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pressure. For Him too obedience took the form of effort and self-sacrifice. His will battled with desire, though it was desire always innocent, natural, necessary. He was really tempted to evade the law of holy obedience,1 and it would accordingly seem to follow that in some sense the Deity of Christ was "quiescent in His temptation."2 The Deity conferred on His human nature just such strength as was "infallibly sufficient, but not more than sufficient to sustain Him in conflict and bear Him through the fearful strife."

3. Thus the victory of Christ is an ethical and real one, not "necessary" in the sense that the power of the indwelling Deity overbore the free moral liberty of Christ's human will. He was free, though His victory was inevitable in virtue of the unction of the Holy Spirit that rested upon Him. He cannot be thought to have repelled the enemy's assaults "like smoke." 3 Rather His human nature in the power of the Spirit was enabled to prevail over temptation, just as in a lower degree His members are enabled to prevail, through the power of the Spirit, yet not without acute suffering and even an agony of conflict. Throughout His trial the will of Christ was acting as ideally man's will ought ever to act. It was truly "free," just because it clung with unswerving fidelity to the will of God, in spite of His capacity for suffering temptation, and His possession of the faculties which ordinarily are employed in sinful

1 Cp. Liddon, Bampton Lectures, note C. Cp. Bruce, Humiliation of Christ, pp. 266 ff.

Irenæus, ut sup. Cp. Bruce, l.c. p. 269.

3 As Jo. Damasc. asserts, de orth. fid. iii. 20. Hilary maintains the same position in effect when he teaches (docetically) that our Lord was not subject to pain or fear. See p. 64 above. On the relation of the work of the Holy Spirit to the temptation, see Mill, op. cit. pp. 37-48.

action.1 But we must remember that there was present with Christ's human nature a countervailing force which enabled Him to conquer the temptation by which He was beset, not coercing His human will, but acting upon it morally in the way of constraining appeal.

It is partly in virtue of this unswerving fidelity to Divine control and direction that our Lord is called in Scripture the captain or leader of faith: faithful to Him that appointed Him.2 That He suffered as we suffered, that He was tried and tempted, and was subject to human limitations, are facts of the Gospel narrative to which we must be true, in spite of the difficulties which a priori suggest themselves when we confess that Christ is very God. "We may construct what appear to be conclusive arguments to show that since the Lord Jesus Christ was a Divine person, He must have known all things, must have been inaccessible to temptation, could never have had occasion to pray." "3 So men have reasoned in effect-even thinkers so illustrious as Thomas Aquinas. But demonstrations of what must have been can avail little, at least in the judgment of instructed Christians, against the express testimony of Holy Writ. "Let this be our wisdom-to be sure

1 Aug. de Civ. Dei, xxii. 30. 3: "Primum liberum arbitrium quod homini datum est, quando primum creatus est rectus, potuit non peccare, sed potuit et peccare; hoc autem novissimum eo potentius erit quo peccare non poterit . . . Primum liberum arbitrium posse non peccare; novissimum, non posse peccare." Of our Lord both assertions are true (1) "Potuit non peccare": hence He possessed the faculty of sinning, had He willed to exercise it. (2) "Non potuit peccare." His human will, reinforced by the fulness of the Divine Spirit, could not choose to sin. As to these "old alternatives" Dr. Dale justly points out that "they are metaphysical, not moral, alternatives; they are philosophical abstractions, and do not cover the whole of life. . . Paradoxical as it may seem, moral inability may be the highest form of moral freedom" (Christian Doctrine, note H, p. 293).

2 Heb. xii. 2, iii. 2.

3 R. W. Dale, Christian Doctrine, p. 75.

that the earnest desire to seek truth is a safer way than the presumption that we know what we know not." 1

4. Christ's growth in knowledge as Man

We find that the Gospels bear witness to a real development in our Lord's human nature, and it is important to collect the various statements which bear on this point before attempting to construct any theory as to their meaning.

3

The evangelists, then, attest the natural growth of Christ's bodily and mental faculties. He advanced (πρоÉKOTтEV) in wisdom and stature (S. Luke ii. 52). There was growth in the powers not only of body, but also of mind and intellect. Moreover, the Gospels represent Christ as occasionally asking for information,2 and occasionally surprised; while as to one matter in particular He professes ignorance. All these facts point to a certain limitation of knowledge; but they are to be qualified by those passages which ascribe to our Lord a supernatural illumination of mind. Thus He is spoken of as possessing a power of supernatural intuition into the hearts and thoughts of men.5 There are, indeed, passages which imply more than this. Christ occasionally speaks as one who is conscious of an eternal Sonship, as one who has an immediate knowledge of the Father, such as can only come to other men, in their measure, mediately, through union with Him." Speaking generally, however, the phenomena recorded 1 Aug. de Trin. ix. 1.

