§ 92. The peculiar activity and the exclusive dignity of the Redeemer imply each other, and are inseparably one in the self-consciousness of believers. 1. Whether we prefer to call Christ the Redeemer, or to regard Him as the one in Whom the creation of human nature, which up to this point had existed only in a provisional state, was perfected, each of these points of view means only that we ascribe to Him a peculiar activity, and that in connexion with a peculiar spiritual content of His person. For if His influence is only of the same kind as that of others, even if it is ever so much more complete and inclusive, then its result also, that is, the salvation of mankind, would be a work common to Him and the others, although His share might be the greater; and there would be, not one Redeemer over against the redeemed, but many, of whom one would only be the First among those like Him. Nor would the human creation then be completed through Him, but through all of those redeemers together, who, in so far as their work implies in them a peculiar quality of nature, are all alike distinguished from the rest of mankind. It would be just the same, if His activity were indeed peculiar to Himself, but this less in virtue of an inner quality belonging to Him than of a peculiar position in which He had been put. The second form of expression, that the human creation had been completed in Him, would then be altogether without content, since it would be more natural to suppose that there are many like Him, only they did not happen to occupy the same position. In that case He would not even be properly Redeemer, even though it could be said that mankind had been redeemed through His act or His suffering, as the case might be. For the result, namely, salvation, could not be something communicated from Him (since He had nothing peculiar to Himself); it could only have been occasioned or released by Him.

Just as little could the approximation to the condition of blessedness be traced to Him, if He had indeed had an exclusive dignity, but had remained passive in it, and had exercised no influence corresponding to it. For (apart from the fact that it is incomprehensible how His contemporaries, and we after them, should ever have come to attribute such an influence to Him, especially when the manner of His appearance was what it was), supposing that the blessedness could have been communicated merely through men’s observing this dignity, although there were united with it no influence acting on others, then in the observers there must have been something more than receptivity; His appearance would have to be regarded rather as merely the occasion for this idea, spontaneously produced by themselves.

2. Thus the approximation to blessedness, out of the state of misery, cannot be explained as a fact mediated through Jesus, by reference to either of these elements without the other. It follows, therefore, that they must be most intimately related and mutually determined. So that it is vain to attribute to the Redeemer a higher dignity than the activity at the same time ascribed to Him demands, since nothing is explained by this surplus of dignity. It is equally vain to attribute to Him a greater activity than follows naturally from the dignity which one is ready to allow to Him, since whatever results from this surplus of activity cannot be traced to Him in the same sense as the rest. Therefore every doctrine of Christ is inconsistent, in which this equality (of dignity and activity) is not essential, whether it seeks to disguise the detraction from the dignity by praising in Him great but really alien activities, or, conversely, seeks to compensate for the lesser influence which it allows Him by highly exalting Him, yet in a fashion which leads to no result.

3. If we hold fast to this rule, we could treat the whole doctrine of Christ either as that of His activity, for then the dignity must naturally follow from that, or as that of His dignity, for the activity must then result of itself. This is indicated by the two general formulæ above. For that the creation of human nature has been completed in His person is in and by itself only a description of His dignity, greater or less, according as the difference between the condition before and after is regarded as greater or less; but the activity follows of itself, if indeed the creation is to continue to exist. Again, that He is the Redeemer similarly describes His activity, but the dignity follows of itself to just the same degree. Nevertheless, it is not advisable to choose one of these methods of treatment to the exclusion of the other; this would involve at once both giving up the (traditional) language of the Church, and making a comparison between our statements and other treatments of doctrine more difficult. Some of the churchly formulæ deal with the activity of Christ; others are concerned with His dignity; hence the strongest assurance that the two classes agree is to be found in the fact that the subject should be treated separately from both standpoints. The more what is peculiar in each of them is related to the other, the more probable it is that the propositions which are laid down reproduce with purity an original self-consciousness. The common measure of both, namely, the extent to which activity and dignity are embraced in one presentation, is to be found in the first place in the presentation of the result in individual lives, and next in the presentation of the Church, which must be just as complete a revelation of the dignity of the Redeemer as the world is a complete revelation of the attributes of God.

This division falls accordingly into two doctrines—that of the Person of Christ, and that of His Work. These two are quite different so far as the individual propositions are concerned, but their total content is the same; from each point of view the content both of the second division and of the second section may be regarded as that which came to pass through Christ.

§ 93. If the spontaneity of the new corporate life is original in the Redeemer and proceeds from Him alone, then as an historical individual He must have been at the same time ideal (i.e. the ideal must have become completely historical in Him), and each historical moment of His experience must at the same time have borne within it the ideal. 1. If the peculiar dignity of the Redeemer can be measured only by His total activity as resting upon that dignity, while this activity can be seen in its completeness only in the corporate life He founded; if, further, on the one hand, all other religious communities are destined to pass over into this one, so that all religious life existing apart from this is imperfect, whereas in this there is perfection; if, on the other hand, this life itself, at all times and even in its highest development, has no other relation to the Redeemer than that which has been indicated above,³ so that it can be all that it is only in virtue of its susceptibility to His influence: then the dignity of the Redeemer must be thought of in such a way that He is capable of achieving this. But inasmuch as His activity, so far as we can relate it directly and exclusively to His person, is to be considered in the first place in His public life, but in this life there are no conspicuous isolated acts which definitely stood out in separation from the rest of it, the true manifestation of His dignity, which is identical with His activity in the founding of a community, lies not in isolated moments, but in the whole course of His life. These are the two truths which, in our proposition, are not simply laid down but are also fully and at every point related to each other.

2. Now, if we live in the Christian fellowship, with the conviction which is common to all Christians, that no more perfect form of the God-consciousness lies in front of the human race, and that any new form would simply be a retrograde step; and, further, that every increase in the activity of the God-consciousness within the Christian fellowship proceeds, not from any newly-added power, but always and only from an ever-active susceptibility to His influence, clearly every given state of this corporate life must remain no more than an approximation to that which exists in the Redeemer Himself; and just this is what we understand by His ideal dignity. But this corporate life is not concerned with the multifarious relationships of human life—as though Christ must have been ideal for all knowledge or all art and skill which have been developed in human society—but only with the capacity of the God-consciousness to give the impulse to all life’s experiences and to determine them. Hence we do not make the ideality of the Redeemer cover more than this. To this, it is true, it might still be objected that, since the potency of the God-consciousness in the corporate life itself remains always imperfect at best, we must certainly attribute an exemplary (vorbildliche) dignity to the Redeemer, but ideality (Urbildlichkeit) (which, properly, asserts the existence of the concept itself), that is, absolute perfection, is not necessarily to be attributed to Him, not even according to the principle laid down above, for it is not necessary to explain the result, which always remains imperfect. Rather, it might be argued, this is the fundamental exaggeration into which believers fall when they regard Christ in the mirror of their own imperfection; and this exaggeration continually perpetuates itself in the same manner, since believers in all ages read into Jesus whatever they are able to conceive as ideal in this sphere. But in this connexion there are two things to be observed. First, that on this view (if clearly realized) there must be developed at least a wish—for the absolutely perfect is always at least an object of aspiration—the more the individual subordinates his personal consciousness to the God-consciousness, even a hope, that some day the human race, if only in its noblest and best, will pass beyond Christ and leave Him behind. But this clearly marks the end of Christian faith, which on the contrary knows no other way to a pure conception of the ideal than an ever-deepening understanding of Christ. If, on the other hand, this consequence is not consciously realized, or is definitely rejected, then this limitation of the ideal to the merely exemplary can only be a misunderstood rule of prudence, the apparent ground for which will reveal itself later. Second, we must reflect, on the one hand, that as soon as we grant the possibility of a continued progress in the potency of the God-consciousness, while denying that its perfection exists anywhere, we can also no longer maintain that the creation of man has been or will be completed, since undoubtedly in progress thus continual perfection remains always only a bare possibility. And this would be to assert less of man than of other creatures—for it may be said of all more limited kinds of being that their concept is perfectly realized in the totality of individuals, which complete each other. But this cannot hold of a species which develops itself freely, if the perfection of an essential vital function be posited in the concept but actually found in no individual; for perfection cannot be obtained by adding together things that are imperfect. And, on the other hand, it is to be considered how difficult it would necessarily be to indicate a difference between a true ideal and such an example in which there at the same time resides the power to produce every possible advance in the totality. For productivity belongs only to the concept of the ideal and not to that of the exemplary. We must conclude, then, that ideality is the only appropriate expression for the exclusive personal dignity of Christ.

With regard to the above statement, however, that the thought either of desire or of ability to go beyond Christ marks the end of the Christian faith, here, too, it is not easy to distinguish, among the various conceptions of it which leave room for the perfectibility of Christianity, between those which, although they do not seem so, nevertheless are still Christian, and those which are not, yet wish to pass as such. Everyone recognizes that there is a great difference between two classes. There are those who say it is not only possible but our duty to go beyond much of what Christ taught His disciples, because He Himself (since human thought is impossible without words) was seriously hindered by the imperfection of language from giving real expression to the innermost content of His spiritual being in clearly defined thoughts; and the same, it may be held, is true in another sense of His actions also, in which the relations by which they were determined, and therefore imperfection, are always reflected. This, however, does not prevent us from attributing to Him absolute ideality in His inner being, in the sense that that inner being may always transcend its manifestation, and what is manifested be only an ever more perfect presentation of it. But there is another class: those who are of opinion that Christ is no more even in His inner being than could be manifested of it, while the fellowship of doctrine and life which takes its origin from Christ, with the testimonies to Him which it preserves, has in virtue of special divine guidance so fortunate an organization that both doctrine and life can easily be re-modelled in accordance with any more perfect ideal which later generations might conceive, without the fellowship needing to lose its historical identity, so that the necessity of founding new religious fellowships has been for all time done away. A single step more, and even the first presuppositions of the Christian faith will be removed; and that step may quite consistently be taken. For if Christ was so much under the constraint of what was necessarily involved in His appearance in history, then both He Himself, and His whole achievement as well, must be capable of being explained simply by what was historically given Him. That is, Christianity in its entirety can be explained by Judaism at the stage of development which it had then reached—the stage at which it was possible for a man like Jesus to be born of it. Accordingly, Christianity was nothing but a new development of Judaism, though a development saturated with foreign philosophies then current, and Jesus was nothing but a more or less original and revolutionary reformer of the Jewish law.

3. But however certain it may be that the source of such a corporate life, continually advancing in the power of its God-consciousness, can lie only in the ideal, it is not on that account any easier to understand just how the ideal can have been revealed and manifested in a truly historically-conditioned individual. Even generally considered, we are compelled to keep the two ideas separate, and, whether we are speaking of works of art or of the forms of nature, we regard each separate one only as a complement of the rest and as requiring completion by them. But if sin is posited as a corporate act of the human race, what possibility then remains that an ideal individual could have developed out of this corporate life? The way of escape, which suggests that the ideal might be produced by human thought and transferred more or less arbitrarily to Jesus, is already cut off. In that case Christianity would be founded upon an imperfect ideal; it would therefore have to give up its claim to take up into itself all forms of faith and to develop out of itself more and more perfection and blessedness. But if our aim is to make room in human nature before Christ, and apart from Him, for the power of producing within itself a pure and perfect ideal—then human nature, since there is a natural connexion between reason and will, cannot have been in a condition of universal sinfulness. Hence, if the man Jesus was really ideal, or if the ideal became historical and actual in Him—the one expression means the same as the other—in order to establish a new corporate life within the old and out of it, then certainly He must have entered into the corporate life of sinfulness, but He cannot have come out of it, but must be recognized in it as a miraculous fact (eine wunderbare Erscheinung), and yet (in harmony with the analogies established above)⁴ only in the meaning of the word ‘miracle’ which has here once for all been determined. His peculiar spiritual content, that is, cannot be explained by the content of the human environment to which He belonged, but only by the universal source of spiritual life in virtue of a creative divine act in which, as an absolute maximum, the conception of man as the subject of the God-consciousness comes to completion. But since we can never properly understand the beginnings of life, full justice is done to the demand for the perfect historicity of this perfect ideal, if, from then on, He developed in the same way as all others, so that from birth on His powers gradually unfolded, and, from the zero point of His appearance onwards, were developed to completeness in the order natural to the human race. This applies also to His God-consciousness, with which we are here specially concerned; which certainly, in the case of others as little as in His, is infused by education—the germ of it is found originally in all—but which in Him too, as in all, had to develop gradually in human fashion into a really manifest consciousness, and antecedently was only present as a germ, although in a certain sense always present as an active power. So even during this period of development, after it had actually become a consciousness, it could exert its influence over the sensuous self-consciousness only in the measure in which the various functions of the latter had already emerged, and thus, even regarded from this side, it appeared as itself something that was only gradually unfolding to its full extent. If we make the mistake of thinking that, on account of His ideal nature, we must deny this and assume that from the very beginnings of His life He carried the God-consciousness as such within Himself—then from the very outset He must have been conscious of Himself as an Ego; indeed (the deduction is very simple), He must have been master of language from the first, at least so far as its more abstract part is concerned, and before He ever spoke; thus His whole earliest childhood must have been mere appearance. This excludes the thought of a true human life and quite definitely adopts the error of Docetism; and on these terms we should have to separate in time that in which Christ is like all men from what in Him is ideal, allotting to the former the whole period of development up to the beginning of mature manhood, and only then allowing the ideal to come in over and above. But this latter is then inconceivable without an absolute miracle. Nay more, sin too would then, at that earlier stage, be at least possible in Him, and therefore also certainly actually present, even if only in the faintest degree; and thus Jesus would be Redeemer and redeemed in one person—with all the further consequences of that.

