V. But what avails it, say you, to shew that St. John is con-

sistent with himself, and that he is not really at variance with the Evangelists who preceded him, if the doctrine which he teaches, and which the Creed re-asserts, is itself incredible? You object to this doctrine that it ‘involves an invincible contradic- tion.’ It represents Christ on the one hand as a Personal Being, while on the other it asserts that two mutually self-excluding
_Christus dem johanneischen insofern vollkommen an die Seite setzen kann, als der durch Vermittlung der synoptischen Tradition gebildete Glaube wesentlich ganz dieselben Ziige in seinem Christusbegriff haben musste, wie sie der johanneische Christus hat.” For the preceding remarks, see Person Christi, Einl. pp. 80-89.
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Christ, thus Gop and Man, in One Person. 259
Essences are really united in Him. How can He be personal, you ask, if He be in very truth both God and Man? If He is thus God and Man, is He not, in point of fact, a‘ double Being ;’ and is not unity of being an indispensable condition of person- ality? Surely, you insist, this condition is forfeited by the very terms of the doctrine. Christ either is not both God and Man, or He is not a single Personality. To say that He is One Person in Two Natures is to affirm the existence of a miracle which is incredible, if for no other reason, simply on the score of its unintelligibility 2.
This is what may be said; but let us consider, first of all, whether to say this does not, however unintentionally, caricature the doctrine of St. John and of the Catholic Creed. Does it not seem as if both St. John and the Creed were at pains to make it clear that the Person of Christ in His pre-existent glory, in His state of humiliation and sorrow, and in the majesty of His mediatorial kingdom, is continuously, unalterably One? Does not the Nicene Creed, for instance, first name the Only-begotten Son of God, and then go on to say how for us men and for our salvation He was Himself made Man, and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate? Does not St.John plainly refer to One and the Same Agent in such verses as the following? ‘ All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made®, ‘He riseth from supper, and laid aside
5. Schenkel, Charakterbild Jesu, p. 2: ‘Es gehért vor Allem zum Begriffe einer Person, dass sie im Kerne ihres Wesens eine Einheit bildet ; nur unter dieser Voraussetzung lisst sie sich geschichtlich begreifen. Diese Einheit wird durch die herk6mmliche Lehre in der Person des Welterlisers aufge- hoben. Jesus Christus wird in der kirchlichen Glaubenslehre als ein Doppel- Wesen dargestellt, als die persénliche Vereinigung zweier Wesenheiten, die an sich nichts mit einander gemein haben, sich vielmehr schlechthin wider- sprechen und nur vermige eines alle Begriffe iibersteigenden Wunders in die engste und unaufléslichste Verbindung mit einander gebracht worden sind. Lr ist demzufolge Mensch und Gott in einer und derselben Person. Die kirchlichen Theologen haben grosse Anstrengungen gemacht, um die unauf- losliche Verbindung von Gott und Mensch in einer Person als begreiflich und moglich darzustellen ; sie haben sich aber zuletzt doch immer wieder zu dem Gestiindniss genédthigt gesehen, dass die Sache unbegreiflich sei, und dass ein undurchdringliches Geheimniss iiber dem Personleben Jesu Christi schwebe. Allein eine solche Berufung auf Geheimnisse und Wunder ist, wo es auf die Erklarung einer geschichtlichen Thatsache ankommt, fiir die Wissenschaft ohne allen Werth ; sie offenbart uns die Unfahigkeit des theo- logischen Denkens, das in sich Widersprechende vorstellbar, das geschicht- lich Unbegreifliche denkbar zu machen.’ Cf, Strauss, Leben Jesu, § 146; Schleiermacher, Glaubenslehre, ii, § 96-98.
a St. John i. 3.
