2. The Deity of Christ.The reality and integrity of Christ's divine nature have been sufficiently proved in a former chapter (see pages 305-315). We need only refer to the evidence there given, that, during his earthly ministry, Christ:(a) Possessed a knowledge of his own deity.John 3:13—“the Son of man, who is in heaven”—a passage with clearly indicates Christ's consciousness, at certain times in his earthly life at least, that he was not confined to earth but was also in heaven [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and B, omit ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ; for advocacy of the common reading, see Broadus, in Hovey's Com. onJohn 3:13];8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”—here Jesus declares that there is a respect in which the idea of birth and beginning does not apply to him, but in which he can apply to himself the name“I am”of the eternal God;14:9, 10—“Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?”Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 24-49, gives the following instances of Jesus' supernatural knowledge: 1. Jesus' knowledge of Peter (John 1:42); 2. his finding of Philip (1:43); 3. his recognition of Nathanael (1:47-50); 4. of the woman of Samaria (4:17-19, 39); 5. miraculous draughts of fishes (Luke 5:6-9;John 21:6); 6. death of Lazarus (John 11:14); 7. of the ass's colt (Mat. 21:2); 8. of the upper room (Mark 14:15); 9. of Peter's denial (Mat. 26:34); 10. of the manner of his own death (John 12:33;18:32); 11. of the manner of Peter's death (John 21:19); 12. of the fall of Jerusalem (Mat. 24:2).Jesus does not say“our Father”but“my Father”(John 20:17). Rejection of him is a greater sin than rejection of the prophets, because he is the“beloved Son”of God (Luke 20:13). He knows God's purposes better than the angels, because he is the Son of God (Mark 13:32). As Son of God, he alone knows, and he alone can reveal, the Father (Mat.[pg 682]11:27). There to clearly something more in his Sonship than in that of his disciples (John 1:14—“only begotten”;Heb. 1:6—“first begotten”). See Chapman, Jesus Christ and the Present Age, 37; Denney, Studies in Theology, 33.(b) Exercised divine powers and prerogatives.John 2:24, 25—“But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all man, and because he needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man; for he himself knew what was in man”;18:4—“Jesus therefore, knowing all the things that were coming upon him, went forth”;Mark 4:39—“he awoke, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm”;Mat. 9:6—“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath authority on earth to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick of the palsy), Arise, and take up thy bed, and go unto thy house”;Mark 2:7—“Why doth this man thus speak? he blasphemeth: who can forgive sins but one, even God?”It is not enough to keep, like Alexander Severus, a bust of Christ, in a private chapel, along with Virgil, Orpheus, Abraham, Apollonius, and other persons of the same kind; see Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. xvi.“Christ is all in all. The prince in the Arabian story took from a walnut-shell a miniature tent, but that tent expanded so as to cover, first himself, then his palace, then his army, and at last his whole kingdom. So Christ's being and authority expand, as we reflect upon them, until they take in, not only ourselves, our homes and our country, but the whole world of sinning and suffering men, and the whole universe of God”; see A. H. Strong, Address at the Ecumenical Missionary Conference, April 23, 1900.Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 39—“What is that law which I call gravitation, but the sign of the Son of man in heaven? It is the gospel of self-surrender in nature. It is the inability of any world to be its own centre, the necessity of every world to center in something else.... In the firmament as on the earth, the many are made one by giving the one for the many.”“Subtlest thought shall fail and learning falter; Churches change, forms perish, systems go; But our human needs, they will not alter, Christ no after age will e'er outgrow. Yea, amen, O changeless One, thou only Art life's guide and spiritual goal; Thou the light across the dark vale lonely, Thou the eternal haven of the soul.”But this is to say, in other words, that there were, in Christ, a knowledge and a power such as belong only to God. The passages cited furnish a refutation of both the Ebionite denial of the reality, and the Arian denial of the integrity, of the divine nature in Christ.Napoleon to Count Montholon (Bertrand's Memoirs):“I think I understand somewhat of human nature, and I tell you all these [heroes of antiquity] were men, and I am a man; but not one is like him: Jesus Christ was more than man.”See other testimonies in Schaff, Person of Christ. Even Spinoza, Tract. Theol.-Pol., cap. 1 (vol. 1:383), says that“Christ communed with God, mind to mind ... this spiritual closeness is unique”(Martineau, Types, 1:254), and Channing speaks of Christ as more than a human being,—as having exhibited a spotless purity which is the highest distinction of heaven. F. W. Robertson has called attention to the fact that the phrase“Son of man”(John 5:27;cf.Dan. 7:13) itself implies that Christ was more than man; it would have been an impertinence for him to have proclaimed himself Son of man, unless he had claimed to be something more; could not every human being call himself the same? When one takes this for his characteristic designation, as Jesus did, he implies that there is something strange in his being Son of man; that this is not his original condition and dignity; in other words, that he is also Son of God.It corroborates the argument from Scripture, to find that Christian experience instinctively recognizes Christ's Godhead, and that Christian history shows a new conception of the dignity of childhood and of womanhood, of the sacredness of human life, and of the value of a human soul,—all arising from the belief that, in Christ, the Godhead honored human nature by taking it into perpetual union with itself, by bearing its guilt and punishment, and by raising it up from the dishonors of the grave to the glory of heaven. We need both the humanity and the deity of Christ; the humanity,—for, as Michael Angelo's Last Judgment witnesses, the ages that neglect Christ's humanity must have some human advocate and Savior, and find a poor substitute for the ever-present Christ in Mariolatry, the invocation of the saints, and the“real presence”of the wafer and the mass; the deity,—for, unless Christ is God, he cannot offer an infinite atonement for us, nor bring about a real union between our souls and the[pg 683]Father. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:325-327 (Syst. Doct., 3:221-223)—“Mary and the saints took Christ's place as intercessors in heaven; transubstantiation furnished a present Christ on earth.”It might almost be said that Mary was made a fourth person in the Godhead.Harnack, Das Wesen des Christenthums:“It is no paradox, and neither is it rationalism, but the simple expression of the actual position as it lies before us in the gospels: Not the Son, but the Father alone, has a place in the gospel as Jesus proclaimed it”;i. e., Jesus has no place, authority, supremacy, in the gospel,—the gospel is a Christianity without Christ; see Nicoll, The Church's One Foundation, 48. And this in the face of Jesus' own words:“Come unto me”(Mat. 11:28);“the Son of man ... shall sit on the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations”(Mat. 25:31, 32);“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”(John 14:9);“he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”(John 3:36). Loisy, The Gospel and the Church, advocates the nut-theory in distinction from the onion-theory of doctrine. Does the fourth gospel appear a second century production? What of it? There is an evolution of doctrine as to Christ.