The views which have been presented with regard to inborn depravity and
the reaction of divine holiness against it suggest the question whether
infants dying before arriving at moral consciousness are saved, and if so,
in what way. To this question we reply as follows:
(_a_) Infants are in a state of sin, need to be regenerated, and can be
saved only through Christ.
_Job 14:4_—“_Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not
one_”; _Ps. 51:5_—“_Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; And
in sin did my mother conceive me_”; _John 3:6_—“_That which is
born of the flesh is flesh_”; _Rom. 5:14_—“_Nevertheless death
reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned
after the likeness of Adam’s transgression_”; _Eph. 2:3_—“_by
nature children of wrath_”; _1 Cor. 7:14_—“_else were your
children unclean_”—clearly intimate the naturally impure state of
infants; and _Mat. 19:14_—“_Suffer the little children, and forbid
them not, to come unto me_”—is not only consistent with this
doctrine, but strongly confirms it; for the meaning is: “_forbid
them not to come unto me_”—whom they need as a Savior. “Coming to
Christ” is always the coming of a sinner, to him who is the
sacrifice for sin; _cf._ _Mat. 11:28_—“_Come unto me, all ye that
labor._”
(_b_) Yet as compared with those who have personally transgressed, they
are recognized as possessed of a relative innocence, and of a
submissiveness and trustfulness, which may serve to illustrate the graces
of Christian character.
_Deut 1:39_—“_your little ones ... and your children, that this
day have no knowledge of good or evil_”; _Jonah 4:11_—“_sixscore
thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and
their left hand_”; _Rom. 9:11_—“_for the children being not yet
born, neither having done anything good or bad_”; _Mat. 18:3,
4_—“_Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no
wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall
humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in
the kingdom of heaven._” See Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:265.
Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:50—“Unpretentious receptivity, ... not
the reception of the kingdom of God at a childlike _age_, but in a
childlike _character_ ... is the condition of entering; ... not
blamelessness, but receptivity itself, on the part of those who do
not regard themselves as too good or too bad for the offered gift,
but receive it with hearty desire. Children have this
unpretentious receptivity for the kingdom of God which is
characteristic of them generally, since they have not yet other
possessions on which they pride themselves.”
(_c_) For this reason, they are the objects of special divine compassion
and care, and through the grace of Christ are certain of salvation.
_Mat. 18:5, 6, 10, 14_—“_whoso shall receive one such little child
in my name receiveth me: but whoso shall cause one of these little
ones that believe on me to stumble, it is profitable for him that
a great millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he
should be sunk in the depth of the sea.... See that ye despise not
one of these little ones: for I say unto you, that in heaven their
angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven....
Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven, that
one of these little ones should perish_”; _19:14_—“_Suffer the
little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for to such
belongeth the kingdom of heaven_”—not God’s kingdom of nature, but
his kingdom of grace, the kingdom of saved sinners. “Such” means,
not children as children, but childlike believers. Meyer, on _Mat.
19:14_, refers the passage to spiritual infants only: “Not little
children,” he says, “but men of a childlike disposition.” Geikie:
“Let the little children come unto me, and do not forbid them, for
the kingdom of heaven is given only to such as have a childlike
spirit and nature like theirs.” The Savior’s words do not intimate
that little children are either (1) sinless creatures, or (2)
subjects for baptism; but only that their (1) humble
teachableness, (2) intense eagerness, and (3) artless trust,
illustrate the traits necessary for admission into the divine
kingdom. On the passages in Matthew, see Commentaries of Bengel,
De Wette, Lange; also Neander, Planting and Training (ed.
Robinson), 407.
We therefore substantially agree with Dr. A. C. Kendrick, in his
article in the Sunday School Times: “To infants and children, as
such, the language cannot apply. It must be taken figuratively,
and must refer to those qualities in childhood, its dependence,
its trustfulness, its tender affection, its loving obedience,
which are typical of the essential Christian graces.... If asked
after the _logic_ of our Savior’s words—how he could assign, as a
reason for allowing _literal_ little children to be brought to
him, that _spiritual_ little children have a claim to the kingdom
of heaven—I reply: the persons that thus, as a class, typify the
subjects of God’s spiritual kingdom cannot be in themselves
objects of indifference to him, or be regarded otherwise than with
intense interest.... The class that in its very nature thus
shadows forth the brightest features of Christian excellence must
be subjects of God’s special concern and care.”
To these remarks of Dr. Kendrick we would add, that Jesus’ words
seem to us to intimate more than special concern and care. While
these words seem intended to exclude all idea that infants are
saved by their natural holiness, or without application to them of
the blessings of his atonement, they also seem to us to include
infants among the number of those who have the right to these
blessings; in other words, Christ’s concern and care go so far as
to choose infants to eternal life, and to make them subjects of
the kingdom of heaven. _Cf._ _Mat. 18:14_—“_it is not the will of
your Father who is in heaven, that one of those little ones should
perish_”—those whom Christ has received here, he will not reject
hereafter. Of course this to said to infants, as infants. To
those, therefore, who die before coming to moral consciousness,
Christ’s words assure salvation. Personal transgression, however,
involves the necessity, before death, of a personal repentance and
faith, in order to achieve salvation.
(_d_) The descriptions of God’s merciful provision as coëxtensive with the
ruin of the Fall also lead us to believe that those who die in infancy
receive salvation through Christ as certainly as they inherit sin from
Adam.
_John 3:16_—“_For God so loved the world_”—includes infants. _Rom.
5:14_—“_death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that
had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who is
a figure of him that was to come_”—there is an application to
infants of the life in Christ, as there was an application to them
of the death in Adam; _19-21_—“_For as through the one man’s
disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the
obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous. And the law
came in besides, that the trespass might abound; but when sin
abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly: that, as sin reigned
in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto
eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord_”—as without personal
act of theirs infants inherited corruption from Adam, so without
personal act of theirs salvation is provided for them in Christ.
Hovey, Bib. Eschatology, 170, 171—“Though the sacred writers say
nothing in respect to the future condition of those who die in
infancy, one can scarcely err in deriving from this silence a
favorable conclusion. That no prophet or apostle, that no devout
father or mother, should have expressed any solicitude as to those
who die before they are able to discern good from evil is
surprising, unless such solicitude was prevented by the Spirit of
God. There are no instances of prayer for children taken away in
infancy. The Savior nowhere teaches that they are in danger of
being lost. We therefore heartily and confidently believe that
they are redeemed by the blood of Christ and sanctified by his
Spirit, so that when they enter the unseen world they will be
found with the saints.” David ceased to fast and weep when his
child died, for he said: “_I shall go to him, but he will not
return to me_” (_2 Sam. 12:23_).
(_e_) The condition of salvation for adults is personal faith. Infants are
incapable of fulfilling this condition. Since Christ has died for all, we
have reason to believe that provision is made for their reception of
Christ in some other way.
_2 Cor. 5:15_—“_he died for all_”; _Mark 16:16_—“_He that
believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that disbelieveth
shall be condemned_” (_verses 9-20_ are of canonical authority,
though probably not written by Mark). Dr. G. W. Northrop held
that, as death to the Christian has ceased to be penalty, so death
to all infants is no longer penalty, Christ having atoned for and
removed the guilt of original sin for all men, infants included.
But we reply that there is no evidence that there is any guilt
taken away except for those who come into vital union with Christ.
E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 166—“The curse falls alike on
every one by birth, but may be alleviated or intensified by every
one who comes to years of responsibility, according as his nature
which brings the curse rules, or is ruled by, his reason and
conscience. So the blessings of salvation are procured for all
alike, but may be lost or secured according to the attitude of
everyone toward Christ who alone procures them. To infants, as the
curse comes without their election, so in like manner comes its
removal.”
(_f_) At the final judgment, personal conduct is made the test of
character. But infants are incapable of personal transgression. We have
reason, therefore, to believe that they will be among the saved, since
this rule of decision will not apply to them.
_Mat. 25:45, 46_—“_Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these
least, ye did it not unto me. And these shall go away into eternal
punishment_”; _Rom. 2:5, 6_—“_the day of wrath and revelation of
the righteous judgment of God; who __ will render to every man
according to his works._” Norman Fox, The Unfolding of Baptist
Doctrine, 24—“Not only the Roman Catholics believed in the
damnation of infants. The Lutherans, in the Augsburg Confession,
condemn the Baptists for affirming that children are saved without
baptism—‘damnant Anabaptistas qui ... affirmant pueros sine
baptismo salvos fieri’—and the favorite poet of Presbyterian
Scotland, in his Tam O’Shanter, names among objects from hell ‘Twa
span-lang, wee, unchristened bairns.’ The Westminster Confession,
in declaring that ‘elect infants dying in infancy’ are saved,
implies that non-elect infants dying in infancy are lost. This was
certainly taught by some of the framers of that creed.”
Yet John Calvin did not believe in the damnation of infants, as he
has been charged with believing. In the Amsterdam edition of his
works, 8:522, we read: “I do not doubt that the infants whom the
Lord gathers together from this life are regenerated by a secret
operation of the Holy Spirit.” In his Institutes, book 4, chap.
16, p. 335, he speaks of the exemption of infants from the grace
of salvation “as an idea not free from execrable blasphemy.” The
Presb. and Ref. Rev., Oct. 1890:634-651, quotes Calvin as follows:
“I everywhere teach that no one can be justly condemned and perish
except on account of actual sin; and to say that the countless
mortals taken from life while yet infants are precipitated from
their mothers’ arms into eternal death is a blasphemy to be
universally detested.” So also John Owen, Works, 8:522—“There are
two ways by which God saveth infants. First, by interesting them
in the covenant, if their immediate or remote parents have been
believers; ... Secondly, by his grace of election, which is most
free and not tied to any conditions; by which I make no doubt but
God taketh unto him in Christ many whose parents never knew, or
were despisers of, the gospel.”