The pure historicity of the person of the Redeemer, however, involves also this fact, that He could develop only in a certain similarity with His surroundings, that is, in general after the manner of His people. For since mind and understanding drew their nourishment solely from this surrounding world, and His free self-activity too had in this world its determined place, even His God-consciousness, however original its higher powers, could only express or communicate itself in ideas which He had appropriated from this sphere, and in actions which as to their possibility were predetermined in it.⁵ If we wished to deny this dependence of development upon surroundings, we should logically have to assume an empirical omniscience in Christ, in virtue of which all human forms of thought, as well as languages, would have been equally familiar to Him, so that He would have lived in whatever is true and right in each of these just as much as in that of His native land. We should also have to add the same omniscience relatively to the various human relationships and their management. And this, too, would mean the loss of true humanity.

4. Further, whatever is involved in the ideality of the contents of His personal spiritual life must also be compatible with this purely human conception of His historical existence. Thus, in the first place, His development must be thought of as wholly free from everything which we have to conceive as conflict. For it is not possible that, where an inner conflict has ever at any time taken place, the traces of it should ever disappear completely. Just as little could the ideal have been recognized as present where even the slightest traces of this conflict betrayed themselves. The power with which the God-consciousness, so far as it was developed at each particular moment, determined that moment could never have been in doubt, or disturbed by the memory of an earlier conflict. Nor could He ever have found Himself in a condition through which a conflict could have been occasioned in the future, that is, there could have been in Him, even from the beginning, no inequality in the relation of the various functions of sensuous human nature to the God-consciousness. Thus at every moment even of His period of development He must have been free from everything by which the rise of sin in the individual is conditioned.⁶ Two things, further, are quite well possible together: first, that all powers, both the lower ones which were to be mastered and the controlling higher ones, emerged only in gradual development, so that the latter were able to dominate the former only in the measure of their development; and, secondly, that the domination itself was nevertheless at each moment complete in the sense that nothing was ever able to find a place in the sense-nature which did not instantly take its place as an instrument of the spirit, so that no impression was taken up merely sensuously into the innermost consciousness and elaborated apart from God-consciousness into an element of life, nor did any action, that can really be regarded as such, and as a real whole, ever proceed solely from the sense-nature and not from the God-consciousness. What we could lay down above⁷ only as a possibility, namely, a sinless development of a human individual life, must have become actual in the person of the Redeemer in virtue of this undisturbed identity of the relationship, so that we can represent the growth of His personality from earliest childhood on to the fulness of manhood as a continuous transition from the condition of purest innocence to one of purely spiritual fulness of power, which is far removed from anything which we call virtue. For in the condition of innocence there is an activity of the God-consciousness, but only an indirect one, which, though still latently, restrains every movement in the sense-experience which must develop into opposition. The nearest approximation to this, which not seldom occurs in our experience, we usually call ‘a happy childlike nature.’ The adult fulness of power, on the other hand, although its growth is gradual and the result of practice, is distinguished from virtue in this respect, that it is not the result of a conflict, inasmuch as it does not need to be worked out either through error or through sin, nor even through an inclination to either. And this purity must on no account be regarded as a consequence of outward protection, but must have its ground in the Man Himself, that is, in the higher God-consciousness implanted in Him originally. Otherwise, since such outward protection depends upon the actions of others, the ideal in Him would be produced rather than productive, and He Himself would be just as much the first from the totality redeemed, as afterwards Himself the Redeemer.

Secondly, so far as what is conditioned by race in His person is concerned, Christ could hardly be a complete man if His personality were not determined by this factor; but such determination in no way concerns the real principle of His life but only the organism. Racial peculiarity is in no way the type of His self-activity; it is only the type of His receptivity for the self-activity of the spirit; nor can it have been like a repelling or exclusive principle in Him, but must have been united with the freest and most unclouded appreciation of everything human, and with the recognition of the identity of nature and also of spirit in all human forms; also it must have been without any effort to extend what in Him was racial beyond its appointed limits. And it is only when we have guarded ourselves thus that we can say that the racial too in Him is ideally determined, both in itself and in its relation to the whole of human nature.

5. Here we can only call attention in passing and by anticipation to the influence which this conception of the ideality of the Redeemer in the perfectly natural historicity of His career exercises on all the Christian doctrines current in the Church, all of which must be formulated differently if that conception more or less is given up. To begin with, the fact that all doctrines and precepts developed in the Christian Church have universal authority only through their being traced back to Christ, has no other ground than His perfect ideality in everything connected with the power of the God-consciousness. In so far as this is set aside, there must be conceded a possibility of doctrines and precepts arising in the sphere of piety which go beyond the utterances of Christ. Similarly, the preaching of the written word, in so far as it contains only glorification of Christ, and the sacrament of the altar, can be regarded as permanent institutions in the Christian Church only if we premise that the whole development and maintenance of Christian piety must always proceed from vital fellowship with Christ. Nor could Christ be presented as a universal example unless His relation to all original differences in individuals were uniform—for otherwise He would necessarily be more of an example for some than for others. This only becomes possible through His ideality. But just as little could He be a universal example, unless every moment of His life were ideal. Otherwise it would be necessary first to distinguish the ideal from the non-ideal, which could only be done according to an external law, which (it follows) would be superior to Him. That law would come in, unless (as His ideality implies) what is racially determined in Him had been limited; otherwise we should have to consent to adopt into the Christian norm of life all that is simply Jewish in His life. Moreover, these points, cardinal for the Christian fellowship, are not doctrines which became current only through later developments; they are the original doctrines of His disciples, closely bound up with the way in which they applied to Jesus the idea of the Messiah, and such as are easily brought into connexion with His own utterances, so far as these are accessible to us.

§ 94. The Redeemer, then, is like all men in virtue of the identity of human nature, but distinguished from them all by the constant potency of His God-consciousness, which was a veritable existence of God in Him. 1. That the Redeemer should be entirely free from all sinfulness is no objection at all to the complete identity of human nature in Him and others, for we have already⁸ laid down that sin is so little an essential part of the being of man that we can never regard it as anything else than a disturbance of nature. It follows that the possibility of a sinless development is in itself not incongruous with the idea of human nature; indeed, this possibility is involved, and recognized, in the consciousness of sin as guilt, as that is universally understood. This likeness, however, is to be understood in such a general sense that even the first man before the first sin stood no nearer the Redeemer, and was like Him in no higher sense, than all other men. For if even in the life of the first man we must assume a time when sin had not yet appeared, yet every first appearance of sin leads back to a sinful preparation.⁹ But the Redeemer too shared in the same vicissitudes of life, without which we can hardly imagine the entrance of sin at a definite moment even in Adam, for they are essential to human nature. Furthermore, the first man was originally free from all the contagious influences of a sinful society, while the Redeemer had to enter into the corporate life when it had already advanced far in deterioration, so that it would hardly be possible to attribute His sinlessness to external protection—which we certainly must somehow admit in the case of the first man, if we would not involve ourselves in contradictions. Of the Redeemer, on the contrary, we must hold that the ground of His sinlessness was not external to Himself, but that it was a sinlessness essentially grounded in Himself, if He was to take away, through what He was in Himself, the sinfulness of the corporate life. Therefore, so far as sin is concerned, Christ differs no less from the first man than from all others.

The identity of human nature further involves this, that the manner in which Christ differs from all others also has its place in this identity. This would not be the case if it were not involved in human nature that individuals, so far as the measure of the different functions is concerned, are originally different from each other, so that to every separate corporate life (regarded in space as well as in time) there belong those who are more and less gifted; and we only arrive at the truth of life when we thus correlate those who differ from each other. In the same way, therefore, all those who in any respect give character to an age or a district are bound up with those over whom (as being defective in that particular respect) they extend an educative influence, even as Christ is bound up with those whom His preponderatingly powerful God-consciousness links to the corporate life thus indicated. The greater the difference, and the more specific the activity, the more must these also have established themselves against the hindering influences of a worthless environment, and they can be understood only by reference to this self-differentiating quality of human nature,¹⁰ not by reference to the group in which they stand; although by divine right they belong to it, as the Redeemer does to the whole race.

2. But in admitting that what is peculiar in the Redeemer’s kind of activity belongs to a general aspect of human nature, we by no means wish to reduce this activity, and the personal dignity by which it is conditioned, to the same measure as that of others. The simple fact that faith in Christ postulates a relation on His part to the whole race, while everything analogous is valid only for definite individual times and places, is sufficient to prove this. For no one has yet succeeded, in any sphere of science or art, and no one will ever succeed, in establishing himself as head, universally animating and sufficient for the whole human race.

For this peculiar dignity of Christ, however, in the sense in which we have already referred back the ideality of His person to this spiritual function of the God-consciousness implanted in the self-consciousness, the terms of our proposition alone are adequate; for to ascribe to Christ an absolutely powerful God-consciousness, and to attribute to Him an existence of God in Him, are exactly the same thing. The expression, ‘the existence of God in anyone,’ can only express the relation of the omnipresence of God to this one. Now since God’s existence can only be apprehended as pure activity, while every individualized existence is merely an intermingling of activity and passivity—the activity being always found apportioned to this passivity in every other individualized existence—there is, so far, no existence of God in any individual thing, but only an existence of God in the world. And only if the passive conditions are not purely passive, but mediated through vital receptivity, and this receptivity confronts the totality of finite existence (so far, i.e., as we can say of the individual as a living creature that, in virtue of the universal reciprocity, it in itself represents the world), could we suppose an existence of God in it. Hence this clearly does not hold of what is individualized as an unconscious thing; for since an unconscious thing brings no living receptivity to meet all the forces of consciousness it cannot represent these forces in itself. But just as little and for the same reason can what is conscious but not intelligent represent them, so that it is only in the rational individual that an existence of God can be admitted. How far this is also true similarly and without distinction if we regard reason as functioning in objective consciousness lies outside our investigation. But so far as the rational self-consciousness is concerned, it is certain that the God-consciousness which (along with the self-consciousness) belongs to human nature originally, before the Redeemer and apart from all connexion with Him, cannot fittingly be called an existence of God in us, not only because it was not a pure God-consciousness (either in polytheism or even in Jewish monotheism, which was everywhere tinctured with materialistic conceptions, whether cruder or finer), but also because, such as it was, it did not assert itself as activity, but in these religions was always dominated by the sensuous self-consciousness. If, then, it was able neither to portray God purely and with real adequacy in thought, nor yet to exhibit itself as pure activity, it cannot be represented as an existence of God in us. But just as the unconscious forces of nature and non-rational life become a revelation of God to us only so far as we bring that conception with us, so also that darkened and imperfect God-consciousness by itself is not an existence of God in human nature, but only in so far as we bring Christ with us in thought and relate it to Him. So that originally it is found nowhere but in Him, and He is the only ‘other’ in which there is an existence of God in the proper sense, so far, that is, as we posit the God-consciousness in His self-consciousness as continually and exclusively determining every moment, and consequently also this perfect indwelling of the Supreme Being as His peculiar being and His inmost self. Indeed, working backwards we must now say, if it is only through Him that the human God-consciousness becomes an existence of God in human nature, and only through the rational nature that the totality of finite powers can become an existence of God in the world, that in truth He alone mediates all existence of God in the world and all revelation of God through the world, in so far as He bears within Himself the whole new creation which contains and develops the potency of the God-consciousness.

3. But if as a person of this kind He needs to have the whole human development in common with us, so that even this existence of God must in Him have had a development in time, and as the most spiritual element in His personality could only emerge into manifestation after the lower functions; yet He cannot have entered life as one for whom the foundations of sin had already been laid before His being began to be manifested. We have envisaged this earlier establishment of sin for all of us,¹¹ without entering upon natural-scientific investigations into the origin of the individual life, and the coming together in us (if we may use the phrase) of soul and body, but simply by holding to the general facts of experience; so here, too, we seek to combine with these facts only the relatively supernatural, which we have already admitted in general for the entrance of the Redeemer into the world.

