Chapter XXXVIII: Section II: The Person Of Christ (3)

_Matt. 11:27_—“_no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither
doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the
Son willeth to reveal him._” Here it seems to be intimated that
the mystery of the nature of the Son is even greater than that of
the Father. Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:408—The Person of Christ is in
some respects more baffling to reason than the Trinity. Yet there
is a profane neglect, as well as a profane curiosity: _Col.
1:27_—“_the riches of the glory of this mystery ... which is
Christ in you, the hope of glory_”; _2:2, 3_—“_the mystery of God,
even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge
hidden_”; _1 Tim. 3:16_—“_great is the mystery of godliness; He
who was manifested in the flesh_”—here the Vulgate, the Latin
Fathers, and Buttmann make μυστήριον the antecedent of ὅς, the
relative taking the _natural_ gender of its antecedent, and
μυστήριον referring to Christ; _Heb. 2:11_—“_both he that
sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one_ [not
father, but race, or substance]” (_cf._ _Acts 17:26_—“_he made of
one every nation of men_”)—an allusion to the solidarity of the
race and Christ’s participation in all that belongs to us.

_John 17:3_—“_this is life eternal, that they should know thee the
only true God, and him who thou didst send, even Jesus Christ_”;
_20:27_—“_Reach hither thy finger, and see my hands; and reach
hither thy hand, and put it into my side: and be not faithless,
but believing_”; _Luke 24:39_—“_See my hands and my feet, that it
is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and
bones, as ye behold me having_”; _Phil. 3:8, 10_—“_I count all
things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ
Jesus my Lord ... that I may know him_”; _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._”

Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 254, 255—“Ranke said that Alexander
was one of the few men in whom biography is identical with
universal history. The words apply far better to Christ.” Crane,
Religion of To-morrow, 267—“Religion being merely the personality
of God, Christianity the personality of Christ.” Pascal: “Jesus
Christ is the centre of everything and the object of everything,
and he who does not know him knows nothing of the order of nature
and nothing of himself.” Goethe in his last years wrote: “Humanity
cannot take a retrograde step, and we may say that the Christian
religion, now that it has once appeared, can never again
disappear; now that it has once found a divine embodiment, cannot
again be dissolved.” H. B. Smith, that man of clear and devout
thought, put his whole doctrine into one sentence: “Let us come to
Jesus,—the person of Christ is the centre of theology.” Dean
Stanley never tired of quoting as his own Confession of Faith the
words of John Bunyan: “Blest Cross—blest Sepulchre—blest rather
he—The man who there was put to shame for me!” And Charles Wesley
wrote on Catholic Love: “Weary of all this wordy strife, These
motions, forms, and modes and names, To thee, the Way, the Truth,
the Life, Whose love my simple heart inflames—Divinely taught, at
last I fly, With thee and thine to live and die.”

“We have two great lakes, named Erie and Ontario, and these are
connected by the Niagara River through which Erie pours its waters
into Ontario. The whole Christian Church throughout the ages has
been called the overflow of Jesus Christ, who is infinitely
greater than it. Let Lake Erie be the symbol of Christ, the
pre-existent Logos, the Eternal Word, God revealed in the
universe. Let Niagara River be a picture to us of this same Christ
now confined to the narrow channel of His manifestation in the
flesh, but within those limits showing the same eastward current
and downward gravitation which men perceived so imperfectly
before. The tremendous cataract, with its waters plunging into the
abyss and shaking the very earth, is the suffering and death of
the Son of God, which for the first time makes palpable to human
hearts the forces of righteousness and love operative in the
Divine nature from the beginning. The law of universal life has
been made manifest; now it is seen that justice and judgment are
the foundations of God’s throne; that God’s righteousness
everywhere and always makes penalty to follow sin; that the love
which creates and upholds sinners must itself be numbered with the
transgressors, and must bear their iniquities. Niagara has
demonstrated the gravitation of Lake Erie. And not in vain. For
from Niagara there widens out another peaceful lake. Ontario is
the offspring and likeness of Erie. So redeemed humanity is the
overflow of Jesus Christ, but only of Jesus Christ after He has
passed through the measureless self-abandonment of His earthly
life and of His tragic death on Calvary. As the waters of Lake
Ontario are ever fed by Niagara, so the Church draws its life from
the cross. And Christ’s purpose is, not that we should repeat
Calvary, for that we can never do, but that we should reflect in
ourselves the same onward movement and gravitation towards
self-sacrifice which He has revealed as characterizing the very
life of God” (A. H. Strong, Sermon before the Baptist World
Congress, London, July 12, 1905).

(_b_) The chief problems.—These problems are the following: 1. one personality and two natures; 2. human nature without personality; 3. relation of the Logos to the humanity during the earthly life of Christ; 4. relation of the humanity to the Logos during the heavenly life of Christ. We may throw light on 1, by the figure of two concentric circles; on 2, by remembering that two earthly parents unite in producing a single child; on 3, by the illustration of latent memory, which contains so much more than present recollection; on 4, by the thought that body is the manifestation of spirit, and that Christ in his heavenly state is not confined to place.