(_g_) Since there is no evidence that children dying in infancy are
regenerated prior to death, either with or without the use of external
means, it seems most probable that the work of regeneration may be
performed by the Spirit in connection with the infant soul’s first view of
Christ in the other world. As the remains of natural depravity in the
Christian are eradicated, not by death, but at death, through the sight of
Christ and union with him, so the first moment of consciousness for the
infant may be coincident with a view of Christ the Savior which
accomplishes the entire sanctification of its nature.
_2 Cor. 3:18_—“_But we all, beholding as in a mirror the glory of
the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory,
even as from the Lord the Spirit_”; _1 John 3:2_—“_We know that,
if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see
him as he is._” If asked why more is not said upon the subject in
Scripture, we reply: It is according to the analogy of God’s
general method to hide things that are not of immediate practical
value. In some past ages, moreover, knowledge of the fact that all
children dying in infancy are saved might have seemed to make
infanticide a virtue.
While we agree with the following writers as to the salvation of
all infants who die before the age of conscious and wilful
transgression, we dissent from the seemingly Arminian tendency of
the explanation which they suggest. H. E. Robins, Harmony of
Ethics with Theology: “The judicial declaration of acquittal on
the ground of the death of Christ which comes upon all men, into
the benefits of which they are introduced by natural birth, is
inchoate justification, and will become perfected justification
through the new birth of the Holy Spirit, unless the working of
this divine agent is resisted by the personal moral action of
those who are lost.” So William Ashmore, in Christian Review,
26:245-264. F. O. Dickey: “As infants are members of the race, and
as they are justified from the penalty against inherited sin by
the mediatorial work of Christ, so the race itself is justified
from the same penalty and to the same extent as are they, and were
the race to die in infancy it would be saved.” The truth in the
above utterances seems to us to be that Christ’s union with the
race secures the objective reconciliation of the race to God. But
subjective and personal reconciliation depends upon a moral union
with Christ which can be accomplished for the infant only by his
own appropriation of Christ at death.
While, in the nature of things and by the express declarations of
Scripture, we are precluded from extending this doctrine of regeneration
at death to any who have committed personal sins, we are nevertheless
warranted in the conclusion that, certain and great as is the guilt of
original sin, no human soul is eternally condemned solely for this sin of
nature, but that, on the other hand, all who have not consciously and
wilfully transgressed are made partakers of Christ’s salvation.
The advocates of a second probation, on the other hand, should
logically hold that infants in the next world are in a state of
sin, and that at death they only enter upon a period of probation
in which they may, or may not, accept Christ,—a doctrine much less
comforting than that propounded above. See Prentiss, in Presb.
Rev., July, 1883: 548-580—“Lyman Beecher and Charles Hodge first
made current in this country the doctrine of the salvation of all
who die in infancy. If this doctrine be accepted, then it follows:
(1) that these partakers of original sin must be saved wholly
through divine grace and power; (2) that in the child unborn there
is the promise and potency of complete spiritual manhood; (3) that
salvation is possible entirely apart from the visible church and
the means of grace; (4) that to a full half of the race this life
is not in any way a period of probation; (5) that heathen may be
saved who have never even heard of the gospel; (6) that the
providence of God includes in its scope both infants and heathen.”
“Children exert a redeeming and reclaiming influence upon us,
their casual acts and words and simple trust recalling our
world-hardened and wayward hearts again to the feet of God. Silas
Marner, the old weaver of Raveloe, so pathetically and vividly
described in George Eliot’s novel, was a hard, desolate, godless
old miser, but after little Eppie strayed into his miserable
cottage that memorable winter night, he began again to believe. ‘I
think now,’ he said at last, ‘I can trusten God until I die.’ An
incident in a Southern hospital illustrates the power of children
to call men to repentance. A little girl was to undergo a
dangerous operation. When she mounted the table, and the doctor
was about to etherize her, he said: ‘Before we can make you well,
we must put you to sleep.’ ‘Oh then, if you are going to put me to
sleep,’ she sweetly said, ‘I must say my prayers first.’ Then,
getting down on her knees, and folding her hands, she repeated
that lovely prayer learned at every true mother’s feet: ‘Now I lay
me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.’ Just for a
moment there were moist eyes in that group, for deep chords were
touched, and the surgeon afterwards said: ‘I prayed that night for
the first time in thirty years.’ ” The child that is old enough to
sin against God is old enough to trust in Christ as the Savior of
sinners. See Van Dyke, Christ and Little Children; Whitsitt and
Warfield, Infant Baptism and Infant Salvation; Hodge, Syst.
Theol., 1:26, 27; Ridgeley, Body of Div., 1:422-425; Calvin,
Institutes, II, i, 8; Westminster Larger Catechism, x, 3; Krauth,
Infant Salvation in the Calvinistic System; Candlish on Atonement,
part ii, chap. 1; Geo. P. Fisher, in New Englander, Apr. 1868:338;
J. F. Clarke, Truths and Errors of Orthodoxy, 360.
PART VI. SOTERIOLOGY, OR THE DOCTRINE OF SALVATION THROUGH THE WORK OF
CHRIST AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.
Chapter I. Christology, Or The Redemption Wrought By Christ.
Section I.—Historical Preparation For Redemption.
Since God had from eternity determined to redeem mankind, the history of
the race from the time of the Fall to the coming of Christ was
providentially arranged to prepare the way for this redemption. The
preparation was two-fold:
I. Negative Preparation,—in the history of the heathen world.
This showed (1) the true nature of sin, and the depth of spiritual
ignorance and of moral depravity to which the race, left to itself, must
fall; and (2) the powerlessness of human nature to preserve or regain an
adequate knowledge of God, or to deliver itself from sin by philosophy or
art.
Why could not Eve have been the mother of the chosen seed, as she
doubtless at the first supposed that she was? (_Gen. 4:1_—“_and
she conceived, and bare Cain_ [_i. e._, “gotten”, or “acquired”],
_and said, I have gotten a man, even Jehovah_”). Why was not the
cross set up at the gates of Eden? Scripture intimates that a
preparation was needful (_Gal 4:4_—“_but when the fulness of the
time came, God hath sent forth his Son_”). Of the two agencies
made use of, we have called heathenism the negative preparation.
But it was not wholly negative; it was partly positive also.
Justin Martyr spoke of a Λόγος σπερματικός among the heathen.
Clement of Alexandria called Plato a Μωσῆς ἀττικίζων—a
Greek-speaking Moses. Notice the priestly attitude of Pythagoras,
Socrates, Plato, Pindar, Sophocles. The Bible recognizes Job,
Balaam, Melchisedek, as instances of priesthood, or divine
communication, outside the bounds of the chosen people. Heathen
religions either were not religions, or God had a part in them.
Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, were at least reformers, raised up
in God’s providence. _Gal 4:3_ classes Judaism with the
“_rudiments of the world_,” and _Rom. 5:20_ tells us that “_the
law came in beside_,” as a force coöperating with other human
factors, primitive revelation, sin, _etc._
The positive preparation in heathenism receives greater attention
when we conceive of Christ as the immanent God, revealing himself
in conscience and in history. This was the real meaning of Justin
Martyr, Apol. 1:46; 2:10, 13—“The whole race of men partook of the
Logos, and those who lived according to reason (λόγου), were
Christians, even though they were accounted atheists. Such among
the Greeks were Socrates and Heracleitus, and those who resembled
them.... Christ was known in part even to Socrates.... The
teachings of Plato are not alien to those of Christ, though not in
all respects similar. For all the writers of antiquity were able
to have a dim vision of realities by means of the indwelling seed
of the implanted Word (λόγου).” Justin Martyr claimed inspiration
for Socrates. Tertullian spoke of Socrates as “pæne
noster”—“almost one of us.” Paul speaks of the Cretans as having:
“_a prophet of their own_” (_Tit. 1:12_)—probably Epimenides (596
B. C.) whom Plato calls a θεῖος ἀνήρ—“a man of God,” and whom
Cicero couples with Bacis and the Erythræan Sibyl. Clement of
Alexandria, Stromata, 1:19; 6:5—“The same God who furnished both
the covenants was the giver of the Greek philosophy to the Greeks,
by which the Almighty is glorified among the Greeks.” Augustine:
“Plato made me know the true God; Jesus Christ showed me the way
to him.”
Bruce, Apologetics, 207—“God gave to the Gentiles at least the
starlight of religious knowledge. The Jews were elected for the
sake of the Gentiles. There was some light even for pagans, though
heathenism on the whole was a failure. But its very failure was a
preparation for receiving the true religion.” Hatch, Hibbert
Lectures, 133, 238—“Neo-Platonism, that splendid vision of
incomparable and irrecoverable cloudland in which the sun of Greek
philosophy set.... On its ethical side Christianity had large
elements in common with reformed Stoicism; on its theological side
it moved in harmony with the new movements of Platonism.” E. G.
Robinson: “The idea that all religions but the Christian are the
direct work of the devil is a Jewish idea, and is now abandoned.
On the contrary, God has revealed himself to the race just so far
as they have been capable of knowing him.... Any religion is
better than none, for all religion implies restraint.”
_John 1:9_—“_There was the true light, even the light which
lighteth every man, coming into the world_”—has its Old Testament
equivalent in _Ps. 94:10_—“_He that chastiseth the nations, shall
not he correct, Even he that teacheth man knowledge?_” Christ is
the great educator of the race. The preincarnate Word exerted an
influence upon the consciences of the heathen. He alone makes it
true that “anima naturaliter Christiana est.” Sabatier, Philos.