The origin of every human life may be regarded in a twofold manner, as issuing from the narrow circle of descent and society to which it immediately belongs, and as a fact of human nature in general. The more definitely the weaknesses of that narrow circle repeat themselves in an individual, the more valid becomes the first point of view. The more the individual by the kind and-degree of his gifts transcends that circle, and the more he exhibits what is new within it, the more we are thrown back upon the other explanation. This means that the beginning of Jesus’ life cannot in any way be explained by the first factor, but only and exclusively by the second; so that from the beginning He must have been free from every influence from earlier generations which disseminated sin and disturbed the inner God-consciousness, and He can only be understood as an original act of human nature, i.e. as an act of human nature as not affected by sin. The beginning of His life was also a new implanting of the God-consciousness which creates receptivity in human nature; hence this content and that manner of origin are in such a close relation that they mutually condition and explain each other. That new implanting came to be through the beginning of His life, and therefore that beginning must have transcended every detrimental influence of His immediate circle; and because it was such an original and sin-free act of nature, a filling of His nature with God-consciousness became possible as its result. So that upon this relation too the fullest light is thrown if we regard the beginning of the life of Jesus as the completed creation of human nature. The appearance of the first man constituted at the same time the physical life of the human race; the appearance of the Second Adam constituted for this nature a new spiritual life, which communicates and develops itself by spiritual fecundation. And as in the former its originality (which is the condition of the appearance of human nature) and its having emerged from creative divine activity are the same thing, so also in the Redeemer both are the same—His spiritual originality, set free from every prejudicial influence of natural.descent, and that existence of God in Him which also proves itself creative. If the impartation of the Spirit to human nature which was made in the first Adam was insufficient, in that the spirit remained sunk in sensuousness and barely glanced forth clearly at moments as a presentiment of something better, and if the work of creation has only been completed. through the second and equally original impartation to the Second Adam, yet both events go back to one undivided eternal divine decree and form, even in a higher sense, only one and the same natural system, though one unattainable by us.

§ 95. The ecclesiastical formulæ concerning the Person of Christ need to be subjected to continual criticism.

1. The ecclesiastical formulæ are, on the one hand, products of controversy, in that, although the original consciousness was the same in all, yet the thought expressive of it took different forms with different thinkers, according as they linked their presentation of what was new to one or another of the existing conceptions. In this way it was possible for Jewish or heathen elements or presuppositions to creep in, even though it were unconsciously, and to evoke corrective opposition. Even the later development of the original formulæ partly took the same road, in order to guard against misunderstandings which might arise from rhetorical or poetic expressions in doctrinal language; partly it proceeded with that over-subtlety which was later brought to perfection in Scholasticism, and which, utterly disregarding the true interests of Dogmatic, propounded difficult questions simply for the sake of definitions. The result inevitably was that Dogmatic was overloaded with a multitude of definitions, which have absolutely no other relation to the immediate Christian self-consciousness than that indicated by the history of controversy. The realization of this has produced in some minds a distaste for everything which had a controversial origin; they will only admit such expressions as lie outside all controversy and obviate in advance, wherever possible, all future controversy; they are in the keenest antagonism to the tendency of others, who want to retain everything now existing just as it has come to be. So that without a process of elimination and compromise neither adjustment nor progress is possible.

2. For this unavoidable critical process, two rules (in view of the opposing parties) must be adopted. The rule for the one party is this: a thing no longer really exists, but becomes mere matter of history, when it can exercise no further activity owing to the situation to which it properly belonged being no longer present. The rule for the other party is this: if we go back to formulæ which are simple, but just on account of their simplicity are too indefinite for didactic purposes, we gain a merely apparent satisfaction, which lasts only until the disagreement which has remained hidden under the identity of the formula breaks out somewhere or other. The task of the critical process is to hold the ecclesiastical formulæ to strict agreement with the foregoing analysis of our Christian self-consciousness, in order, partly, to judge how far they agree with it at least in essentials, partly (with regard to individual points), to inquire how much of the current form of expression is to be retained, and how much, on the other hand, had better be given up, either because it is an imperfect solution of the problem or because it is an addition not in itself essential, and harmful because the occasion of persistent misunderstandings.

§ 96. First Theorem.—In Jesus Christ divine nature and human nature were combined into one person.

Augsb. Conf., Art. 3: That the two natures, divine and human, inseparably united in one person are One Christ.—Conf. Angl. ii. (p. 127¹²): ita ut duae naturae divina et humana integre atque perfecte in unitate personae fuerint inseparabiliter coniunctae, ex quibus est unus Christus, etc.— Expos. simpl. xi.: Agnoscimus ergo in uno atque eodem domino nostro duas naturas divinam et humanam, et has dicimus conjunctas et unitas esse … in una persona, ita ut unum Christum … veneremur … juxta divinam naturam patri juxta humanam vero nobis hominibus consubstantialem. —Conf. Gallic. xv. p. 116: Credimus in una eademque persona, quae est Jesus Christus, vere et inseparabiliter duas illas naturas sic esse conjunctas ut etiam sint unitae.—Conf. Helv. xi. p. 96: Hic Christus … cum … totum hominem anima et corpore constantem assumsisset, in una individuaque persona duas sed impermixtas naturas—frater noster factus est.— Sol. decl. viii.: Credimus iam in una illa indivisa persona Christi duas esse distinctas naturas divinam videlicet quae ab aeterno est, et humanam quae in tempore assumta est in unitatem personae filii Dei.— Symb. Nic.: Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν, τὸν ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς γεννηθέντα πρὸ πάντων τῶν αἰώνων … θεὸν ἀληθινόν … τὸν δι᾽ ἡμᾶς … κατελθόντα … καὶ σαρκωθέντα, etc. Symb. Quic. 28, 29: … . Quia dominus noster Jesus Christus dei filius Deus pariter et homo est. Deus est ex substantia patris ante secula genitus, homo ex substantia matris in seculo natus.

1. Although only a few of the credal passages quoted here indicate the object of this presentation of the unique personality of the Redeemer, yet it is unmistakable that the tendency is the same as in the propositions so far laid down, namely, to describe Christ in such a way (frater, consubstantialis nobis) that in the new corporate life a vital fellowship between us and Him shall be possible, and, at the same time, that the existence of God in Him shall be expressed in the clearest possible way; from which it follows at once that the most unconditional adoration and brotherly comradeship are united in our relation to Him. With this we are in complete agreement. Yet, on the other hand, there is almost nothing in the execution of this aim against which protest must not be raised, whether we regard the scientific character of the expression or its suitability for ecclesiastical use.

With regard to the first: to begin with, we must warn the reader against the very confusing description of the subject that results when the expression ‘Jesus Christ’ is used, to indicate not only the subject of the union of the two natures (at which point the first four passages properly stop), but also the divine nature of the Redeemer from all eternity before its union with the human nature; so that this union no longer appears as an element that goes to constitute the person, Jesus Christ, but rather as an act of this person Himself. This confusion has, most glaringly, passed over from the two passages drawn from the ancient creeds into the Helvetic Confession.¹³ But the New Testament knows nothing of this usage; even the expression ‘Son of God’ it uses (when it speaks independently) only of the subject of this union,¹⁴ and not of the divine element in it before the union. So our proposition has held to what is correct. The expression ‘Jesus Christ’ itself only became a single proper name originally through misuse (though this happened very early), since properly Christ is only the description of the real dignity added to the proper name; but even in the combination it is obvious that the historical and the ideal are both comprised. But far worse than this ambiguous description of the subject is this (which cannot possibly be justified on any strictly scientific investigation), that the expression ‘nature’ is used indifferently for the divine and the human. Any other expression that was used indifferently of both would lead one to suspect that such a formula was bound to become the source of many confusions. For how can divine and human be thus brought together under any single conception, as if they could both be more exact determinations, co-ordinated to each other, of one and the same universal? Indeed, even divine spirit and human spirit could not without confusion be brought together in this way. But the word ‘nature’ is particularly ill-adapted for such a common use, even if we leave Latin and Greek etymology completely out of account and simply take our stand on our own use of the word. For in one sense we actually oppose God and nature to one another, and hence in this sense cannot attribute a nature to God. Nature in this sense is for us the summary of all finite existence, or, as in the opposition of nature and history, the summary of all that is corporeal, and that goes back to what is elementary, in its various and discrete phenomena, in which all that we so describe is mutually conditioned. Over against this divided and conditioned we set God as the unconditioned and the absolutely simple. But just for this reason we cannot attribute a nature to God in the other sense. For always, whether we use the word generally, as when we speak of animal and vegetable nature, or of an individual, as when we say that a person has a noble or an ignoble nature, always we use it solely of a limited existence, standing in opposition to something else, an existence in which active and passive are bound up together, and which is revealed in a variety of appearances, in the latter case of individuals, in the former of vital factors. And upon closer consideration it is hardly to be denied that this expression, if we go back to the original Greek word,¹⁵ bears in itself traces of heathen influence, though possibly of unconscious influence. For in polytheism, which represents the Godhead as no less split up and divided than finite existence appears to us, the word ‘nature’ has certainly the same meaning in the expression divine nature as it has elsewhere. The fact ought to have been a warning, that the heathen sages themselves had already risen above this imperfect representation of God, and said of Him that He was to be thought of as beyond all existence and being.

It is no better with the relation which is here set forth between nature and person. For in utter contradiction to the use elsewhere, according to which the same nature belongs to many individuals or persons, here one person is to share in two quite different natures. Now if ‘person’ indicates a constant unity of life, but ‘nature’ a sum of ways of action or laws, according to which conditions of life vary and are included within a fixed range, how can the unity of life coexist with the duality of natures, unless the one gives way to the other, if the one exhibits a larger and the other a narrower range, or unless they melt into each other, both systems of ways of action and laws really becoming one in the one life?—if indeed we are speaking of a person, i.e. of an Ego which is the same in all the consecutive moments of its existence. The attempt to make clear this unity along with the duality naturally but seldom results in anything else than a demonstration of the possibility of a formula made up by combining indications out of which it is impossible to construct a figure. On the other hand, as soon as the same writer avoids this formula of two natures, he not seldom says something which one can follow, and of which the figure can be drawn (nachzeichnen).¹⁶ Hence all the results of the endeavour to achieve a living presentation of the unity of the divine and the human in Christ, ever since it was tied down to this expression, have always vacillated between the opposite errors of mixing the two natures to form a third which would be neither of them, neither divine nor human, or of keeping the two natures separate, but either neglecting the unity of the person in order to separate the two natures more distinctly, or, in order to keep firm hold of the unity of the person, disturbing the necessary balance, and making one nature less important than the other and limited by it. The same thing comes out even in the vacillation between the expressions ‘connexion’ and ‘union’—in the latter there is a tendency to wipe out the difference of the natures, while the former makes the unity of the person doubtful. The utter fruitlessness of this way of presenting the matter becomes particularly clear in the treatment of the question whether Christ as one person formed out of two natures had also two wills according to the number of the natures, or only one according to the number of the person. For if Christ had only one will, then the divine nature is incomplete if this is a human will; and the human nature, if it is a divine will. But if Christ has two wills, then the unity of the person is no more than apparent, even if we try to conserve it by saying that the two wills always will the same thing. For what this results in is only agreement, not unity; and, in fact, to answer the problem thus is to return to the division of Christ. And one or the other will is always simply a superfluous accompaniment of the other, whether it be the divine will that accompanies the human or vice versa. And manifestly, as we are accustomed to take reason and will together the same question may be raised with regard to the reason; then all that has just been said repeats itself, since each nature is incomplete without the reason that belongs to it, and a unity of the person is as little compatible with such a twofold reason as with a twofold will; and it is equally unthinkable that a divine reason, which as omniscient sees everything at once, should think the same as a human reason, which only knows separate things one after the other and as a result of the other, and that a human will, which always strives only for separate ends and one for the sake of the other, should will the same as a divine will, whose object can be nothing but the whole world in the totality of its development.

Finally, for the scientific perfection of dogmatic terminology it is also necessary that related doctrines should be capable of easy comprehension in their relations to each other; if so, the way in which this formula is related to the formulae of the doctrine of the Trinity is no great recommendation of it. There the expression ‘unity of nature’ alongside of the trinity of Persons has been avoided, and ‘unity of essence’ used instead. But, however praiseworthy this may be, since the term ‘essence’ is certainly much more appropriate to the Godhead than the term ‘nature,’ yet the question inevitably arises what the relation is between what in Christ we call His divine nature and that unity of essence which is common to all three Persons of the Trinity, and whether each of the three Persons, outside their participation in the Divine Essence, has also a nature of its own as well, or whether this is a peculiarity of the Second Person. No satisfactory answer to this is to be found either here or in the doctrine of the Trinity. But the matter becomes still more confused through the introduction in the Dogmatic of the whole Western Church of another usage of the word ‘Person,’ according to which, in the one case, we have three Persons in one Essence and in the other one Person out of two natures. If now we carry over into the doctrine of the Trinity the explanations which are usually given of the word ‘Person’ in the doctrine of Christ—and there is sufficient reason for this, since it is asserted that Christ did not become a Person only through the union of the two natures, but the Son of God only took up human nature into His Person—then the three Persons must have an independent anterior existence in themselves; and if each Person is also a nature,¹⁷ we come almost inevitably to three divine natures for the three divine Persons in the one Divine Essence. If, on the other hand, the same word ‘Person’ means something different in the one doctrine from what it means in the other, so that in the Person of Christ we have still another Person in the other sense of the word, the confusion is just as great.