vi 8 2
260 Nestorians deny the unity of Christ’s Person.
His garments; and took a towel, and girded Himself. After that He poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded>” If St.John or the Creed had proceeded to intro- duce a new subject to whom the circumstances of Christ’s earthly Life properly belonged, and who only maintained a mysterious, even although it were an indissoluble connexion with the Eternal Word in heaven, then the charge of making Christ a ‘ double Being’ would be warrantable. Nestorius was fairly liable to that charge. He practically denied that the Man Christ Jesus was One Person with the Eternal Word. In order to heighten the ethical import of the Human Life of Christ, Nestorianism represents our Lord as an individual Man, Who, although He is the temple and organ of the Deity to which He is united, yet has a separate basis of personality in His Human Nature. The individuality of the Son of Mary is thus treated as a distinct thing from that of the Eternal Word; and the Christ of Nesto- rianism is really a ‘double Being,’ or rather he is two distinct persons, mysteriously joined in οὔθ, But the Church has formally condemned this error, and in so doing she was merely throwing into the form of a doctrinal proposition the plain im- port of the narrative of St. John’s Gospel 4,
> St. John xiii. 4, 5.
¢ Ap. Marium Mere. p.54: ‘Non Maria peperit Deum. Non peperit creatura increabilem, sed peperit hominem Deitatis instrumentum. Divido naturas, sed conjungo reverentiam.’ Cf, Nestorii Ep. iii. ad Ccelestin. (Mansi, tom. iv. 1197): τὸ προελθεῖν τὸν Θεὸν Λόγον ἐκ τῆς χριστοτόκου παρθένου παρὰ τῆς θείας ἐδιδάχθην γραφῆς" τὸ δὲ γεννηθῆναι Θεὸν ἐξ αὐτῆς, οὐδαμοῦ ἐδιδάχθην. And his ‘famous’ saying, ‘I will never own a child of two months old to be God.’ (Labbe, iii. 506.)
4 St. Leo in Epist. ad Leonem Aug. ed. Ballerino, 165: ‘ Anathematizetur ergo Nestorius, qui beatam Virginem non Dei, sed hominis tantummodo cre- didit genitricem, ut aliam personam carnis faceret, aliam Deitatis; nec unum Christum in Verbo Dei et carne sentiret, sed separatum atque sejunctum alterum Filium Dei, alterum hominis predicaret.’ See Confession of the Easterns, accepted by St. Cyril, Labbe, iii. 1107: “Ομολογοῦμεν τὸν Κύριον ἡμῶν ᾿Ιησοῦν Χριστὸν, τὸν Ὑἱὺν τοῦ Θεοῦ, Θεὸν τέλειον καὶ ἄνθρωπον τέλειον ἐκ ψυχῆς λογικῆς καὶ σώματος, πρὸ αἰώνων μὲν ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς γεννηθέντα κατὰ τὴν Θεότητα, ἐπ᾽ ἐσχάτων δὲ τῶν ἡμερῶν τὸν αὐτὸν ἐκ Μαρίας κατὰ τὴν ἀνθρω-. πότητα, ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρὶ κατὰ τὴν Θεότητα, ὁμοούσιον ἡμῖν κατὰ τὴν ἀνθρω-. πότητα' δύο γὰρ φύσεων ἕνωσις γέγονε. Κατὰ ταύτην τὴν τῆς ἀσυγχύτου ἑνώσεως ἔννοιαν ὁμολογοῦμεν τὴν ἁγίαν Παρθένον Θεοτόκον, διὰ τὸ τὸν Θεὸν Δόγον σαρκωθῆναι καὶ ἐνανθρωπῆσαι, καὶ ἐξ αὐτῆς τῆς συλλήψεως ἑνῶσαι ἑαυτῷ τὸν ἐξ αὐτῆς ληφθέντα ναόν. Τὰς δὲ εὐαγγελικὰς περὶ τοῦ Κυρίου φωνὰς ἴσμεν τοὺς θεολόγους ἄνδρας τὰς μὲν κοινοποιοῦντας ὡς ἐφ᾽ ἑνὸς προσώπου, τὰς δὲ διαιροῦντας ὡς ἐπὶ δύο φύσεων, καὶ τὰς μὲν θεοπρεπεῖς κατὰ τὴν Θεότητα τοῦ Χριστοῦ, τὰς δὲ ταπεινὰς κατὰ τὴν ἀνθρωπότητα αὐτοῦ paces | The
LECT.