“Harnack does not conceive of Christianity as a seed, at first a plant in potentiality, then a real plant, identical from the beginning of its evolution to the final limit, and from the root to the summit of the stem. He conceives of it rather as a fruit ripe, or over ripe, that must be peeled to reach the incorruptible kernel, and he peels his fruit so thoroughly that little remains at the end.”R. W. Gilder:“If Jesus is a man, And only a man, I say That of all mankind I will cleave to him, And will cleave alway. If Jesus Christ is a God, And the only God, I swear I will follow him through heaven and hell, The earth, the sea, and the air.”On Christ manifested in Nature, see Jonathan Edwards, Observations on Trinity, ed. Smyth, 92-97—“He who, by his immediate influence, gives being every moment, and by his Spirit actuates the world, because he inclines to communicate himself and his excellencies, doth doubtless communicate his excellency to bodies, as far as there is any consent or analogy. And the beauty of face and sweet airs in men are not always the effect of the corresponding excellencies of the mind; yet the beauties of nature are really emanations or shadows of the excellencies of the Son of God. So that, when we are delighted with flowery meadows and gentle breezes of wind, we may consider that we see only the emanations of the sweet benevolence of Jesus Christ. When we behold the fragrant rose and lily, we see his love and purity. So the green trees and fields, and singing of birds, are the emanations of his infinite joy and benignity. The easiness and naturalness of trees and vines are shadows of his beauty and loveliness. The crystal rivers and murmuring streams are the footsteps of his favor, grace and beauty. When we behold the light and brightness of the sun, the golden edges of an evening cloud, or the beauteous bow, we behold the adumbrations of his glory and goodness, and in the blue sky, of his mildness and gentleness. There are also many things wherein we may behold his awful majesty: in the sun in his strength, in comets, in thunder, in the hovering thunder clouds, in ragged rocks and the brows of mountains. That beauteous light wherewith the world is filled in a clear day is a lively shadow of his spotless holiness, and happiness and delight in communicating himself. And doubtless this is a reason why Christ is compared so often to these things, and called by their names, as the Sun of Righteousness, the Morning Star, the Rose of Sharon, and Lily of the Valley, the apple tree among trees of the wood, a bundle of myrrh, a roe, or a young hart. By this we may discover the beauty of many of those metaphors and similes which to an unphilosophical person do seem so uncouth. In like manner, when we behold the beauty of man's body in its perfection, we still see like emanations of Christ's divine perfections, although they do not always flow from the mental excellencies of the person that has them. But we see the most proper image of the beauty of Christ when we see beauty in the human soul.”On the deity of Christ, see Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1:262, 351; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 127, 207, 458; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:61-64; Hovey, God with Us, 17-23; Bengel onJohn 10:30. On the two natures of Christ, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 201-212.
2. The Deity of Christ.The reality and integrity of Christ's divine nature have been sufficiently proved in a former chapter (see pages 305-315). We need only refer to the evidence there given, that, during his earthly ministry, Christ:(a) Possessed a knowledge of his own deity.John 3:13—“the Son of man, who is in heaven”—a passage with clearly indicates Christ's consciousness, at certain times in his earthly life at least, that he was not confined to earth but was also in heaven [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and B, omit ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ; for advocacy of the common reading, see Broadus, in Hovey's Com. onJohn 3:13];8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”—here Jesus declares that there is a respect in which the idea of birth and beginning does not apply to him, but in which he can apply to himself the name“I am”of the eternal God;14:9, 10—“Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?”Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 24-49, gives the following instances of Jesus' supernatural knowledge: 1. Jesus' knowledge of Peter (John 1:42); 2. his finding of Philip (1:43); 3. his recognition of Nathanael (1:47-50); 4. of the woman of Samaria (4:17-19, 39); 5. miraculous draughts of fishes (Luke 5:6-9;John 21:6); 6. death of Lazarus (John 11:14); 7. of the ass's colt (Mat. 21:2); 8. of the upper room (Mark 14:15); 9. of Peter's denial (Mat. 26:34); 10. of the manner of his own death (John 12:33;18:32); 11. of the manner of Peter's death (John 21:19); 12. of the fall of Jerusalem (Mat. 24:2).Jesus does not say“our Father”but“my Father”(John 20:17). Rejection of him is a greater sin than rejection of the prophets, because he is the“beloved Son”of God (Luke 20:13). He knows God's purposes better than the angels, because he is the Son of God (Mark 13:32). As Son of God, he alone knows, and he alone can reveal, the Father (Mat.[pg 682]11:27). There to clearly something more in his Sonship than in that of his disciples (John 1:14—“only begotten”;Heb. 1:6—“first begotten”). See Chapman, Jesus Christ and the Present Age, 37; Denney, Studies in Theology, 33.(b) Exercised divine powers and prerogatives.John 2:24, 25—“But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all man, and because he needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man; for he himself knew what was in man”;18:4—“Jesus therefore, knowing all the things that were coming upon him, went forth”;Mark 4:39—“he awoke, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm”;Mat. 9:6—“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath authority on earth to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick of the palsy), Arise, and take up thy bed, and go unto thy house”;Mark 2:7—“Why doth this man thus speak? he blasphemeth: who can forgive sins but one, even God?”It is not enough to keep, like Alexander Severus, a bust of Christ, in a private chapel, along with Virgil, Orpheus, Abraham, Apollonius, and other persons of the same kind; see Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. xvi.“Christ is all in all. The prince in the Arabian story took from a walnut-shell a miniature tent, but that tent expanded so as to cover, first himself, then his palace, then his army, and at last his whole kingdom. So Christ's being and authority expand, as we reflect upon them, until they take in, not only ourselves, our homes and our country, but the whole world of sinning and suffering men, and the whole universe of God”; see A. H. Strong, Address at the Ecumenical Missionary Conference, April 23, 1900.Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 39—“What is that law which I call gravitation, but the sign of the Son of man in heaven? It is the gospel of self-surrender in nature. It is the inability of any world to be its own centre, the necessity of every world to center in something else.... In the firmament as on the earth, the many are made one by giving the one for the many.”“Subtlest thought shall fail and learning falter; Churches change, forms perish, systems go; But our human needs, they will not alter, Christ no after age will e'er outgrow. Yea, amen, O changeless One, thou only Art life's guide and spiritual goal; Thou the light across the dark vale lonely, Thou the eternal haven of the soul.”But this is to say, in other words, that there were, in Christ, a knowledge and a power such as belong only to God. The passages cited furnish a refutation of both the Ebionite denial of the reality, and the Arian denial of the integrity, of the divine nature in Christ.Napoleon to Count Montholon (Bertrand's Memoirs):“I think I understand somewhat of human nature, and I tell you all these [heroes of antiquity] were men, and I am a man; but not one is like him: Jesus Christ was more than man.”See other testimonies in Schaff, Person of Christ. Even Spinoza, Tract. Theol.-Pol., cap. 1 (vol. 1:383), says that“Christ communed with God, mind to mind ... this spiritual closeness is unique”(Martineau, Types, 1:254), and Channing speaks of Christ as more than a human being,—as having exhibited a spotless purity which is the highest distinction of heaven. F. W. Robertson has called attention to the fact that the phrase“Son of man”(John 5:27;cf.Dan. 7:13) itself implies that Christ was more than man; it would have been an impertinence for him to have proclaimed himself Son of man, unless he had claimed to be something more; could not every human being call himself the same? When one takes this for his characteristic designation, as Jesus did, he implies that there is something strange in his being Son of man; that this is not his original condition and dignity; in other words, that he is also Son of God.It corroborates the argument from Scripture, to find that Christian experience instinctively recognizes Christ's Godhead, and that Christian history shows a new conception of the dignity of childhood and of womanhood, of the sacredness of human life, and of the value of a human soul,—all arising from the belief that, in Christ, the Godhead honored human nature by taking it into perpetual union with itself, by bearing its guilt and punishment, and by raising it up from the dishonors of the grave to the glory of heaven. We need both the humanity and the deity of Christ; the humanity,—for, as Michael Angelo's Last Judgment witnesses, the ages that neglect Christ's humanity must have some human advocate and Savior, and find a poor substitute for the ever-present Christ in Mariolatry, the invocation of the saints, and the“real presence”of the wafer and the mass; the deity,—for, unless Christ is God, he cannot offer an infinite atonement for us, nor bring about a real union between our souls and the[pg 683]Father. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:325-327 (Syst. Doct., 3:221-223)—“Mary and the saints took Christ's place as intercessors in heaven; transubstantiation furnished a present Christ on earth.”It might almost be said that Mary was made a fourth person in the Godhead.Harnack, Das Wesen des Christenthums:“It is no paradox, and neither is it rationalism, but the simple expression of the actual position as it lies before us in the gospels: Not the Son, but the Father alone, has a place in the gospel as Jesus proclaimed it”;i. e., Jesus has no place, authority, supremacy, in the gospel,—the gospel is a Christianity without Christ; see Nicoll, The Church's One Foundation, 48. And this in the face of Jesus' own words:“Come unto me”(Mat. 11:28);“the Son of man ... shall sit on the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations”(Mat. 25:31, 32);“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”(John 14:9);“he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”(John 3:36). Loisy, The Gospel and the Church, advocates the nut-theory in distinction from the onion-theory of doctrine. Does the fourth gospel appear a second century production? What of it? There is an evolution of doctrine as to Christ.“Harnack does not conceive of Christianity as a seed, at first a plant in potentiality, then a real plant, identical from the beginning of its evolution to the final limit, and from the root to the summit of the stem. He conceives of it rather as a fruit ripe, or over ripe, that must be peeled to reach the incorruptible kernel, and he peels his fruit so thoroughly that little remains at the end.”R. W. Gilder:“If Jesus is a man, And only a man, I say That of all mankind I will cleave to him, And will cleave alway. If Jesus Christ is a God, And the only God, I swear I will follow him through heaven and hell, The earth, the sea, and the air.”On Christ manifested in Nature, see Jonathan Edwards, Observations on Trinity, ed. Smyth, 92-97—“He who, by his immediate influence, gives being every moment, and by his Spirit actuates the world, because he inclines to communicate himself and his excellencies, doth doubtless communicate his excellency to bodies, as far as there is any consent or analogy. And the beauty of face and sweet airs in men are not always the effect of the corresponding excellencies of the mind; yet the beauties of nature are really emanations or shadows of the excellencies of the Son of God. So that, when we are delighted with flowery meadows and gentle breezes of wind, we may consider that we see only the emanations of the sweet benevolence of Jesus Christ. When we behold the fragrant rose and lily, we see his love and purity. So the green trees and fields, and singing of birds, are the emanations of his infinite joy and benignity. The easiness and naturalness of trees and vines are shadows of his beauty and loveliness. The crystal rivers and murmuring streams are the footsteps of his favor, grace and beauty. When we behold the light and brightness of the sun, the golden edges of an evening cloud, or the beauteous bow, we behold the adumbrations of his glory and goodness, and in the blue sky, of his mildness and gentleness. There are also many things wherein we may behold his awful majesty: in the sun in his strength, in comets, in thunder, in the hovering thunder clouds, in ragged rocks and the brows of mountains. That beauteous light wherewith the world is filled in a clear day is a lively shadow of his spotless holiness, and happiness and delight in communicating himself. And doubtless this is a reason why Christ is compared so often to these things, and called by their names, as the Sun of Righteousness, the Morning Star, the Rose of Sharon, and Lily of the Valley, the apple tree among trees of the wood, a bundle of myrrh, a roe, or a young hart. By this we may discover the beauty of many of those metaphors and similes which to an unphilosophical person do seem so uncouth. In like manner, when we behold the beauty of man's body in its perfection, we still see like emanations of Christ's divine perfections, although they do not always flow from the mental excellencies of the person that has them. But we see the most proper image of the beauty of Christ when we see beauty in the human soul.”On the deity of Christ, see Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1:262, 351; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 127, 207, 458; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:61-64; Hovey, God with Us, 17-23; Bengel onJohn 10:30. On the two natures of Christ, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 201-212.
2. The Deity of Christ.The reality and integrity of Christ's divine nature have been sufficiently proved in a former chapter (see pages 305-315). We need only refer to the evidence there given, that, during his earthly ministry, Christ:(a) Possessed a knowledge of his own deity.John 3:13—“the Son of man, who is in heaven”—a passage with clearly indicates Christ's consciousness, at certain times in his earthly life at least, that he was not confined to earth but was also in heaven [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and B, omit ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ; for advocacy of the common reading, see Broadus, in Hovey's Com. onJohn 3:13];8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”—here Jesus declares that there is a respect in which the idea of birth and beginning does not apply to him, but in which he can apply to himself the name“I am”of the eternal God;14:9, 10—“Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?”Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 24-49, gives the following instances of Jesus' supernatural knowledge: 1. Jesus' knowledge of Peter (John 1:42); 2. his finding of Philip (1:43); 3. his recognition of Nathanael (1:47-50); 4. of the woman of Samaria (4:17-19, 39); 5. miraculous draughts of fishes (Luke 5:6-9;John 21:6); 6. death of Lazarus (John 11:14); 7. of the ass's colt (Mat. 21:2); 8. of the upper room (Mark 14:15); 9. of Peter's denial (Mat. 26:34); 10. of the manner of his own death (John 12:33;18:32); 11. of the manner of Peter's death (John 21:19); 12. of the fall of Jerusalem (Mat. 24:2).Jesus does not say“our Father”but“my Father”(John 20:17). Rejection of him is a greater sin than rejection of the prophets, because he is the“beloved Son”of God (Luke 20:13). He knows God's purposes better than the angels, because he is the Son of God (Mark 13:32). As Son of God, he alone knows, and he alone can reveal, the Father (Mat.[pg 682]11:27). There to clearly something more in his Sonship than in that of his disciples (John 1:14—“only begotten”;Heb. 1:6—“first begotten”). See Chapman, Jesus Christ and the Present Age, 37; Denney, Studies in Theology, 33.(b) Exercised divine powers and prerogatives.John 2:24, 25—“But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all man, and because he needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man; for he himself knew what was in man”;18:4—“Jesus therefore, knowing all the things that were coming upon him, went forth”;Mark 4:39—“he awoke, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm”;Mat. 9:6—“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath authority on earth to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick of the palsy), Arise, and take up thy bed, and go unto thy house”;Mark 2:7—“Why doth this man thus speak? he blasphemeth: who can forgive sins but one, even God?”It is not enough to keep, like Alexander Severus, a bust of Christ, in a private chapel, along with Virgil, Orpheus, Abraham, Apollonius, and other persons of the same kind; see Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. xvi.“Christ is all in all. The prince in the Arabian story took from a walnut-shell a miniature tent, but that tent expanded so as to cover, first himself, then his palace, then his army, and at last his whole kingdom. So Christ's being and authority expand, as we reflect upon them, until they take in, not only ourselves, our homes and our country, but the whole world of sinning and suffering men, and the whole universe of God”; see A. H. Strong, Address at the Ecumenical Missionary Conference, April 23, 1900.Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 39—“What is that law which I call gravitation, but the sign of the Son of man in heaven? It is the gospel of self-surrender in nature. It is the inability of any world to be its own centre, the necessity of every world to center in something else.... In the firmament as on the earth, the many are made one by giving the one for the many.”“Subtlest thought shall fail and learning falter; Churches change, forms perish, systems go; But our human needs, they will not alter, Christ no after age will e'er outgrow. Yea, amen, O changeless One, thou only Art life's guide and spiritual goal; Thou the light across the dark vale lonely, Thou the eternal haven of the soul.”But this is to say, in other words, that there were, in Christ, a knowledge and a power such as belong only to God. The passages cited furnish a refutation of both the Ebionite denial of the reality, and the Arian denial of the integrity, of the divine nature in Christ.Napoleon to Count Montholon (Bertrand's Memoirs):“I think I understand somewhat of human nature, and I tell you all these [heroes of antiquity] were men, and I am a man; but not one is like him: Jesus Christ was more than man.”See other testimonies in Schaff, Person of Christ. Even Spinoza, Tract. Theol.