Luther said that we should need “new tongues” before we could
properly set forth this doctrine,—particularly a new language with
regard to the nature of man. The further elucidation of the
problems mentioned above will immediately occupy our attention.
Our investigation should not be prejudiced by the fact that the
divine element in Jesus Christ manifests itself within human
limitations. This is the condition of all revelation. _John
14:9_—“_he that hath seen me hath seen the father_”; _Col.
2:9_—“_in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily_” =
up to the measure of human capacity to receive and to express the
divine. _Heb. 2:11_ and _Acts 17:26_ both attribute to man a
consubstantiality with Christ, and Christ is the manifested God.
It is a law of hydrostatics that the smallest column of water will
balance the largest. Lake Erie will be no higher than the water in
the tube connected therewith. So the person of Christ reached the
level of God, though limited in extent and environment. He was God
manifest in the flesh.

Robert Browning, Death in the Desert: “I say, the acknowledgment
of God in Christ Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All
questions in the earth and out of it, And has so far advanced thee
to be wise”; Epilogue to Dramatis Personæ: “That one Face, far
from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become
my Universe that feels and knows.” “That face,” said Browning to
Mrs. Orr, as he finished reading the poem, “is the face of Christ.
That is how I feel him.” This is his answer to those victims of
nineteenth century scepticism for whom incarnate Love has
disappeared from the universe, carrying with it the belief in God.
He thus attests the continued presence of God in Christ, both in
nature and humanity. On Browning as a Christian Poet, see A. H.
Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 373-447; S. Law
Wilson, Theology of Modern Literature, 181-226.

(_c_) Reason for mystery.—The union of the two natures in Christ’s person is necessarily inscrutable, because there are no analogies to it in our experience. Attempts to illustrate it on the one hand from the union and yet the distinctness of soul and body, of iron and heat, and on the other hand from the union and yet the distinctness of Christ and the believer, of the divine Son and the Father, are one-sided and become utterly misleading, if they are regarded as furnishing a rationale of the union and not simply a means of repelling objection. The first two illustrations mentioned above lack the essential element of two natures to make them complete: soul and body are not two natures, but one, nor are iron and heat two substances. The last two illustrations mentioned above lack the element of single personality: Christ and the believer are two persons, not one, even as the Son and the Father are not one person, but two.

The two illustrations most commonly employed are the union of soul
and body, and the union of the believer with Christ. Each of these
illustrates one side of the great doctrine, but each must be
complemented by the other. The former, taken by itself, would be
Eutychian; the latter, taken by itself, would be Nestorian. Like
the doctrine of the Trinity, the Person of Christ is an absolutely
unique fact, for which we can find no complete analogies. But
neither do we know how soul and body are united. See Blunt, Dict.
Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Hypostasis; Sartorius, Person and
Work of Christ, 27-65; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 39-77; Luthardt,
Fund. Truths, 281-334.

A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 218, 230—“Many people are
Unitarians, not because of the difficulties of the Trinity, but
because of the difficulties of the Person of Christ.... The union
of the two natures is not mechanical, as between oxygen and
nitrogen in our air; nor chemical, as between oxygen and hydrogen
in water; nor organic, as between our hearts and our brains; but
personal. The best illustration is the union of body and soul in
our own persons,—how perfectly joined they are in the great
orator! Yet here are not two natures, but one human nature. We
need therefore to add the illustration of the union between the
believer and Christ.” And here too we must confess the
imperfection of the analogy, for Christ and the believer are two
persons, and not one. The person of the God-man is unique and
without adequate parallel. But this constitutes its dignity and
glory.

(_d_) Ground of possibility.—The possibility of the union of deity and humanity in one person is grounded in the original creation of man in the divine image. Man’s kinship to God, in other words, his possession of a rational and spiritual nature, is the condition of incarnation. Brute-life is incapable of union with God. But human nature is capable of the divine, in the sense not only that it lives, moves, and has its being in God, but that God may unite himself indissolubly to it and endue it with divine powers, while yet it remains all the more truly human. Since the moral image of God in human nature has been lost by sin, Christ, the perfect image of God after which man was originally made, restores that lost image by uniting himself to humanity and filling it with his divine life and love.

