expression to the secret of this Christology of the Church, were, it is true, officially disavowed; but the thing itself could not be altered, as long as the human nature of Christ was treated as impersonal, and as possessed of no independent significance. And as the conception of the personality of man began, under other, and those chiefly Pelagian influences, to assume a more definite shape, and to take up a position either alongside of, or even opposed to, the magical cast of doctrine above alluded to, the knot was drawn ever tighter. Some of the scholastic theologians remained true to tradition; but their unproductiveness, and their return to simpler mystical views of the Person of Christ, show that the interest hitherto taken in the rational development of Christology was already beginning to die out. So with Thomas Aquinas. Others began again to take up the position of Adoptianism, which was now no longer condemned; but, shut up within the formulas of the Church, and feeling the difficulty of uniting the two, they strove in vain to find a solution. So Duns Scotus. On the whole, vacillation and uncertainty prevailed; and the end thereof was a bewildered. scepticism, conjoined with blind subjection to the authority of the Church, to which was committed the responsibility of reconciling the apparent or real discordances in its teachings. In one line, however,-in that of the Mystics,-enough life remained to preserve the continuity of the process of development on which Christology had entered. This mystical tendency attained its climax, and thus also its normal and ecclesiastical consummation, in the Reformation. Even Mysticism, however, failed to advance beyond the idea of the impersonality of the humanity of Christ; though it did regard the humanity of Christ, in a general way, as the perfection of human nature. It taught, therefore, at all events by implication, that it is not contradictory of, but solely accordant with, the natures of God and man, that they should enter into the most intimate fellowship with each other, nay more, it is congruous to the nature of both, and not a curtailment of the human, that God alone should be the true personality in man. How far had it thus departed from the spirit and the principles of the Council of Chalcedon! The Lutheran Church, in its doctrine of the "Communicatio Idiomatum" (to its praise be it said), did not, like Mysticism, rest satisfied with the mere unity

of the Ego, and allow the human aspect to be absorbed in the Divine hypostasis, but declared the main problem to be, the union of the two natures themselves with each other, and put forth efforts to effect a solution. Inasmuch, however, as at this point a stop began to be put to the building of the edifice, at which the Church had laboured from the year 451 to 793, notwithstanding that the principles which had formerly been presupposed still combined to exert an influence, the proper place for discussing the Lutheran Christology will be the Second Epoch of this Period. We shall be able to show, on the one hand, that it formed the conclusion of the old era; and, on the other hand, that it formed the conclusion of the old, in virtue of a principle which fitted it to inaugurate a new, era.

We have thus tried to present a cursory view of that which constituted the life and soul of the Christological process in the different sections of the First Epoch (from 381 to 1517). Our task is now to take a survey of the various modes of conceiving and explaining the union of the two aspects of the Person of Christ, which resulted from the manifold points of view from which Christology was regarded during this epoch.

At no time in its history was the Christian Church disposed to dispense with a doctrine concerning the Person of Christ. It constantly applied the knowledge it possessed of God and man, whatever might be its measure, to this dogma. So far, therefore, the history of Christology is one of the chief sources of our knowledge of the modes in which different periods conceived of God and man. But, as a Christology could not fairly be considered to have been formed, until Christ was conceived as the unity of the divine and the human, each period, whatever might be its views in other respects, and whatever might be the nature of its main Christological efforts, was called upon to say, what, with the premises which it acknowledged, was its conception of the Unio.

The different modes of conceiving of this Unio, which came one after another into vogue, may be classified under three heads. In these, notwithstanding that the first and second were directly opposed the one to the other, a regular progress is discernible.

I. Under the first head belong those views of the Unio which, in that they detracted from, or altogether denied, the individuality and reality of the one or the other nature, had most affinity with Docetism or Ebionitism. They fell into Ebionitism when they represented the divine nature as transformed into the human, and into Docetism, when they represented the human nature as transformed into the divine; and they bore a certain resemblance to both, when they represented the one as tempered and modified by the other, so that, as in chemistry, the result was a compound product, a mixture of both factors. The first form was brought repeatedly under consideration in the first volume: of the second form was Eutychianism: of the third, was Theopassianism. They all belong to the Monophysitic family, which, as well as the school of Antioch, conceived of the divine and human as antagonistic to, and exclusive of, each other. Hence, the only union possible, was one which involved either the entire or the partial absorption of one of the factors; and usually, the divine factor, which was chiefly described and defined by physical categories, absorbed the human. The chief representatives of this class of views flourished, in part, during the First Period.

