121. II. The Two Natures In Personal Oneness.

II. The Two Natures In Personal Oneness.

1. The Result of the Incarnation.—The reality of the incarnation determines the personal oneness of the Christ in the union of the two natures. We already have the facts which verify this statement. They came into our possession while discussing the doctrine of the person of Christ, and more fully in the treatment of the incarnation. The divine Son did not place himself in a merely tactual or sympathetic union with a human person, even though it were the closest possible to the mode, but so united our nature with himself as to share our experiences. The Christ is the Son incarnate. He is one person, but in possession of both divine and human attributes. The divine nature is the necessary ground of the former; the human, the necessary ground of the latter. Therefore while he is personally one he must possess both natures in a personal oneness. This is the meaning and the result of the incarnation. Only with such a result can it be a reality—such a reality as will interpret the Scriptures, or meet the necessity for an atonement, or satisfy the deepest religious consciousness.

2. The Catholic Doctrine.—That the union of the two natures in the personal oneness of Christ is, in the proper sense of catholic, the catholic doctrine, is so surely and openly true that it needs no elaborate treatment. The doctrine is embodied in the creeds of the Churches. Exceptions are too rare to discredit or render inaccurate the general statement. Even its omission from a creed may not mean its omission in the faith of the Church which formulates such creed. The creeds of some Churches are very brief, and deal but little with formulations of doctrine. In such instances the omitted doctrine of the union of the two natures in the personal oneness of Christ may hold its place as firmly in the faith of the Church as other fundamental doctrines likewise omitted. This doctrine is in the ecumenical creeds, and by their acceptance has become the catholic doctrine. It is true that this doctrine was not definitely formulated in the Nicene Creed, but the ground of it was therein laid, and so far it became the faith of the Church. It is also true that the Athanasian Creed was not formally ecumenical, but the consensus of the Church soon gave it ecumenical character, and thus determined the union of the two natures in the personal oneness of Christ, so definitely formulated in this creed, to be the doctrine of the Church universal. There follows the Chalcedonian symbol, formulated by an ecumenical council convened for the definite purpose of constructing a doctrine of the person of Christ. Nothing in this doctrine is more definitely formulated than the union of the two natures in his personal oneness. This was then the creed of the whole Church. Since the division into the Greek and Roman it has been in common the creed of both. It is the doctrine of the Protestant Churches: of the Lutheran; of the Reformed; of the Churches which hold substantially the Westminster Confession; of the Church of England; of the Methodist Churches, and of others here omitted. It is thus manifestly true that the union of the two natures in the personal oneness of Christ is the catholic doctrine.

3. Mystery of the Doctrine.—We reach the profoundest mystery of the incarnation in the personal oneness of the divine-human Christ. It is, if possibly so, a profounder mystery than the doctrine of the Trinity. The notion of three personal subsistences in one nature seems less remote from the grasp of thought than a unity of personality in the union of two natures, each of which is normally a person. Personality itself is a profound mystery. How obscure the notion of an unbodied spirit endowed with personal faculties and active in modes of personal agency! Nor do we attain to any clearness of view in the instance of personal mind enshrined in a physical organism. Indeed, it is difficult to say in which case lies the deeper mystery. Even our own experience in the embodied mode of life clears no obscurity. That we thus exist and personally act we know, but below these facts all is mystery. Surely, then, it is not for us to grasp in thought the personality of the Christ in the union of- a human nature with the divine. The constitution of our own personality in the union of two distinct natures, the mental and the physical, has been in frequent use for the illustration of the person of Christ. Any helpful illustration would be accepted readily, but we can find no help in the one here offered. The want of analogy wholly voids the illustration. In order to secure any ground of analogy our mental and physical natures must be combined in the basis of our personality. This is attempted, but certainly without attainment. In man the seat of personality is wholly in the mind, and there is no ground for two personalities in his constituent natures. No attribute of personality belongs to the body. The mind is the whole personal self, and if disembodied would still possess its personality. For the present life the body determines some modes of its personal agency and some facts of its consciousness, but has no part in its personal constitution nor place in its ground. But the human nature assumed by the divine Son in the person of Christ not only may be a person, but normally is a person. The depth of mystery lies in the union of two such natures in the unity of personality. For the illustration of such a personality there is no analogy in the constitution of our own. The mystery deepens in the fact that in his personality the finite blends with the infinite. In his consciousness there is a mingling of human forms of experience with forms of the divine consciousness. The person of Christ is a mystery of Christian truth without solution In our reason. It is proper here to recall the profound difference, previously pointed out, between a mystery and a contradiction. There is nothing in the doctrine of the person of Christ which contradicts our reason. The world is full of mysteries, but mystery is not the limit of assured truth. On the ground of Scripture the doctrine of the person of Christ, as previously set forth, is true, and on that ground we hold it in a sure faith.

