02.23. The Person of Christ
Chapter 23 The Person of Christ
1. How can it be proved that the promised Messiah of the Scriptures has already come, and that Jesus Christ is that person?
We prove that he must have already come by showing that the conditions of time and circumstances, which the prophets declare should mark his advent, are no longer possible. We prove, secondly, that Jesus of Nazareth was that person by showing that every one of those conditions was fulfilled in him.
2. Prove that Genesis 49:10, refers to the Messiah, and show how it proves that the Messiah must have already come. The original word translated Shiloh, signifies peace, and is applied to the Messiah.—Compare Micah 5:2; Micah 5:5. with Matthew 2:6. Besides, it is only to the Messiah that the gathering of the nations is to be.—See Isaiah 55:5; Isaiah 60:3; Haggai 2:7. The Jews, moreover, have always understood this passage as referring to the Messiah.
Up to the time of the birth of Jesus Christ the scepter and the lawgiver did remain with Judah; but seventy years after his birth, at the destruction of Jerusalem, they finally departed. If the advent of the Messiah had not occurred previously this prophecy is false.
3. Do the same with reference to the prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27. This prophecy refers expressly to the Messiah, and to his peculiar and exclusive work. That the seventy weeks here mentioned are to be interpreted weeks of years is certain, 1st., from the fact that it was the Jewish custom so to divide time;
2nd., from the fact that this was precisely the common usage of the prophetical books, see Ezekiel 4:6; Revelation 12:6; Revelation 13:5;
3rd. from the fact that the literal application of the language as seventy common weeks is impracticable. The prophecy is, that seven weeks of years, or forty–nine years from the end of the captivity, the city would be rebuilt. That sixty–two weeks of years, or four hundred and thirty–four years after the rebuilding of the city, the Messiah should appear, and that during the period of one week of years he should confirm the covenant, and in the midst of the week be cut off.
There is some doubt as to the precise date from which the calculation ought to commence. The greatest difference, however, is only ten years, and the most probable date causes the prophecy to coincide precisely with the history of Jesus Christ.
4. What prophecies, relating to the time, place, and circumstances of the birth of the Messiah, have been fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth? As to time, it was predicted that he should come before the scepter departed from Judah (Genesis 49:10), at the end of four hundred and ninety years after the going forth of the command to rebuild Jerusalem, and while the second temple was still standing. Haggai 2:9; Malachi 3:1. As to place and circumstances, he was to be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), of the tribe of Judah, of the family of David. Jeremiah 23:5-6. He was to be born of a virgin, Isaiah 7:14; and to be preceded by a forerunner.—Malachi 3:1. All these met in Jesus Christ, and can never again be fulfilled in another, since the genealogies of tribes and families have been lost.
5. What remarkable characteristics of the Messiah, as described in the Old Testament, were verified in our Savior?
He was to be a king and conqueror of universal empire, Psalms 2:6 and Psalms 14:1-7; Isaiah 9:6-7; and yet despised and rejected, a man of sorrow, a prisoner, pouring forth is soul unto death. Isaiah 53:1-12 :He was to be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and under his administration the moral condition of the whole earth was to be changed.—Isaiah 42:6; Isaiah 49:6; Isaiah 60:1-22. His death was to be vicarious.—Isaiah 53:5; Isaiah 53:9; Isaiah 53:12. He was to enter the city riding upon an ass.—Zechariah 9:9. He was to be sold for thirty pieces of silver, and his price purchase a potter’s field. Zechariah 11:12-13. His garments were to be parted by lot.—Psalms 22:18. They were to give him vinegar to drink.—Psalms 69:21. The very words he was to utter on the cross are predicted, Psalms 22:1; also that he should be pierced, Zechariah 12:10; and make his grave with the wicked and with the rich, Isaiah 53:9.—See Dr. Alexander’s “Evidences of Christianity.”