Religion, 138-140—“Religion is union between God and the soul.
That experience was first perfectly realized in Christ. Here are
the ideal fact and the historical fact united and blended.
Origen’s and Tertullian’s rationalism and orthodoxy each has its
truth. The religious consciousness of Christ is the fountain head
from which Christianity has flowed. He was a beginning of life to
men. He had the spirit of sonship—God in man, and man in God.
‘Quid interius Deo?’ He showed us insistence on the moral ideal,
yet the preaching of mercy to the sinner. The gospel was the
acorn, and Christianity is the oak that has sprung from it. In the
acorn, as in the tree, are some Hebraic elements that are
temporary. Paganism is the materializing of religion; Judaism is
the legalizing of religion. ‘In me,’ says Charles Secretan, ‘lives
some one greater than I.’ ”
But the positive element in heathenism was slight. Her altars and
sacrifices, her philosophy and art, roused cravings which she was
powerless to satisfy. Her religious systems became sources of
deeper corruption. There was no hope, and no progress. “The
Sphynx’s moveless calm symbolizes the monotony of Egyptian
civilization.” Classical nations became more despairing, as they
became more cultivated. To the best minds, truth seemed impossible
of attainment, and all hope of general well-being seemed a dream.
The Jews were the only forward-looking people; and all our modern
confidence in destiny and development comes from them. They, in
their turn, drew their hopefulness solely from prophecy. Not their
“genius for religion,” but special revelation from God, made them
what they were.
Although God was in heathen history, yet so exceptional were the
advantages of the Jews, that we can almost assent to the doctrine
of the New Englander, Sept. 1883:576—“The Bible does not recognize
other revelations. It speaks of the ‘_face of the covering that
covereth all peoples, and the veil that is spread over all
nations_’ (_Is. 25:7_); _Acts 14:16, 17_—‘_who in the generations
gone by suffered all the nations to walk in their own ways. And
yet he left not himself without witness_’ = not an internal
revelation in the hearts of sages, but an external revelation in
nature, ‘_in that he did good and gave you from heaven rains and
fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness._’
The convictions of heathen reformers with regard to divine
inspiration were dim and intangible, compared with the
consciousness of prophets and apostles that God was speaking
through them to his people.”
On heathenism as a preparation for Christ, see Tholuck, Nature and
Moral Influence of Heathenism, in Bib. Repos., 1832:80, 246, 441;
Döllinger, Gentile and Jew; Pressensé, Religions before Christ;
Max Müller, Science of Religion, 1-128; Cocker, Christianity and
Greek Philosophy; Ackerman, Christian Element in Plato; Farrar,
Seekers after God; Renan, on Rome and Christianity, in Hibbert
Lectures for 1880.
II. Positive Preparation,—in the history of Israel.
A single people was separated from all others, from the time of Abraham,
and was educated in three great truths: (1) the majesty of God, in his
unity, omnipotence, and holiness; (2) the sinfulness of man, and his moral
helplessness; (3) the certainty of a coming salvation. This education from
the time of Moses was conducted by the use of three principal agencies:
A. Law.—The Mosaic legislation, (_a_) by its theophanies and miracles,
cultivated faith in a personal and almighty God and Judge; (_b_) by its
commands and threatenings, wakened the sense of sin; (_c_) by its priestly
and sacrificial system, inspired hope of some way of pardon and access to
God.
The education of the Jews was first of all an education by Law. In
the history of the world, as in the history of the individual, law
must precede gospel, John the Baptist must go before Christ,
knowledge of sin must prepare a welcome entrance for knowledge of
a Savior. While the heathen were studying God’s works, the chosen
people were studying God. Men teach by words as well as by
works,—so does God. And words reveal heart to heart, as works
never can. “The Jews were made to know, on behalf of all mankind,
the guilt and shame of sin. Yet just when the disease was at its
height, the physicians were beneath contempt.” Wrightnour: “As if
to teach all subsequent ages that no outward cleansing would
furnish a remedy, the great deluge, which washed away the whole
sinful antediluvian world with the exception of one comparatively
pure family, had not cleansed the world from sin.”
With this gradual growth in the sense of sin there was also a
widening and deepening faith. Kuyper, Work of the Holy Spirit,
67—“Abel, Abraham, Moses = the individual, the family, the nation.
By faith Abel obtained witness; by faith Abraham received the son
of the promise; and by faith Moses led Israel through the Red
Sea.” Kurtz, Religionslehre, speaks of the relation between law
and gospel as “Ein fliessender Gegensatz”—“a flowing
antithesis”—like that between flower and fruit. A. B. Davidson,
Expositor, 6:163—“The course of revelation is like a river, which
cannot be cut up into sections.” E. G. Robinson: “The two
fundamental ideas of Judaism were: 1. theological—the unity of
God; 2. philosophical—the distinctness of God from the material
world. Judaism went to seed. Jesus, with the sledge-hammer of
truth, broke up the dead forms, and the Jews thought he was
destroying the Law.” On methods pursued with humanity by God, see
Simon, Reconciliation, 232-251.
B. Prophecy.—This was of two kinds: (_a_) verbal,—beginning with the
protevangelium in the garden, and extending to within four hundred years
of the coming of Christ; (_b_) typical,—in persons, as Adam, Melchisedek,
Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, Jonah; and in acts, as Isaac’s
sacrifice, and Moses’ lifting up the serpent in the wilderness.
The relation of law to gospel was like that of a sketch to the
finished picture, or of David’s plan for the temple to Solomon’s
execution of it. When all other nations were sunk in pessimism and
despair, the light of hope burned brightly among the Hebrews. The
nation was forward-bound. Faith was its very life. The O. T.
saints saw all the troubles of the present “sub specie
eternitatis,” and believed that “_Light is sown for the righteous,
And gladness for the upright in heart_” (_Ps. 97:11_). The hope of
Job was the hope of the chosen people: “_I know that my Redeemer
liveth, And at last he will stand up upon the earth_” (_Job
19:25_). Hutton, Essays, 2:237—“Hebrew supernaturalism has
transmuted forever the pure naturalism of Greek poetry. And now no
modern poet can ever become really great who does not feel and
reproduce in his writings the difference between the natural and
the supernatural.”
Christ was the reality, to which the types and ceremonies of
Judaism pointed; and these latter disappeared when Christ had
come, just as the petals of the blossom drop away when the fruit
appears. Many promises to the O. T. saints which seemed to them
promises of temporal blessing, were fulfilled in a better, because
a more spiritual, way than they expected. Thus God cultivated in
them a boundless trust—a trust which was essentially the same
thing with the faith of the new dispensation, because it was the
absolute reliance of a consciously helpless sinner upon God’s
method of salvation, and so was implicitly, though not explicitly,
a faith in Christ.
The protevangelium (_Gen. 3:15_) said “_it_ [this promised seed]
_shall bruise thy head_.” The “_it_” was rendered in some Latin
manuscripts “_ipsa_.” Hence Roman Catholic divines attributed the
victory to the Virgin. Notice that Satan was cursed, but not Adam
and Eve; for they were candidates for restoration. The promise of
the Messiah narrowed itself down as the race grew older, from
Abraham to Judah, David, Bethlehem, and the Virgin. Prophecy spoke
of “_the sceptre_” and of “_the seventy weeks_.” Haggai and
Malachi foretold that the Lord should suddenly come to the second
temple. Christ was to be true man and true God; prophet, priest,
and king; humbled and exalted. When prophecy had become complete,
a brief interval elapsed, and then he, of whom Moses in the law,
and the prophets, did write, actually came.
All these preparations for Christ’s coming, however, through the
perversity of man became most formidable obstacles to the progress
of the gospel. The Roman Empire put Christ to death. Philosophy
rejected Christ as foolishness. Jewish ritualism, the mere shadow,
usurped the place of worship and faith, the substance of religion.
God’s last method of preparation in the case of Israel was that of
C. Judgment—Repeated divine chastisements for idolatry culminated in the
overthrow of the kingdom, and the captivity of the Jews. The exile had two
principal effects: (_a_) religious,—in giving monotheism firm root in the
heart of the people, and in leading to the establishment of the
synagogue-system, by which monotheism was thereafter preserved and
propagated; (_b_) civil,—in converting the Jews from an agricultural to a
trading people, scattering them among all nations, and finally imbuing
them with the spirit of Roman law and organization.
Thus a people was made ready to receive the gospel and to propagate it
throughout the world, at the very time when the world had become conscious
of its needs, and, through its greatest philosophers and poets, was
expressing its longings for deliverance.
At the junction of Europe, Asia, and Africa, there lay a little
land through which passed all the caravan-routes from the East to
the West. Palestine was “the eye of the world.” The Hebrews
throughout the Roman world were “the greater Palestine of the
Dispersion.” The scattering of the Jews through all lands had
prepared a monotheistic starting point for the gospel in every
heathen city. Jewish synagogues had prepared places of assembly
for the hearing of the gospel. The Greek language—the universal
literary language of the world—had prepared a medium in which that
gospel could be spoken. “Cæsar had unified the Latin West, as
Alexander the Greek East”; and universal peace, together with
Roman roads and Roman law, made it possible for that gospel, when
once it had got a foothold, to spread itself to the ends of the
earth. The first dawn of missionary enterprise appears among the
proselyting Jews before Christ’s time. Christianity laid hold of
this proselyting spirit, and sanctified it, to conquer the world
to the faith of Christ.
Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 2:9, 10—“In his great expedition across
the Hellespont, Paul reversed the course which Alexander took, and
carried the gospel into Europe to the centres of the old Greek
culture.” In all these preparations we see many lines converging
to one result, in a manner inexplicable, unless we take them as
proofs of the wisdom and power of God preparing the way for the
kingdom of his Son; and all this in spite of the fact that “_a
hardening in part hath befallen Israel, until the fulness of the
Gentiles be come in_” (_Rom. 11:25_). James Robertson, Early
Religion of Israel, 15—“Israel now instructs the world in the
Worship of Mammon, after having once taught it the knowledge of
God.”
On Judaism, as a preparation for Christ, see Döllinger, Gentile
and Jew, 2:291-419; Martensen, Dogmatics, 224-236; Hengstenberg,
Christology of the O. T.; Smith, Prophecy a Preparation for
Christ; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 458-485; Fairbairn, Typology;
MacWhorter, Jahveh Christ; Kurtz, Christliche Religionslehre, 114;
Edwards’ History of Redemption, in Works, 1:297-395; Walker,
Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation; Conybeare and Howson, Life
and Epistles of St. Paul, 1:1-37; Luthardt, Fundamental Truths,
257-281; Schaff, Hist. Christian Ch., 1:32-49; Butler’s Analogy,
Bohn’s ed., 228-238; Bushnell, Vicarious Sac., 63-66; Max Müller,
Science of Language, 2:443; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk,
1:463-485; Fisher, Beginnings of Christianity, 47-73.
Section II.—The Person Of Christ.
The redemption of mankind from sin was to be effected through a Mediator
who should unite in himself both the human nature and the divine, in order
that he might reconcile God to man and man to God. To facilitate an
understanding of the Scriptural doctrine under consideration, it will be
desirable at the outset to present a brief historical survey of views
respecting the Person of Christ.
In the history of doctrine, as we have seen, beliefs held in
solution at the beginning are only gradually precipitated and
crystallized into definite formulas. The first question which
Christians naturally asked themselves was “_What think ye of the
Christ_” (_Mat 22:42_); then his relation to the Father; then, in
due succession, the nature of sin, of atonement, of justification,
of regeneration. Connecting these questions with the names of the
great leaders who sought respectively to answer them, we have: 1.
the Person of Christ, treated by Gregory Nazianzen (328); 2. the
Trinity, by Athanasius (325-373); 3. Sin, by Augustine (353-430);
4. Atonement, by Anselm (1033-1109); 5. Justification by faith, by
Luther (1485-1560); 6. Regeneration, by John Wesley
(1703-1791);—six weekdays of theology, leaving only a seventh, for
the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, which may be the work of our age.
_John 10:36_—“_him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the
world_”—hints at some mysterious process by which the Son was
prepared for his mission. Athanasius: “If the Word of God is in
the _world_, as in a body, what is there strange in affirming that
he has also entered into _humanity_?” This is the natural end of
evolution from lower to higher. See Medd, Bampton Lectures for
1882, on The One Mediator: The Operation of the Son of God in
Nature and in Grace; Orr, God’s Image in Man.
I. Historical Survey of Views Respecting the Person of Christ.
1. _The Ebionites_ (אביון = “poor”; A. D. 107?) denied the reality of
Christ’s divine nature, and held him to be merely man, whether naturally
or supernaturally conceived. This man, however, held a peculiar relation
to God, in that, from the time of his baptism, an unmeasured fulness of
the divine Spirit rested upon him. Ebionism was simply Judaism within the
pale of the Christian church, and its denial of Christ’s godhood was
occasioned by the apparent incompatibility of this doctrine with
monotheism.
Fürst (Heb. Lexicon) derives the name “Ebionite” from the word
signifying “poor”; see _Is. 25:4_—“_thou hast been a stronghold to
the poor_”; _Mat 5:3_—“_Blessed are the poor in spirit._” It means
“oppressed, pious souls.” Epiphanius traces them back to the
Christians who took refuge, A. D. 66, at Pella, just before the
destruction of Jerusalem. They lasted down to the fourth century.
Dorner can assign no age for the formation of the sect, nor any
historically ascertained person as its head. It was not Judaic
Christianity, but only a fraction of this. There were two
divisions of the Ebionites:
(_a_) The Nazarenes, who held to the supernatural birth of Christ,
while they would not go to the length of admitting the preëxisting
hypostasis of the Son. They are said to have had the gospel of
Matthew, in Hebrew.
(_b_) The Cerinthian Ebionites, who put the baptism of Christ in
place of his supernatural birth, and made the ethical sonship the
cause of the physical. It seemed to them a heathenish fable that
the Son of God should be born of the Virgin. There was no personal
union between the divine and human in Christ. Christ, as distinct
from Jesus, was not a merely impersonal power descending upon
Jesus, but a preëxisting hypostasis above the world-creating
powers. The Cerinthian Ebionites, who on the whole best represent
the spirit of Ebionism, approximated to Pharisaic Judaism, and
were hostile to the writings of Paul. The Epistle to the Hebrews,
in fact, is intended to counteract an Ebionitic tendency to
overstrain law and to underrate Christ. In a complete view,
however, should also be mentioned:
(_c_) The Gnostic Ebionism of the pseudo-Clementines, which in
order to destroy the deity of Christ and save the pure monotheism,
so-called, of primitive religion, gave up even the best part of
the Old Testament. In all its forms, Ebionism conceives of God and
man as external to each other. God could not become man. Christ
was no more than a prophet or teacher, who, as the reward of his
virtue, was from the time of his baptism specially endowed with
the Spirit. After his death he was exalted to kingship. But that
would not justify the worship which the church paid him. A merely
creaturely mediator would separate us from God, instead of uniting
us to him. See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:305-307 (Syst. Doct.,
3:201-204), and Hist. Doct. Person Christ, A.1:187-217; Reuss,
Hist. Christ. Theol., 1:100-107; Schaff, Ch. Hist., 1:213-215.
2. _The Docetæ_ (δοκέω—“to seem,” “to appear”; A. D. 70-170), like most of
the Gnostics in the second century and the Manichees in the third, denied
the reality of Christ’s human body. This view was the logical sequence of
their assumption of the inherent evil of matter. If matter is evil and
Christ was pure, then Christ’s human body must have been merely
phantasmal. Docetism was simply pagan philosophy introduced into the
church.
The Gnostic Basilides held to a real human Christ, with whom the
divine νοῦς became united at the baptism; but the followers of
Basilides became Docetæ. To them, the body of Christ was merely a
seeming one. There was no real life or death. Valentinus made the
Æon, Christ, with a body purely pneumatic and worthy of himself,
pass through the body of the Virgin, as water through a reed,
taking up into himself nothing of the human nature through which
he passed; or as a ray of light through colored glass which only
imparts to the light a portion of its own darkness. Christ’s life
was simply a theophany. The Patripassians and Sabellians, who are
only sects of the Docetæ, denied all real humanity to Christ.
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 141—“He treads the thorns of death and
shame ‘like a triumphal path,’ of which he never felt the
sharpness. There was development only externally and in
appearance. No ignorance can be ascribed to him amidst the
omniscience of the Godhead.” Shelley: “A mortal shape to him Was
as the vapor dim Which the orient planet animates with light.” The
strong argument against Docetism was found in _Heb. 2:14_—“_Since
then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself
in like manner partook of the same._”
That Docetism appeared so early, shows that the impression Christ
made was that of a superhuman being. Among many of the Gnostics,
the philosophy which lay at the basis of their Docetism was a
pantheistic apotheosis of the world. God did not need to become
man, for man was essentially divine. This view, and the opposite
error of Judaism, already mentioned, both showed their
insufficiency by attempts to combine with each other, as in the
Alexandrian philosophy. See Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person Christ,
A.1:218-253, and Glaubenslehre, 2:307-310 (Syst. Doct.,
3:204-206); Neander, Ch. Hist, 1:387.
3. _The Arians_ (Arius, condemned at Nice, 325) denied the integrity of
the divine nature in Christ. They regarded the Logos who united himself to
humanity in Jesus Christ, not as possessed of absolute godhood, but as the
first and highest of created beings. This view originated in a
misinterpretation of the Scriptural accounts of Christ’s state of
humiliation, and in mistaking temporary subordination for original and
permanent inequality.
Arianism is called by Dorner a reaction from Sabellianism.
Sabellius had reduced the incarnation of Christ to a temporary
phenomenon. Arius thought to lay stress on the hypostasis of the
Son, and to give it fixity and substance. But, to his mind, the
reality of Sonship seemed to require subordination to the Father.
Origen had taught the subordination of the Son to the Father, in
connection with his doctrine of eternal generation. Arius held to
the subordination, and also to the generation, but this last, he
declared, could not be eternal, but must be in time. See Dorner,
Person Christ, A.2:227-244, and Glaubenslehre, 2:307, 312, 313
(Syst. Doct., 3:203, 207-210); Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.:
Arianismus. See also this Compendium, Vol. I:328-330.
4. _The Apollinarians_ (Apollinaris, condemned at Constantinople, 381)
denied the integrity of Christ’s human nature. According to this view,
Christ had no human νοῦς or πνεῦμα, other than that which was furnished by
the divine nature. Christ had only the human σῶμα and ψυχή; the place of
the human νοῦς or πνεῦμα was filled by the divine Logos. Apollinarism is
an attempt to construe the doctrine of Christ’s person in the forms of the
Platonic trichotomy.
Lest divinity should seem a foreign element, when added to this
curtailed manhood, Apollinaris said that there was an eternal
tendency to the human in the Logos himself; that in God was the
true manhood; that the Logos is the eternal, archetypal man. But
here is no _becoming_ man—only a manifestation in flesh of what
the Logos already _was_. So we have a Christ of great head and
dwarfed body. Justin Martyr preceded Apollinaris in this view. In
opposing it, the church Fathers said that “what the Son of God has
not taken to himself, he has not sanctified”—τὸ ἀπρόσληπτον καὶ
ἀθεράπευτον. See Dorner, Jahrbuch f. d. Theol., 1:397-408—“The
impossibility, on the Arian theory, of making two finite souls
into one, finally led to the [Apollinarian] denial of any human
soul in Christ”; see also, Dorner, Person Christ, A.2:352-399, and
Glaubenslehre, 2:310 (Syst. Doct., 3:206, 207); Shedd, Hist.
