witness concerning man; for he himself knew what was
in man_”; _18:4_—“_Jesus therefore, knowing all the things that
were coming upon him, went forth_”; _Mark 4:39_—“_he awoke, and
rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the
wind ceased, and there was a great calm_”; _Mat. 9:6_—“_But that
ye may know that the Son of man hath authority on earth to forgive
sins (then saith he to the sick of the palsy), Arise, and take up
thy bed, and go unto thy house_”; _Mark 2:7_—“_Why doth this man
thus speak? he blasphemeth: who can forgive sins but one, even
God?_”

It is not enough to keep, like Alexander Severus, a bust of
Christ, in a private chapel, along with Virgil, Orpheus, Abraham,
Apollonius, and other persons of the same kind; see Gibbon,
Decline and Fall, chap. xvi. “Christ is all in all. The prince in
the Arabian story took from a walnut-shell a miniature tent, but
that tent expanded so as to cover, first himself, then his palace,
then his army, and at last his whole kingdom. So Christ’s being
and authority expand, as we reflect upon them, until they take in,
not only ourselves, our homes and our country, but the whole world
of sinning and suffering men, and the whole universe of God”; see
A. H. Strong, Address at the Ecumenical Missionary Conference,
April 23, 1900.

Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 39—“What is that law which I call
gravitation, but the sign of the Son of man in heaven? It is the
gospel of self-surrender in nature. It is the inability of any
world to be its own centre, the necessity of every world to center
in something else.... In the firmament as on the earth, the many
are made one by giving the one for the many.” “Subtlest thought
shall fail and learning falter; Churches change, forms perish,
systems go; But our human needs, they will not alter, Christ no
after age will e’er outgrow. Yea, amen, O changeless One, thou
only Art life’s guide and spiritual goal; Thou the light across
the dark vale lonely, Thou the eternal haven of the soul.”

But this is to say, in other words, that there were, in Christ, a knowledge and a power such as belong only to God. The passages cited furnish a refutation of both the Ebionite denial of the reality, and the Arian denial of the integrity, of the divine nature in Christ.

Napoleon to Count Montholon (Bertrand’s Memoirs): “I think I
understand somewhat of human nature, and I tell you all these
[heroes of antiquity] were men, and I am a man; but not one is
like him: Jesus Christ was more than man.” See other testimonies
in Schaff, Person of Christ. Even Spinoza, Tract. Theol.-Pol.,
cap. 1 (vol. 1:383), says that “Christ communed with God, mind to
mind ... this spiritual closeness is unique” (Martineau, Types,
1:254), and Channing speaks of Christ as more than a human
being,—as having exhibited a spotless purity which is the highest
distinction of heaven. F. W. Robertson has called attention to the
fact that the phrase “Son of man” (_John 5:27_; _cf._ _Dan. 7:13_)
itself implies that Christ was more than man; it would have been
an impertinence for him to have proclaimed himself Son of man,
unless he had claimed to be something more; could not every human
being call himself the same? When one takes this for his
characteristic designation, as Jesus did, he implies that there is
something strange in his being Son of man; that this is not his
original condition and dignity; in other words, that he is also
Son of God.

It corroborates the argument from Scripture, to find that
Christian experience instinctively recognizes Christ’s Godhead,
and that Christian history shows a new conception of the dignity
of childhood and of womanhood, of the sacredness of human life,
and of the value of a human soul,—all arising from the belief
that, in Christ, the Godhead honored human nature by taking it
into perpetual union with itself, by bearing its guilt and
punishment, and by raising it up from the dishonors of the grave
to the glory of heaven. We need both the humanity and the deity of
Christ; the humanity,—for, as Michael Angelo’s Last Judgment
witnesses, the ages that neglect Christ’s humanity must have some
human advocate and Savior, and find a poor substitute for the
ever-present Christ in Mariolatry, the invocation of the saints,
and the “real presence” of the wafer and the mass; the deity,—for,
unless Christ is God, he cannot offer an infinite atonement for
us, nor bring about a real union between our souls and the Father.
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:325-327 (Syst. Doct., 3:221-223)—“Mary
and the saints took Christ’s place as intercessors in heaven;
transubstantiation furnished a present Christ on earth.” It might
almost be said that Mary was made a fourth person in the Godhead.