6. What peculiar work was the Messiah to accomplish, which has been performed by Christ?
All his mediatorial offices were predicted in substance. He was to do the work of a prophet (Isaiah 13:6; Isaiah 60:3), and that of a priest (Isaiah 53:10), to make reconciliation for sin (Daniel 9:24). As king, he was to administer the several dispensations of his kingdom, closing one and introducing another, sealing up the vision and prophecy, causing the sacrifice and oblation to cease (Daniel 9:24), and setting up a kingdom that should never cease (Daniel 2:44) 7. State the five points involved in the church doctrine as to the Person of Christ.
1st. Jesus of Nazareth was very God, possessing the divine nature and all its essential attributes.
2nd. He is also true man, his human nature derived by generation from the stock of Adam.
3rd. These natures continue united in his Person, yet ever remain true divinity and true humanity, unmixed and as to essence unchanged. So that Christ possesses at once in the unity of his Person two spirits with all their essential attributes, a human consciousness, mind, heart, and will, and a divine consciousness, mind, feeling, and will. Yet it does not become us to attempt to explain the manner in which the two spirits mutually affect each other, or how far they meet in one consciousness, nor how the two wills cooperate in one activity, in the union of the one person.
4th. Nevertheless they constitute as thus united one single Person, and the attributes of both natures belong to the one Person.
5th. This Personality is not a new one constituted by the union of the two natures in the womb of the Virgin, but it is the eternal and immutable Person of the
8. How may it be proved that Christ is really a man?
He is called man.—1 Timothy 2:5. His most common title is Son of Man, Matthew 13:37, also seed of the woman, Genesis 3:15; the seed of Abraham, Acts 3:25; Son of David, and fruit of his loins, Luke 1:32; made of a woman.—Galatians 4:4. He had a body, ate, drank, slept, and increased in stature, Luke 2:52; and through a life of thirty–three years was recognized by all men as a true man. He died in agony on the cross, was buried, rose, and proved his identity by physical signs.—Luke 24:36-44. He had a reasonable soul, for he increased in wisdom. He exercised the common feelings of our nature, he groaned in spirit and was troubled, he wept.—John 11:33; John 11:35. He loved Martha and Mary, and the disciple that Jesus loved leaned upon his bosom.—John 13:23. The absolute divinity of Christ has been proved above, Chap. 9.
9. How may it be proved that both these natures constituted but one person? In many passages both natures are referred to, when it is evident that only one person was intended.—Php 2:6-11. In many passages both natures are set forth as united. It is never affirmed that divinity abstractly, or a divine power, was united to, or manifested in a human nature, but of the divine nature concretely, that a divine person was united to a human nature.—Hebrews 2:11-14; 1 Timothy 3:16; Galatians 4:4; Romans 8:3; Romans 1:3-4; Romans 9:5; John 1:14; 1 John 4:3. The union of two natures in one person is also clearly taught by those passages in which the attributes of one nature are predicated of the person, while that person is designated by a title derived from the other nature. Thus human attributes and actions are predicated of Christ in certain passages, while the person of whom these attributes or actions are predicated, is designated by a divine title.—Acts 20:28; Romans 8:32; 1 Corinthians 2:8; Matthew 1:23; Luke 1:31-32; Colossians 1:13-14. On the other hand, in other passages, divine attributes and actions are predicated of Christ, while his person, of whom those attributes are predicated, is designated by a human title. John 3:13; John 6:62; Romans 9:5; Revelation 5:12.
10. What is the general principle upon which those passages are to be explained which designate the person of Christ from one nature, and predicate attributes to it belonging to the other? The person of Christ, constituted of two natures, is one person. He may, therefore, indifferently be designated by divine or human titles, and both divine and human attributes may be truly predicated of him. He is still God when he dies, and still man when he raises his people from their graves.
Mediatorial actions pertain to both natures. It must he remembered, however, that while the person is one, the natures are distinct, as such. What belongs to either nature is attributed to the one person to which both belong, but what is peculiar to one nature is never attributed to the other. God, i. e., the divine person who is at once God and man, gave his blood for his church, i. e., died as to his human nature (Acts 20:28). But human attributes or actions are never asserted of Christ’s divine nature, nor are divine attributes or actions ever asserted of his human nature.
