secration of Humanity for ever; it is of this, and not directly at all of the eternal relations within Divine Being, that their imagination is wholly full, when they write all their writings, and think all their thoughts, in the Name of "God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ." Moreover there is another direction, in which we may venture to say that the term the Divine Logos, and the term Jesus Christ our Lord, are not, as terms, simply identical. The Logos indeed "became flesh." But having become flesh, He was man :-man to eternity, in the highest perfection-which is also the revelation and true measure of what manhood ideally means: man, for a brief term of years, under all the extremest disabilities of material and mortal life. The central characteristic of His manhood, as revealed in mortal life, was the absoluteness of His relation of dependence upon God. Now it is not at all necessary to say, either on the one hand, that the Person of God Incarnate was wholly distinct from the Person of the Eternal Father and the Eternal Spiritseeing that they are inseparably One: or, on the other hand, that the Son of Man, in His revelation of man's true relation of absolute dependence upon God, was dependent upon the First Person of the Blessed Trinity only, in a sort of imaginary separableness, and not also upon the Word and the Spirit.1 It is no objection to this, and is proof of no confusion of thought, if it involves the explicit statement that He was, on earth, dependent upon Himself. For the statement that His dutiful dependence, in mortality, was dependence on Himself, is a statement which is any 1 My attention has been drawn to the following sentence, which might often, I believe, have an important application amongst ourselves : "Cur æqualis et una Trinitas? Responsio. Quia et sempiterna est in ipsa Trinitate deitas. Rogo, non animadvertis omnes pæne hæreses in hoc titulo unitam deitatem Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti blasphemare, dum hæc quæ superius uniter in Trinitate sunt dicta ad unam Personam Patris illi tantummodo conferant?" Vigilii Tapsensis de Trinitate, Lib. i. 201, p. 239, Migne. N how undeniably true, with whatever intellectual mystery it may be thought to involve, from the moment at which it is said that He was, as man, dependent upon "God." There is one thought more, which the subject of the present chapter requires. We had occasion to ask just now, Why is it that the formula which is so characteristic of Christian thought in the apostolic age, seems to be made up of Two terms rather than Three? Is it an imperfect formula which omits the doctrine of the Holy Spirit? On one side the question has been already answered. It is not an imperfect formula as to the Being of God, for it is not a formula as to the Being of God at all. But does it even, in fact, omit the doctrine of the Holy Spirit? On the contrary, it implies it. "Grace and peace, from the Eternal God, and particularly from His Revelation and victorious work as Man, in flesh,to you!" This grace, this peace, no longer only in the Person of Jesus Christ;-but through the Person of Jesus Christ, to you, and in you: What is this but Christ in you? And how Christ in you,—save in, and as, Spirit? Christ in you, or the Spirit of Christ in you; these are not different realities; but the one is the method of the other. It is in the Person of Christ that the Eternal God is revealed in manhood, to man. It is in the Person of His Spirit that the Incarnate Christ is Personally present within the spirit of each several man. The Holy Ghost is mainly revealed to us as the Spirit of the Incarnate. If it once be conceded that the revelation of the Holy Ghost is a revelation of the new Testament, not of the Old: it will be obvious that that revelation in the New Testament is made, not as an independent or separate vista into truth, but as a sort of necessary sequel or climax to the meaning of Incarnation, at the moment when Incarnation proper, that is, the life lived by God the Son in flesh, upon earth, was immediately drawing to its close. The meaning of Incarnation was not exhausted; there is a sense in which it may be said to have hardly yet begun ;when Jesus Christ passed away from this visible scene of mortal life. That real significance of Incarnation, hardly then as yet begun, is to be recognized not more directly in the contemplation of the Presence of the Son of Man in Heaven-with all that that contemplation carries in its train ;—than in the recognition of the Presence and working here on earth, of the Spirit of the Incarnation and of the Incarnate. The Spirit of the Incarnate is the Spirit of God. But it is not so much the Spirit of God, regarded in His eternal existence, or relation, in the Being of Deity: it is the Spirit of God in Humanity, the Spirit of God become the Spirit of man in the Person of the Incarnate,— become thenceforward the true interpretation and secret of what true manhood