There is yet another reason why the Person of Christ maintains its place in the Christian view of the world. Christ founds His religion with the claim that He brings the perfect revelation of God, so that beyond what He brings no further revelation is conceivable or is to be looked for. Whoever, therefore, has a part in the religion of Christ in the way Christ Himself intended, cannot do other than regard Christ as the Bearer of the final revelation of God. At the same time, this point of view is conclusive only in connection with what has already been set forth. For Islam also claims to be the perfect religion, and yet is content with a superficial recognition of its prophet, to whom, under this title, there is actually no place assigned in the Mohammedan view of the world. Thus the claim Christ makes to the perfect revelation of God in Himself is only defined as against the rival claim of Mohammed, by the fact that on the ground of His peculiar relation to God, Christ lived a life of mastery over the world, such as makes possible the community in which each Christian is to attain the similar destiny of the life eternal. Because this goal is not the reward of fulfilling a statutory law, Christ does not count, like Mohammed, merely as a lawgiver. On the contrary, since the aim of the Christian is to be attained under the form of personal freedom, therefore the twofold significance we are compelled to ascribe to Christ as being at once the perfect revealer of God and the manifest [offenbar] type of spiritual lordship over the world, finds expression in the single predicate of His Godhead.

This mutual relation between the Godhead of Christ and the raising of the members of His community to mastery over the world as their true destiny, is set forth with greatest clearness in that dogma of the Greek Church which affirms the consummation of the human race in Christ as the Word of God, Who is Himself God. The communication of ἀφθαρσία through the teaching—otherwise the incarnation—of the Divine Word, is regularly described also as θεοποίησις (vol. i. p. 4). Mastery over the world is the content of both these descriptions of the Christian, as well as the motive for defining clearly the idea of the Divine Word. This relation of things is no longer considered in present-day discussions of the meaning of the Godhead of Christ. The Greek Catholic formula, that God became man in order that man might become God, is indeed repeated in the West, because it was adopted along with the Nicene type of doctrine by Augustine. Accordingly we find it used by Thomas Aquinas (P. iii. qu. 1, art. 2), as by Athanasius, to explain the incarnation of the Divine Word. In Luther’s hymn, “Vom Himmel kam der Engel Schaar,” there is an echo of the same thought in so far as by the birth of Christ we are said to have become of the race of God. Also, in the wake of mysticism, not only in the Middle Ages (vol. i. p. 117), but even to some extent where mysticism has found acceptance in Evangelical circles, we find traces of this conception of the deification of man. Nevertheless, the combination has remained on the whole unproductive for the Western Church, because the latter, since Augustine, has pushed into the foreground the human personality of Christ and His corresponding activity as mediator between God and man (vol. i. p. 38). If, at the same time, His Godhead was in traditional fashion stipulated for or assumed, yet it followed that the result of the mediatorial activity of the man Christ could not be described as the bestowal of Godhead upon men. For this reason, the Godhead predicated of Christ suggests always a gulf between Christ and the members of His community, a gulf which no salvation wrought by Christ avails to lessen.

The Latin Church of the Middle Ages no doubt handed on the primitive formula of the one Person in two natures—human and Divine. But neither in the sphere of theology nor of asceticism did the Latins understand how to make a clear and decisive use of Christ’s Divinity. In Peter Lombard the interpretations of Christ’s redemptive work and the doctrine of Christ’s Person stand side by side without any vital connection, and the same is the case with Lombard’s theological successors. After all his ingenious inquiries and conclusions concerning the assumption of human nature by the Divine Person of the Word, Aquinas leaves the relation as obscure as before. Or rather, amid all his efforts to establish the dogma, he unconsciously betrays the fact that the only conception he can attain is that of an undefined and indefinable relation between the mutable human nature and the immutable Divine Person in Christ, whereby the human nature is in reality not affected.² The God-manhood of Christ is upheld as real, subject to the alteration, that is, the exaltation, which the human nature has experienced through its connection with the Divine. The Godhead thus remains in the background; and if we would recognise a union of natures according to the strict standard of Godhead, this is rendered impossible by the instruction which Thomas himself gives us, for he bids us conceive the Divine nature as immutable, and involved only through the relation which the human nature assumes toward it,—secundum rationem tantum. To this type of doctrine corresponds the contemplative treatment of Christ’s Person throughout the Middle Ages. Nominally, indeed, it is ever the verbum incarnatum Who as the Bearer of God’s redeeming love is adored by Bernard in all the sufferings of Christ. But in reality the Bridegroom, the fairest of the children of men, to Whom devout souls give back love for love, is nothing more than the ideal man, whose perfectness is manifest in the strength of his self-denial. Thus the Godhead, assumed in theory, is in practice denied, for the Divine majesty is set aside that there may be room, on the footing of equality, for the play of mutual love. What is the worth, then, of a confession of Christ’s Godhead, expressed in the formulas of Greek theology, if, in the West, both theology after the most ingenious efforts confesses itself unable to attain any real knowledge of its object, and piety treats Christ as if Godhead did not belong to Him at all?³

In Luther we come upon a definite attempt to establish theoretically the old Christology by proving the communicatio idiomatum.⁴ At the same time, Luther’s religious estimate of Christ does not depend upon a rigorous realisation of the theological formula of the one Person in two natures, although on the whole he continues to give to this formula its ancient place. His religious estimate of Christ, as distinguished from his theoretical exposition of Christological dogma, is expressed in his catechetical and to some extent also in his homiletical writings. In his earliest catechetic treatment of the main articles of the faith,⁵ it is evident how, through the positing of a new idea of faith, the objects of faith also are transformed. If faith no longer consists in assent to revealed dogmas, but in confidence toward God, then it follows that faith, i.e. trust in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit, is a recognition of the Godhead of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, since trust of this kind can be given to God alone. Through this explanation of Luther’s the Godhead of Christ is introduced as a judgment of value. It is the same point of view which in the Larger Catechism meets us in the form that God and faith (i.e. trust) stand in necessary relation to each other, so that even in the case of a corrupt faith that idol becomes our God, to which we offer our highest and supremest trust (p. 211). To this thought of Luther’s, Melanchthon, at a later date, amid discussions of a scholastic order, was yet able to give expression.⁶

The estimation of Christ as God, involved in the act of putting our trust in Him, implies also a change in, or at least a new interpretation of, those attributes which directly or indirectly are ascribed to Christ in the Creed. Christ cannot be the object of our trust if the description of Him in the Creed is meant to be understood in a sense purely objective. For this reason Luther in his Kurze Form adds with regard to each attribute that it is there “ for me.” This, however, is controlled by the preliminary statement: “ I believe not only that Jesus Christ is the true and only Son of God, in an eternal Divine nature and essence eternally begotten, but also that all things are subjected to Him by the Father, and that even in His humanity He is appointed Lord over me and over all things which with the Father in His Divinity He created.” With this is to be compared, in the first place, the formula in the Shorter Catechism: “ I believe that Jesus Christ, very God, eternally begotten of the Father, also very man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord, by Whom I, a lost and condemned man, have been redeemed, gotten, and won.” In both cases the predicates of the old Christology are repeated, though in shorter form and less definite outline than would satisfy the old requirements. But the Kurze Form makes it plain that the faith which accepts these statements cannot be regarded as the trust which, properly speaking, is religious faith. These predicates are simply taken for granted, and trust in Christ has for its object His attribute of Lordship,—that He is Lord over me and over all things. Both in the Kurze Form and in the Shorter Catechism the recognition of Christ’s Divinity is bound up with this statement. Should it be imagined that the traditional interpretation and this new interpretation of Christ’s Godhead mean for Luther the same thing, or that the latter stands in analytic relation to the former, such a conclusion has against it the fact that in the Larger Catechism the word Lord is made equivalent to Redeemer, and also that it is there declared that the eternal Word submitted to incarnation and to suffering in order that He might become our Lord. That Christ is “ my Lord ” depends therefore upon the whole scope of His human existence, activity, and suffering, upon the effort “ He put forth in daring to win us and bring us under His Lordship.” If this train of thought is completed by supplying the missing statement of the Shorter Catechism, that it is in the Kingdom of Christ as “ my Lord ” that I serve Him, we can scarcely suppose that Luther in making Lord equivalent to Redeemer, disputes the equivalence of Lord and God. Thus, while assuming the formula of the two natures, Luther really connects the religious estimate of Christ as God with the significance which Christ’s work has for the Christian community, and with the position thereby given to Christ at the head of the Kingdom of God. According to Luther, the Godhead of Christ is not exhausted by maintaining the existence in Christ of the Divine nature; the chief point is that in His exertions as man His Godhead is manifest and savingly effective.

Luther here adopts a standpoint which is as manifestly distinct from the Greek method as from the Latin. In the Greek theology, the incarnation of the Divine Word is the complete and saving revelation of the Godhead of Christ; the teaching of the God-man, and His yielding up of His human life to the death to annul the law of death, are but subordinate proofs of His Godhead for subordinate ends. In the Latin Church, the Godhead of Christ under the form of incarnation is no doubt recognised, but His mediatorial and saving work—the satisfaction rendered and the merit acquired to procure for men the forgiveness of sins—is exhibited only in His human activity as such; the Godhead in Aquinas comes into account merely as constituting the essential worth for the expiation of sin of Christ’s merit and satisfaction; in Duns Scotus it is not regarded at all. Luther’s statements in the Catechisms amount to this, that while the Church formula is retained, it really is in Christ’s human achievements that His Godhead becomes for His people manifest, conspicuous, intelligible, winning our faith, not in the form of assent to an unintelligible dogma, but of personal trust for our own salvation.

Luther never dreamed of rejecting the old Christology when he attached to the work of Christ a superior worth as evidence of His Godhead. Nor was this attempt of Luther’s without some relation to a thought of the earlier time. For while in the Middle Ages the sufferings of Christ were regarded merely as an attribute of His human nature, the worth of these sufferings for cancelling the evil of sin was ascribed by Aquinas to the fact that with the human nature there was united the Divine. It is in keeping herewith that in the sixteenth century those Anabaptists and Scotists who had ceased to regard the redemption of Christ as universal and as the foundation-principle of His Church (vol. i. p. 314), went astray regarding His Godhead. It was therefore to this very attribute of Redeemer that Luther attached his statement of Christ’s Godhead, directing toward it the trust of the believer, because it surpasses every other motive for trust. But from this standpoint he seeks, in a way of his own, to throw further light upon the elementary recognition of Christ under the scheme of the two natures, for these he will not relinquish. He is not in the least concerned that the laity, to whose guidance the catechetical writings are devoted, should have before their minds a complete and exhaustive conception of the old interpretation of Christ. For the chief emphasis, as we saw, is laid upon personal trust in the Redeemer and Lord of Christendom. But even apart from any special reference to the laity, Luther has on one occasion⁷ sought to show that the opposition between knowledge and faith, always minimised by the Scholastics, is of the nature of a contradiction. While the Scholastics set the one function against the other within the common sphere of the understanding (intellectus), Luther withdraws faith from the sphere of the understanding altogether, declaring that the Articles of the Creed anent the Trinity and the Person of Christ are incomprehensible to the understanding, and that “the more we speculate about them the darker and less intelligible do they become.” But he closes this discussion by declaring that the trust we put in Christ establishes and recognises His true Godhead, since Christ’s Godhead is understood as the power which Christ has put forth upon our redemption. It is true that even in this connection Luther has no desire to dispense with the unintelligible formulas; but the very fact that they are pronounced unintelligible forbids their being viewed as other than worthless for the faith which consists in trust. Allusions of a similar kind are to be found in other sermons of Luther’s.⁸

Melanchthon, in his first epoch, interpreted the thought of Luther as meaning that the formula of the two natures in Christ is unimportant so long as Christ is duly recognised in His saving benefits. Thus, in the Loci Theol. of the year 1521 (C. R. xxi. p. 85), we read: “Hoc est Christum cognoscere, beneficia eius cognoscere, non quod isti (scholastici) docent, eius naturas, modos incarnationis contueri.” Ni scias, in quem usum carnem induerit, et cruci affixus sit Christus, quid proderit eius historiam novisse? An vero medico satis est novisse herbarum figuras, colores, lineamenta, vim scire nativam nihil refert? Ita Christum, qui nobis remedii et, ut scripturae verbo utar, salutaris vice donatus est, oportet alio quodam modo cognoscamus, quam exhibent scholastici.” This thought persists also in the Apology for the Augsburg Confession, ii. 101: “Quid est notitia Christi, nisi nosse beneficia Christi, promissiones, quas per evangelium sparsit in mundum? Et haec beneficia nosse proprie et vere est credere in Christum.” Faith in Christ is under all circumstances the recognition of His Godhead; Melanchthon, therefore, would have us recognise this attribute in that which makes Christ our Mediator and Reconciler. Neither in this connection nor where he criticises the invocation of the saints, does Melanchthon employ the formula of the natural Godhead in Christ. He does not refute the invocation of the saints on the ground that they lack that Divine nature which would justify the invocation of Christ. He gives Christ the advantage over the saints rather on the ground that Christ has laid us under obligation to Himself, which the saints have not. In this connection we read (ix. 23): “Prorsus aequantur (sancti) Christo, si confidere debemus, quod meritis eorum salvemur.” By these words Melanchthon certainly did not intend to deny indirectly the Godhead of Christ. Therefore he must be understood to mean that this attribute of Christ is to be found in the service He renders, the benefit He bestows, the saving work He accomplishes.