_2 Pet. 1:4_—“_partakers of the divine nature._” Creation and
providence do not furnish the last limit of God’s indwelling.
Beyond these, there is the spiritual union between the believer
and Christ, and even beyond this, there is the unity of God and
man in the person of Jesus Christ. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:283
(Syst. Doct., 3:180)—“Humanity in Christ is related to divinity,
as woman to man in marriage. It is receptive, but it is exalted by
receiving. Christ is the offspring of the [marriage] covenant
between God and Israel.” _Ib._, 2:403-411 (Syst. Doct.,
3:301-308)—“The question is: How can Christ be both Creator and
creature? The Logos, as such, stands over against the creature as
a distinct object. How can he become, and be, that which exists
only as object of his activity and inworking? Can the cause become
its own effect? The problem is solved, only by remembering that
the divine and human, though distinct from each other, are not to
be thought of as foreign to each other and mutually exclusive. The
very thing that distinguishes them binds them together. Their
essential distinction is that God has aseity, while man has simply
dependence. ‘_Deep calleth unto deep_’ (_Ps. 42:7_)—the deep of
the divine riches, and the deep of human poverty, call to each
other. ‘From me a cry,—from him reply.’ God’s infinite resources
and man’s infinite need, God’s measureless supply and man’s
boundless receptivity, attract each other, until they unite in him
in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The mutual
attraction is of an ethical sort, but the divine love has ‘_first
loved_’ (_1 John 4:19_).

“The new second creation is therefore not merely, like the first
creation, one that distinguishes from God,—it is one that unites
with God. Nature is distinct from God, yet God moves and works in
nature. Much more does human nature find its only true reality, or
realization, in union with God. God’s uniting act does not violate
or unmake it, but rather first causes it to be what, in God’s
idea, it was meant to be.” Incarnation is therefore the very
fulfilment of the idea of humanity. The supernatural assumption of
humanity is the most natural of all things. Man is not a mere
tangent to God, but an empty vessel to be filled from the infinite
fountain. Natura humana in Christo capax divinæ. See Talbot, in
Bap. Quar., 1868:129; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 270.

God could not have become an angel, or a tree, or a stone. But he
could become man, because man was made in his image. God in man,
as Phillips Brooks held, is the absolutely natural. Channing said
that “all minds are of one family.” E. B. Andrews: “Divinity and
humanity are not contradictory predicates. If this had been
properly understood, there would have been no Unitarian movement.
Man is in a true sense divine. This is also true of Christ. But he
is infinitely further along in the divine nature than we are. If
we say his divinity is a new kind, then the new kind arises out of
the degree.” “Were not the eye itself a sun, No light for it could
ever shine: By nothing godlike could the soul be won, Were not the
soul itself divine.”

John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:165—“A smaller circle
may represent a larger in respect of its circularity; but a
circle, small or large, cannot be the image of a square.” ...
2:101—“God would not be God without union with man, and man would
not be man without union with God. Immanent in the spirits he has
made, he shares their pains and sorrows.... Showing the infinite
element in man, Christ attracts us toward his own moral
excellence.” Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist,
190—“Incarnation is the indwelling of God in his children, of
which the type and pattern is seen in him who is at once the
manifestation of God to man, and the revelation to men of what
humanity is to be when God’s work in the world is done—perfect God
and perfect man, because God perfectly dwelling in a perfect man.”

We have quoted these latter utterances, not because we regard them
as admitting the full truth with regard to the union of the divine
and human in Christ; but because they recognize the essential
likeness of the human to the divine, and so help our understanding
of the union between the two. We go further than the writers
quoted, in maintaining not merely an indwelling of God in Christ,
but an organic and essential union. Christ moreover is not the
God-man by virtue of his possessing a larger measure of the divine
than we, but rather by being the original source of all life, both
human and divine. We hold to his deity as well as to his divinity,
as some of these authors apparently do not. See _Heb. 7:15,
16_—“_another priest, who hath been made ... after the power of an
endless life_”; _John 1:4_—“_In him was life; and the life was the
light of men._”

(_e_) No double personality.—This possession of two natures does not involve a double personality in the God-man, for the reason that the Logos takes into union with himself, not an individual man with already developed personality, but human nature which has had no separate existence before its union with the divine. Christ’s human nature is impersonal, in the sense that it attains self-consciousness, and self-determination only in the personality of the God-man. Here it is important to mark the distinction between nature and person. Nature is substance possessed in common; the persons of the Trinity have one nature; there is a common nature of mankind. Person is nature separately subsisting, with powers of consciousness and will. Since the human nature of Christ has not and never had a separate subsistence, it is impersonal, and in the God-man the Logos furnishes the principle of personality. It is equally important to observe that self-consciousness and self-determination do not belong to nature as such, but only to personality. For this reason, Christ has not two consciousnesses and two wills, but a single consciousness and a single will. This consciousness and will, moreover, is never simply human, but is always theanthropic—an activity of the one personality which unites in itself the human and the divine (Mark 13:32; Luke 22:42).

The human father and the human mother are distinct persons, and
they each give something of their own peculiar nature to their
child; yet the result is, not two persons in the child, but only
one person, with one consciousness and one will. So the Fatherhood
of God and the motherhood of Mary produced not a double
personality in Christ, but a single personality. Dorner
illustrates the union of human and divine in Jesus by the _Holy
Spirit_ in the Christian,—nothing foreign, nothing distinguishable
from the human life into which it enters; and by the _moral
sense_, which is the very presence and power of God in the human
soul,—yet conscience does not break up the unity of the life; see
C. C. Everett, Essays, 32. These illustrations help us to
understand the interpenetration of the human by the divine in
Jesus; but they are defective in suggesting that his relation to
God was different from ours not in kind but only in degree. Only
Jesus could say: “_Before Abraham was born, I am_” (_John 8:58_);
“_I and the Father are one_” (_John 10:30_).

