of God _and_ man; for this, he says, involves the fallacy of two
natures. He would speak rather of the manifestation of God _in_
man. The ordinary Unitarian insists that Christ was “a mere man.”
As if there could be such a thing as _mere_ man, exclusive of
aught above him and beyond him, self-centered and self-moved. We
can sympathize with Whiton’s objection to the phrase “God _and_
man,” because of its implication of an imperfect union. But we
prefer the term “God-man” to the phrase “God _in_ man,” for the
reason that this latter phrase might equally describe the union of
Christ with every believer. Christ is “the only begotten,” in a
sense that every believer is not. Yet we can also sympathize with
Dean Stanley, Life and Letters, 1:115—“Alas that a Church that has
so divine a service should keep its long list of Articles! I am
strengthened more than ever in my opinion that there is only
needed, that there only should be, one, _viz_., ‘I believe that
Christ is both God and man.’ ”
1. Proof of this Union.
(_a_) Christ uniformly speaks of himself, and is spoken of, as a single
person. There is no interchange of “I” and “thou” between the human and
the divine natures, such as we find between the persons of the Trinity
(John 17:23). Christ never uses the plural number in referring to himself,
unless it be in John 3:11—“we speak that we do know,”—and even here “we”
is more probably used as inclusive of the disciples. 1 John 4:2—“is come
in the flesh”—is supplemented by John 1:14—“became flesh”; and these texts
together assure us that Christ so came in human nature as to make that
nature an element in his single personality.
_John 17:23_—“_I in them, and thou in me, that they may be
perfected into one; that the world may know that thou didst send
me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me_”; _3:11_—“_We speak
that which we know, and bear witness of that which we have seen;
and ye receive not our witness_”; _1 John 4:2_—“_every spirit that
confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God_”;
_John 1:14_—“_And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us_”—he
so came in human nature that human nature and himself formed, not
two persons, but one person.
In the Trinity, the Father is objective to the Son, the Son to the
Father, and both to the Spirit. But Christ’s divinity is never
objective to his humanity, nor his humanity to his divinity.
Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 97—“He is not so much God
_and_ man, as God _in_, and _through_, and _as_ man. He is one
indivisible personality throughout.... We are to study the divine
in and through the human. By looking for the divine side by side
with the human, instead of discerning the divine within the human,
we miss the significance of them both.” We mistake when we say
that certain words of Jesus with regard to his ignorance of the
day of the end (_Mark 13:32_) were spoken by his human nature,
while certain other words with regard to his being in heaven at
the same time that he was on earth (_John 3:13_) were spoken by
his divine nature. There was never any separation of the human
from the divine, or of the divine from the human,—all Christ’s
words were spoken, and all Christ’s deeds were done, by the one
person, the God-man. See Forrest, The Authority of Christ, 49-100.
(_b_) The attributes and powers of both natures are ascribed to the one
Christ, and conversely the works and dignities of the one Christ are
ascribed to either of the natures, in a way inexplicable, except upon the
principle that these two natures are organically and indissolubly united
in a single person (examples of the former usage are Rom. 1:3 and 1 Pet.
3:18; of the latter, 1 Tim. 2:5 and Heb. 1:2, 3). Hence we can say, on the
one hand, that the God-man existed before Abraham, yet was born in the
reign of Augustus Cæsar, and that Jesus Christ wept, was weary, suffered,
died, yet is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; on the other hand,
that a divine Savior redeemed us upon the cross, and that the human Christ
is present with his people even to the end of the world (Eph. 1:23; 4:10;
Mat. 28:20).
_Rom. 1:3_—“_his Son, who was born of the seed of David according
to the flesh_”; _1 Pet. 3:18_—“_Christ also suffered for sins once
... being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the
spirit_”; _1 Tim. 2:5_—“_one mediator also between God and men,
himself man, Christ Jesus_”; _Heb. 1:2, 3_—“_his Son, whom he
appointed heir of all things ... who being the effulgence of his
glory ... when he had made purification of sins, sat down on the
right hand of the Majesty on high_”; _Eph. 1:22, 23_—“_put all
things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over
all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him
that filleth all in all_”; _4:10_—“_He that descended is the same
also that ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill
all things_”; _Mat. 28:20_—“_lo, I am with you always, even unto
the end of the world._”
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 142-145—“Mary was Theotokos, but she
was not the mother of Christ’s Godhood, but of his humanity. We
speak of the blood of God the Son, but it is not as God that he
has blood. The hands of the babe Jesus made the worlds, only in
the sense that he whose hands they were was the Agent in
creation.... Spirit and body in us are not merely put side by
side, and insulated from each other. The spirit does not have the
rheumatism, and the reverent body does not commune with God. The
reason why they affect each other is because they are equally
ours.... Let us avoid sensuous, fondling, modes of addressing
Christ—modes which dishonor him and enfeeble the soul of the
worshiper.... Let us also avoid, on the other hand, such phrases
as ‘the dying God’, which loses the manhood in the Godhead.”
Charles H. Spurgeon remarked that people who “dear” everybody
reminded him of the woman who said she had been reading in “dear
Hebrews.”
(_c_) The constant Scriptural representations of the infinite value of
Christ’s atonement and of the union of the human race with God which has
been secured in him are intelligible only when Christ is regarded, not as
a man of God, but as the God-man, in whom the two natures are so united
that what each does has the value of both.
_1 John 2:2_—“_he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for
ours only, but also for the whole world,_”—as John in his gospel
proves that Jesus is the Son of God, the Word, God, so in his
first Epistle he proves that the Son of God, the Word, God, has
become man; _Eph. 2:16-18_—“_might reconcile them both_ [Jew and
Gentile] _in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the
enmity thereby; and he came and preached peace to you that were
far off, and peace to them that were nigh: for through him we both
have our access in one Spirit unto the Father_”; _21, 22_—“_in
whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a
holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for
a habitation of God in the Spirit_”; _2 Pet. 1:4_—“_that through
these_ [promises] _ye may become partakers of the divine nature._”
John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:107—“We cannot separate
Christ’s divine from his human acts, without rending in twain the
unity of his person and life.”
(_d_) It corroborates this view to remember that the universal Christian
consciousness recognizes in Christ a single and undivided personality, and
expresses this recognition in its services of song and prayer.
The foregoing proof of the union of a perfect human nature and of a
perfect divine nature in the single person of Jesus Christ suffices to
refute both the Nestorian separation of the natures and the Eutychian
confounding of them. Certain modern forms of stating the doctrine of this
union, however—forms of statement into which there enter some of the
misconceptions already noticed—need a brief examination, before we proceed
to our own attempt at elucidation.
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:403-411 (Syst. Doct., 3:300-308)—“Three
ideas are included in incarnation: (1) assumption of human nature
on the part of the Logos (_Heb. 2:14_—‘_partook __ of ... flesh
and blood_’; _2 Cor. 5:19_—‘_God was in Christ_’; _Col. 2:9_—‘_in
him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily_’); (2) new
creation of the second Adam, by the Holy Ghost and power of the
Highest (_Rom. 5:14_—‘_Adam’s’ transgression, who is a figure of
him that was to come_’; _1 Cor. 15:22_—‘_as in Adam all die, so
also in Christ shall all be made alive_’; _15:45_—‘_The first man
Adam became a living soul, the last Adam became a life-giving
Spirit_’; _Luke 1:35_—‘_the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and
the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee_’; _Mat.
1:20_—‘_that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit_’);
(3) becoming flesh, without contraction of deity or humanity (_1
Tim. 3:16_—‘_who was manifested in the flesh_’; _1 John
4:2_—‘_Jesus Christ is come in the flesh_’; _John 6:41, 51_—‘_I am
the bread which came down out of heaven.... I am the living
bread_’; _2 John 7_—‘_Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh_’; _John
1:14_—‘_the word became flesh_’). This last text cannot mean: The
Logos ceased to be what he was, and began to be only man. Nor can
it be a mere theophany, in human form. The reality of the humanity
is intimated, as well as the reality of the Logos.”
The Lutherans hold to a communion of the natures, as well as to an
impartation of their properties: (1) _genus
idiomaticum_—impartation of attributes of both natures to the one
person; (2) _genus apotelesmaticum_ (from ἀποτέλεσμα, “that which
is finished or completed,” _i. e._, Jesus’ work)—attributes of the
one person imparted to each of the constituent natures. Hence Mary
may be called “the mother of God,” as the Chalcedon symbol
declares, “as to his humanity,” and what each nature did has the
value of both; (3) _genus majestaticum_—attributes of one nature
imparted to the other, yet so that the divine nature imparts to
the human, not the human to the divine. The Lutherans do not
believe in a _genus tapeinoticon_, _i. e._, that the human
elements communicated themselves to the divine. The only
communication of the human was to the person, not to the divine
nature, of the God-man. Examples of this third _genus
majestaticum_ are found is _John 3:13_—“_no one hath ascended into
heaven, but he that descended out of heaven, even the Son of man,
who is in heaven_” [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and
B, omit ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ]; _5:27_—“_he gave him authority to
execute judgment, because he is a son of man._” Of the explanation
that this is the figure of speech called “_allæosis,_” Luther
says: “_Allæosis_ est larva quædam diaboli, secundum cujus
rationes ego certe nolim esse Christianus.”
The _genus majestaticum_ is denied by the Reformed Church, on the
ground that it does not permit a clear distinction of the natures.
And this is one great difference between it and the Lutheran
Church. So Hooker, in commenting upon the Son of man’s “ascending
up where he was before,” says: “By the ‘_Son of man_’ must be
meant the whole person of Christ, who, being man upon earth,
filled heaven with his glorious presence; but not according to
that nature for which the title of man is given him.” For the
Lutheran view of this union and its results in the communion of
natures, see Hase, Hutterus Redivivus, 11th ed., 195-197;
Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 2:24, 25. For the Reformed
view, see Turretin, loc. 13, quæst. 8; Hodge, Syst. Theol.,
2:387-397, 407-418.
2. Modern misrepresentations of this Union.
A. Theory of an incomplete humanity.—Gess and Beecher hold that the
immaterial part in Christ’s humanity is only contracted and metamorphosed
deity.
The advocates of this view maintain that the divine Logos reduced himself
to the condition and limits of human nature, and thus literally became a
human soul. The theory differs from Apollinarianism, in that it does not
necessarily presuppose a trichotomous view of man’s nature. While
Apollinarianism, however, denied the human origin only of Christ’s πνεῦμα,
this theory extends the denial to his entire immaterial being,—his body
alone being derived from the Virgin. It is held, in slightly varying
forms, by the Germans, Hofmann and Ebrard, as well as by Gess; and Henry
Ward Beecher was its chief representative in America.
Gess holds that Christ gave up his eternal holiness and divine
self-consciousness, to become man, so that he never during his
earthly life thought, spoke, or wrought as God, but was at all
times destitute of divine attributes. See Gess, Scripture Doctrine
of the Person of Christ; and synopsis of his view, by Reubelt, in
Bib. Sac., 1870:1-32; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, 1:234-241, and 2:20;
Ebrard, Dogmatik, 2:144-151, and in Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.:
Jesus Christ, der Gottmensch; also Liebner, Christliche Dogmatik.
Henry Ward Beecher, in his Life of Jesus the Christ, chap. 3,
emphasizes the word “_flesh,_” in _John 1:14_ and declares the
passage to mean that the divine Spirit enveloped himself in a
human _body_, and in that condition was subject to the
indispensable limitations of material laws. All these advocates of
the view hold that Deity was dormant, or paralyzed, in Christ
during his earthly life. Its essence is there, but not its
efficiency at any time.
