willing and self-sacrificing service. Thus man becomes a worker with God in establishing the kingdom of God on earth. Similar indications pointing to the Christian conception of God are found in philosophy. From Plato to Hegel, philosophy at different times has sought the rational theory of the existence and constitution of the universe in some sort of a Trinity. 1 2 Bancroft, the historian, has said that some idea of the triune God is inherent in every system of thought which can pretend to vitality." Coleridge says: "The Trinity is the only form in which an idea of God is possible, unless it be a Spinozistic or World-God. ... I affirm that the article of the Trinity is religion, is reason and its universal formula; and that there neither is nor can be any religion, any reason, but what is, or is an expansion of, the truth of the Trinity." It is now evident that there is a truth in these seemingly extravagant assertions. The history of religion, and of theological and philosophical thought has shown that the Trinity and the Incarnation present a conception of God necessary to satisfy spiritual wants which all religions have more or less clearly disclosed, and to meet the demands of reason in every attempt to construct a theological or philosophical theory of the universe in its relation to God. The triads and incarnations of the ethnic religions and philosophies disclose, even in man's dimmer apprehensions of what God reveals himself to be, some consciousness of him as being what in Christ he is more clearly and fully revealed to be. VII. The truth of the doctrines of the God in Christ, and of the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is independent of the philosophical and speculative questions respecting them which have been discussed within the church, and of the failure to attain agreement in answering these questions. The revelation of the God in Christ, and of the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, underlies the whole revelation of God as the redeemer of men from sin, and is inseparably connected with it. It is thus inwrought into the essence of Christianity. Hence these doctrines, as thus revealed in the Scriptures and in their practical significance as connected with redemption, have been the common belief of the church in all ages. The truth of these doctrines has 1 Christian Examiner, vol. 69, September, 1860, p. 213. not been the question at issue in the controversies which have arisen within the church. These have pertained to attempts to give more exact definitions and formulas, to explain how the divine and the human are united in Christ, or how the three exist as one in the eternal being of God; while on both sides of the controversy the aim has been to elucidate the doctrines, to remove objections, and to vindicate them as true. Theologians distinguish between the ontological or immanent Trinity as eternal in God independent of his revelation of himself, and the economic or practical Trinity as revealed in the scriptures in its practical significance as related to redemption. It may be objected to this distinction that what God reveals is himself; and the Trinity revealed must be the Trinity that God eternally is. But the distinction, rightly apprehended, is between the Trinity so far as revealed and the idea of the Trinity as formed by the human mind, when in reflective thought it goes behind the revelation and attempts a metaphysical construction of the Trinity as it is eternal in God, or a picturing of it in the imagination. The results of such attempts are speculative theories as to the ontological Trinity. But every revelation of God must be on a background of mystery. No finite mind can completely comprehend God. The revelation of God in Christ, and of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, opens a deeper insight into the essential being of God and his relations to man than any other revelation. For that very reason it discloses to us more fully the mystery of his being. Therefore, though all attempts to picture God, as thus revealed, in the imagination, or to define him with exactness and completeness, or to answer all speculative questions which may be asked, may fail, God so far as revealed may still be apprehensible, and the revelation may be real, far-reaching, and of great practical power. A similar distinction must be made between Christ the Son of God and the Son of Man, as revealed in the work of redemption, and conceptions of him arising from attempted psychological constructions of his person as human and divine. Attempts at such construction have been common in the history of the church. They have been the occasion of discussion and controversy within the church, which continue to this day. But in all this theorizing and discussion within the church, it has not been disputed that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. There has been a general agreement in recognizing the union of the human and the divine in the person, Jesus the Christ. The difficulty has been how to construct his person in thought. But in whatever way it has been constructed, the belief in the God in Christ has remained unchanged. The history shows that neither one theory nor another of constructing the idea is essential to the doctrine in its scriptural and practical significance. The common doctrine of the church has been, that Christ is one person having two natures, the divine and the human. The question is, What person is it that presents himself in Christ? Is it God, or man? 66 It cannot be a human person, a particular man, named Jesus. This is an ancient error, controverted in a short paper of doubtful genuineness, attributed to Athanasius, and bearing a title similar to one of his genuine writings. The writer says of this error: They who say this contradict the Word (Logos), since they say that a Son of man, not descending from heaven but arising from the earth, received God descending from heaven into himself." 