Doctrine, 1:394.
Apollinaris taught that the eternal Word took into union with
himself, not a complete human nature, but an irrational human
animal. Simon, Reconciliation, 329, comes near to being an
Apollinarian, when he maintains that the incarnate Logos was
human, but was not a man. He is the constituter of man,
self-limited, in order that he may save that to which he has given
life. Gore, Incarnation, 93—“Apollinaris suggested that the
archetype of manhood exists in God, who made man in his own image,
so that man’s nature in some sense preëxisted in God. The Son of
God was eternally human, and he could fill the place of the human
mind in Christ without his ceasing to be in some sense divine....
This the church negatived,—man is not God, nor God man. The first
principle of theism is that manhood at the bottom is not the same
thing as Godhead. This is a principle intimately bound up with
man’s responsibility and the reality of sin. The interests of
theism were at stake.”
5. _The Nestorians_ (Nestorius, removed from the Patriarchate of
Constantinople, 431) denied the real union between the divine and the
human natures in Christ, making it rather a moral than an organic one.
They refused therefore to attribute to the resultant unity the attributes
of each nature, and regarded Christ as a man in very near relation to God.
Thus they virtually held to two natures and two persons, instead of two
natures in one person.
Nestorius disliked the phrase: “Mary, mother of God.” The
Chalcedon statement asserted its truth, with the significant
addition: “as to his humanity.” Nestorius made Christ a peculiar
temple of God. He believed in συνάφεια, not ἕνωσις,—junction and
indwelling, but not absolute union. He made too much of the
analogy of the union of the believer with Christ, and separated as
much as possible the divine and the human. The two natures were,
in his view, ἄλλος καὶ ἄλλος, instead of being ἄλλο καὶ ἄλλο,
which together constitute εἶς—one personality. The union which he
accepted was a moral union, which makes Christ simply God and man,
instead of the God-man.
John of Damascus compared the passion of Christ to the felling of
a tree on which the sun shines. The axe fells the tree, but does
no harm to the sunbeams. So the blows which struck Christ’s
humanity caused no harm to his deity; while the flesh suffered,
the deity remained impassible. This leaves, however, no divine
efficacy of the human sufferings, and no personal union of the
human with the divine. The error of Nestorius arose from a
philosophic nominalism, which refused to conceive of nature
without personality. He believed in nothing more than a local or
moral union, like the marriage union, in which two become one; or
like the state, which is sometimes called a moral person, because
having a unity composed of many persons. See Dorner, Person
Christ, B.1:53-79, and Glaubenslehre, 2:315, 316 (Syst. Doct.,
3:211-213); Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:210; Wilberforce,
Incarnation, 152-154.
“There was no need here of the virgin-birth,—to secure a sinless
father as well as mother would have been enough. Nestorianism
holds to no real incarnation—only to an alliance between God and
man. After the fashion of the Siamese twins, Chang and Eng, man
and God are joined together. But the incarnation is not merely a
higher degree of the mystical union.” Gore, Incarnation,
94—“Nestorius adopted and popularized the doctrine of the famous
commentator, Theodore of Mopsuestia. But the Christ of Nestorius
was simply a deified man, not God incarnate,—he was from below,
not from above. If he was exalted to union with the divine
essence, his exaltation was only that of one individual man.”
6. _The Eutychians_ (condemned at Chalcedon, 451) denied the distinction
and coëxistence of the two natures, and held to a mingling of both into
one, which constituted a _tertium quid_, or third nature. Since in this
case the divine must overpower the human, it follows that the human was
really absorbed into or transmuted into the divine, although the divine
was not in all respects the same, after the union, that it was before.
Hence the Eutychians were often called Monophysites, because they
virtually reduced the two natures to one.
They were an Alexandrian school, which included monks of
Constantinople and Egypt. They used the words σύγχυσις,
μεταβολή—confounding, transformation—to describe the union of the
two natures in Christ. Humanity joined to deity was as a drop of
honey mingled with the ocean. There was a change in either
element, but as when a stone attracts the earth, or a meteorite
the sun, or when a small boat pulls a ship, all the movement was
virtually on the part of the smaller object. Humanity was so
absorbed in deity, as to be altogether lost. The union was
illustrated by electron, a metal compounded of silver and gold. A
more modern illustration would be that of the chemical union of an
acid and an alkali, to form a salt unlike either of the
constituents.
In effect this theory denied the human element, and, with this,
the possibility of atonement, on the part of human nature, as well
as of real union of man with God. Such a magical union of the two
natures as Eutyches described is inconsistent with any real
_becoming man_ on the part of the Logos,—the manhood is well-nigh
as illusory as upon the theory of the Docetæ. Mason, Faith of the
Gospel, 140—“This turns not the Godhead only but the manhood also
into something foreign—into some nameless nature, betwixt and
between—the fabulous nature of a semi-human demigod,” like the
Centaur.
The author of “The German Theology” says that “Christ’s human
nature was utterly bereft of self, and was nothing else but a
house and habitation of God.” The Mystics would have human
personality so completely the organ of the divine that “we may be
to God what man’s hand is to a man,” and that “I” and “mine” may
cease to have any meaning. Both these views savor of Eutychianism.
On the other hand, the Unitarian says that Christ was “a mere
man.” But there cannot be such a thing as a mere man, exclusive of
aught above and beyond him, self-centered and self-moved. The
Trinitarian sometimes declares himself as believing that Christ is
God and man, thus implying the existence of two substances. Better
say that Christ is the God-man, who manifests all the divine
powers and qualities of which all men and all nature are partial
embodiments. See Dorner, Person of Christ, B.1:83-93, and
Glaubenslehre, 2:318, 319 (Syst. Doct., 3:214-216); Guericke, Ch.
History, 1:356-360.
The foregoing survey would seem to show that history had exhausted the
possibilities of heresy, and that the future denials of the doctrine of
Christ’s person must be, in essence, forms of the views already mentioned.
All controversies with regard to the person of Christ must, of necessity,
hinge upon one of three points: first, the reality of the two natures;
secondly, the integrity of the two natures; thirdly, the union of the two
natures in one person. Of these points, Ebionism and Docetism deny the
reality of the natures; Arianism and Apollinarianism deny their integrity;
while Nestorianism and Eutychianism deny their proper union. In opposition
to all these errors, the orthodox doctrine held its ground and maintains
it to this day.
We may apply to this subject what Dr. A. P. Peabody said in a
different connection: “The canon of infidelity was closed almost
as soon as that of the Scriptures”—modern unbelievers having, for
the most part, repeated the objections of their ancient
predecessors. Brooks, Foundations of Zoölogy, 126—“As a shell
which has failed to burst is picked up on some old battle-field,
by some one on whom experience is thrown away, and is exploded by
him in the bosom of his approving family, with disastrous results,
so one of these abandoned beliefs may be dug up by the head of
some intellectual family, to the confusion of those who follow him
as their leader.”
7. _The Orthodox doctrine_ (promulgated at Chalcedon, 451) holds that in
the one person Jesus Christ there are two natures, a human nature and a
divine nature, each in its completeness and integrity, and that these two
natures are organically and indissolubly united, yet so that no third
nature is formed thereby. In brief, to use the antiquated dictum, orthodox
doctrine forbids us either to divide the person or to confound the
natures.
That this doctrine is Scriptural and rational, we have yet to show. We may
most easily arrange our proofs by reducing the three points mentioned to
two, namely: first, the reality and integrity of the two natures;
secondly, the union of the two natures in one person.
The formula of Chalcedon is negative, with the exception of its
assertion of a ἕνωσις ὑποστατική. It proceeds from the natures,
and regards the result of the union to be the person. Each of the
two natures is regarded as in movement toward the other. The
symbol says nothing of an ἀνυποστασία of the human nature, nor
does it say that the Logos furnishes the ego in the personality.
John of Damascus, however, pushed forward to these conclusions,
and his work, translated into Latin, was used by Peter Lombard,
and determined the views of the Western church of the Middle Ages.
Dorner regards this as having given rise to the Mariolatry,
saint-invocation, and transubstantiation of the Roman Catholic
Church. See Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:189 _sq._; Dorner, Person
Christ, B.1:93-119, and Glaubenslehre, 2:320-328 (Syst. Doct.,
3:216-223), in which last passage may be found valuable matter
with regard to the changing uses of the words πρόσωπον, ὑπόστασις,
οὐσία, _etc._
Gore, Incarnation, 96, 101—“These decisions simply express in a
new form, without substantial addition, the apostolic teaching as
it is represented in the New Testament. They express it in a new
form for protective purposes, as a legal enactment protects a
moral principle. They are developments only in the sense that they
represent the apostolic teaching worked out into formulas by the
aid of a terminology which was supplied by Greek dialectics....
What the church borrowed from Greek thought was her terminology,
not the substance of her creed. Even in regard to her terminology
we must make one important reservation; for Christianity laid all
stress on the personality of God and man, of which Hellenism had
thought but little.”
II. The two Natures of Christ,—their Reality and Integrity.
1. The Humanity of Christ.
A. Its Reality.—This may be shown as follows:
(_a_) He expressly called himself, and was called, “man.”
_John 8:40_—“_ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the
truth_”; _Acts 2:22_—“_Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God
unto you_”; _Rom. 5:15_—“_the one man, Jesus Christ_”; _1 Cor.