-Pol., cap. 1 (vol. 1:383), says that“Christ communed with God, mind to mind ... this spiritual closeness is unique”(Martineau, Types, 1:254), and Channing speaks of Christ as more than a human being,—as having exhibited a spotless purity which is the highest distinction of heaven. F. W. Robertson has called attention to the fact that the phrase“Son of man”(John 5:27;cf.Dan. 7:13) itself implies that Christ was more than man; it would have been an impertinence for him to have proclaimed himself Son of man, unless he had claimed to be something more; could not every human being call himself the same? When one takes this for his characteristic designation, as Jesus did, he implies that there is something strange in his being Son of man; that this is not his original condition and dignity; in other words, that he is also Son of God.It corroborates the argument from Scripture, to find that Christian experience instinctively recognizes Christ's Godhead, and that Christian history shows a new conception of the dignity of childhood and of womanhood, of the sacredness of human life, and of the value of a human soul,—all arising from the belief that, in Christ, the Godhead honored human nature by taking it into perpetual union with itself, by bearing its guilt and punishment, and by raising it up from the dishonors of the grave to the glory of heaven. We need both the humanity and the deity of Christ; the humanity,—for, as Michael Angelo's Last Judgment witnesses, the ages that neglect Christ's humanity must have some human advocate and Savior, and find a poor substitute for the ever-present Christ in Mariolatry, the invocation of the saints, and the“real presence”of the wafer and the mass; the deity,—for, unless Christ is God, he cannot offer an infinite atonement for us, nor bring about a real union between our souls and the[pg 683]Father. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:325-327 (Syst. Doct., 3:221-223)—“Mary and the saints took Christ's place as intercessors in heaven; transubstantiation furnished a present Christ on earth.”It might almost be said that Mary was made a fourth person in the Godhead.Harnack, Das Wesen des Christenthums:“It is no paradox, and neither is it rationalism, but the simple expression of the actual position as it lies before us in the gospels: Not the Son, but the Father alone, has a place in the gospel as Jesus proclaimed it”;i. e., Jesus has no place, authority, supremacy, in the gospel,—the gospel is a Christianity without Christ; see Nicoll, The Church's One Foundation, 48. And this in the face of Jesus' own words:“Come unto me”(Mat. 11:28);“the Son of man ... shall sit on the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations”(Mat. 25:31, 32);“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”(John 14:9);“he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”(John 3:36). Loisy, The Gospel and the Church, advocates the nut-theory in distinction from the onion-theory of doctrine. Does the fourth gospel appear a second century production? What of it? There is an evolution of doctrine as to Christ.“Harnack does not conceive of Christianity as a seed, at first a plant in potentiality, then a real plant, identical from the beginning of its evolution to the final limit, and from the root to the summit of the stem. He conceives of it rather as a fruit ripe, or over ripe, that must be peeled to reach the incorruptible kernel, and he peels his fruit so thoroughly that little remains at the end.”R. W. Gilder:“If Jesus is a man, And only a man, I say That of all mankind I will cleave to him, And will cleave alway. If Jesus Christ is a God, And the only God, I swear I will follow him through heaven and hell, The earth, the sea, and the air.”On Christ manifested in Nature, see Jonathan Edwards, Observations on Trinity, ed. Smyth, 92-97—“He who, by his immediate influence, gives being every moment, and by his Spirit actuates the world, because he inclines to communicate himself and his excellencies, doth doubtless communicate his excellency to bodies, as far as there is any consent or analogy. And the beauty of face and sweet airs in men are not always the effect of the corresponding excellencies of the mind; yet the beauties of nature are really emanations or shadows of the excellencies of the Son of God. So that, when we are delighted with flowery meadows and gentle breezes of wind, we may consider that we see only the emanations of the sweet benevolence of Jesus Christ. When we behold the fragrant rose and lily, we see his love and purity. So the green trees and fields, and singing of birds, are the emanations of his infinite joy and benignity. The easiness and naturalness of trees and vines are shadows of his beauty and loveliness. The crystal rivers and murmuring streams are the footsteps of his favor, grace and beauty. When we behold the light and brightness of the sun, the golden edges of an evening cloud, or the beauteous bow, we behold the adumbrations of his glory and goodness, and in the blue sky, of his mildness and gentleness. There are also many things wherein we may behold his awful majesty: in the sun in his strength, in comets, in thunder, in the hovering thunder clouds, in ragged rocks and the brows of mountains. That beauteous light wherewith the world is filled in a clear day is a lively shadow of his spotless holiness, and happiness and delight in communicating himself. And doubtless this is a reason why Christ is compared so often to these things, and called by their names, as the Sun of Righteousness, the Morning Star, the Rose of Sharon, and Lily of the Valley, the apple tree among trees of the wood, a bundle of myrrh, a roe, or a young hart. By this we may discover the beauty of many of those metaphors and similes which to an unphilosophical person do seem so uncouth. In like manner, when we behold the beauty of man's body in its perfection, we still see like emanations of Christ's divine perfections, although they do not always flow from the mental excellencies of the person that has them. But we see the most proper image of the beauty of Christ when we see beauty in the human soul.”On the deity of Christ, see Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1:262, 351; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 127, 207, 458; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:61-64; Hovey, God with Us, 17-23; Bengel onJohn 10:30. On the two natures of Christ, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 201-212.
2. The Deity of Christ.The reality and integrity of Christ's divine nature have been sufficiently proved in a former chapter (see pages 305-315). We need only refer to the evidence there given, that, during his earthly ministry, Christ:(a) Possessed a knowledge of his own deity.John 3:13—“the Son of man, who is in heaven”—a passage with clearly indicates Christ's consciousness, at certain times in his earthly life at least, that he was not confined to earth but was also in heaven [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and B, omit ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ; for advocacy of the common reading, see Broadus, in Hovey's Com. onJohn 3:13];8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”—here Jesus declares that there is a respect in which the idea of birth and beginning does not apply to him, but in which he can apply to himself the name“I am”of the eternal God;14:9, 10—“Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?”Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 24-49, gives the following instances of Jesus' supernatural knowledge: 1. Jesus' knowledge of Peter (John 1:42); 2. his finding of Philip (1:43); 3. his recognition of Nathanael (1:47-50); 4. of the woman of Samaria (4:17-19, 39); 5. miraculous draughts of fishes (Luke 5:6-9;John 21:6); 6. death of Lazarus (John 11:14); 7. of the ass's colt (Mat. 21:2); 8. of the upper room (Mark 14:15); 9. of Peter's denial (Mat. 26:34); 10. of the manner of his own death (John 12:33;18:32); 11. of the manner of Peter's death (John 21:19); 12. of the fall of Jerusalem (Mat. 24:2).Jesus does not say“our Father”but“my Father”(John 20:17). Rejection of him is a greater sin than rejection of the prophets, because he is the“beloved Son”of God (Luke 20:13). He knows God's purposes better than the angels, because he is the Son of God (Mark 13:32). As Son of God, he alone knows, and he alone can reveal, the Father (Mat.[pg 682]11:27). There to clearly something more in his Sonship than in that of his disciples (John 1:14—“only begotten”;Heb. 1:6—“first begotten”). See Chapman, Jesus Christ and the Present Age, 37; Denney, Studies in Theology, 33.