Against this theory we urge the following objections:
(_a_) It rests upon a false interpretation of the passage John 1:14—ὁ
λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο. The word σάρξ here has its common New Testament
meaning. It designates neither soul nor body alone, but human nature in
its totality (_cf._ John 3:6—τὸ γεγεννημένον ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς σάρξ ἐστιν;
Rom. 7:18—οὐκ οἰκεῖ ἐν ἐμοί, τοῦτ᾽ ἔστιν ἐν τῇ σαρκί μου, ἀγαθόν). That
ἐγένετο does not imply a transmutation of the λόγος into human nature, or
into a human soul, is evident from ἐσκήνωσεν which follows—an allusion to
the Shechinah of the Mosaic tabernacle; and from the parallel passage 1
John 4:2—ἐν σαρκὶ ἐληλυθότα—where we are taught not only the oneness of
Christ’s person, but the distinctness of the constituent natures.
_John 1:14_—“_the Word became flesh, and dwelt_ [tabernacled]
_among us, and we behold his glory_”; _3:6_—“_That which is born
of the flesh is flesh_”; _Rom., 7:18_—“_in me, that is, in my
flesh, dwelleth no good thing_”; _1 John 4:2_—“_Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh._” Since “_flesh_,” in Scriptural usage, denotes
human nature in its entirety, there is as little reason to infer
from these passages a change of the Logos into a human body, as a
change of the Logos into a human soul. There is no curtailed
humanity in Christ. One advantage of the monistic doctrine is that
it avoids this error. Omnipresence is the presence of the whole of
God in every place. _Ps. 85:9_—“_Surely his salvation is nigh them
that fear him, That glory may dwell in our land_”—was fulfilled
when Christ, the true Shekinah, tabernacled in human flesh and men
“_beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father,
full of grace and truth_” (_John 1:14_). And Paul can say in _2
Cor. 12:9_—“_Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my
weaknesses, that the power of Christ may spread a tabernacle over
me._”
(_b_) It contradicts the two great classes of Scripture passages already
referred to, which assert on the one hand the divine knowledge and power
of Christ and his consciousness of oneness with the Father, and on the
other hand the completeness of his human nature and its derivation from
the stock of Israel and the seed of Abraham (Mat. 1:1-16; Heb. 2:16). Thus
it denies both the true humanity, and the true deity, of Christ.
See the Scripture passages cited in proof of the Deity of Christ,
pages 305-315. Gess himself acknowledges that, if the passages in
which Jesus avers his divine knowledge and power and his
consciousness of oneness with the Father refer to his earthly
life, his theory is overthrown. “Apollinarianism had a certain
sort of grotesque grandeur, in giving to the human body and soul
of Christ an infinite, divine πνεῦμα. It maintained at least the
divine side of Christ’s person. But the theory before us denies
both sides.” While it so curtails deity that it is no proper
deity, it takes away from humanity all that is valuable in
humanity; for a manhood that consists only in body is no proper
manhood. Such manhood is like the “half length” portrait which
depicted only the _lower half_ of the man. _Mat. 1:1-16_, the
genealogy of Jesus, and _Heb. 2:16_—“_taketh hold of the seed of
Abraham_”—intimate that Christ took all that belonged to human
nature.
(_c_) It is inconsistent with the Scriptural representations of God’s
immutability, in maintaining that the Logos gives up the attributes of
Godhead, and his place and office as second person of the Trinity, in
order to contract himself into the limits of humanity. Since attributes
and substance are correlative terms, it is impossible to hold that the
substance of God is in Christ, so long as he does not possess divine
attributes. As we shall see hereafter, however, the possession of divine
attributes by Christ does not necessarily imply his constant exercise of
them. His humiliation indeed, consisted in his giving up their independent
exercise.
See Dorner, Unveränderlichkeit Gottes, in Jahrbuch für deutsche
Theologie, 1:361; 2:440; 3:579; esp. 1:390-412—“Gess holds that,
during the thirty-three years of Jesus’ earthly life, the Trinity
was altered; the Father no more poured his fulness into the Son;
the Son no more, with the Father, sent forth the Holy Spirit; the
world was upheld and governed by Father and Spirit alone, without
the mediation of the Son; the Father ceased to beget the Son. He
says the Father alone has _aseity_; he is the only Monas. The
Trinity is a family, whose head is the Father, but whose number
and condition is variable. To Gess, it is indifferent whether the
Trinity consists of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or (as during
Jesus’ life) of only one. But this is a Trinity in which two
members are accidental. A Trinity that can get along without one
of its members is not the Scriptural Trinity. The Father depends
on the Son, and the Spirit depends on the Son, as much as the Son
depends on the Father. To take away the Son is to take away the
Father and the Spirit. This giving up of the actuality of his
attributes, even of his holiness, on the part of the Logos, is in
order to make it possible for Christ to sin. But can we ascribe
the possibility of sin to a being who is really God? The reality
of temptation requires us to postulate a veritable human soul.”
(_d_) It is destructive of the whole Scriptural scheme of salvation, in
that it renders impossible any experience of human nature on the part of
the divine,—for when God becomes man he ceases to be God; in that it
renders impossible any sufficient atonement on the part of human
nature,—for mere humanity, even though its essence be a contracted and
dormant deity, is not capable of a suffering which shall have infinite
value; in that it renders impossible any proper union of the human race
with God in the person of Jesus Christ,—for where true deity and true
humanity are both absent, there can be no union between the two.
See Dorner, Jahrbuch f. d. Theologie, 1:390—“Upon this theory only
an exhibitory atonement can be maintained. There is no real
humanity that, in the strength of divinity, can bring a sacrifice
to God. Not substitution, therefore, but obedience, on this view,
reconciles us to God. Even if it is said that God’s Spirit is the
real soul in all men, this will not help the matter; for we should
then have to make an essential distinction between the indwelling
of the Spirit in the unregenerate, the regenerate, and Christ,
respectively. But in that case we lose the likeness between
Christ’s nature and our own,—Christ’s being preëxistent, and ours
not. Without this pantheistic doctrine, Christ’s unlikeness to us
is yet greater; for he is really a wandering God, clothed in a
human body, and cannot properly be called a human soul. We have
then no middle-point between the body and the Godhead; and in the
state of exaltation, we have no manhood at all,—only the infinite
Logos, in a glorified body as his garment.”
Isaac Watts’s theory of a preëxistent humanity in like manner
implies that humanity is originally in deity; it does not proceed
from a human stock, but from a divine; between the human and the
divine there is no proper distinction; hence there can be no
proper redeeming of humanity; see Bib. Sac., 1875:421. A. A.
Hodge, Pop. Lectures, 226—“If Christ does not take a human πνεῦμα,
he cannot be a high-priest who feels with us in all our
infirmities, having been tempted like us.” Mason, Faith of the
Gospel, 138—“The conversion of the Godhead into flesh would have
only added one more man to the number of men—a sinless one,
perhaps, among sinners—but it would have effected no union of God
and men.” On the theory in general, see Hovey, God with Us, 62-69;
Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:430-440; Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
4:386-408; Biedermann, Christliche Dogmatik, 356-359; Bruce,
Humiliation of Christ, 187, 230; Schaff, Christ and Christianity,
115-119.
B. Theory of a gradual incarnation.—Dorner and Rothe hold that the union
between the divine and the human natures is not completed by the
incarnating act.
The advocates of this view maintain that the union between the two natures
is accomplished by a gradual communication of the fulness of the divine
Logos to the man Christ Jesus. This communication is mediated by the human
consciousness of Jesus. Before the human consciousness begins, the
personality of the Logos is not yet divine-human. The personal union
completes itself only gradually, as the human consciousness is
sufficiently developed to appropriate the divine.
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:660 (Syst. Doct., 4:125)—“In order that
Christ might show his high-priestly love by suffering and death,
the different sides of his personality yet stood to one another in
relative separableness. The divine-human union in him,
accordingly, was before his death not yet completely actualized,
although its completion was from the beginning divinely assured.”
2:431 (Syst. Doct., 3:328)—“In spite of this _becoming_, inside of
the _Unio_, the Logos is from the beginning united with Jesus in
the deepest foundation of his being, and Jesus’ life has ever been
a divine-human one, in that a present receptivity for the Godhead
has never remained without its satisfaction.... Even the
unconscious humanity of the babe turns receptively to the Logos,
as the plant turns toward the light. The initial union makes
Christ already the God-man, but not in such a way as to prevent a
subsequent _becoming_; for surely he did become omniscient and
incapable of death, as he was not at the beginning.”
2:464 _sq._ (Syst. Doct., 3:363 _sq._)—“The actual life of God, as
the Logos, reaches beyond the beginnings of the divine-human life.
For if the _Unio_ is to complete itself by growth, the relation of
impartation and reception must continue. In his personal
consciousness, there was a distinction between duty and being. The
will had to take up practically, and turn into action, each new
revelation or perception of God’s will on the part of intellect or
conscience. He had to maintain, with his will, each revelation of
his nature and work. In his twelfth year, he says: ‘_I must be
about my Father’s business._’ To Satan’s temptation: ‘_Art thou
God’s Son?_’ he must reply with an affirmation that suppresses all
doubt, though he will not prove it by miracle. This moral growth,
as it was the will of the Father, was his task. He hears from his
Father, and obeys. In him, imperfect knowledge was never the same
with false conception. In us, ignorance has error for its obverse
side. But this was never the case with him, though he grew in
knowledge unto the end.” Dorner’s view of the Person of Christ may
be found in his Hist. Doct. Person Christ, 5:248-261;
Glaubenslehre, 2:347-474 (Syst. Doct., 3:243-373).
A summary of his views is also given in Princeton Rev.,
1873:71-87—Dorner illustrates the relation between the humanity
and the deity of Christ by the relation between God and man, in
conscience, and in the witness of the Spirit. “So far as the human
element was immature or incomplete, so far the Logos was not
present. Knowledge advanced to unity with the Logos, and the human
will afterwards confirmed the best and highest knowledge. A
resignation of both the Logos and the human nature to the union is
involved in the incarnation. The growth continues until the idea,
and the reality, of divine humanity perfectly coincide. The
assumption of unity was gradual, in the life of Christ. His
exaltation began with the perfection of this development.” Rothe’s
statement of the theory can be found in his Dogmatik, 2:49-182;
and in Bib. Sac., 27:386.
It is objectionable for the following reasons:
(_a_) The Scripture plainly teaches that that which was born of Mary was
as completely Son of God as Son of man (Luke 1:35); and that in the
incarnating act, and not at his resurrection, Jesus Christ became the
God-man (Phil. 2:7). But this theory virtually teaches the birth of a man
who subsequently and gradually became the God-man, by consciously
appropriating the Logos to whom he sustained ethical relations—relations
with regard to which the Scripture is entirely silent. Its radical error
is that of mistaking an incomplete consciousness of the union for an
incomplete union.
In _Luke 1:35_—“_the holy thing which is begotten shall be called
the Son of God_”—and _Phil. 2:7_—“_emptied himself, taking the
form of servant, being made in the likeness of men_”—we have
evidence that Christ was both Son of God and Son of man from the
very beginning of his earthly life. But, according to Dorner,
before there was any human consciousness, the personality of Jesus
Christ was not divine-human.
(_b_) Since consciousness and will belong to personality, as distinguished
from nature, the hypothesis of a mutual, conscious, and voluntary
appropriation of divinity by humanity and of humanity by divinity, during
the earthly life of Christ, is but a more subtle form of the Nestorian
doctrine of a double personality. It follows, moreover, that as these two
personalities do not become absolutely one until the resurrection, the
death of the man Jesus Christ, to whom the Logos has not yet fully united
himself, cannot possess an infinite atoning efficacy.
Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 2:68-70, objects to Dorner’s
view, that it “leads us to a man who is in intimate communion with
God,—a man of God, but not a man who is God.” He maintains,
against Dorner, that “the union between the divine and human in
Christ exists before the consciousness of it.” 193-195—Dorner’s
view “makes each element, the divine and the human, long for the
other, and reach its truth and reality only in the other. This, so
far as the divine is concerned, is very like pantheism. Two
_willing_ personalities are presupposed, with ethical relation to
each other,—two persons, at least at the first. Says Dorner: ‘So
long as the manhood is yet unconscious, the person of the Logos is
not yet the central _ego_ of this man. At the beginning, the Logos
does not impart himself, so far as he is person or
self-consciousness. He keeps apart by himself, just in proportion
as the manhood fails in power of perception.’ At the beginning,
then, this man is not yet the God-man; the Logos only works in
him, and on him. ‘The _unio personalis_ grows and completes
itself,—becomes ever more all-sided and complete. Till the
resurrection, there is a relative separability still.’ Thus
Dorner. But the Scripture knows nothing of an ethical relation of
the divine, to the human in Christ’s person. It knows only of one
divine-human subject.” See also Thomasius, 2:80-92.
(_c_) While this theory asserts a final complete union of God and man in
Jesus Christ, it renders this union far more difficult to reason, by
involving the merging of two persons in one, rather than the union of two
natures in one person. We have seen, moreover, that the Scripture gives no
countenance to the doctrine of a double personality during the earthly
life of Christ. The God-man never says: “I and the Logos are one”; “he
that hath seen me hath seen the Logos”; “the Logos is greater than I”; “I
go to the Logos.” In the absence of all Scripture evidence in favor of
this theory, we must regard the rational and dogmatic arguments against it
as conclusive.
Liebner, in Jahrbuch f. d. Theologie, 3:349-366, urges, against
Dorner, that there is no sign in Scripture of such communion
between the two natures of Christ as exists between the three
persons of the Trinity. Philippi also objects to Dorner’s view:
(1) that it implies a pantheistic identity of essence in both God
and man; (2) that it makes the resurrection, not the birth, the
time when the Word became flesh; (3) that it does not explain how
two personalities can become one; see Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
4:364-380. Philippi quotes Dorner as saying: “The unity of essence
of God and man is the great discovery of this age.” But that
Dorner was no pantheist appears from the following quotations from
his Hist. Doctrine of the Person of Christ, II, 3:5, 23, 69,
115—“Protestant philosophy has brought about the recognition of
the essential connection and unity of the human and the divine....
To the theology of the present day, the divine and human are not
mutually exclusive but connected magnitudes, having an inward
relation to each other and reciprocally confirming each other, by
which view both separation and identification are set aside....
And now the common task of carrying on the union of faculties and
qualities to a union of essence was devolved on both. The
difference between them is that only God has aseity.... Were we to
set our face against every view which represents the divine and
human as intimately and essentially related, we should be wilfully
throwing away the gains of centuries, and returning to a soil
where a Christology is an absolute impossibility.”
See also Dorner, System, 1:123—“Faith postulates a difference
between the world and God, between whom religion seeks a union.
Faith does not wish to be a mere relation to itself or to its own
representations and thoughts. That would be a monologue; faith
desires a dialogue. Therefore it does not consent with a monism
which recognizes only God or the world (with the ego). The duality
(not the dualism, which is opposed to such monism, but which has
no desire to oppose the rational demand for unity) is in fact a
condition of true and vital unity.” The _unity_ is the foundation
of religion; the _difference_ is the foundation of morality.
Morality and religion are but different manifestations of the same
principle. Man’s moral endeavor is the working of God within him.
God can be revealed only in the perfect character and life of
Jesus Christ. See Jones, Robert Browning, 146.
Stalker, Imago Christi: “Christ was not half a God and half a man,
but he was perfectly God and perfectly man.” Moberly, Atonement
and Personality, 95—“The Incarnate did not oscillate between being
God and being man. He was indeed _always_ God, and yet never
otherwise God than as expressed within the possibilities of human
consciousness and character.” He knew that he was something more
than he was as incarnate. His miracles showed what humanity might
become. John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 14—“The divinity
of Christ was not that of a divine nature in local or mechanical
juxtaposition with a human, but of a divine nature that suffused,
blended, identified itself with the thoughts, feelings, volitions
of a human individuality. Whatever of divinity could not
organically unite itself with and breathe through a human spirit,
was not and could not be present in one who, whatever else he was,
was really and truly human.” See also Biedermann, Dogmatik,
351-353; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:428-430.
3. The real nature of this Union.
(_a_) Its great importance.—While the Scriptures represent the person of
Christ as the crowning mystery of the Christian scheme (Matt 11:27; Col.
1:27; 2:2; 1 Tim. 3:16), they also incite us to its study (John 17:3;
20:27; Luke 24:39; Phil. 3:8, 10). This is the more needful, since Christ
is not only the central point of Christianity, but is Christianity
itself—the embodied reconciliation and union between man and God. The
following remarks are offered, not as fully explaining, but only as in
some respects relieving, the difficulties of the subject.
_Matt. 11:27_—“_no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither
doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the
Son willeth to reveal him._” Here it seems to be intimated that
the mystery of the nature of the Son is even greater than that of
the Father. Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:408—The Person of Christ is in
some respects more baffling to reason than the Trinity. Yet there
is a profane neglect, as well as a profane curiosity: _Col.
1:27_—“_the riches of the glory of this mystery ... which is
Christ in you, the hope of glory_”; _2:2, 3_—“_the mystery of God,
even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge
hidden_”; _1 Tim. 3:16_—“_great is the mystery of godliness; He
who was manifested in the flesh_”—here the Vulgate, the Latin
Fathers, and Buttmann make μυστήριον the antecedent of ὅς, the
relative taking the _natural_ gender of its antecedent, and
μυστήριον referring to Christ; _Heb. 2:11_—“_both he that
sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one_ [not
father, but race, or substance]” (_cf._ _Acts 17:26_—“_he made of
one every nation of men_”)—an allusion to the solidarity of the
race and Christ’s participation in all that belongs to us.
_John 17:3_—“_this is life eternal, that they should know thee the
only true God, and him who thou didst send, even Jesus Christ_”;
_20:27_—“_Reach hither thy finger, and see my hands; and reach
hither thy hand, and put it into my side: and be not faithless,
but believing_”; _Luke 24:39_—“_See my hands and my feet, that it
is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and
bones, as ye behold me having_”; _Phil. 3:8, 10_—“_I count all
things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ
Jesus my Lord ... that I may know him_”; _1 John 1:1_—“_that which
we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which
we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life._”
Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 254, 255—“Ranke said that Alexander
was one of the few men in whom biography is identical with
universal history. The words apply far better to Christ.” Crane,
Religion of To-morrow, 267—“Religion being merely the personality
of God, Christianity the personality of Christ.” Pascal: “Jesus
Christ is the centre of everything and the object of everything,
and he who does not know him knows nothing of the order of nature
and nothing of himself.” Goethe in his last years wrote: “Humanity
cannot take a retrograde step, and we may say that the Christian
religion, now that it has once appeared, can never again
disappear; now that it has once found a divine embodiment, cannot
again be dissolved.” H. B. Smith, that man of clear and devout
thought, put his whole doctrine into one sentence: “Let us come to
Jesus,—the person of Christ is the centre of theology.” Dean
Stanley never tired of quoting as his own Confession of Faith the
words of John Bunyan: “Blest Cross—blest Sepulchre—blest rather
he—The man who there was put to shame for me!” And Charles Wesley
wrote on Catholic Love: “Weary of all this wordy strife, These
motions, forms, and modes and names, To thee, the Way, the Truth,
the Life, Whose love my simple heart inflames—Divinely taught, at
last I fly, With thee and thine to live and die.”
“We have two great lakes, named Erie and Ontario, and these are
connected by the Niagara River through which Erie pours its waters
into Ontario. The whole Christian Church throughout the ages has
been called the overflow of Jesus Christ, who is infinitely
greater than it. Let Lake Erie be the symbol of Christ, the
pre-existent Logos, the Eternal Word, God revealed in the
universe. Let Niagara River be a picture to us of this same Christ
now confined to the narrow channel of His manifestation in the
flesh, but within those limits showing the same eastward current
and downward gravitation which men perceived so imperfectly
before. The tremendous cataract, with its waters plunging into the
abyss and shaking the very earth, is the suffering and death of
the Son of God, which for the first time makes palpable to human
hearts the forces of righteousness and love operative in the
Divine nature from the beginning. The law of universal life has
been made manifest; now it is seen that justice and judgment are
the foundations of God’s throne; that God’s righteousness
everywhere and always makes penalty to follow sin; that the love
which creates and upholds sinners must itself be numbered with the
transgressors, and must bear their iniquities. Niagara has
demonstrated the gravitation of Lake Erie. And not in vain. For
from Niagara there widens out another peaceful lake. Ontario is
the offspring and likeness of Erie. So redeemed humanity is the
overflow of Jesus Christ, but only of Jesus Christ after He has
passed through the measureless self-abandonment of His earthly
life and of His tragic death on Calvary. As the waters of Lake
Ontario are ever fed by Niagara, so the Church draws its life from
the cross. And Christ’s purpose is, not that we should repeat
Calvary, for that we can never do, but that we should reflect in
ourselves the same onward movement and gravitation towards
self-sacrifice which He has revealed as characterizing the very
life of God” (A. H. Strong, Sermon before the Baptist World
Congress, London, July 12, 1905).
(_b_) The chief problems.—These problems are the following: 1. one
personality and two natures; 2. human nature without personality; 3.
relation of the Logos to the humanity during the earthly life of Christ;
4. relation of the humanity to the Logos during the heavenly life of
Christ. We may throw light on 1, by the figure of two concentric circles;
on 2, by remembering that two earthly parents unite in producing a single
child; on 3, by the illustration of latent memory, which contains so much
more than present recollection; on 4, by the thought that body is the
manifestation of spirit, and that Christ in his heavenly state is not
confined to place.
Luther said that we should need “new tongues” before we could
properly set forth this doctrine,—particularly a new language with
regard to the nature of man. The further elucidation of the
problems mentioned above will immediately occupy our attention.
Our investigation should not be prejudiced by the fact that the
divine element in Jesus Christ manifests itself within human
limitations. This is the condition of all revelation. _John
14:9_—“_he that hath seen me hath seen the father_”; _Col.
2:9_—“_in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily_” =
up to the measure of human capacity to receive and to express the
divine. _Heb. 2:11_ and _Acts 17:26_ both attribute to man a
consubstantiality with Christ, and Christ is the manifested God.
It is a law of hydrostatics that the smallest column of water will
balance the largest. Lake Erie will be no higher than the water in
the tube connected therewith. So the person of Christ reached the
level of God, though limited in extent and environment. He was God
manifest in the flesh.
Robert Browning, Death in the Desert: “I say, the acknowledgment
of God in Christ Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All
questions in the earth and out of it, And has so far advanced thee
to be wise”; Epilogue to Dramatis Personæ: “That one Face, far
from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become
my Universe that feels and knows.” “That face,” said Browning to
Mrs. Orr, as he finished reading the poem, “is the face of Christ.
That is how I feel him.” This is his answer to those victims of
nineteenth century scepticism for whom incarnate Love has
disappeared from the universe, carrying with it the belief in God.
He thus attests the continued presence of God in Christ, both in
nature and humanity. On Browning as a Christian Poet, see A. H.
Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 373-447; S. Law
Wilson, Theology of Modern Literature, 181-226.
(_c_) Reason for mystery.—The union of the two natures in Christ’s person
is necessarily inscrutable, because there are no analogies to it in our
experience. Attempts to illustrate it on the one hand from the union and
yet the distinctness of soul and body, of iron and heat, and on the other
hand from the union and yet the distinctness of Christ and the believer,
of the divine Son and the Father, are one-sided and become utterly
misleading, if they are regarded as furnishing a rationale of the union
and not simply a means of repelling objection. The first two illustrations
mentioned above lack the essential element of two natures to make them
complete: soul and body are not two natures, but one, nor are iron and
heat two substances. The last two illustrations mentioned above lack the
element of single personality: Christ and the believer are two persons,
not one, even as the Son and the Father are not one person, but two.