really is, it is this which is the distinctive revelation of the New Testament, the distinctive significance and life of the Church of Christ. This is the truth, immense in its significance for practical Christianity, which the so-called doctrine of the "Double Procession" directly protects; and which the denial of that doctrine tends directly to impair. It may be that the removal of the "Filioque" from the Nicene creed, would not necessarily imply a denial of the doctrine: but there can at least be little doubt, historically speaking, that the "Filioque" has served, to the doctrine, as a bulwark of great importance. It becomes, then, of considerable importance, to take full note of the passages in which the Spirit of God, become 'This is what Dr Milligan means when he says, in somewhat obscure and questionable phrases, that "the Spirit bestowed upon us by the glorified Lord is not the Third Person of the Trinity in the soleness of the Personality possessed by Him before the foundations of the world were laid," or again, “not the Third Person of the Trinity in His absolute and metaphysical existence, but that Person as He is mediated by the Son, who is human as well as divine." The Ascension of our Lord, pp. 172 and 189. (The italics are mine.) the Spirit of the Christ, is spoken of directly as the Spirit of Christ. It is of course not necessary that this should be the only form of phrase. The Spirit of Christ is the Spirit of God. To speak of Him as the Spirit of God does not exclude in any way the interpretation that He is mediated by Christ: that He is the Spirit of God become the Spirit of man in the Person of Christ. But to speak of Him as the Spirit of Christ does interpret the phrases which speak of Him simply as the Spirit of God. As a prelude to such passages (which are well known) it may be desirable to call attention to the very remarkable words which serve as the climax and close of the great High Priestly prayer of the 17th of St John. "I" that is, the Incarnate, "made known unto them Thy name, and will make it known; that the love wherewith Thou lovedst Me may be in them, and I in them." What is this love wherewith the Father loved His own Son? How can the very love of the Father to the Son, be itself the animating love of the Son's disciples? And how is it that that indwelling presence of the very love of the Father towards the Son seems to be spoken of as so closely identified with,-perhaps we should say as itself actually being-the indwelling presence of the Person of the Incarnate? Nothing but extreme familiarity could blind us to the wonder, and exceeding awfulness, of words like these. I do not now go back again over the language of the 14th, 15th, and 16th chapters: but at least it is well to remember that all these chapters are the prelude which leads up to the 17th; and that the close of the 17th is the close of them all. Take with these His action on the night after the Resurrection, when the work of the Incarnation, in its first part on earth, is complete; and when He is therefore, by an act of significant symbolism, handing on or passing over to them, for continuance as their Spirit, the Spirit which had been His own. He breathed on them, and saith unto them, "Receive ye [the] Holy Ghost"—(λáßere πνεûμа åɣιov). This is not the action of one who, by prayer, would invoke upon them, a Spirit which is not of, or from, Himself: it is the symbolism rather of one who would transfer to them the very Spirit which animates-which may be said to be -Himself. It is, then, in precise agreement with this that the later phrases of the New Testament speak. The Spirit of God is now the Spirit of Christ. The Presence of the Spirit is Christ. The Presence of the Christ is Spirit. "They assayed to go into Bithynia; and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not."1 "Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit" (margin, "even as from the Spirit which is the Lord" καθάπερ ἀπὸ κυρίου πνεύματος). "Because ye are sons God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying Abba Father." "For I know that this shall turn to my salvation, through your supplication and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ." And St Peter looking back in retrospect upon the older prophecies, sees now how this had been a truth, in some sense, even of them, "who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you; searching what time or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did point unto." 5 4 There is one passage in St Paul's epistles which has been hitherto omitted; but which is really more significant than all these-as well from the general context in which it occurs, as from the things actually said. This is the 8th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. It is to be borne in mind that the 8th chapter is the conclusion and climax of the magnificent doctrinal argument of this great 1 Acts xvi. 7. Phil. i. 19. 2 2 Cor. iii. 17, 18. 3 Gal. iv. 6. |