2. It lies in the nature of the case, that after this formula had once secured recognition as the foundation for all other definitions regarding the Person of Christ, an involved and artificial mode of procedure was inevitable if terms so indefensible were to be kept as innocuous as possible. The almost inevitable consequence was that, as this foundation itself contains an apparent contradiction, the whole development was bound to resolve itself into a disproof of this reproach couched in a series of negative terms—terms which no more express or reproduce the actual content of our immediate impression than they contain a knowledge of Christ in the form of intuition—that is, of objective consciousness (though indeed it would be less of a recommendation to us than to others if they could do this last). Accordingly we are compelled to put a very low estimate upon the value of this theory for ecclesiastical use. It cannot give any guidance in the proper preaching of Christ, for it takes a purely negative form; at most it might serve homiletical diction as a test of whether in the glorification or the vivid presentation of Christ elements may not have been introduced which transgress the prescribed limits. But even in this connexion the definitions of the Schools have long since become a dead letter in which no one any longer can find refuge. For the devotional phraseology even of the most orthodox teachers, in so far as they are not content simply to hand on the letter of tradition but aim at edification and confirmation in a living faith, is so remote from the terminology of the schools that it would hardly be possible to find any current terms to bridge the gulf. No less unfruitful does this development appear when we regard the divergent opinions which prevail among us, some of them docetic in character, since they identify the Redeemer so closely with God that the truth of His humanity is obscured; some of them Ebionite, inasmuch as they leave no room for any essential distinction between Christ and an exceptional man. They are utterly unsuitable for use in determining in either direction the boundary between what is Christian but appears unchristian, whether owing to its own gaucherie or to the misrepresentation of opponents, and what has ceased to be Christian altogether, because it is naturalistic or fanatical.

3. It must be remembered, further, that in the original construction of Protestant theology nothing was done for this article—the old formulæ were simply repeated. For although the question was at once taken up again on one particular side in the controversies between the two Protestant parties, this could not lead to a complete new revision, since the matter arose only à propos of another point in dispute; nor did what on this occasion was actually established secure symbolical recognition anywhere within the sphere of the Augsburg Confession. And so, if Dogmatics are to be ever more completely purged of scholasticism, the task remains of constructing a scientific statement of this particular doctrine also, in which the impression of the peculiar dignity of the Redeemer that we have obtained from the testimonies borne to Him shall not be reflected merely in negative formulæ, and which at the same time (at least as much as with other dogmatic definitions) shall approximate to what can be presented to Christian congregations in religious teaching. We hope that above¹⁸ we have laid the foundation for such a revision, which attempts so to define the mutual relations of the divine and the human in the Redeemer, that both the expressions, divine nature and the duality of natures in the same Person (which, to say the least, are exceedingly inconvenient) shall be altogether avoided. For if the distinction between the Redeemer and us others is established in such a way that, instead of being obscured and powerless as in us, the God-consciousness in Him was absolutely clear and determined each moment, to the exclusion of all else, so that it must be regarded as a continual living presence, and withal a real existence of God in Him, then, in virtue of this difference, there is in Him everything that we need, and, in virtue of His likeness to us, limited only by His utter sinlessness, this is all in Him in such a way that we can lay hold of it. That is to say, the existence of God in the Redeemer is posited as the innermost fundamental power within Him, from which every activity proceeds and which holds every element together; everything human (in Him) forms only the organism for this fundamental power, and is related to it as the system which both receives and represents it, just as in us all other powers are related to the intelligence.¹⁹ If this form of expression is very different from that of the language of the Schools as used hitherto, yet it rests equally upon the Pauline phrase ‘God was in Christ’ and the Johannine ‘the Word became flesh’; for ‘Word’ is the activity of God expressed in the form of consciousness, and ‘flesh’ is a general expression for the organic. In so far as all human activity of the Redeemer depends, as a connected whole, upon this existence of God in Him and represents it, the expression (that in the Redeemer God became man) is justified as true exclusively of Him; and similarly every moment of His existence, so far as it can be isolated, presents just such a new incarnation and incarnatedness of God, because always and everywhere all that is human in Him springs out of that divine. And it would be difficult for anyone to prove that there is anything docetic or Ebionite in this description. It could be called Ebionite only by one who feels that he must insist upon an empirical emergence of divine properties if he is to recognize a superhuman element in the Redeemer; and the only thing that could be regarded as docetic is that in the Redeemer the God-consciousness is not imperfect. But neither objection would find any support even in the letter of the accepted ecclesiastical doctrine. Hence even in dealing with the ecclesiastical propositions now to follow, our criticism must be related to the form of statement just given, in order at each point to show how far the intention of these propositions agrees in meaning with our form of statement, and how far the unsuitability and difficulty of those formulæ has, on the one hand, prevented the exposition from answering fully to the intention, and on the other has given scope for subtle inanities.

§ 97. Second Theorem.—In the uniting of the divine nature with the human, the divine alone was active or self-imparting, and the human alone passive or in process of being assumed; but during the state of union every activity was a common activity of both natures.

1. If we take an objective view of the task of presenting Christ clearly as such a unity of both natures, it is natural and indeed inevitable that we should separate from one another the act of union and the state of union. For the former was only the beginning of the Person of Christ as it came to manifestation in the world, and accordingly must be expressed by a reference to the previous non-existence of that Person; while the latter, as the specific existence of the Person, must be described by a formula which is equally appropriate to all moments of it. But for our task the description of the first beginning, since we are not directly affected by it, seems a work of supererogation. This accordingly is better omitted: such exercises are always of doubtful value. Thus the inclusion of this theorem calls for special justification. But, in the first place, it is quite in order to refer back to its beginnings such a difference as that between Christ and all other men, because it does make a difference if it is recognized as original; and, again, the expression must be quite differently phrased if the difference is a later accession and hence only a subsequent condition of a person originally entirely like ourselves. And since if we reproduce the impression made upon us we cannot but deny the latter suggestion, the necessity arises of presenting the first moment also as continuous with every later one. And so both the theorems set forth above, while they definitely insist on the distinction between beginning and further career, must be understood only as they merge in each other. For, on the one hand, the beginning of the Person is at the same time the beginning of its activity; on the other, every moment so far as it can be isolated and considered in itself is a new coming into being of this specific personality. And as every activity of Christ must exemplify the same relation as that which marks the act of union (which, indeed, is only a union for such activities), that is, that the impulse springs from the divine nature; so also conversely the act of union must exemplify the same relation as that through which every activity of Christ exists (since every activity is only an individual manifestation of this union)—that is, that both natures work together into one. By this canon alone must both the formulæ presented in our theorem be judged and applied, as well as all others which appear elsewhere and are derived from them.

2. There are manifold objections to the expression by which it is sought to describe more nearly the active participation of the divine nature in that act of union—namely, that in it the divine nature has assumed the human into the unity of its Person.²⁰ Not only on account of the expression ‘divine nature,’ but, in the first place, because it makes the personality of Christ altogether dependent upon the personality of the second Person in the Divine Essence. For since the Sabellians denied this, but yet believed no less than orthodox Christians in the union of the divine with the human in Christ, it seems an injustice to all who may perhaps approximate to the Sabellian view to attach the expression for this belief to the orthodox Trinitarian doctrine: especially as the original faith-constituting impression made upon the disciples, even as they grasped it in thought and reproduced it, was not connected with any knowledge of a Trinity. But the worst is, that the human nature in this way can only become a Person in the sense in which this is true of a Person in the Trinity, so that we are confronted with the dilemma, that either the three Persons must, like human persons, be individuals existing independently by themselves, or Christ as man was not such an independent individual—an assertion which gives us a completely docetic picture of Him. It is, therefore, much safer (as it is also analogous to the origin and development of faith) to establish the doctrine of Christ independently of that doctrine of the Trinity. It is true that even our first proposition might still be regarded as docetic—as if, that is to say, the truth of the human nature in Christ were already lost when we say that in the origin of the Person of Christ the human nature was altogether passive, since obviously in the origin of every other human person it takes an active part, in that its body-forming power shapes itself into a new unity of human existence in the completeness of all vital functions. But if we call to our help the canon set forth above, according to which the act of the union also must have been once a common activity of both—of the self-imparting Divine Essence,²¹ and of the human nature appointed to be assumed by it—then the position is that the human nature certainly cannot have been active in being assumed by the divine, in such a way that (to put it so) the being of God in Christ was developed out of the human nature, or even in such a way that there was in the human nature a capacity to draw down the divine to itself; only the possibility was innate in it (and must have remained in it intact even during the dominion of sin) of being assumed into such a union with the divine, but this possibility is far from being either capacity or activity. On the other hand, in accordance with our canon we must add that the human nature can have been assumed by the divine only as engaged in a person-forming activity, since the divine activity is not person-forming in the way of generation. In speaking, therefore, of the origin of the specific personality of Christ, that is, of the implanting of the divine in the human nature, it must be said that in this the latter was only receptive and could only take a passive part, since no person-forming activity of human nature apart from any activity of the divine nature could ever have produced anything but an ordinary human person. But in so far as Christ none the less was also a perfectly human person, the formation of this person also must have been an act of the human nature; and so the whole process must have been a common act of the two natures. This is recognized by all dogmatic theologians who, rejecting the opinion that the body of Christ was completely formed in a single moment,²² or that in essentials it came down from heaven with the divine,²³ reckon the gradual formation of the organism from the first beginnings of life onwards as part of the truth of the human nature of Christ. But during this development the human nature was not altogether passive; hence there was also a physical activity of this nature at the first beginnings of life alongside of its merely passive attitude relatively to the divine activity.

On the other hand, doubts of an altogether opposite kind might be raised against a special divine activity in the origin of the Person of Christ, namely, that this activity must either have occurred in time (which conflicts with the first canon, that God must remain outside every temporal medium), or it would not have been a special and immediate activity (in which case the already admitted supernatural quality would again be endangered). So we see how either of two errors could be chosen even by those of genuinely Christian temper. In order to avoid entangling the Eternal in temporality, one may decide to make it a condition in presenting the peculiar dignity of Christ that it must be possible to regard Him like any other person as a product of the human nature. And in order at the same time to leave room all the more assuredly for an immediate divine activity, one might propose the view that even the humanity of Christ did not begin at any particular time—an interpretation which necessarily borders on docetism and threatens the true historicity of Christ no less than the opposite view does His ideality. But vacillation between these two views will be altogether avoided if it be admitted that the uniting divine activity is also an eternal activity, but that, as in God there is no distinction between resolve and activity, this eternal activity means for us simply a divine decree, identical as such with the decree to create man and included therein; but the aspect of this decree which is turned towards us as activity, or its manifestation in the actual beginning of the life of the Redeemer, through which that eternal decree realized itself, as at a single point of space so also at a moment of time, is temporal. So that the temporality has reference purely to the person-forming activity of the human nature, during which it was taken up into the union; and we can with equal justice say that Christ even as a human person was ever coming to be simultaneously with the world itself.²⁴

The presentation of this act of union and of the relation of the two natures in the union involves two other formulæ, one asserting the impersonality of the human nature in Christ before its union with the divine; the other affirming His supernatural conception.

With regard to the first of these, the statement that the human nature of Christ in itself is impersonal, or that it has no subsistence of its own, but subsists only through the divine, is, in this scholastic dress, very clumsy and obscure. It is not an easily solved problem, to think of something as the human nature of Christ and yet as impersonal, since the nature in which we all share can only be called the nature of an individual in so far as it has become personal in him. But if we go into the idea, there must arise the new difficulty, how, in view of this impersonality, the human nature in Christ can fail to be more imperfect in Him than in us all? But this confusion disappears when the matter is rightly conceived. The term ‘human nature’ can properly mean only this life-form as a unity, as in essence it is person-forming and has its existence in the changing course of personal life. Hence the origin of each individual of our species is to be regarded as an act which human nature as a living force brings about by itself. The meaning is this—that since by this act there could be given to a person at the start only the germ of the imperfect and obscure God-consciousness, not the absolutely powerful God-consciousness itself, while in the Person of Christ this last must have been included in the development right from the very beginnings of life, therefore without the accession of the uniting divine activity the Person of Christ would not have come into being. But the expression remains an unfortunate one, that the human nature of Christ would have been impersonal—all that it means is that the human nature would not have become this personality of Christ, but that that divine influence upon the human nature is at one and the same time the incarnation of God in human consciousness and the formation of the human nature into the personality of Christ. In the same way, the expression ‘this human nature would have remained impersonal’ (which likewise is only apparently negative) merely indicates the permanency of that same divine influence and of whatever follows from it in the Person of Christ. But the formula was shaped with special reference to those who hold that the Word was united with the Person of Jesus only long after His Person had reached maturity—and who therefore assume a personality for His human nature apart from this union.

