Note (return) — Chapter V

A somewhat paradoxical result of the defence of the Logos doctrine in the struggle against the "Patripassians" was the increased emphasis that now began to be laid on the integrity and independence of the human nature in Christ. If the only essential result of the struggle with Gnosticism was to assert the substantial reality of Christ's body, it was Tertullian who distinguished what Christ did as man from what he did as God in order to prove that he was not a tertium quid. The discriminating intellect which was forced to receive a doctrine as a problem could not proceed otherwise. But, even before the struggle with Modalism, elements were present which repressed the naïve confidence of the utterances about the God-man. If I judge rightly, there were two features in Irenæus both of which resulted in a splitting up of the conception of the perfect unity of Christ's person. The first was the intellectual contemplation of the perfect humanity of Jesus, the second was found in certain Old and New Testament texts and the tradition connected with these.603 With regard to the first we may point out that Irenæus indeed regarded the union of the human and divine as possible only because man, fashioned from the beginning by and after the pattern of the Logos, was an image of the latter and destined for union with God. Jesus Christ is the realisation of our possession of God's image;604 but this thought, if no further developed, may be still united with the Logos doctrine in such a way that it does not interfere with it, but serves to confirm it. The case becomes different when it is not only shown that the Logos was always at work in the human race, but that humanity was gradually more and more accustomed by him (in the patriarchs and prophets) to communion with God,605 till at last the perfect man appeared in Christ. For in this view it might appear as if the really essential element in Jesus Christ were not the Logos, who has become the new Adam, but the new Adam, who possesses the Logos. That Irenæus, in explaining the life of Jesus as that of Adam according to the recapitulation theory, here and there expresses himself as if he were speaking of the perfect man, is undeniable: If the acts of Christ are really to be what they seem, the man concerned in them must be placed in the foreground. But how little Irenæus thought of simply identifying the Logos with the perfect man is shown by the passage in III. 19. 3 where he writes: "'ωσπερ γαρ ην ανθρωπος 'ινα πειρασθη, 'ουτω και λογος 'ινα δοξασθη. ησυχαζοντος μεν του λογου εν τω πειραζεσθαι και σταυρουσθαι και αποθνησκειν συγγινομενου δε τω ανθρωπω εν τω νικαν και 'υπομενειν και χρηστευεσθαι και ανιστασθαι και αναλαμβανεσθαι" ("For as he was man that he might be tempted, so also he was the Logos that he might be glorified. The Logos remained quiescent during the process of temptation, crucifixion and death, but aided the human nature when it conquered, and endured, and performed deeds of kindness, and rose again from the dead, and was received up into heaven"). From these words it is plain that Irenæus preferred to assume that the divine and human natures existed side by side, and consequently to split up the perfect unity, rather than teach a mere ideal manhood which would be at the same time a divine manhood. The "discrete agere" of the two natures proves that to Irenæus the perfect manhood of the incarnate Logos was merely an incidental quality he possessed. In reality the Logos is the perfect man in so far as his incarnation creates the perfect man and renders him possible, or the Logos always exists behind Christ the perfect man. But nevertheless this very way of viewing the humanity in Christ already compelled Irenæus to limit the "deus crucifixus" and to lay the foundation for Tertullian's formulæ. With regard to the second point we may remark that there were not a few passages in both Testaments where Christ appeared as the man chosen by God and anointed with the Spirit. These as well as the corresponding language of the Church were the greatest difficulties in the way of the Logos Christology. Of what importance is an anointing with the Spirit to him who is God? What is the meaning of Christ being born by the power of the Holy Ghost? Is this formula compatible with the other, that he as the Logos himself assumed flesh from the Virgin etc.? Irenæus no doubt felt these difficulties. He avoided them (III. 9. 3) by referring the bestowal of the Spirit at baptism merely to the man Jesus, and thus gave his own approval to that separation which appeared to him so reprehensible in the Gnostics.606 This separation indeed rescued to future ages the minimum of humanity that was to be retained in the person of Christ, but at the same time it laid the foundation of those differentiating speculations, which in succeeding times became the chief art and subject of dispute among theologians. The fact is that one cannot think in realistic fashion of the "deus homo factus" without thinking oneself out of it. It is exceedingly instructive to find that, in some passages, even a man like Irenæus was obliged to advance from the creed of the one God-man to the assumption of two independent existences in Christ, an assumption which in the earlier period has only "Gnostic" testimony in its favour. Before Irenæus' day, in fact, none but these earliest theologians taught that Jesus Christ had two natures, and ascribed to them particular actions and experiences. The Gnostic distinction of the Jesus patibilis ("capable of suffering") and the Christ απαθης ("impassible") is essentially identical with the view set forth by Tertullian adv. Prax., and this proves that the doctrine of the two natures is simply nothing else than the Gnostic, i.e., scientific, adaptation of the formula: "filius dei filius hominis factus." No doubt the old early-Christian interest still makes itself felt in the assertion of the one person. Accordingly we can have no historical understanding of Tertullian's Christology or even of that of Irenæus without taking into account, as has not yet been done, the Gnostic distinction of Jesus and Christ, as well as those old traditional formulæ: "deus passus, deus crucifixus est" ("God suffered, God was crucified").607