Against the validity of this conception opponents raise two objections: first, that hereby the true Godhead of Christ is denied, and the attribute of Godhead attached to the human Christ only in name; and, second, that Christ is after all only acknowledged as mere man, and so in the end there is a breach of the commandment, Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. With regard to the latter argument, I can shelter myself behind Luther.⁹ Also, to say that in the statement of Melanchthon Christ is represented as mere man, is a pure inference of my opponents, to which they have been led by their own conceptions of the matter. They put the alternative—either Christ is the union of Divine and human nature, or else He is mere human nature: now, in such a statement as that of Melanchthon no use is made of the first formula; therefore Christ is declared to be a mere man. In so far as it is attempted by means of this syllogism to prove me in the wrong, I would remark that this cannot possibly be my view of the matter. For by a mere man (if I ever used the expression), I should mean man as a material entity apart from every characteristic of spiritual and moral personality. I am far from regarding anyone even of my opponents as a mere man, for I assume, in every one of them, some good results of upbringing and some measure of moral worth. That I speak of Christ at all only in so far as His personal character as the Bearer of the revelation of God comes into account, surely no one who has read what I have written will deny. At the least, therefore, it is a proof of incompetence and hasty judgment when my opponents maintain that I regard Christ as a mere man, and deny His Godhead.

But if Christ by what He has done and suffered for my salvation is my Lord, and if, by trusting for my salvation to the power of what He has done for me, I honour Him as my God, then that is a value-judgment of a direct kind. It is not a judgment which belongs to the sphere of disinterested scientific knowledge, like the formula of Chalcedon. When, therefore, my opponents demand in this connection a judgment of the latter sort, they reveal their own inability to distinguish scientific from religious knowledge, which means that they are not really at home in the sphere of religion. Every cognition of a religious sort is a direct judgment of value (p. 205). The nature of God and the Divine we can only know in its essence by determining its value for our salvation.¹⁰ Let him who denies this see to it how he reconciles his position with the Larger Catechism, and with the fact that we know God only by revelation, and therefore also must understand the Godhead of Christ, if it is to be understood at all, as an attribute revealed to us in His saving influence upon ourselves. We must first be able to prove the Godhead that is revealed before we take account of the Godhead that is eternal. My opponents, however, being bent on getting first an acknowledgment of the latter, imagine that they can establish the Godhead of Christ upon the basis of a scientific idea, that is, through an act of disinterested cognition, previous to all possible experience, and apart from all religious experience of the matter. And as representatives of a scientific conception of the Godhead of Christ, they pursue an impracticable method, inasmuch as their conception of the Word of God, eternally begotten by God before the world, rests only on tradition, detached from all the circumstances of its origin. Accordingly, they would have us make confession of the Godhead of Christ in this particular formula, before ever His Godhead has been proved to us in His saving influence upon ourselves, aye even although the said influence cannot possibly prove His Godhead in the aspects of it here concerned. These teachers must first of all be good enough to tell us what Christ’s Godhead in its eternal essence is—what it is in its eternal relation to God; then it will be time enough to discuss whether and in what way this attribute is for us savingly effective and actually revealed. The method of cognition herein applied is false (p. 19), and Luther’s warning against teachers who would determine the things of God a priori, from above downwards, previous to all definite Divine revelation, holds good for this problem also.¹¹

§ 45. Such is the limited order of cognition prescribed for the theologian at this point. So far, however, as the doctrinal system of the Church demands consideration, the preceding discussion has shown that in the Catechisms of Luther and in the Apology for the Augsburg Confession there are hints, hitherto neglected, towards a right conception of the Deity of Christ. These hints may the more readily be followed, since in the doctrine of the two natures the historical and religious conception of Christ finds no place. The supporters of the opposite view must lay their account with the fact that other men who belong to a different school from theirs, also prove the existence within the symbolic books of the main ideas of their own theological position. They might have learned long ago from Philippi that the formulas which they themselves exclusively recognise as the content of the symbolic books do not define the limits of theological knowledge, but are intended merely to prevent those deviations from truth among which is included a curtailing of the problem of knowledge (vol. ii. p. 18).

It is also a false assumption that a uniform doctrine of the Godhead of Christ can be exegetically constructed from the New Testament. Strictly speaking, the content of the New Testament books is not doctrine at all. Least of all can we discover in Christ’s own words a doctrine of His Godhead. There, indeed, it is not to be expected. For the thought of Christ’s Godhead is never other than the expression of that unique acknowledgment and appreciation which the Christian community yields to its Founder. But there meet us in the New Testament two ways of conceiving Christ’s Godhead which do not directly correspond. On the one hand, the majority of the apostles connect the name κύριος, which in Jewish usage is equivalent to God, with the lordship over the world on which Christ has entered by His exaltation to the right hand of God (1 Pet. iii. 22; Jas. ii. 1; Phil. ii. 9–11; Heb. i. 3). The frequent application of this attribute to Christ is to be understood in view of the fact that faith has its necessary points of attachment always in the present. Our faith in Christ is not faith in Him as One Who was, but faith in Him as One Who continues to work, namely, under the conditions corresponding to His present mode of existence. This is the starting-point from which the apostles recall even the circumstances of Christ’s earthly life, and are confident, because of their faith in Him as Lord, that even His death is an event fraught with blessing to the community. Paul indicates a limit for the conjunction of the name κύριος with the Person of Christ, in so far as he connects the bestowal of this name by God with the exaltation, and puts the earthly course of Jesus’ life in the opposite category of an obedience rendered in the form of a servant (Phil. ii. 6–11). With this, however, must be compared the fact that in Rom. v. 15 Paul associates the specifically Divine attribute of grace with the contemplation of the man Christ, just as Christ in yielding His obedience is at the same time a revelation of God. As Lord over the world, Christ is also Lord over His community. But the latter relation is the primary one, partly because the community acknowledges Him as God, and partly because, in definite statements, the community, of which Christ is head, is made to share His position toward the world.

Whatever in the Epistles goes beyond this practical significance of the attribute κύριος as applied to Christ, and gives to His relation toward the world a wider scope than His present lordship over it, belongs to the sphere of special γνῶσις,—that is, of intellectual cognition, which creates problems rather than solves them. This at least is the case when in 1 Cor. viii. 6 Paul describes the Lord Jesus Christ as Him through whom all things have been created or come to be. It is assumed that only God the Father is the Creator of all things, the original source of all that exists: the Lord Jesus Christ, therefore, is the mediate source. But by Lord here must be understood the exalted Christ. Therefore as mediate source of creation we have indicated to us an entity which as such appeared at a given point in time. This is the riddle of which we ought not to get rid by pushing Christ back out of post-existence into pre-existence. For by an exchange of this kind we should invalidate the clear and definite meaning of κύριος. The statements in Col. i. 14–20 also refer to the exalted Christ into Whose Kingdom God has translated the community. If these sentences are in logical sequence, it is a poor exegesis that would interpret them by referring the relative pronouns alternately to the post-existent and to the pre-existent Christ. Most certainly it is the exalted Christ Who is the mediate source of our redemption or forgiveness, which would not be ours if Christ were not risen and exalted. To this are attached the two groups of statements introduced in parallel fashion (ὃς ἐστιν) in ver. 15 and ver. 18b. The second group is at the beginning very evidently dominated by the thought of the risen Christ; but vers. 19 and 20 take us back to the purpose with which on earth Christ offered the sacrifice of His death; He would have the whole world come in Him to rest, and to this end would bring all things into the new way of which He is the goal, and to peace with each other, through the blood of His Cross. It is manifest, also, that the first group both begins and ends with statements about the exalted Christ. It is as the exalted One that Christ is the image of God and the head of the community. Now the literal meaning of πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως and the words πρὸ πάντων have led to the false assumption that the intervening statements refer to the temporal pre-existence of Christ before the world, and to disregard of the fact that up to this point the dominating conception has been the exalted Christ. But the temporal priority of Christ before the world cannot be the point at issue; that would be a barren thought. Superiority over the world is ascribed to Christ in view of the worth which belongs to Him in His position as the image of God and the head of the community. It is as the image and revelation of the invisible God (2 Cor. iv. 4) that the exalted Christ is πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως. In this connection πρωτότοκος can be understood only in the metaphorical sense in which the corresponding Hebrew word is used, namely, he who is preferred—the same sense in which it is used in Rom. viii. 29, and probably also in Rev. i. 5. Christ is He Who is preferred, Who belongs to God in contrast with creation as a whole, which is not the image and direct revelation of God. For all things, so we read, have been created by God in Him, that is in the exalted Christ. This is the same statement as in 1 Cor. viii. 6. It finds its more exact explanation in the two following and parallel pairs of sentences. The indefinite expression “were created” is in these sentences split up into “have been created” and “consist.” That is, first—all things have been created through and unto the exalted Christ, and He is before all things. The indefinite formula ἐν αὐτῷ is here more particularly defined to the effect that Christ is the mediate cause through which, and the end for which, all things have been created; and as the end of all things He is before all things. To introduce the idea of Christ’s pre-existence is to make an intelligible explanation impossible. For only the exalted Lord is conceivable as the goal of creation. Besides, the preposition πρό applies to place as fitly as to time, and the former application alone gives a sentence of weight, in keeping with the new thought εἰς αὐτὸν ἔκτισται. The second pair of sentences provides the corroborating conclusion—He in Whom the world as one continuous whole at this moment consists, is the exalted One, Who is the head of the community.

The same strain of thought is re-echoed in the Epistle to the Ephesians. Christ, in Whom all things are to find their ultimate unity (i. 10), in Whom also the community of those who fear God was chosen by God before the creation of the world, is the exalted Christ, through Whom at this present time all Divine blessings are bestowed upon the community (i. 3–6). In this twofold relation of Christ to the world and to the community, the community holds higher rank and stands nearer to Him; it is filled by Christ, that is to say, it is the organ of His specific activity, while He fills Himself in all ways with all things (i. 30), or, in other words, extends His lordship over the world. From the Divine standpoint, and in view of the conditions that belong to the very idea of purpose, these combinations do not present any special difficulty. For, according to the rule, ultimum in executione est primum in intentione, the ultimate end of a chain of means exists in the thought and purpose of the agent before the means, precedes all actual effort, being itself the motive of such effort, and is present to the agent, from the beginning of his efforts to the end, as the mediate cause. If, before the creation of the world, God already recognises or ordains His Son to be the perfect Lord of the ideal community (1 Pet. i. 20; Eph. i. 4), and if it is with a view to Him that the world is created, then in God’s purpose His Son stands above and before the world as the mediate cause of the same. Here also lies the explanation of Heb. i. 1-3. In this passage the Son of God is presented to us first of all in His capacity as Prophet, but at the same time as predestined by God to be Lord of the world. Of this Person it is then declared: δι’ οὗ καὶ ἐποίησεν τοὺς αἰῶνας. The context demands that the attribute expressed in the first relative clause should be recapitulated in the second relative pronoun—δι’ οὗ, i.e. τοῦ τεθέντος κληρονόμου πάντων, God made the worlds. This is the same thought as in Colossians; and therefore the third relative clause in Hebrews refers to the exalted Son of God Who has assumed His predestined lordship over the world.

Alongside of this group of interpretations of the Godhead of the exalted Christ stands the twofold statement of John, that the revealing Word, which is God, has in the Person of Jesus Christ become a human person, and that the disciples recognise in Him the manifestation of the only Son of God by the fact that He lived a life full of grace and truth—a life, that is to say, exhibiting the characteristics by which God Himself described His nature to Moses (John i. 14; Ex. xxxiv. 6, 7). At this point it must be laid down clearly that the attribute of Godhead thus ascribed to Christ is based on the personal experience of His disciples. Apart from that relation it is inconceivable. This, and no other, is the ground on which John ranges the figure of Christ under the wider conception of the revealing Word—a conception which he applies to the creation of the world, etc., and for which he claims the predicate God. Thus the two lines of thought which meet us in the New Testament are wholly independent of each other, and find their explanation in considerations of a very different order. The Johannine conception regards the historical manifestation of Christ from the point of view of the conjoint moral impression made upon the community of disciples—an impression which agrees with the known nature of God; the Godhead of Christ as thus established is not directly associated with the Divine attribute of exaltation over the world; rather is the underlying assumption the creation of the world through the Word of God, the Divine worth of Jesus being embodied in the formula that the Word, Which is the universal form of Divine revelation, has in Jesus become a human personality. The representation given by the other apostles connects the Godhead of Christ with the thought of the eternal significance for God of the Person of Christ and the realisation of the same in Christ’s present exaltation above the world—also a line of thought which rests upon the view that Christ in the ethical union between Himself and His community is the revealed end of the world.

