§ 1. Orthodox Doctrine stated.
Having considered the Orthodox idea of man in his natural state, and of
man in his supernatural state, we next pass to consider the Orthodox idea
of Christ’s person and of Christ’s work. In this chapter we shall consider
the Orthodox view of the person of Christ, and ask what is its substantial
truth, and what its formal error.
The Orthodox opinion concerning Christ is thus stated in the Assembly’s
Confession of Faith: “The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity,
being very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father,
did, when the fulness of time was come, take upon him man’s nature, with
all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without
sin; so that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures—the Godhead and the
Manhood—were inseparably joined together in one person, which person is
very God and very Man.”
Christ, therefore, was perfectly God and perfectly man. The formula is,
“_two natures, but one person_.” The Orthodox doctrine is not of God
dwelling in a human body as its soul (which seems to be the view of
Swedenborg), but it is of God united with a human soul and body as one
person or one consciousness.
§ 2. This Doctrine gradually developed.
This idea of Christ, as we know, was gradually formed in the Christian
Church, and did not become Orthodox until after many struggles. First came
the question whether the Deity of Christ was equal or subordinate to that
of the Father. Hardly had the Orthodox doctrine triumphed over that of
subordination, against those who denied the equal Deity, than it was
obliged to turn round and contend against those on the other side, who
denied the humanity of Christ altogether. The Ebionites considered Jesus
as a mere man. Theodotus, in the year 200, taught the same, with Artemon
and Praxeas. In the next century the Arians and Sabellians opposed
Orthodoxy from opposite sides,—the one confounding the persons of the
Godhead, and the other dividing the substance. So for several centuries
the pendulum of opinion swung from one side to the other before it rested
in the golden mean of Orthodoxy.
The Nestorians separated the two natures of Christ, and maintained that
his Divinity consisted only in the indwelling of God. But scarcely had
Nestorius been banished for separating the two natures than Eutyches
plunged into heresy on the other side, by confounding them together. This
was the Monophysite heresy; and no sooner was this overthrown, and it was
decided to be wrong to say that Christ had only one nature, than others
began to contend that he had only one will. These were the Monothelites.
But through all these controversies, the main doctrine of Orthodoxy
continues to shine out luminous and distinct, asserting that Christ
combines the fulness of Deity and the fulness of Humanity.
§ 3. Unitarian Objections.
As this view of the Deity of Christ has been stated, it seems, in its
doctrinal form, contradictory to Scripture as well as to reason. That the
infinite God, who fills the universe, and sustains it; present in the
smallest insect; present in the most distant nebula, whose light just
arriving at our eye has been a million of years on its journey,—that this
infinite Being should have been born in Palestine, seems to confute itself
by its very statement. Who took care of the universe when God was an
infant in the arms of the Virgin Mary? Jesus was born, and died; but God
cannot be born, and cannot die. Jesus suffered from hunger, fatigue, and
pain; but God cannot suffer. Jesus was seen by human eyes, and touched by
human hands; but no man hath seen God at any time. Jesus had a finite
body; but God is Spirit. Jesus was tempted; but God cannot be tempted with
evil. Jesus prayed; but God cannot pray. Jesus said, “My Father is greater
than I;” but God has no one greater than himself. Jesus said, “I can of
mine own self do nothing;” but God can of his own self do everything.
Jesus said “that he came down from heaven not to do his own will;” but God
always does his own will. Jesus said that there were some things he did
not know; but God knows everything. He declared that all power was _given_
to him in heaven and earth; but God’s power cannot be given to him.
Scripture, therefore, as well as common sense, seems to deny the Orthodox
doctrine of the Deity of Christ.
The common Trinitarian answer to these texts is, that Christ is speaking
in his human nature when he asserts these limitations. But this answer, as
Dr. Bushnell has well shown, is no answer; for, as he says, “it not only
does an affront to the plain language of Scripture, but virtually denies
any real unity between the human and the divine.” Jesus does not say, “All
power in heaven and earth is given _to my human nature_,” but “to _me_;”
and when the Trinitarian himself declares that in Christ, with two
natures, there is but _one person_, the question is concerning that one
person, whether _that_ is finite or infinite, absolute or dependent,
omniscient or not so, omnipresent or not so, omnipotent or not so. The
question does not concern his nature, but himself. The one person must be
either finite or infinite: it cannot be both.
§ 4. Substantial Truth in this Doctrine.
But now we ask, What substantial truth underlies this formal error? What
truth of life underlies this error of doctrine? Let us remember how empty
the world was of God at the time of Christ’s coming. The wisest men could
speak thus with Pliny: “All religion is the offspring of necessity,
weakness, and fear. What God is,—if in truth he be anything distinct from
the world,—it is beyond the power of man’s understanding to know.” All
intelligent men agreed that if God existed he could not possibly take any
interest in the affairs of the world or of individuals. Phariseeism on the
one hand, and Sadduceeism on the other,—a religion hardened into forms,
and an empty scepticism, cold and dead,—divided the world between them.
But men cannot live without God, and be satisfied. They were feeling after
him, if haply they might find him, who is not far from any one of us.
Then Christ came; and in all that he said and did, he spoke from the
knowledge of God; he acted from the life of God. Here was one, then, at
last, to whom God was not an opinion, but a reality; through whose life
flowed the life of God in a steady current. We see that all sincere souls
who came near Jesus received from him the same sight of God which he
possessed; for faith in a living and present God is so congenial to the
nature of man, that it carries conviction with it wherever it is not a
mere opinion, but a state of the soul.
Those, therefore, who could find God nowhere else, found him in Christ.
Those who saw _him_, saw the Father. As when through a window we behold
the heavens, as when in a mirror we see an image of the sun, we do not
speak of the window or the mirror, but say that we see the sun and the
heavens, so those who looked at Christ said that they saw God.