The theory of two consciousnesses and two wills, first elaborated
by John of Damascus, was an unwarranted addition to the orthodox
doctrine propounded at Chalcedon. Although the view of John of
Damascus was sanctioned by the Council of Constantinople (681),
“this Council has never been regarded by the Greek Church as
œcumenical, and its composition and spirit deprive its decisions
of all value as indicating the true sense of Scripture”; see
Bruce, Humiliation of Christ, 90. _Nature_ has consciousness and
will, only as it is manifested in _person_. The one person has a
single consciousness and will, which embraces within its scope at
all times a human nature, and sometimes a divine. Notice that we
do not say Christ’s human nature had no will, but only that it had
none before its union with the divine nature, and none separately
from the one will which was made up of the human and the divine
united; _versus_ Current Discussions in Theology, 5:283.

Sartorius uses the illustration of two concentric circles: the one
ego of personality in Christ is at the same time the centre of
both circles, the human nature and the divine. Or, still better,
illustrate by a smaller vessel of air inverted and sunk, sometimes
below its centre, sometimes above, in a far larger vessel of
water. See _Mark 13:32_—“_of that day or that hour knoweth no one,
not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son_”; _Luke
22:42_—“_Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me:
nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done._” To say that,
although in his capacity as man he was ignorant, yet at that same
moment in his capacity as God he was omniscient, is to accuse
Christ of unveracity. Whenever Christ spoke, it was not one of the
natures that spoke, but the person in whom both natures were
united.

We subjoin various definitions of personality: Boëthius, quoted in
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:415 (Syst. Doct., 3:313)—“Persona est
animæ rationalis individua substantia”; F. W. Robertson, Lect. on
Gen., p. 3—“Personality = self-consciousness, will, character”;
Porter, Human Intellect, 626—“Personality = distinct subsistence,
either actually or latently self-conscious and self-determining”;
Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 408—“Person = being, conscious of
self, subsisting in individuality and identity, and endowed with
intuitive reason, rational sensibility, and free-will.” Dr. E. G.
Robinson defines “nature” as “that substratum or condition of
being which determines the kind and attributes of the person, but
which is clearly distinguishable from the person itself.”

Lotze, Metaphysics, § 244—“The identity of the subject of inward
experience is all that we require. So far as, and so long as, the
soul knows itself as this identical subject, it is and is named,
simply for that reason, substance.” Illingworth, Personality,
Human and Divine, 32—“Our conception of substance is not derived
from the physical, but from the mental, world. Substance is first
of all that which underlies our mental affections and
manifestations. Kant declared that the idea of freedom is the
source of our idea of personality. Personality consists in the
freedom of the whole soul from the mechanism of nature.” On
personality, see Windelband, Hist. Philos., 238. For the theory of
two consciousnesses and two wills, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
4:129, 234; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 2:314; Ridgeley, Body of Divinity,
1:476; Hodge, Syst Theol., 2:378-391; Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,
2:289-308, esp. 328. _Per contra_, see Hovey, God with Us, 66;
Schaff, Church Hist., 1:757, and 3:751; Calderwood, Moral
Philosophy, 12-14; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 148-169; Van
Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 512-518.

(_f_) Effect upon the human.—The union of the divine and the human natures makes the latter possessed of the powers belonging to the former; in other words, the attributes of the divine nature are imparted to the human without passing over into its essence,—so that the human Christ even on earth had power to be, to know, and to do, as God. That this power was latent, or was only rarely manifested, was the result of the self-chosen state of humiliation upon which the God-man had entered. In this state of humiliation, the communication of the contents of his divine nature to the human was mediated by the Holy Spirit. The God-man, in his servant-form, knew and taught and performed only what the Spirit permitted and directed (Mat. 3:16; John 3:34; Acts 1:2; 10:38; Heb. 9:14). But when thus permitted, he knew, taught, and performed, not, like the prophets, by power communicated from without, but by virtue of his own inner divine energy (Mat. 17:2; Mark 5:41; Luke 5:20, 21; 6:19; John 2:11, 24, 25; 3:13; 20:19).

Kahnis, Dogmatik, 2d ed., 2:77—“Human nature does not become
divine, but (as Chemnitz has said) only the medium of the divine;
as the moon has not a light of her own, but only shines in the
light of the sun. So human nature may derivatively exercise divine
attributes, because it is united to the divine in one person.”
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 151—“Our souls spiritualize our
bodies, and will one day give us the spiritual body, while yet the
body does not become spirit. So the Godhead gives divine powers to
the humanity in Christ, while yet the humanity does not cease to
be humanity.”

Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:131—“The union exalts the human, as
light brightens the air, heat gives glow to the iron, spirit
exalts the body, the Holy Spirit hallows the believer by union
with his soul. Fire gives to iron its own properties of lighting
and burning; yet the iron does not become fire. Soul gives to body
its life-energy; yet the body does not become soul. The Holy
Spirit sanctifies the believer, but the believer does not become
divine; for the divine principle is the determining one. We do not
speak of airy light, of iron heat, or of a bodily soul. So human
nature possesses the divine only derivatively. In this sense it is
_our_ destiny to become ‘_partakers of the divine nature_’ (_2
Pet. 1:4_). Even in his earthly life, when he wished to be, or
more correctly, when the Spirit permitted, he was omnipotent,
omniscient, omnipresent, could walk the sea, or pass through
closed doors. But, in his state of humiliation, he was subject to
the Holy Spirit.”

In _Mat. 3:16_, the anointing of the Spirit at his baptism was not
the descent of a material dove (“_as a dove_”). The dove-like
appearance was only the outward sign of the coming forth of the
Holy Spirit from the depths of his being and pouring itself like a
flood into his divine-human consciousness. _John 3:34_—“_for he
giveth not the Spirit by measure_”; _Acts 1:2_—“_after that he had
given commandment through the Holy Spirit unto the apostles_”;
_10:38_—“_Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy
Spirit and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all
that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him_”; _Heb,
9:14_—“_the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit
offered himself without blemish onto God._”

When permitted by the Holy Spirit, he knew, taught, and wrought as
God: _Mat. 17:2_—“_he was transfigured before them_”; _Mark
5:41_—“_Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise_”; _Luke 5:20, 21_—“_Man,
thy sins are forgiven thee.... Who can forgive sins, but God
alone?_”—_Luke 6:19_—“_power came forth from him, and healed them
all_”; _John 2:11_—“_This beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana
of Galilee, and manifested his glory_”; _24, 25_—“_he knew all
men.... he himself knew what was in man_”; _3:13_—“_the Son of
man, who is __ in heaven_” [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with
א and B, omit ὁ ὢν ἔν τῷ ὀυρανῷ,—for advocacy of the common
reading, see Broadus, in Hovey’s Com., on _John 3:13_];
_20:19_—“_when the doors were shut ... Jesus came and stood in the
midst._”

Christ is the “_servant of Jehovah_” (_Is. 42:1-7; 49:1-12; 52:13;
53:11_) and the meaning of παῖς (_Acts 3:13, 28; 4:27, 30_) is not
“child” or “Son”; it is “_servant_,” as in the Revised Version.
But, in the state of exaltation, Christ is the “_Lord of the
Spirit_” (_2 Cor. 3:18_—Meyer), giving the Spirit (_John 16:7_—“_I
will send him unto you_”), present in the Spirit (_John 14:18_—“_I
come unto you_”; _Mat. 28:20_—“_I am with you always, even unto
the the end of the world_”), and working through the Spirit (_1
Cor. 15:45_—“_The last Adam became a life-giving spirit_”); _2
Cor. 3:17_—“_Now the Lord is the Spirit_”. On Christ’s relation to
the Holy Spirit, see John Owen, Works, 282-297; Robins, in Bib.
Sac., Oct. 1874:615; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 208-241.

Delitzsch: “The conception of the servant of Jehovah is, as it
were, a pyramid, of which the base is the people of Israel as a
whole; the central part, Israel according to the Spirit; and the
summit, the Mediator of Salvation who rises out of Israel.” Cheyne
on Isaiah, 2:253, agrees with this view of Delitzsch, which is
also the view of Oehler. The O. T. is the life of a nation; the N.
T. is the life of a man. The chief end of the nation was to
produce the man; the chief end of the man was to save the world.
Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 59—“If humanity were not potentially
and in some degree an Immanuel, God with us, there would never
have issued from its bosom he who bore and revealed this blessed
name.” We would enlarge and amend this illustration of the
pyramid, by making the base to be the Logos, as Creator and
Upholder of all (_Eph. 1:23_; _Col. 1:16_); the stratum which
rests next upon the Logos is universal humanity (_Ps, 8:5, 6_);
then comes Israel as a whole (_Mat. 2:15_); spiritual Israel rests
upon Israel after the flesh (_Is. 42:1-7_); as the acme and cap
stone of all, Christ appears, to crown the pyramid, the true
servant of Jehovah and Son of man (_Is. 53:11_; _Mat. 20:28_). We
may go even further and represent Christ as forming the basis of
another inverted pyramid of redeemed humanity ever growing and
rising to heaven (_Is. 9:6_—“_Everlasting Father_”; _Is.
53:10_—“_he shall see his seed_”; _Rev. 22:16_—“_root and
offspring of David_”; _Heb. 2:13_—“_I and the children whom God
hath given me._”)

(_g_) Effect upon the divine.—This communion of the natures was such that, although the divine nature in itself is incapable of ignorance, weakness, temptation, suffering, or death, the one person Jesus Christ was capable of these by virtue of the union of the divine nature with a human nature in him. As the human Savior can exercise divine attributes, not in virtue of his humanity alone, but derivatively, by virtue of his possession of a divine nature, so the divine Savior can suffer and be ignorant as man, not in his divine nature, but derivatively, by virtue of his possession of a human nature. We may illustrate this from the connection between body and soul. The soul suffers pain from its union with the body, of which apart from the body it would be incapable. So the God-man, although in his divine nature impassible, was capable, through his union with humanity, of absolutely infinite suffering.