Both these ways of conceiving Christ’s Godhead are distinctively religious, in so far as they describe the significance of Christ for that view of the world which originated with Himself, and for the corresponding self-estimate of the individual. For John must be understood to mean that the life of Jesus produced those same moral impressions which as the chief attributes of God attract to themselves all human trust; and the other apostles regard the present lordship of Christ as the determining motive which lays claim to the whole of human life, and leaves nothing over that dare rule itself by any other motive. Every other standard is relative; however all-embracing any one motive in human life may be, it still leaves room for others. An authority, therefore, which either excludes all other standards or else subordinates them to itself, which at the same time regulates in exhaustive fashion all human trust in God, has itself the worth of Godhead. But these two ways of conceiving Christ’s Godhead are of such a nature that each requires the other to complete itself. For what John experienced in Christ cannot be merely an influence wielded by Christ in the past, it must be an influence which still affects the religious view of the world and the religious self-estimate of the individual, if these latter are to be determined thereby. Conversely, the idea of the Godhead of the exalted Christ depends for its convincing power entirely upon whether the marks of this Godhead can be found in His historical existence upon the earth. Paul, indeed (Phil. ii. 9), fixes the precise moment when the Person, Who till then had not been declared God, received the Divine name and the universal lordship. This involves the difficulty that the identity of the one Person in the two forms of existence is not guaranteed. For the marks by which Paul immediately before, and indeed always, denotes the superiority of the man Christ, must surely first be brought into harmony with the predicate κύριος. If the Godhead of Christ, or His lordship over the world in His present state of exaltation, is to be a postulate of the Christian faith, an integral part of the Christian view of the world, then it must be demonstrated to us in Christ’s influence upon ourselves. But every form of influence exerted by Christ must find its criterion in the historical figure presented by His life. Therefore the Godhead or universal lordship of Christ must be apprehended in definite features of His historical life, as an attribute of His existence in time. For what Christ is in virtue of His eternal destiny, and what the influence is which He exerts on us because of His exaltation to God, would be wholly beyond our ken if we did not also experience the effects of the same in His historical existence in time. Unless the conception of His present lordship receives its content from the definite characteristics of His historical activity, then it is either a meaningless formula or the occasion for all kinds of extravagance. If, on the other hand, we are to hold fast our faith that Christ is at this moment Lord over the community of the Kingdom of God, and is working toward the gradual subjection of the world to this its true end, then lordship over the world must be recognisable as already a conspicuous feature of Christ’s historical life.

Both the Confessional systems of theology which have sprung from the Reformation assume as the formative principle of the whole phenomenon Divine nature with all the Divine attributes, especially omnipotence and omniscience, which are the attributes chiefly concerned in the creation of the world. But in the correlation of the Divine with the human nature, the two systems come into direct contrast with each other.¹² The Lutheran doctrine is determined by the consideration that the fulness of the Godhead is revealed in the human person of Christ; with this in view, it maintains that through the incarnation of the Divine Word, or through the union of the Divine with the human nature, the latter becomes endowed with all the Divine attributes. The Reformed doctrine is determined by the consideration that the union of the Divine Word with the human nature preserves the closest possible analogy with the nature of man as such; with this in view, it maintains that the Divine Word, in order to become man, gave up the fulness of His Divine attributes, more especially those relations in which, as Creator and Lord, He stands to the world. Now the Lutheran formula does not correspond with the historical picture, which the Reformed doctrine faithfully follows; it requires, therefore, to be supplemented by the statement that the Incarnate Word of God during His earthly life regularly refrained from the manifestation of His Divine attributes (κρύψις). The difference between the two types of doctrine is specially conspicuous in the way in which the ideas of incarnatio and exinanitio are contrasted with each other. According to the Lutheran doctrine, the verbum incarnatum is the subject of exinanitio; according to the Reformed, the verbum sese exinaniens is the subject of incarnatio. That is to say, since the conception and human birth are the first manifestations of the exinanitio, therefore, according to Lutheran teaching, the union of the human nature with the Divine, and the transference to the former of all the Divine attributes, are already presupposed at the entrance of the God-man into the process of birth, which is the first instance of His hiding His Divine attributes. According to the Reformed teaching, the Divine Word empties Himself of His Divine attributes by entering into the process of birth—in other words, by entering into union with human nature.

What significance, then, have these two explanations for the apprehension and appreciation of the Person of Christ in its historical manifestation? The Lutheran doctrine corresponds with the historical manifestation only in so far as it is untrue to itself, and, by its assertion of the κρύψις, robs the transference of the Divine attributes to the human nature of all significance for Christ’s historical life. It is therefore in direct contradiction to the phenomenon which it pretends to explain. It claims to demonstrate the Godhead of Christ in the peculiar quality of His humanity, in accordance with the line followed by Luther in his Larger Catechism; but the means which are employed to solve this problem do not permit a solution, because they do not rise to the level of the view there set forth by Luther. In this connection there is another point specially to be noted. If the incarnatio verbi is assumed to be real because the verbum incarnatum subjects Himself to the conceptio on which the individual existence of Christ depends, this does not in the very least guarantee that the personality which results from the conceptio is co-extensive with the verbum incarnatum. It would be equally consistent with the main assumption to suppose that the verbum incarnatum manifests Himself only in the completed history of the whole human race. This has actually been maintained, for Strauss in his day declared that the human race in its gradual attainment of religious self-consciousness is the God-man, and corresponds to the idea of the verbum incarnatum. It is probably more than a mere accident that this possible heretical consequence of the Lutheran Christology comes from the same theological workshop in which the Lutheran formula itself was put together. On the other hand, the Reformed explanation of the Person of Christ through the kenosis of the Divine Word does certainly remain true to those human and temporal limits within which it perceives the life of Jesus to have been lived; but in the same measure in which it does so, it compels us to refuse the predicate of Godhead to the historical life of Christ. If the eternal Logos, by His conception as an individual man, emptied Himself of those attributes in which His original relation to the world is expressed, and in which He is of like essence with the Father, then in His historical existence He is not the possessor of Godhead. It is in this case impossible to understand why other men also, who in their own sphere are recognised as ideals, should not equally be regarded as incarnations of the self-depotentiating Divine Reason. For this is the possible heretical consequence of this type of doctrine, which frankly acknowledges that Godhead and manhood cannot be predicated, at the same time and in the same relation, of the Person of Christ—in other words, that the two predicates are mutually exclusive.

Nevertheless, under the pretext that it is the logical outcome of the Christology outlined in the Formula of Concord, the said doctrine has become common among theologians who pride themselves on their Lutheran orthodoxy. The first to tread this way, Gottfried Thomasius,¹³ believed himself called on to expand the Lutheran formula of the communicatio idiomatum, as the consequence of the incarnatio verbi divini, beyond the traditional and one-sided presentation it had hitherto received. It was one-sided that only the human nature should be invested with Divine attributes—omnipotence, omniscience, and the like. In consequence of the incarnatio verbi divini, the Divine nature also in Christ must be declared to be the bearer of suffering, want, and weakness, if the formula of the communicatio idiomatum was to be valid. This had not been done; nor has it been accomplished by the corrections proposed by Thomasius. The latter falls completely out of line with the system set forth in the Formula of Concord. It is not the verbum incarnatum which forms for Thomasius the framework within which he ascribes to the Divine nature of Christ the human attributes of suffering and the like. On the contrary, he maintains that the verbum divinum, with a view to incarnation, renounced omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, attributes which bear on the relation of God to the world, which therefore are for God only relative, and therefore also can be given up by the Divine Logos without abrogating His Godhead. Even if this assumption were on all sides unassailable, it would still be in contradiction to the Formula of Concord. For how can the incarnation of the Logos invest the human nature with those very attributes which the Logos in His union with human nature no longer possesses? Lutheran, therefore, as judged by the standard of the Formula of Concord, this theory certainly is not. And, what is more, it is self-contradictory. For even if omnipotence and the like are only relative attributes of God and of the Divine Logos, relative, that is, in relation to the world, is not this very relation the limit within which alone any knowledge of God is possible, outside of which God is wholly inconceivable? Moreover, the conception of the Divine Logos had its origin exclusively in the relation of God to the world. So that we cease to conceive the Logos of God in the way which the conception itself requires, if in any particular case we think away His relation to the world, and therefore His omnipotence, or, in any other relation into which He can enter, leave this out of account as no longer existing. If the Logos, for the sake of His incarnation, emptied Himself of His omnipotence, etc., then He simply cannot be recognised in the Person of Christ as the Logos, eternally begotten of the Father, and of the same essence with Him. This hypothesis serves only to prove that Christ, at least in His earthly existence, has no Godhead at all.

Despite these considerations, even Luthardt teaches: “When the Son of God took upon Him the earthly nature of man, He still retained His Divine nature and the essential and inalienable glory of the same; but, as concerned His relation to the world, He laid aside in His state of humiliation the Divine conditions of existence, and the corresponding exercise of Divine power, not to assume them again till His exaltation, though then as One who has become man.” From the historical notices which accompany §§ 50, 51 of his Compendium der Dogmatik, we gather merely that Luthardt is conscious of propounding doctrine which is the opposite of what is prescribed to him in the Formula of Concord; but how to conceive the above statement, or on what grounds we are to find it intelligible, he does not tell us. What is taught under the head of the Kenosis of the Divine Logos is pure mythology. Not Luthardt, to be sure, but Gess has given us the theory in its wildest form. But the formula is common to both, and it means a return to the mediaeval interpretation of the matter. Acknowledgment is made of a Divine nature which stands behind the human person of Jesus, but occupies only a vague relation to it; attention is then concentrated upon the man Jesus as Mediator, without any effort to find an indication of His Godhead in His human life upon the earth. This way of confessing Christ’s Godhead is a ceremony that has lost its meaning. On the other hand, the hints thrown out by Luther and Melanchthon in which they transcend the limits of Latin Catholicism, and bid us learn the meaning of Christ’s Godhead in Christ our Redeemer, are for these Lutherans or Pietists non-existent, although they occur in symbolical books.

Another series of attempts is associated with the dark saying of Marheineke (vol. i. p. 582), that Christ in His own person is humanity itself, so far as He presents in Himself what is common to all individual men. This statement is with all celerity exchanged for the other, that Christ in His own individuality embraces dynamically as root-principle all human individuals, or, that He represents in personal form the totality of individuals, and gathers together the original types or ideal personalities of all separate individuals in Himself. That is, the generic idea is conceived in the one case as an abstract unity, in the other, in nominalistic fashion, as the collective unity of all the separate individuals. If either one or the other can rightly be applied to Christ, there is an end to His human individuality. But what have statements of this kind to do with His Godhead? In the characteristics here described, Christ is supposed to correspond to the idea of the second Adam. In the same way, then, that the first Adam, as head of the natural creation, reaches over into the realm of spirit, so Christ, as Head of the spiritual creation, points to what may be called a cosmic or metaphysical significance of His person. “And this, then, is the point where Christology borders on the doctrine of the Trinity, and where the statement of Scripture about the Word that was in the beginning finds its fit place.” “That point in the cosmos which is the centre of receptivity for God (namely, Christ as the central individual of the human race), is the point where a real world-unity and world-consummation are possible; but its actual realisation comes from the personal self-communication of God. For the idea of the world as it exists eternally before God does not stop short at mere receptivity for God, it includes also the being wholly filled with God, namely in itself and at the point where, corresponding to this central receptivity, there takes place the equally central fulfilment.” That is to say, for the completeness of the world-idea the indwelling of God in the central Man is an indispensable supposition. This theory bears a remote resemblance to that interpretation of Christ’s Godhead which Paul derives from the final cause of the world. But if we put the theory to the test, and ask in what features of the historical picture Christ’s Godhead appears, we do not find an answer to our query any more than to the reflection that the existence in the Person of Christ of this central individual has never been proved. The reason of this defect lies in the fact that behind this theory a religious interest in the person of Christ is nowhere discernible. To guarantee the completeness of the world-idea may be a philosophical motive, but it is certainly not a religious one; for no relation has been shown between the world-consummation in this central man and any saving good derived therefrom. In short, this idea lacks not merely the requisite scientific maturity, but the religious kernel; it is therefore not a theological conception at all.

The religious estimate of Christ, which finds expression under definite conditions in the predicate of His Godhead, must approve itself in the connection between Christ’s visible conduct and His religious convictions and ethical motives; it does not stand in any direct relation to the presumable endowment of His Person with inborn qualities or powers. For not in this latter relation but in the former does He exert an influence upon us. The religious estimate of His Person will stand related to His moral conduct in so far as the latter is the test and counterpart of His own conviction that He enjoys a unique fellowship with God. For this reason the religious dignity of Christ does not depend upon the unbroken completeness of His ethical horizon—a completeness which, in fact, does not exist if we compare the ethical perceptions of Christ with a system of the present day. In his Life of Jesus for the German People, Strauss maintains that Jesus has only a relative significance for the development of the moral ideal, since He betrays no sense of the ethical significance of the family or of the joy of life, no idea of the moral worth of the State, of trade, of art and science; that, therefore, His moral code is defective, and requires to be supplemented. As if the worth for the human race of a man like Jesus depended on His having a complete view of all possible applications, both positive and negative, of the influence which He sought to exert upon human life—a view that is reached only afterwards in the form of scientific cognition which lay outside the range of His vocation! With the most perfect system of ethics Christ would not have altered the course of the intellectual world; with any such system He would long ago have become antiquated. For the more detailed the programme of any reformation in the spiritual sphere, the more limited is its field of action; the more indefinite it is in detail, the wider and more lasting is its influence. As a matter of fact, Jesus is not concerned to provide a moral code for the details of life; that is not His business, and any estimate of His person that has this for its starting-point is historically unjust. Jesus has the same right as every other man to demand that He be understood in the light of His own individuality. That this individuality is that of the religious man and thereafter of the prophet and founder of a religion, cannot, of course, be recognised where, as in the case of the Life just mentioned, the thought of God is simply suspended. This explains also why in the end the historical figure of Jesus became for Strauss quite indistinct. Would a man who regards all music as a disagreeable noise undertake to write a life and an appreciation of Mozart? That were the true parallel to this atheistic method of writing the history of religion.