The ‘Communicatio tdiomatum, 261
Undoubtedly, you reply, the Church has not allowed her doc- trine to be stated in terms which would dissolve the Redeemer into two distinct agents, and would so altogether forfeit the reality of redemption®. But the question is whether the or- thodox statement be really successful in avoiding the error which it deprecates. Certainly the Church does say that
definition of Chalcedon is equally emphatic on the subject of the Hypostatic Union. Routh, Ser. Op. ii. 78; Bright, Hist. Ch. p. 409. The title Theo- tokos, assigned to the Blessed Virgin by eminent Fathers before the Nestorian controversy (see Bright, ib. p. 302), and by the whole Church ever since the Council of Ephesus, is essentially a tribute to Christ’s personal glory. It is in exact accordance with that well-known Scriptural usus loquendi, whereby Gop is said to have ‘ purchased the Church with His own Blood’ (Acts xx. 28, see Lect. VI.; and compare 1 Cor. ii. 8), as conversely, ‘the Son of Man,’ while yet on earth, is said to have been ‘in heaven’ (St. John iii.13). This ‘communicatio idiomatum,’ κοινοποίησις or ἀντίδοσις (St. John Dam. Orth. Fid. iii. 4), as it is technically termed, is only intelligible on the principle that whatever belongs to our Lord in either of His two spheres of Hxistence belongs to Him as the One Christ, Who is, and is to be spoken of as, both Gop and Man. In other words, the properties of both His Natures are the properties of His Person. (Hooker, E. P. v.53; St. Thom, Summ. iii. 16, 4.) In the same sense then as that in which St. Paul could attribute ‘ crucifixion,’ and ‘shedding His Blood,’ to ‘Gop,’ that is to say, to our Divine Saviour in His Manhood, the Church could attribute to Him Birth of a human Mother. The phrase θεοτόκος is implicitly sanctioned by the phrase αἷμα Θεοῦ, It presupposes the belief that Jesus Christ, the Son of Mary, is our Lord and Gop; that ‘the Son which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, very and eternal Gop, took Man’s Nature upon Him in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, of her substance ;’ art. 2. In sub-apostolic language, 6 yap Θεὸς ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦς ὃ Χριστὸς ἐκυοφορήθη ἀπὸ Μαρίας. Ign. ad Eph.18. Cf. Bright’s observations, Lat. ΤΥ, S. Ath. Ρ. 150 566.
ὁ Jackson on the Creed, Works, vol. vii. p. 294: ‘That proper blood wherewith God is said to have purchased the church, was the blood of the Son of God, the second Person in Trinity, after a more peculiar manner than it was the blood either of God the Father or of God the Holy Ghost. It was the blood of God the Father or of God the Holy Ghost, as all other creatures are, by common right of creation and preservation. It was the blood of God the Son alone by personal union. If this Son of God, and High Priest of our souls, had offered any other sacrifice for us than Himself, or the Man- hood thus personally united unto Him, His offering could not have been satisfactory, because in all other things created, the Father and the Holy Ghost had the same right or interest which the Son had, He could not have offered anything to Them which were not as truly Theirs as His. Only the Seed οἵ Abraham, or Fruit of the Virgin’s womb Which He assumed into the Godhead, was by the assumption made so His own, as it was not Theirs, His own by incommunicable property of personal union. By reason of this incommunicable property in the woman’s seed, the Son of God might truly have said unto His Father, ‘Lord, Thou hast purchased the church, yet with My blood :’ but so could not the Man Christ Jesus say unto the
Son of God, ‘Lord, Thou hast paid the ransom for the sins of the world,
yet with My blood, not with Thine own.’