(b) Exercised divine powers and prerogatives.John 2:24, 25—“But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all man, and because he needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man; for he himself knew what was in man”;18:4—“Jesus therefore, knowing all the things that were coming upon him, went forth”;Mark 4:39—“he awoke, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm”;Mat. 9:6—“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath authority on earth to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick of the palsy), Arise, and take up thy bed, and go unto thy house”;Mark 2:7—“Why doth this man thus speak? he blasphemeth: who can forgive sins but one, even God?”It is not enough to keep, like Alexander Severus, a bust of Christ, in a private chapel, along with Virgil, Orpheus, Abraham, Apollonius, and other persons of the same kind; see Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. xvi.“Christ is all in all. The prince in the Arabian story took from a walnut-shell a miniature tent, but that tent expanded so as to cover, first himself, then his palace, then his army, and at last his whole kingdom. So Christ's being and authority expand, as we reflect upon them, until they take in, not only ourselves, our homes and our country, but the whole world of sinning and suffering men, and the whole universe of God”; see A. H. Strong, Address at the Ecumenical Missionary Conference, April 23, 1900.Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 39—“What is that law which I call gravitation, but the sign of the Son of man in heaven? It is the gospel of self-surrender in nature. It is the inability of any world to be its own centre, the necessity of every world to center in something else.... In the firmament as on the earth, the many are made one by giving the one for the many.”“Subtlest thought shall fail and learning falter; Churches change, forms perish, systems go; But our human needs, they will not alter, Christ no after age will e'er outgrow. Yea, amen, O changeless One, thou only Art life's guide and spiritual goal; Thou the light across the dark vale lonely, Thou the eternal haven of the soul.”But this is to say, in other words, that there were, in Christ, a knowledge and a power such as belong only to God. The passages cited furnish a refutation of both the Ebionite denial of the reality, and the Arian denial of the integrity, of the divine nature in Christ.Napoleon to Count Montholon (Bertrand's Memoirs):“I think I understand somewhat of human nature, and I tell you all these [heroes of antiquity] were men, and I am a man; but not one is like him: Jesus Christ was more than man.”See other testimonies in Schaff, Person of Christ. Even Spinoza, Tract. Theol.-Pol., cap. 1 (vol. 1:383), says that“Christ communed with God, mind to mind ... this spiritual closeness is unique”(Martineau, Types, 1:254), and Channing speaks of Christ as more than a human being,—as having exhibited a spotless purity which is the highest distinction of heaven. F. W. Robertson has called attention to the fact that the phrase“Son of man”(John 5:27;cf.Dan. 7:13) itself implies that Christ was more than man; it would have been an impertinence for him to have proclaimed himself Son of man, unless he had claimed to be something more; could not every human being call himself the same? When one takes this for his characteristic designation, as Jesus did, he implies that there is something strange in his being Son of man; that this is not his original condition and dignity; in other words, that he is also Son of God.It corroborates the argument from Scripture, to find that Christian experience instinctively recognizes Christ's Godhead, and that Christian history shows a new conception of the dignity of childhood and of womanhood, of the sacredness of human life, and of the value of a human soul,—all arising from the belief that, in Christ, the Godhead honored human nature by taking it into perpetual union with itself, by bearing its guilt and punishment, and by raising it up from the dishonors of the grave to the glory of heaven. We need both the humanity and the deity of Christ; the humanity,—for, as Michael Angelo's Last Judgment witnesses, the ages that neglect Christ's humanity must have some human advocate and Savior, and find a poor substitute for the ever-present Christ in Mariolatry, the invocation of the saints, and the“real presence”of the wafer and the mass; the deity,—for, unless Christ is God, he cannot offer an infinite atonement for us, nor bring about a real union between our souls and the[pg 683]Father. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:325-327 (Syst. Doct., 3:221-223)—“Mary and the saints took Christ's place as intercessors in heaven; transubstantiation furnished a present Christ on earth.”It might almost be said that Mary was made a fourth person in the Godhead.Harnack, Das Wesen des Christenthums:“It is no paradox, and neither is it rationalism, but the simple expression of the actual position as it lies before us in the gospels: Not the Son, but the Father alone, has a place in the gospel as Jesus proclaimed it”;i. e., Jesus has no place, authority, supremacy, in the gospel,—the gospel is a Christianity without Christ; see Nicoll, The Church's One Foundation, 48. And this in the face of Jesus' own words:“Come unto me”(Mat. 11:28);“the Son of man ... shall sit on the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations”(Mat. 25:31, 32);“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”(John 14:9);“he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”(John 3:36). Loisy, The Gospel and the Church, advocates the nut-theory in distinction from the onion-theory of doctrine. Does the fourth gospel appear a second century production? What of it? There is an evolution of doctrine as to Christ.“Harnack does not conceive of Christianity as a seed, at first a plant in potentiality, then a real plant, identical from the beginning of its evolution to the final limit, and from the root to the summit of the stem. He conceives of it rather as a fruit ripe, or over ripe, that must be peeled to reach the incorruptible kernel, and he peels his fruit so thoroughly that little remains at the end.”R. W. Gilder:“If Jesus is a man, And only a man, I say That of all mankind I will cleave to him, And will cleave alway. If Jesus Christ is a God, And the only God, I swear I will follow him through heaven and hell, The earth, the sea, and the air.”On Christ manifested in Nature, see Jonathan Edwards, Observations on Trinity, ed. Smyth, 92-97—“He who, by his immediate influence, gives being every moment, and by his Spirit actuates the world, because he inclines to communicate himself and his excellencies, doth doubtless communicate his excellency to bodies, as far as there is any consent or analogy. And the beauty of face and sweet airs in men are not always the effect of the corresponding excellencies of the mind; yet the beauties of nature are really emanations or shadows of the excellencies of the Son of God. So that, when we are delighted with flowery meadows and gentle breezes of wind, we may consider that we see only the emanations of the sweet benevolence of Jesus Christ. When we behold the fragrant rose and lily, we see his love and purity. So the green trees and fields, and singing of birds, are the emanations of his infinite joy and benignity. The easiness and naturalness of trees and vines are shadows of his beauty and loveliness. The crystal rivers and murmuring streams are the footsteps of his favor, grace and beauty. When we behold the light and brightness of the sun, the golden edges of an evening cloud, or the beauteous bow, we behold the adumbrations of his glory and goodness, and in the blue sky, of his mildness and gentleness. There are also many things wherein we may behold his awful majesty: in the sun in his strength, in comets, in thunder, in the hovering thunder clouds, in ragged rocks and the brows of mountains. That beauteous light wherewith the world is filled in a clear day is a lively shadow of his spotless holiness, and happiness and delight in communicating himself. And doubtless this is a reason why Christ is compared so often to these things, and called by their names, as the Sun of Righteousness, the Morning Star, the Rose of Sharon, and Lily of the Valley, the apple tree among trees of the wood, a bundle of myrrh, a roe, or a young hart. By this we may discover the beauty of many of those metaphors and similes which to an unphilosophical person do seem so uncouth. In like manner, when we behold the beauty of man's body in its perfection, we still see like emanations of Christ's divine perfections, although they do not always flow from the mental excellencies of the person that has them. But we see the most proper image of the beauty of Christ when we see beauty in the human soul.”On the deity of Christ, see Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1:262, 351; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 127, 207, 458; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:61-64; Hovey, God with Us, 17-23; Bengel onJohn 10:30. On the two natures of Christ, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 201-212.