11. How have theologians defined the ideas of “nature,” a “person” as they are involved in this doctrine? In the doctrine of the Trinity the difficulty is that one spirit exists as three Persons. In the doctrine of the Incarnation the difficulty is that two spirits exist in union as one Person.
“Nature” in this connection has been defined by the terms, “essence,”“being,”“substance.”
“Person” in this connection has been defined as “an individual substance, which is neither part of, nor is sustained by some other thing,” or as “an intelligent individual subsistence, per se subsistens.” The human nature in Christ never was “per se subsistens,” but since it began to be as a germ generated into personal union with the eternal Second Person of the Godhead, so from the beginning “in altero sustentatur.”
12. What were the elects of this personal union upon the Divine nature of Christ? His divine nature being eternal and immutable, and, of course, incapable of addition, remained essentially unchanged by this union. The whole immutable divine essence continued to subsist as the eternal Personal Word, now embracing a perfect human nature in the unity of his person, and as the organ of his will. Yet thereby is the relation of the divine nature changed to the whole creation, since he has become Emmanuel, “God with us,”“God manifest in the flesh.”
13. What were the effects of that union upon his human nature? The human nature, being perfect after its kind, began to exist in union with the divine nature, and as one constituent of the divine Person, and as such it ever continues unmixed and essentially unchanged human nature. The effect of this union upon Christ human nature, therefore, was—
1st. Exaltation of all human excellencies above the standard of human and of creaturely nature.—John 1:14; John 3:34; Isaiah 12:2.
2nd. Unparalleled exaltation to dignity and glory, above every name that is named, and a community of honor and worship with the divinity in virtue of its union therewith in the one divine Person.
3rd. As in the union of soul and body in the natural person, the soul although absolutely destitute of extension in itself, is in virtue of its union with the body present at once from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot—that is virtually, if not essentially, present in conscious perception and active volition—so through its personal union with the eternal Word is the human nature of Christ, (a) virtually present (although logically in heaven) with his people in the most distant parts of the earth at the same time, sympathizing with each severally as one who has himself also been tempted, (b) rendered practically inexhaustible in all those draughts made upon its energies by the constant exercise of those mediatorial functions which involve both natures.
Hence the church doctrine concerning the “communicatio idiomatum vel proprietatum ” of the two natures of Christ. It is affirmed in the concrete in respect to the person, but denied in the abstract in respect to the natures; it is affirmed utrius natural ad personam, but denied utrius naturoe ad naturam.
14. To what extent is the human nature of Christ included in the worship due to him?
We must distinguish between the object and the grounds of worship. There can be no proper ground of worship, except the possession of divine attributes. The object of worship is not the divine excellence in the abstract, but the divine person Of whom that excellence is an attribute. The God–man, consisting of two natures, is to be worshipped in the perfection of his entire person, because only of his divine attributes.
15. State the analogy presented in the union of two natures in the persons of men.
1st. Every human person comprehends two distinct natures, (a) a conscious, self–acting, self–determined spirit absolutely without extension in space, and (b) an extended highly organized body composed of passive matter.
2nd. These constitute but one person. The body is part of the person.
3rd. These natures remain distinct, the attributes of the spirit never being made common to the material body, nor the attributes of the body to the spirit, but the attributes of both body and spirit are common to the one person. The person is often designated by a title proper to one nature while the predicate is proper to the other nature.
4th. The spirit is the person. When the spirit leaves the body the latter is buried as a corpse, while the former goes to judgment. At the resurrection the spirit will resume the corpse into the person.
5th. While in union the person possesses and exercises the attributes of both natures. And in virtue of the union the unextended spirit is present virtually wherever the extended body is, and the inert insensible matter of the nerve tissues thrill with feeling and throb with will as organs of the feeling and willing soul.