v]
262 Christ's Manhood an instrument of Fis Deity.
‘although Christ be God and Man, yet He is not two, but one Christ.’ But is this possible? How can Godhead and Manhood thus coalesce without forfeiture of that unity which is a condition of personality 1
The answer to this question lies in the fact, upon which St. John insists with such prominence, that our Lord’s Godhead is the seat of His Personality. The Son of Mary is not a distinct human person mysteriously linked with the Divine Nature of the Eternal Word‘. The Person of the Son of Mary is divine and eternal; It is none other than the Person of the Word. When He took upon Him to deliver man, the Eternal Word did not abhor the Virgin’s womb. He clothed Himself with man’s bodily and man’s immaterial nature; He united it to His Own Divinity. He ‘took man’s Nature upon Him in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, of her substance, so that two whole and per- fect Natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in One Person, never to be divided, whereof is One Christ 8” Thus to speak of Christ as a Man, at least with- out explanation, may lead to a serious misconception; He is the Man, or rather He is Man. Christ’s Manhood is not of Itself an individual being; It is not a seat and centre of personality; It has no conceivable existence apart from the act whereby the Eternal Word in becoming Incarnate called It into being and made It His Own}. It is a vesture which He has folded around His Person; It is an instrument through which He places Him- self in contact with men, and whereby He acts upon humanity i,
* St. Ful. de Fide ad Petr. c. 17: ‘Deus Verbum non accepit personam hominis, sed naturam ; et in eternam personam divinitatis accepit tempora- lem substantiam carnis.’ St.Joh. Damasc. de Fid. Orthod. iii. 11: ὁ Θεὸς Λόγος σαρκωθεὶς οὐ Thy ἐν τῷ εἴδει θεωρουμένην, ov γὰρ πάσας Tas ὑποστάσεις ἀνέλαβεν" ἀλλὰ τὴν ἐν ἀτόμῳ, ἀπαρχὴν τοῦ ἡμετέρου φυράματος, οὐ κάθ᾽ ἑαυ- τὴν ὑποστᾶσαν καὶ ἄτομον χρηματίσασαν πρότερον, καὶ οὕτως ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ προσ- ληφθεῖσαν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν τῇ αὐτοῦ ὑποστάσει ὑπάρξασαν, αὕτη γὰρ ἡ ὑπόστασις τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγου ἐγένετο τῇ σαρκὶ ὑπόστασις. He states this in other terms (6. 9) by saying that our Lord’s Humanity had no subsistence of itself. It was not ἰδιοσύστατος, nor was it strictly ἀνυπόστατος, but ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγου ὑποστάσει ὑποστᾶσα, ἐνυπόστατος. He speaks too οὗ Christ’s ὑπόστασις σύν- θετος. Hooker, E. P. v. 52. 3. & Art. ii.
h St. Aug. 6. Serm. Arian. c. 6: ‘Nec sic assumptus est [homo] ut prits crearetur, post assumeretur, sed ut in ipsa assumptione crearetur.’ St. Leo, Ep. 25. 3: ‘Natura nostra non sic assumpta est ut prius creata, post as- sumeretur; sed ut ipsi assumptione crearetur.’ Newman’s Par. Sermons, ii. 32, vi. 59.
i Jackson on the Creed, Works, vol. vii. p. 289: ‘The Humanity of Christ is such an instrument of the Divine Nature in His Person, as the hand of man is to the person or party whose hand it is. And it is well
[ LECT.
Analogy from the composite nature of man. 263
He wears It in heaven, and thus robed in It He represents, He impersonates, He pleads for the race of beings to which It belongs. In saying that Christ ‘took our nature upon Him,’ we imply that His Person existed before, and that the Manhood which He assumed was Itself impersonal. Therefore He did not make Himself a ‘double Being’ by becoming incarnate. His Manhood no more impaired the unity of His Person than each human body, with its various organs and capacities, impairs the unity of that personal principle which is the centre and pivot of each separate human existence, and which has its seat within the soul of each one of us.