Just as my soul could never suffer the pains of fire if it were
only soul, but can suffer those pains in union with the body, so
the otherwise impassible God can suffer mortal pangs through his
union with humanity, which he never could suffer if he had not
joined himself to my nature. The union between the humanity and
the deity is so close, that deity itself is brought under the
curse and penalty of the law. Because Christ was God, did he pass
unscorched through the fires of Gethsemane and Calvary? Rather let
us say, because Christ was God, he underwent a suffering that was
absolutely infinite. Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:300 _sq._;
Lawrence, in Bib. Sac., 24:41; Schöberlein, in Jahrbuch für
deutsche Theologie, 1871:459-501.

A. J. F. Behrends, in The Examiner, April 21, 1898—“Jesus Christ
is God in the form of man; as completely God as if he were not
man; as completely man as if he were not God. He is always divine
and always human.... The infirmities and pains of his body pierced
his divine nature.... The demand of the law was not laid upon
Christ from without, but proceeded from within. It is the
righteousness _in_ him which makes his death necessary.”

(_h_) Necessity of the union.—The union of two natures in one person is necessary to constitute Jesus Christ a proper mediator between man and God. His two-fold nature gives him fellowship with both parties, since it involves an equal dignity with God, and at the same time a perfect sympathy with man (Heb. 2:17, 18; 4:15, 16). This two-fold nature, moreover, enables him to present to both God and man proper terms of reconciliation: being man, he can make atonement for man; being God, his atonement has infinite value; while both his divinity and his humanity combine to move the hearts of offenders and constrain them to submission and love (1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 7:25).

_Heb. 2:17,18_—“_Wherefore it behooved him in all things to be
made like unto his brethren, that he might become a merciful and
faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make
propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself
hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are
tempted_”; _4:15,16_—“_For we have not a high priest that cannot
be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath
been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us
therefore draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that
we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help us in time of
need_”; _1 Tim. 2:5_—“_one God, one mediator also between God and
men, himself man, Christ Jesus_”; _Heb. 7:25_—“_Wherefore also he
is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God
through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for
them._”

Because Christ is man, he can make atonement for man and can
sympathize with man. Because Christ is God, his atonement has
infinite value, and the union which he effects with God is
complete. A merely human Savior could never reconcile or reunite
us to God. But a divine-human Savior meets all our needs. See
Wilberforce, Incarnation, 170-208. As the high priest of old bore
on his mitre the name Jehovah, and on his breastplate the names of
the tribes of Israel, so Christ Jesus is God with us, and at the
same time our propitiatory representative before God. In Virgil’s
Æneid, Dido says well: “Haud ignara malí, miseris succurrere
disco”—“Myself not ignorant of woe, Compassion I have learned to
show.” And Terence uttered almost a Christian word when he wrote:
“Homo sum, et humani nihil a me alienum puto”—“I am a man, and I
count nothing human as foreign to me.” Christ’s experience and
divinity made these words far more true of him than of any merely
human being.

(_i_) The union eternal.—The union of humanity with deity in the person of Christ is indissoluble and eternal. Unlike the avatars of the East, the incarnation was a permanent assumption of human nature by the second person of the Trinity. In the ascension of Christ, glorified humanity has attained the throne of the universe. By his Spirit, this same divine-human Savior is omnipresent to secure the progress of his kingdom. The final subjection of the Son to the Father, alluded to in 1 Cor. 15:28, cannot be other than the complete return of the Son to his original relation to the Father; since, according to John 17:5, Christ is again to possess the glory which he had with the Father before the world was (_cf._ Heb. 1:8; 7:24, 25).

_1 Cor. 15:28_—“_and when all things have been subjected unto him,
then shall the Son also himself be subjected to him that did
subject all things unto him, that God may be all in all_”; _John
17:5_—“_Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory
which I had with thee before the world was_”; _Heb. 1:8_—“_of the
Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever_”;
_7:24_—“_he, because he abideth forever, hath his priesthood
unchangeable._” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:281-283 (Syst. Doct.
3:177-179), holds that there is a present and relative distinction
between the Son’s will, as Mediator, and that of the Father (_Mat.
26:39_—“_not as I will, but as thou wilt_”)—a distinction which
shall cease when Christ becomes Judge (_John 16:26_—“_In that day
ye shall ask in my name: and I say not onto you, that I will pray
the Father for you_”) If Christ’s _reign_ ceased, he would be
inferior to the saints, who are themselves to reign. But they are
to reign only in and with Christ, their head.