Jesus is the bearer of the perfect spiritual religion, which consists in mutual fellowship with God, the Author of the world and its final goal. In the idea of God as the final goal of all things lies the reason why Jesus recognises as binding upon Himself for God’s sake the widest conceivable aim of moral effort, namely, the union of mankind through love; while in the idea of God as the Author of the world lies the reason why Jesus for His own personal life repudiates every motive that is individual, worldly, and therefore less than Divine. But inasmuch as Jesus desired His own attitude to God to be shared by the rest of mankind, He laid upon His disciples, as their aim also, the union of mankind through love, or, in other words, the realisation of the Kingdom of God; and through His own personal freedom in relation to the world, He led His disciples, in accepting their view of the world from Him, to the assured conviction that human life is of more worth than all the world. By making the aim of His own life the aim of mankind, who are to be called into the fellowship of His community, He is before all else the Founder of a religion and the Redeemer of men from the dominion of the world. He is the author of a moral code only in so far as the raising of men above the world, and their fellowship in this relation, carries with it the ordering of their conduct towards each other in the Kingdom of God. But since this end is served by setting up the universal principle of brotherly love, it is not any defect in the moral code of Jesus as such that the ordering of the separate provinces of moral life is left to the free application of this supreme principle. Had Jesus directed His attention to the ethical regulation of the separate provinces of human life, the result would have been—since He meant to be the Founder of a community—that He would have drawn up definite legal enactments. Hence the objections of Strauss come in the end to this, that Jesus did not impose upon His disciples a system such as that of Islam. That He did not follow this path marks His unique and incomparable supremacy over all other founders of religions.¹⁴

If the subject-matter of Christ’s life, in pursuance of His purpose to redeem mankind and reveal to men the love of God, serves to render visible His Godhead, then, within the limits of the dogma of the two natures, no one has so aptly stated this connection as St. Bernard.¹⁵ In his in Cant. canticorum, sermo vi. 3, we come upon the following: “Dum in carne et per carnem facit opera non carnis sed dei, naturae utique imperans superansque fortunam, stultam faciens sapientiam hominium daemonumque debellans tyrannidem, manifeste ipsum se esse indicat, per quem eadem et antefiebant, quando fiebant. In carne, inquam, et per carnem potenter et patenter operatus mira, locutus salubria, passus indigna evidenter ostendit, quia ipse sit, qui potenter sed invisibiliter secula condidisset, sapienter regeret, benigne protegeret. Denique dum evangelizat ingratis, signa praebet infidelibus, pro suis crucifixoribus orat, nonne liquido ipsum se esse declarat, qui cum patre suo quotidie oriri facit solem super bonos et malos, pluit super iustos et iniustos?” These three sentences speak of the God-man, but to this effect, that the Divine Person of the Logos wears the human nature—the flesh—as the organ of His activity. On these assumptions Bernard develops the communicatio idiomatum in both directions, ascribing sufferings to the Divine Person of the Logos, and acts of omnipotence to the human nature of the same. But these acts of omnipotence, which are to be on a level with the creation and governance of the world, Bernard exhibits to us in moral achievements of the God-man. That Christ overcomes His fate, reveals to us in Him the Creator of the world; that He endures indignities which He has not deserved, of course for the good of men, reveals in Him the Creator, the wise Ruler, the gracious Protector of the world; finally, that He does not withhold His benefits from the unthankful and unbelieving, that He prays for those who crucify Him, proves His connection with the perfect God, who bestows His favours both on the evil and the good. The God-man has all the Divine attributes; but, as Bernard says,¹⁶ He exercises these attributes in the work of redemption with effort, whereas in the work of creation the effort does not occur. Further, in the work of redemption, He exercises these attributes for the salvation of men, and therefore in the form of moral acts, especially in the effort of endurance. These activities, having as their aim redemption and the revelation of love, are more than human activities; at bottom, they are Divine. Of the likeness between the moral activities of the God-man and the omnipotence of God, we can be assured only if we have already established their Divine worth for our salvation. Luther can scarcely have known these sentences of Bernard; yet his own exposition in the Larger Catechism follows the same lines. It is as my Redeemer that Christ is my Lord; what is said of Him in the second Article of the Creed explains redemption, its manner and means; that is, how much it cost Him (quanti constiterit); and what He spent and dared to win us and bring us under His lordship, namely, that He became man, and suffered, and died, etc. etc. And all this in order that He might be my Lord.¹⁷ The theological solution of the problem of Christ’s Divinity must therefore be based upon an analysis of what He has done for the salvation of mankind in the form of His community.

§ 46. This subject is treated in Dogmatics under the title of the three functions or offices of the God-man. In the most developed form of the dogma the aim is rightly to distribute among the functions of Prophet, Priest, and King the activities of Christ described in the New Testament, which had for their aim the establishment and ordering of human salvation, and which extend in time over the status exinanitionis et exaltationis. This application of Old Testament types to the interpretation of Christ’s Person has its first representative in Eusebius of Caesarea; but only since the Reformation has it become a factor in theology.¹⁸ The origin of this threefold type is to be found in the literal meaning of the word Christ, it being regarded as legitimate to refer the anointing with the Holy Spirit not only to the anointing of a king, but also to that of a priest and of a prophet. But in estimating the practical worth of this principle of division, we must take account of the way in which it gradually became current with the theologians of the Reformation. It is well known that the theologians who follow Melanchthon and Luther down to Hafenreffer and Gerhard, treat the saving work of Christ only under the two heads of King and Priest.¹⁹ Attention may also be called to the fact that it was Calvin who added the type of the Prophet (in the Catechismus Genevensis and Institutio, ii. 15). The school of Melanchthon and Luther did not by any means ignore Christ’s work of teaching, but the Old Testament type of the high priest seemed to justify its being reckoned part of His work as Priest. Even in Calvin, in the first edition of the Institutio (1536), we find only the Kingship and the Priesthood assumed as exhausting the meaning of the name Christ.²⁰ The working out of the idea brings before us in its full extent the religious view of the world and sense of personal worth which, in the first epoch of the Reformation, accompanied every effort at theological reconstruction. What Christ is for us, must verify itself in the transferring of His worth to us. The recognition of Jesus as the Christ has for us no meaning unless through Him we know ourselves raised to kingship or dominion over the world, and to priesthood or undisturbed communion with God. Only in relation to these practical ends will even an objective theological discussion of the statements of the Creed satisfy the religious interest. But Calvin’s treatment of this subject is derived from Luther’s tract De libertate christiana (vol. i. p. 182). A comparison of the sentence already quoted with this tract of Luther’s proves for one thing that the immense significance of the latter was not lost upon Calvin, and besides, the agreement between Luther and Calvin is a confirmation of the method by which thus far I have endeavoured to pave the way for a doctrine of the Person or saving work of Christ. If, in accordance with this view, the aim of Christ’s activity as King and Priest is to secure for us freedom with regard to the world and with regard to sin, and freedom in our intercourse with God, then surely I am in line with the real trend of the Reformation when I bring the specific significance of the Person of Christ for the Christian view of the world and sense of personal worth into relation with the attainment of our own personal independence over against the world. Finally, the order adopted by Luther—King, Priest—explains not only why the theologians who followed Luther and Melanchthon adhered to this appellation, even after their attention was directed to the significance of Christ’s work of teaching, but also why Calvin, when in the Catechismus Genevensis he added the type of the Prophet, put it in the third rank, and why, when in the Institutio of the year 1559 he gave the first place to the office of Prophet, he still put the office of King before the office of Priest. It is true that in the Institutio of the year 1539 he already put the office of Prophet in the forefront as evidence of Christ’s anointing. But this does not mean that he sought to attach to it the same importance as to the Kingship and the Priesthood, the former of these being here expounded with somewhat more detail than before.²¹

The complete presentation of the three munera Christi in the Institutio of the year 1559 (vol. ii. p. 15) marks a change for the worse in this respect, that the practical bearing of the Kingship and the Priesthood of Christ, in the transference of these attributes to believers, has disappeared. Which shows that the religious interest has suffered at the hands of the purely dogmatic method, which treats human salvation exclusively from the side of dependence upon God, without keeping in view the practical consideration that in Christianity our religious dependence upon God is to form the basis of our personal independence. At the same time, in distinction from other methods of treatment, it is important to mention that Calvin still gives the same definition of Christ’s Kingship, so far as subject-matter is concerned, that he has previously given, namely, that Christ’s Kingship verifies itself in our assurance of eternal salvation, in our victory over sin, in our patience in face of the evils of the world.²² The scope of the regnum Christi in this relation he expressly limits to the status exaltationis. On the other hand, he extends not only the priestly but the prophetic office over both the status Christi. For the satisfaction offered in Christ’s sacrificial death is continued in the intercession of the exalted Christ, and the exercise on earth of the office of Prophet in the continua evangelii predicatio within the Church through the communication to the Church of the Spirit. This exclusive reference of the kingly office to the inward perfection of believers occurs elsewhere, so far as I know, only in Amesius (Medulla, i. 19. 24, 26); but how far removed Amesius is from the starting-point adopted by Calvin, when he adds, that the prophetic office of Christ admits of being transferred to other men, but not the office of King nor the office of Priest!

While I reserve my right to return at a later point to another interpretation due to Calvin of the Kingship of Christ, the exposition already given justifies the conclusion that Calvin consistently maintained that reference of Christ’s Kingship to the defence of believers and their deliverance from sin and the world, which he adopted from Luther’s “Freedom of a Christian Man.” Meanwhile, from Luther through Melanchthon there spread among the theologians of the German Reformation another definition of the regnum Christi spirituale. This was the conception of the community of believers, in so far as that community is established, maintained, and governed through the Word of God.²³ Calvin had already adopted this as the content of the office of Prophet in both the states of Christ. But to show how movable Calvin was on this point, it is worth noting that in the Catechismus Genevensis he appropriates the above interpretation of the kingly office, in spite of its inconsistency with the view he had otherwise expounded; and since the kingly office concerned the status exaltationis, there followed the further change that he limited the prophetic office in this connection to the status exinanitionis.²⁴ At the same time this inconsequence on Calvin’s part has not had any appreciable influence in his own circle. On the contrary, the Heidelberg Catechism adopts the statement of the Catechism of Geneva about the office of Prophet, and combines under the head of Kingship the two references acknowledged by Calvin, namely, the ruling of the Church as such by Word and Spirit, and the defence as well as maintenance of the standing of believers.²⁵ The same method of statement meets us in Rodolf, the expounder of the Catechism. But all the other Reformed theologians accessible to me retain the double reference of the kingly office proposed in the Catechism, namely, that of Calvin and of Melanchthon and Luther, combine with it Calvin’s extension of the prophetic office to both the states of Christ, and land themselves in a double explanation of the origin of the Church, namely, from the persistence of the prophetic office, and from the kingly office of Christ. The Lutherans, especially Gerhard, Quenstedt, and Hollatz, follow suit; although in Baier we miss Calvin’s original reference of the kingly office to the defence of believers. I may mention, also, in regard to the conception of the regnum Christi, which originally was not divided into the regnum potentiae and the regnum gratiae, that after the doctrine of the two natures became prominent, a distinction was drawn in both schools between what was due to the Divine nature, and what to the exaltation of the human nature in Christ. And although here also we find traces of the opposite views held by the two schools with regard to the relation between the two states of Christ, yet this is of small significance for the theory of the three offices. On the contrary, our inquiry has shown that the form in which this dogma was taught in the seventeenth century by both sides alike, was a compound of elements from Luther and Melanchthon on the one hand, and from Calvin on the other.

When the activities of Christ in His two states are divided according to subject-matter among the three offices, the result is a network in which each office appears under both states, and each of the two states displays all the three offices. This method obtains even in the case of those who, like Amesius and Wendelin, begin by making the essential order of the offices evolve itself in the temporal sequence of events, namely, Christ first taught, then offered Himself as a sacrifice, and finally entered upon His lordship. For these theologians, too, recognise the continuance of the prophetic and of the priestly office in statu exaltationis—their position being that the effect of what Christ accomplished in His earthly life is brought to bear upon mankind through the continuance of similar activity on His part in His exaltation, whereby, according to the theory in question, the opus mediatorium Christi becomes complete. It has been proved by Krauss that in their application of this doctrine the Lutheran theologians lack the necessary precision. For my purpose here I select one instance of this for special notice.

It is a formal weakness in the view under consideration, that its advocates have from the beginning been content to demonstrate the regnum Christi merely in statu exaltationis, whereas they make the other two offices hold for both forms of existence. This betrays an ominous resemblance to the Socinian position, and throws doubt upon the possibility of successfully opposing the latter in the other points connected with the doctrine of Christ. For, according to Luther’s Catechisms at least, it is the regnum Christi which is the direct test of His Godhead. If the Kingship of Christ fails to approve itself in statu exinanitionis, then the teaching of the highest Prophet affords so much the less ground for applying to Him the predicate of Godhead, that His sufferings in the office of Priest seem directly to contradict the characteristic attributes of Deity. Many of the Reformed theologians, however, under the impulse of opposition to the Socinians, have made a brave attempt to supplement the theory at this point. In Gomarus, Maccovius, Wendelin, Heidanus, Rüssen, I find the following adduced as proofs of the Kingship of Christ, namely, that He was born as King of the Jews, that He was worshipped by the Magi, that He issued commands to evil spirits, that He made changes in the law, forgave sins, wrought miracles, and made a royal entry into Jerusalem. By these things He declared not only His destination to Kingship in the future, which the Socinians admitted, but His possession of the right to the same. In conclusion, the said theologians argue that, if these are not valid proofs of the active Kingship of Christ, then that Kingship cannot be dated even from His resurrection, but is established only by the complete subjection of the world to Him at the last. These arguments have been appropriated by the later Lutherans Hollatz and Buddeus. But a makeshift of this sort, compounded of elements wholly incongruous, is the more powerless to produce conviction that it betrays complete ignorance of what is universally recognised as the subject-matter of the regnum Christi in statu exaltationis. This consideration, according to the statement supplied by Krauss, has been regarded by one only of the Reformed theologians on the European continent, namely, Wolleb. By him, the effort Christ spent on the formation of His community, namely, His appointment of the apostles and His institution of the sacraments, is described as evidence of His active exercise of kingly rights.²⁶ This assumption is shared by the Helmstedt Lutheran, Hornejus, and it reappears in Schleiermacher (vol. i. p. 522), who quotes the sending forth of the disciples and the instructions given for their conduct as the historical marks of the Kingship of Christ.