16. What is the peculiar view as to the “communicatio idiomatum ” introduced into theology by the Lutherans? and state the reasons for not accepting it. In connection with, and in the process of maintaining, his peculiar view as to the presence of the very substance of Christ’s body and blood in, with, and under the bread and the wine in the Eucharist, Luther and his followers introduced and elaborated a doctrine that, in consequence of the hypostatic union of the divine natures in the one person of Christ, each nature shares in the essential attributes of the other nature. When they came to explain the matter more fully, they did not affirm that any distinctive attribute of humanity was shared by the divinity, nor that the human nature shared all the attributes of the divine; they affirmed in detail simply that the humanity shared with the divine in its omniscience, omnipresence, and power of giving life. The advocates of this doctrine were divided into two schools:
1st. The most extreme and logically consistent, represented by John Brentz and the theologians of Tubingen. These maintained that the every act of incarnation effected, as the essence of the personal union, the participation of each nature in the properties of the other. From his conception in the womb of the Virgin the human nature of Christ was inalienably endowed with all the divine majesty, and all those properties which constitute it. These were necessarily exercised from the first., but not manifested during his earthly life, their exercise being hidden. The facts of Christ’s life during his estate of humiliation are therefore explained by a voluntary Krypsis, or hiding of the divine properties of his humanity.
2nd. The other less extreme view was represented by Martin Chemnitz, and the theologians of Giessen. They held also, that, by the very act of incarnation the humanity of Christ was endowed with divine perfections. That as to his relation to space, “Logos icon extra carnem, et caro non extra Logon(The Logos is not beyond the fleash, and the flesh is not beyond the Logos).” Yet they taught that the exercise of these perfections was not necessary, but subject to the will of the divine person, who causes his human nature to be present wherever and whenever he wills, and who during the period of his humiliation on earth voluntarily emptied (Kenosis) his human nature of its use and exercise of its divine attributes. Prof. A. B. Bruce, D.D., “Humiliation of Christ,” Lecture 3.—“The Lutherans held the exaltation of the humanity to meet the divinity, and (while on earth) the Kenosis of the humanity. The Reformed insisted on the reality of the human life of Christ, and the self–emptying (Kenosis) of the divinity to meet the humanity. The Lutherans held the double life of the glorified humanity (the local presence and the illocal omnipresence). The Reformed tendency was to recognize a double life of the Logos— totus extra Jesum, and totus in Jesu.”
We reject the Lutheran view because—
1st. It is not taught in the Bible. It really rests upon their mistaken interpretation of the words of Christ—“This is my body.”
2nd. It is impossible to reconcile it with the phenomena of Christ’s earthly life. It increases the difficulties of the problem it was invented to explain.
3rd. It virtually destroys the incarnation by assimilating the human nature to the divine in the co–partnership of properties, whereby it is virtually abrogated, and in effect only the divine remains.
4th. It involves the fallacy of conceiving of properties as separable from the substances of which they are the active powers, and thus is open to the same criticisms as the doctrine of transubstantiation.
17. How can it be shown that the doctrine of the incarnation is a fundamental doctrine of the Gospel?
1st. This doctrine, and all the elements thereof; is set forth in the Scriptures with preeminent clearness and prominence.
2nd. Its truth is essentially involved in every other doctrine of the entire system of faith; in every mediatorial act of Christ, as prophet, priest and king; in the whole history of his estate of humiliation, and in every aspect of his estate of exaltation; and, above all, in the significance and value of that vicarious sacrifice which is the heart of the gospel. If Christ is not in the same person both God and man, he either could not die, or his death could not avail. If he be not man, his whole history is a myth; if he be not God, to worship him is idolatry, y et not to worship him is to disobey the Father.—John 5:23.
3rd. Scripture expressly declares that this doctrine is essential.—1 John 4:2-3.
18. In what Creeds and by what Councils has this doctrine been most accurately defined?
1st. The Creed of the Council of Nice, amended by the Council of Constantinople, and the Athanasian Creed, and the Creed of the Council of Chalcedon, are accurate and authoritative statements of the whole church as to this doctrine. They are all to be found above, Ch. 7.
2nd. The decision of the Council of Ephesus, A. D. 431, condemning the Nestorians, and affirming the unity of the Person; the decision of the Council of Chalcedon (451) against Eutyches, affirming the distinction of natures; and the decision of the Council of Constantinople (681) against the Monothelites, affirming that Christ’s human nature retains in its unimpaired integrity a separate will as well as intelligence, closed the gradually perfected definition of the church doctrine as to the Person of Christ, and have been accepted by all Protestants.
