Chapter 24

§ 1. Orthodox Doctrine stated.

Having considered the Orthodox idea of man in his natural state, and of man in his supernatural state, we next pass to consider the Orthodox idea of Christ’s person and of Christ’s work. In this chapter we shall consider the Orthodox view of the person of Christ, and ask what is its substantial truth, and what its formal error.

The Orthodox opinion concerning Christ is thus stated in the Assembly’s Confession of Faith: “The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father, did, when the fulness of time was come, take upon him man’s nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin; so that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures—the Godhead and the Manhood—were inseparably joined together in one person, which person is very God and very Man.”

Christ, therefore, was perfectly God and perfectly man. The formula is, “_two natures, but one person_.” The Orthodox doctrine is not of God dwelling in a human body as its soul (which seems to be the view of Swedenborg), but it is of God united with a human soul and body as one person or one consciousness.

§ 2. This Doctrine gradually developed.

This idea of Christ, as we know, was gradually formed in the Christian Church, and did not become Orthodox until after many struggles. First came the question whether the Deity of Christ was equal or subordinate to that of the Father. Hardly had the Orthodox doctrine triumphed over that of subordination, against those who denied the equal Deity, than it was obliged to turn round and contend against those on the other side, who denied the humanity of Christ altogether. The Ebionites considered Jesus as a mere man. Theodotus, in the year 200, taught the same, with Artemon and Praxeas. In the next century the Arians and Sabellians opposed Orthodoxy from opposite sides,—the one confounding the persons of the Godhead, and the other dividing the substance. So for several centuries the pendulum of opinion swung from one side to the other before it rested in the golden mean of Orthodoxy.

The Nestorians separated the two natures of Christ, and maintained that his Divinity consisted only in the indwelling of God. But scarcely had Nestorius been banished for separating the two natures than Eutyches plunged into heresy on the other side, by confounding them together. This was the Monophysite heresy; and no sooner was this overthrown, and it was decided to be wrong to say that Christ had only one nature, than others began to contend that he had only one will. These were the Monothelites. But through all these controversies, the main doctrine of Orthodoxy continues to shine out luminous and distinct, asserting that Christ combines the fulness of Deity and the fulness of Humanity.

§ 3. Unitarian Objections.

As this view of the Deity of Christ has been stated, it seems, in its doctrinal form, contradictory to Scripture as well as to reason. That the infinite God, who fills the universe, and sustains it; present in the smallest insect; present in the most distant nebula, whose light just arriving at our eye has been a million of years on its journey,—that this infinite Being should have been born in Palestine, seems to confute itself by its very statement. Who took care of the universe when God was an infant in the arms of the Virgin Mary? Jesus was born, and died; but God cannot be born, and cannot die. Jesus suffered from hunger, fatigue, and pain; but God cannot suffer. Jesus was seen by human eyes, and touched by human hands; but no man hath seen God at any time. Jesus had a finite body; but God is Spirit. Jesus was tempted; but God cannot be tempted with evil. Jesus prayed; but God cannot pray. Jesus said, “My Father is greater than I;” but God has no one greater than himself. Jesus said, “I can of mine own self do nothing;” but God can of his own self do everything. Jesus said “that he came down from heaven not to do his own will;” but God always does his own will. Jesus said that there were some things he did not know; but God knows everything. He declared that all power was _given_ to him in heaven and earth; but God’s power cannot be given to him. Scripture, therefore, as well as common sense, seems to deny the Orthodox doctrine of the Deity of Christ.

The common Trinitarian answer to these texts is, that Christ is speaking in his human nature when he asserts these limitations. But this answer, as Dr. Bushnell has well shown, is no answer; for, as he says, “it not only does an affront to the plain language of Scripture, but virtually denies any real unity between the human and the divine.” Jesus does not say, “All power in heaven and earth is given _to my human nature_,” but “to _me_;” and when the Trinitarian himself declares that in Christ, with two natures, there is but _one person_, the question is concerning that one person, whether _that_ is finite or infinite, absolute or dependent, omniscient or not so, omnipresent or not so, omnipotent or not so. The question does not concern his nature, but himself. The one person must be either finite or infinite: it cannot be both.

§ 4. Substantial Truth in this Doctrine.

But now we ask, What substantial truth underlies this formal error? What truth of life underlies this error of doctrine? Let us remember how empty the world was of God at the time of Christ’s coming. The wisest men could speak thus with Pliny: “All religion is the offspring of necessity, weakness, and fear. What God is,—if in truth he be anything distinct from the world,—it is beyond the power of man’s understanding to know.” All intelligent men agreed that if God existed he could not possibly take any interest in the affairs of the world or of individuals. Phariseeism on the one hand, and Sadduceeism on the other,—a religion hardened into forms, and an empty scepticism, cold and dead,—divided the world between them. But men cannot live without God, and be satisfied. They were feeling after him, if haply they might find him, who is not far from any one of us.

Then Christ came; and in all that he said and did, he spoke from the knowledge of God; he acted from the life of God. Here was one, then, at last, to whom God was not an opinion, but a reality; through whose life flowed the life of God in a steady current. We see that all sincere souls who came near Jesus received from him the same sight of God which he possessed; for faith in a living and present God is so congenial to the nature of man, that it carries conviction with it wherever it is not a mere opinion, but a state of the soul.