Harnack, Das Wesen des Christenthums: “It is no paradox, and
neither is it rationalism, but the simple expression of the actual
position as it lies before us in the gospels: Not the Son, but the
Father alone, has a place in the gospel as Jesus proclaimed it”;
_i. e._, Jesus has no place, authority, supremacy, in the
gospel,—the gospel is a Christianity without Christ; see Nicoll,
The Church’s One Foundation, 48. And this in the face of Jesus’
own words: “_Come unto me_” (_Mat. 11:28_); “_the Son of man ...
shall sit on the throne of his glory: and before him shall be
gathered all the nations_” (_Mat. 25:31, 32_); “_he that hath seen
me hath seen the Father_” (_John 14:9_); “_he that obeyeth not the
Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him_”
(_John 3:36_). Loisy, The Gospel and the Church, advocates the
nut-theory in distinction from the onion-theory of doctrine. Does
the fourth gospel appear a second century production? What of it?
There is an evolution of doctrine as to Christ. “Harnack does not
conceive of Christianity as a seed, at first a plant in
potentiality, then a real plant, identical from the beginning of
its evolution to the final limit, and from the root to the summit
of the stem. He conceives of it rather as a fruit ripe, or over
ripe, that must be peeled to reach the incorruptible kernel, and
he peels his fruit so thoroughly that little remains at the end.”
R. W. Gilder: “If Jesus is a man, And only a man, I say That of
all mankind I will cleave to him, And will cleave alway. If Jesus
Christ is a God, And the only God, I swear I will follow him
through heaven and hell, The earth, the sea, and the air.”

On Christ manifested in Nature, see Jonathan Edwards, Observations
on Trinity, ed. Smyth, 92-97—“He who, by his immediate influence,
gives being every moment, and by his Spirit actuates the world,
because he inclines to communicate himself and his excellencies,
doth doubtless communicate his excellency to bodies, as far as
there is any consent or analogy. And the beauty of face and sweet
airs in men are not always the effect of the corresponding
excellencies of the mind; yet the beauties of nature are really
emanations or shadows of the excellencies of the Son of God. So
that, when we are delighted with flowery meadows and gentle
breezes of wind, we may consider that we see only the emanations
of the sweet benevolence of Jesus Christ. When we behold the
fragrant rose and lily, we see his love and purity. So the green
trees and fields, and singing of birds, are the emanations of his
infinite joy and benignity. The easiness and naturalness of trees
and vines are shadows of his beauty and loveliness. The crystal
rivers and murmuring streams are the footsteps of his favor, grace
and beauty. When we behold the light and brightness of the sun,
the golden edges of an evening cloud, or the beauteous bow, we
behold the adumbrations of his glory and goodness, and in the blue
sky, of his mildness and gentleness. There are also many things
wherein we may behold his awful majesty: in the sun in his
strength, in comets, in thunder, in the hovering thunder clouds,
in ragged rocks and the brows of mountains. That beauteous light
wherewith the world is filled in a clear day is a lively shadow of
his spotless holiness, and happiness and delight in communicating
himself. And doubtless this is a reason why Christ is compared so
often to these things, and called by their names, as the Sun of
Righteousness, the Morning Star, the Rose of Sharon, and Lily of
the Valley, the apple tree among trees of the wood, a bundle of
myrrh, a roe, or a young hart. By this we may discover the beauty
of many of those metaphors and similes which to an unphilosophical
person do seem so uncouth. In like manner, when we behold the
beauty of man’s body in its perfection, we still see like
emanations of Christ’s divine perfections, although they do not
always flow from the mental excellencies of the person that has
them. But we see the most proper image of the beauty of Christ
when we see beauty in the human soul.”

On the deity of Christ, see Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1:262,
351; Liddon, Our Lord’s Divinity, 127, 207, 458; Thomasius,
Christi Person und Werk, 1:61-64; Hovey, God with Us, 17-23;
Bengel on _John 10:30_. On the two natures of Christ, see A. H.
Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 201-212.

III. The Union of the two Natures in one Person.

Distinctly as the Scriptures represent Jesus Christ to have been possessed of a divine nature and of a human nature, each unaltered in essence and undivested of its normal attributes and powers, they with equal distinctness represent Jesus Christ as a single undivided personality in whom these two natures are vitally and inseparably united, so that he is properly, not God and man, but the God-man. The two natures are bound together, not by the moral tie of friendship, nor by the spiritual tie which links the believer to his Lord, but by a bond unique and inscrutable, which constitutes them one person with a single consciousness and will,—this consciousness and will including within their possible range both the human nature and the divine.