Within the circle of Calvinism, however, even before its contact with Socinianism, there appeared a most vigorous interpretation of the Kingship of Christ in His historical life, an interpretation with independent features of its own. The Puritan exposition of Christ’s Kingship has in view the acceptance of Christ as Lawgiver for the Church in its capacity as a visible, organised, and worshipping community. This is a direct departure from the conception of the regnum Christi spirituale upheld alike by Calvin and by Luther. The idea attained concrete realisation owing to the special conditions under which the congregations of Dutch and English exiles were forced to dispense with the support of the State, and the English Puritans, like the Scots, had to effect the formation of a Reformed Church in conflict with the civil power. At the same time it cannot be denied that in the editions of the Institutio between 1539 and 1554 there is a statement of Calvin’s pointing in this direction, which is wanting in 1536, and has again disappeared in 1559. This statement, however, Calvin makes, not under the head of the regnum Christi, but by way of explaining the title dominus in the Creed.²⁷ The idea was appropriated by John a Lasco, along with Calvin’s interpretation of the regnum Christi. In the Catechism of the Congregation of Exiles in London (1551), he speaks, on the one hand, of the Kingship of Christ as existing for the protection of believers from every evil, and expresses the thought that believers ipsius plenitudine in reges atque sacerdotes domino in spiritu consecrantur. But at the same period, in the Compendium doctrinae, following the order regnum, prophetia, sacerdotium, he describes the content of the first of these offices as being the communication through Christ of all eternal and unchangeable laws for the Church. This view first finds a distinct echo in the Scots Confession of 1650: “Iesum Christum esse Messiam promissum, unicum ecclesiae caput, iustum nostrum legislatorem, unicum nostrum summum sacerdotem confitemur.” Then the founder of English Puritanism, Robert Browne,²⁸ follows suit with the statement: “The Kingdom of Christ is His office of government, whereby He useth the obedience of His people, to keep His laws and commandements to their salvation and welfare.” Also, in the Larger Catechism of the Westminster Assembly of the year 1648, this thought certainly gets the first place, before the other acknowledged attributes of Christ’s Kingship: “Christus exsequitur munus regium dum populum sibi ex mundo vocat, eosque officiariis, legibus ac censuris donat atque instruit, quibus eos visibili modo regit et gubernat.”²⁹ These principles reappear in the Puritan theologians of the seventeenth century, and on them is based, in particular, the binding force of Christ’s legislation with regard to worship. Yet it is well worth noting that a theologian so influential as John Owen refuses to regard as exhaustive this reference of Christ’s Kingship to the external supremacy of the Gospel, as seen in the obedience given to Church officers. He not only recognises that thereby injury is done to the significance of Christ’s Divine nature as the basis of His dominion over the world, but, in the spirit of Luther and Calvin, he emphasises the internal and spiritual character of Christ’s dominion, as consisting in that rule over souls which alone gives obedience to Christ its worth.³⁰

The Puritan view of Christ’s Kingship is undoubtedly the source of that flavour of the ceremonial law which obtains in the Scottish Church and in Independency; it also opens the way for that rejection or limitation of the interference of the State with the Church which is the mark of Independency, and has dominated the ecclesiastical history of Scotland. At the same time, even for this particular circle of Calvinism, the significance of the view before us is far more ecclesiastical than dogmatic. For example, the fact that in the Reformed Churches of the Continent this view is not current, has never been felt by the Puritans to be a ground of ecclesiastical separation. On the contrary, we see in Owen that the directly opposite doctrine of the spiritual nature of Christ’s Kingship is maintained alongside of it as the matter of chief concern. No doubt, historically considered Christ’s intention of founding a community, and His preparatory steps toward that end, are to be viewed as the material of His Kingship; but the indications in Matthew’s Gospel (if the words were spoken by Christ at all), that His community is to assume a constitutional form, have not the force of statutory legislation; the legal element, which is the unique feature of Puritanism, does not come from Christ. The Puritan idea of the Kingship of Christ, therefore, so far as it goes beyond the position of Wolleb and Schleiermacher, need not further be taken into account. Here and there, however, in the Reformed theology we get valuable hints toward a restatement of the dogma of the three offices of Christ. For example, there is the remark of Amesius that in the statu exaltationis the Kingship of Christ involves a certain modification of the prophetic and the priestly office, so that Christ regium sacerdotium et prophetiam regiam exerceat (Medulla, i. 23, 32). Does not this remark apply also to our view of Christ’s earthly life? Does not the prophetic activity of Christ, so far as it seeks the establishment of the Kingdom of God from His own person as centre, also display the note of Kingship? Besides, have not the Reformed theologians (vol. i. p. 275) made the positive statement that, in discharging the priestly office of satisfaction by His double obedience, Christ acts as caput ecclesiae, that is to say, exercises the office of a King?

The reply to the first question is already given in the statement with which Ernesti (vol. i. p. 521) introduced his objections to the customary definition of the three offices, namely, that if Moses is a type of Christ, then for the latter the kingly and the prophetic office fall into one. This corresponds also to the acknowledged historical facts. For when Jesus, who appeared with the marks of a prophet only, and was so regarded, sought recognition from His disciples as the anointed King, He ranged the material of His prophetic activity under a conception which must in itself have had no relation to it. Hence it is a purely arbitrary analysis of the word “Christ” when theologians find expressed in it both the prophetic and the kingly office. Then the gradual development of the dogma showed that Christ in statu exaltationis had to act not only as King but as Priest in establishing the Church; so that in this connection also the two titles coincide. On the other hand, it follows from the statement of Reformed theologians already referred to, and which has found so wide response in more recent times, that the Kingship of Christ is to be regarded as operative in His priestly ministry also; which combination we may reasonably understand to mean, in the sense of Ernesti, that Christ, by offering up His life, gives the supreme proof of His Kingship in the interest of His subjects. In any case it follows that, if Christ in His priestly ministry is to be regarded as caput ecclesiae, Priesthood and Kingship cannot be set alongside each other as independent offices, but the former must be understood as a particular consequence and application of the latter. Thus the analysis of the title Christ, which led to the scheme of the three offices, is as amply refuted in argument as it lacks justification in history. For Jesus is called the Anointed solely to denote His sovereign dignity. If He is also called Prophet and Priest, it is clear that His prophetic activities afford the material for the exercise of His Kingship, and, in view of the previous discussion, we may surmise that His priestly activity, in freely surrendering His life, must be regarded also as a particular manifestation of His Kingship, conditioned by the special circumstances of the case. Reformed theologians, e.g. Amesius and Wendelin, justify the setting up of the three offices alongside of and in succession to each other, from the ordo conferendae salutis, qui prius debuit explicari, deinde acquiri, postea applicari. But this observation is not of sufficient weight to uphold the linear enumeration of the three offices of Christ against the subordination, already indicated, of the two other offices to the office of King. For what is here formally and theoretically distinguished, is in actual fact neither co-ordinate nor distinct. The whole operation, therefore, is of value only in so far as it secures a complete mastery of the material which must be included in determining the significance of Christ as mediator salutis; but what that significance is, the scheme of the three offices does not reveal, for the simple reason that complete knowledge must take the form of unity.

While, therefore, in our effort to grasp the significance of Christ’s life, we are at liberty to follow the lines of the scheme now before us, yet this much we must regard as proved, that Christ’s exercise of His Kingship, which for Himself is the chief thing, seeing He wishes to be recognised as the Christ, will find expression both in His prophetic and in His priestly service. And since the kingly activity of Christ pertains to the founding and upholding of the religious community of Christ, therefore in the statu exinanitionis it is represented by the purpose of Christ to accomplish this end, which purpose pervades His two other activities, and is never out of their view. On the other hand, the priestly and the prophetic offices refuse to be merged in each other, for the former moves in the direction from man to God, and the latter in exactly the opposite direction, from God to man. The traditional theology, however, differentiates also the material presented to us under these two conceptions. To Christ’s prophetic office are reckoned all His words, to His priestly office all His deeds. Moreover, as Priest, Christ must satisfy the double legal demand made by God on sinful men, namely, through the conformity of His whole conduct to the moral law in His intercourse with men, and through readiness to endure all possible persecution as the punishment of sin. Now, as is well known, the distinction between active and passive obedience is due entirely to this consideration of the double claim of the law upon sinful men. Regarded in themselves, the two conceptions are not mutually exclusive. For obedience in suffering is either non-existent or else it exists in the active form of endurance; suffering which is not at bottom an exercise of moral will would not come under the head of obedience at all. These considerations apply also to the older Dogmatics, for the latter distinguishes and co-ordinates the two conceptions of obedience only in regard to the satisfaction offered to God, whereas, from the point of view of merit, it combines them in the one obedience to the Divine will. This means the setting up alongside of each other of two views of the same matter, one clear and the other crooked, and the question arises not only whether this is in itself conceivable, but especially whether there is evidence for it in the consciousness of Jesus. I waive the point as to whether God regarded the life of Christ at one and the same time from the standpoint of legal righteousness and from that of loving Providence. But for the individual consciousness of Jesus it is neither proved nor even probable that He regarded the details of His life at one moment as satisfaction to God, at another as service rendered, at one time in the light of the distinction between doing and suffering, at another in the light of the subordination of suffering to doing. Yet this must needs be the case to satisfy the demands of the traditional Dogmatics. For though, at the end of Christ’s life, His sufferings assumed for Him a form more intensified in degree, yet in essence they were identical through all the stages of His public life, being interwoven with His work from the beginning. Thus the particular distinctions which have been made in the material of Christ’s priestly office do not stand the test of comparison with the facts of His historical life.

The same is true of the distribution of Christ’s words and deeds between the two offices of Prophet and Priest. The deeds of Christ in their conformity to the Divine law are regarded exclusively as something rendered to God; but surely, in the first place, they are something rendered to man, to the various classes of men with whom Christ comes into more or less intimate relation. The words of Christ are regarded exclusively in their prophetic significance for man; but His words, equally with His deeds, must submit to be judged by the standards of the moral law. And therefore the truth, wisdom, and self-possession that mark the words of Christ are just as much a part of His moral obedience toward God, as the “grace and truth,” which pervade all His deeds, are part of His function as Prophet to reveal the will of God to men. Therefore, just as it proved impossible alongside of Christ’s priestly and prophetic activity to find a separate sphere for the exercise of His Kingship, so it is equally impossible to assign to each of these two offices a separate department of Christ’s life. Thus the expectation based upon the doctrine of the three offices, that thereby we should reach a true division of the life of Christ, is shown to be groundless. The kingly office of Christ finds expression only in His manifest purpose by deed and word to establish the community of the Kingdom of God and to lead it to its goal; and although Christ in His life both reveals God to men and represents men to God, or brings men near to God, yet in the light of our preceding discussion we must not expect that Christ’s words and deeds as a whole will permit of exact subdivision between these diverse categories. In all these respects the doctrine of the three offices spells failure. If, however, the formal distinction between the kingly Priesthood and the kingly Prophethood of Christ is to be maintained, we must show how this distinction, as a means of apprehending the homogeneous life-work of Christ, is derived from the manifest inward unity of the same. For the older school it might be sufficient that in the New Testament Christ is named Prophet and Priest; for us that counts as a valuable fingerpost to guide our inquiry, but can by no means be taken as the expression of a complete understanding of the life-work and religious worth of Christ.

The superficial formalism of the old method comes out, also, in the way in which the contrast between the two states of Christ is applied to His three official functions. For it is only in theory that there is any contrast between them; in reality, whatever falls within the status exaltationis must be conceived as a continuation of the corresponding functions of the status exinanitionis, if it is capable of being clearly conceived at all. I have already pointed out (p. 406) that the formula which describes Christ as exalted to the right hand of God, either has for us no meaning, since Christ as exalted is beyond our ken, or else offers an occasion for every form of extravagance, unless regard be had to the fact that between Christ and the community of believers, which He designed by His words, deeds, and patience to establish, there is an abiding relation whereby Christ continues to be the ground of its existence and specific character. If by His kingly Prophethood and Priesthood Christ founded His community, then its present maintenance, through the continued exercise of these functions in His exalted state, can only be rightly judged in the light of what is recognised to have been the content of these functions in His historical life. Indeed, this principle is already systematically applied to explain the attribute of intercession which, in the Epistles to the Romans and to the Hebrews, is ascribed to the exalted Christ, and which therefore is regarded as a continuation of His Priesthood. It is understood to mean that what Christ accomplished as Priest by His sufferings and death for the founding of His community, remains the efficient ground of its relation to God. The continuance of the kingly Prophethood signifies that the power of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, through which Christ founded His community, is that means for its maintenance and extension which corresponds to the historical dignity of Christ, and causes His person to be recognised as still effective for that end. With regard to Christ’s earthly life, we had already found that no material was forthcoming for the exercise of His kingly office which did not fall in part under His prophetic, in part under His priestly, activity. This conclusion is further strengthened when we proceed to examine more closely the idea introduced by Calvin, that the exalted Christ exercises His Kingship in the assurance which believers have of their salvation, in their victory over the enemies thereof, and in their patience under all kinds of evil. For it will appear that these are merely such results as are necessarily involved in His Priesthood, so far as by His Priesthood He has reconciled us to God.

