CHAPTER III.

CHRIST'S HUMANITY.

CHRIST'S Humanity is undisputed, being demonstrable from all the descriptions of him given in the Gospels. Some of the more important of the numerous texts are: Gen. 3:15, 66 The seed of the woman." Matt. 13:37, "The Son of man." Isa. 7:14, "A virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." Luke 1:32, "God shall give unto him the throne of his father David." Luke 3: 23-38, Christ was "the son of David, of Abraham, and of Adam." Gal. 4: 4, Christ was "made of a woman." Rom. 1: 3, "Jesus Christ concerning the flesh was made of the seed of David." 1 Tim. 2: 5, "The man Christ Jesus." Christ was born and died, hungered and thirsted, grew from infancy to childhood and manhood, was subject to the alternations of pleasure and pain, was tempted and struggled with temptation-in short, had all the experiences of man excepting those which involve sin. Luke 2:52; 24: 36-44; Matt. 4: 1; John 11: 33, 35; 13: 23; Heb. 4:15; 5:8; Phil. 2:7, 8.

What is implied in humanity has never been a dispute within the Church; but as some heretical parties have asserted a defective or mutilated humanity in Christ, the Church has specified particulars.

1. Christ had "a true body." Westminster L. C., 37. This was maintained in opposition to the Docetaе (Sokeîv), who asserted that Christ's body was seeming only, and spectral, a phantom of ghostlike appearance and not solid

flesh and blood. This heresy is refuted by Luke 24:39, "A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." John 20: 27, "Reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side." Luke 24: 43, "He did eat before them."

2. Christ had "a rational soul." Westminster L. C., 37. This was held in opposition to Apollinarism; which would find the rational element for the human nature in the eternal reason of the Logos. Apollinaris at first asserted that the Logos united with a human body only. Afterwards he modified this, by asserting that he united with a body and an irrational animal soul. Socrates: History, II. lxvi. Texts that disprove this are: Matt. 26: 38, "My soul is sorrowful." Mark 6: 6, Jesus "marvelled." Matt. 8: 10. Luke 7:9. Sorrow and wonder are rational emotions, proper to man, but not to God. Apollinaris, from the account given of him by Gregory of Nyssa (Adv. Apollinarem), seems to have blended and confused the human and divine natures even in the Godhead; for he asserted a human element in the divine essence itself. The Divine, he contended, is also essentially and eternally human. There is, thus, an eternal humanity. The Divine nature necessarily tends to the human form; inherently yearns to become man, and is unsatisfied until it is incarnate. This is the worst feature in Apollinaris's scheme, who was nevertheless a strong advocate of the Athanasian trinitarianisın against the Arians. Apollinaris also held that the mental suffering of Christ was suffering of the divine nature; otherwise it could not be a real atonement. See Dorner: Person of Christ.

The rational objections to Apollinarism are the following:

(a) A human nature destitute of finite reason would be either idiotic or brutal. If the Logos assumed into union only the body and the animal soul-the oŵua and Yux, and not the Tveûpa, in St. Paul's classification in

1 Thess. 5: 23-he did not unite himself with a rational nature. (b) In this case, also, he did not unite with a complete, but a defective humanity. Some of the essential properties of human nature, namely, rationality and voluntariness, would have been wanting. (c) In this case, none of Christ's mental processes could have been of a finite kind. Nothing but infinite and divine reason could have been manifested in his self-consciousness. The same would be true of his voluntary action. This must have been infinite only. There could have been no exhibition of finite human will, or of finite human reason in his earthly life.

