Christ and humanity : with a review, historical and critical, of the doctrine of Christ's person

Front matter

FSS E NOES nee OF are r SASL) SSE eee A a

Theological Seminary. . PRINCETON, N. J.

Bint 20 GoGarnoivis

Preface

Ir apology were necessary -for the appearance of a new volume on.so old a theme as the Person of Christ, it might be found in the fact that the old has become the new—as it will ever be the grand centre of regard and interest to all Christian minds. The thought of the Christian world is being turned, as never before, to this central Person of history, with the feeling that here, in this wonderful Life and Character, is contained the secret that will explain the riddle of the world, as well as the power that alone can cure its evils. The numberless Lives of Christ which are multiplying every ‘year are a significant token of this revived interest in the greatest of all subjects. They are so many studies, or portraitures, of this one Character, each bringing out some new, or newly discovered, feature or lineament or aspect from the inexhaustible Gospel history. But these discoveries only make more urgent and emphatic the inquiry—Who and what is this wonderful Being that vi PREFACE.

so attracts and baffles the-thought of the world ?—who is so lowly, yet so majestic; whose words are so simple, yet so freighted with wisdom and authority ; whose acts are so natural, yet so miraculous—in a word, who is so truly and intensely Awman, yet so manifestly divine ? And this question is not answered by the history—at least the answer does not Jie upon the surface—else there would not be so many and conflicting interpretations of His person. ,

Doubtless the secret of His person is practically disclosed to every true believer, as it was to Peter, by a divine revelation, or inward persuasion below the reach of the reasoning faculty to demonstrate or refute. - But .the intuitions of faith, while they never contradict, do not always satisfy the reason, or the world at large. Theology, after nearly eighteen centuries of trial, has not yet mastered the problem, as is evident from the fact that no theory or creed yet framed explains perfectly the facts and impressions of the historic life. The conception of Christ constructed by the logic of the schools is not coincident with that perfect and single image given in the Gospels, still less with that which lives in the heart, and constitutes the practical and unformulated faith of the Church.

~The chief labor in the field of Christology hitherto has been expended in proving the Divinity of Christ, as an element by itself. And in this direction the work

PREFACE. . vii has been somewhat overdone—not through an undue estimate of the importance of this doctrine, but through a false method of procedure. While the logical and Scriptural proofs have been unanswerable, the real /Y7umanity of Christ has given way under them; and another and opposite school has arisen to defend this equally important truth. The result has been that Christ’ remains divided between the so-called Orthodox believer in- His Divinity, and the Unitarian or Humanitarian dissenter—each contending for his own side or fraction of a Redeemer, which neither has yet been able to reconeile with the other..

The true method of proof for the Divinity of Christ is that which He himself gives in His self-revelation, viz., through the medium of His Humanity. Nowhere does Christ assert or demonstrate His own Divinity as a thing by itself—since it did not so exist—but only as the distinction, or inmost essence, of His Humanity ; and which, as in other divine revelations, only anointed eyes can discern. “When ye have lifted up the Son of Man” —TVe says to the Jews—* then shall ye know that Iam He.” When we have held up the Humanity, or human life of Christ, to the gaze of love and faith till its true meaning dawns upon us, we shall see and know that it is Divene.

The time has come for a new method and direction of theological and Christological inquiry; and the to-

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kens are abundant that it has already beoun. Christian thought is directed with new interest to the Humanity of Christ, with the conviction that He is more human, or more ¢rudy human, as well as more Divine, than other men; that Humanity is more truly represented in Him than in any other man, or in all men together. ‘There is something in this Man that brings Him nearer to us, sinful though we be, than is explained by the supposition that He is only a man, or even man and God united. The commonly accepted theories of the Person of Christ remove Him further from us by making Him an anomalous being, whose humanity is supplemented by union with a Divine nature, or. Aypostases, which we can not share or comprehend, and can only faintly and distantly follow. According to this conception, He is human only in a part of His nature, or, as the creeds declare, in only one of His natures, while in the other He is not human, but Divine. The peculiar power and truth of Christ’s Humanity will not be reached till this anomalous division and composition of His person be abolished ; till His Divinity be brought over to the side of His Humanity, or His Humanity be identified with His Divinity, and be considered, as it is, a Divine Humanity, not less but more human because it is divine. |

It can not be denied that the image of Christ as commonly conceived, and as presented in most theological