15:21_—“_by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of
the dead_”; _1 Tim. 2:5_—“_one mediator also between God and man,
himself man, Christ Jesus._” Compare the genealogies in _Mat.
1:1-17_ and _Luke 3:23-38_, the former of which proves Jesus to be
in the royal line, and the latter of which proves him to be in the
natural line, of succession from David; the former tracing back
his lineage to Abraham, and the latter to Adam. Christ is
therefore the son of David, and of the stock of Israel. Compare
also the phrase “_Son of man_,” _e. g._, in _Mat. 20:28_, which,
however much it may mean in addition, certainly indicates the
veritable humanity of Jesus. Compare, finally, the term “_flesh_”
(= human nature), applied to him in _John 1:14_—“_And the Word
became flesh_” and in _1 John 4:2_—“_every spirit that confesseth
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God._”
“Jesus is the true Son of man whom he proclaimed himself to be.
This implies that he is the representative of all humanity.
Consider for a moment what is implied in your being a man. How
many parents had you? You answer, Two. How many grandparents? You
answer, Four. How many great-grandparents? Eight. How many
great-great-grandparents? Sixteen. So the number of your ancestors
increases as you go further back, and if you take in only twenty
generations, you will have to reckon yourself as the outcome of
more than a million progenitors. The name Smith, or Jones, which
you bear, represents only one strain of all those million; you
might almost as well bear any other name; your existence is more
an expression of the race at large than of any particular family
or line. What is true of you, was true, on the human side, of the
Lord Jesus. In him all the lines of our common humanity converged.
He was the Son of man, far more than he was Son of Mary”; see A.
H. Strong, Sermon before the London Baptist Congress.
(_b_) He possessed the essential elements of human nature as at present
constituted—a material body and a rational soul.
_Mat. 26:38_—“_My soul is exceeding sorrowful_”; _John 11:33_—“_he
groaned in the spirit_”; _Mat. 26:26_—“_this is my body_”;
_28_—“_this is my blood_”; _Luke 24:39_—“_a spirit hath not flesh
and bones, as ye behold me having_”; _Heb. 2:14_—“_Since then the
children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself in like
manner partook of the same_”; _1 John 1:1_—“_that which we have
heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we
beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life_”;
_4:2_—“_every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in
the flesh is of God._”
Yet Christ was not all men in one, and he did not illustrate the
development of all human powers. Laughter, painting, literature,
marriage—these provinces he did not invade. Yet we do not regard
these as absent from the ideal man. The perfection of Jesus was
the perfection of self-limiting love. For our sakes he sanctified
himself (_John 17:19_), or separated himself from much that in an
ordinary man would have been excellence and delight. He became an
example to us, by doing God’s will and reflecting God’s character
in his particular environment and in his particular mission—that
of the world’s Redeemer; see H. E. Robins, Ethics of the Christian
Life, 259-303.
Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 86-105—“Christ was not a man
only amongst men. His relation to the human race is not that he
was another specimen, differing, by being another, from every one
but himself. His relation to the race was not a differentiating
but a consummating relation. He was not generically but
inclusively man.... The only relation that can at all directly
compare with it is that of Adam, who in a real sense was
humanity.... That complete indwelling and possessing of even one
other, which the yearnings of man toward man imperfectly approach,
is only possible, in any fulness of the words, to that spirit of
man which is the Spirit of God: to the Spirit of God become,
through incarnation, the spirit of man.... If Christ’s humanity
were not the humanity of Deity, it could not stand in the wide,
inclusive, consummating relation, in which it stands, in fact, to
the humanity of all other men.... Yet the centre of Christ’s being
as man was not in himself but in God. He was the expression, by
willing reflection, of Another.”
(_c_) He was moved by the instinctive principles, and he exercised the
active powers, which belong to a normal and developed humanity (hunger,
thirst, weariness, sleep, love, compassion, anger, anxiety, fear,
groaning, weeping, prayer).
_Mat 4:2_—“_he afterward hungered_”; _John 19:28_—“_I thirst_”;
_4:6_—“_Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus
by the well_”; _Mat 8:24_—“_the boat was covered with the waves:
but he was asleep_”; _Mark 10:21_—“_Jesus looking upon him loved
him_”; _Mat. 9:36_—“_when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with
compassion for them_”; _Mark 3:5_—“_looked round about on them
with anger, being grieved at the hardening of their heart_”; _Heb.
5:7_—“_supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that
was able to save him from death_”; _John 12:27_—“_Now is my soul
troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour_”;
_11:33_—“_he groaned in the spirit_”; _35_—“_Jesus wept_”; _Mat
14:23_—“_he went up into the mountain apart to pray._” _Heb.
2:16_—“_For it is not doubtless angels whom he rescueth, but he
rescueth the seed of Abraham_” (Kendrick).
Prof. J. P. Silvernail, on The Elocution of Jesus, finds the
following intimations as to his delivery. It was characterized by
1. Naturalness (sitting, as at Capernaum); 2. Deliberation
(cultivates responsiveness in his hearers); 3. Circumspection (he
looked at Peter); 4. Dramatic action (woman taken in adultery); 5.
Self-control (authority, poise, no vociferation, denunciation of
Scribes and Pharisees). All these are manifestations of truly
human qualities and virtues. The epistle of James, the brother of
our Lord, with its exaltation of a meek, quiet and holy life, may
be an unconscious reflection of the character of Jesus, as it had
appeared to James during the early days at Nazareth. So John the
Baptist’s exclamation, “_I have need to be baptized of thee_”
(_Mat 3:14_), may be an inference from his intercourse with Jesus
in childhood and youth.
(_d_) He was subject to the ordinary laws of human development, both in
body and soul (grew and waxed strong in spirit; asked questions; grew in
wisdom and stature; learned obedience; suffered being tempted; was made
perfect through sufferings).
_Luke 2:40_—“_the child grew, and waxed strong, filled with
wisdom_”; _46_—“_sitting in the midst of the teachers, both
hearing them, and asking them questions_” (here, at his twelfth
year, he appears first to become fully conscious that he is the
Sent of God, the Son of God); _49_—“_know ye not that I must be in
my Father’s house?_” (lit. “in the things of my Father”);
_52_—“_advanced in wisdom and stature_”; _Heb. 5:8_—“_learned
obedience by the things which he suffered_”; _2:18_—“_in that he
himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them
that are tempted_”; _10_—“_it became him ... to make the author of
their salvation perfect through sufferings._”
Keble: “Was not our Lord a little child, Taught by degrees to
pray; By father dear and mother mild Instructed day by day?”
Adamson, The Mind in Christ: “To Henry Drummond Christianity was
the crown of the evolution of the whole universe. Jesus’ growth in
stature and in favor with God and men is a picture in miniature of
the age-long evolutionary process.” Forrest, Christ of History and
of Experience, 185—“The incarnation of the Son was not his one
revelation of God, but the interpretation to sinful humanity of
all his other revelations of God in nature and history and moral
experience, which had been darkened by sin.... The Logos,
incarnate or not, is the τέλος as well as the ἀρχή of creation.”
Andrew Murray, Spirit of Christ, 26, 27—“Though now baptized
himself, he cannot yet baptize others. He must first, in the power
of his baptism, meet temptation and overcome it; must learn
obedience and suffer; yea, through the eternal Spirit, offer
himself a sacrifice to God and his Will; then only could he afresh
receive the Holy Spirit as the reward of obedience, with the power
to baptize all who belong to him”; see _Acts 2:33_—“_Being
therefore by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of
the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he hath poured forth
this, which ye see and hear._”
(_e_) He suffered and died (bloody sweat; gave up his spirit; his side
pierced, and straightway there came out blood and water).
_Luke 22:44_—“_being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his
sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling down upon the
ground_”; _John 19:30_—“_he bowed his head, and gave up his
spirit_”; _34_—“_one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his
side, and straightway there came out blood and water_”—held by
Stroud, Physical Cause of our Lord’s Death, to be proof that Jesus
died of a broken heart.
Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, 1:9-19—“The Lord is said to have grown in
wisdom and favor with God, not because it was so, but because he
acted as if it were so. So he was exalted after death, as if this
exaltation were on account of death.” But we may reply: Resolve
all signs of humanity into mere appearance, and you lose the
divine nature as well as the human; for God is truth and cannot
act a lie. The babe, the child, even the man, in certain respects,
was ignorant. Jesus, the boy, was not making crosses, as in
Overbeck’s picture, but rather yokes and plows, as Justin Martyr
relates—serving a real apprenticeship in Joseph’s workshop: _Mark
6:3_—“_Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?_”
See Holman Hunt’s picture, “The Shadow of the Cross”—in which not
Jesus, but only Mary, sees the shadow of the cross upon the wall.
He lived a life of faith, as well as of prayer (_Heb.
12:2_—“_Jesus the author_ [captain, prince] _and perfecter of our
faith_”), dependent upon Scripture, which was much of it, as _Ps.
16_ and _118_, and _Is. 49, 50, 61,_ written for him, as well as
about him. See Park, Discourses, 297-327; Deutsch, Remains,
131—“The boldest transcendental flight of the Talmud is its
saying: ‘God prays.’ ” In Christ’s humanity, united as it is to
deity, we have the fact answering to this piece of Talmudic
poetry.
B. Its Integrity. We here use the term “integrity” to signify, not merely
completeness, but perfection. That which is perfect is, _a fortiori_,
complete in all its parts. Christ’s human nature was:
(_a_) Supernaturally conceived; since the denial of his supernatural
conception involves either a denial of the purity of Mary, his mother, or
a denial of the truthfulness of Matthew’s and Luke’s narratives.
_Luke 1:34, 35_—“_And Mary said unto the angel, How shall this be,
seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her,
The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most
High shall overshadow thee._” The “_seed of the woman_” (_Gen.