2 S. Mk. vi. 38, viii. 5, ix. 21; S. Lk. viii. 30; S. Jo. vi. 5, 6, xi. 34. 3 S. Mk. vi. 6, vii. 18, viii. 17-21.

4 S. Mt. xxiv. 36; S. Mk. xiii. 32.

5 S. Jo. i. 48; S. Mt. xii. 25; S. Jo. xvi. 19.

6 Cp. Liddon, Bampton Lectures, p. 253.

7 S. Mt. xi. 27; S. Lk. x. 22; cp. S. Jo. i. 18, iii. 35.

in the Gospels point to a human consciousness in Christ, subject to natural limitations, but supernaturally intensified and illuminated. The insight and foresight vouchsafed to our Lord's human spirit seems in fact to be analogous to that exercised by prophets and apostles. The indwelling presence of Deity does not altogether annihilate the action of human faculties, but intensifies and heightens it.1 The fulness of the Divine Spirit which sustained and illuminated our Lord's human faculties does not appear to have involved a Divine omniscience, nor to have suspended altogether the ordinary laws and limitations of human intelligence.

We are then face to face with two divergent series of considerations: those which the Gospel narrative generally appears to suggest, and those which might be deduced a priori from the truth of Christ's Divinity.

It may be well briefly to describe the different lines of treatment accorded to the facts by ancient thinkers.

(1) It was somewhat inconsistently taught by a party of monophysites in Egypt (the Agnoeta) that the human soul of our Lord was like ours in every respect, even in ignorance. It does not appear that they actually attributed ignorance to the Logos.2 They seem, however, to have been regarded as heretics, though their teaching ran counter to the general current of monophysite opinion.

(2) Others reasoning a priori took what we can only call a docetic view. Our Lord's " advance" or "growth " in knowledge and wisdom was only exhibitive. His human soul possessed perfect knowledge in virtue of its union with the Divine Logos. Accordingly His " growth" was nothing more than a progressive manifestation of the

1 See on all this subject, C. Gore, Bampton Lectures, pp. 147 ff., and Dissertations, no. 2; also Dale, Christian Doctrine, note F.

2 So, e.g., Liddon, Bampton Lectures, p. 470; but see Gore, Dissertations, pp. 155 f. Cp. p. 120 above.

omniscience which He actually possessed. Thus Cyril of Alexandria attributes to Christ what he calls an "economic" ignorance: that is, such ignorance as properly accorded with the manhood He had assumed. Christ accordingly "seems ignorant of that which, as man, it did not behove Him to know. Cyril even declares that He "pretends" not to know the day of judgment.1 Of this theory it may be remarked (a) that it conflicts with the simple impression made by the Gospel narrative, which certainly does not suggest any notion of a merely simulated limitation of faculties; (b) that as actually held by Cyril it involves an inconsistency with his general conception of our Lord's humanity, which in the physical sphere at least he admits to have been subject to the ordinary laws of natural development; (c) that Cyril's view is dictated by his anxiety to vindicate the reality of the union of the human with the Divine nature which Nestorianism denied. To allow that Christ was really ignorant on any matter would have seemed to Cyril to favour the Nestorian idea that He was a human person intimately associated with the Logos,-not personally one with Him. We are in fact bound to admit that Cyril's theory appeared to be justified by the acknowledged dogmatic truth of which he was the most conspicuous defender. Moreover, the same general line of treatment is found in the Western Father Hilary.2 In its more developed form this view of Christ's human nature meets us in John of Damascus, who goes so far as to declare peremptorily that whoever teaches that Christ really advanced (πρоÉKOTτEV) in knowledge is practically a Nestorian, and

1 The most important passages are given in Bruce, Humil. of Christ, Appendix, pp. 366 f. Cp. Liddon, Bampton Lectures, p. 469, note 3. * See Hil. de Trin. ix. 62, quoted by Swayne, Enquiry into the Nature of our Lord's Knowledge as Man, p. 32.

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