1 Moreover, any possible union of God with him would be a union with only one man, not with humanity. And further, if the person presented in Jesus was a human person, then, however richly endowed, he could never become God, but must remain in every action and through all his history, always a man; for it is impossible for one person either to be transformed into another, or united with another in one person; and God cannot impart his absoluteness to a man, because that would be the absurdity of creating a second God. Jesus then would be a man distinguished from other men only by a higher prophetic inspiration and richer spiritual gifts, and incompetent for the work of God in Christ redeeming men from sin. This, therefore, involves the denial that he is divine, except in the sense in which all men are so, being in their personality in the likeness of God. Thus it logically leads to the Socinian doctrine that Christ is a mere man. On the other hand, it may be supposed that the person in Christ is God, in that eternal mode of his being in which he is revealed as the Logos, the Word, or the Son. The danger here is that in this conception the human in Christ may be displaced by the divine or lost in it. Accordingly Docetism appeared early 1 "On the Incarnation of the Word (Logos) of God," Works, vol. iv. p. 91. Ed. J. P. Migne; Paris, 1857. Patrologia Græca, vol. xxviii. in the history of the church, affirming that Christ's body and all the human sensibilities through which man suffers had no reality, but were merely illusive appearance. Apollinarianism, on the other hand, recognized the reality of Christ's body, with all its natural sensibilities, but denied the existence in him of a rational spirit. From these facts, as well as from the whole history of the early Christian church, it is evident that it was the deity of Christ rather than his humanity which made the most powerful impression on the primitive Christians. In opposition to the two errors of Docetism and Apollinarianism, the church in its creeds declared the existence in the Christ of "a true body and a reasonable soul." But throughout the whole history, the common belief of trinitarians has been that in some way the one person of Christ is the Logos, or Son of God. Some in our own day have propounded a doctrine essentially the same with Apollinarianism. This arises from confounding the human nature predicated of Christ in theology with a distinct human person. A rational human spirit, as it exists in a man, is itself the person of the man. Therefore, it is argued, personality is of the essence of the human spirit or soul; if impersonal, it would not be a spirit or soul. Thence, it is inferred that if Christ has a rational human soul and is at the same time the Son of God, he is no longer one person, but two. Then the Logos or Son of God, is recognized as the one person in Christ to the exclusion of a rational human soul. This conception of Christ really divests him of human nature in its higher attributes as rational free spirit, and regards him as God acting only through a human body. This annuls every conception of Christ as at once human and divine. It therefore excludes all the significance of Christ as the revealer of man as well as of God, and as revealing the essential likeness of man to God. And it does not remove the difficulty. There is more difficulty in conceiving of God as incarnate in a mere material body than in a complete human nature. It is only the likeness of man in his higher nature to God which makes the incarnation possible. God cannot impetrify himself in a stone, or indendrify himself in a tree, or incarnate himself in mere living flesh, as in an oyster. God as a spirit cannot become matter. Therefore, by adopting the Apollinarian theory, nothing is gained and new difficulties are created. But it is not necessary to resort to this theory. The doctrine of anhypostasia, commonly held by the Reformed churches, presents a more scriptural conception of the person of Christ, and more effectually removes the difficulty. Trinitarians who reject it, commonly show that they have not apprehended its real significance. It is commonly spoken of as the doctrine of the impersonality of Christ's human nature; and this is misunderstood as denying that he is human. But, in fact, the doctrine does not deny that Christ is human, but strenuously affirms that the one person, Jesus Christ, is both divine and human; in one aspect this one person is divine, having all the attributes essential to personality in God; in another he is human, having all the attributes essential in human personality. For it must be remembered that personality is not the person, but is only the name of the abstracted qualities or nature which constitute a being personal, and that absoluteness and finiteness are not of the essence of personality, but only different forms in which personality may exist. The doctrine simply denies that Jesus ever existed as an individual man, a human person before the incarnation, but asserts that he is a human person in and through the union of the divine with the human in the incarnation. In this the two natures are united, as the Council of Chalcedon declared, "indivisibly and inseparably." This doctrine has been designated by the Greek words, anhypostasia, as denying Christ's human personality antecedent to and apart from the incarnation of the Logos, and enhypostasia, as asserting his human personality in the incarnation of the Logos.1 1 Athanasian Creed: "Who, although he is God and man, yet he is not two, but one Christ. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by assumption of the manhood into God. One altogether; not by conversion of substance, but by unity of person. For as the rational soul and the flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ." Turretin: "By the intimate and perpetual conjunction of the human and divine natures into the unity of a person, the human nature, which was destitute of a personality of its own and avʊπóσTaTos, because otherwise it would itself have been a person, was taken up to the person of the Logos and conjoined or adjoined to it into the unity of a person, so that now it may be évvróσTaTos, since it has coalesced into one person with the Logos. The union is effected by the assumption of the human nature into the oneness of the person of the Logos." - Instit. Loc. xiii., Quaest. 6, VI. and III. Buddaeus: "The human nature, destitute of all subsistence in itself subsists in the subsistence of the Logos. By this union of the two natures, -26 VOL. I. |