The two illustrations most commonly employed are the union of soul
and body, and the union of the believer with Christ. Each of these
illustrates one side of the great doctrine, but each must be
complemented by the other. The former, taken by itself, would be
Eutychian; the latter, taken by itself, would be Nestorian. Like
the doctrine of the Trinity, the Person of Christ is an absolutely
unique fact, for which we can find no complete analogies. But
neither do we know how soul and body are united. See Blunt, Dict.
Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Hypostasis; Sartorius, Person and
Work of Christ, 27-65; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 39-77; Luthardt,
Fund. Truths, 281-334.
A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 218, 230—“Many people are
Unitarians, not because of the difficulties of the Trinity, but
because of the difficulties of the Person of Christ.... The union
of the two natures is not mechanical, as between oxygen and
nitrogen in our air; nor chemical, as between oxygen and hydrogen
in water; nor organic, as between our hearts and our brains; but
personal. The best illustration is the union of body and soul in
our own persons,—how perfectly joined they are in the great
orator! Yet here are not two natures, but one human nature. We
need therefore to add the illustration of the union between the
believer and Christ.” And here too we must confess the
imperfection of the analogy, for Christ and the believer are two
persons, and not one. The person of the God-man is unique and
without adequate parallel. But this constitutes its dignity and
glory.
(_d_) Ground of possibility.—The possibility of the union of deity and
humanity in one person is grounded in the original creation of man in the
divine image. Man’s kinship to God, in other words, his possession of a
rational and spiritual nature, is the condition of incarnation. Brute-life
is incapable of union with God. But human nature is capable of the divine,
in the sense not only that it lives, moves, and has its being in God, but
that God may unite himself indissolubly to it and endue it with divine
powers, while yet it remains all the more truly human. Since the moral
image of God in human nature has been lost by sin, Christ, the perfect
image of God after which man was originally made, restores that lost image
by uniting himself to humanity and filling it with his divine life and
love.
_2 Pet. 1:4_—“_partakers of the divine nature._” Creation and
providence do not furnish the last limit of God’s indwelling.
Beyond these, there is the spiritual union between the believer
and Christ, and even beyond this, there is the unity of God and
man in the person of Jesus Christ. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:283
(Syst. Doct., 3:180)—“Humanity in Christ is related to divinity,
as woman to man in marriage. It is receptive, but it is exalted by
receiving. Christ is the offspring of the [marriage] covenant
between God and Israel.” _Ib._, 2:403-411 (Syst. Doct.,
3:301-308)—“The question is: How can Christ be both Creator and
creature? The Logos, as such, stands over against the creature as
a distinct object. How can he become, and be, that which exists
only as object of his activity and inworking? Can the cause become
its own effect? The problem is solved, only by remembering that
the divine and human, though distinct from each other, are not to
be thought of as foreign to each other and mutually exclusive. The
very thing that distinguishes them binds them together. Their
essential distinction is that God has aseity, while man has simply
dependence. ‘_Deep calleth unto deep_’ (_Ps. 42:7_)—the deep of
the divine riches, and the deep of human poverty, call to each
other. ‘From me a cry,—from him reply.’ God’s infinite resources
and man’s infinite need, God’s measureless supply and man’s
boundless receptivity, attract each other, until they unite in him
in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The mutual
attraction is of an ethical sort, but the divine love has ‘_first
loved_’ (_1 John 4:19_).
“The new second creation is therefore not merely, like the first
creation, one that distinguishes from God,—it is one that unites
with God. Nature is distinct from God, yet God moves and works in
nature. Much more does human nature find its only true reality, or
realization, in union with God. God’s uniting act does not violate
or unmake it, but rather first causes it to be what, in God’s
idea, it was meant to be.” Incarnation is therefore the very
fulfilment of the idea of humanity. The supernatural assumption of
humanity is the most natural of all things. Man is not a mere
tangent to God, but an empty vessel to be filled from the infinite
fountain. Natura humana in Christo capax divinæ. See Talbot, in
Bap. Quar., 1868:129; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 270.
God could not have become an angel, or a tree, or a stone. But he
could become man, because man was made in his image. God in man,
as Phillips Brooks held, is the absolutely natural. Channing said
that “all minds are of one family.” E. B. Andrews: “Divinity and
humanity are not contradictory predicates. If this had been
properly understood, there would have been no Unitarian movement.
Man is in a true sense divine. This is also true of Christ. But he
is infinitely further along in the divine nature than we are. If
we say his divinity is a new kind, then the new kind arises out of
the degree.” “Were not the eye itself a sun, No light for it could
ever shine: By nothing godlike could the soul be won, Were not the
soul itself divine.”
John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:165—“A smaller circle
may represent a larger in respect of its circularity; but a
circle, small or large, cannot be the image of a square.” ...
2:101—“God would not be God without union with man, and man would
not be man without union with God. Immanent in the spirits he has
made, he shares their pains and sorrows.... Showing the infinite
element in man, Christ attracts us toward his own moral
excellence.” Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist,
190—“Incarnation is the indwelling of God in his children, of
which the type and pattern is seen in him who is at once the
manifestation of God to man, and the revelation to men of what
humanity is to be when God’s work in the world is done—perfect God
and perfect man, because God perfectly dwelling in a perfect man.”
We have quoted these latter utterances, not because we regard them
as admitting the full truth with regard to the union of the divine
and human in Christ; but because they recognize the essential
likeness of the human to the divine, and so help our understanding
of the union between the two. We go further than the writers
quoted, in maintaining not merely an indwelling of God in Christ,
but an organic and essential union. Christ moreover is not the
God-man by virtue of his possessing a larger measure of the divine
than we, but rather by being the original source of all life, both
human and divine. We hold to his deity as well as to his divinity,
as some of these authors apparently do not. See _Heb. 7:15,
16_—“_another priest, who hath been made ... after the power of an
endless life_”; _John 1:4_—“_In him was life; and the life was the
light of men._”
(_e_) No double personality.—This possession of two natures does not
involve a double personality in the God-man, for the reason that the Logos
takes into union with himself, not an individual man with already
developed personality, but human nature which has had no separate
existence before its union with the divine. Christ’s human nature is
impersonal, in the sense that it attains self-consciousness, and
self-determination only in the personality of the God-man. Here it is
important to mark the distinction between nature and person. Nature is
substance possessed in common; the persons of the Trinity have one nature;
there is a common nature of mankind. Person is nature separately
subsisting, with powers of consciousness and will. Since the human nature
of Christ has not and never had a separate subsistence, it is impersonal,
and in the God-man the Logos furnishes the principle of personality. It is
equally important to observe that self-consciousness and
self-determination do not belong to nature as such, but only to
personality. For this reason, Christ has not two consciousnesses and two
wills, but a single consciousness and a single will. This consciousness
and will, moreover, is never simply human, but is always theanthropic—an
activity of the one personality which unites in itself the human and the
divine (Mark 13:32; Luke 22:42).
The human father and the human mother are distinct persons, and
they each give something of their own peculiar nature to their
child; yet the result is, not two persons in the child, but only
one person, with one consciousness and one will. So the Fatherhood
of God and the motherhood of Mary produced not a double
personality in Christ, but a single personality. Dorner
illustrates the union of human and divine in Jesus by the _Holy
Spirit_ in the Christian,—nothing foreign, nothing distinguishable
from the human life into which it enters; and by the _moral
sense_, which is the very presence and power of God in the human
soul,—yet conscience does not break up the unity of the life; see
C. C. Everett, Essays, 32. These illustrations help us to
understand the interpenetration of the human by the divine in
Jesus; but they are defective in suggesting that his relation to
God was different from ours not in kind but only in degree. Only
Jesus could say: “_Before Abraham was born, I am_” (_John 8:58_);
“_I and the Father are one_” (_John 10:30_).
The theory of two consciousnesses and two wills, first elaborated
by John of Damascus, was an unwarranted addition to the orthodox
doctrine propounded at Chalcedon. Although the view of John of
Damascus was sanctioned by the Council of Constantinople (681),
“this Council has never been regarded by the Greek Church as
œcumenical, and its composition and spirit deprive its decisions
of all value as indicating the true sense of Scripture”; see
Bruce, Humiliation of Christ, 90. _Nature_ has consciousness and
will, only as it is manifested in _person_. The one person has a
single consciousness and will, which embraces within its scope at
all times a human nature, and sometimes a divine. Notice that we
do not say Christ’s human nature had no will, but only that it had
none before its union with the divine nature, and none separately
from the one will which was made up of the human and the divine
united; _versus_ Current Discussions in Theology, 5:283.
Sartorius uses the illustration of two concentric circles: the one
ego of personality in Christ is at the same time the centre of
both circles, the human nature and the divine. Or, still better,
illustrate by a smaller vessel of air inverted and sunk, sometimes
below its centre, sometimes above, in a far larger vessel of
water. See _Mark 13:32_—“_of that day or that hour knoweth no one,
not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son_”; _Luke
22:42_—“_Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me:
nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done._” To say that,
although in his capacity as man he was ignorant, yet at that same
moment in his capacity as God he was omniscient, is to accuse
Christ of unveracity. Whenever Christ spoke, it was not one of the
natures that spoke, but the person in whom both natures were
united.
We subjoin various definitions of personality: Boëthius, quoted in
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:415 (Syst. Doct., 3:313)—“Persona est
animæ rationalis individua substantia”; F. W. Robertson, Lect. on
Gen., p. 3—“Personality = self-consciousness, will, character”;
Porter, Human Intellect, 626—“Personality = distinct subsistence,
either actually or latently self-conscious and self-determining”;
Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 408—“Person = being, conscious of
self, subsisting in individuality and identity, and endowed with
intuitive reason, rational sensibility, and free-will.” Dr. E. G.
Robinson defines “nature” as “that substratum or condition of
being which determines the kind and attributes of the person, but
which is clearly distinguishable from the person itself.”
Lotze, Metaphysics, § 244—“The identity of the subject of inward
experience is all that we require. So far as, and so long as, the
soul knows itself as this identical subject, it is and is named,
simply for that reason, substance.” Illingworth, Personality,
Human and Divine, 32—“Our conception of substance is not derived
from the physical, but from the mental, world. Substance is first
of all that which underlies our mental affections and
manifestations. Kant declared that the idea of freedom is the
source of our idea of personality. Personality consists in the
freedom of the whole soul from the mechanism of nature.” On
personality, see Windelband, Hist. Philos., 238. For the theory of
two consciousnesses and two wills, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
4:129, 234; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 2:314; Ridgeley, Body of Divinity,
1:476; Hodge, Syst Theol., 2:378-391; Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,
2:289-308, esp. 328. _Per contra_, see Hovey, God with Us, 66;
Schaff, Church Hist., 1:757, and 3:751; Calderwood, Moral
Philosophy, 12-14; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 148-169; Van
Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 512-518.
(_f_) Effect upon the human.—The union of the divine and the human natures
makes the latter possessed of the powers belonging to the former; in other
words, the attributes of the divine nature are imparted to the human
without passing over into its essence,—so that the human Christ even on
earth had power to be, to know, and to do, as God. That this power was
latent, or was only rarely manifested, was the result of the self-chosen
state of humiliation upon which the God-man had entered. In this state of
humiliation, the communication of the contents of his divine nature to the
human was mediated by the Holy Spirit. The God-man, in his servant-form,
knew and taught and performed only what the Spirit permitted and directed
(Mat. 3:16; John 3:34; Acts 1:2; 10:38; Heb. 9:14). But when thus
permitted, he knew, taught, and performed, not, like the prophets, by
power communicated from without, but by virtue of his own inner divine
energy (Mat. 17:2; Mark 5:41; Luke 5:20, 21; 6:19; John 2:11, 24, 25;
3:13; 20:19).