19. How may 3rd. Heresies on this subject be classified? As they seek relief from the impossibility which reason experiences in the effort fully to comprehend the mutual consistency of all the elements of this doctrine (1) in the denial of the divine element, (2) or in the denial of the human element in its reality and integrity, or (3) in the denial of the unity of the person embracing both natures.
20. What parties have held that Jesus was a mere man? In the early church the Ebionites, and the Alogi. At the time of the Reformation the Socinians. In latter times Rationalists and Unitarians. for an account of their history and doctrines, see above, Ch. 6., Q. 11, and Q. 13, and below, at the close of this chapter.
21. What parties denied Christ’s true humanity and on what grounds?
These speculations were all of Gnostic origin. Hence came the conviction that matter was inherently evil, and that innumerable AEons, or great spiritual emanations from the absolute God, mediate between him and the actual world.
22. State the Apollinarian Heresy.
Apollinaris, bishop of Laodicea, circum. 370, of general repute for orthodoxy and learning, taught that as man naturally consists of a body,
23. What was the Nestorian Heresy? This term rather expresses an exaggerated, one–sided tendency of speculation on this subject than a positive definable false doctrine. It is the tendency to so emphasize the distinction of the two complete, unmodified natures in Christ, as to throw into the shade the equally revealed fact of the unity of his Person. This tendency was most conspicuous in the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, the leader of the Antiochian school, and from him it became the general character of that school. The theology of the Eastern Church of the fourth and fifth centuries was divided between the two great rival schools of Alexandria and Antioch. “In the Alexandrian school, an intuitive mode of thought inclining to the mystical; in the Antiochian, a logical reflective bent of the understanding predominated.”—Neander, “Hist.,” Torrey’s Trans., Vol. 2., p. 352.
Nestorius, who had been a monk at Antioch, became patriarch of Constantinople. He disapproved of the phrase, “Mother of God”
24. What was the Eutychian or Monophysite Heresy?
Eutyches was an abbot at Constantinople, and an extreme disciple of Dioscuros, the successor of Cyril. He pressed the opposition to the Nestorians to the length of confounding the two natures of Christ, and hence holding that Christ possessed but one nature, resulting from the union of Divinity with humanity. They were styled Monophysites. They were condemned by the Council of Chalcedon (A. D. 451), which adopted the statement communicated by Leo the Great, bishop of Rome, to Flavian, patriarch of Constantinople. “Totus in suis, totus in nostris.”
25. What was the doctrine of the Monothelites? The Emperor Heraclius attempted to reunite the Monophysites with the orthodox Church by adopting, as a compromise, the decision of the Council of Chalcedon as the coexistence of two distinct natures in the one Person of Christ, with the amendment that there was in consequence of the personal union but one divine–human energy (
26. What is the modern doctrine of Kenosis? The old Socinian doctrine teaches that Jesus, a true man after his ascension, becomes the subject of an apotheosis, whereby he is exalted into a condition and rank between that of God and the universe. The Eutychians taught that the human nature was absorbed by and assimilated to the divine. The Lutherans taught that the human nature was endowed with the properties of the divine. The modern doctrine of Kenosis is that instead of man becoming God, or being personally united to divinity, God literally became man. It is taught with various modifications by Drs. Thomasius, Hofmann, Ebrard, Martensen, and others, and very clearly by Dr. W. F. Gess in a work translated admirably by Dr. J. A. Reubelt, of Indiana. The term signifies a voluntary emptying of himself; of his divinity, by the Logos. It is derived from Php 2:7,
I. The Father alone is from himself. He eternally communicates the fullness of his divine essence and perfections to the Son, thus giving to him to have life in himself. The Son thus eternally flowing from the Father unites with the Father in communicating their fullness to the Spirit, and is himself the life of the world.
II. “But the Logos is God; he has life in himself even as the Father; his volition to receive life from the Father is the source of his life; his self–consciousness is his own act. Hence it follows that he can suspend his self–consciousness.”