Whiton, Gloria Patri, 79-81, would give up speaking of the union
of God _and_ man; for this, he says, involves the fallacy of two
natures. He would speak rather of the manifestation of God _in_
man. The ordinary Unitarian insists that Christ was “a mere man.”
As if there could be such a thing as _mere_ man, exclusive of
aught above him and beyond him, self-centered and self-moved. We
can sympathize with Whiton’s objection to the phrase “God _and_
man,” because of its implication of an imperfect union. But we
prefer the term “God-man” to the phrase “God _in_ man,” for the
reason that this latter phrase might equally describe the union of
Christ with every believer. Christ is “the only begotten,” in a
sense that every believer is not. Yet we can also sympathize with
Dean Stanley, Life and Letters, 1:115—“Alas that a Church that has
so divine a service should keep its long list of Articles! I am
strengthened more than ever in my opinion that there is only
needed, that there only should be, one, _viz_., ‘I believe that
Christ is both God and man.’ ”

1. Proof of this Union.

(_a_) Christ uniformly speaks of himself, and is spoken of, as a single person. There is no interchange of “I” and “thou” between the human and the divine natures, such as we find between the persons of the Trinity (John 17:23). Christ never uses the plural number in referring to himself, unless it be in John 3:11—“we speak that we do know,”—and even here “we” is more probably used as inclusive of the disciples. 1 John 4:2—“is come in the flesh”—is supplemented by John 1:14—“became flesh”; and these texts together assure us that Christ so came in human nature as to make that nature an element in his single personality.

_John 17:23_—“_I in them, and thou in me, that they may be
perfected into one; that the world may know that thou didst send
me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me_”; _3:11_—“_We speak
that which we know, and bear witness of that which we have seen;
and ye receive not our witness_”; _1 John 4:2_—“_every spirit that
confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God_”;
_John 1:14_—“_And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us_”—he
so came in human nature that human nature and himself formed, not
two persons, but one person.

In the Trinity, the Father is objective to the Son, the Son to the
Father, and both to the Spirit. But Christ’s divinity is never
objective to his humanity, nor his humanity to his divinity.
Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 97—“He is not so much God
_and_ man, as God _in_, and _through_, and _as_ man. He is one
indivisible personality throughout.... We are to study the divine
in and through the human. By looking for the divine side by side
with the human, instead of discerning the divine within the human,
we miss the significance of them both.” We mistake when we say
that certain words of Jesus with regard to his ignorance of the
day of the end (_Mark 13:32_) were spoken by his human nature,
while certain other words with regard to his being in heaven at
the same time that he was on earth (_John 3:13_) were spoken by
his divine nature. There was never any separation of the human
from the divine, or of the divine from the human,—all Christ’s
words were spoken, and all Christ’s deeds were done, by the one
person, the God-man. See Forrest, The Authority of Christ, 49-100.

(_b_) The attributes and powers of both natures are ascribed to the one Christ, and conversely the works and dignities of the one Christ are ascribed to either of the natures, in a way inexplicable, except upon the principle that these two natures are organically and indissolubly united in a single person (examples of the former usage are Rom. 1:3 and 1 Pet. 3:18; of the latter, 1 Tim. 2:5 and Heb. 1:2, 3). Hence we can say, on the one hand, that the God-man existed before Abraham, yet was born in the reign of Augustus Cæsar, and that Jesus Christ wept, was weary, suffered, died, yet is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; on the other hand, that a divine Savior redeemed us upon the cross, and that the human Christ is present with his people even to the end of the world (Eph. 1:23; 4:10; Mat. 28:20).

_Rom. 1:3_—“_his Son, who was born of the seed of David according
to the flesh_”; _1 Pet. 3:18_—“_Christ also suffered for sins once
... being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the
spirit_”; _1 Tim. 2:5_—“_one mediator also between God and men,
himself man, Christ Jesus_”; _Heb. 1:2, 3_—“_his Son, whom he
appointed heir of all things ... who being the effulgence of his
glory ... when he had made purification of sins, sat down on the
right hand of the Majesty on high_”; _Eph. 1:22, 23_—“_put all
things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over
all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him
that filleth all in all_”; _4:10_—“_He that descended is the same
also that ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill
all things_”; _Mat. 28:20_—“_lo, I am with you always, even unto
the end of the world._”

Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 142-145—“Mary was Theotokos, but she
was not the mother of Christ’s Godhood, but of his humanity. We
speak of the blood of God the Son, but it is not as God that he
has blood. The hands of the babe Jesus made the worlds, only in
the sense that he whose hands they were was the Agent in
creation.... Spirit and body in us are not merely put side by
side, and insulated from each other. The spirit does not have the
rheumatism, and the reverent body does not commune with God. The
reason why they affect each other is because they are equally
ours.... Let us avoid sensuous, fondling, modes of addressing
Christ—modes which dishonor him and enfeeble the soul of the
worshiper.... Let us also avoid, on the other hand, such phrases
as ‘the dying God’, which loses the manhood in the Godhead.”
Charles H. Spurgeon remarked that people who “dear” everybody
reminded him of the woman who said she had been reading in “dear
Hebrews.”