Kahnis, Dogmatik, 2d ed., 2:77—“Human nature does not become
divine, but (as Chemnitz has said) only the medium of the divine;
as the moon has not a light of her own, but only shines in the
light of the sun. So human nature may derivatively exercise divine
attributes, because it is united to the divine in one person.”
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 151—“Our souls spiritualize our
bodies, and will one day give us the spiritual body, while yet the
body does not become spirit. So the Godhead gives divine powers to
the humanity in Christ, while yet the humanity does not cease to
be humanity.”
Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:131—“The union exalts the human, as
light brightens the air, heat gives glow to the iron, spirit
exalts the body, the Holy Spirit hallows the believer by union
with his soul. Fire gives to iron its own properties of lighting
and burning; yet the iron does not become fire. Soul gives to body
its life-energy; yet the body does not become soul. The Holy
Spirit sanctifies the believer, but the believer does not become
divine; for the divine principle is the determining one. We do not
speak of airy light, of iron heat, or of a bodily soul. So human
nature possesses the divine only derivatively. In this sense it is
_our_ destiny to become ‘_partakers of the divine nature_’ (_2
Pet. 1:4_). Even in his earthly life, when he wished to be, or
more correctly, when the Spirit permitted, he was omnipotent,
omniscient, omnipresent, could walk the sea, or pass through
closed doors. But, in his state of humiliation, he was subject to
the Holy Spirit.”
In _Mat. 3:16_, the anointing of the Spirit at his baptism was not
the descent of a material dove (“_as a dove_”). The dove-like
appearance was only the outward sign of the coming forth of the
Holy Spirit from the depths of his being and pouring itself like a
flood into his divine-human consciousness. _John 3:34_—“_for he
giveth not the Spirit by measure_”; _Acts 1:2_—“_after that he had
given commandment through the Holy Spirit unto the apostles_”;
_10:38_—“_Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy
Spirit and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all
that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him_”; _Heb,
9:14_—“_the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit
offered himself without blemish onto God._”
When permitted by the Holy Spirit, he knew, taught, and wrought as
God: _Mat. 17:2_—“_he was transfigured before them_”; _Mark
5:41_—“_Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise_”; _Luke 5:20, 21_—“_Man,
thy sins are forgiven thee.... Who can forgive sins, but God
alone?_”—_Luke 6:19_—“_power came forth from him, and healed them
all_”; _John 2:11_—“_This beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana
of Galilee, and manifested his glory_”; _24, 25_—“_he knew all
men.... he himself knew what was in man_”; _3:13_—“_the Son of
man, who is __ in heaven_” [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with
א and B, omit ὁ ὢν ἔν τῷ ὀυρανῷ,—for advocacy of the common
reading, see Broadus, in Hovey’s Com., on _John 3:13_];
_20:19_—“_when the doors were shut ... Jesus came and stood in the
midst._”
Christ is the “_servant of Jehovah_” (_Is. 42:1-7; 49:1-12; 52:13;
53:11_) and the meaning of παῖς (_Acts 3:13, 28; 4:27, 30_) is not
“child” or “Son”; it is “_servant_,” as in the Revised Version.
But, in the state of exaltation, Christ is the “_Lord of the
Spirit_” (_2 Cor. 3:18_—Meyer), giving the Spirit (_John 16:7_—“_I
will send him unto you_”), present in the Spirit (_John 14:18_—“_I
come unto you_”; _Mat. 28:20_—“_I am with you always, even unto
the the end of the world_”), and working through the Spirit (_1
Cor. 15:45_—“_The last Adam became a life-giving spirit_”); _2
Cor. 3:17_—“_Now the Lord is the Spirit_”. On Christ’s relation to
the Holy Spirit, see John Owen, Works, 282-297; Robins, in Bib.
Sac., Oct. 1874:615; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 208-241.
Delitzsch: “The conception of the servant of Jehovah is, as it
were, a pyramid, of which the base is the people of Israel as a
whole; the central part, Israel according to the Spirit; and the
summit, the Mediator of Salvation who rises out of Israel.” Cheyne
on Isaiah, 2:253, agrees with this view of Delitzsch, which is
also the view of Oehler. The O. T. is the life of a nation; the N.
T. is the life of a man. The chief end of the nation was to
produce the man; the chief end of the man was to save the world.
Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 59—“If humanity were not potentially
and in some degree an Immanuel, God with us, there would never
have issued from its bosom he who bore and revealed this blessed
name.” We would enlarge and amend this illustration of the
pyramid, by making the base to be the Logos, as Creator and
Upholder of all (_Eph. 1:23_; _Col. 1:16_); the stratum which
rests next upon the Logos is universal humanity (_Ps, 8:5, 6_);
then comes Israel as a whole (_Mat. 2:15_); spiritual Israel rests
upon Israel after the flesh (_Is. 42:1-7_); as the acme and cap
stone of all, Christ appears, to crown the pyramid, the true
servant of Jehovah and Son of man (_Is. 53:11_; _Mat. 20:28_). We
may go even further and represent Christ as forming the basis of
another inverted pyramid of redeemed humanity ever growing and
rising to heaven (_Is. 9:6_—“_Everlasting Father_”; _Is.
53:10_—“_he shall see his seed_”; _Rev. 22:16_—“_root and
offspring of David_”; _Heb. 2:13_—“_I and the children whom God
hath given me._”)
(_g_) Effect upon the divine.—This communion of the natures was such that,
although the divine nature in itself is incapable of ignorance, weakness,
temptation, suffering, or death, the one person Jesus Christ was capable
of these by virtue of the union of the divine nature with a human nature
in him. As the human Savior can exercise divine attributes, not in virtue
of his humanity alone, but derivatively, by virtue of his possession of a
divine nature, so the divine Savior can suffer and be ignorant as man, not
in his divine nature, but derivatively, by virtue of his possession of a
human nature. We may illustrate this from the connection between body and
soul. The soul suffers pain from its union with the body, of which apart
from the body it would be incapable. So the God-man, although in his
divine nature impassible, was capable, through his union with humanity, of
absolutely infinite suffering.
Just as my soul could never suffer the pains of fire if it were
only soul, but can suffer those pains in union with the body, so
the otherwise impassible God can suffer mortal pangs through his
union with humanity, which he never could suffer if he had not
joined himself to my nature. The union between the humanity and
the deity is so close, that deity itself is brought under the
curse and penalty of the law. Because Christ was God, did he pass
unscorched through the fires of Gethsemane and Calvary? Rather let
us say, because Christ was God, he underwent a suffering that was
absolutely infinite. Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:300 _sq._;
Lawrence, in Bib. Sac., 24:41; Schöberlein, in Jahrbuch für
deutsche Theologie, 1871:459-501.
A. J. F. Behrends, in The Examiner, April 21, 1898—“Jesus Christ
is God in the form of man; as completely God as if he were not
man; as completely man as if he were not God. He is always divine
and always human.... The infirmities and pains of his body pierced
his divine nature.... The demand of the law was not laid upon
Christ from without, but proceeded from within. It is the
righteousness _in_ him which makes his death necessary.”
(_h_) Necessity of the union.—The union of two natures in one person is
necessary to constitute Jesus Christ a proper mediator between man and
God. His two-fold nature gives him fellowship with both parties, since it
involves an equal dignity with God, and at the same time a perfect
sympathy with man (Heb. 2:17, 18; 4:15, 16). This two-fold nature,
moreover, enables him to present to both God and man proper terms of
reconciliation: being man, he can make atonement for man; being God, his
atonement has infinite value; while both his divinity and his humanity
combine to move the hearts of offenders and constrain them to submission
and love (1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 7:25).
_Heb. 2:17,18_—“_Wherefore it behooved him in all things to be
made like unto his brethren, that he might become a merciful and
faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make
propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself
hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are
tempted_”; _4:15,16_—“_For we have not a high priest that cannot
be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath
been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us
therefore draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that
we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help us in time of
need_”; _1 Tim. 2:5_—“_one God, one mediator also between God and
men, himself man, Christ Jesus_”; _Heb. 7:25_—“_Wherefore also he
is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God
through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for
them._”
Because Christ is man, he can make atonement for man and can
sympathize with man. Because Christ is God, his atonement has
infinite value, and the union which he effects with God is
complete. A merely human Savior could never reconcile or reunite
us to God. But a divine-human Savior meets all our needs. See
Wilberforce, Incarnation, 170-208. As the high priest of old bore
on his mitre the name Jehovah, and on his breastplate the names of
the tribes of Israel, so Christ Jesus is God with us, and at the
same time our propitiatory representative before God. In Virgil’s
Æneid, Dido says well: “Haud ignara malí, miseris succurrere
disco”—“Myself not ignorant of woe, Compassion I have learned to
show.” And Terence uttered almost a Christian word when he wrote:
“Homo sum, et humani nihil a me alienum puto”—“I am a man, and I
count nothing human as foreign to me.” Christ’s experience and
divinity made these words far more true of him than of any merely
human being.
(_i_) The union eternal.—The union of humanity with deity in the person of
Christ is indissoluble and eternal. Unlike the avatars of the East, the
incarnation was a permanent assumption of human nature by the second
person of the Trinity. In the ascension of Christ, glorified humanity has
attained the throne of the universe. By his Spirit, this same divine-human
Savior is omnipresent to secure the progress of his kingdom. The final
subjection of the Son to the Father, alluded to in 1 Cor. 15:28, cannot be
other than the complete return of the Son to his original relation to the
Father; since, according to John 17:5, Christ is again to possess the
glory which he had with the Father before the world was (_cf._ Heb. 1:8;
7:24, 25).
_1 Cor. 15:28_—“_and when all things have been subjected unto him,
then shall the Son also himself be subjected to him that did
subject all things unto him, that God may be all in all_”; _John
17:5_—“_Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory
which I had with thee before the world was_”; _Heb. 1:8_—“_of the
Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever_”;
_7:24_—“_he, because he abideth forever, hath his priesthood
unchangeable._” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:281-283 (Syst. Doct.
3:177-179), holds that there is a present and relative distinction
between the Son’s will, as Mediator, and that of the Father (_Mat.
26:39_—“_not as I will, but as thou wilt_”)—a distinction which
shall cease when Christ becomes Judge (_John 16:26_—“_In that day
ye shall ask in my name: and I say not onto you, that I will pray
the Father for you_”) If Christ’s _reign_ ceased, he would be
inferior to the saints, who are themselves to reign. But they are
to reign only in and with Christ, their head.
The best illustration of the possible meaning of Christ’s giving
up the kingdom is found in the Governor of the East India Company
giving up his authority to the Queen and merging it in that of the
home government, he himself, however, at the same time becoming
Secretary of State for India. So Christ will give up his
vicegerency, but not his mediatorship. Now he reigns by delegated
authority; then he will reign in union with the Father. So
Kendrick, in Bib. Sac., Jan. 1890:68-83. Wrightnour: “When the
great remedy has wrought its perfect cure, the physician will no
longer be looked upon as the physician. When the work of
redemption is completed, the mediatorial office of the Son will
cease.” We may add that other offices of friendship and
instruction will then begin.
Melanchthon: “Christ will finish his work as Mediator, and then
will reign as God, immediately revealing to us the Deity.”
