There is, no doubt, a serious difficulty in the old orthodox Christology, if we view it in the light of our modern psychology. We can conceive of a human nature without sin (for sin is a corruption, not an essential quality, of man), but we can not conceive of a human nature without personality, or a self-conscious and free Ego; for this distinguishes it from the mere animal nature, and is man's crowning excellency and glory. To an unbiased reader of the Gospel history,
33moreover, Christ appears as a full human personality, thinking, speaking, acting, suffering like a man (only without sin), distinguishing himself from other men and from his heavenly Father, addressing him in prayer, submitting to him his own will, and commending to him his spirit in the hour of death.
6767 He calls himself a 'man,' ἄνθρωπος (
John viii. 40; comp.
xix. 5), and very often 'the Son of man,' and other men his 'brethren' (
John xx. 17). Yet, on the other hand, be appears just as clearly in the Gospels as a personality in the most intimate, unbroken, mysterious life-union with his heavenly Father, in the full consciousness of a personal pre-existence before the creation, of having been sent by the Father from heaven into this world, of living in heaven even during this earthly abode, and of being ever one with him in will and in essence.
6868 John viii.58;
xvii. 5,
24;
iii. 11-13;
v. 37;
vi. 38,
62;
viii. 42;
x. 30, and many other passages in the Gospels. Dr. R. Rothe, who rejects the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation, yet expressly admits (
Dogmatik, II. 88): '
Ebenso bestimmt, wie seine wahre Menschheit, tritt im Neuen Testament auch die wahre GOTTHEIT
des Erlösers hervor.' To escape the orthodox inference of an incarnation of a divine hypostasis, Rothe must resort (p. 100) to the Socinian interpretation of
John xvii. 5, where the Saviour asserts his pre-existence
with the Father (δόξασόν με σύ, πάτερ, παρὰ σεαυτῷ τῇ δόξῃ, ᾗ εἶχον πρὸ τοῦ τὸν κόσμον εἶναι παρὰ σοί); thereby distinguishing himself from the hypostasis of the Father, and yet asserting coeternity. The Socinians and Grotius find here merely an ideal glory in the divine counsel; but it must be taken, in analogy with similar passages, of a
real, personal, self-conscious pre-existence, and a
real glory attached to it; otherwise it would be nothing peculiar and characteristic of Christ. How absurd would it be for a man to utter such a prayer! In one word, he makes the impression of a
theanthropic, divine-human person.
6969 A
persona σύνθετος, in the language of the old Protestant divines.
Divina et humana naturæ' (says Hollaz), '
in una persona συνθέτῳ
Filii Dei existentes, unam eandemque habent ὑπόστασιν,
modo tamen habendi diversam. Natura enim divina eam habet primario, per se et independenter, natura autem humana secundario, propter unionem personalem, adeoque participative. The divine nature, therefore, is, in the orthodox system, that which forms and constitutes the personality (
das personbildende Princip.). His human personality was completed and perfected by being so incorporated with the pre-existent Logos-personality as to find in it alone its full self-consciousness, and to be permeated and controlled by it in every stage of its development.
The Chalcedonian Christology has latterly been subjected to a rigorous criticism (by Schleiermacher, Baur, Dorner, Rothe, and others), and has been charged with a defective psychology, and now with dualism, now with docetism, according as its distinction of two natures or of the personal unity has most struck the eye. But these imputations neutralize each other, like the imputations of tritheism and modalism, which may be made against the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity when either
34the tri-personality or the consubstantiality is taken alone. This, indeed, is the peculiar excellence of the Creed of Chalcedon, that it exhibits so sure a tact and so wise a circumspection in uniting the colossal antithesis in Christ, and seeks to do justice alike to the distinction of the natures and to the unity of the person. In Christ all contradictions are reconciled.
The Chalcedonian Creed is far from exhausting the great mystery of godliness, 'God manifest in flesh.' It leaves much room for a fuller appreciation of the genuine, perfect, and sinless humanity of Christ, of the Pauline doctrine of the
Kenosis, or self-renunciation and self-limitation of the Divine Logos in the incarnation and during the human life of our Lord, and for the discussion of other questions connected with his relation to the Father and to the world, his person and his work. But it indicates the essential elements of Christological truth, and the boundary-lines of Christological error. It defines the course for the sound development of this central article of the Christian faith so as to avoid both the Scylla of Nestorian dualism and the Charybdis of Eutychian monophysitism, and to save the full idea of the one divine-human personality of our Lord and Saviour. Within these limits theological speculation may safely and freely move, and bring us to clearer conceptions; but in this world, where we 'know only in part (ἐκ μέρους),' and 'see through a mirror obscurely (δἰ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι)' it will never fully comprehend the great central mystery of the theanthropic life of our Lord.
