Part 6 — Chapter I. Christology, Or The Redemption Wrought By Christ. (continued 2)

(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 [pg 686]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 [pg 687] “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.

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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 [pg 689] 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 [pg 690] 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 [pg 691]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 alwaysGod, 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 [pg 692]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 [pg 693]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.” [pg 694] 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 [pg 695] 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 [pg 696]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 [pg 697]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.”

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(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 [pg 699]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 fulnessof 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 [pg 700]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.

[pg 701]

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, [pg 702] 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, [pg 703]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.”

[pg 704]

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 [pg 705]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 [pg 706]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.