(_c_) The constant Scriptural representations of the infinite value of Christ’s atonement and of the union of the human race with God which has been secured in him are intelligible only when Christ is regarded, not as a man of God, but as the God-man, in whom the two natures are so united that what each does has the value of both.

_1 John 2:2_—“_he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for
ours only, but also for the whole world,_”—as John in his gospel
proves that Jesus is the Son of God, the Word, God, so in his
first Epistle he proves that the Son of God, the Word, God, has
become man; _Eph. 2:16-18_—“_might reconcile them both_ [Jew and
Gentile] _in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the
enmity thereby; and he came and preached peace to you that were
far off, and peace to them that were nigh: for through him we both
have our access in one Spirit unto the Father_”; _21, 22_—“_in
whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a
holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for
a habitation of God in the Spirit_”; _2 Pet. 1:4_—“_that through
these_ [promises] _ye may become partakers of the divine nature._”
John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:107—“We cannot separate
Christ’s divine from his human acts, without rending in twain the
unity of his person and life.”

(_d_) It corroborates this view to remember that the universal Christian consciousness recognizes in Christ a single and undivided personality, and expresses this recognition in its services of song and prayer.

The foregoing proof of the union of a perfect human nature and of a perfect divine nature in the single person of Jesus Christ suffices to refute both the Nestorian separation of the natures and the Eutychian confounding of them. Certain modern forms of stating the doctrine of this union, however—forms of statement into which there enter some of the misconceptions already noticed—need a brief examination, before we proceed to our own attempt at elucidation.

Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:403-411 (Syst. Doct., 3:300-308)—“Three
ideas are included in incarnation: (1) assumption of human nature
on the part of the Logos (_Heb. 2:14_—‘_partook __ of ... flesh
and blood_’; _2 Cor. 5:19_—‘_God was in Christ_’; _Col. 2:9_—‘_in
him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily_’); (2) new
creation of the second Adam, by the Holy Ghost and power of the
Highest (_Rom. 5:14_—‘_Adam’s’ transgression, who is a figure of
him that was to come_’; _1 Cor. 15:22_—‘_as in Adam all die, so
also in Christ shall all be made alive_’; _15:45_—‘_The first man
Adam became a living soul, the last Adam became a life-giving
Spirit_’; _Luke 1:35_—‘_the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and
the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee_’; _Mat.
1:20_—‘_that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit_’);
(3) becoming flesh, without contraction of deity or humanity (_1
Tim. 3:16_—‘_who was manifested in the flesh_’; _1 John
4:2_—‘_Jesus Christ is come in the flesh_’; _John 6:41, 51_—‘_I am
the bread which came down out of heaven.... I am the living
bread_’; _2 John 7_—‘_Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh_’; _John
1:14_—‘_the word became flesh_’). This last text cannot mean: The
Logos ceased to be what he was, and began to be only man. Nor can
it be a mere theophany, in human form. The reality of the humanity
is intimated, as well as the reality of the Logos.”

The Lutherans hold to a communion of the natures, as well as to an
impartation of their properties: (1) _genus
idiomaticum_—impartation of attributes of both natures to the one
person; (2) _genus apotelesmaticum_ (from ἀποτέλεσμα, “that which
is finished or completed,” _i. e._, Jesus’ work)—attributes of the
one person imparted to each of the constituent natures. Hence Mary
may be called “the mother of God,” as the Chalcedon symbol
declares, “as to his humanity,” and what each nature did has the
value of both; (3) _genus majestaticum_—attributes of one nature
imparted to the other, yet so that the divine nature imparts to
the human, not the human to the divine. The Lutherans do not
believe in a _genus tapeinoticon_, _i. e._, that the human
elements communicated themselves to the divine. The only
communication of the human was to the person, not to the divine
nature, of the God-man. Examples of this third _genus
majestaticum_ are found is _John 3:13_—“_no one hath ascended into
heaven, but he that descended out of heaven, even the Son of man,
who is in heaven_” [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and
B, omit ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ]; _5:27_—“_he gave him authority to
execute judgment, because he is a son of man._” Of the explanation
that this is the figure of speech called “_allæosis,_” Luther
says: “_Allæosis_ est larva quædam diaboli, secundum cujus
rationes ego certe nolim esse Christianus.”

The _genus majestaticum_ is denied by the Reformed Church, on the
ground that it does not permit a clear distinction of the natures.
And this is one great difference between it and the Lutheran
Church. So Hooker, in commenting upon the Son of man’s “ascending
up where he was before,” says: “By the ‘_Son of man_’ must be
meant the whole person of Christ, who, being man upon earth,
filled heaven with his glorious presence; but not according to
that nature for which the title of man is given him.” For the
Lutheran view of this union and its results in the communion of
natures, see Hase, Hutterus Redivivus, 11th ed., 195-197;
Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 2:24, 25. For the Reformed
view, see Turretin, loc. 13, quæst. 8; Hodge, Syst. Theol.,
2:387-397, 407-418.