‘As the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ.’ As the personality of man resides in the soul, after death has severed soul and body, so the Person of Christ had Its eternal seat in His Godhead before His Incarna- tion. Intimately as the ‘1,’ or personal principle within each of us, is associated with every movement of the body, the ‘I’ itself resides in the soul. The soul is that which is conscious, which remembers, which wills, and which thus realizes person- ality). Certainly it is true that in our present state of existence we have never as yet realized what personal existence is, apart from the body. But the youngest of us will do this, ere many years have passed. Meanwhile we know that, when divorced from the personal principle which rules and inspires it, the body is but a lump of lifeless clay. The body then does not superadd
observed, whether by Aquinas himself or no I remember not, but by Viguerius, an accurate summist of Aquinas’ sums, that albeit the intel- lectual part of man be a spiritual substance, and separated from the matter or bodily part, yet is the union betwixt the hand and intellectual part of man no less firm, no less proper, than the union between the feet or other organical parts of sensitive creatures, and their sensitive souls or mere physical forms. For the intellectual part of man, whether it be the form of man truly, though not merely physical, or rather his essence, not his form at all, doth use his own hand not as the carpenter doth use his axe, that is, not as an external or separated, but as his proper united instru- ment: nor is the union between the hand as the instrument and intellective part as the artificer or commander of it an union of matter and form, but an union personal, or at the least such an union as resembles the hypo- statical union between the Divine and Human Nature of Christ much better than any material union wherein philosophers or school-divines can make instance.’ Cf. Viguerius, Institutiones, c. 20. introd. p. 259, com- menting on St. Thom. 3°. q. 2. a. I. :
ji Yet when we contrast man’s person (ego) and his nature, we under- stand by nature, not merely the body, but also soul and spirit, inasmuch as man’s ego is conceived of as distinct from the latter not less than from "ἢ former. Delitzsch, B:bl. Psych. iv. § 2. v
264 1, he reality of our Lord’s human Will
a second personality to that which is in the soul. It supplies the personal soul with an instrument; it introduces it to a sphere of action; it is the obedient slave, the plastic ductile form of the personal soul which tenants it. The hand is raised, the voice is heard; but these are acts of the selfsame personality as that which, in the invisible voiceless recesses of its immaterial self, goes through intellectual acts of inference, or moral acts of aversion or of love. In short, man is at once animal and spirit, but his personal unity is not thereby impaired : and Jesus Christ is not other than a Single Person, although He has united the Perfect Nature of Man to His Divine and Eternal Being. Therefore, although He says ‘I and the Father are One,’ He never says ‘I and the Son’ or ‘I and the Word are One.’ For He is the Word; He is the Son. And His Human Life is not a distinct self, but a living robe which, as it was created, was forthwith wrapped around His Eternal Personality ΚΕ.
But if the illustration of the Creed is thus suggestive of the unity of Christ’s Person, is it, you may fairly ask, altogether in harmony with the Scriptural and Catholic doctrine of His Perfect Manhood? If Christ’s Humanity stands to His God- head in the relation of the body of a man to his soul, does not this imply that Christ has no human Soul}, or at any rate no distinct human Will? You remind me that ‘the truth of our Lord’s Human Will is essential to the integrity of His Manhood, to the reality of His Incarnation, to the completeness of His redemptive work. It is plainly asserted by Scripture; and the error which denies It has been condemned by the Church. If Nestorius errs on one side, Apollinaris, Eutyches, and finally the Monothelites, warn us how easily we may err on the other. Christ has a Human Will as being Perfect Man, no less than He has a Divine Will as being Perfect God. But this is not sug- gested by the analogy of the union of body and soul in man. And if there are two Wills in Christ, must there not also be two
k On the objection that the illustration in the Athanasian Creed favours Nestorianism, cf. St. Tho. 3°. 2.5. It was accepted by St. Cyril himself, but not as complete, Scholia. 8, 28, quo. by Bright, Lat. Tr. of S. Ath. p.161, notek.
1 This preliminary form of the objection is thus noticed by the Master of the Sentences, Petr. Lomb. 1. iii. d. 5 (858): ‘Non accepit Verbum Dei personam hominis, sed naturam, E: A quibusdam opponitur, quod per- sona assumit personam. Persona enim est substantia rationalis individue nature, hoc autem est anima. Ergo si animam assumsit, et personam. Quod ideo non sequitur, quia anima non est persona, quando alii rei unita est personaliter, sed quando per se est. Illa autem anima (our Lord’s) nunquam fuit, quia esset alii rei conjuncta.’
[ Lect.
does not make His Manhood a separate Person. 265
Persons? and may not the Sufferer Who kneels in Gethsemane be another than the Word by Whom all things were made ?’