It is involved in this formula that in the origin of the Person of Christ a supernatural activity was operative. The second formula agrees with it, in that it adds to this yet another supernatural element—namely, the complete exclusion of the male activity in the conception of Christ. For this is a second element: the being of God in Christ cannot possibly be explained by the fact that no male activity had any share in His conception. This position must be considered from a twofold point of view: first, with reference to the available New Testament testimonies on the subject; next, with reference to its dogmatic value. Those stories²⁵ are never again referred to in the further course of the history of Christ; nor does any apostolic passage appeal to them. They conflict with the two genealogies of Christ, which go back to Joseph in a simple and straightforward way without taking any account of these stories. So far as John is concerned, they conflict not only with his silence concerning the fact itself, but also with the way in which he relates, without any corrective remark, that Jesus was called the son of Joseph by His countrymen and acquaintances.²⁶ The same sort of thing is also found in both Matthew and Luke.²⁷ Anyone who takes the stories of a Virgin Birth as literally exact has of course one miracle more to stand for; but probably no one will wish to maintain that such acceptance of them introduces into our faith an element at variance with its true nature—though certainly those who delight in parallels between these birth-narratives and the various Jewish and heathen legends of the supernatural conception of distinguished men go as far as they can in that direction. On the other hand, others have doubts about basing a doctrine, in these circumstances, solely upon these stories, and even, it may be, about setting it up as an indispensable part of the creed. They rather find themselves constrained to conclude from the available evidence that among the original followers of Christ no great value was attached to this circumstance, nor was there any quite fixed and generally recognized tradition on the subject. And if they do so, we are bound to grant them that it is quite possible to believe in Christ as Redeemer without believing in His supernatural conception in this sense.

So far as the second point of view is concerned—that of the dogmatic value of this belief—first, not only are the passages in the ancient creeds ²⁸ so expressed that they betray virtually no trace of a dogmatic purpose, but the same is true also of the modern creeds borrowed from them.²⁹ The additions made in the latter to the expressions sometimes adopted from the old creeds, sometimes presupposed as accepted,³⁰ have at most here and there a slight dogmatic colouring, either with reference to original sin or to the implanting of the divine in human nature—the only points on account of which the fact can have importance for the Christian faith. A closer consideration will show, however, that it is without any real bearing upon either question. For we have already claimed that the Person of Christ is supernatural, in our sense of the term, in both these relations; and thus, although this was not definitely expressed, it has been indicated that no adequate explanation of His origin can be found in an act of the person-forming power of human nature, mediated through a double-sided sexual activity. For, as has been said above,³¹ the sinfulness of every individual has its root in the previous generation. It follows that the Redeemer could not come into being through natural procreation, since He must not Himself belong to the corporate life of sinfulness. The same is true also with regard to the other point. For the reproductive power of the species cannot be adequate to produce an individual through whom something is to be introduced, for the first time, into the species, which was never in it before. For that it is necessary to postulate, in addition to this reproductive power, a creative activity combined with the human activity; only thus can the influence of the sexual activity in procreation be neutralized—an influence which would involve participation in the universal sinfulness. In this sense everyone who assumes in the Redeemer a natural sinlessness and a new creation through the union of the divine with the human, postulates a supernatural conception as well. But where natural procreation is inadequate, there its partial neutralization must also be inadequate. For the being of God in a life cannot be explained by its origin from a virgin without sexual intercourse; and equally the absence of any paternal share in the new life cannot free that life from participation in the corporate life of sinfulness so long as the maternal share remains altogether what it is by nature. And so before long the complementary idea was formed, that in the same way Mary too must have been free from inherited sinfulness. But for one thing, the same affirmation must be made, and for the same reason, about the mother of Mary, and so right back through the generations. And for another, in so far as every psychical factor has also its physical counterpart, every actual sin of Mary must have exercised an influence upon the child so long as its life was enclosed within hers. Since, therefore, there is no doctrine or tradition of a continuous series of mothers who were conceived, and who remained, without sin, the absence of the male share in the begetting of the Redeemer is in both connexions inadequate; and consequently the assumption of a Virgin Birth is superfluous. Consequently everything rests upon the higher influence which, as a creative divine activity, could alter both the paternal and the maternal influence in such a way that all ground for sinfulness was removed, and this although procreation was perfectly natural—as indeed only this creative divine activity could avail to give completeness to the natural imperfection of the child who was begotten. The general idea of a supernatural conception remains, therefore, essential and necessary, if the specific pre-eminence of the Redeemer is to remain undiminished. But the more precise definition of this supernatural conception as one in which there was no male activity has no connexion of any kind with the essential elements in the peculiar dignity of the Redeemer; and hence, in and by itself, is no constituent part of Christian doctrine. Whoever accepts this definition, therefore, accepts it only on the ground of the narratives involving it contained in the New Testament writings; hence belief in it, like belief in many matters of fact which have just as little necessary connexion with the dignity and the work of the Redeemer, belongs solely to the doctrine of Scripture; and everyone has to reach a decision about it by the proper application of those principles of criticism and interpretation which approve themselves to Him. But anyone who accepts a supernatural conception in our sense of the term can hardly, at least, find any reason in the supernatural element which they contain for denying the historical character of these narratives, or for departing from the literal interpretation of them. Similarly anyone who cannot accept them as literally and historically true is still quite free to hold to the doctrine proper of the supernatural conception. But if it is superfluous to set up a doctrine of the Virgin Birth proper, it is also inadvisable to do so, for this involves one all too easily in investigations of a purely scientific character which lie quite outside our sphere.³²

And now in order to avoid misunderstanding, it is necessary to say only this further about a conception which has come to prevail everywhere in Christendom. First, this physiologically supernatural element does not, in itself, imply what we demand of the divine influence in the conception of the Redeemer; nor has it any influence upon the racial character of Jesus’ personality—it neither abolishes, in itself, that which carries with it a participation in sinfulness, nor does it rob Him of what belongs to His historicity. Secondly, for the same reasons, we must avoid spinning out the notion, which, as we have seen, has no other basis than the Gospel narratives, further than these narratives require; hence the assertion that Mary remained a virgin is to be rejected as completely baseless. Thirdly, the notion must not be based upon—and just as little made the basis of—a condemnation of the sexual impulse, as if its satisfaction were something sinful and productive of sin. Lastly, even if we take the narratives literally and in a historical sense, we must not assume that their terminology is pedantically exact; in particular, we must keep in mind that the angel could not then speak to Mary of the Holy Spirit in the more precise New Testament sense.³³ Therefore all ingenious explanations as to why this activity is attributed specially to the Holy Spirit are out of place.³⁴ But only completely uninitiated persons could, in spite of the clear distinction always made by the teachers of the Church,³⁵ so confuse the relation as to call Jesus the son of the Holy Spirit.

3. The second formula of our proposition, which describes the state of union of the two natures, can also be rightly understood only by the help of the canon we have laid down. Otherwise it would be easy to regard the association of the two natures as one on equal terms; and, since an absolute equilibrium between them cannot be assumed, also to suppose an occasional preponderance on the side of the human nature. The nature of the association, however, must at every moment be such that the activity proceeds from the being of God in Christ, and the human nature is only taken up into association with it. If we think here of the antithesis—and it must certainly not be overlooked—between predominantly active and predominantly passive moments in human life, we might well be apprehensive that we are still losing, in this way, the completeness of the human nature in Christ, since of course passive states cannot proceed from the divine in Him, from which yet everything must proceed—and so passive states would necessarily be lacking in Him. To take this point now in its widest reference, we find one passive condition posited as necessary, almost as constant, in Christ, so that in a sense all His actions depend upon it—namely, sympathy with the condition of men; yet at the same time in everything which proceeded from this we shall most distinctly recognize the impulse of the reconciling being of God in Christ; which accordingly seems to be conditioned by a passive state’ which could only take its rise in the human nature. Now if that were really the case, and Christ could have come to all those actions, and therefore strictly speaking to the whole work of redemption, only through an almost accidental feeling [i.e. sympathy], then inevitably our whole idea of the Redeemer would thereby become something different from that which up till now we have represented to ourselves. But our canon also compels us to think of the human nature of Christ in such feelings, not as moved for and through itself, but only as taken up into association with an activity of the divine in Christ. Now this ‘divine’ is the divine love in Christ which, once and for all or in every moment—whichever expression be chosen—gave direction to His feelings for the spiritual conditions of men. In virtue of these feelings, and in consequence of them, there then arose the impulse to particular helpful acts. So that in this interrelation every original activity belongs solely to the divine, and everything passive solely to the human. For even the human activities conditioned by those impulses carry in themselves the quality of passivity. There must certainly, however, have been, even in the life of Christ, other passive states which did not proceed from any spiritual impulse, but only from the natural connexion of the human organism with external nature. Now to these states we must, also in accordance with our canon, apply the formula originally intended only for the act of union, that the human nature is not the personal nature of Christ before it has been taken up into union with the divine. For all such states were still impersonal so long as they were simply passive; but their assumption into the innermost personal consciousness and their permeation by a divine impulse were so entirely one and the same thing that before such permeation they would have been assumed only as an external and alien element. So that, to sum up, we may say that there can have been no active state in Christ which, regarded as existing for itself, did not arise from the being of God in Him, and was not perfected by the human nature; and similarly no passive state whose transformation into activity—which first made it a personal state—did not follow the same course.

Against this, of course, the objection might be urged, that if we distinguish individual moments, and ascribe to the divine in Christ the rise of all the activities which follow each other thus in time, then this divine in Christ, in contradiction to what can properly be asserted of a being of God, is being described as a temporal thing, with an activity which arises and passes away. But this difficulty too is resolved if, carrying further (under the guidance of our canon) the answer already ³⁶ given to the same objection with regard to the act of union, we say that even during the union the Divine Essence in Christ retained its identity, only becoming active in temporal fashion, and that only that side of this activity is temporal which had already become human and passed over into the sphere of outward appearance. So that in Christ Himself the original assumptive divine activity and the divine activity during the union are not to be distinguished; but all activities, in so far as distinguishable in time, are simply developments of the human activities. Every outward activity of Christ, whether it is to be regarded rather as an activity of the intellect or as one of the will, was in its aspect of human growth a result of the temporal development; and only in so far as all emergent activity of Christ is to be regarded thus can we rightly ascribe to Him a perfect human soul, but a soul inwardly impelled by this special being of God in Him, which, retaining its unchangeable identity, permeates that soul in the variety of its functions and moments, as that variety continually develops.³⁷ This, too, is the meaning of the phrase of the Schools, that the union is a personal one. It is not a special nature which comes into being in this way, one which could and must be distinguished from other human existence; what comes into existence through the being of God in Christ is all perfectly human, and in its totality constitutes a unity, the unity of a natural life-story, in which everything that emerges is purely human, and one thing can be deduced from another, since every moment presupposes those which have gone before, yet in which everything can be completely understood only upon the presupposition of that union through which alone this Person could come into being, so that every moment also reveals the divine in Christ as that which conditions it. And if, after all that has been said, we define the spheres of our two propositions in relation to each other, then we shall have to say that the first applies exclusively to the very earliest beginning of the existence of Christ when the life was coming into being as a simple entity, and consequently that it holds only of the time before the historical appearance of Christ. And similarly the latter applies exclusively after this appearance; for only when the human element is absolutely complete, and there is no more growth in its coexistence with the being of God in Him, can it be purely co-operative in its action. And so it is comprehensible that for the time filled by this historical appearance there should be two different modes of interpretation, which, although quite consistent with each other, yet when their true relation is not recognized, seem to be incompatible. One of these pays such exclusive attention throughout to the initiatory divine factor that it is in danger of losing sight altogether of the human context; the other attempts everywhere to grasp the human context so completely that it comes near losing sight of the underlying divine factor.

