for this is exactly what the apostolic writers do not do. We must hold to the reality of the humiliation, and, if we can see no further, we must be content to hold that, even in a way we cannot conceive, this state of limitation within the sphere of the humanity must have been compatible with the exercise in another sphere, by the same divine person, of the fulness of divine power. But the rationality of such a combination is a question which must be reserved till we have dealt with the standing in regard to ecclesiastical authority of our present conclusion.

§ 2.

The relation of our conclusion to ecclesiastical authority.

We need have no hesitation in claiming that the theological conclusion we have arrived at is wholly consistent with the actual dogmatic decisions of ecumenical councils, which are the only ecclesiastical decisions bearing on the present subject, the acceptance of which can fairly be said to be required for the ministry in the Anglican Church.

That Christ is God, consubstantial with the Father in His divine nature: that He is completely man, in mind and spirit as well as body, in His human nature that He is one only person, and that person divine, who for us men and for our salvation assumed our manhood: that the manhood as assumed remains

proper manhood and retains its proper energy and attributes unabsorbed into the Godhead-these1 are the central Church dogmas in regard to the person of Christ, and it will not take long to show that nothing said above is in any conflict with any of them. In fact it could not be suggested that any heretical tendency has been exhibited except in regard to the first and last of the above-mentioned decisions.

The first-the decree of Nicaea-asserts the Son consubstantial and coequal with the Father: it goes on by way of appendix to deny Him to be changeable or alterable 2. Can it be said that this decree condemns any view which speaks of the Son as becoming subject to limitation, or that postulates in the Incarnation any change in the mode of being of the eternal Son?

To this question we answer, first, that the fathers of the Council had only moral alterability in view in their ecclesiastical decision, as it was only moral alterability which the Arians asserted of Christ, and any idea of moral alterability has in this discussion been expressly repudiated. But further, even in regard to metaphysical alteration, it must be remembered that in the view here presented the limitation of which the incarnate Son is the subject is regarded (1) as not affecting His

1 See further, for an explanation of them, B. L. lect. iv.

...

2 See Heurtley's de Fide et Symbolo, p. 6 τοὺς δὲ λέγοντας . . . ἢ τρεπτὸν ἢ ἀλλοίωτὸν τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ τούτους ἀναθεματίζει ἡ καθολικὴ καὶ ἀποστολικὴ ἐκκλησία.

3 See Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism (Cambridge, 1882) p. 25 He [the Son according to the Arians] must have free will like us and a nature capable like ours of moral change, whether for evil or for good.' Cf. Bright, Waymarks, p. 387.

See above, p. 96.

essential being or operation in the universe, (2) as not imposed from without but an act of His own powerthat divine power which declares itself' most chiefly' in such self-renouncing 'pity' and love1. All that is asked then is that the Son should be regarded as exhibiting a divine capacity for self-accommodation within a certain sphere in carrying out His unchanging redemptive purpose. With such a view the fathers of Nicaea were not in any way concerned. Such self-accommodation is not 'mutability,' but the self-adaptiveness, the movement, of real spiritual life. As far as any charge of attributing 'mutability' to the Son in this metaphysical sense was made in the Arian controversy it was made mostly on the Arian side against the orthodox. 'All generation,' the Arians said, 'is a sort of change; but God is immutable: therefore God cannot be either generating or generated.' To which there is no better expressed reply than that of Victorinus Afer 2, where he refuses to identify the movement of divine life with change. Eternal life in God means eternal movement. It is only such eternal movement of life as makes intelligible such subsequent temporal 'changes' as are involved in the divine acts of creation or redemption.

Nor should it be left out of sight that, so far as the self-limitation of the Son even within a certain sphere of operation may be supposed to affect His essential

1 See above, pp. 142, 148, for phrases quoted from Gregory of Nyssa and Hilary.

'The argument here is quoted from Candidus the Arian to whom Victorinus Afer replied. But the argument was a commonplace of discussion see Gwatkin, l. c. p. 243; and on Candidus and Victorinus see s. v. VICTORINUS in Dict. of Chr. Biog. iv. pp. 1130 ff. with reff.

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consubstantiality with the Father, it is relative to that no less mysterious but also no less real act of self-denial on the part of the Father which the New Testament describes as His 'giving up' or 'giving' the Son. There is reciprocal self-sacrifice postulated alike in the Father and the Son1.

As regards the last of the decisions summarized above, which is contained in the decrees of the fourth and sixth Councils, it may be said that as they assert the completeness in our Lord of both the divine and human natures and activities-the fulness of both natures being inseparably but unconfusedly united in the one personso any position which involves incompleteness of divine activity or knowledge in the Incarnation is as much opposed to these decisions as one which involves a similar human incompleteness.

To this I should reply, primarily and to secure my ground, that the view expressed above involves no limitation of the divine activity of the Word absolutely in Himself or in the world, but only within a certain area. I can, therefore, affirm without any hesitation with the fourth Council that the one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, is both perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man,... consubstantial with the Father according to His Godhead, and with us according to His manhood "in all points like us, apart from sin," begotten of the Father before all ages, according to His Godhead, and in these last days, the same person, for us and for our salvation, born of Mary the Virgin, the Theotokos, according to His manhood; one

1 St. John iii. 16; 1 John iv. 9; Rom. viii. 32.

and the same person made known as Christ, Son, Lord, Only-Begotten, in two natures, unconfusedly, unchangeably, indissolubly, inseparably; the distinction of the natures being in no wise destroyed on account of the union, but each nature rather preserving its own special characteristic, and combining to form one person 1.' Or with the sixth Council, that 'We glorify in our Lord Jesus Christ, our true God, two natural energies indissolubly, unalterably, indivisibly, unconfusedly, that is the divine energy and the human energy; as Leo the theologian most clearly says, "Either form energizes in fellowship with the other as is proper to itself, the Word working what belongs to the Word, and the body accomplishing what belongs to the body 2."

Such decisions are in no way dissonant with a view which, maintaining the integrity and distinctness of the Godhead and of the manhood in the one person of the Son of God, maintains also, as the language of the New Testament demands, that the activity (and consciousness) of the Godhead was, by His own will, restrained and limited within the sphere of the Incarnation, to allow the real action of the manhood and its own proper 'energy'; and it needs to be pointed out that the special view here maintained was not at all before the mind of these councils-which were intent upon a quite different task, with which the present writer cannot be accused of lack of sympathy, that of securing against monophysite tendencies the permanence and real action of the manhood and of its faculties in our Lord's person.

1 The Definition of Chalcedon (de Fide et Symb. p. 27).

* The decision of Constantinople III (Gieseler, Eccl. Hist. ii. p. 176).