Certainly, the illustration of the Creed cannot be pressed closely without risk of serious error. An illustration is gene- rally used to indicate correspondence in a single particular; and it will not bear to be erected into an absolute and consistent parallel, supposed to be in all respects analogous to that with which it has a single point of correspondence. But the Creed protects itself elsewhere against any such misuse of this par- ticular illustration. The Creed says that as body and soul meet in a single man, so do Perfect Godhead and Perfect Manhood meet in one Christ. The Perfect Manhood of Christ, not His Body merely but His Soul, and therefore His Human Will, is part of the One Christ. Unless in His condescending love our Eternal Lord has thus taken upon Him our fallen nature in its integrity, that is to say, a Human Soul as well as a Human Body, a Human Will as an integral element of the Human Soul, mankind would not have been really represented on the cross or before the throne. We should not have been truly redeemed or sanctified by a real union with the Most Holy.
Yet in taking upon Him a Human Will, the Eternal Word did not assume a second principle of action which was de- structive of the real unity of His Person. Within the precincts of a single human soul may we not observe two principles of volition, this higher and that lower, this animated almost en- tirely by reason, that as exclusively by passion? St. Paul has described the moral dualism within a single will which is cha- racteristic of the approach to the regenerate life, in a wonderful passage of his Epistle to the Romans™. The real self is loyal to God; yet the Christian sees within him a second self, warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to that which his central being, in its loyalty to God, energetically rejects". Yet in this great conflict between the old and the new self of the regenerate man, there is, we know, no real schism of
m Rom. vii. 14-25. Origen, St. Chrysostom, and Theodoret understand this passage of the state of man before regeneration. St. Augustine was of this mind in his earlier theological life (Confess. vii. 21; Prop. 45 in Ep. ad Rom., quoted by Meyer, Romer. p. 246), but his struggle with the Pelagian heresy led him to understand the passage of the regenerate (Retractat. i. 23, - ii. 1; contr. duas Ep. Pelag. i. 10; contr. Faust. xv. 8). This judgment has been accepted by the great divines of the middle ages, St. Anselm and Aquinas, and largely by the moderns. Of late years, the Greek interpretation hus been again widely accepted, as doing more perfect justice to the lan- ἀνὰ of the Apostle, Ὁ Rom, vii. 17, 22, 23. Υ
266 Christ's two Wills harmonious, yet distinct,
an indivisible person, although for the moment antagonist ele- ments within the soul are so engaged as to look like separate hostile agencies. The man’s lower nature is not a distinct person, yet it has what is almost a distinct will, and what is thus a shadow of the Created Will which Christ assumed along with His Human Nature. Of course in the Incarnate Christ, the Human Will, although a proper principle of action, was not, could not be, in other than the most absolute harmony with the Will of God°®. Christ’s sinlessness is the historical expression of this harmony. The Human Will of Christ corresponded to the Eternal Will with unvarying accuracy; because in point of fact God, Incarnate in Christ, willed each volition of Christ’s Human Wille. Christ’s Human Will then had a distinct existence, yet Its free volitions were but the earthly echoes of the Will of the All-holy4, At the Temptation It was confronted with the per- sonal principle of evil; but the Tempter without was seconded by no pulse of sympathy within. The Human Will of Christ was incapable of willing evil. In Gethsemane It was thrown forward into strong relief as Jesus bent to accept the chalice of suffering from which His Human sensitiveness could not but shrink. But from the first It was controlled by the Divine Will to which It is indissolubly united; just as, if we may use the comparison, in a holy man, passion and impulse are brought entirely under the empire of reason and conscience'. As God and Man, our Lord has two Wills; but the Divine Will origi- nates and rules His Action; the Human Will is but the docile servant of that Will of God which has its seat in Christ’s Divine and Eternal Person*. Here indeed we touch upon the line at
ο This was the ground taken in the Sixth General Council, A.D. 680, when the language of Chalcedon was adapted to meet the error of the Mono- thelites. Avo φυσικὰς θελήσεις ἤτοι θελήματα ἐν αὐτῷ καὶ δύο φυσικὰς ἐνεργείας ἀδιαιρέτως, ἀτρέπτως, ἀμερίστως, ἀσυγχύτως, κατὰ τὴν τῶν ἁγίων πατέρων διδασκαλίαν κηρύττομεν, καὶ δύο φυσικὰ θελήματα οὐκ ὑπεναντία, μὴ γένοιτο, καθὼς οἱ ἀσεβεῖς ἔφησαν αἱρετικοὶ, ἀλλ᾽ ἑπόμενον τὸ ἀνθρώπινον αὐτοῦ θέλημα, καὶ μὴ ἀντιπίπτον, ἢ ἀντιπαλαῖον μᾶλλον μὲν οὖν καὶ ὑποτασσόμενον τῷ θείῳ αὐτοῦ καὶ πανσθενεῖ θελήματι. Mansi, tom. xi. p.637. Routh, Scr. Op. ii. 236; Hooker, E. P. v. 48. 9.