4. In agreement with both formulæ of our proposition are, further, the old canons—they have only a negative but no real positive value—which as a result of the discussions in the Councils are expounded even in the oldest systematic treatises.³⁸ It is obvious that underlying the earliest threefold statement of the points in question³⁹ is the idea that the divine nature in Christ cannot in any way be separated from the human nature in Him, so as to permit of the sundering of the two. Every such separation, even if in accordance with these formulæ it were understood only in a temporal or spatial sense, could still be only a separation of the activities; and if such a separation were possible, then there would have to be in Christ, on the one hand, human activities in no way dependent upon the impulse of the divine, and on the other, divine activities which would have nowhere betrayed themselves in His human nature. But these could have given no proof of their derivation from the act of union, since they would bear in themselves no similarity to this; accordingly these formulæ exclude just what our canon also excludes. The other threefold statement⁴⁰ quite clearly has the purpose of rejecting any idea of an alteration of one nature by the other. Through any such alteration—which of course could only have proceeded from the human nature—the divine would have become something conditioned in space and time; and similarly, if the human had been altered by the divine, the Person would have lost its identity with the rest of the human race. In neither case would there have been a union of the divine with the human. Here too the aim, therefore, is the same as that which guides us in seeking to understand the divine factor in the union in the only way which is compatible with the integrity of the human, and vice versa. None the less, these two formulæ are not for us to-day; they are altogether based upon the conception of divinity as a nature, which can only serve to introduce confusion everywhere.

It is time that, along with these negative formulæ, we consigned to the history of dogma also the extremely empty and formal theory, that propositions about Christ, to be correct, must be differently constructed according as we are speaking of the whole Person of Christ, or only of one of the two natures. Such rules, if they are to be normative for the language of edification, imposing the limits within which it must move, could only be of value in times of heresy-hunting; but heresy-hunting in this form is hardly likely to recur. In general, we must recognize that we are no longer at the same stage as the men of these far-off days, when the more exact technical terminology was only being gradually developed out of the popular presentations of eminent men. Now that the system of doctrine has been completed, and development within the Schools goes its own way, Christian preachers must have the freedom granted to the poets, to make use of terms which cannot find a place in the terminology of technical theology, provided that in their immediate context, from which they must not be torn, they are unobjectionable, and that they involve nothing which would lessen the dignity of the Redeemer or offend people’s feeling for that dignity. If, on the other hand, these rules are meant to be used only in technical theology itself, in order that at every point it may more easily determine whether individual formulæ are or are not consistent with the general propositions, then they depend too much upon the use of the expression ‘nature,’ for the divine as well as for the human, to be useful when once that mode of expression has been abandoned. And we possess a far better canon in the formula that in Christ the creation of man first reaches completion. For what distinguishes Christ from all others is that which is innermost in Him; hence the indwelling being of God in Him must be related to the whole human nature in the same way as that which previously was innermost was related to the whole human organism—an analogy which, even if not clearly expressed, runs through the whole foregoing presentation of the subject.

5. It follows at once from the character of the being of God in Christ as now set forth, and from the necessity of ceasing to treat the Supreme Being as a nature, as well as from our previous teaching on the divine attributes, that the theory of a mutual communication of the attributes of the two natures to one another also is to be banished from the system of doctrine, and handed over to the history of doctrine. For in so far as we arrive at our ideas of divine attributes only by analogy, the attribution of these to human nature, if that nature is not to be destroyed by the infinity of these attributes, is merely an assertion of absolute human excellence. But on the other hand, in so far as each particular attribute is simply a negation of the essence of man, and it is only when viewed all together as one that they can represent the Divine Essence, it is impossible to predicate of human nature even the individual features of this collective view. For example, if we were to attribute to human nature the identity of omniscience and omnipotence, so that one and the same omniscient omnipotence and omnipotent omniscience of the divine nature should have permeated the assumed human nature,⁴¹ as heat permeates iron, then during this communication nothing human could have been left in Christ, since everything human is essentially a negation of omniscient omnipotence. If in consequence we fall back upon regarding the divine attributes as altogether or for the most part quiescent—though the former alternative alone is consistent, not even the miracles being traced to an exceptional activity of the divine attributes⁴²—the emptiness of this whole theory comes out most clearly. For since divine attributes are simply activities, in what consists the communication of these when they are inactive? Moreover, in that case the union of the natures would altogether cease to be a dogmatic idea in the stricter sense, for it cannot possibly be a statement regarding an impression received from Christ, since the quiescent attributes cannot make themselves perceptible even indirectly. It is the same with the communication of human attributes to the divine nature. On the one hand, all statements regarding our God-consciousness are just such an attribution, inasmuch as all divine attributes are drawn, by analogy, from human. But apart from this, it would necessarily mean the negation of the Divine Essence, if to the divine nature there were to be ascribed any human quality (and in any way) which had to be excluded in the original formation of our conceptions of divine attributes. If, for example, to the divine nature there were to be communicated anything human in the way of capacity for suffering, in such a communication no room is left for anything divine; nay, every notable human excellence, even, is a diminution of the capacity for suffering, and even what most inwardly resembles the divine in man does not so much suffer as give its activity a reactive form. It has been believed that the capacity for suffering must be attributed even to the divine nature in Christ, partly on the ground that otherwise redemptive power would be lacking to His suffering;⁴³ not only, however, has this older assertions against it,⁴⁴ but equally it depends, as we shall show later, upon wrong ideas of the work of redemption. And so it might well be said that this doctrine of the mutual communication of attributes, truly and completely worked out, must cancel again the union of the two natures, since in virtue of that communication each nature would cease to be what it is. The rejection of this theory, however, by no means involves a preferring the Reformed school to the Lutheran. For if the former speaks, instead,⁴⁵ of contrasted attributes of two natures in one person, it is rightly met with the objection that it is dividing Christ, since contrasted things cannot be one, nor can the natures be one either, if their attributes are held apart. But the other school is chargeable with a similar division. For if the communication is to be a real one, then through it there arise in each nature two kinds of activities, which cannot really form a series—e.g. in the human nature of Christ there would have to be ideational activities both in the manner of a limited consciousness and in that of the communicated omniscience. Both doctrines, therefore, are equally to be rejected, since they both depend upon the false idea of a divine nature to which it is possible to ascribe a group of attributes.

§ 98. Third Theorem.—Christ was distinguished from all other men by His essential sinlessness and His absolute perfection. 1. By essential sinlessness we are to understand a sinlessness which has its adequate ground within His personality itself, so that it would have been altogether the same whatever the outward relations might have been (and among outward relations we may include also whatever belongs to the body). This expression at least sets forth with sufficient definiteness the point at issue, since it follows from what has been said that this inner ground can be none other than the union of the divine and the human in His Person. That which in individual cases we experience immediately we must conceive to be possible also in general. We have immediate experience of the fact that by a favourable combination of circumstances sin, even inward sin, may be prevented from becoming actual. But this happens in such a way that therein we not only remain conscious of ourselves as sinful men, but are even confirmed in this consciousness through this very perception, for it implies a recognition that in our case the inner ground for the prevention of sin is lacking. Such sinlessness, which in comparison with essential sinlessness is no more than accidental, would therefore not express the peculiar excellence of the Redeemer; and not only so, but where the inward possibility of sinning is posited, there too is posited in addition at least an infinitely small amount of the reality of sin, in the form of tendency. So that one who can be content with such accidental sinlessness in the Redeemer may also let pass actual sin in Him, provided it does not make itself so perceptible⁴⁶ that someone for a moment might claim superiority to Christ. At the same time, the usual formulæ of technical theology do not mark the distinction with the required sharpness, and the quarrel which has been waged between them seems a perfectly empty one. It is true that the formula, potuit non peccare, asserts the essential pre-eminence of Christ, if taken as affirming a contrast to the state of all other men. For these, one and all, can never not-sin; sin creeps into everything—which, strictly speaking, must then have been the case with Christ also (to the extent of the infinitely small amount referred to above); if a real possibility of sinning is ascribed to Him. But the formula does not express that pre-eminence, as soon as it is taken to mean something different from the other formula, non potuit peccare; for when made a contrast to this it involves the possibility of sinning. But exactly the same holds true of the latter formula; it too may be used by one who is only assuming a general divine protection exerted over the Redeemer. Thus it too corresponds to the content of our formula only if it be taken as the equivalent of the first in the sense indicated.

But, even on the basis of our formula, it remains difficult to determine what it excludes from Christ, and that in such wise as to preserve intact all that must belong to Him in virtue of His likeness to us. And this point is indisputably one from which it must be possible to develop much that is essential for Christian ethics; for everything depends on determining the point where sin begins. A special difficulty arises here from the fact that even in the earliest documents of the faith it is asserted that Christ was tempted in all points, a statement which in the light of the conclusion reached above⁴⁷ involves sin in Him, if we take it as meaning that there was even an infinitely small element of struggle involved. On the other hand, susceptibility to the contrast of the pleasurable and the painful belongs to the reality of human nature, so that it must be possible for pleasure and pain to exist in a sinless way, and the beginning of sin must lie between the moment at which pleasure and pain exist in this sinless way and that at which struggle begins. If, at the same time, we remember that in Christ every impulse must have been determined by the God-consciousness, it follows that in Him, too, pleasure and pain must have been possible, but not so that they determined the impulse; that is, they must have been present only as the result of an impulse which was determined in the manner appropriate to Him. They are such results when as sensation or feeling they remain wholly within the limits of the quiescent consciousness, but not when they pass over into desire or repulsion. Now temptation consists just in the approximation of these two, and Christ can have been tempted without prejudice to His essential sinlessness only if pleasure and pain came to Him as intensified sensation. while His essential sinlessness explains why they never could become anything more than symptoms of a state, but without any determinative or co-determinative power; but not if they came so that the transition from the one sort to the other ever really took place.⁴⁸ Only, as this rule must hold good for every moment of Christ’s life without exception, it must be observed that this way of expressing it is applicable only to a developed consciousness, and that the childhood of Christ as well can only have had the character of perfect innocence if this rule held good then also in proportion to the stage of development reached at the moment. So that in respect of sin Christ was at all times equally different from all other men, and at all times equally essentially free from sin.

It belongs further to this sinlessness, that Christ can neither have originated real error Himself, or even have accepted the error of others with real conviction, and as well-established truth. Nor is it necessary to restrict this principle to the sphere of His proper vocation; only we must hold fast to the distinction between the acceptance and the propagation of ideas which were definitely maintained by others (in regard to these one neither makes any investigation nor accepts any responsibility), and the forming of a judgment which in some connexion thereafter determines one’s mode of action. In the latter case, error always presupposes either a precipitancy which nothing but irrelevant motives could have occasioned, or an obscured sense of truth which partly has its basis in the universal sinfulness, but partly too is in each single case bound up with the special sinfulness of the individual.

Closely connected with this doctrine of the essential sinlessness of Christ is the idea of the natural immortality of Christ—namely, that Christ would not have been subject to death in virtue of His human nature; an idea which has not, it is true, been fixed by being included in any of the creeds, nor is really based on passages in the Bible,⁴⁹ but yet has found very general acceptance. But the only basis for the conception is that when death is regarded as the wages of sin, he who is free from all connexion with sin must also have been free from the dominion of death. When we take into account what has already been said above⁵⁰ about the natural immortality of Adam and the connexion of all natural evils with sin, nothing more can be inferred from the sinlessness of Christ than that death can have been no evil for Christ. We must hold to this position, and instead of the idea in question take our side with those who acknowledge that immortality was conferred upon Christ’s human nature only with the Resurrection.⁵¹ All the more that mortality and the capacity for physical suffering are so closely connected that such a natural immortality in Christ would make the capacity of human nature in His Person for suffering a mere empty phrase, and no great worth could be attached to His physical sufferings without self-contradiction.

Yet this idea is not represented as simply an inference from the sinlessness of Christ; it is held that it alone reveals to us the true significance of all the statements which set forth His death as a voluntary one, and thus brings out fully the higher significance of His suffering and death. But precisely from this point of view the idea is a highly dubious one. For one who cannot naturally die cannot be put to death by force either; it would therefore have been necessary that Christ by a miracle should first have made Himself mortal, in order that it should be possible to put Him to death; so that His death would have been, almost directly, His own act.

2. Now so far as the absolute perfection of His human nature during the period of His manhood is concerned, special emphasis is very often laid upon intellectual and physical excellence, especially in the older treatments of the subject. But—since here no records come to our aid which would transform every such proposition into a historical one, and so remove it from the sphere of doctrine altogether—it may well be doubted whether the impression which we receive from Christ is sufficient to justify us in postulating for Him qualities which we cannot deduce from the union of the divine with the human nature. Only one thing can be said if we deduce the temporal appearance of this creative activity, as an individual fact, from the general divine ordination. And this is that, just as the Redeemer could appear only at a particular time and only out of the midst of this people, so, too, the divine activity would not have assumed the human nature and created the Person of the Redeemer in such a way that any deformity could have resulted. It is natural enough, therefore, to ascribe to the Redeemer a physical ideality also; but since the physical aspect of His appearance was to be of no significance in itself, but only as the organ of that union, the ideality must be restricted solely to this. From this assumption, and from the undisturbed and continuous influence of a pure will, there is to be inferred only a healthiness which is equally remote from a disproportionate strength or dominance of individual physical functions and from morbid weakness, inasmuch as by both of these the balanced aptitude of the organism for all demands of the will is impaired. To this accordingly we must restrict ourselves, and all the more reject all prying questions,⁵² because our ideas of the relation between body and soul are still open to important corrections. And thus, if the ancients have not seldom something to say about the beauty of the Redeemer,⁵³ this is an idea which lies very near the frontier which we must not touch, and we may disregard it as an unconscious after-effect of heathen notions.