Quenstedt, quoted in Schmid, Dogmatik, 293, thinks the giving up
of the kingdom will be only an exchange of outward administration
for inward,—not a surrender of all power and authority, but only
of one mode of exercising it. Hanna, on Resurrection, lect. 4—“It
is not a giving up of his mediatorial authority,—that throne is to
endure forever,—but it is a simple public recognition of the fact
that God is all in all, that Christ is God’s medium of
accomplishing all.” An. Par. Bible, on _1 Cor. 15:28_—“Not his
mediatorial relation to his own people shall be given up; much
less his personal relation to the Godhead, as the divine Word; but
only his mediatorial relation to the world at large.” See also
Edwards, Observations on the Trinity, 85 _sq._ Expositor’s Greek
Testament, on _1 Cor. 15:28_, “affirms no other subjection than is
involved in Sonship.... This implies no inferiority of nature, no
extrusion from power, but the free submission of love ... which is
the essence of the filial spirit which actuated Christ from first
to last.... Whatsoever glory he gains is devoted to the glory and
power of the Father, who glorifies him in turn.”
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:402 (Syst. Doct., 3:297-299)—“We are not
to imagine incarnations of Christ in the angel-world, or in other
spheres. This would make incarnation only the change of a garment,
a passing theophany; and Christ’s relation to humanity would be a
merely external one.” Bishop of Salisbury, quoted in Swayne, Our
Lord’s Knowledge as Man, XX—“Are we permitted to believe that
there is something parallel to the progress of our Lord’s humanity
in the state of humiliation, still going on even now, in the state
of exaltation? that it is, in fact, becoming more and more
adequate to the divine nature? See _Col. 1:24_—‘_fill up that
which is lacking_’; _Heb. 10:12, 13_—‘_expecting till his
enemies_’; _1 Cor. 15:28_—‘_when all things have been subjected
unto him._’ ” In our judgment such a conclusion is unwarranted, in
view of the fact that the God-man in his exaltation has the glory
of his preëxistent state (_John 17:5_); that all the heavenly
powers are already subject to him (_Eph. 1:21, 22_); and that he
is now omnipresent (_Mat. 28:20_).
(_j_) Infinite and finite in Christ.—Our investigation of the Scripture
teaching with regard to the Person of Christ leads us to three important
conclusions: 1. that deity and humanity, the infinite and the finite, in
him are not mutually exclusive; 2. that the humanity in Christ differs
from his deity not merely in degree but also in kind; and 3. that this
difference in kind is the difference between the infinite original and the
finite derivative, so that Christ is the source of life, both physical and
spiritual, for all men.
Our doctrine excludes the view that Christ is only quantitatively
different from other men in whom God’s Spirit dwells. He is
qualitatively different, in that he is the source of life, and
they the recipients. Not only is it true that the fulness of the
Godhead is in him alone,—it is also true that he is himself God,
self-revealing and self-communicating, as men are not. Yet we
cannot hold with E. H. Johnson, Outline of Syst. Theol., 176-178,
that Christ’s humanity was of one species with his deity, but not
of one substance. We know of but one underlying substance and
ground of being. This one substance is self-limiting, and so
self-manifesting, in Jesus Christ. The determining element is not
the human but the divine. The infinite Source has a finite
manifestation; but in the finite we see the Infinite; _2 Cor.
5:19_—“_God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself_”;
_John 14:9_—“_he that hath seen me hath seen the Father._” We can
therefore agree with the following writers who regard all men as
partakers of the life of God, while yet we deny that Christ is
only a man, distinguished from his fellows by having a larger
share in that life than they have.
J. M. Whiton: “How is the divine spirit which is manifest in the
life of the man Christ Jesus to be distinguished, _qua_ divine,
from the same divine spirit as manifested in the life of humanity?
I answer, that in him, the person Christ, dwelleth the _fulness_
of the Godhead bodily. I emphasize _fulness_, and say: The
God-head is alike in the race and in its spiritual head, but the
_fulness_ is in the head alone—a fulness of course not absolute,
since circumscribed by a human organism, but a fulness to the
limits of the organism. Essential deity cannot be ascribed to the
human Christ, except as in common with the race created in the
image of God. Life is one, and all life is divine.”... Gloria
Patri, 88, 23—“Every incarnation of life is _pro tanto_ and in its
measure an incarnation of God ... and God’s way is a perpetually
increasing incarnation of life whose climax and crown is the
divine fulness of life in Christ.... The _Homoousios_ of the
Nicene Creed was a great victory of the truth. But the Nicene
Fathers builded better than they knew. The Unitarian Dr. Hedge
praised them because they got at the truth, the logical conclusion
of which was to come so long after, that God and man are of one
substance.” So Momerie, Inspiration, holds man’s nature to be the
same in kind with God’s. See criticism of this view in Watts, New
Apologetic, 133, 134. _Homoiousios_ he regards as involving
_homoousios_; the divine nature capable of fission or
segmentation, broken off in portions, and distributed among finite
moral agents; the divine nature undergoing perpetual curtailment;
every man therefore to some extent inspired, and evil as truly an
inspiration of God as is good. Watts seems to us to lack the
proper conception of the infinite as the ground of the finite, and
so not excluding it.
Lyman Abbott affirms that Christ is, “not God _and_ man, but God
_in_ man.” Christ differs from other men only as the flower
differs from the bulb. As the true man, he is genuinely divine.
Deity and humanity are not two distinct natures, but one nature.
The ethico-spiritual nature which is finite in man is identical
with the nature which is infinite in God. Christ’s distinction
from other men is therefore in the degree in which he shared this
nature and possessed a unique fulness of life—“_anointed with the
Holy Spirit and with power_” (_Acts 10:38_). Phillips Brooks: “To
this humanity of man as a part of God—to this I cling; for I do
love it, and I will know nothing else.... Man is, in virtue of his
essential humanity, partaker of the life of the essential Word....
Into every soul, just so far as it is possible for that soul to
receive it, God beats his life and gives his help.” Phillips
Brooks believes in the redemptive indwelling of God in man, so
that salvation is of man, for man, and by man. He does not scruple
to say to every man: “You are a part of God.”
While we shrink from the expressions which seem to imply a
partition of the divine nature, we are compelled to recognize a
truth which these writers are laboring to express, the truth
namely of the essential oneness of all life, and of God in Christ
as the source and giver of it. “Jesus quotes approvingly the words
of _Psalm 82:6_—‘_I said, Ye are Gods._’ Microscopic, indeed, but
divine are we—sparks from the flame of deity. God is the Creator,
but it is through Christ as the mediating and as the final Cause.
‘_And we through him_’ (_1 Cor. 8:6_)—we exist for him, for the
realization of a divine humanity in solidarity with him. Christ is
at once the end and the instrumental cause of the whole process.”
Samuel Harris, God the Creator and Lord of All, speaks of “the
essentially human in God, and the essentially divine in man.” The
Son, or Word of God, “when manifested in the forms of a finite
personality, is the essential Christ, revealing that in God which
is essentially and eternally human.”
Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:196—“The whole of humanity is the
object of the divine love; it is an Immanuel and son of God; its
whole history is a continual incarnation of God; as indeed it is
said in Scripture that we are a divine offspring, and that we live
and move and have our being in God. But what lies potentially in
the human consciousness of God is not on that account also
manifestly revealed to it from the beginning.” Hatch, Hibbert
Lectures, 175-180, on Stoic monism and Platonic dualism, tells us
that the Stoics believed in a personal λόγος and an impersonal
ὕλη, both of them modes of a single substance. Some regarded God
as a mode of matter, _natura naturata_: “Jupiter est quodcunque
vides, quodcunque moveris” (Lucan, Phars., 9:579); others
conceived of him as the _natura naturans_,—this became the
governing conception.... The products are all divine, but not
equally divine.... Nearest of all to the pure essence of God is
the human soul: it is an emanation or outflow from him, a sapling
which is separate from and yet continues the life of the parent
tree, a colony in which some members of the parent state have
settled. Plato followed Anaxagoras in holding that mind is
separate from matter and acts upon it. God is outside the world.
He shapes it as a carpenter shapes wood. On the general subject of
the union of deity and humanity in the person of Christ, see
Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.: Christologie; Barrows, in Bib. Sac.,
10:765; 26:83; also, Bib. Sac., 17:535; John Owen, Person of
Christ, in Works, 1:223; Hooker, Eccl. Polity, book v. chap.
51-56: Boyce, in Bap. Quar., 1870:385; Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:403
sq.; Hovey, God with Us, 61-88; Plumptre, Christ and Christendom,
appendix; E. H. Johnson, The Idea of Law in Christology, in Bib.
Sac., Oct. 1889:599-625.
Section III.—The Two States Of Christ.
I. The State of Humiliation.
1. The nature of this humiliation.
We may dismiss, as unworthy of serious notice, the views that it consisted
essentially either in the union of the Logos with human nature,—for this
union with human nature continues in the state of exaltation; or in the
outward trials and privations of Christ’s human life,—for this view casts
reproach upon poverty, and ignores the power of the soul to rise superior
to its outward circumstances.
E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 224—“The error of supposing it
too humiliating to obey law was derived from the Roman treasury of
merit and works of supererogation. Better was Frederick the
Great’s sentiment when his sturdy subject and neighbor, the
miller, whose windmill he had attempted to remove, having beaten
him in a lawsuit, the thwarted monarch exclaimed: ‘Thank God,
there is law in Prussia!’ ” Palmer, Theological Definition,
79—“God reveals himself in the rock, vegetable, animal, man. Must
not the process go on? Must there not appear in the fulness of
time a man who will reveal God as perfectly as is possible in
human conditions—a man who is God under the limitations of
humanity? Such incarnation is humiliation only in the eyes of men.
To Christ it is lifting up, exaltation, glory; _John 12:32_—‘_And
I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto
myself._’ ” George Harris, Moral Evolution, 409—“The divinity of
Christ is not obscured, but is more clearly seen, shining through
his humanity.”
We may devote more attention to the
A. Theory of Thomasius, Delitzsch, and Crosby, that the humiliation
consisted in the surrender of the relative divine attributes.
This theory holds that the Logos, although retaining his divine
self-consciousness and his immanent attributes of holiness, love, and
truth, surrendered his relative attributes of omniscience, omnipotence,
and omnipresence, in order to take to himself veritable human nature.
According to this view, there are, indeed, two natures in Christ, but
neither of these natures is infinite. Thomasius and Delitzsch are the
chief advocates of this theory in Germany. Dr. Howard Crosby has
maintained a similar view in America.
The theory of Thomasius, Delitzsch, and Crosby has been, though
improperly, called the theory of the Kenosis (from
ἐκένωσεν—“_emptied himself_”—in _Phil. 2:7_), and its advocates
are often called Kenotic theologians. There is a Kenosis of the
Logos, but it is of a different sort from that which this theory
supposes. For statements of this theory, see Thomasius, Christi
Person und Werk, 2:233-255, 542-550; Delitzsch, Biblische
Psychologie, 323-333; Howard Crosby, in Bap. Quar., 1870:350-363—a
discourse subsequently published in a separate volume, with the
title: The True Humanity of Christ, and reviewed by Shedd, in
Presb. Rev., April, 1881:429-431. Crosby emphasizes the word
“_became_,” in _John 1:14_—“_and the Word became flesh_”—and gives
the Word “_flesh_” the sense of “man,” or “human.” Crosby, then,
should logically deny, though he does not deny, that Christ’s body
was derived from the Virgin.
We object to this view that:
(_a_) It contradicts the Scriptures already referred to, in which Christ
asserts his divine knowledge and power. Divinity, it is said, can give up
its world-functions, for it existed without these before creation. But to
give up divine attributes is to give up the substance of Godhead. Nor is
it a sufficient reply to say that only the relative attributes are given
up, while the immanent attributes, which chiefly characterize the Godhead,
are retained; for the immanent necessarily involve the relative, as the
greater involve the less.