P This does not exclude the action upon our Lord’s Manhood of the Holy Spirit, Who is One with the Word as with the Father: St. Matt. iv. 1; St. Luke iv. 18; St. John iii. 34; Acts x. 38.
4 ‘In ancient language, a twofold voluntas is quite compatible with a single volitio.” Klee, Dogmengesch. ii. 4. 6.
r St. Maximus illustrates the two harmonious operations of the Two Wills in Christ, by the physical image of a heated sword which both cuts and burns. Disp. cont. Pyrrh. apud Klee, ubi sup.
* St, Ambros, de Fide, v. 6: ‘ Didicisti, quod omnia sibi Ipsi eo
LECT.
Mystery, no reasonable bar to fazth. 267
which revealed truth shades off into inaccessible mystery. We may not seek to penetrate the secrets of that marvellous θεανδρικὴ ἐνέργεια : but at least we know that each Nature of Christ is perfect, and that the Person which unites them is One and in- dissoluble t,
For the illustration of the Creed might at least remind us that we carry about with us the mystery of a composite nature, which should lead a thoughtful man to pause before pressing such objections as are urged by modern scepticism against the truth of the Incarnation. The Christ Who is revealed in the Gospels and Who is worshipped by the Church, is rejected as being ‘an unintelligible wonder!’ True, He is, as well in His condescension as in His greatness, utterly beyond the scope of our finite comprehensions. ‘Salva proprietate utriusque Nature, et in unam coeunte personam, suscepta est a majestate humilitas, a virtute infirmitas, ab eternitate mortalitas¥.’ We do not pro- fess to solve the mystery of that Union between the Almighty, Omniscient, Omnipresent Being, and a Human Life, with its bounded powers, its limited knowledge, its restricted sphere. We only know that in Christ, the finite and the Infinite are thus united. But we can understand this mysterious union at least as well as we can understand the union of such an organism as the human body to a spiritual immaterial principle like the human soul. How does spirit thus league itself with matter ? Where and what is the life-principle of the body? Where is the exact frontier-line between sense and consciousness, between brain and thought, between the act of will and the movement of muscle? Is human nature then so utterly commonplace, and have its secrets been so entirely unravelled by contemporary science, as to entitle us to demand of the Almighty God that when He reveals Himself to us He shall disrobe Himself of
possit secundum operationem utique Deitatis; disce nunc quod secundum carnem omnia subjecta accipiat.’
Ὁ St. Leo, Ep. xxviii. c. 4: ‘Qui verus est Deus, idem verus est Homo; et nullum est in hic unitate mendacium, dum invicem sunt et humilitas hominis et altitudo deitatis. Agit enim utraque forma cum alterius communione quod proprium est; Verbo scilicet operante quod Verbi est, et carne exsequente quod carnis est. Unum horum coruscat miraculis, alterum succumbit injuriis,’ St. Joh. Damase. iii. 19: Θεοῦ ἐνανθρωπήσαντος, καὶ ἣ ἀνθρωπίνη αὐτοῦ ἐνέργεια θεία ἦν, ἤγουν τεθεωμένη, καὶ οὐκ ἄμοιρος τῆς θείας αὐτοῦ ἐνεργείας" καὶ ἡ θεία αὐτοῦ ἐνέργεια οὐκ ἄμοιρος τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης αὐτοῦ ἐνεργείας" ἀλλ᾽ ἑκατέρα σὺν τῇ ἑτέρᾳ θεωρουμένη. He urges, here and in iii. 15, that Two Natures imply Two Energies co-operating, for no nature is avevépyntos. See St. Tho. 3%. 19. 1.