The traditional scheme of the three offices is only a first step toward grasping the significance of Christ for the community which believes on Him. It is a mere attempt to reach as complete a mastery as possible of the material at our disposal. But, since it offers us only distinctions and contrasts without reducing these to an ultimate unity, it is far from being an exhaustive treatment of the subject, which as such is neither twofold nor threefold, but one. I have endeavoured to approach the truth by reducing the different data before us to their inherent unity. From this point of view it is necessary, first of all, that Christ’s activity in statu exaltationis be conceived as the expression of the abiding influence of His historical manifestation. Further, His deeds and words must be regarded as the one common material of His prophetic and priestly activities, and His kingly office must be included in these as a specific modification of the same; or, more correctly, His Kingship must be shown to consist in these very same priestly and prophetic activities in so far as both are inspired by His purpose to found and maintain a community of believers. Only the prophetic and the priestly activities refuse to coalesce, because in the relation between God and man they run in exactly opposite directions. And yet, just because of this twofold relation, they form the unity of the opus mediatorium. It will be our business, by means of further elucidations, partly to substantiate, partly to complete, this unity of the prophetic and priestly functions in Christ. This, however, we can only do by analysing the purpose which may be seen to pervade Christ’s life as a whole.

In conclusion, another point must be noted, namely, that the designation of the three ” offices ” is not free from objection. It is quite true that the equivalence in theological usage of munus and officium is a guarantee that the old theologians did not conceive the first expression as contrasted with the second. But German usage has given a preference to the word Amt, and offers no equivalent for officium. Now the word Amt denotes a special calling such as contributes to the existence of a legally constituted community, or an ethical community existing under legal conditions. But in the case before us the circumstances to be dealt with are wholly different. For by the Kingdom of God which Christ establishes is meant a community resting, not on legal rights, but on loving conduct; among its other characteristics is this, that for love men give up their legal rights, or at any rate do not bring the standard of right as such visibly into application. That Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world (John xviii. 36), can only mean that it is exempt from the standard of legal rights. Besides, in the Old Testament prophecy never was an ” Amt ”; it was always a free religious vocation. Finally, the Epistle to the Hebrews sets forth that the Priesthood of Christ is subject to other conditions than the official (amtlich) priesthood of the Old Testament. Therefore it is only of the personal vocation of Christ that we have any right to speak in these relations. Accuracy in the scientific use of terms is not a matter of indifference. Although the old theologians had no intention of drawing a distinction at this point between munus and officium, it has happened all the same that, following in Melanchthon’s track, they have introduced as the specific organ of the regnum Christi spirituale the official, that is, the duly licensed, preaching of the gospel and administration of the sacraments (p. 289). An inference from that position meets us in the statement of the Reformed theologian Polanus:³¹ ” Huius regis nostri prorex seu vicarius generalis non est papa Romanus, sed omnes fidi ecclesiae pastores sunt Christi vicarii.” This is not consistent with the spiritual character of Christ’s lordship, which is manifested in the fact that Gospel and sacraments continue to exist at all in the community of believers. That particular officials are duly licensed to administer Word and sacrament follows, not from the religious character of the community as such, in which, consistently with Christ’s vocation as Prophet, all must be regarded as ” taught of God,” but from the earthly and historical conditions of the existence of the community. If, on the contrary, a duly licensed office as such is the organ of Christ’s lordship, then the declarations of Christ Himself, that His Kingdom is not of this world, and that His disciples are not to rule but to serve (Mark x. 42–45), are made of none effect. It is better that Polanus be declared mistaken. But, to remove the occasion for such assertions, and for the hierarchical pretensions which are founded upon them, it is well to withhold from the work of Christ the title of ” office ” (Amt), since this title may lead the holders of office in the Church, because of their formal ecclesiastical distinction and prerogative as compared with the ordinary members of the community, to pose as the representatives of Christ.

§ 47. The religious view of the world is such that God is recognised as the efficient cause at work in the significant phenomena of nature and of the human mind. In the sprouting of vegetation the heathen sees particular gods; in its decay he sees their death; Zeus thunders, and by the hot rays of the sun Apollo slays. Nor, on this level of natural religion, is any particular need felt for any other formula than that the life of the gods is identical with the life of the corresponding natural objects. For only to the more exact observation of the scientist does Nature give the impression of possessing in herself a relative independence. It is otherwise when individual men acquire religious significance, since these produce an unqualified impression of mental independence. If in their actions there is descried a special interposition of God, as when the Assyrian king inflicts God’s judgment on the Israelites, or Koresch is God’s servant to deliver them from banishment, then these persons come into consideration as instruments of the Divine action. In this capacity they stand at a greater distance from God, if it be assumed that the Divine purposes which they serve are to themselves unknown. Nearer to God stand the prophets; but these, too, in varying degree. The heathen view of prophecy, for example, assumes a curtailment or cessation of the usual mental independence of the prophet, who is accounted an organ of Divine revelation in the degree in which through ecstasies and mania he has ceased to have control over himself. But the prevailing Old Testament view of prophecy presupposes both the mental and the moral independence of the prophets, and controls the Divine impulse which is perceived in them by the recognition of their own consciousness of the same, and their convinced assent to the words of God which are given them. At the same time the religious value attached to the prophets and their words both by themselves and their countrymen is this, that they are accounted the instruments or organs of the self-revelation of God. In no way different is the estimate put by Jesus upon Himself, save only that the essential and ultimate Divine purpose, which Jesus is conscious not only of explaining in word but of realising in deed, involves His placing His own independent personality in a still closer relation to God His Father. His estimate of Himself betrays, it is true, a sort of sliding scale in the way He describes His own relation to God, not only in John, but also in the other Gospels; yet amid this variety of presentation, describing Himself at one time as a mere ambassador who has seen and heard God and executes His commands, and at another time as the Son of God Who pursues God’s work and in His own person exercises God’s lordship over men for the ends of the Kingdom of God, Jesus attributes to His life as a whole, in the unity which for His own consciousness it possesses, the worth of being the instrument of the complete self-revelation of God. This is the purely religious type of self-judgment. But the unique feature of the case is, that there is not a trace of evidence to show that Jesus exempts any one relation of His own spiritual life and activity from the standard in question. For even when He expresses Himself in terms of independent human purpose, that purpose is at least adjusted to the ultimate Divine end for men which He is seeking to promote. The difference, namely, does not present itself to His consciousness in the form of a contrast, as in the case of Paul, who says on the one hand that Christ lives in him, and on the other that he lives a natural life, but in the faith of Christ (Gal. ii. 20). And thus John, in seeking to realise the impression made on his own mind of the worth of Christ’s life as a whole, was in a position to construct a new formula, which implies more than that Christ was an instrument of Divine revelation. His faith in the Divine worth of Christ expresses itself in this judgment with regard to Him—that the Divine revelation is a human person.

This conception is not framed to suit any system of scientific knowledge, or to embody a statutory explanation of the experienced fact; the context on both sides admits of its being formulated in two different ways. Viewed in the light of the opening words of John’s exposition, the statement has this meaning, that the Divine revealing Word constitutes the form, and the human individual the substance, of the Person of Christ. This is what in the end the doctrine of the Greek Church comes to. For the theory of the anhypostasis of the human nature in Christ, the reverse side of the theory that both natures subsist in the unity of the hypostasis, is intelligible only if the Divine Logos is the form in which this human individual exists, outside of which He has no real existence at all. For the form is the basis of reality. The anhypostasis of the human nature in Christ does not mean that the human nature is not individual,³² or that the human soul in Christ is incomplete; it means that this human individual only exists in such a way that the Divine Logos is the moving force of all His visible activities, and that His human soul as such has no scope for independent activity as in other men. This also is the thought of Christ which dominates the orthodox exposition of His prophetic and kingly functions. But the interpretation of His Priesthood refuses to be bound by the limits of this theory. In the conception of obedience to God the human soul is operative as form; the Divine nature comes into account only in so far as it is made subordinate to the power of the individual will of the man Christ, and defines the infinite worth of Christ’s obedience in counterbalancing sin. In this respect the Lutheran and the Reformed doctrines of Christ’s priestly function have alike failed to transcend the limits laid down by Augustine, namely, that Christ’s mediatorship depends on His humanity (vol. i. p. 38). Within the limits of this conception Duns Scotus could even refuse to the work of Christ the infinite worth which Aquinas, in virtue of the union with the Divine nature, had assigned to His human satisfaction. Finally, Melanchthon and the Lutherans, in opposing Stancarus, failed to do more than uphold the position of Aquinas. This doctrine has certainly fallen upon the right method, in apprehending Christ’s Godhead as the worth to be put on those human achievements of His which suffice for our salvation. It is at least wholly wide of the mark when many theologians of the Reformed school attempt to refer the conception of Christ’s priestly activity, which has God for its remoter object, back to God also as subject.³³ Such utterances are possible only for those who have not condescended to carry out the notion of obedience and satisfaction to God into that specific detail, the propriety of which in other matters they themselves have acknowledged.

Even the Johannine prologue, after presenting the Divine Word as the form, and the human individual as the material of the revelation in Christ, reverses its point of view, and in the human personality as form bids us recognise as substance grace and truth, those distinctive marks of Godhead. Nor is this method accidental or arbitrary. For, in the first place, it corresponds to the self-manifestation of Christ in His words and actions, that is to say, to the historical reality. Further, it follows from a necessity of thought. For we cannot surrender the position that the soul which reveals itself in the spoken ” I ” is the self-dependent form of all its functions. If God or the Logos, i.e. the universal self-revealing function of the spiritual God, is permanently assumed as the form of Christ’s Person and its manifestations, then the latter is reduced to the aspect of a mechanism; for the form is at the same time the efficient cause. But if we regard the life of Christ as a mechanism, we not only do away with the distinction between Christ and nature, but give the lie to our own experience of His spiritual personality. Moreover, we should only be justified in relinquishing our recognition of Christ’s personal and human independence, if we could permanently, from the Divine standpoint, trace the controlling presence of God, and the special limitations under which it works. But this we are not in a position to do. While, therefore, our religious judgment is to the effect that God is not merely with Him (Acts x. 38; John viii. 29), but in Him (John xiv. 10, xvii. 21), that His characteristic activities are the activities of God, that His love to men, as the motive of all His conduct, is identical with the love of God, yet we are compelled to alternate this judgment with others which express the ethical independence of Christ under the category of human freedom. And while we are in a position to understand the sequence of Christ’s life from the latter point of view, it is a question whether we may trust ourselves to understand the special conditions of Christ’s dependence upon God, however indefinite the formula in which we might express them. The situation is exactly the same as when with Paul, from a religious standpoint, we conclude that God works in us to will and to do (Phil. ii. 13), or, with the Epistle to the Hebrews, that God works in us that which is well-pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ (Heb. xiii. 21), or with John, that the love of God attains its perfection when we love the brethren (1 John iv. 12)—only thereafter to interpret all these phenomena by the law of human freedom. Moreover, the distinction does not apply here that in Christ the working of God is excluded, because in Him the Divine Word is a human personality. For the Divine Word includes in itself the characteristic working of God, and is simply inconceivable without it—even according to the traditional formula. In that, namely, which is eternally begotten by God, God as the begetter is continuously and effectively present.

A scientific apprehension of the relation expressed in the religious view of Christ appears to be attainable, therefore, only on the assumption that we have grasped the historical manifestation of Christ under the form of the human Ego, that is, have viewed it in the light of its inherent unity as judged by ethical laws. The problem lies along the same lines by which it has been attempted to reach a unifying view of Christ’s priestly activity; only it is a problem of wider extent, and we have no assurance beforehand that the distinctions between satisfaction and merit, between passive and active obedience, will be available for its solution.