PREFACE. 1X symbols, is a confused or double image. THe is conceived now as Divine, and now as human, or as both together in a kind of unity called one person, but which is really and practically a duality. Nothing else, indeed, is possible so long as the ancient creed or symbol is literally held of ‘two natures in one person,’ each retaining its own distinctive properties. None will question the importance of such a conception of Christ as shall bring these two aspects of His person into a real unity or zdentity, so as to give a single, distinct, and adequate—and, so to speak, a stereoscopic—image of the God-Man, without blur or confusion, and at the same time without detriment either to His Divinity or His Humanity. The author humbly but confidently believes that he has attained such a view, which he has endeavored to present and vindicate in this volume. In this view Christ is at once and eternally the Image of God and the Ideal of Humanity. The Incarnation is not a violation of His nature, but simply a descent from the ‘form of God’ to the form and limitations of a man, to redeem and perfect the race of which He is the Divine Prototype and Head.

A few words further as to the point of view from which the author has written, and the amount of its divergence from the ‘orthodox’ stand-point, may not be out of place. Dissatisfied with the ordinary interpretations of Christ’s person, as inconsistent both with reason AL 2 x . PREFACE.

and Scripture, he has sought to find a ground for the Incarnation deeper and more permanent, and a conception of its reality less contradictory and confusing to reason, than has hitherto prevailed. This, he thinks, he. has found in the nature of God and of man as related to each other, or the essential unity of the Divine and Human: a truth obscured and practically denied by the alienation and antagonism brought about by sin, but demonstrated and restored to its reality in the person of Christ. |

If man is made 7m the image of God, and if Christ és -that Image in its eternal and divine reality, then the Divine and Human are not so diverse and incompatible as they have commonly been supposed, but differ only -as the ideal differs from the actual, or the prototype -from the copy. This fundamental error—the assumed diversity and exclusiveness of the Divine and Human— determined the orthodox conception of the Incarnation, as a synthesis or union of the two natures brought. together from without, each retaining its own properties, ‘without conversion, intermixture, or confusion ;’ which, of course, resulted in a union that is merely a conjunction and not a unity, much less an identity. The attempt to merge them into a unity, or to combine two heterogeneous natures in one person, has been tried now for nearly fifteen centuries, in every conceivable variety of form and combination; and the problem is not yet

‘ PREFACE. x1 solved, and never can be on these premises, for it is an attempt to make the impossible possible.

The view advocatéd in this volume proceeds from a . different idea or starting-point, viz., that the Incarnation is not a synthesis, or union of opposite natures, but a development or determination of the Divine in the form of the Human. It is thus a return to the literal meaning of the Scriptural statement, ‘The Word became flesh, instead of the current statement, derived not from Scripture, but the creeds, that ‘He assumed human nature.” The essential Humanity of Christ, aside from its unessential and fleshly robe, is traced to its true origin and eternal existence in God, and not derived from the race He created, and of which He is the original. It is thus a Divine Humanity, and identical with His Divinity. Jor, as Dorner has truly said, ‘the Deity can be shown to be the principle of itself and of humanity, but the humanity can. neither be the principle of itself nor of the Deity” Still less can our fallen humanity be the source of that sinless and ideal Hnmanity which we behold in Christ.

It has not been considered that the true edea of God, as revealed, includes humanity, or at least a human determination and manifestation; and the true idea of Man includes God, as the ground and complement and inspiration of his being.

As the true idea of God unfolded implies a Trinity,

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in which the eternally begotten Son stands over against or dwells in the bosom of the Father, without contraand this in order dicting the unity of the Godhead that there may be a creation—so a still further unfolding of the idea of God implies an Znearnation, in which God becomes Man, or the Word becomes flesh; the eternal Image and Form of God reveals itself in the human image aifd form, without contradicting His nature, but rather in fulfillment of its ethical demands, and in order that there may be a Redemption. |

In maintaining this view, the author believes that he is putting forth no novelty of speculation, nor reviving an ancient and exploded heresy, but is only gathering up and combining into a consistent whole those fragments of truth which lay at the heart of the Monophysite controversy, and kept it alive for many centuries, but which were overborne by ecclesiastical authority, or distorted into error by the substitution of logic for insight in the interpretation of Scripture. He also believes that he has done violence to the spirit, at least, of no Christian creed, but has only attained a more consistent and Scriptural standing upon that ground of truth on which all creeds are built, and of which they are but imperfect and fallible expressions. For a comparative survey of the various opinions and teachings of the Church from the first centuries on this subject, and a fuller statement and vindication of the view here pre-

PREFACE. xiii a sented, the reader is referred to the Historical and Critical Review of the Doctrine of Christ’s Person, which forms the second part of this volume, and to which the author invites special and thoughtful attention.