α St. Leo, Ep. xxviii. ο. 3,
268 Incarnation, how related to Creation.
mystery? If we reject His Self-revelation in the Person of Jesus Christ on the ground of our inability to understand the difficulties, great and undeniable, although not greater than we might have anticipated, which do in fact surround it; are we also prepared to conclude that, because we cannot explain how a spiritual principle like the soul can be robed in and act through a material body, we will therefore close our eyes to the argu- ments which certify us that the soul is an immaterial essence, and take refuge from this oppressive sense of mystery in some doctrine of consistent materialism Υ ?
Certainly St. John’s doctrine of the Divinity of the Word Incarnate cannot be reasonably objected to on the score of its mysteriousness by those who allow themselves to face their real ignorance of the mysteries of our human nature. Nor does that doctrine involve a necessary internal self-contradiction on such a ground as that ‘the Word by Whom all things were made, and Who sustains all things, cannot become His Own creature.’ Un- doubtedly the Word Incarnate does not cease to be the Word ; but He can and does assume a Nature which He has created, and in which He dwells, that in it He may manifest Himself. Between the processes of Creation and Incarnation there is no necessary contradiction in Divine revelation, such as is presumed to exist by certain Pantheistic thinkers. He who becomes In- carnate creates the form in which He manifests Himself simul- taneously with the act of His Self-manifestation. Doubtless when we say that God creates, we imply that He gives an exist- ence to something other than Himself. On the other hand, it is certain that He does in a real sense Himself exist in each created object, not as being one with it, but as upholding it in being. He is in every such object the constitutive, sustaining, binding force which perpetuates its being. Thus in varying degrees the creatures are temples and organs of the indwelling Presence of the Creator, although in His Essence He is infinitely removed from them. If this is true of the irrational and, in a lower measure, even of the inanimate creatures, much more is it true
γ᾿ The true lesson of such uncomprehended truths has been stated in Dante’s imperishable lines :— * Accender ne dovria pit il disio Di veder quella essenzia, in che si vede Come nostra natura e Dio s’unio. Li si vedra& cid che tenem per fede, Non dimostrato; ma fia per se noto, Aguisa del ver primo che l’uom crede.’ PaRAD. ii. 40-45. [ LECT.
Origin of belief in the Godhead of Christ. 269
of the family of man, and of each member of that family. In vast inorganic masses God discovers Himself as the supreme, creative, sustaining Force. In the graduated orders of vital power which range throughout the animal and vegetable worlds, God unveils His activity as the Fountain of all life. In man, a ereature exercising conscious reflective thought and free self- determining will, God proclaims Himself a free Intelligent Agent. Man indeed may, if he will, reveal much more than this of the beauty of God. Man may shed abroad, by the free movement of his will, rays of God’s moral glory, of love, of mercy, of purity, of justice. Whether a man will thus declare the glory of his Maker depends not upon the necessary con- stitution of his nature, but upon the free co-operation of his will with the designs of God. God however is obviously able to create a Being who will reveal Him perfectly and of necessity, as expressing His perfect image and likeness before His creatures. All nature points to such a Being as its climax and consumma- tion. And such a Being is the Archetypal Manhood, assumed by the Eternal Word. It is the climax of God’s creation; It is the climax also of God’s Self-revelation. At this point God’s creative activity becomes entirely one with His Self-revealing activity. The Sacred Manhood is a creature, yet It is indis- solubly united to the Eternal Word. It differs from every other created being, in that God personally tenants It. So far then are Incarnation and Creation from being antagonistic concep- tions of the activity of God, that the absolutely Perfect Creature only exists as a perfect reflection of the Divine glory. In the Incarnation, God creates only to reveal, and He reveals perfectly by That which He creates. ‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory W.’