1

AGOBARD, bishop of Lyons, records how Felix of Urgel, the Adoptionist leader, 'began to teach certain people to believe that our Lord Jesus Christ was, according to the flesh, truly ignorant of where Lazarus lay and of the day of judgement and of the subject of the conversation of the two disciples (on the road to Emmaus), &c. When I heard this,' he adds,

'I approached him in the presence of those whom he was seeking to convince and asked him whether this was really his opinion. And when he sought to establish his view I denounced him and expressed abhorrence of his corrupt teaching and I showed the others, as best I could, how anxiously they should repudiate such ideas, and in what sense those passages of Scripture ought to be understood and I caused passages chosen from the holy fathers to be read to Felix himself which contradicted his blasphemies. And when they had been read, he promised to apply himself with all diligence to his own correction.'

(2) The definition of Chalcedon affirmed the juxtaposition of the divine and human natures in Christ each with its separate and distinct operation, but contributed nothing positive towards the solution of the question how is this duality of natures and operations related to the unity of the person? How, for example, did the one person Christ, being God, exercise a human consciousness, involving as it does human limitations? The tendency was to regard the divine and human natures simply as placed side by side; to speak of Christ

1 See Agobard adv. Felicem Urgel. c. 5, and the note in Patr. Lat. civ. p. 37.

as acting now in the one and now in the other—or, more specifically, to attribute the powerful works and words of the incarnate person to His Godhead and His sufferings and humble' sayings to His manhood. The following is a typical passage from the great Tome of Leo 1:

'The nativity of the flesh is a manifestation of human nature: the birth from a virgin is an indication of divine power2. The infancy of the babe is exhibited by the lowliness of the cradle: the greatness of the Highest is declared by the voices of angels. He whom Herod impiously designs to slay is like humanity in its beginnings; but He whom the Magi rejoice to adore upon their knees is Lord of all. . . . To hunger, to thirst, to be weary, and to sleep is evidently human. But to satisfy five thousand men with five loaves, and to give to the Samaritan woman living water, of which whoso drinketh is secure from further thirst, to walk on the surface of the sea with feet not sinking, and to allay the swelling waves by rebuking the tempestthis without doubt is divine. As then (to omit not a little), it belongs not to the same nature to weep for a dead friend with the sensation of compassion, and

1 It should be noted that the dogmatic authority of a letter approved by a Council as a whole is not identical with the dogmatic authority of the actual formula decreed by the Council; e. g. the letters of St. Cyril are not dogmas in the sense in which it is a dogma that the term theotocus is rightly applied to the Blessed Virgin. The letters were approved as embodying the truth which the Council affirmed. Thus again St. Leo's tome was accepted at Chalcedon as embodying the truth of the permanence and distinct reality of Christ's human nature in the Godhead which assumed it. But all the phrases and passages in it are no more of dogmatic authority than the reading of 1 John iv. 3 qui solvit Iesum (ồ Xúei tòv 'Inσoûv) adopted in the tome (c. 5).

i. e. an indication that Christ, the child, was God.

...

to raise the same friend to life again at the authority of a word; . . . or to hang upon the cross and to make all the elements tremble, turning daylight into night; or to be pierced with nails, and to open the gates of paradise to the faith of the thief; so it belongs not to the same nature to say I and the Father are one, and to say the Father is greater than I1

In his notes on this passage Dr. Bright quotes some parallels (which, in fact, abound), e. g. St. Athanasius, adv. Arian. iii. 32 In the case of Lazarus He uttered a human voice, as man; but divinely, as God, did He raise Lazarus from the dead.' And St. Gregory Nazianzen, 'Orthodox writers clearly make a distinction between the things which belong to Christ-they assign to what is human the facts that He was born, was tempted, hungered, thirsted, was weary, and slept; and they set down to the Godhead the facts that He was glorified by angels, that He overcame the tempter and fed the people in the wilderness and walked on the surface of the sea.' He quotes further the formula of reunion between St. Cyril and the Easterns, ending with the words 'We know that theologians have treated some of the expressions concerning our Lord as common, as referring to one person, and have distinguished others as referring to two natures, and have taught us to refer to Christ's Godhead those which are appropriate to deity (0Eожреπеîs) and to the manhood those which imply

1 Ep. ad Flav. c. 4. This is a working out in example of the general principle: 'Agit utraque forma cum alterius communione quod proprium est; verbo scilicet operante quod verbi est et carne exsequente quod carnis est. Unum horum coruscat miraculis, aliud succumbit iniuriis.' St. Leo on the Incarnation (Masters, 1886) pp. 230 ff.

humiliation,' and he proves that this practice was endorsed by St. Cyril.

Now in regard to this tendency, to distribute to the two natures the words and acts of Christ, we may remark that up to a certain point it must be accepted by all who believe in Christ's Godhead. Thus 'I and my Father are one thing' (St. John x. 30) is pâμa Оεоπреπés. It could only be spoken by one who, however truly incarnate, was Himself God. St. John viii. 40 'Me, a man who hath told you the truth which I have heard from God,' is ȧveршлопрenés. It could only be spoken by one who, whatever else he was, was really man. But beyond the rare words of our Lord about His own essential being, such as the one just cited or St. Matthew xi. 27 'No one knoweth the Father save the Son' beyond such words and the accompanying divine claim on men which such words are necessary to interpret and justify, there is very little recorded in our Lord's life-may I say nothing?-which belongs to the divine nature per se and not rather to the divine nature acting under conditions of manhood. He had come to reveal God and to make His claim felt not as a messenger but as the Son. For this purpose He spoke as what He was, the Son. But He came to reveal God and make His claim felt, under conditions and limitations of manhood, and His powerful works, no less than His humiliations, are in the Gospels attributed to His manhood. Thus His miracles in general, and in particular the raising of Lazarus, are attributed by our Lord to the Father, as answering His own prayer, and to the Holy Spirit as 'the finger of God,' and St. Luke

describes His miracles generally as the result of 'the power of the Lord' present with Him1. This is a point on which-it must be emphatically said-accurate exegesis renders impossible to us the phraseology of the Fathers exactly as it stands. So Dr. Westcott remarks 'It is unscriptural, though the practice is supported by strong patristic authority, to regard the Lord during His historic life, as acting now by His human and now by His divine nature only. The two natures were inseparably combined in the unity of His person. In all things He acts personally; and, as far as it is revealed to us, His greatest works during His earthly life are wrought by the help of the Father through the energy of a humanity enabled to do all things in fellowship with God (comp. John xi. 41 f.)2'

§ 8.

Mediaeval and scholastic theology.

By the time of Augustine in the west, and by the time of John of Damascus at least in the east, the theological determination against the admission of a real growth in our Lord's human knowledge or a real ignorance in His human condition, such as the Gospel documents describe, must be regarded as fixed. I must however indicate

3

1 St. John xi. 41, St. Matt. xii. 28, St. Luke v. 17; and see above, p. 80. 2 Ep. to the Hebrews, p. 66,

Apparent exceptions do not on examination seem to hold, e. g. St. Bernard, commenting on Mark xiii. 32 (de Grad. Hum. cc. 3, 10), seeks to