The best illustration of the possible meaning of Christ’s giving
up the kingdom is found in the Governor of the East India Company
giving up his authority to the Queen and merging it in that of the
home government, he himself, however, at the same time becoming
Secretary of State for India. So Christ will give up his
vicegerency, but not his mediatorship. Now he reigns by delegated
authority; then he will reign in union with the Father. So
Kendrick, in Bib. Sac., Jan. 1890:68-83. Wrightnour: “When the
great remedy has wrought its perfect cure, the physician will no
longer be looked upon as the physician. When the work of
redemption is completed, the mediatorial office of the Son will
cease.” We may add that other offices of friendship and
instruction will then begin.

Melanchthon: “Christ will finish his work as Mediator, and then
will reign as God, immediately revealing to us the Deity.”
Quenstedt, quoted in Schmid, Dogmatik, 293, thinks the giving up
of the kingdom will be only an exchange of outward administration
for inward,—not a surrender of all power and authority, but only
of one mode of exercising it. Hanna, on Resurrection, lect. 4—“It
is not a giving up of his mediatorial authority,—that throne is to
endure forever,—but it is a simple public recognition of the fact
that God is all in all, that Christ is God’s medium of
accomplishing all.” An. Par. Bible, on _1 Cor. 15:28_—“Not his
mediatorial relation to his own people shall be given up; much
less his personal relation to the Godhead, as the divine Word; but
only his mediatorial relation to the world at large.” See also
Edwards, Observations on the Trinity, 85 _sq._ Expositor’s Greek
Testament, on _1 Cor. 15:28_, “affirms no other subjection than is
involved in Sonship.... This implies no inferiority of nature, no
extrusion from power, but the free submission of love ... which is
the essence of the filial spirit which actuated Christ from first
to last.... Whatsoever glory he gains is devoted to the glory and
power of the Father, who glorifies him in turn.”

Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:402 (Syst. Doct., 3:297-299)—“We are not
to imagine incarnations of Christ in the angel-world, or in other
spheres. This would make incarnation only the change of a garment,
a passing theophany; and Christ’s relation to humanity would be a
merely external one.” Bishop of Salisbury, quoted in Swayne, Our
Lord’s Knowledge as Man, XX—“Are we permitted to believe that
there is something parallel to the progress of our Lord’s humanity
in the state of humiliation, still going on even now, in the state
of exaltation? that it is, in fact, becoming more and more
adequate to the divine nature? See _Col. 1:24_—‘_fill up that
which is lacking_’; _Heb. 10:12, 13_—‘_expecting till his
enemies_’; _1 Cor. 15:28_—‘_when all things have been subjected
unto him._’ ” In our judgment such a conclusion is unwarranted, in
view of the fact that the God-man in his exaltation has the glory
of his preëxistent state (_John 17:5_); that all the heavenly
powers are already subject to him (_Eph. 1:21, 22_); and that he
is now omnipresent (_Mat. 28:20_).

(_j_) Infinite and finite in Christ.—Our investigation of the Scripture teaching with regard to the Person of Christ leads us to three important conclusions: 1. that deity and humanity, the infinite and the finite, in him are not mutually exclusive; 2. that the humanity in Christ differs from his deity not merely in degree but also in kind; and 3. that this difference in kind is the difference between the infinite original and the finite derivative, so that Christ is the source of life, both physical and spiritual, for all men.

Our doctrine excludes the view that Christ is only quantitatively
different from other men in whom God’s Spirit dwells. He is
qualitatively different, in that he is the source of life, and
they the recipients. Not only is it true that the fulness of the
Godhead is in him alone,—it is also true that he is himself God,
self-revealing and self-communicating, as men are not. Yet we
cannot hold with E. H. Johnson, Outline of Syst. Theol., 176-178,
that Christ’s humanity was of one species with his deity, but not
of one substance. We know of but one underlying substance and
ground of being. This one substance is self-limiting, and so
self-manifesting, in Jesus Christ. The determining element is not
the human but the divine. The infinite Source has a finite
manifestation; but in the finite we see the Infinite; _2 Cor.
5:19_—“_God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself_”;
_John 14:9_—“_he that hath seen me hath seen the Father._” We can
therefore agree with the following writers who regard all men as
partakers of the life of God, while yet we deny that Christ is
only a man, distinguished from his fellows by having a larger
share in that life than they have.