59 Comp. my
Church Hist. Vol. III. p. 738.
60 Abridged, in part, from
My Church History, Vol. III. pp. 747 sqq.
61 The diametrical opposite of the ἐνανθρώπησις θεοῦ is the heathen ἀποθέωσις ἀνθρώπου.
62 '
Tenet,' says Leo, in his Epist. 28 ad Flavian., '
sine defectu proprietatem suam utraque natura, et sicut formam servi Dei forma non adimit, ita formam Dei servi forma non minuit. . . . Agit utraque forma cum alterius communione quod proprium est; Verbo scilicet operante quod Verbi est, et carne exsequente quod carnis est. Unum horum coruscat miraculis, aliud succumbit injuriis. Et sicut Verbum ab æqualitate paternæ gloriæ non recedit, ita caro naturam nostri generis non relinquit.'
63 Here belongs, in further explanation, the scholastic doctrine of the περιχώρησις,
permeatio, circummeatio, circulatio, circumincessio, intercommunio, or reciprocal indwelling and pervasion, which has relation, not merely to the Trinity, but also to Christology. The verb περιχωρεῖν is first applied by Gregory of Nyssa (
Contra Apollinarium) to the interpenetration and reciprocal pervasion of the two natures in Christ. On this rested also the doctrine of the exchange or communication of attributes, ἀντίδοσις, ἀντιμετάστασις, κοινωνία ἰδιωμάτων,
communicatio idiomatum. The ἀντιμετάστασις τῶν ὀνομάτων, also ἀντιμεδίστασις,
transmutatio proprietatum, transmutation of attributes, is, strictly speaking, not identical with ἀντίδοσις, but a deduction from it, and the rhetorical expression for it.
64 Comp.
1 Cor. ii. 8: 'They would not have crucified the Lord of glory.'
65 Ἀνυπόστατος is that which has no personality in itself, ἐνυπόστατος that which subsists in another personality, or partakes of another hypostasis.
66 The doctrine of the impersonality of the human nature of Christ may already be found as to its germ in Cyril of Alexandria, and was afterwards more fully developed by John of Damascus (
De orthodoxa fide, lib. III.), and by the Lutheran scholastics of the seventeenth century, who, however, did not, for all this, conceive Christ as a mere generic being typifying mankind, but as a concrete human individual. Comp. Petavius,
De incarnatione, lib. V. c. 5–8 (Tom. IV. pp. 421 sqq.); Thomasius,
Christol. II. 108–110; Rothe,
Dogmatik, II. 51 and 147.
67 He calls himself a 'man,' ἄνθρωπος (
John viii. 40; comp.
xix. 5), and very often 'the Son of man,' and other men his 'brethren' (
John xx. 17).
68 John viii.58;
xvii. 5,
24;
iii. 11-13;
v. 37;
vi. 38,
62;
viii. 42;
x. 30, and many other passages in the Gospels. Dr. R. Rothe, who rejects the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation, yet expressly admits (
Dogmatik, II. 88): '
Ebenso bestimmt, wie seine wahre Menschheit, tritt im Neuen Testament auch die wahre GOTTHEIT
des Erlösers hervor.' To escape the orthodox inference of an incarnation of a divine hypostasis, Rothe must resort (p. 100) to the Socinian interpretation of
John xvii. 5, where the Saviour asserts his pre-existence
with the Father (δόξασόν με σύ, πάτερ, παρὰ σεαυτῷ τῇ δόξῃ, ᾗ εἶχον πρὸ τοῦ τὸν κόσμον εἶναι παρὰ σοί); thereby distinguishing himself from the hypostasis of the Father, and yet asserting coeternity. The Socinians and Grotius find here merely an ideal glory in the divine counsel; but it must be taken, in analogy with similar passages, of a
real, personal, self-conscious pre-existence, and a
real glory attached to it; otherwise it would be nothing peculiar and characteristic of Christ. How absurd would it be for a man to utter such a prayer!
69 A
persona σύνθετος, in the language of the old Protestant divines.
Divina et humana naturæ' (says Hollaz), '
in una persona συνθέτῳ
Filii Dei existentes, unam eandemque habent ὑπόστασιν,
modo tamen habendi diversam. Natura enim divina eam habet primario, per se et independenter, natura autem humana secundario, propter unionem personalem, adeoque participative. The divine nature, therefore, is, in the orthodox system, that which forms and constitutes the personality (
das personbildende Princip.).
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