§ 99. The facts of the Resurrection and the Ascension of Christ, and the prediction of His Return to Judgment, cannot be laid down as properly constituent parts of the doctrine of His Person.

1. When we compare with the canon for dogmatic statements laid down above,⁵⁴ the propositions, on the one hand, concerning the Person of Christ which we have so far set forth, and on the other the statements contained in the oldest creeds⁵⁵ expressing these facts (i.e. Resurrection, Ascension, and Judgment), it will be seen that the former correspond to both the requirements insisted on, and the latter to neither. For if the redeeming efficacy of Christ depends upon the being of God in Him, and faith in Him is grounded upon the impression that such a being of God indwells Him, then it is impossible to prove any immediate connexion between these facts and that doctrine. The disciples recognized in Him the Son of God without having the faintest premonition of His resurrection and ascension, and we too may say the same of ourselves; moreover neither the spiritual presence which He promised nor all that He said about His enduring influence upon those who remained behind is mediated through either of these two facts. This may well depend upon His sitting at the right hand of God—by which, however, since the expression may be strictly an impossible one, we must understand simply the peculiar and incomparable dignity of Christ, raised above all conflict—but not upon a visible resurrection or ascension, since of course Christ could have been raised to glory even without these intermediate steps; and if so, it is impossible to see in what relation both these can stand to the redeeming efficacy of Christ. It is true, on the one hand, Paul seems to attribute to the resurrection, just as much as to the death, a share of its own in redemption;⁵⁶ yet on the other, the way in which he brings it forward as a guarantee of our own resurrection⁵⁷ shows that he in no sense thinks of it as having an exclusive connexion with the peculiar being of God in Christ. Also, it is never adduced as an evidence of the divine indwelling in Christ; for it is everywhere ascribed, not to Himself, but to God.⁵⁸ No more does John adduce the visible ascension as a proof of the higher dignity of Christ. Hence we may safely credit everyone who is familiar with dogmatic statements with a recognition of the fact that the right impression of Christ can be, and has been, present in its fulness without a knowledge of these facts.

So far as the Return to Judgment is concerned, we can treat of the doctrinal significance of this idea only at a later point. Here it need only be remarked that although the Judgment, in so far as we regard it as a transferable divine act, is so closely bound up with the work of redemption that it is not easy to think that God could hand it over to any but the Redeemer, yet this implies nothing greater in the Person of Christ than already we ascribe to Him apart from this; and in any case it does not really belong to the work of redemption itself, since of course those who believe do not come into judgment. But considered as the Return of Christ it is connected with the ascension as its counterpart. Just as the latter is only an accidental form for effecting the sitting at the right hand of God, so also the promise of return is only an accidental form for the satisfaction of the longing to be united with Christ. And just as the incomprehensible and miraculous in the ascension cannot be made dependent on the divine in Christ, which reveals itself as the impulse to all His free actions, and since the ascension is nowhere presented as His act, no more can the miraculous in the Return depend upon it. So that the dissimilarity between our propositions above (those, that is to say, which we have recognized as such) and these assertions must be clear to everyone.

It is somewhat different with Christ’s so-called Descent into Hell.⁵⁹ This—according to its dominant idea—would certainly belong to His redemptive activities if only we could regard it as a fact. It would then have to be regarded as an exercise of His prophetic and high-priestly office towards those who had died before His appearance. But for one thing the only passage which seems to treat of this descent⁶⁰ is far from including anything of the kind, and for another the transaction, even with this extended interpretation of the passage, would not correspond to the task to be accomplished, as we are bound to understand it. For all those also who have died since His appearance without having heard the preaching of the Gospel have the same claims as the others. Moreover, the expressions used in that passage in no way compel us to assume such an otherwise unattested fact, any more than they fix the time at which it is supposed to have happened. For these reasons the Descent has been completely omitted from our proposition.

2. Belief in these facts, accordingly, is no independent element in the original faith in Christ, of such a kind that we could not accept Him as Redeemer or recognize the being of God in Him, if we did not know that He had risen from the dead and ascended to heaven, or if He had not promised that He would return for judgment. Further, this belief is not to be derived from those original elements; we cannot conclude that because God was in Christ He must have risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, or that because He was essentially sinless He must come again to act as Judge. Rather they are accepted only because they are found in the Scriptures; and all that can be required of any Protestant Christian is that he shall believe them in so far as they seem to him to be adequately attested. Here the sacred writers are to be regarded only as reporters; accordingly belief in these statements belongs, immediately and originally, rather to the doctrine of Scripture than to the doctrine of the Person of Christ. Yet an indirect connexion with that doctrine is not to be denied to such belief, in so far, that is, as our judgment about the disciples as original reporters reacts upon our judgment about the Redeemer. Anyone, for example, who, in view of the miraculous element involved, and to avoid accepting the resurrection of Christ as literal fact, prefers to suppose that the disciples were deceived and took an inward experience for an outward, ascribes to them such weakness of intellect that not only is their whole testimony to Christ thereby rendered unreliable, but also Christ, in choosing for Himself such witnesses, cannot have known what is in men.⁶¹ Or, if we suppose that He Himself wished or arranged that they should be constrained to regard an inner experience as outward perception, then He Himself would be an originator of error, and all moral conceptions would be thrown into confusion if such a higher dignity as His were compatible with this. With the ascension it is different, so far at least as we have no adequate reason for maintaining that we have before us a direct report from an eyewitness of what actually happened, and least of all from an apostolic eyewitness. If, nevertheless, it is affirmed that Christ did rise from the dead, but was not taken up into heaven, but lived in concealment for an indeterminate time, so that He must have arranged something which could be regarded as an ascension to heaven, then the case is just the same as with the resurrection. Least closely connected with the doctrine of the Person of Christ proper is the promise of His Return, especially as it is promised for the sake of an office to be fulfilled, and so far would belong to the next section, if only that office were one directly belonging to His vocation as Redeemer. Only if exegesis brought out clearly that a time had been fixed for this Return which has now long since elapsed, or if it were described in a way whose impossibility we could prove, would this necessarily react, if not on the doctrine of the Scriptures, yet certainly on that of the Person of Christ.

Postscript to this Doctrine.—The presentation of the Person of Christ given above, first in our own quite independent form of expression, then in closer connexion with the accepted forms of the Church, is, in essentials, so widespread and so long current in the Christian Church, that it must be regarded as the general faith of Christians. All the more that even many of those who content themselves with a lesser idea of the Redeemer reject this dominant view only because they are suspicious of the miraculous in general—whether they overlook the distinction which we have laid down,⁶² or reject it—or because they believe that along with it they must accept a doctrine of the Trinity which is offensive to them on account of its polytheistic complexion. It is therefore to be hoped that many will find it easier to accept, in a freer presentation, a view by which they are repelled when they find it invested in hard scholastic forms.

It cannot, however, be definitely proved that the same form of doctrine prevailed universally in Christendom where the same faith about the relation to the Redeemer underlay it, the reason being that neither understanding nor terminology had sufficiently developed for that. Also it is undeniable that alongside this view of the Redeemer other different and lesser ones were current in Christendom very early. For both these reasons the question cannot be avoided whether the view of the Church can really be vindicated as the original one by statements of Christ Himself and of the Apostles, or whether they are right who assert that it is a view which arose later. Here it must be premised, that even supposing the originality of our doctrine were not proved, it still would not follow that it is false or arbitrarily invented, provided only that those original testimonies are not demonstrably at variance with it. But the question itself, it must be admitted, is so complicated that it cannot be decided in a manner which could win general acceptance, so long as, on the one hand, the most various opinions exist alongside each other as to the way in which the New Testament writings came into existence and as to who their authors were, and on the other hand, exegetical methods are so various and so arbitrary. So long as it is possible to dispute interminably over the meaning of particular passages, it is useless to have recourse to particular sayings of Christ’s own to prove His essential sinlessness⁶³ or the being of God in Him.⁶⁴ But anyone who in the interpretation of particular passages is not content merely with a sense in harmony with his own theory, but keeps an open mind for a true impression of the whole, will scarcely be able to ascribe to the sayings of Christ about His relation to men and to His Father⁶⁵ (having regard to the way in which they complete and pervade each other) a lesser content than that set forth in our propositions, although perhaps not precisely in the sense of the ecclesiastical formulae relating to the doctrine of the Trinity. And at the same time these sayings are not of such a kind that they destroy the reality of Christ’s human existence, as if in His temporal consciousness He had, say, a recollection of a separate existence of the divine in Him, before His incarnation.⁶⁶

In entire agreement with this is the double appellation, Son of Man and Son of God, which Christ gives to Himself. For He could not have given Himself the first name, if He had not been conscious of sharing completely in the same human nature as others; but it would have been meaningless to claim it specially for Himself, if He had not had a reason for doing so which others could not adduce—if, that is, the name had not had a pregnant meaning, which was meant to indicate a difference between Him and all others.⁶⁷ Similarly the connexion between the appellation Son of God and what Christ says about His relation to His Father shows that He did not use it of Himself in the same sense in which it had already been used of others⁶⁸— as indeed is clearly involved in the expression ‘only-begotten’ which comes from Christ Himself.⁶⁹ Only if we destroy this natural connexion between two designations which manifestly refer to each other, will it become easier to admit lesser interpretations and to associate them with Ebionite theories. While, on the other hand, those passages in which a high degree of grief is ascribed to Christ,⁷⁰ or in which something is told of Him which seems to imply passionate excitement,⁷¹ are really only details which—so far from being evidence against His sinlessness, or incompatible with the being of God in Him—manifestly caused no one to doubt Him, because everyone habitually interprets such individual moments in harmony with the total impression he has already received. So they serve only to remind us that faith in Jesus as Redeemer was not based on details, but develops out of a total impression—from which it follows only that there are no details in existence which could have prevented that impression. But that the faith even in the first generation of His disciples had the same content as we have set forth here, is proved, not only by the most various testimonies which ascribe to Christ perfect purity⁷² and fulness of power,⁷³ but also by the way in which Paul describes Him, in contrast with Adam, as the originator of a new human worth, and by the Johannine presentation of the λόγος, as well as by the theory set forth in the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Now of course even these testimonies could be weakened by artificial interpretations, by tearing them out of their context and combining them with what is irrelevant. But it is not sufficient to show merely that this expression and that other may have less significance; it must also be made clear how it can have come about that an ordinary relation was described in extraordinary and inappropriate terms, and how the original sense of these was so early lost in the tradition. So long as this cannot be done better than it is by entirely arbitrary hypotheses, the belief will probably hold the field that the faith of the Church is also the original faith and is founded upon the sayings of Christ about Himself.

Now if this is in general the sufficiently clear result of an examination of Scripture, our Dogmatic can not only easily dispense with the whole arsenal of particular statements which have been set forth under various rubrics⁷⁴ as proving the being of God in Christ, but put them aside all the more readily that they give no help in presenting the subject in the best way, but rather hide what is important and certain under what is untrustworthy. For what is the use of ascribing divine titles to Christ, if He Himself calls attention to an improper use of the word ‘God’ [John 10³⁴⁻³⁶]? But appellations which express the unity of the divine and the human in so definite and unambiguous a way as the later ‘God-man’ do not occur in Scripture; all the predicates which can be cited in this connexion are more or less uncertain in meaning.⁷⁵ So, too, as far as the divine attributes are concerned, it is natural that, since Christ is always spoken of as a man, only such attributes are ascribed to Him as express exalted humanity, so that it is easy to explain them as nothing but very permissible hyperbolical expressions. Since, further, it is difficult to distinguish between worship in the strict sense and the utterances of a deep, but not properly divine, adoration, if we were to proceed on that line everything would depend upon the divine activities asserted of Christ. But creation and preservation are only ascribed to Christ⁷⁶ in such a way that it must remain doubtful whether they do not mean that He is active cause only in so far as He is final cause. Finally, in the Resurrection and the Last Judgment, Christ is everywhere distinguished from God, for He appears only as a deputy with full powers, and hence His power is represented as resting in the Father, just as the appointment proceeds from the Father originally. Exactly the same is true of the sending of the Spirit, which Christ ascribes, now to Himself, now to the Father, who sends it at His request.⁷⁷ So that without those great supreme testimonies all these details would have little effect.