Two errors, or misconceptions, have contributed hitherto ta keep asunder or hinder the coalescence of the Divine and Human in Christ. F irst, His Divinity has been conceived in its absolute and infinite form, as it exists in God, and not in its finite and Awman form, and subjected to human limitations — although this is the very idea and import of the Incarnation. Secondly, His Humanity has been measured by ours, and whatever in Tlim transcends this imperfect type has been referred to His Divinity, instead of measuring our humanity by this Divine Ideal. The study and comprehension of these two points will furnish the key to the view of Christ presented in this volume.

In close connection with this Divine-human conception of Christ is the more exalted view of Humanity which is here presented. This is especially needed at this time in order to redeem, or recover what is in danger of being lost, the true idea of Man, and of his place or rank in the creation, in contrast with the low and degrading notions which many are seeking to substitute for the Divine idea revealed in the Bible. The vindication of the grand doctrine that Man is created in the image of God, and has a Divine parentage and destiny,

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is the best refutation of the new and blasphemous doctrine that he was made in the image of the brute, and is only a developed ape.

Of the Discourses embodied in this volume, the first, on the Divine Humanity of Christ, was originally preached before the General Association of Illinois, in 1860, and published the same year in the New- Englander. The view there propounded—the result mainly of independent investigation—the author, after fourteen years of maturer thought and study, has found no reason to modify in any essential respect. It is therefore republished in its original form, with only a few verbal alterations. The views of Gess, Liebner, and other German theologians, which have since appeared, and which approach very nearly the view here given—especially as regards the #enoszs, or human limitation of the Logos involved in the Incarnation—it is perhaps needless to say, were unknown to the author at the time this Discourse was written. The great work of Dorner, of which abundant use has been made in the Historical and Critical Review, was' not accessible until its appearance in an English dress in 1861-70. All the more gratifying, therefore, are the many correspondences of thought therein brought to view by recent writers on Christology, showing a convergence of Christian thought from independent sources toward the same point or

PREFACE. XV solution of the problem which is a confirmation of its truth.

The remaining Discourses have mostly grown out of the first; as side-shoots or branches of the same doctrine, and, witli a single exception, were preached in the ordinary course of Sabbath instruction during the twenty years of the author’s ministry in Rockford. One sermon—the seventh—bears traces of an earlier and *rhe-, torical period, for which he asks due indulgence.

Seca cement!

In conclusion, the author commends his volume to the thoughtful and candid perusal of his Christian brethren of every name, with the earnest hope that it may help them to think more divinely, and at the same time more humahly, of Christ, and more reverently of themselves and Humanit ye

[The following passage from Dr. Theo. Christlieb’s recently translated work on Modern Doubt and Christian Belief, alighted on since the above Preface was written, will show the attitude of the latest and most advanced Christian thought toward this great Cnristological problem: **Since these late disputes, certain theologians have truly pointed out that the Church has proceeded in too one-sided and dogmatic a manner in her delineations of the Person of Christ. It can not be denied that there is a considerable gulf between the portrait of Christ in the Gospels and that of our dogmatic writings. In the latter we often miss the living historical reality of the Saviour. What with the great stress laid on the two-separate factors—His Humanity and His Divinity—we have Jost the living unity of the Person, the human and historical element in Christ ; His learning obedience in constant and free self-surrertder to His Father’s will has been neglected as against His divine nature.

‘*At this point of her doctrinal development the Church has still much to learn with regard to the great Christological problem of the present day —a problem so great and difficult that it will never be more than approxxvi PREFACE.

imately solyed. Yet we shall constantly approach toward its final solution, if only we do not forget, on the one hand, that the genuinely human does not stand in absolute antithesis to the divine, but is intimately related to it; whereas, on the other hand, in a race degenerated through sin, this true humanity can not be fully brought out except by a fresh ingrafting of the divine. The true, the perfectly beautiful humanity of Christ, is so far from being annihilated by His Divinity, that it is only the latter which completes and guarantees the former.”—Lect. VI., p. 446, American Edition. ]

Contents

DISCOURSES ON CHRIST AND HUMANITY.

I,

PAGE