2. Modern misrepresentations of this Union.

A. Theory of an incomplete humanity.—Gess and Beecher hold that the immaterial part in Christ’s humanity is only contracted and metamorphosed deity.

The advocates of this view maintain that the divine Logos reduced himself to the condition and limits of human nature, and thus literally became a human soul. The theory differs from Apollinarianism, in that it does not necessarily presuppose a trichotomous view of man’s nature. While Apollinarianism, however, denied the human origin only of Christ’s πνεῦμα, this theory extends the denial to his entire immaterial being,—his body alone being derived from the Virgin. It is held, in slightly varying forms, by the Germans, Hofmann and Ebrard, as well as by Gess; and Henry Ward Beecher was its chief representative in America.

Gess holds that Christ gave up his eternal holiness and divine
self-consciousness, to become man, so that he never during his
earthly life thought, spoke, or wrought as God, but was at all
times destitute of divine attributes. See Gess, Scripture Doctrine
of the Person of Christ; and synopsis of his view, by Reubelt, in
Bib. Sac., 1870:1-32; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, 1:234-241, and 2:20;
Ebrard, Dogmatik, 2:144-151, and in Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.:
Jesus Christ, der Gottmensch; also Liebner, Christliche Dogmatik.
Henry Ward Beecher, in his Life of Jesus the Christ, chap. 3,
emphasizes the word “_flesh,_” in _John 1:14_ and declares the
passage to mean that the divine Spirit enveloped himself in a
human _body_, and in that condition was subject to the
indispensable limitations of material laws. All these advocates of
the view hold that Deity was dormant, or paralyzed, in Christ
during his earthly life. Its essence is there, but not its
efficiency at any time.

Against this theory we urge the following objections:

(_a_) It rests upon a false interpretation of the passage John 1:14—ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο. The word σάρξ here has its common New Testament meaning. It designates neither soul nor body alone, but human nature in its totality (_cf._ John 3:6—τὸ γεγεννημένον ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς σάρξ ἐστιν; Rom. 7:18—οὐκ οἰκεῖ ἐν ἐμοί, τοῦτ᾽ ἔστιν ἐν τῇ σαρκί μου, ἀγαθόν). That ἐγένετο does not imply a transmutation of the λόγος into human nature, or into a human soul, is evident from ἐσκήνωσεν which follows—an allusion to the Shechinah of the Mosaic tabernacle; and from the parallel passage 1 John 4:2—ἐν σαρκὶ ἐληλυθότα—where we are taught not only the oneness of Christ’s person, but the distinctness of the constituent natures.

_John 1:14_—“_the Word became flesh, and dwelt_ [tabernacled]
_among us, and we behold his glory_”; _3:6_—“_That which is born
of the flesh is flesh_”; _Rom., 7:18_—“_in me, that is, in my
flesh, dwelleth no good thing_”; _1 John 4:2_—“_Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh._” Since “_flesh_,” in Scriptural usage, denotes
human nature in its entirety, there is as little reason to infer
from these passages a change of the Logos into a human body, as a
change of the Logos into a human soul. There is no curtailed
humanity in Christ. One advantage of the monistic doctrine is that
it avoids this error. Omnipresence is the presence of the whole of
God in every place. _Ps. 85:9_—“_Surely his salvation is nigh them
that fear him, That glory may dwell in our land_”—was fulfilled
when Christ, the true Shekinah, tabernacled in human flesh and men
“_beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father,
full of grace and truth_” (_John 1:14_). And Paul can say in _2
Cor. 12:9_—“_Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my
weaknesses, that the power of Christ may spread a tabernacle over
me._”

(_b_) It contradicts the two great classes of Scripture passages already referred to, which assert on the one hand the divine knowledge and power of Christ and his consciousness of oneness with the Father, and on the other hand the completeness of his human nature and its derivation from the stock of Israel and the seed of Abraham (Mat. 1:1-16; Heb. 2:16). Thus it denies both the true humanity, and the true deity, of Christ.

See the Scripture passages cited in proof of the Deity of Christ,
pages 305-315. Gess himself acknowledges that, if the passages in
which Jesus avers his divine knowledge and power and his
consciousness of oneness with the Father refer to his earthly
life, his theory is overthrown. “Apollinarianism had a certain
sort of grotesque grandeur, in giving to the human body and soul
of Christ an infinite, divine πνεῦμα. It maintained at least the
divine side of Christ’s person. But the theory before us denies
both sides.” While it so curtails deity that it is no proper
deity, it takes away from humanity all that is valuable in
humanity; for a manhood that consists only in body is no proper
manhood. Such manhood is like the “half length” portrait which
depicted only the _lower half_ of the man. _Mat. 1:1-16_, the
genealogy of Jesus, and _Heb. 2:16_—“_taketh hold of the seed of
Abraham_”—intimate that Christ took all that belonged to human
nature.