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← Second Aspect of the Antithesis. The Consciousness of Grace · Contents · The Work of Christ →

Footnotes

1. Cf. § 63. ↩

2. 90, I. ↩

3. ↩

4. 13, 1. ↩

5. It will doubtless be generally recognized that this is implied in the statement in Gal. 4⁴, that Christ was made under the law. ↩

6. Cf. §§ 67–69. ↩

7. 68, I. ↩

8. 68, above. ↩

9. Cf. § 72. ↩

10. Cf. § 13. ↩

11. Cf. § 69. ↩

12. The page-numbers for the Reformed Confessions refer to the Augusti Corpus etc. ↩

13. The Belgic Confession, too, shares in the same confusion, x. p. 176: Necesse itaque e[?]m qui Deus sermo filius et Jesus Christus nominatur jam tum extitisse cum ab ipso omnia crearentur. ↩

14. No one, we may suppose, will cite John 1¹⁸ or 17⁶ as instances against this assertion. ↩

15. φύσις. This censure seems also to fall on a writing which is merely deutero-canonical, for in 2 Pet. i⁴ the expression is found, θείας φύσεως κοινωνοί. But the immediate context of itself shows that these words cannot be taken so precisely as must be done in the case we are dealing with, where an important dogmatic definition is in question. ↩

16. Cf. Joann. Damasc. iii. 19: ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀνάγκη τὰς ἀλλήλαις ἑνωθείσας φύσεις καθ’ ὑπόστασιν ἑκάστην ἰδίαν κεκτῆσθαι ὑπόστασιν. δύνανται γὰρ εἰς μίαν συνδραμοῦσαι ὑπόστασιν μήτε ἀνυπόστατοι εἶναι μήτε ἰδιάζουσαν ἑκάστη ἔχειν ὑπόστασιν, ἀλλὰ μίαν καὶ τὴν αὐτὴν ἀμφότεραι,—and iii. 2: Λόγος σαρκὶ ἐψυχωμένῃ καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ τὸ εἶναι λαχοῦσῃ ἑνωθεὶς καθ’ ὑπόστασιν. ↩

17. The formulæ here are taken from Reinhard, Dogmatik, § 92, p. 347. ↩

18. ↩

19. Precisely as in the Symbol. Quic. 25: Nam sicut anima rationalis et caro unus est homo, ita et Deus et homo unus est Christus. ↩

20. Reinhard’s phrasing is particularly infelicitous (Dogm. § 91): Qui (filius Dei) cum natura quadam humana quam sibi adiunxerit unam efficiat personam. ↩

21. In the proposition itself, even after expressing unqualified disapproval of the term ‘divine nature,’ I allowed it to stand, purely for convenience’ sake. But here in the detailed discussion that consideration is irrelevant, and hence I have reverted to the simplest term. ↩

22. Joann. Damasc. iii. 2: καὶ τότε ἐπεσκίασεν ἐπ’ αὐτὴν ἡ τοῦ θεοῦ … ἐνυπόστατος σοφία καὶ δύναμις, ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ … καὶ συνέπηξεν ἑαυτῷ … σάρκα ἐψυχωμένην … οὐ ταῖς κατὰ μικρὸν προσθήκαις ἀπαρτιζομένου τοῦ σχήματος, ἀλλ’ ὑφ’ ἓν τελειωθέντος. On the other point, see Athanas., ad Epict. (ed. Patav.), i. p. 731: πόθεν δὲ πάλιν ἠρεύξαντό τινες ἴσην ἀσέβειαν … ὥστε εἰπεῖν, μὴ νεώτερον εἶναι τὸ σῶμα τῆς τοῦ λόγου θεότητος ἀλλὰ συναΐδιον αὐτῷ διὰ παντὸς γεγενῆσθαι, ἐπειδὴ ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τῆς σοφίας συνέστη. ↩

23. See Gerhard, loc. iii. p. 421. ↩

24. Of the two terms employed by the Greek Fathers for this act of union, ἐνσάρκωσις is much to be preferred to ἐνσωμάτωσις. The latter in part admits of the idea that the λόγος was implanted in a body already complete, in part the idea that the λόγος was only allied to a body, but Himself took the place of the soul. Neither idea is present in ἐνσάρκωσις. Hence, where the subject is handled properly, this term and the corresponding ‘incarnatio’ are much more common than ‘corporatio’ and ἐνσωμάτωσις. ↩

25. Matt. i¹⁸⁻²⁵ and Luke i³¹⁻³⁴. ↩

26. John 6⁴². ↩

27. Matt. 13⁵⁵, Luke 4²². ↩

28. Symb. rom.: τὸν γεννηθέντα ἐκ πνεύματος ἁγίου καὶ Μαρίας τῆς παρθένου· qui natus est de spiritu sancto ex Maria virgine.—Symb. Nic. Const.: σαρκωθέντα ἐκ πνεύματος ἁγίου καὶ Μαρίας τῆς παρθένου καὶ ἐνανθρωπήσαντα. ↩

29. Conf. Aug. 8: natus ex virgine Maria.—Exp. simpl. xi. p. 26: non ex viri coitu sed conceptum purissime ex spiritu sancto et natum ex Maria semper virgine.—Conf. Helv. xi. p. 96: carnem … ex intacta virgine Maria, spiritu cooperante, sumens.—Conf. Gallic. xiv. p. 116: cuius caro sit vere semen Abrahae et Davidis, quamvis arcana et incomprehensibili spiritus sancti virtute fuerit suo tempore in utero beatae illius virginis concepta.—Conf. Anglic. ii. p. 127: in utero beatae virginis ex illius substantia naturam humanam assumsit.—Conf. Belg. xviii. p. 180: conceptus in utero beatae virginis Mariae idque virtute spiritus sancti absque viri opere. ↩

30. Even where the subject is not mentioned at all, as in the Symb. Quic. and the Conf. Hungar., no definite intention need be suspected. ↩

31. See § 69. ↩

32. Consider, e.g., the expressions italicized in the quotations given above from the creeds. ↩

33. Joann. Damasc., rightly understood, agrees with this (i. 19, iii. 11) τῇ μὲν ἐνσαρκώσει τοῦ λόγου οὔτε ὁ πατὴρ οὔτε τὸ πνεῦμα κατ’ οὐδένα λόγον κεκοινώνηκεν εἰ μὴ κατ’ εὐδοκίαν, although elsewhere he speaks differently and less precisely. ↩

34. Cf. Gerh., loc. iii. p. 416, whose explanations depend principally upon Hilarius, de fid. trin. ii. ↩

35. Many passages in Gerh., loc. cit. ↩

36. In 2 of this section. ↩

37. The same view is expressed, among others, by Joann. Dam., if only he be rightly understood (iii. 7; p. 215 seq.): Ἰστέον δὲ, ὡς εἰ καὶ περιχωρεῖν ἐν ἀλλήλαις τὰς τοῦ κυρίου φύσεις φαμέν, ἀλλ’ οἴδαμεν ὅπως ἐκ τῆς θείας φύσεως ἡ περιχώρησις γέγονεν· αὕτη μὲν γὰρ διὰ πάντων διήκει καθὼς βούλεται καὶ περιχωρεῖ, δι’ αὐτῆς δὲ οὐδέν. καὶ αὕτη μὲν τῶν οἰκείων αὐχημάτων τῇ σαρκὶ μεταδίδωσι (of which more below) μένουσα αὐτὴ ἀπαθὴς, καὶ τῶν τῆς σαρκὸς παθῶν (to which everything temporal belongs) ἀμέτοχος. ↩

38. E.g. Joann. Dam. iii. 3 ff. ↩

39. ἀχωρίστως, ἀδιαιρέτως, and ἀδιαστάτως. ↩

40. ἀναλλοιώτως, ἀτρέπτως, and ἀσυγχύτως. ↩

41. See Sol. decl., p. 778: cum tota divinitatis plenitudo in Christo habitet ut in proprio suo corpore etiam … in assumpta humana natura divinam suam virtutem exerceat … idque ea quodammodo ratione qua … ignis in ferro candente agit. ↩

42. See Reinh., Dogm., § 97, 2 and 6. ↩

43. Sol. decl., p. 771: Si enim persuaderi mihi patiar ut credam solam humanam naturam pro me passam esse, profecto Christus mihi non magni pretii salvator erit, sed ipse tandem salvatore eget. ↩

44. Joann. Dam. iii. 7: αὕτη μὲν (ἡ θεία φύσις) τῶν οἰκείων αὐχημάτων τῇ σαρκὶ μεταδίδωσι, μένουσα αὐτὴ ἀπαθὴς, καὶ τῶν τῆς σαρκὸς παθῶν ἀμέτοχος. ↩

45. Conf. Gall. xv. p. 116: manente tamen unaquaque illarum naturarum in sua distincta proprietate, etc. Similarly, Conf. Belg. xix. ↩

46. John 8⁴⁶. ↩

47. Cf. § 93, 4. ↩

48. In the treatment of this question I could take no special account of the story of the Temptation, for to me it is impossible to regard it as historical. Obviously its content, taken literally, is such that in comparison Christ must often have been much more strongly tempted in the course of His active life. And hence the narrator is by no means to be blamed who indicates (Luke 4¹³) that this is not to be regarded as for Him the end of all temptation. ↩

49. What Christ Himself says in John 10¹⁷⁻¹⁸ expresses, not a physical, but a social and ethical relation. ↩

50. Cf. § 59, Postscript. ↩

51. Conf. Belg. xix. p. 181: et quamvis eidem naturae immortalitatem resurrectione sua dederit, etc. ↩

52. It is a divine provision, certainly of the highest significance, but not sufficiently recognized, that neither a trustworthy tradition regarding the external aspect of Christ’s person, nor an authentic picture of it, has come down to us. For the same reason, we may be sure, we lack an exact description of His manner of life and a connected narrative of the events of His career. ↩

53. E.g. Chrysost., in ep. ad Col. Homil. viii.: οὕτως ἦν καλὸς, ὡς οὐδὲ εἶναι εἰπεῖν. ↩

54. Cf. § 29, 3. ↩

55. Symb. Nic.: καὶ ἀναστάντα ἐν τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ κατὰ τὰς γραφάς· καὶ ἀνελθόντα εἰς τοὺς οὐρανοὺς καὶ καθεζόμενον ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ πατρὸς· καὶ πάλιν ἐρχόμενον μετὰ δόξης κρῖναι ζῶντας καὶ νεκρούς. ↩

56. Rom. 4²⁵. ↩

57. 1 Cor. 15¹³. ¹⁶. ↩

58. Acts 2²⁴ 3⁵ 4¹⁰ 10⁴⁰, Rom. 4²⁴, 1 Cor. 6¹⁴ 15¹⁵, 2 Cor. 4¹⁴. ↩

59. Symb. Rom.: κατελθόντα εἰς τὰ κάτωτα only in one Greek, but in several old Latin copies; Symb. Quic. 36: descendit ad inferos. ↩

60. 1 Pet. 3¹⁹. Eph. 4⁹ should certainly not be adduced here. ↩

61. John 2²⁵. ↩

62. Cf. § 13. ↩

63. John 8⁴⁶. ↩

64. John 10³⁰⁻³⁸. ↩

65. John 5¹⁷. ²¹. ²⁶ 8²⁴. ³⁶ 14¹¹. ²⁰ 17¹⁰. ²¹⁻²³. ↩

66. An indication of this sort might be found in John 17⁵, but John 5¹⁹·²⁰ makes this interpretation almost impossible. But even apart from that it would be open to suspicion, because the petition has remained unfulfilled, since in spite of all the labour expended no one has yet reached a clear consciousness on the matter, and no one ever will. ↩

67. It is a strange idea that this designation was intended to refute the popular opinion that no one would know whence the Messiah came; not less strange is the other, that it was intended to refer to a vision in Daniel (7¹³) where one like a Son of man—manifestly by contrast with the beasts mentioned earlier—comes in the clouds of heaven before the Ancient of days. ↩

68. Compare especially John 10³⁵ff.. ↩

69. John 3¹⁶. ↩

70. Matt. 26³⁷, Luke 19⁴¹. ↩

71. John 11³³. ³⁸. ↩

72. 2 Cor. 5²¹, 1 Pet. 2²², Heb. 1³ 7²⁶⁻²⁷ 9¹⁴. ↩

73. Phil. 4¹³. ↩

74. ὀνομαστικῶς, ἰδιωματικῶς, ἐνεργητικῶς, and λατρευτικῶς. ↩

75. It is obvious that no reference can be made here to the miraculous signs of the Old Testament, heavenly voices and appearances, by which the Son of God is to be recognized. For in any case they could have nothing to say about the Person of Christ; at most they might have to be considered àpropos of the doctrine of the Trinity. ↩

76. 1 Cor. 8⁶, Col. 1¹⁶⁻¹⁷, Heb. 1⁴. ↩

77. Luke 24⁴⁹ and John 15²·⁶; cf. John 14¹⁶·³⁶. ↩