Two facts are offered in aid of our thought. If not of any service for the solution of this mystery they may be helpful toward a true notion of the person of Christ.

One fact is that it was a form of human nature, simply as such, and not in personal development, that the Logos assumed in the incarnation. While it is conceded that the assumption of a human nature in its personal form would have resulted in a duality of persons in Christ, it is claimed that by the assumption of a human nature as yet impersonal such a consequence is avoided. “If the Son of God had taken to himself a man now made and already perfected, it would of necessity follow that there are in Christ two persons, the one assuming and the other assumed; whereas the Son of God did not assume a man’s person into his own, but a man’s nature to his own person, . . . the very first original element of our nature, before it was come to have any personal human subsistence. . . . By taking only the nature of man he still continueth one person, and changeth but the manner of his subsisting, which was before in the mere glory of the Son of God, and is now in the habit of our flesh.”^{[580] [580]} Hooker:Ecclesiastical Polity, book v, § 53. Of course, the fact here given as securing the oneness of personality in Christ requires that the assumed human nature should in itself ever remain in an impersonal form; for any subsequent change into a personal mode would have the same consequence of personal duality as an original incarnation of the Son in a human person. Yet this notion of a mere human nature must not be carried too far, nor held too rigidly, else the nature itself will not account for the human facts in the life of Christ. We know nothing of the mode of connection between a mental nature and a physical organism, whereby the physical determines the cast of many facts of experience in the mental. No more can we know the mode in which the spiritual nature of man must be related to the incarnate Logos so as to constitute in him the ground of experiences like our own. Yet it seems manifest that there can be no such ground without the activity of the mental nature assumed with the physical nature in the incarnation. This must be the case in respect to such experiences as have a specially mental cast. While, therefore, we may deny to the human nature assumed in the incarnation a distinct personal subsistence in Christ, we must still allow it such forms of activity as will account for the human facts of his incarnate life. The other fact is that the ground of the personality of Christ is in his divine nature, not in his human nature. There is here such a distinction between nature and person as we find in the doctrine of the Trinity, as formulated by the Council of Nice. While we cannot think of the divine nature as ever actually in an impersonal state, we can so think of a human nature. Indeed, the nature of every man exists in an impersonal mode before it attains to personality. In this case, however, as in the preceding one, it must be assumed that the human nature of Christ remains without personality in itself. But in this case, as in that, it must not be assumed that the human nature remains inactive or without effect in the consciousness of Christ. Such an assumption would deny the reality of the divine incarnation. While it is true that our own mind has the ground of its personality entirely in itself, yet its enshrinement in a physical organism has much to do with its consciousness. So the impersonal human nature assumed in the incarnation may determine many facts in the consciousness of Christ. Thus arises his the anthropic personality. In the consciousness of both divine and human facts he is the God-man. The new facts of consciousness are entirely consistent with the unity of his personality—just as the experiences which come to the human personality through the bodily organism are entirely consistent with its unity.