2. The Deity of Christ.The reality and integrity of Christ's divine nature have been sufficiently proved in a former chapter (see pages 305-315). We need only refer to the evidence there given, that, during his earthly ministry, Christ:(a) Possessed a knowledge of his own deity.John 3:13—“the Son of man, who is in heaven”—a passage with clearly indicates Christ's consciousness, at certain times in his earthly life at least, that he was not confined to earth but was also in heaven [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and B, omit ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ; for advocacy of the common reading, see Broadus, in Hovey's Com. onJohn 3:13];8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”—here Jesus declares that there is a respect in which the idea of birth and beginning does not apply to him, but in which he can apply to himself the name“I am”of the eternal God;14:9, 10—“Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?”Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 24-49, gives the following instances of Jesus' supernatural knowledge: 1. Jesus' knowledge of Peter (John 1:42); 2. his finding of Philip (1:43); 3. his recognition of Nathanael (1:47-50); 4. of the woman of Samaria (4:17-19, 39); 5. miraculous draughts of fishes (Luke 5:6-9;John 21:6); 6. death of Lazarus (John 11:14); 7. of the ass's colt (Mat. 21:2); 8. of the upper room (Mark 14:15); 9. of Peter's denial (Mat. 26:34); 10. of the manner of his own death (John 12:33;18:32); 11. of the manner of Peter's death (John 21:19); 12. of the fall of Jerusalem (Mat. 24:2).Jesus does not say“our Father”but“my Father”(John 20:17). Rejection of him is a greater sin than rejection of the prophets, because he is the“beloved Son”of God (Luke 20:13). He knows God's purposes better than the angels, because he is the Son of God (Mark 13:32). As Son of God, he alone knows, and he alone can reveal, the Father (Mat.[pg 682]11:27). There to clearly something more in his Sonship than in that of his disciples (John 1:14—“only begotten”;Heb. 1:6—“first begotten”). See Chapman, Jesus Christ and the Present Age, 37; Denney, Studies in Theology, 33.(b) Exercised divine powers and prerogatives.John 2:24, 25—“But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all man, and because he needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man; for he himself knew what was in man”;18:4—“Jesus therefore, knowing all the things that were coming upon him, went forth”;Mark 4:39—“he awoke, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm”;Mat. 9:6—“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath authority on earth to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick of the palsy), Arise, and take up thy bed, and go unto thy house”;Mark 2:7—“Why doth this man thus speak? he blasphemeth: who can forgive sins but one, even God?”It is not enough to keep, like Alexander Severus, a bust of Christ, in a private chapel, along with Virgil, Orpheus, Abraham, Apollonius, and other persons of the same kind; see Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. xvi.“Christ is all in all. The prince in the Arabian story took from a walnut-shell a miniature tent, but that tent expanded so as to cover, first himself, then his palace, then his army, and at last his whole kingdom. So Christ's being and authority expand, as we reflect upon them, until they take in, not only ourselves, our homes and our country, but the whole world of sinning and suffering men, and the whole universe of God”; see A. H. Strong, Address at the Ecumenical Missionary Conference, April 23, 1900.Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 39—“What is that law which I call gravitation, but the sign of the Son of man in heaven? It is the gospel of self-surrender in nature. It is the inability of any world to be its own centre, the necessity of every world to center in something else.... In the firmament as on the earth, the many are made one by giving the one for the many.”“Subtlest thought shall fail and learning falter; Churches change, forms perish, systems go; But our human needs, they will not alter, Christ no after age will e'er outgrow. Yea, amen, O changeless One, thou only Art life's guide and spiritual goal; Thou the light across the dark vale lonely, Thou the eternal haven of the soul.”But this is to say, in other words, that there were, in Christ, a knowledge and a power such as belong only to God. The passages cited furnish a refutation of both the Ebionite denial of the reality, and the Arian denial of the integrity, of the divine nature in Christ.Napoleon to Count Montholon (Bertrand's Memoirs):“I think I understand somewhat of human nature, and I tell you all these [heroes of antiquity] were men, and I am a man; but not one is like him: Jesus Christ was more than man.”See other testimonies in Schaff, Person of Christ. Even Spinoza, Tract. Theol.-Pol., cap. 1 (vol. 1:383), says that“Christ communed with God, mind to mind ... this spiritual closeness is unique”(Martineau, Types, 1:254), and Channing speaks of Christ as more than a human being,—as having exhibited a spotless purity which is the highest distinction of heaven. F. W. Robertson has called attention to the fact that the phrase“Son of man”(John 5:27;cf.Dan. 7:13) itself implies that Christ was more than man; it would have been an impertinence for him to have proclaimed himself Son of man, unless he had claimed to be something more; could not every human being call himself the same? When one takes this for his characteristic designation, as Jesus did, he implies that there is something strange in his being Son of man; that this is not his original condition and dignity; in other words, that he is also Son of God.It corroborates the argument from Scripture, to find that Christian experience instinctively recognizes Christ's Godhead, and that Christian history shows a new conception of the dignity of childhood and of womanhood, of the sacredness of human life, and of the value of a human soul,—all arising from the belief that, in Christ, the Godhead honored human nature by taking it into perpetual union with itself, by bearing its guilt and punishment, and by raising it up from the dishonors of the grave to the glory of heaven. We need both the humanity and the deity of Christ; the humanity,—for, as Michael Angelo's Last Judgment witnesses, the ages that neglect Christ's humanity must have some human advocate and Savior, and find a poor substitute for the ever-present Christ in Mariolatry, the invocation of the saints, and the“real presence”of the wafer and the mass; the deity,—for, unless Christ is God, he cannot offer an infinite atonement for us, nor bring about a real union between our souls and the[pg 683]Father. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:325-327 (Syst. Doct., 3:221-223)—“Mary and the saints took Christ's place as intercessors in heaven; transubstantiation furnished a present Christ on earth.”It might almost be said that Mary was made a fourth person in the Godhead.Harnack, Das Wesen des Christenthums:“It is no paradox, and neither is it rationalism, but the simple expression of the actual position as it lies before us in the gospels: Not the Son, but the Father alone, has a place in the gospel as Jesus proclaimed it”;i. e., Jesus has no place, authority, supremacy, in the gospel,—the gospel is a Christianity without Christ; see Nicoll, The Church's One Foundation, 48. And this in the face of Jesus' own words:“Come unto me”(Mat. 11:28);“the Son of man ... shall sit on the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations”(Mat. 25:31, 32);“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”(John 14:9);“he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”(John 3:36). Loisy, The Gospel and the Church, advocates the nut-theory in distinction from the onion-theory of doctrine. Does the fourth gospel appear a second century production? What of it? There is an evolution of doctrine as to Christ.