Liebner, Jahrbuch f. d. Theol., 3:349-356—“Is the Logos here? But
wherein does he show his presence, that it may be known?” Hase,
Hutterus Redivivus, 11th ed., 217, note. John Caird, Fund. Ideas
of Christianity, 2:125-146, criticises the theory of the Kenosis,
but grants that, with all its self-contradictions, as he regards
them, it is an attempt to render conceivable the profound truth of
a sympathizing, self-sacrificing God.
(_b_) Since the Logos, in uniting himself to a human soul, reduces himself
to the condition and limitations of a human soul, the theory is virtually
a theory of the coëxistence of two human souls in Christ. But the union of
two finite souls is more difficult to explain than the union of a finite
and an infinite,—since there can be in the former case no intelligent
guidance and control of the human element by the divine.
Dorner, Jahrbuch f. d. Theol., 1:397-408—“The impossibility of
making two finite souls into one finally drove Arianism to the
denial of any human soul in Christ” (Apollinarianism). This
statement of Dorner, which we have already quoted in our account
of Apollinarianism, illustrates the similar impossibility, upon
the theory of Thomasius, of constructing out of two finite souls
the person of Christ. See also Hovey, God with Us, 68.
(_c_) This theory fails to secure its end, that of making comprehensible
the human development of Jesus,—for even though divested of the relative
attributes of Godhood, the Logos still retains his divine
self-consciousness, together with his immanent attributes of holiness,
love, and truth. This is as difficult to reconcile with a purely natural
human development as the possession of the relative divine attributes
would be. The theory logically leads to a further denial of the possession
of any divine attributes, or of any divine consciousness at all, on the
part of Christ, and merges itself in the view of Gess and Beecher, that
the Godhead of the Logos is actually transformed into a human soul.
Kahnis, Dogmatik 3:343—“The old theology conceived of Christ as in
full and unbroken use of the divine self-consciousness, the divine
attributes, and the divine world-functions, from the conception
until death. Though Jesus, as fœtus, child, boy, was not almighty
and omnipresent according to his human nature, yet he was so, as
to his divine nature, which constituted one _ego_ with his human.
Thomasius, however, declared that the Logos gave up his relative
attributes, during his sojourn in flesh. Dorner’s objection to
this, on the ground of the divine unchangeableness, overshoots the
mark, because it makes any _becoming_ impossible.
“But some things in Thomasius’ doctrine are still difficult: 1st,
divinity can certainly give up its world-functions, for it has
existed without these before the world was. In the nature of an
absolute personality, however, lies an absolute knowing, willing,
feeling, which it cannot give up. Hence _Phil. 2:6-11_ speaks of a
giving-up of divine glory, but not of a giving-up of divine
attributes or nature. 2d, little is gained by such an assumption
of the giving-up of _relative_ attributes, since the Logos, even
while divested of a part of his attributes, still has full
possession of his divine self-consciousness, which must make a
purely human development no less difficult. 3d, the expressions of
divine self-consciousness, the works of divine power, the words of
divine wisdom, prove that Jesus was in possession of his divine
self-consciousness and attributes.
“The essential thing which the Kenotics aim at, however, stands
fast; namely, that the divine personality of the Logos divested
itself of its glory (_John 17:5_), riches (_2 Cor. 8:6_), divine
form (_Phil. 2:6_). This divesting is the becoming man. The
humiliation, then, was a giving up of the use, not of the
possession, of the divine nature and attributes. That man can thus
give up self-consciousness and powers, we see every day in sleep.
But man does not, thereby, cease to be man. So we maintain that
the Logos, when he became man, did not divest himself of his
divine person and nature, which was impossible; but only divested
himself of the use and exercise of these—these being latent to
him—in order to unfold themselves to use in the measure to which
his human nature developed itself—a use which found its completion
in the condition of exaltation.” This statement of Kahnis,
although approaching correctness, is still neither quite correct
nor quite complete.
B. Theory that the humiliation consisted in the surrender of the
independent exercise of the divine attributes.
This theory, which we regard as the most satisfactory of all, may be more
fully set forth as follows. The humiliation, as the Scriptures seem to
show, consisted:
(_a_) In that act of the preëxistent Logos by which he gave up his divine
glory with the Father, in order to take a servant-form. In this act, he
resigned not the possession, nor yet entirely the use, but rather the
independent exercise, of the divine attributes.
_John 17:5_—“_glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory
which I had with thee before the world was_”; _Phil. 2:6,
7_—“_who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an
equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself,
taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men_”;
_2 Cor. 8:9_—“_For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that
ye through his poverty might become rich._” Pompilia, in Robert
Browning’s The Ring and the Book: “Now I see how God is likest God
in being born.”
Omniscience gives up all knowledge but that of the child, the
infant, the embryo, the infinitesimal germ of humanity.
Omnipotence gives up all power but that of the impregnated ovum in
the womb of the Virgin. The Godhead narrows itself down to a point
that is next to absolute extinction. Jesus washing his disciples’
feet, in _John 13:1-20_, is the symbol of his coming down from his
throne of glory and taking the form of a servant, in order that he
may purify us, by regeneration and sanctification, for the
marriage-supper of the Lamb.
(_b_) In the submission of the Logos to the control of the Holy Spirit and
the limitations of his Messianic mission, in his communication of the
divine fulness of the human nature which he had taken into union with
himself.
_Acts 1:2_—Jesus, “_after that he had given commandment through
the Holy Spirit unto the apostles whom he had chosen_”;
_10:38_—“_Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy
Spirit and with power_”; _Heb. 9:14_—“_the blood of Christ, who
through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto
God._” A minor may have a great estate left to him, yet may have
only such use of it as his guardian permits. In Homer’s Iliad,
when Andromache brings her infant son to part with Hector, the boy
is terrified by the warlike plumes of his father’s helmet, and
Hector puts them off to embrace him. So God lays aside “That
glorious form, that light unsufferable, And that far-beaming blaze
of majesty.” Arthur H. Hallam, in John Brown’s Rab and his
Friends, 282, 283—“Revelation is the voluntary approximation of
the infinite Being to the ways and thoughts of finite humanity.”
(_c_) In the continuous surrender, on the part of the God-man, so far as
his human nature was concerned, of the exercise of those divine powers
with which it was endowed by virtue of its union with the divine, and in
the voluntary acceptance, which followed upon this, of temptation,
suffering, and death.
_Mat. 26:53_—“_thinkest thou that I cannot beseech my Father, and
he shall even now send me more than twelve legions of angels?_”
_John 10:17, 18_—“_Therefore doth the Father love me, because I
lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one taketh it away
from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down,
and I have power to take it again_”; _Phil. 2:8_—“_and being found
in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even
unto death, yea, the death of the cross._” _Cf._ Shakespeare,
Merchant of Venice: “Such music is there in immortal souls, That
while this muddy vesture of decay Doth close it in, we cannot see
it.”
Each of these elements of the doctrine has its own Scriptural support. We
must therefore regard the humiliation of Christ, not as consisting in a
single act, but as involving a continuous self-renunciation, which began
with the Kenosis of the Logos in becoming man, and which culminated in the
self-subjection of the God-man to the death of the cross.
Our doctrine of Christ’s humiliation will be better understood if
we put it midway between two pairs of erroneous views, making it
the third of five. The list would be as follows: (1) Gess: The
Logos gave up all divine attributes; (2) Thomasius: The Logos gave
up relative attributes only; (3) True View: The Logos gave up the
independent exercise of divine attributes; (4) Old Orthodoxy:
Christ gave up the use of divine attributes; (5) Anselm: Christ
acted as if he did not possess divine attributes. The full
exposition of the classical passage with reference to the
humiliation, namely, _Phil. 2:5-8_, we give below, under the next
paragraph, pages 705, 706. Brentius illustrated Christ’s
humiliation by the king who travels incognito. But Mason, Faith of
the Gospel, 158, says well that “to part in appearance with only
the fruition of the divine attributes would be to impose upon us
with a pretence of self-sacrifice; but to part with it in reality
was to manifest most perfectly the true nature of God.”
This same objection lies against the explanation given in the
Church Quarterly Review, Oct. 1891:1-30, on Our Lord’s Knowledge
as Man: “If divine knowledge exists in a different form from
human, and a translation into a different form is necessary before
it can be available in the human sphere, our Lord might know the
day of judgment as God, and yet be ignorant of it as man. This
must have been the case if he did not choose to translate it into
the human form. But it might also have been incapable of
translation. The processes of divine knowledge may be far above
our finite comprehension.” This seems to us to be a virtual denial
of the unity of Christ’s person, and to make our Lord play fast
and loose with the truth. He either knew, or he did not know; and
his denial that he knew makes it impossible that he should have
known in any sense.
2. The stages of Christ’s humiliation.
We may distinguish: (_a_) That act of the preïncarnate Logos by which, in
becoming man, he gave up the independent exercise of the divine
attributes. (_b_) His submission to the common laws which regulate the
origin of souls from a preëxisting sinful stock, in taking his human
nature from the Virgin,—a human nature which only the miraculous
conception rendered pure. (_c_) His subjection to the limitations involved
in a human growth and development,—reaching the consciousness of his
sonship at his twelfth year, and working no miracles till after the
baptism. (_d_) The subordination of himself, in state, knowledge,
teaching, and acts, to the control of the Holy Spirit,—so living, not
independently, but as a servant. (_e_) His subjection, as connected with a
sinful race, to temptation and suffering, and finally to the death which
constituted the penalty of the law.
Peter Lombard asked whether God could know more than he was aware
of? It is only another way of putting the question whether, during
the earthly life of Christ, the Logos existed outside of the flesh
of Jesus. We must answer in the affirmative. Otherwise the number
of the persons in the Trinity would be variable, and the universe
could do without him who is ever “_upholding all things by the
word of his power_” (_Heb. 1:3_), and in whom “_all things
consist_” (_Col. 1:17_). Let us recall the nature of God’s
omnipresence (see pages 279-282). Omnipresence is nothing less
than the presence of the whole of God in every place. From this it
follows, that the whole Christ can be present in every believer as
fully as if that believer were the only one to receive of his
fulness, and that the whole Logos can be united to and be present
in the man Christ Jesus, while at the same time he fills and
governs the universe. By virtue of this omnipresence, therefore,
the whole Logos can suffer on earth, while yet the whole Logos
reigns in heaven. The Logos outside of Christ has the perpetual
consciousness of his Godhead, while yet the Logos, as united to
humanity in Christ, is subject to ignorance, weakness, and death.
Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:153—“Jehovah, though present in the form of
the burning bush, was at the same time omnipresent also”;
2:265-284, esp. 282—“Because the sun is shining in and through a
cloud, it does not follow that it cannot at the same time be
shining through the remainder of universal space, unobstructed by
any vapor whatever.” Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 21—“Not with
God, as with finite man, does arrival in one place necessitate
withdrawal from another.” John Calvin: “The whole Christ was
there; but not all that was in Christ was there.” See Adamson, The
Mind of Christ.
How the independent exercise of the attributes of omnipotence,
omniscience, and omnipresence can be surrendered, even for a time,
would be inconceivable, if we were regarding the Logos as he is in
himself, seated upon the throne of the universe. The matter is
somewhat easier when we remember that it was not the Logos _per
se_, but rather the God-man, Jesus Christ, in whom the Logos
submitted to this humiliation. South, Sermons, 2:9—“Be the
fountain never so full, yet if it communicate itself by a little
pipe, the stream can be but small and inconsiderable, and equal to
the measure of its conveyance.” Sartorius, Person and Work of
Christ, 39—“The human eye, when open, sees heaven and earth; but
when shut, it sees little or nothing. Yet its inherent capacity
does not change. So divinity does not change its nature, when it
drops the curtain of humanity before the eyes of the God-man.”