III. In condescending to be conceived of the Virgin, the Logos laid aside his self–consciousness, and with it the communication of the Father’s life to the Son, by which the Son has life in himself even as the Father, and hence his omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotent government of the world was suspended.
IV. When the substance of the Logos awoke to self–consciousness as the infant Jesus, it was as a true human infant, and he grew and developed in knowledge and powers, as a true man without sin, endowed with preeminent grace and the fullness of the indwelling Spirit of God.
V. When glorified the ante–mundane eternal communication of the fullness of divine life from the Father to the Logos recommenced, and though continuing truly human, he is no less truly God. He is again eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. “Thus a man is received into the trinitarian life of the Deity, from and by the glorification of the Son.”—“Script. Doc. Pers. Christ. Gess.,” by Reubelt. This doctrine.—
1st. Does violence to the infinite perfections and immutability of the divine nature.
2nd. It is not consistent with the Scriptural fact that Christ, while on earth, was real and absolute God.
3rd. It is not consistent with the fact that the humanity of Christ was real humanity generated of the seed of Abraham.
4th. It is confessedly different from the immemorial and universal faith of the Church. For a thorough discussion, see Dr. A. B. Bruce’s “Humiliation of Christ.”
AUTHORITATIVE STATEMENTS. The GREEK, ROMAN, and PROTESTANT Churches all agree in accepting the definitions of the Creeds, those of Nice and of Chalcedon and the Athanasian (so called).—See above Chap. 7. The LUTHERAN DOCTRINE as to the Relations of the two Natures.
“Formula Concordioe,” Pars. 1., Epitome, ch. 8, §§ 11 and 12.— “Therefore not only as God, but also as man, he knows all things, and had power to do all things, is present to all creatures, and has all things which are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, under his feet, and in his hands. ‘All things are given to me in heaven and On earth’ and ‘he ascended above all heavens, and fills all things.’ Being everywhere present, he is able to exercise this his power, neither is anything to him either impossible or unknown. Hence, moreover, and most easily, is he being present, able to distribute his true body and blood in the sacred Supper. But this is done not according to the mode and property of human nature, but according to the mode and property of the right hand of God. . . . And this presence of Christ in the sacred Supper is neither physical nor earthly, nor capernaitish (see John 6:52-59), nevertheless, it is most true and substantial.”
Pars. 2 (“Solida Declaratio ”), ch. 8, § 4.—“For that communion of natures, and of properties, is not the result of an essential, or natural effusion of the properties of the divine nature upon the human:as if the humanity of Christ had them subsisting independently and separate from divinity, or as, if by that communion, the human nature of Christ had laid aside its natural properties, and was either converted into the divine nature, or was made equal in itself, and per se to the divine nature by those properties thus communicated, or that the natural properties and operations were identical or even equal. For these and like errors have justly been rejected, etc.”
Luther says, “Where you put God, there you must put the humanity (of Christ), they cannot be sundered or riven; it is one person, and the humanity is more closely united with God than is our skin with our flesh, yea, more intimately than body with soul.”
Confessio Helvetica Posteri ch. sit—“We acknowledge, therefore, that in one and the same Lord Jesus Christ, there are two natures, and we say that these are so conjoined and united that they are not absorbed, nor confused nor mixed; but are rather united and conjoined in one person, being preserved with their permanent properties; so that we worship one Lord the Christ, and not two; one we say, true God and man according to his divine nature consubstantial with the Father, and according to his human nature consubstantial with us men, and in all things like us, sin excepted. Therefore, as we abominate the Nestorian dogma making two out of one Christ, and dissolving the union of the Person so, also, we heartily execrate the madness of Eutyches and of the Monophysites and the Monothelites, expunging the property of the human nature. Therefore, we in no wise teach that the divine nature in Christ suffered, or that Christ according to his human nature has hitherto been in this world, and so is everywhere. ”
“West. Con.,” Ch. 8, § 2.—“The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance, and equal with the Father, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon him man’s nature, and all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin:being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary, of her substance. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and man.”