II. Under the second head must be classed those views which followed on, and were connected with, the condemnatory judgment pronounced by the Church on Apollinarism. The two natures were in this case also regarded as mutually exclusive contrarieties; but at the same time efforts were made to preserve completely to both their distinctive characters,-chiefly in the interest of the humanity of Christ, and of a positive conception of God. Still it was deemed possible to maintain a unity of the entire Person; though, naturally, only by means of a third principle, external to both natures.

That view is scarcely worthy of mention which, without inquiring further into the connecting principle, simply represents the Person of Christ as the sum and result of the two concurrent natures; and which therefore takes no trouble to consider whether the two natures can be thus combinedwhether they are so homogeneous as to be capable of addition to one sum (= Person), or whether each is not rather an independent person in itself. It is clear that in this case the two natures are only, as it were, arithmetically added together

P. 2.-VOL. I.

B

pronounced one; and that they are posited as one merely in thought, so that the Unio is purely nominal-an unio verbalis. All that was done was to postulate that the two natures be thought at one and the same time: the problem was not more precisely defined, much less was any progress made towards a solution.

The efforts after a unio realis took three forms :

(1.) The idea which first suggested itself was, that the divine and human natures are one, inasmuch as the latter is the temple or garment of the former. But to term a mere juxtaposition unity, and to represent the natures as one merely on the ground of their presence in one and the same place (unio localis), is to reduce the incarnation to a theophany, and, examined more carefully, is illusory; inasmuch as the divine nature (of which, by the way, no other aspects than those which may be termed physical are brought into view) would appear, in virtue of its omnipresence, to dwell in all things quite as truly as in the humanity of Christ.

It leads to a view of essentially the same character, to appeal to the mere power of God, and to judge that by His mere will He could conjoin and form into one whole, two natures which are not only different in essence, and have no sort of internal connection with each other, but are even mutually opposed. This we may designate the Mechanical Unio.

(2.) Inasmuch, however, as neither of the two natures is a mere lifeless substance, a form of union so dead must inevitably inflict injury on both. Hence Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius, whose ovvápeia, in other respects, bore the closest resemblance to the view just now described, combined therewith, the rudiments of a representation which, though occupying the same platform, was of a higher character. They supposed, namely, that the Logos, who is present in all things, stood in a peculiar relation-a relation as it were of elective affinity-to the man Jesus; the reason thereof being, that the man Jesus, because of His spirit and disposition, was honoured by God with the dignity of Sonship—a title and rank which belonged to the Logos by nature. Whether this excellence of the man Jesus was regarded as innate or as acquired, does not clearly appear. This view, which represents the relation of the Logos to the man Christ as taking a special form, on the ground of the pre

eminent worth recognised, in the judgment of God, as attaching to Christ's human nature, may be described, when considered from the point of view of its objective basis, as an unio in conformity to the idea of justice, or as the unio forensis; when considered in its actual character, as the relative union-unio relativa, ἕνωσις σχετική.

(3.) The peculiar excellence attaching to the human nature of Christ, and which attracted to itself the special sympathy of the omnipresent divine nature, must on earth, have been rather moral than physical (relating to the púσis),—that it must mainly have consisted in the sympathy for the divine, felt by this man. Still, the foundation in which this moral excellence inhered, was constituted by two opposed substances,-substances, that is, which were not of a nature to seek an union with, when turned towards, each other; but such, that whilst remaining internally independent, each had the same end in view as the other. Keeping these two points in view, we arrive at a subjective moral unio,—an union consisting in the harmony of two otherwise distinct and separate wills, which manifest the same tendency in similar forms or modes (a). This was unquestionably a more spiritual conception of the Unio; but still it was unsatisfactory, so far as it represented the acts of volition, on which the main stress was laid, as proceeding, in analogy with the point of view of law or justice, from two separate and opposed centres of life. The natures were no longer supposed to be merely passively combined; but were conceived as active, as effecting their own union. This union, however, was, after all, external to themselves, consisting in the mere similarity of their activity, and in their having a common aim. The assumption of two such centres of life, necessarily led to the assumption of the existence of two eternally co-ordinate personalities. That such must be the result of the attempt at a subjective moral unio, could not long remain unperceived. On the ground that this form of Christology involved a dualism, the culminating points of which (the Egos) were only held together by an ideal unity outside of and above them, it was justly condemned by the Church, no less than the theories classed under the first head,-both at the Council of Chalcedon. The

(a) See Note A, Appendix II., for the German of this passage. Tr.