The divine in Christ, during most of his earthly life, is latent,
or only now and then present to his consciousness or manifested to
others. Illustrate from second childhood, where the mind itself
exists, but is not capable of use; or from first childhood, where
even a Newton or a Humboldt, if brought back to earth and made to
occupy an infant body and brain, would develop as an infant, with
infantile powers. There is more in memory than we can at this
moment recall,—memory is greater than recollection. There is more
of us at all times than we know,—only the sudden emergency reveals
the largeness of our resources of mind and heart and will. The new
nature, in the regenerate, is greater than it appears: “_Beloved,
now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what
we shall be. We, know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be
like him_” (_1 John 3:2_). So in Christ there was an ocean-like
fulness of resource, of which only now and then the Spirit
permitted the consciousness and the exercise.
Without denying (with Dorner) the completeness, even from the
moment of the conception, of the union between the deity and the
humanity, we may still say with Kahnis: “The human nature of
Christ, according to the measure of its development, appropriates
more and more to its conscious use the latent fulness of the
divine nature.” So we take the middle ground between two opposite
extremes. On the one hand, the Kenosis was not the extinction of
the Logos. Nor, on the other hand, did Christ hunger and sleep by
miracle,—this is Docetism. We must not minimize Christ’s
humiliation, for this was his glory. There was no limit to his
descent, except that arising from his sinlessness. His humiliation
was not merely the giving-up of the appearance of Godhead. Baird,
Elohim Revealed, 585—“Should any one aim to celebrate the
condescension of the emperor Charles the Fifth, by dwelling on the
fact that he laid aside the robes of royalty and assumed the style
of a subject, and altogether ignore the more important matter that
he actually became a private person, it would be very weak and
absurd.” _Cf._ _2 Cor. 8:9_—“_though he was rich, yet for your
sakes he became poor_” = he beggared himself. _Mat. 27:46_—“_My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?_” = non-exercise of divine
omniscience.
Inasmuch, however, as the passage _Phil. 2:6-8_ is the chief basis
and support of the doctrine of Christ’s humiliation, we here
subjoin a more detailed examination of it.
EXPOSITION OF PHILIPPIANS, 2:6-8. The passage reads: “_who,
existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality
with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the
form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being
found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient
even unto death, yea, the death of the cross_.”
The subject of the sentence is at first (_verses 6, 7_) Christ
Jesus, regarded as the preëxistent Logos; subsequently (_verse
8_), this same Christ Jesus, regarded as incarnate. This change in
the subject is indicated by the contrast between μορφῇ θεοῦ
(_verse 6_) and μορφὴν δούλου (_verse 7_), as well as by the
participles λαβών and γενόμενος (_verse 7_) and εύρεθείς (_verse
8_) It is asserted, then, that the preëxisting Logos, “although
subsisting in the form of God, did not regard his equality with
God as a thing to be forcibly retained, but emptied himself by
taking the form of a servant, (that is,) by being made in the
likeness of men. And being found in outward condition as a man, he
(the incarnate son of God, yet further) humbled himself, by
becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (_verse
8_).
Here notice that what the Logos divested himself of, in becoming
man, is not the substance of his Godhead, but the “_form of God_”
in which this substance was manifested. This “_form of God_” can
be only that independent exercise of the powers and prerogatives
of Deity which constitutes his “_equality with God_.” This he
surrenders, in the act of “_taking the form of a servant_”—or
becoming subordinate, as man. (Here other Scriptures complete the
view, by their representations of the controlling influence of the
Holy Spirit in the earthly life of Christ.) The phrases “made in
the likeness of men” and “found in fashion as a man” are used to
intimate, not that Jesus Christ was not really man, but that he
was God as well as man, and therefore free from the sin which
clings to man (_cf._ _Rom. 8:3_—ἐν ὁμοιώματι σαρκὸς
ἁμαρτίας—Meyer). Finally, this one person, now God and man united,
submits himself, consciously and voluntarily, to the humiliation
of an ignominious death.
See Lightfoot, on _Phil. 2:8_—“Christ divested himself, not of his
divine nature, for that was impossible, but of the glories and
prerogatives of Deity. This he did by taking the form of a
servant.” Evans, in Presb. Rev., 1883:287—“Two stages in Christ’s
humiliation, each represented by a finite verb defining the
central act of the particular stage, accompanied by two modal
participles. 1st stage indicated in _v. 7_. Its central act is:
‘_he emptied himself_.’ Its two modalities are: (1) ‘_taking the
form of servant_’; (2) ‘_being made in the likeness of men_.’ Here
we have the humiliation of the Kenosis,—that by which Christ
_became_ man. 2d stage, indicated in _v. 8_. Its central act is:
‘_he humbled himself_.’ Its two modalities are: (1) ‘_being found
in fashion as a man_’; (2) ‘_becoming obedient unto death, yea,
the death of the cross_.’ Here we have the humiliation of his
obedience and death,—that by which, _in_ humanity, he became a
sacrifice for our sins.”
Meyer refers _Eph. 5:31_ exclusively to Christ and the church,
making the completed union future, however, _i. e._, at the time
of the Parousia. “_For this cause shall a man leave his father and
mother_” = “in the incarnation, Christ leaves father and mother
(his seat at the right hand of God), and cleaves to his wife (the
church), and then the two (the descended Christ and the church)
become one flesh (one ethical person, as the married pair become
one by physical union). The Fathers, however, (Jerome, Theodoret,
Chrysostom), referred it to the incarnation.” On the
interpretation of _Phil 2:6-11_, see Comm. of Neander, Meyer,
Lange, Ellicott.
On the question whether Christ would have become man had there
been no sin, theologians are divided. Dorner, Martensen, and
Westcott answer in the affirmative; Robinson, Watts, and Denney in
the negative. See Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of Christ, 5:236;
Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 327-329; Westcott, Com. on
Hebrews, page 8—“The Incarnation is in its essence independent of
the Fall, though conditioned by it as to its circumstances.” _Per
contra_, see Robinson, Christ. Theol., 219, note—“It would be
difficult to show that a like method of argument from _a priori_
premisses will not equally avail to prove sin to have been a
necessary part of the scheme of creation.” Denney, Studies in
Theology, 101, objects to the doctrine of necessary incarnation
irrespective of sin, that it tends to obliterate the distinction
between nature and grace, to blur the definite outlines of the
redemption wrought by Christ, as the supreme revelation of God and
his love. See also Watts, New Apologetic, 198-202; Julius Müller,
Dogmat. Abhandlungen, 66-126; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 512-526,
543-548; Forrest, The Authority of Christ, 340-345. On the general
subject of the Kenosis of the Logos, see Bruce, Humiliation of
Christ; Robins, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1874:615; Philippi,
Glaubenslehre, 4:138-150, 386-475; Pope, Person of Christ, 23;
Bodemeyer, Lehre von der Kenosis; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:610-625.
II. The State of Exaltation.
1. The nature of this exaltation.
It consisted essentially in: (_a_) A resumption, on the part of the Logos,
of his independent exercise of divine attributes. (_b_) The withdrawal, on
the part of the Logos, of all limitations in his communication of the
divine fulness to the human nature of Christ. (_c_) The corresponding
exercise, on the part of the human nature, of those powers which belonged
to it by virtue of its union with the divine.
The eighth Psalm, with its account of the glory of human nature,
is at present fulfilled only in Christ (see _Heb. 2:9_—“_but we
behold ... Jesus_”). _Heb. 2:7_—ἠλάττωσας αὐτὸν βραχύ τι παρ᾽
ἀγγέλους—may be translated, as in the margin of the Rev. Vers.:
“_Thou madest __ him for a little while lower than the angels._”
Christ’s human body was not necessarily subject to death; only by
outward compulsion or voluntary surrender could he die. Hence
resurrection was a natural necessity (_Acts 2:24_—“_whom God
raised up, having loosed the pangs of death: because it was not
possible he should be holden of it_”; _31_—“_neither was he left
unto Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption_”). This exaltation,
which then affected humanity only in its head, is to be the
experience also of the members. Our bodies also are to be
delivered from the bondage of corruption, and we are to sit with
Christ upon his throne.
2. The stages of Christ’s exaltation.
(a) The quickening and resurrection.
Both Lutherans and Romanists distinguish between these two, making the
former precede, and the latter follow, Christ’s “preaching to the spirits
in prison.” These views rest upon a misinterpretation of 1 Pet. 3:18-20.
Lutherans teach that Christ descended into hell, to proclaim his triumph
to evil spirits. But this is to give ἐκήρυξεν the unusual sense of
proclaiming his triumph, instead of his gospel. Romanists teach that
Christ entered the underworld to preach to Old Testament saints, that they
might be saved. But the passage speaks only of the disobedient; it cannot
be pressed into the support of a sacramental theory of the salvation of
Old Testament believers. The passage does not assert the descent of Christ
into the world of spirits, but only a work of the preïncarnate Logos in
offering salvation, through Noah, to the world then about to perish.
Augustine, Ad Euodiam, ep. 99—“The spirits shut up in prison are
the unbelievers who lived in the time of Noah, whose spirits or
souls were shut up in the darkness of ignorance as in a prison;
Christ preached to them, not in the flesh, for he was not yet
incarnate, but in the spirit, that is, in his divine nature.”
Calvin taught that Christ descended into the underworld and
suffered the pains of the lost. But not all Calvinists hold with
him here; see Princeton Essays, 1:153. Meyer, on _Rom. 10:7_,
regards the question—“_Who shall descend into the abyss?_ (_that
is, to bring Christ up from the dead_)”—as an allusion to, and so
indirectly a proof-text for, Christ’s descent into the underworld.
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 211, favors a preaching to the dead:
“During that time [the three days] he did not return to heaven and
his Father.” But though _John 20:17_ is referred to for proof, is
not this statement true only of his body? So far as the soul is
concerned, Christ can say: “_Father, into thy hands I commend my
spirit_,” and “_To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise_” (_Luke
23:43, 46_).
Zahn and Dorner best represent the Lutheran view. Zahn, in
Expositor, March, 1898: 216-223—“If Jesus was truly man, then his
soul, after it left the body, entered into the fellowship of
departed spirits.... If Jesus is he who lives forevermore and even
his dying was his act, this carrying in the realm of the dead
cannot be thought of as a purely passive condition, but must have
been known to those who dwelt there..... If Jesus was the Redeemer
of mankind, the generations of those who had passed away must have
thus been brought into personal relation to him, his work and his
kingdom, without waiting for the last day.”
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:662 (Syst. Doct., 4:127), thinks
“Christ’s descent into Hades marks a new era of his pneumatic
life, in which he shows himself free from the limitations of time
and space.” He rejects “Luther’s notion of a merely triumphal
progress and proclamation of Christ. Before Christ,” he says,
“there was no abode peopled by the damned. The descent was an
application of the benefit of the atonement (implied in
κηρύσσειν). The work was prophetic, not high-priestly nor kingly.
Going to the spirits in prison is spoken of as a spontaneous act,
not one of physical necessity. No power of Hades led him over into
Hades. Deliverance from the limitations of a mortal body is
already an indication of a higher stage of existence. Christ’s
soul is bodiless for a time—πνεῦμα only—as the departed were.
“The ceasing of this preaching is neither recorded, nor reasonably
to be supposed,—indeed the ancient church supposed it carried on
through the apostles. It expresses the universal significance of
Christ for former generations and for the entire kingdom of the
dead. No physical power is a limit to him. The gates of hell, or
Hades, shall not prevail over or against him. The intermediate
state is one of blessedness for him, and he can admit the penitent
thief into it. Even those who were not laid hold of by Christ’s
historic manifestation in this earthly life still must, and may,
be brought into relation with him, in order to be able to accept
or to reject him. And thus the universal relation of Christ to
humanity and the absoluteness of the Christian religion are
confirmed.” So Dorner, for substance.