3:15_) was one who had no earthly father. “_Eve_” = life, not only
as being the source of physical life to the race, but also as
bringing into the world him who was to be its spiritual life.
Julius Müller, Proof-texts, 29—Jesus Christ “had no earthly
father; his birth was a creative act of God, breaking through the
chain of human generation.” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:447 (Syst.
Doct., 3:345)—“The new science recognizes manifold methods of
propagation, and that too even in one and the same species.”
Professor Loeb has found that the unfertilized egg of the
sea-urchin may be made by chemical treatment to produce thrifty
young, and he thinks it probable that the same effect may be
produced among the mammalia. Thus parthenogenesis in the highest
order of life is placed among the scientific possibilities.
Romanes, even while he was an agnostic, affirmed that a
virgin-birth even in the human race would be by no means out of
the range of possibility; see his Darwin and After Darwin, 119,
footnote—“Even if a virgin has ever conceived and borne a son, and
even if such a fact in the human species has been unique, it would
not betoken any breach of physiological continuity.” Only a new
impulse from the Creator could save the Redeemer from the long
accruing fatalities of human generation. But the new creation of
humanity in Christ is scientifically quite as possible as its
first creation in Adam; and in both cases there may have been no
violation of natural law, but only a unique revelation of its
possibilities. “Birth from a virgin made it clear that a new thing
was taking place in the earth, and that One was coming into the
world who was not simply man.” A. B. Bruce: “Thoroughgoing
naturalism excludes the virgin life as well as the virgin birth.”
See Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 254-270; A. H. Strong,
Christ in Creation, 176.
Paul Lobstein, Incarnation of our Lord, 217—“That which is unknown
to the teachings of St. Peter and St. Paul, St. John and St.
James, and our Lord himself, and is absent from the earliest and
the latest gospels, cannot be so essential as many people have
supposed.” This argument from silence is sufficiently met by the
considerations that Mark passes over thirty years of our Lord’s
life in silence; that John presupposes the narratives of Matthew
and of Luke; that Paul does not deal with the story of Jesus’
life. The facts were known at first only to Mary and to Joseph;
their very nature involved reticence until Jesus was demonstrated
to be “_the Son of God with power ... by the resurrection from the
dead_” (_Rom. 1:4_); meantime the natural development of Jesus and
his refusal to set up an earthly kingdom may have made the
miraculous events of thirty years ago seem to Mary like a
wonderful dream; so only gradually the marvellous tale of the
mother of the Lord found its way into the gospel tradition and
creeds of the church, and into the inmost hearts of Christians of
all countries; see F. L. Anderson, in Baptist Review and
Expositor, 1904:25-44, and Machen, on the N. T. Account of the
Birth of Jesus, in Princeton Theol. Rev., Oct. 1905, and Jan.
1906.
Cooke, on The Virgin Birth of our Lord, in Methodist Rev., Nov.
1904:849-857—“If there is a moral taint in the human race, if in
the very blood and constitution of humanity there is an
ineradicable tendency to sin, then it is utterly inconceivable
that any one born in the race by natural means should escape the
taint of that race. And, finally, if the virgin birth is not
historical, then a difficulty greater than any that destructive
criticism has yet evolved from documents, interpolations,
psychological improbabilities and unconscious contradictions
confronts the reason and upsets all the long results of scientific
observation,—that a sinful and deliberately sinning and unmarried
pair should have given life to the purest human being that ever
lived or of whom the human race has ever dreamed, and that he,
knowing and forgiving the sins of others, never knew the shame of
his own origin.” See also Gore, Dissertations, 1-68, on the Virgin
Birth of our Lord, J. Armitage Robinson, Some Thoughts on the
Incarnation, 42, both of whom show that without assuming the
reality of the virgin birth we cannot account for the origin of
the narratives of Matthew and of Luke, nor for the acceptance of
the virgin birth by the early Christians. _Per contra_, see Hoben,
in Am. Jour. Theol., 1902:478-506, 709-752. For both sides of the
controversy, see Symposium by Bacon, Zenos, Rhees and Warfield, in
Am. Jour. Theol., Jan. 1906:1-30; and especially Orr, Virgin Birth
of Christ.
(_b_) Free, both from hereditary depravity, and from actual sin; as is
shown by his never offering sacrifice, never praying for forgiveness,
teaching that all but he needed the new birth, challenging all to convict
him of a single sin.
Jesus frequently went up to the temple, but he never offered
sacrifice. He prayed: “_Father, forgive them_” (_Luke 23:34_); but
he never prayed: “Father, forgive _me_.” He said: “_Ye must be
born anew_” (_John 3:7_); but the words indicated that _he_ had no
such need. “At no moment in all that life could a single detail
have been altered, except for the worse.” He not only _yielded_ to
God’s will when made known to him, but he _sought_ it: “_I seek
not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me_” (_John
5:30_). The anger which he showed was no passionate or selfish or
vindictive anger, but the indignation of righteousness against
hypocrisy and cruelty—an indignation accompanied with grief:
“_looked round about on them with anger, being grieved at the
hardening of their heart_” (_Mark 3:5_). F. W. H. Myers, St. Paul,
19, 53—“Thou with strong prayer and very much entreating Willest
be asked, and thou wilt answer then, Show the hid heart beneath
creation beating, Smile with kind eyes and be a man with men....
Yea, through life, death, through sorrow and through sinning, He
shall suffice me, for he hath sufficed: Christ is the end, for
Christ was the beginning, Christ the beginning, for the end is
Christ.” Not personal experience of sin, but resistance to it,
fitted him to deliver us from it.
_Luke 1:35_—“_wherefore also the holy thing which is begotten
shall be called the Son of God_”; _John 8:46_—“_Which of you
convicteth me of sin?_” _14:30_—“_the prince of the world cometh:
and he hath nothing in me_” = not the slightest evil inclination
upon which his temptations can lay hold; _Rom. 8:3_—“_in the
likeness of sinful flesh_” = in flesh, but without the sin which
in other men clings to the flesh; _2 Cor. 5:21_—“_Him who knew no
sin_”; _Heb. 4:15_—“_in all points tempted like as we are, yet
without sin_”; _7:26_—“_holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from
sinners_”—by the fact of his immaculate conception;
_9:14_—“_through the eternal Spirit offered himself without
blemish unto God_”; _1 Pet. 1:19_—“_precious blood, as of a lamb
without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ_”;
_2:22_—“_who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth_”;
_1 John 3:5, 7_—“_in him is no sin ... he is righteous._”
Julius Müller, Proof-texts, 29—“Had Christ been only human nature,
he could not have been without sin. But _life_ can draw out of the
putrescent clod materials for its own living. Divine life
appropriates the human.” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:446 (Syst.
Doct., 3:344)—“What with us is regeneration, is with him the
incarnation of God.” In this origin of Jesus’ sinlessness from his
union with God, we see the absurdity, both doctrinally and
practically, of speaking of an immaculate conception of the
Virgin, and of making her sinlessness precede that of her Son. On
the Roman Catholic doctrine of the immaculate conception of the
Virgin, see H. B. Smith, System, 389-392; Mason, Faith of the
Gospel, 129-131—“It makes the regeneration of humanity begin, not
with Christ, but with the Virgin. It breaks his connection with
the race. Instead of springing sinless from the sinful race, he
derives his humanity from something not like the rest of us.”
Thomas Aquinas and Liguori both call Mary the Queen of Mercy, as
Jesus her Son is King of Justice; see Thomas, Præf. in Sept. Cath.
Ep., Comment on Esther, 5:3, and Liguori, Glories of Mary, 1:80
(Dublin version of 1866). Bradford, Heredity, 289—“The Roman
church has almost apotheosized Mary; but it must not be forgotten
that the process began with Jesus. From what he was, an inference
was drawn concerning what his mother must have been.”
“Christ took human nature in such a way that this nature, without
sin, bore the consequences of sin.” That portion of human nature
which the Logos took into union with himself was, in the very
instant and by the fact of his taking it, purged from all its
inherent depravity. But if in Christ there was no sin, or tendency
to sin, how could he be tempted? In the same way, we reply, that
Adam was tempted. Christ was not omniscient: _Mark 13:32_—“_of
that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in
heaven, neither the Son, but the Father._” Only at the close of
the first temptation does Jesus recognize Satan as the adversary
of souls: _Mat. 4:10_—“_Get thee hence, Satan._” Jesus could be
tempted, not only because he was not omniscient, but also because
he had the keenest susceptibility to all the forms of innocent
desire. To these desires temptation may appeal. Sin consists, not
in these desires, but in the gratification of them out of God’s
order, and contrary to God’s will. Meyer: “Lust is appetite run
wild. There is no harm in any natural appetite, considered in
itself. But appetite has been spoiled by the Fall.” So Satan
appealed (_Mat. 4:1-11_) to our Lord’s desire for food, for
applause, for power; to “Ueberglaube, Aberglaude, Unglaube”
(Kurtz); _cf._ _Mat. 26:39; 27:42; 26:53_. All temptation must be
addressed either to desire or fear; so Christ “_was in all points
tempted like as we are_” (_Heb. 4:15_). The first temptation, in
the wilderness, was addressed to desire; the second, in the
garden, was addressed to fear. Satan, after the first, “_departed
from him for a season_” (_Luke 4:13_); but he returned, in
Gethsemane—“_the prince of the world cometh: and he hath nothing
in me_” (_John 14:30_)—If possible, to deter Jesus from his work,
by rousing within him vast and agonizing fears of the suffering
and death that lay before him. Yet, in spite of both the desire
and the fear with which his holy soul was moved, he was “_without
sin_” (_Heb. 4:15_). The tree on the edge of the precipice is
fiercely blown by the winds: the strain upon the roots is
tremendous, but the roots hold. Even in Gethsemane and on Calvary,
Christ never prays for forgiveness, he only imparts it to others.