The apostle said that God was in Christ; and this was wholly true.
Christians afterwards said that Christ was God; and they thought they were
only saying the same thing. They said that Christ had a divine nature as
well as a human nature; and in this also there was no essential falsehood,
for when we speak of our nature, we intend merely by it those elements of
character which are original and permanent, which are not acquired, do not
alter, and are never lost. God dwelt in the soul of Christ thus
constantly, thus permanently. The Word thus “became flesh, and dwelt among
us.” The word of the Lord _came_ to the prophets, but it _dwelt_ in
Christ. He and his Father were one. The vital truth of all this was that
men were now able to see God manifested in man as a living, present
reality. “_Here_,” they said, “is God. We have found God. He is in Christ.
We can see him there.”
Is it any wonder that men should have called Jesus God? that they should
call him so still? In him truly “dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily;”
and this indwelling Spirit expressed itself in what he said and what he
did. When Jesus speaks, it is as if God speaks. When Jesus does anything,
it is as if we saw God do it. It becomes to us an expression of the divine
character. When Jesus says to the sinner, “Go and sin no more,” we see in
this a manifestation not merely of his own compassion, but of God’s
forgiving love; and when he dies, although God cannot die, yet he dies
according to the divine will, and thus expresses God’s willingness to
suffer for the redemption of the world.
§ 5. Formal Error of the Orthodox Statement.
When we look at Christ’s Divinity from this point of view, the distinction
between the Trinitarian and Unitarian seems almost to disappear. Still the
question remains, Is it right to call him God? The distinction remains
between saying, “God was in Christ,” and saying, “Christ was God.” In
short, was the _person_ of Christ human or divine? We agree with the
Orthodox in saying that Christ had two natures—a divine nature and a human
nature. We also maintain with them that he had one person. But the
question comes, Was that one person divine or human, finite or infinite,
dependent or absolute? The consciousness of the one person is a single
consciousness. Christ could not at the same time have been conscious of
knowing all things and of not knowing all things, of having all power and
of not having it, of depending on God for all things and of not depending
for anything. One of two things alone is possible. Either Christ was God
united with a human soul, or he was a human soul united with God. When
Christ uses the personal pronoun “I,” he must mean by that “_I_” either
the finite man or the infinite God. I believe the Unitarian is right in
saying that this personal pronoun “I” always refers to the finite being
and consciousness, and not to the infinite Being. For example: “_I am not
alone, but I and the Father that sent me._” “_I proceeded forth and came
from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me._” God cannot proceed
from God; God cannot send God. Again: “If I honor myself, my honor is
nothing; it is my Father that honoreth me.” This cannot mean, “If God
honors God, his honor is nothing; but it is God that honors him.” It must
mean that the human being, Christ, receives his honor from the divine
Being. This view—that the person of Christ is human, but is intimately
united and in perfect union with the indwelling God—makes all Scripture
intelligible. Any other view is either unintelligible or contradictory.
This view of the divine nature of Christ united with the human person, of
God dwelling in the flesh, does not confound the mind like the common
Trinitarian view, and yet has a value for the heart of paramount
importance. If Christ is really a man like ourselves, made in all respects
like his brethren, and yet is thus at one with God, thus full of God, it
shows us that sin and separation from God are accidental things, and not
anything necessary. If Jesus is truly a man, he redeems and exalts
humanity. What he has been is a type of what all men may be. Thus the
apostle Paul speaks when he says that all things were created in Christ,
who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that he might go
before us, or be our leader in all things; which is a much higher view
than the common understanding of the passage, which merely supposes him to
have been God’s instrument in creating the physical universe. He is the
image of the invisible God—the first-born of the whole creation. This
creation is the new creation—that which is intended in Revelation (3:14),
where Christ is spoken of as the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the
Beginning of the creation of God, and that which Paul means when he says
that in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is worth
anything, “but the new creation.”
All such passages refer, as it seems to us, not to a past natural
creation, but to a supernatural creation—a creation of life eternal,
which, beginning in Christ, is to embrace the whole of humanity.
§ 6. Errors of Arianism and Naturalism.
And we cannot but think this doctrine far truer, as well as more Orthodox,
than the Arianism which so long struggled in the Church for supremacy.
That view which supposed that Christ was neither truly man nor truly God,
but some high, preëxisting being between the two, appears to us to be the
falsest and most unsatisfactory of all the doctrines concerning Christ’s
person. It separates him more entirely from our sympathies than either of
the others. It destroys both his divinity and his humanity, and, by giving
us something intermediate, gives us really nothing. It makes his apparent
human life a delusion, his temptation unreal, his human sympathies and
sorrows deceptive. We think, therefore, that the Church was right in
rejecting the Arian doctrine.
We think it was also right in rejecting the Humanitarian doctrine, or that
of mere Naturalism. Christ was something more than mere man,—something
more than Moses and Elijah,—something more than a man of great religious
genius. The peculiarity of Christ was, that he was chosen by God’s wisdom,
and prepared by God’s providence, to be the typical man of the race,—the
God-man, in whom the divine Spirit and human soul become one in a perfect
union. He was, perhaps, placed, by an exceptional birth, where the first
Adam stood,—rescued from inherited depravity, made in the image of God.
Then the Spirit was given him without measure. The word of God _dwelt_ in
him, and did not merely come to him as a transient influence for a special
purpose. Add to this a freely chosen aim of life, and a fidelity which was
always about his Father’s business, and aiming to finish the work which
was given him to do, and we have a being in whom we can see either a
manifestation of God or a manifestation of man. The Spirit in Christ was
one with God; the soul and body were human.