3. Christ" continues to be God and man in two distinct natures." Westminster L. C., 36. This statement is in opposition to Eutychianism, which asserts that the union of the Logos with a human nature results in a single nature of a third species, which nature is neither divine nor human, but theanthropic. Eutychianism is contradicted by Rom. 1:3, 4, which describes Christ κατὰ σάρκα and κατὰ πνεῦ μa ȧyiwσvvns; and by Rom. 9:5, which describes him κατὰ σάρκα and as ἐπὶ παντῶν θεός. Christ, in these and similar passages, is represented as having two natures, not one only. A nature is necessarily incomplex and simple. A person may be incomplex, like a trinitarian person who has only one nature, or complex, like a human person who has two natures, and a theanthropic person who has three natures. A person may have two or more heterogeneous natures, but a nature cannot have two or more classes of heterogeneous properties. A substance or nature is homogeneous as to its qualities. A theanthropic nature, therefore, such as Eutyches supposed, having two classes of heterogeneous properties, the divine and the human, is inconceivable. We cannot think of a substance composed of both immaterial and material properties; a substance which is both mind. and matter. This is Spinoza's error. But we can think of a person so composed. We cannot logically conceive of a

divine-human nature.

material nature.

Man is such.'

It would be like an immaterial. But a person may be immaterial-material.

'Dorner (Christian Doctrine, III. 280) is Eutychian, in asserting that Christ had a God-human nature; " and in denominating "the God-human personality ""a God-humanity." This is confounding and mixing the natures. A "God-huinan nature" would be a theanthropic nature. There is a "God-human," or theanthropic person having two natures, but not a "God-human," or theanthropic nature having two sets of properties, divine and human. A "God-humanity," strictly speaking, would be a Divine humanity: that is, a human nature that is divine. But this is very different from a Divine-human person. Hooker's statement is excellent, upon this point. "Let us set it down for a rule or principle necessary to the plain deciding of all doubts and questions about the union of natures in Christ, that of both natures there is a co-operation often, an association always, but never any mutual participation, whereby the properties of the one are infused into the other." Polity, V. liii. Hooker quotes the following from Gregory of Nyssa, and adds that it is "so plain and direct for Eutyches," that he stands in doubt that the words are his whose name they carry": "The nature which Christ took weak and feeble from us, by being mingled with deity, became the same which deity is; so that the assumption of our substance into his was like the blending of a drop of vinegar with the huge ocean, whereby although it continue still, yet not with those properties which severed it hath; because since the instant of the conjunction all distinction of the one from the other is extinct, and whatsoever we can now conceive of the Son of God is nothing else but mere deity."

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It may be objected, that the traducianist seems to affirm a nature with two sets of properties, when he postulates a "human nature" that is both psychical and physical. But this does not mean that one and the same substance has both psychical and physical properties, but that two distinct and different substances, the psychical and the physical, are combined in a complex unity to which the general title of "human nature" is given. Each substance has its own properties diverse from those of the other. But the two are associated in a complex whole, a common specific nature," from which each individual man is derived both mentally and bodily.

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CHAPTER IV.

CHRIST'S UNIPERSONALITY.

THAT the two natures, the divine and the human, constitute only one person, is proved by the following Scripture texts: Rom. 1:3. Here, the one person called "Jesus Christ our Lord" is said to be "made of the seed of David according to the flesh," and "declared to be the Son of God, according to the spirit of holiness." This latter phrase, being antithetic to the phrase "according to the flesh," means "according to the divinity." Shedd: On Romans 1:4. Christ is described by St. Paul, κатà σáρкa and кaтà πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης; the first denoting the human nature, the last the divine. Rom. 9:5. Here, Christ is represented as "God over all, blessed forever," and as having also a descent from the fathers of the Jewish nation. Phil. 2:6-11; 1 Tim. 3:16; Heb. 1: 6-9 compared with Heb. 2:14; John 1:14; 1 John 1:1-3; 4:3; Gal. 4:4. Usher (Incarnation, Works, IV. 580) combines the Scripture data as follows: "He 'in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily' is the person; that fulness which so doth dwell in him is the natures. Now, there dwelleth in him not only the fulness of the Godhead, but the fulness of the manhood also. For we believe him to be both perfect God, begotten of the substance of his Father before all worlds; and perfect man made of the substance of his mother in the fulness of time. And therefore we must hold that there are two distinct natures in him; and two so distinct that they do not make one compounded nature; but still remain uncompounded and unconfounded together. But he in whom the fulness of the manhood dwelleth is not one