Birth in order to our salvation. When, however, we follow the order of salvation of the Creed, and the New Testament upon which it is founded, we see that it is just the Incarnation, which is the initial saving act of the Son of God, upon which all other saving acts depend. And so the necessity of the Virgin Birth soon becomes evident.

It is just here that we must recall St. Paul's antithesis between the first and the second Adam.

As the first Adam summed up in himself all his descendants, the whole human race, who share with their first father the consequences of his original sin and fall; just so Jesus Christ recapitulates in Himself this same human race in order to redeem it. Jesus was more than an individual man. If He were no more than that, His Incarnation would not have redemptive significance. He was born of the Virgin as the God-man, God manifest in the flesh. God did not take to Himself a man Jesus born of Mary, as the ancient Gnostics held, and their modern representatives among the Ritschlians now hold. This would give only a divinely inhabited man, not a God-man. This would make Jesus nothing more than John the Baptist, who was just such a divinely inhabited man: "filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb" (Luke 115). Certainly all the Gospels agree in making the origin of Jesus something different from this. It was God the Son, the second Person of the Trinity, the pre-existent Son of God, who became man by entering the Virgin's womb, being conceived by her and being born of

her. In other words, God took to Himself human nature in its entireness, completeness, and integrity: but He did not become thereby merely such an individual man as John the Baptist; but, to use the term of the older theologians, a common Man in whom all men have a share, a Man who sums up in Himself all that is characteristic of perfect humanity. Jesus Christ did not share in the inheritance of sin and guilt, otherwise He would have needed salvation Himself. He made, as it were, a new beginning in humanity, taking to Himself the old humanity without its inheritance of evil, and introducing into humanity a spirit of holiness, incorruptible flesh, and an innocent sinlessness, in original uninterrupted communion with the Father, which involved the perfection of humanity.

It is just because God the Son thus identifies Himself, not with an individual man but with humanity as such, that He is able to save the human race. Accordingly, in all His activities He acts as the second Adam, the head of redeemed humanity. His Incarnation united humanity to God and made human salvation realizable, because of the pulsations of the divine life in the humanity of Jesus Christ, and through Him in all who are united to Him in a regenerate life. St. Paul, in his Epistles, repeatedly represents that in all the saving acts of Christ all Christians are involved, because they are in mystic union with Him as the second Adam, the God-man, so that in His Incarnation there is involved the regeneration of mankind.

The Christian Faith, as expressed in this article of the Creed, embraces these elements:

(1) Jesus Christ was conceived of the Holy Ghost; that is, Mary conceived the Son of God, not through human agency, but by the power of the Holy Spirit of God.

(2) Mary was before this conception, in the conception, and subsequent thereto in the birth of Jesus, a Virgin.

(3) By this conception and birth the Son of God received from the Virgin a complete human nature.

(4) The pre-existent Son of the Father was conceived and was born with the flesh and nature of man; and so as God became the God-man, uniting humanity with Deity in eternal union.

(5) The birth of the Virgin was the first act of salvation of the Son of the Father for the regeneration of mankind.

CHAPTER VI

CRUCIFIED AND BURIED

It is noteworthy that the Creed passes over the entire life of Jesus in this world between His birth and His crucifixion. Indeed the life of Jesus in this world has little doctrinal importance. There are few and only incidental references to it in the Epistles, the Book of Acts, and Revelation. The Gospels do not give us a life of Jesus. The incidents are few, the biographical material slender, His relations to the great events of His time insignificant, making not a ripple in the current of history. His thirty years prior to His ministry were lived in obscurity. His ministry was short and of uncertain length-at the most three and a half years, but probably not more than a year and a half.1

The Gospels give His teachings, especially in the training of His disciples, to the chief of whom, the Twelve and the Seventy, He committed the continuation of His ministry and the establishment of His kingdom in the world.

For the doctrine of Christ, therefore, His brief public ministry is of little importance. The Gospels set the teaching of Jesus in the framework of certain activities, and these in none of the Gospels are given

1 V. Briggs, New Light on the Life of Jesus, p. 55.

in chronological order. The Gospels are what they profess to be, and what they have always been called, Gospels, that is, glad tidings of salvation through the Messiah. They occupy the same fundamental position in the New Testament that the Law does in the Old Testament. Lives of Jesus Christ are really modern conceptions, which in some respects lead to false ideas of Him. The New Testament leaves all those things that go to make up a biography in the background of His teaching and of His miracles of love; and thus makes Him, what He is and must be from the very nature of the case, the Messiah and Saviour, a mystery, a unique man, one apart from all men in a unique relation to God, His Father, in a sense peculiar to Him alone.

The only important doctrinal significance in the life of Jesus is that His life illustrates His character and His teachings; and makes it evident that He was sinless, and entirely perfect, in His entire attitude of love to the Father and to all mankind.

His piety was perfect; for His union and communion with the Father was entire and uninterrupted. His teachings were the culmination and fulfilment of the entire Old Testament, and the basis of apostolic teaching and of Christian doctrine in all time; and so the complete and perfect teaching of the Son, who knew of His own knowledge and experience the mind of the Father. His conduct was in all respects one of conformity to the divine will and Law; and yet transcended them by a higher revelation of

IV. Briggs, New Light on the Life of Jesus, chaps. V and VIII.