Both schools of Reformation theology adopt the ethical method of apprehending Christ, in so far as they take note of His obedience to the Divine law, and attach worth to the same. But it is only with a section of the Reformed theologians that this ethical tendency reaches any degree of completeness. In the case of the Lutherans it is traversed at the very beginning by the twofold contention, that Christ for Himself had no obligation toward the law, because as God He stands above the law, and that by fulfilling the law He gained nothing for Himself, because as God He possesses all things. The first of these statements is an after-effect of the nominalism of Luther, under circumstances which make the wholly extraneous and arbitrary character of this element conspicuous (vol. i. p. 277). The other statement Reformed theologians have sought to repudiate, by asserting with regard to the Godhead of Christ the possibility of His earning a plenior gloriae patefactio; Alting alone has kept within the lines of an ethical judgment of Christ by employing the argument that Christ merited His glory by completely identifying Himself with the attainment through His own merits of our salvation (vol. i. p. 287). The ethical method is also traversed by the contention of the Lutherans, that the fulfilment of the law, to which Christ was under no obligation for Himself, was meant by Him to make up for the fulfilment of the same by all mankind. For conduct ceases to have any ethical significance when, for the agent, it is not an end in itself at all, but so far as he is concerned is practised merely as a means to some other end. An obedience to the law, by which a man is not seeking to attain the end of his own being, is in no sense a moral obedience. Therefore the only view that remains on ethical lines is the view of the Reformed theologians, that Christ rendered obedience to the law, in the place of the elect, as Head of the Church (vol. i. p. 275). In this special capacity of Christ a basis could be found for maintaining that, what Christ by fulfilling the law accomplished as the representative of others, He accomplished also for Himself, and vice versa. The ethical method is further traversed by the distinction and co-ordination of the two kinds of obedience, active and passive, which, in relation to the twofold demand of the law upon sinful men, serve as satisfaction to God. For on this condition Christ’s sufferings have assigned to them only an objective, and no personal worth. The incompatibility of this distinction with the ethical point of view at once obtrudes itself in the addition made to it by the older Dogmatics, to the effect that the one obedience of Christ in deed and suffering, which conforms itself not to the universal law, but to the special prescription of God, is a vehicle of merit. This idea is specifically ethical; but it is by no means an ethical idea of the first rank, and therefore the application of it to Christ is not above suspicion, either in itself, or in view of the accompanying circumstances. For it is bounded by a conception of freedom which is not subject to the standard of the moral law, or to the universal validity of moral duty; it originates in the hypothesis of a private and incalculable relation to God, which is inconsistent with the other bases of the doctrine. Finally, the older theology betrays how very limited is the interest it takes in the ethical apprehension of Christ, by the fact that the prophetic and kingly functions of Christ are never so much as examined to see whether they too ought not to be interpreted from this point of view; most of all, however, by the further fact, that the directly religious functions of Christ, which are of such significance in His life, namely, His habit of prayer, and His submission to the dispensations of God, have received no consideration whatever in the doctrine of His Person. So far as the first point is concerned, I have already (p. 430) recalled the fact that Christ’s speaking in the place and power of God must nevertheless be subsumed under the duty of truthfulness and the virtue of conscientiousness, if as Prophet He is not to be wholly unlike His Old Testament forerunners. The traces of His Kingship have not been followed up at all in His historical life; only unwittingly did the Reformed theologians, who describe Christ in His satisfaction as the Head of the Church, take an ethical view of His Kingship. But the point at which the older doctrine completely fails to meet the demands which necessarily arise from the study of the life of Jesus, is in the interpretation of everything that presents Christ as Himself the subject of religion. For this aspect of His person is easily seen to be at once the centre and the circumference of all that was purposely accomplished by Him, with a bearing on others. And for this aspect of His Person there is no room, either in the scheme of the two natures or in that of the three offices. Wherefore, then, this determined opposition to a treatment of the life of Jesus which obscures His subjectivity, when my opponents have nothing better to offer in Dogmatics than a repetition of the old formulas, which likewise obscure the subjectivity of Christ?

§ 48. The fundamental condition of the ethical apprehension of Jesus is contained in the statement, that what Jesus actually was and accomplished, that He is in the first place for Himself. Every intelligent life moves within the lines of a personal self-end. This the old theologians could not bring themselves to see, for they referred the obedience of Christ exclusively to the end of representing mankind, that is, to an end other than the personal self-end of Jesus. Even Alting could attach validity to the statement sibi ipsi meruit only as an addition to the service Christ had rendered to mankind. Of course, this dislocation is due in part to the fact that the two ways of regarding Christ—from the point of view of His Godhead, and from that of His manhood—were not kept clearly separate, the latter being always obscured by the former. At the same time, it cannot be overlooked that the ethical view of the merits of Christ, as we here find it, is tinged with a certain egoism, the egoism, namely, of onlookers. These claim Christ so exclusively for their own salvation, that they will not concede to Him the honour of existing for Himself; although, without this, how is it possible to render any real service to others? And, indeed, this method of regarding Christ is in contradiction not only with the universal rules for estimating other personalties, but also with the undeniable features of Jesus’ presentation of Himself, especially in the Fourth Gospel. In opposition to this view, therefore, it is certain that the human life of Christ must be viewed under the category of His consciously pursued personal end, and with allowance of His right to self-existence, so that thereby His influence and intentions with regard to men may be apprehended as such. For all such ends become criteria of a man’s characteristic and personal conduct, only in so far as they are included in His personal self-end. This leads to the inversion of the Altingian formula: Jesus has acquired merit at our hand by identifying our interest with His own, His merit in our behalf follows from the merit He has acquired for Himself. But, since the idea of merit is excluded if the idea of duty is involved, we must state the matter thus—In so far as Christ, by His duly ordered speech and conduct, realises His personal self-end, it follows from the special content of the latter that in this form He also realises the ends of others, i.e. has ministered to the salvation of mankind as a whole.

Thus the question falls to be asked, What is the special content of the personal self-end of Christ? As such, the older theology denotes the unbroken obedience of Christ to the Divine law, and His obedience (or patience) under the sufferings which by special dispensation God caused to come upon Him, although in this connection no necessity for these sufferings appears. I do not, of course, mean these two kinds of obedience in the sense of the theory already discussed (p. 269), which assigns their place to the doing and suffering of Christ from the standpoint of satisfaction to God, for in both these aspects the said theory lies outside ethical treatment. By this theory the doing and the suffering of Christ are viewed solely in the light of a certain objective worth, not therefore in the light of their unbroken continuity with His distinct personal life; nor is His conduct in obedience to the law viewed in the light of its relation to His personal self-end. Here, on the contrary, I am referring to Christ’s doing and suffering as the two partial manifestations of that complete personal obedience which is treated by the older theologians from the point of view of the merit of Christ. Under their formula, however, sufficient care is not taken to ensure that the doing and the suffering of Christ can really be understood as partial manifestations of the one obedience. It needs to be supplemented by the observation that the suffering of Christ, through the patience with which it was borne, becomes a kind of doing. For this is the only way in which an ethical value can be got out of suffering at all. Apart from this condition, all suffering is either ethically indifferent, or else it is disease; more especially mental suffering, that is not met with the exercise of self-control and patience, is just mental disease. To Christ none of these cases applies, since His active patience kept pace with His experiences of suffering. By His patience the suffering inflicted on Him is as such made His own; and that, too, without any deadening of feeling, but rather with keen sensitiveness to suffering in every degree and throughout the whole course of His public life. For these considerations room is found in the formula, that the obedience of Christ in doing and in suffering is identical, obedience here being understood to mean activity of the will. The expression is certainly indefinite, but we have no option, for in another respect, also, the unity of Christ’s obedience in doing and suffering is not safeguarded by the traditional formula. While, for the necessity on Christ’s part of obedient conduct, reference is made to the universal moral law, for the necessity of His sufferings we are referred to the special dispensation of God; and in this connection the special dispensation of these sufferings by God must remain unintelligible, except where it can be explained from the need of paying the penalty for man. For if, as regards the positive fulfilment of the moral law by Christ, the ethical standpoint of universal human obligation, as understood by the Reformed divines, is to be maintained, then, clearly, the explanation of Christ’s sufferings from the special need on God’s part of legal satisfaction belongs to a different category, since this explanation is not derived from any consideration affecting Christ Himself. The inconsistency can be removed only by the introduction of an idea which was strange to the thinkers of former days, but which has been applied by not a few theologians since Schleiermacher. It is the idea of an ethical vocation (vol. i. pp. 529, 648).

A man’s vocation as a citizen denotes that particular department of work in human society, in the regular pursuit of which the individual realises at once his own self-end and the common ultimate end of society. Every civil vocation is an ethical vocation, and not a means of egoism, in so far as it is pursued under the view that, in society as a whole, and in the individual, the moral law ought to be fulfilled, and the highest conceivable goal for the race attained. The varieties of ethical vocation, according to their natural origin, divide themselves in manifold fashion into vocations which have their origin in the family, vocations which are concerned with the production, manipulation, and distribution of the means of physical life, vocations connected with the State and with religion, vocations in the sphere of science and art. Their manifoldness consists in this, that they attain ethical distinctness in part directly, in part, like the last-named, only indirectly; that several of them can exist compatibly with each other in the same individual, while others cannot; that some are of a public, others of a private nature. Rightly understood, every ethical vocation falls within the scope of the moral law; but inasmuch as each man’s vocation forms for him the special sphere within which he regularly fulfils the universal moral law, it follows that each man, in the ethical exercise of his own vocation, at once attains his own ethical self-end and renders his rightful contribution to the ethical end of society as a whole. For the particular is the logical means of reaching systematic knowledge of universal laws, and of the subsumption of the individual phenomenon under the law. In the sphere of will, the form under which the objective unity of the individual will with the universal law of conduct is realised, and the condition of that realisation, is that the ethical activity of the individual forms a whole. This is borne out, in the first place, by the fact that men without a civil vocation, and without its ethical standard, succumb in one degree or another to egoism; further, by the fact that any individual judgment of duty (namely, that on this particular occasion of acting, the action must needs be in keeping with the moral law) is reached through the intermediate idea of a man’s distinct vocation, or through the analogous judgment that in this particular case he is called to obey the behest of love. finally, by the fact that a man’s ethical vocation, in the narrower as in the wider sense, begets those ethical principles in which a mature and conscientious character specialises for itself the moral law, and regulates at the same time the personal attainment of virtue. For conscientiousness not only follows as a single virtue from the significance of a man’s vocation for the development of moral character; it guarantees also the acquisition of the other virtues, in so far as the particular vocation forms the uniting link for the universal and the individual conditions of ethical existence.

The idea of an ethical vocation serves also as a criterion for the public life of Christ as a visibly connected whole. When Christ presents Himself as the Bearer of God’s moral lordship over men, through Whose unique speech and conduct men are impelled to submit themselves to the power which proceeds from Him, and in the direction which is indicated by Him, He understands the name Christ as the expression of His individual vocation. His conduct within this sphere is as certainly in harmony with the universal moral law, as the end of the Kingdom of God, which He pursues in His special vocation as its Founder, is the supreme end out of which the moral law arises. At the same time, His conduct in pursuit of His vocation, being a particular line of conduct, is one-sided, and excludes personal participation in other vocations. Indeed, this exclusiveness of Christ’s vocation goes further than in other cases of a similar kind. Old Testament prophets could at the same time discharge a civil vocation; other founders of religions were at the same time heads of families and heads of tribes, and waged war; Christ had no civil vocation, at least not after He entered on His public work. He detached Himself from His family without founding a family; if He ever occupied Himself in any systematic fashion with the sacred learning of the Jews, it cannot have been by way of a vocation, as was the case with Paul. In short, Christ combined no other vocation with that to which He was conscious of being called. This fact is explained by the range of the vocation to which He devoted Himself. For the vocation of the kingly Prophet, to realise God’s ethical lordship, is the highest of all conceivable vocations; it aims directly at the ethical as a whole; and if this aim was to be pursued as the special business of life, and firmly fixed before the mind of Him who pursued it, it had to be separated from all subordinate aims, which otherwise are meant to find a place within the whole. To fix His vocation as Christ firmly before him, Christ had to forego all those natural conditions in the stability of which other vocations find a guarantee of their own stability—a fixed dwelling and means of support, attachment to a family, the confidence of fellow-citizens. He depended only upon the personal devotion of friends and followers, and built up about Him the circle of His twelve disciples in the view that His vocation demanded the formation of a separate religious community. On the other hand, He adopted a neutral attitude toward all the other interests of human society, toward law and State, industry and science; He was even inwardly indifferent toward the religious usages of His countrymen (Matt. xvii. 24–27), and did not suffer Himself to be shaken in the constancy of His aim by the presentiment that, in the nation to which with scrupulous conscientiousness He had exclusively devoted himself (Mark vii. 27), this aim would fail to be realised (Matt. viii. 11, 12). Equally far was He from allowing His clear consciousness of the universal scope of His mission to be impaired by the fact that He was called to work only among the Jews.

Regarded as a consequence of His loyalty to His vocation, Christ’s patience under the varied sufferings due to the opposition of the leaders and rulers of His nation becomes intelligible. For not suffering in itself, but suffering as the occasion and test of patience and steadfastness, is what comes into account from the ethical point of view. To the contradiction between Christ’s purpose of reform and the authoritative position of the Pharisaic scribes, were due all the affronts, secret and open, to Christ’s personal honour, and the danger to His personal safety, and all these brought in their train temptation for Him. The more intense realisation of these temptations in the soul of Jesus immediately before the final catastrophe, was only the climax of what had occurred in each case of open persecution which He had had to endure. In every such case He must have experienced in one degree or another a conflict between the impulses of self-preservation or personal honour, and of loyalty to His vocation. But, till then, it had cost Him less effort to put the claim of His vocation before the claims of ordinary existence and the natural joy of living—so little effort, perhaps, that He may never have made clear to His own mind the actual state of the case with regard to these constantly recurring temptations. Had He succumbed to one such temptation, it would have meant that, to preserve the tranquillity of His individual existence, He had renounced His vocation. But, on the contrary, all the sufferings that befell Him, and especially those He was ready to bring on Himself by His appearance in Jerusalem, He steadfastly endured, without once proving untrue to His vocation, or failing to assert it. Therefore these sufferings, which, by His enduring of them even to the death, He made morally His own, are manifestations of His loyalty to His vocation, and for Christ Himself come into account solely from this point of view. This connection of things is the more transparent, since Christ faced the climax of His fate neither rebelliously, nor with callous indifference, nor in any fanatical self-deception, but under the impression that, just as His appearing in Jerusalem was an unavoidable discharge of His vocation, so also His violent death was destined under God’s appointment to serve the same end.