Those, therefore, who could find God nowhere else, found him in Christ. Those who saw _him_, saw the Father. As when through a window we behold the heavens, as when in a mirror we see an image of the sun, we do not speak of the window or the mirror, but say that we see the sun and the heavens, so those who looked at Christ said that they saw God.

The apostle said that God was in Christ; and this was wholly true. Christians afterwards said that Christ was God; and they thought they were only saying the same thing. They said that Christ had a divine nature as well as a human nature; and in this also there was no essential falsehood, for when we speak of our nature, we intend merely by it those elements of character which are original and permanent, which are not acquired, do not alter, and are never lost. God dwelt in the soul of Christ thus constantly, thus permanently. The Word thus “became flesh, and dwelt among us.” The word of the Lord _came_ to the prophets, but it _dwelt_ in Christ. He and his Father were one. The vital truth of all this was that men were now able to see God manifested in man as a living, present reality. “_Here_,” they said, “is God. We have found God. He is in Christ. We can see him there.”

Is it any wonder that men should have called Jesus God? that they should call him so still? In him truly “dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily;” and this indwelling Spirit expressed itself in what he said and what he did. When Jesus speaks, it is as if God speaks. When Jesus does anything, it is as if we saw God do it. It becomes to us an expression of the divine character. When Jesus says to the sinner, “Go and sin no more,” we see in this a manifestation not merely of his own compassion, but of God’s forgiving love; and when he dies, although God cannot die, yet he dies according to the divine will, and thus expresses God’s willingness to suffer for the redemption of the world.

§ 5. Formal Error of the Orthodox Statement.

When we look at Christ’s Divinity from this point of view, the distinction between the Trinitarian and Unitarian seems almost to disappear. Still the question remains, Is it right to call him God? The distinction remains between saying, “God was in Christ,” and saying, “Christ was God.” In short, was the _person_ of Christ human or divine? We agree with the Orthodox in saying that Christ had two natures—a divine nature and a human nature. We also maintain with them that he had one person. But the question comes, Was that one person divine or human, finite or infinite, dependent or absolute? The consciousness of the one person is a single consciousness. Christ could not at the same time have been conscious of knowing all things and of not knowing all things, of having all power and of not having it, of depending on God for all things and of not depending for anything. One of two things alone is possible. Either Christ was God united with a human soul, or he was a human soul united with God. When Christ uses the personal pronoun “I,” he must mean by that “_I_” either the finite man or the infinite God. I believe the Unitarian is right in saying that this personal pronoun “I” always refers to the finite being and consciousness, and not to the infinite Being. For example: “_I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me._” “_I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me._” God cannot proceed from God; God cannot send God. Again: “If I honor myself, my honor is nothing; it is my Father that honoreth me.” This cannot mean, “If God honors God, his honor is nothing; but it is God that honors him.” It must mean that the human being, Christ, receives his honor from the divine Being. This view—that the person of Christ is human, but is intimately united and in perfect union with the indwelling God—makes all Scripture intelligible. Any other view is either unintelligible or contradictory. This view of the divine nature of Christ united with the human person, of God dwelling in the flesh, does not confound the mind like the common Trinitarian view, and yet has a value for the heart of paramount importance. If Christ is really a man like ourselves, made in all respects like his brethren, and yet is thus at one with God, thus full of God, it shows us that sin and separation from God are accidental things, and not anything necessary. If Jesus is truly a man, he redeems and exalts humanity. What he has been is a type of what all men may be. Thus the apostle Paul speaks when he says that all things were created in Christ, who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that he might go before us, or be our leader in all things; which is a much higher view than the common understanding of the passage, which merely supposes him to have been God’s instrument in creating the physical universe. He is the image of the invisible God—the first-born of the whole creation. This creation is the new creation—that which is intended in Revelation (3:14), where Christ is spoken of as the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God, and that which Paul means when he says that in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is worth anything, “but the new creation.”

All such passages refer, as it seems to us, not to a past natural creation, but to a supernatural creation—a creation of life eternal, which, beginning in Christ, is to embrace the whole of humanity.

§ 6. Errors of Arianism and Naturalism.

And we cannot but think this doctrine far truer, as well as more Orthodox, than the Arianism which so long struggled in the Church for supremacy. That view which supposed that Christ was neither truly man nor truly God, but some high, preëxisting being between the two, appears to us to be the falsest and most unsatisfactory of all the doctrines concerning Christ’s person. It separates him more entirely from our sympathies than either of the others. It destroys both his divinity and his humanity, and, by giving us something intermediate, gives us really nothing. It makes his apparent human life a delusion, his temptation unreal, his human sympathies and sorrows deceptive. We think, therefore, that the Church was right in rejecting the Arian doctrine.

We think it was also right in rejecting the Humanitarian doctrine, or that of mere Naturalism. Christ was something more than mere man,—something more than Moses and Elijah,—something more than a man of great religious genius. The peculiarity of Christ was, that he was chosen by God’s wisdom, and prepared by God’s providence, to be the typical man of the race,—the God-man, in whom the divine Spirit and human soul become one in a perfect union. He was, perhaps, placed, by an exceptional birth, where the first Adam stood,—rescued from inherited depravity, made in the image of God. Then the Spirit was given him without measure. The word of God _dwelt_ in him, and did not merely come to him as a transient influence for a special purpose. Add to this a freely chosen aim of life, and a fidelity which was always about his Father’s business, and aiming to finish the work which was given him to do, and we have a being in whom we can see either a manifestation of God or a manifestation of man. The Spirit in Christ was one with God; the soul and body were human.