J. M. Whiton: “How is the divine spirit which is manifest in the
life of the man Christ Jesus to be distinguished, _qua_ divine,
from the same divine spirit as manifested in the life of humanity?
I answer, that in him, the person Christ, dwelleth the _fulness_
of the Godhead bodily. I emphasize _fulness_, and say: The
God-head is alike in the race and in its spiritual head, but the
_fulness_ is in the head alone—a fulness of course not absolute,
since circumscribed by a human organism, but a fulness to the
limits of the organism. Essential deity cannot be ascribed to the
human Christ, except as in common with the race created in the
image of God. Life is one, and all life is divine.”... Gloria
Patri, 88, 23—“Every incarnation of life is _pro tanto_ and in its
measure an incarnation of God ... and God’s way is a perpetually
increasing incarnation of life whose climax and crown is the
divine fulness of life in Christ.... The _Homoousios_ of the
Nicene Creed was a great victory of the truth. But the Nicene
Fathers builded better than they knew. The Unitarian Dr. Hedge
praised them because they got at the truth, the logical conclusion
of which was to come so long after, that God and man are of one
substance.” So Momerie, Inspiration, holds man’s nature to be the
same in kind with God’s. See criticism of this view in Watts, New
Apologetic, 133, 134. _Homoiousios_ he regards as involving
_homoousios_; the divine nature capable of fission or
segmentation, broken off in portions, and distributed among finite
moral agents; the divine nature undergoing perpetual curtailment;
every man therefore to some extent inspired, and evil as truly an
inspiration of God as is good. Watts seems to us to lack the
proper conception of the infinite as the ground of the finite, and
so not excluding it.

Lyman Abbott affirms that Christ is, “not God _and_ man, but God
_in_ man.” Christ differs from other men only as the flower
differs from the bulb. As the true man, he is genuinely divine.
Deity and humanity are not two distinct natures, but one nature.
The ethico-spiritual nature which is finite in man is identical
with the nature which is infinite in God. Christ’s distinction
from other men is therefore in the degree in which he shared this
nature and possessed a unique fulness of life—“_anointed with the
Holy Spirit and with power_” (_Acts 10:38_). Phillips Brooks: “To
this humanity of man as a part of God—to this I cling; for I do
love it, and I will know nothing else.... Man is, in virtue of his
essential humanity, partaker of the life of the essential Word....
Into every soul, just so far as it is possible for that soul to
receive it, God beats his life and gives his help.” Phillips
Brooks believes in the redemptive indwelling of God in man, so
that salvation is of man, for man, and by man. He does not scruple
to say to every man: “You are a part of God.”

While we shrink from the expressions which seem to imply a
partition of the divine nature, we are compelled to recognize a
truth which these writers are laboring to express, the truth
namely of the essential oneness of all life, and of God in Christ
as the source and giver of it. “Jesus quotes approvingly the words
of _Psalm 82:6_—‘_I said, Ye are Gods._’ Microscopic, indeed, but
divine are we—sparks from the flame of deity. God is the Creator,
but it is through Christ as the mediating and as the final Cause.
‘_And we through him_’ (_1 Cor. 8:6_)—we exist for him, for the
realization of a divine humanity in solidarity with him. Christ is
at once the end and the instrumental cause of the whole process.”
Samuel Harris, God the Creator and Lord of All, speaks of “the
essentially human in God, and the essentially divine in man.” The
Son, or Word of God, “when manifested in the forms of a finite
personality, is the essential Christ, revealing that in God which
is essentially and eternally human.”

Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:196—“The whole of humanity is the
object of the divine love; it is an Immanuel and son of God; its
whole history is a continual incarnation of God; as indeed it is
said in Scripture that we are a divine offspring, and that we live
and move and have our being in God. But what lies potentially in
the human consciousness of God is not on that account also
manifestly revealed to it from the beginning.” Hatch, Hibbert
Lectures, 175-180, on Stoic monism and Platonic dualism, tells us
that the Stoics believed in a personal λόγος and an impersonal
ὕλη, both of them modes of a single substance. Some regarded God
as a mode of matter, _natura naturata_: “Jupiter est quodcunque
vides, quodcunque moveris” (Lucan, Phars., 9:579); others
conceived of him as the _natura naturans_,—this became the
governing conception.... The products are all divine, but not
equally divine.... Nearest of all to the pure essence of God is
the human soul: it is an emanation or outflow from him, a sapling
which is separate from and yet continues the life of the parent
tree, a colony in which some members of the parent state have
settled. Plato followed Anaxagoras in holding that mind is
separate from matter and acts upon it. God is outside the world.
He shapes it as a carpenter shapes wood. On the general subject of
the union of deity and humanity in the person of Christ, see
Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.: Christologie; Barrows, in Bib. Sac.,
10:765; 26:83; also, Bib. Sac., 17:535; John Owen, Person of
Christ, in Works, 1:223; Hooker, Eccl. Polity, book v. chap.
51-56: Boyce, in Bap. Quar., 1870:385; Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:403
sq.; Hovey, God with Us, 61-88; Plumptre, Christ and Christendom,
appendix; E. H. Johnson, The Idea of Law in Christology, in Bib.
Sac., Oct. 1889:599-625.