In this latter statement, the delineation of the ethical connection between the sufferings and the vocation of Christ already gives place to the religious view of the same, apart from which view Christ Himself was not conscious of His unique and independent position among men. The business of His vocation was the establishment of the universal ethical fellowship of mankind, as that aim in the world which rises above all conditions included in the notion of the world. The historical connections of this idea may be left out of account; in which case it becomes all the more evident that a vocation of this kind can only be conceived under the guiding idea of one supramundane God. But for this reason Christ not merely recognises the business of His vocation to be the Lordship or Kingdom of God, He also recognises this vocation as the special ordinance of God for Himself, and His activity in the fulfilment of it as service rendered to God in God’s own cause. Since His consciousness of His vocation adjusts itself to these conditions, He is led to frame a conception of self-preservation which is not at variance with that consciousness but in harmony with it, and therefore is fitted to throw light upon His bearing under suffering. The saying in John, which carries in itself the proof of its genuineness, “ My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work ” (iv. 34, cf. xvii. 4), applies to His particular vocation; for θέλημα, in other applications also, usually refers to the particular. The task assigned to Jesus, therefore, is a course of conduct in which the content is conceived as the work of God Himself, because the aim represents God’s innermost purpose. The execution of this purpose serves Jesus as meat, that is, as the means of self-preservation, and therefore as satisfaction. The joy He has in it, the sense of harmony with God and with Himself (xv. 11; xvii. 13), follows inevitably from the lively experience of the worth of His vocation for Himself. He found in it a spiritual self-preservation, which approved itself in the clear anticipation of continuance after death (x. 18), and thus, even when the hope of restored life retreated before the actual terrors of death, He still could not be swayed by any value attaching to the preservation of the natural life. The above saying, moreover, likewise displays the characteristic feature of the consciousness of a vocation wherever found, namely, that the more general content of the vocation is always embraced within the category of the personal self-end, and lends to the spiritual self a support which makes it more or less independent of the conditions of natural existence in the world. Every degree of moral loyalty to a vocation overcomes the world, inasmuch as it evokes patience to endure the opposing influences that come from the world, that is, the evils of life—in other words, to subordinate these unavoidable experiences to our own personal freedom. But it is in Christ that we perceive the widest application of this, and our perception of it in Him is the source from which we draw the corresponding principle.

And thus what Christ says in that sentence from John would approve itself as valid for Him, even although we sought no other light upon His life than what is afforded us by the idea of vocation in general, and the vocation of Christ in particular. But the present investigation was undertaken with the view of obtaining the correct ethical judgment upon the Person of Christ, in so far as the ethical point of view is taken in formal opposition to the religious. We have found, however, that an ethical judgment of Jesus in the light of His unique vocation to establish the Kingdom of God, if it follow His own judgment of Himself, runs out into a religious judgment, namely, His religious judgment of His own Person. Therefore, also, in our own thinking on this matter, the religious estimate of Christ must not be set over against the ethical, but added to it, as that without which it would not be complete. The question arises as to what is implied in this view. If the life-work of Christ is the work of God, this involves the assumption that the personal self-end of Christ has the same content as is contained in the self-end of God, which content Christ knew and adopted as such, in accordance with the fact that He was already known and loved by God Himself as the Bearer of the Divine self-end. This statement, which essentially coincides with Matt. xi. 27, is inevitable, if we hold to the position that a universal ethical Kingdom of God is the supreme end of God Himself in the world, if we admit that historically this idea first received shape through Christ, and if we are not satisfied with the vague conception of a wholly accidental relation between God and the world, especially the moral world. Now the freedom and independence of a man’s conduct in pursuit of the supreme end of the Kingdom of God is proof that at bottom, and in a way suited to the human spirit, we are dependent upon God (p. 293); therefore Christ, in the exercise of His particular vocation, must certainly be regarded, not merely as independent of all the world, but as upheld by God. Since, however, as the Founder of the Kingdom of God in the world, in other words, as the Bearer of God’s ethical lordship over men, He occupies a unique position toward all who have received a like aim from Him, therefore He is that Being in the world in Whose self-end God makes effective and manifest after an original manner His own eternal self-end, Whose whole activity, therefore, in discharge of His vocation, forms the material of that complete revelation of God which is present in Him, in Whom, in short, the Word of God is a human person.

The problem here presented to theology is solved when we have shown that there is no contradiction between the ethical and the religious apprehension of Christ, that the former finds its necessary complement in the latter, and that there is nothing here inconsistent either with the Christian idea of God, or with the complete conception of moral freedom. The origin of the Person of Christ—how His Person attained the form in which it presents itself to our ethical and religious apprehension—is not a subject for theological inquiry, because the problem transcends all inquiry. What ecclesiastical tradition offers us in this connection is obscure in itself, and therefore is not fitted to make anything clear. As Bearer of the perfect revelation, Christ is given us that we may believe on Him. When we do believe on Him, we find Him to be the Revealer of God. But the correlation of Christ with God His Father is not a scientific explanation. And as a theologian one ought to know that the fruitless clutching after such explanations only serves to obscure the recognition of Christ as the perfect revelation of God.

§ 49. On the other hand, we find our results verified in certain aspects of the life-work of Christ, which already incidentally have come more or less within our view. The Kingdom of God, the realisation of which forms the vocation of Christ, signifies not merely the correlate of the self-end of God, but also the goal that constitutes the highest destiny of man. Christ, therefore, would not have rightly or fully apprehended His vocation if He had not known that He was under obligation (Mark x. 42–45) to serve those whom, as the new religious community, He undertook to train for that destiny, and that this obligatory service, this obedience toward God, is the specific form of that lordship which He both acquires and exercises over men. Now in the idea of obligation the moral law is identical with the moral self-determination of the individual. For the sense of obligation—the subjective judgment that, in a particular and definitely limited case, it is necessary to act in accordance with the moral law, or some particular moral principle—is as much due to the moral disposition of the individual, as it is derived from the universal law. If, then, Christ was conscious that, in the exercise of His vocation, even in the resultant sufferings and voluntarily endured death, He was under obligation to serve men for their highest good, it follows, further, that here He obeyed love as His impelling motive. For love is the abiding disposition to further spiritual personalities in regard to their proper self-end, under the condition that in so doing we recognise and are seeking to attain our own self-end (p. 277). This condition is evidently present in the case of Christ, since He could never have adopted as His vocation the founding of the Kingdom of God, if He had not regarded the loftiest possible destiny for mankind as the goal of His work, which He pursued for His own sake. And indeed the whole picture which has come down to us of the life of Christ reveals the loftiness of His love, and His lordship over friends and foes alike is made the more conspicuous by the fact that, even in the circle of those who stood nearest Him, He found no fitting help or support from any reliable or constant love toward Himself. In a certain quarter of theological speculation, we are met by the principle that perfect love requires the similar mutual relation of two personal wills. In so far as love is the principle of perfect fellowship between two personal beings, this may be true. But the perfect love, as motive power and guiding principle of the individual will, is independent of responsive love (Matt. v. 46); on the contrary, just there, where it meets with no answering love, perfect love proves in every possible case its peculiar sublimity. Such a case is the experience which befell Christ when those to whom He devoted His service, and whom He sought to save, on the one hand repelled Him in every possible manner, and on the other hand so imperfectly understood Him, that even the devotion of His most devoted disciples brought Him no return for the strain upon His own spririt. I do not need to complete in any further detail the picture of Christ’s life to elicit the admission that the formula offered us by John—“ grace and truth ”—reflects most aptly the impression made by the personal conduct of Christ. For this is the type of love which reaches far beyond all possible return, and in the face of every rebuff persists unchanged. Inasmuch, then, as the love of Christ maintains its supremacy in all possible service, and even in the face of every hindrance, bent ever on the realisation of the Kingdom of God—that goal in which is attained, so far as God is love, God’s own self-end—it follows that the “ grace and truth ” in Christ’s whole activity is the specific and complete revelation of God. This result not only corresponds with the reflection of John, but also makes clear that the revelation of God in Christ, when referred to the technical notion of the Divine Word, surpasses those revelations which are given in creation, in the illumination of the nations, and in His presentation of Himself through the name Jahve. For in the characteristic activity of Christ in the discharge of His vocation, the essential will of God is revealed as love, since Christ’s supreme aim, namely, the Kingdom of God, is identical with the supreme end of the Father. At the same time, however, we must understand John to mean that the exhaustive comprehension of Divine revelation in one human personality reckons on no other test than this “ grace and truth,” which, according to Old Testament standards, expresses the essential will of God. If these, then, are the criteria by which the conception of Christ’s Godhead is framed, it follows that John does not mean us to seek in Christ for the Divine attributes of omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, which, it is said, ought also, or even first of all, to occupy our regard. In so far as the Divine Revelation or Word of God is active in this personality, or is to be conceived as the form of its activity, the point at issue is clearly the definition of God’s being. Since the being of God is spirit, and will, and above all love, it can therefore become effective in a human life, for human nature as such is laid on the lines of spirit, will, and love. On the other hand, the relation of God to the world, in so far as God creates and rules the world, could not be brought to direct manifestation in a human life, which is itself part of the world.

This remark, however, is confronted by the statement of Jesus that all things have been delivered unto Him of the Father (Matt. xi. 27), a statement which does not, it is true, denote an inborn omnipotence, but which does describe power over the world as something the possession of which Jesus claims for Himself, in virtue of Divine bestowal. This declaration cannot be got rid of by saying that it sounds too Johannine to be authentic. For on the whole it stands on no loftier level than when Jesus declares His intention to exercise that lordship of God over the people of Israel which till then had been looked for in vain. With the appearance of the lordship of God there is bound up, in the prophetic vision of the future, the further prospect of a transformation of the natural world. As the expectations of the prophets were the norm by which Jesus formed His own conception of His vocation, it is a logical consequence that He should be convinced of a unique relation of His own Person to the world. The religion of the Old Testament represents the one spiritual God as the Creator and Ruler of the whole world; since the religious community of Israel obeys God and serves Him, it knows itself called not only to lordship over the other nations, but also to the unfettered enjoyment of natural good, which is protected through Divine appointment from the ordinary experiences of the opposite. This, however, betrays an inconsistency in Israel’s view of the world, an imperfection in its very nature. For while the Divine purpose in the world is bound up with the naturally conditioned unity of the Israelitish nation, the position of this nation in the world is made dependent upon legal and political conditions and material advantages, which as such are of a mundane order, and do not correspond to the supramundane position of the one God. Thus there was forced upon Israel the necessity of always postponing to a future, which never became present, the reconciliation between its position in the world and God. Jesus rose above this standpoint, and introduced a new religion, by setting free the lordship of the supramundane God from national and political limitations, as well as from the expectation of material well-being, and by advancing its significance for mankind to a spiritual and ethical union, which at once corresponds to the spirituality of God, and denotes the supramundane end of spiritual creatures. But since Christ in this achievement of His life is at once the Revealer of God in the full sense, and also a man who according to His knowledge of God worships God and serves Him, it is a logical consequence that He asserts for Himself a position toward the world which corresponds to the idea of the one God and to the worth of God’s spiritual Kingdom. If this latter, in the way Christ began to realise it, is the final aim of the whole world, it follows that the whole world is subject to Christ. The peculiar character of the religion founded by Christ depends, therefore, of necessity upon the fact that He whom God knows, and Who has perfect knowledge of God, asserts supremacy over the world.

But the correctness of this assertion must be further tested by the definite content of Christ’s life; for a mere claim upon the future would not be commensurate with the gravity of this assertion. As a matter of fact, it does not prove to be true in the sense that Christ had the whole fixed system of things at His arbitrary disposal. For the support of His material existence He was dependent on all the fixed conditions of human life. Even His power of miracle did not go so far as to make trial of itself in any alteration of the great mechanism of the world, such as the expectation of the prophets had associated with the setting up of the Kingdom of God (Matt. xvi. 1–4). The miraculous power of which He was conscious (Mark vi. 5, 6), and which He reckoned part of His equipment for His vocation (Matt. xii. 28), is exercised within a much more limited sphere. But even if this fact were less evident than it is, the narratives are not of a kind to allow us to discover any rule as to how far the supremacy of Christ’s will over external nature actually extended, the more so that we have no similar experiences at our command to disclose to us the psychical and physical grounds of Christ’s miraculous power. Not in itself, but because of the enforced lack of the means of explanation, this is a sphere which does not lend itself to scientific investigation.

However, the significance of the supremacy which Christ asserted over the world is not affected thereby, nor is our comprehension of this attribute rendered impossible. If, as we cannot but assume, this attribute stands in connection with the religious destiny of man, as that destiny was first realised by Christ Himself, we may expect that Christ’s position of supremacy toward the world finds application also to other men, who, within His community and in accordance with the view of the world which He proclaimed, enter into that relation to God which was His aim for them, and which has been made possible to them through Him. This expectation is met by the statement in Mark viii. 35–37. This statement reveals the supramundane worth, that is, the worth as against the whole world, of the spiritual life of each individual man, and shows the way in which this entirely new perception attains objective reality. For the assuring of life against death, even when for Christ’s sake life is renounced, is a specific test of that supremacy over the world upon which we enter through Christ, since death is our most painful experience of the instability of all the elements of this world, among which, from the natural point of view, each human individual is reckoned. The practical echo of this rule is supplied by the triumphant conviction of Paul—“ All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s ” (1 Cor. iii. 22, 23); “ I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord ” (Rom. viii. 38, 39). This independence of the religious consciousness over against the world, and the supremacy over the world which is to be realised within the sphere of this religion, are identical. Every expression of independence is an evidence of supremacy in one particular department of life. Now, in this positive freedom of the Christian, which is derived expressly from fellowship with Christ and subordination to Him and to God, the real point is not power to effect material changes in the mechanical stability of the world and in the fixed conditions of the social order, but a changed estimate of all the relations of natural and historical life. For, since the Christian life is determined by the supreme supernatural end of God, all other possible motives and impulses which, in the order of nature, and amid the ordinary and natural conditions of human society, can affect human life in the way of creating dissatisfaction, are either rendered powerless or are made subordinate to that supreme motive. Thus the Christian in this present life, in spite of his lowly, helpless, suffering state, has experience through his faith of an exaltation and riches (Jas. i. 9), which are to be understood as a position of supremacy and an amplitude of power, inasmuch as reconciliation with the supramundane God is consummated by a power over the world akin to His.