See Ullman, Sinlessness of Jesus; Thomasius, Christi Person und
Werk, 2:7-17, 126-136, esp. 135, 136; Schaff, Person of Christ,
51-72; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 3:330-349.
(_c_) Ideal human nature,—furnishing the moral pattern which man is
progressively to realize, although within limitations of knowledge and of
activity required by his vocation as the world’s Redeemer.
_Psalm 8:4-8_—“_thou hast made him but little lower than God, And
crownest him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have
dominion over the works of thy hands; Thou hast put all things
under his feet_”—a description of the ideal man, which finds its
realization only in Christ. _Heb. 2:6-10_—“_But now we see not yet
all things subjected to him. But we behold him who hath been made
a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the
suffering of death crowned with glory and honor._” _1 Cor.
15:45_—“_The first ... Adam ... The last Adam_”—implies that the
second Adam realized the full concept of humanity, which failed to
be realized in the first Adam; so _verse 49_—“_as we have borne
the image of the earthly_ [man], _we shall also bear the image of
the heavenly_” [man]. _2 Cor. 3:18_—“_the glory of the Lord_” is
the pattern, into whose likeness we are to be changed. _Phil
3:21_—“_who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that
it may be conformed to the body of his glory_”; _Col. 1:18_—“_that
in all things he might have the pre-eminence_”; _1 Pet.
2:21_—“_suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should
follow his steps_”; _1 John 3:3_—“_every one that hath this hope
set on him purifieth himself, even as he is pure._”
The phrase “_Son of man_” (_John 5:27_; _cf._ _Dan. 7:13_, Com. of
Pusey, _in loco_, and Westcott, in Bible Com. on John, 32-35)
seems to intimate that Christ answers to the perfect idea of
humanity, as it at first existed in the mind of God. Not that he
was surpassingly beautiful in physical form; for the only way to
reconcile the seemingly conflicting intimations is to suppose that
in all outward respects he took our average humanity—at one time
appearing without form or comeliness (_Is. 52:2_), and aged before
his time (_John 8:57_—“_Thou art not yet fifty years old_”), at
another time revealing so much of his inward grace and glory that
men were attracted and awed (_Ps. 45:2_—“_Thou art fairer than the
children of men_”; _Luke 4:22_—“_the words of grace which
proceeded out of his mouth_”; _Mark 10:32_—“_Jesus was going
before them: and they were amazed; and they that followed were
afraid_”; _Mat. 17:1-8_—the account of the transfiguration).
Compare the Byzantine pictures of Christ with those of the Italian
painters,—the former ascetic and emaciated, the latter types of
physical well-being. Modern pictures make Jesus too exclusively a
Jew. Yet there is a certain truth in the words of Mozoomdar:
“Jesus was an Oriental, and we Orientals understand him. He spoke
in figure. We understand him. He was a mystic. You take him
literally: you make an Englishman of him.” So Japanese Christians
will not swallow the Western system of theology, because they say
that this would be depriving the world of the Japanese view of
Christ.
But in all spiritual respects Christ was perfect. In him are
united all the excellences of both the sexes, of all temperaments
and nationalities and characters. He possesses, not simply passive
innocence, but positive and absolute holiness, triumphant through
temptation. He includes in himself all objects and reasons for
affection and worship; so that, in loving him, “love can never
love too much.” Christ’s human nature, therefore, and not human
nature as it is in us, is the true basis of ethics and of
theology. This absence of narrow individuality, this ideal,
universal manhood, could not have been secured by merely natural
laws of propagation,—it was secured by Christ’s miraculous
conception; see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:446 (Syst. Doct., 3:344).
John G. Whittier, on the Birmingham philanthropist, Joseph Sturge:
“Tender as woman, manliness and meekness In him were so allied,
That they who judged him by his strength or weakness Saw but a
single side.”
Seth, Ethical Principles, 420—“The secret of the power of the
moral Ideal is the conviction which it carries with it that it is
no _mere_ ideal, but the expression of the supreme Reality.”
Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 364—“The _a priori_ only
outlines a _possible_, and does not determine what shall be
_actual_ within the limits of the possible. If experience is to be
possible, it must take on certain forms, but those forms are
compatible with an infinite variety of experience.” No _a priori_
truths or ideals can guarantee Christianity. We want a historical
basis, an actual Christ, a _realization_ of the divine ideal.
“Great men,” says Amiel, “are the true men.” Yes, we add, but only
Christ, the greatest man, shows what the true man is. The heavenly
perfection of Jesus discloses to us the greatness of our own
possible being, while at the same time it reveals our infinite
shortcoming and the source from which all restoration must come.
Gore, Incarnation, 168—“Jesus Christ is the catholic man. In a
sense, all the greatest men have overlapped the boundaries of
their time. ‘The truly great Have all one age, and from one
visible space Shed influence. They, both in power and act Are
permanent, and time is not with them, Save as it worketh for them,
they in it.’ But in a unique sense the manhood of Jesus is
catholic; because it is exempt, not from the limitations which
belong to manhood, but from the limitations which make our manhood
narrow and isolated, merely local or national.” Dale, Ephesians,
42—“Christ is a servant and something more. There is an ease, a
freedom, a grace, about his doing the will of God, which can
belong only to a Son.... There is nothing constrained ... he was
born to it.... He does the will of God as a child does the will of
its father, naturally, as a matter of course, almost without
thought.... No irreverent familiarity about his communion with the
Father, but also no trace of fear, or even of wonder.... Prophets
had fallen to the ground when the divine glory was revealed to
them, but Christ stands calm and erect. A subject may lose his
self-possession in the presence of his prince, but not a son.”
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 148—“What once he had perceived, he
thenceforth knew. He had no opinions, no conjectures; we are never
told that he forgot, nor even that he remembered, which would
imply a degree of forgetting; we are not told that he arrived at
truths by the process of reasoning them out; but he reasons them
out for others. It is not recorded that he took counsel or formed
plans; but he desired, and he purposed, and he did one thing with
a view to another.” On Christ, as the ideal man, see
Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 307-336; F. W. Robertson,
Sermon on The Glory of the Divine Son, 2nd Series, Sermon XIX;
Wilberforce, Incarnation, 22-99; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 2:25;
Moorhouse, Nature and Revelation, 37; Tennyson, Introduction to In
Memoriam; Farrar, Life of Christ, 1:148-154, and 2:excursus iv;
Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 276-332; Thomas Hughes, The
Manliness of Christ; Hopkins, Scriptural Idea of Man, 121-145;
Tyler, in Bib. Sac., 22:51, 620; Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:451
_sq._
(_d_) A human nature that found its personality only in union with the
divine nature,—in other words, a human nature impersonal, in the sense
that it had no personality separate from the divine nature, and prior to
its union therewith.
By the impersonality of Christ’s human nature, we mean only that
it had no personality before Christ took it, no personality before
its union with the divine. It was a human nature whose
consciousness and will were developed only in union with the
personality of the Logos. The Fathers therefore rejected the word
ἀνυποστασία, and substituted the word ἐνυποστασία,—they favored
not _un_personality but _in_personality. In still plainer terms,
the Logos did not take into union with himself an already
developed human person, such as James, Peter, or John, but human
nature before it had become personal or was capable of receiving a
name. It reached its personality only in union with his own divine
nature. Therefore we see in Christ not two persons—a human person
and a divine person—but one person, and that person possessed of a
human nature as well as of a divine. For proof of this, see pages
683-700, also Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:289-308.
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 136—“We count it no defect in our
bodies that they have no personal subsistence apart from
ourselves, and that, if separated from ourselves, they are
nothing. They share in a true personal life because we, whose
bodies they are, are persons. What happens to them happens to us.”
In a similar manner the personality of the Logos furnished the
organizing principle of Jesus’ two-fold nature. As he looked
backward he could see himself dwelling in eternity with God, so
far as his divine nature was concerned. But as respects his
humanity he could remember that it was not eternal,—it had had its
beginnings in time. Yet this humanity had never had a separate
personal existence,—its personality had been developed only in
connection with the divine nature. Göschel, quoted in Dorner’s
Person of Christ, 5:170—“Christ _is_ humanity; we have it; he is
it entirely; we participate therein. His personality precedes and
lies at the basis of the personality of the race and its
individuals. As idea, he is implanted in the whole of humanity; he
lies at the basis of every human consciousness, without however
attaining realization in an individual; for this is only possible
in the entire race at the end of the times.”
Emma Marie Caillard, on Man in the Light of Evolution, in Contemp.
Rev., Dec. 1893: 873-881—“Christ is not only the goal of the race
which is to be conformed to him, but he is also the vital
principle which moulds each individual of that race into its own
similitude. The perfect type exists potentially through all the
intermediate stages by which it is more and more nearly
approached, and, if it did not exist, neither could they. There
could be no development of an absent life. The goal of man’s
evolution, the perfect type of manhood, is Christ. He exists and
always has existed potentially in the race and in the individual,
equally before as after his visible incarnation, equally in the
millions of those who do not, as in the far fewer millions of
those who do, bear his name. In the strictest sense of the words,
he is the life of man, and that in a far deeper and more intimate
sense than he can be said to be the life of the universe.” Dale,
Christian Fellowship, 159—“Christ’s incarnation was not an
isolated and abnormal wonder. It was God’s witness to the true and
ideal relation of all men to God.” The incarnation was no detached
event,—it was the issue of an eternal process of utterance on the
part of the Word “_whose goings forth are from of old, from
everlasting_” (_Micah 5:2_).
(_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.