(_c_) It is inconsistent with the Scriptural representations of God’s immutability, in maintaining that the Logos gives up the attributes of Godhead, and his place and office as second person of the Trinity, in order to contract himself into the limits of humanity. Since attributes and substance are correlative terms, it is impossible to hold that the substance of God is in Christ, so long as he does not possess divine attributes. As we shall see hereafter, however, the possession of divine attributes by Christ does not necessarily imply his constant exercise of them. His humiliation indeed, consisted in his giving up their independent exercise.

See Dorner, Unveränderlichkeit Gottes, in Jahrbuch für deutsche
Theologie, 1:361; 2:440; 3:579; esp. 1:390-412—“Gess holds that,
during the thirty-three years of Jesus’ earthly life, the Trinity
was altered; the Father no more poured his fulness into the Son;
the Son no more, with the Father, sent forth the Holy Spirit; the
world was upheld and governed by Father and Spirit alone, without
the mediation of the Son; the Father ceased to beget the Son. He
says the Father alone has _aseity_; he is the only Monas. The
Trinity is a family, whose head is the Father, but whose number
and condition is variable. To Gess, it is indifferent whether the
Trinity consists of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or (as during
Jesus’ life) of only one. But this is a Trinity in which two
members are accidental. A Trinity that can get along without one
of its members is not the Scriptural Trinity. The Father depends
on the Son, and the Spirit depends on the Son, as much as the Son
depends on the Father. To take away the Son is to take away the
Father and the Spirit. This giving up of the actuality of his
attributes, even of his holiness, on the part of the Logos, is in
order to make it possible for Christ to sin. But can we ascribe
the possibility of sin to a being who is really God? The reality
of temptation requires us to postulate a veritable human soul.”

(_d_) It is destructive of the whole Scriptural scheme of salvation, in that it renders impossible any experience of human nature on the part of the divine,—for when God becomes man he ceases to be God; in that it renders impossible any sufficient atonement on the part of human nature,—for mere humanity, even though its essence be a contracted and dormant deity, is not capable of a suffering which shall have infinite value; in that it renders impossible any proper union of the human race with God in the person of Jesus Christ,—for where true deity and true humanity are both absent, there can be no union between the two.

See Dorner, Jahrbuch f. d. Theologie, 1:390—“Upon this theory only
an exhibitory atonement can be maintained. There is no real
humanity that, in the strength of divinity, can bring a sacrifice
to God. Not substitution, therefore, but obedience, on this view,
reconciles us to God. Even if it is said that God’s Spirit is the
real soul in all men, this will not help the matter; for we should
then have to make an essential distinction between the indwelling
of the Spirit in the unregenerate, the regenerate, and Christ,
respectively. But in that case we lose the likeness between
Christ’s nature and our own,—Christ’s being preëxistent, and ours
not. Without this pantheistic doctrine, Christ’s unlikeness to us
is yet greater; for he is really a wandering God, clothed in a
human body, and cannot properly be called a human soul. We have
then no middle-point between the body and the Godhead; and in the
state of exaltation, we have no manhood at all,—only the infinite
Logos, in a glorified body as his garment.”

Isaac Watts’s theory of a preëxistent humanity in like manner
implies that humanity is originally in deity; it does not proceed
from a human stock, but from a divine; between the human and the
divine there is no proper distinction; hence there can be no
proper redeeming of humanity; see Bib. Sac., 1875:421. A. A.
Hodge, Pop. Lectures, 226—“If Christ does not take a human πνεῦμα,
he cannot be a high-priest who feels with us in all our
infirmities, having been tempted like us.” Mason, Faith of the
Gospel, 138—“The conversion of the Godhead into flesh would have
only added one more man to the number of men—a sinless one,
perhaps, among sinners—but it would have effected no union of God
and men.” On the theory in general, see Hovey, God with Us, 62-69;
Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:430-440; Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
4:386-408; Biedermann, Christliche Dogmatik, 356-359; Bruce,
Humiliation of Christ, 187, 230; Schaff, Christ and Christianity,
115-119.

B. Theory of a gradual incarnation.—Dorner and Rothe hold that the union between the divine and the human natures is not completed by the incarnating act.

The advocates of this view maintain that the union between the two natures is accomplished by a gradual communication of the fulness of the divine Logos to the man Christ Jesus. This communication is mediated by the human consciousness of Jesus. Before the human consciousness begins, the personality of the Logos is not yet divine-human. The personal union completes itself only gradually, as the human consciousness is sufficiently developed to appropriate the divine.

Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:660 (Syst. Doct., 4:125)—“In order that
Christ might show his high-priestly love by suffering and death,
the different sides of his personality yet stood to one another in
relative separableness. The divine-human union in him,
accordingly, was before his death not yet completely actualized,
although its completion was from the beginning divinely assured.”
2:431 (Syst. Doct., 3:328)—“In spite of this _becoming_, inside of
the _Unio_, the Logos is from the beginning united with Jesus in
the deepest foundation of his being, and Jesus’ life has ever been
a divine-human one, in that a present receptivity for the Godhead
has never remained without its satisfaction.... Even the
unconscious humanity of the babe turns receptively to the Logos,
as the plant turns toward the light. The initial union makes
Christ already the God-man, but not in such a way as to prevent a
subsequent _becoming_; for surely he did become omniscient and
incapable of death, as he was not at the beginning.”

2:464 _sq._ (Syst. Doct., 3:363 _sq._)—“The actual life of God, as
the Logos, reaches beyond the beginnings of the divine-human life.
For if the _Unio_ is to complete itself by growth, the relation of
impartation and reception must continue. In his personal
consciousness, there was a distinction between duty and being. The
will had to take up practically, and turn into action, each new
revelation or perception of God’s will on the part of intellect or
conscience. He had to maintain, with his will, each revelation of
his nature and work. In his twelfth year, he says: ‘_I must be
about my Father’s business._’ To Satan’s temptation: ‘_Art thou
God’s Son?_’ he must reply with an affirmation that suppresses all
doubt, though he will not prove it by miracle. This moral growth,
as it was the will of the Father, was his task. He hears from his
Father, and obeys. In him, imperfect knowledge was never the same
with false conception. In us, ignorance has error for its obverse
side. But this was never the case with him, though he grew in
knowledge unto the end.” Dorner’s view of the Person of Christ may
be found in his Hist. Doct. Person Christ, 5:248-261;
Glaubenslehre, 2:347-474 (Syst. Doct., 3:243-373).

A summary of his views is also given in Princeton Rev.,
1873:71-87—Dorner illustrates the relation between the humanity
and the deity of Christ by the relation between God and man, in
conscience, and in the witness of the Spirit. “So far as the human
element was immature or incomplete, so far the Logos was not
present. Knowledge advanced to unity with the Logos, and the human
will afterwards confirmed the best and highest knowledge. A
resignation of both the Logos and the human nature to the union is
involved in the incarnation. The growth continues until the idea,
and the reality, of divine humanity perfectly coincide. The
assumption of unity was gradual, in the life of Christ. His
exaltation began with the perfection of this development.” Rothe’s
statement of the theory can be found in his Dogmatik, 2:49-182;
and in Bib. Sac., 27:386.

It is objectionable for the following reasons:

(_a_) The Scripture plainly teaches that that which was born of Mary was as completely Son of God as Son of man (Luke 1:35); and that in the incarnating act, and not at his resurrection, Jesus Christ became the God-man (Phil. 2:7). But this theory virtually teaches the birth of a man who subsequently and gradually became the God-man, by consciously appropriating the Logos to whom he sustained ethical relations—relations with regard to which the Scripture is entirely silent. Its radical error is that of mistaking an incomplete consciousness of the union for an incomplete union.

In _Luke 1:35_—“_the holy thing which is begotten shall be called
the Son of God_”—and _Phil. 2:7_—“_emptied himself, taking the
form of servant, being made in the likeness of men_”—we have
evidence that Christ was both Son of God and Son of man from the
very beginning of his earthly life. But, according to Dorner,
before there was any human consciousness, the personality of Jesus
Christ was not divine-human.

(_b_) Since consciousness and will belong to personality, as distinguished from nature, the hypothesis of a mutual, conscious, and voluntary appropriation of divinity by humanity and of humanity by divinity, during the earthly life of Christ, is but a more subtle form of the Nestorian doctrine of a double personality. It follows, moreover, that as these two personalities do not become absolutely one until the resurrection, the death of the man Jesus Christ, to whom the Logos has not yet fully united himself, cannot possess an infinite atoning efficacy.

Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 2:68-70, objects to Dorner’s
view, that it “leads us to a man who is in intimate communion with
God,—a man of God, but not a man who is God.” He maintains,
against Dorner, that “the union between the divine and human in
Christ exists before the consciousness of it.” 193-195—Dorner’s
view “makes each element, the divine and the human, long for the
other, and reach its truth and reality only in the other. This, so
far as the divine is concerned, is very like pantheism. Two
_willing_ personalities are presupposed, with ethical relation to
each other,—two persons, at least at the first. Says Dorner: ‘So
long as the manhood is yet unconscious, the person of the Logos is
not yet the central _ego_ of this man. At the beginning, the Logos
does not impart himself, so far as he is person or
self-consciousness. He keeps apart by himself, just in proportion
as the manhood fails in power of perception.’ At the beginning,
then, this man is not yet the God-man; the Logos only works in
him, and on him. ‘The _unio personalis_ grows and completes
itself,—becomes ever more all-sided and complete. Till the
resurrection, there is a relative separability still.’ Thus
Dorner. But the Scripture knows nothing of an ethical relation of
the divine, to the human in Christ’s person. It knows only of one
divine-human subject.” See also Thomasius, 2:80-92.

(_c_) While this theory asserts a final complete union of God and man in Jesus Christ, it renders this union far more difficult to reason, by involving the merging of two persons in one, rather than the union of two natures in one person. We have seen, moreover, that the Scripture gives no countenance to the doctrine of a double personality during the earthly life of Christ. The God-man never says: “I and the Logos are one”; “he that hath seen me hath seen the Logos”; “the Logos is greater than I”; “I go to the Logos.” In the absence of all Scripture evidence in favor of this theory, we must regard the rational and dogmatic arguments against it as conclusive.

Liebner, in Jahrbuch f. d. Theologie, 3:349-366, urges, against
Dorner, that there is no sign in Scripture of such communion
between the two natures of Christ as exists between the three
persons of the Trinity. Philippi also objects to Dorner’s view:
(1) that it implies a pantheistic identity of essence in both God
and man; (2) that it makes the resurrection, not the birth, the
time when the Word became flesh; (3) that it does not explain how
two personalities can become one; see Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
4:364-380. Philippi quotes Dorner as saying: “The unity of essence
of God and man is the great discovery of this age.” But that
Dorner was no pantheist appears from the following quotations from
his Hist. Doctrine of the Person of Christ, II, 3:5, 23, 69,
115—“Protestant philosophy has brought about the recognition of
the essential connection and unity of the human and the divine....
To the theology of the present day, the divine and human are not
mutually exclusive but connected magnitudes, having an inward
relation to each other and reciprocally confirming each other, by
which view both separation and identification are set aside....
And now the common task of carrying on the union of faculties and
qualities to a union of essence was devolved on both. The
difference between them is that only God has aseity.... Were we to
set our face against every view which represents the divine and
human as intimately and essentially related, we should be wilfully
throwing away the gains of centuries, and returning to a soil
where a Christology is an absolute impossibility.”

See also Dorner, System, 1:123—“Faith postulates a difference
between the world and God, between whom religion seeks a union.
Faith does not wish to be a mere relation to itself or to its own
representations and thoughts. That would be a monologue; faith
desires a dialogue. Therefore it does not consent with a monism
which recognizes only God or the world (with the ego). The duality
(not the dualism, which is opposed to such monism, but which has
no desire to oppose the rational demand for unity) is in fact a
condition of true and vital unity.” The _unity_ is the foundation
of religion; the _difference_ is the foundation of morality.
Morality and religion are but different manifestations of the same
principle. Man’s moral endeavor is the working of God within him.
God can be revealed only in the perfect character and life of
Jesus Christ. See Jones, Robert Browning, 146.

Stalker, Imago Christi: “Christ was not half a God and half a man,
but he was perfectly God and perfectly man.” Moberly, Atonement
and Personality, 95—“The Incarnate did not oscillate between being
God and being man. He was indeed _always_ God, and yet never
otherwise God than as expressed within the possibilities of human
consciousness and character.” He knew that he was something more
than he was as incarnate. His miracles showed what humanity might
become. John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 14—“The divinity
of Christ was not that of a divine nature in local or mechanical
juxtaposition with a human, but of a divine nature that suffused,
blended, identified itself with the thoughts, feelings, volitions
of a human individuality. Whatever of divinity could not
organically unite itself with and breathe through a human spirit,
was not and could not be present in one who, whatever else he was,
was really and truly human.” See also Biedermann, Dogmatik,
351-353; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:428-430.

3. The real nature of this Union.

(_a_) Its great importance.—While the Scriptures represent the person of Christ as the crowning mystery of the Christian scheme (Matt 11:27; Col. 1:27; 2:2; 1 Tim. 3:16), they also incite us to its study (John 17:3; 20:27; Luke 24:39; Phil. 3:8, 10). This is the more needful, since Christ is not only the central point of Christianity, but is Christianity itself—the embodied reconciliation and union between man and God. The following remarks are offered, not as fully explaining, but only as in some respects relieving, the difficulties of the subject.