“Harnack does not conceive of Christianity as a seed, at first a plant in potentiality, then a real plant, identical from the beginning of its evolution to the final limit, and from the root to the summit of the stem. He conceives of it rather as a fruit ripe, or over ripe, that must be peeled to reach the incorruptible kernel, and he peels his fruit so thoroughly that little remains at the end.”R. W. Gilder:“If Jesus is a man, And only a man, I say That of all mankind I will cleave to him, And will cleave alway. If Jesus Christ is a God, And the only God, I swear I will follow him through heaven and hell, The earth, the sea, and the air.”On Christ manifested in Nature, see Jonathan Edwards, Observations on Trinity, ed. Smyth, 92-97—“He who, by his immediate influence, gives being every moment, and by his Spirit actuates the world, because he inclines to communicate himself and his excellencies, doth doubtless communicate his excellency to bodies, as far as there is any consent or analogy. And the beauty of face and sweet airs in men are not always the effect of the corresponding excellencies of the mind; yet the beauties of nature are really emanations or shadows of the excellencies of the Son of God. So that, when we are delighted with flowery meadows and gentle breezes of wind, we may consider that we see only the emanations of the sweet benevolence of Jesus Christ. When we behold the fragrant rose and lily, we see his love and purity. So the green trees and fields, and singing of birds, are the emanations of his infinite joy and benignity. The easiness and naturalness of trees and vines are shadows of his beauty and loveliness. The crystal rivers and murmuring streams are the footsteps of his favor, grace and beauty. When we behold the light and brightness of the sun, the golden edges of an evening cloud, or the beauteous bow, we behold the adumbrations of his glory and goodness, and in the blue sky, of his mildness and gentleness. There are also many things wherein we may behold his awful majesty: in the sun in his strength, in comets, in thunder, in the hovering thunder clouds, in ragged rocks and the brows of mountains. That beauteous light wherewith the world is filled in a clear day is a lively shadow of his spotless holiness, and happiness and delight in communicating himself. And doubtless this is a reason why Christ is compared so often to these things, and called by their names, as the Sun of Righteousness, the Morning Star, the Rose of Sharon, and Lily of the Valley, the apple tree among trees of the wood, a bundle of myrrh, a roe, or a young hart. By this we may discover the beauty of many of those metaphors and similes which to an unphilosophical person do seem so uncouth. In like manner, when we behold the beauty of man's body in its perfection, we still see like emanations of Christ's divine perfections, although they do not always flow from the mental excellencies of the person that has them. But we see the most proper image of the beauty of Christ when we see beauty in the human soul.”On the deity of Christ, see Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1:262, 351; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 127, 207, 458; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:61-64; Hovey, God with Us, 17-23; Bengel onJohn 10:30. On the two natures of Christ, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 201-212.
2. The Deity of Christ.The reality and integrity of Christ's divine nature have been sufficiently proved in a former chapter (see pages 305-315). We need only refer to the evidence there given, that, during his earthly ministry, Christ:(a) Possessed a knowledge of his own deity.John 3:13—“the Son of man, who is in heaven”—a passage with clearly indicates Christ's consciousness, at certain times in his earthly life at least, that he was not confined to earth but was also in heaven [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and B, omit ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ; for advocacy of the common reading, see Broadus, in Hovey's Com. onJohn 3:13];8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”—here Jesus declares that there is a respect in which the idea of birth and beginning does not apply to him, but in which he can apply to himself the name“I am”of the eternal God;14:9, 10—“Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?”Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 24-49, gives the following instances of Jesus' supernatural knowledge: 1. Jesus' knowledge of Peter (John 1:42); 2. his finding of Philip (1:43); 3. his recognition of Nathanael (1:47-50); 4. of the woman of Samaria (4:17-19, 39); 5. miraculous draughts of fishes (Luke 5:6-9;John 21:6); 6. death of Lazarus (John 11:14); 7. of the ass's colt (Mat. 21:2); 8. of the upper room (Mark 14:15); 9. of Peter's denial (Mat. 26:34); 10. of the manner of his own death (John 12:33;18:32); 11. of the manner of Peter's death (John 21:19); 12. of the fall of Jerusalem (Mat. 24:2).Jesus does not say“our Father”but“my Father”(John 20:17). Rejection of him is a greater sin than rejection of the prophets, because he is the“beloved Son”of God (Luke 20:13). He knows God's purposes better than the angels, because he is the Son of God (Mark 13:32). As Son of God, he alone knows, and he alone can reveal, the Father (Mat.[pg 682]11:27). There to clearly something more in his Sonship than in that of his disciples (John 1:14—“only begotten”;Heb. 1:6—“first begotten”). See Chapman, Jesus Christ and the Present Age, 37; Denney, Studies in Theology, 33.(b) Exercised divine powers and prerogatives.John 2:24, 25—“But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all man, and because he needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man; for he himself knew what was in man”;18:4—“Jesus therefore, knowing all the things that were coming upon him, went forth”;Mark 4:39—“he awoke, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm”;Mat. 9:6—“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath authority on earth to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick of the palsy), Arise, and take up thy bed, and go unto thy house”;Mark 2:7—“Why doth this man thus speak? he blasphemeth: who can forgive sins but one, even God?”It is not enough to keep, like Alexander Severus, a bust of Christ, in a private chapel, along with Virgil, Orpheus, Abraham, Apollonius, and other persons of the same kind; see Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. xvi.“Christ is all in all. The prince in the Arabian story took from a walnut-shell a miniature tent, but that tent expanded so as to cover, first himself, then his palace, then his army, and at last his whole kingdom. So Christ's being and authority expand, as we reflect upon them, until they take in, not only ourselves, our homes and our country, but the whole world of sinning and suffering men, and the whole universe of God”; see A. H. Strong, Address at the Ecumenical Missionary Conference, April 23, 1900.Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 39—“What is that law which I call gravitation, but the sign of the Son of man in heaven? It is the gospel of self-surrender in nature. It is the inability of any world to be its own centre, the necessity of every world to center in something else.... In the firmament as on the earth, the many are made one by giving the one for the many.”“Subtlest thought shall fail and learning falter; Churches change, forms perish, systems go; But our human needs, they will not alter, Christ no after age will e'er outgrow. Yea, amen, O changeless One, thou only Art life's guide and spiritual goal; Thou the light across the dark vale lonely, Thou the eternal haven of the soul.”But this is to say, in other words, that there were, in Christ, a knowledge and a power such as belong only to God. The passages cited furnish a refutation of both the Ebionite denial of the reality, and the Arian denial of the integrity, of the divine nature in Christ.Napoleon to Count Montholon (Bertrand's Memoirs):“I think I understand somewhat of human nature, and I tell you all these [heroes of antiquity] were men, and I am a man; but not one is like him: Jesus Christ was more than man.”See other testimonies in Schaff, Person of Christ. Even Spinoza, Tract. Theol.-Pol., cap. 1 (vol. 1:383), says that“Christ communed with God, mind to mind ... this spiritual closeness is unique”(Martineau, Types, 1:254), and Channing speaks of Christ as more than a human being,—as having exhibited a spotless purity which is the highest distinction of heaven. F. W. Robertson has called attention to the fact that the phrase“Son of man”(John 5:27;cf.Dan. 7:13) itself implies that Christ was more than man; it would have been an impertinence for him to have proclaimed himself Son of man, unless he had claimed to be something more; could not every human being call himself the same? When one takes this for his characteristic designation, as Jesus did, he implies that there is something strange in his being Son of man; that this is not his original condition and dignity; in other words, that he is also Son of God.It corroborates the argument from Scripture, to find that Christian experience instinctively recognizes Christ's Godhead, and that Christian history shows a new conception of the dignity of childhood and of womanhood, of the sacredness of human life, and of the value of a human soul,—all arising from the belief that, in Christ, the Godhead honored human nature by taking it into perpetual union with itself, by bearing its guilt and punishment, and by raising it up from the dishonors of the grave to the glory of heaven. We need both the humanity and the deity of Christ; the humanity,—for, as Michael Angelo's Last Judgment witnesses, the ages that neglect Christ's humanity must have some human advocate and Savior, and find a poor substitute for the ever-present Christ in Mariolatry, the invocation of the saints, and the“real presence”of the wafer and the mass; the deity,—for, unless Christ is God, he cannot offer an infinite atonement for us, nor bring about a real union between our souls and the[pg 683]Father. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:325-327 (Syst. Doct., 3:221-223)—“Mary and the saints took Christ's place as intercessors in heaven; transubstantiation furnished a present Christ on earth.”It might almost be said that Mary was made a fourth person in the Godhead.Harnack, Das Wesen des Christenthums:“It is no paradox, and neither is it rationalism, but the simple expression of the actual position as it lies before us in the gospels: Not the Son, but the Father alone, has a place in the gospel as Jesus proclaimed it”;i. e., Jesus has no place, authority, supremacy, in the gospel,—the gospel is a Christianity without Christ; see Nicoll, The Church's One Foundation, 48. And this in the face of Jesus' own words:“Come unto me”(Mat. 11:28);“the Son of man ... shall sit on the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations”(Mat. 25:31, 32);“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”(John 14:9);“he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”(John 3:36). Loisy, The Gospel and the Church, advocates the nut-theory in distinction from the onion-theory of doctrine. Does the fourth gospel appear a second century production? What of it? There is an evolution of doctrine as to Christ.“Harnack does not conceive of Christianity as a seed, at first a plant in potentiality, then a real plant, identical from the beginning of its evolution to the final limit, and from the root to the summit of the stem. He conceives of it rather as a fruit ripe, or over ripe, that must be peeled to reach the incorruptible kernel, and he peels his fruit so thoroughly that little remains at the end.”R. W. Gilder:“If Jesus is a man, And only a man, I say That of all mankind I will cleave to him, And will cleave alway. If Jesus Christ is a God, And the only God, I swear I will follow him through heaven and hell, The earth, the sea, and the air.”On Christ manifested in Nature, see Jonathan Edwards, Observations on Trinity, ed. Smyth, 92-97—“He who, by his immediate influence, gives being every moment, and by his Spirit actuates the world, because he inclines to communicate himself and his excellencies, doth doubtless communicate his excellency to bodies, as far as there is any consent or analogy. And the beauty of face and sweet airs in men are not always the effect of the corresponding excellencies of the mind; yet the beauties of nature are really emanations or shadows of the excellencies of the Son of God. So that, when we are delighted with flowery meadows and gentle breezes of wind, we may consider that we see only the emanations of the sweet benevolence of Jesus Christ. When we behold the fragrant rose and lily, we see his love and purity. So the green trees and fields, and singing of birds, are the emanations of his infinite joy and benignity. The easiness and naturalness of trees and vines are shadows of his beauty and loveliness. The crystal rivers and murmuring streams are the footsteps of his favor, grace and beauty. When we behold the light and brightness of the sun, the golden edges of an evening cloud, or the beauteous bow, we behold the adumbrations of his glory and goodness, and in the blue sky, of his mildness and gentleness. There are also many things wherein we may behold his awful majesty: in the sun in his strength, in comets, in thunder, in the hovering thunder clouds, in ragged rocks and the brows of mountains. That beauteous light wherewith the world is filled in a clear day is a lively shadow of his spotless holiness, and happiness and delight in communicating himself. And doubtless this is a reason why Christ is compared so often to these things, and called by their names, as the Sun of Righteousness, the Morning Star, the Rose of Sharon, and Lily of the Valley, the apple tree among trees of the wood, a bundle of myrrh, a roe, or a young hart. By this we may discover the beauty of many of those metaphors and similes which to an unphilosophical person do seem so uncouth. In like manner, when we behold the beauty of man's body in its perfection, we still see like emanations of Christ's divine perfections, although they do not always flow from the mental excellencies of the person that has them. But we see the most proper image of the beauty of Christ when we see beauty in the human soul.”On the deity of Christ, see Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1:262, 351; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 127, 207, 458; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:61-64; Hovey, God with Us, 17-23; Bengel onJohn 10:30. On the two natures of Christ, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 201-212.
2. The Deity of Christ.The reality and integrity of Christ's divine nature have been sufficiently proved in a former chapter (see pages 305-315). We need only refer to the evidence there given, that, during his earthly ministry, Christ:(a) Possessed a knowledge of his own deity.John 3:13—“the Son of man, who is in heaven”—a passage with clearly indicates Christ's consciousness, at certain times in his earthly life at least, that he was not confined to earth but was also in heaven [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and B, omit ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ; for advocacy of the common reading, see Broadus, in Hovey's Com. onJohn 3:13];8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”—here Jesus declares that there is a respect in which the idea of birth and beginning does not apply to him, but in which he can apply to himself the name“I am”of the eternal God;14:9, 10—“Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?”Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 24-49, gives the following instances of Jesus' supernatural knowledge: 1. Jesus' knowledge of Peter (John 1:42); 2. his finding of Philip (1:43); 3. his recognition of Nathanael (1:47-50); 4. of the woman of Samaria (4:17-19, 39); 5. miraculous draughts of fishes (Luke 5:6-9;John 21:6); 6. death of Lazarus (John 11:14); 7. of the ass's colt (Mat. 21:2); 8. of the upper room (Mark 14:15); 9. of Peter's denial (Mat. 26:34); 10. of the manner of his own death (John 12:33;18:32); 11. of the manner of Peter's death (John 21:19); 12. of the fall of Jerusalem (Mat. 24:2).Jesus does not say“our Father”but“my Father”(John 20:17). Rejection of him is a greater sin than rejection of the prophets, because he is the“beloved Son”of God (Luke 20:13). He knows God's purposes better than the angels, because he is the Son of God (Mark 13:32). As Son of God, he alone knows, and he alone can reveal, the Father (Mat.[pg 682]11:27). There to clearly something more in his Sonship than in that of his disciples (John 1:14—“only begotten”;Heb. 1:6—“first begotten”). See Chapman, Jesus Christ and the Present Age, 37; Denney, Studies in Theology, 33.(b) Exercised divine powers and prerogatives.John 2:24, 25—“But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all man, and because he needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man; for he himself knew what was in man”;18:4—“Jesus therefore, knowing all the things that were coming upon him, went forth”;Mark 4:39—“he awoke, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm”;Mat. 9:6—“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath authority on earth to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick of the palsy), Arise, and take up thy bed, and go unto thy house”;Mark 2:7—“Why doth this man thus speak? he blasphemeth: who can forgive sins but one, even God?”It is not enough to keep, like Alexander Severus, a bust of Christ, in a private chapel, along with Virgil, Orpheus, Abraham, Apollonius, and other persons of the same kind; see Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. xvi.“Christ is all in all. The prince in the Arabian story took from a walnut-shell a miniature tent, but that tent expanded so as to cover, first himself, then his palace, then his army, and at last his whole kingdom. So Christ's being and authority expand, as we reflect upon them, until they take in, not only ourselves, our homes and our country, but the whole world of sinning and suffering men, and the whole universe of God”; see A. H. Strong, Address at the Ecumenical Missionary Conference, April 23, 1900.Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 39—“What is that law which I call gravitation, but the sign of the Son of man in heaven? It is the gospel of self-surrender in nature. It is the inability of any world to be its own centre, the necessity of every world to center in something else.... In the firmament as on the earth, the many are made one by giving the one for the many.”“Subtlest thought shall fail and learning falter; Churches change, forms perish, systems go; But our human needs, they will not alter, Christ no after age will e'er outgrow. Yea, amen, O changeless One, thou only Art life's guide and spiritual goal; Thou the light across the dark vale lonely, Thou the eternal haven of the soul.”But this is to say, in other words, that there were, in Christ, a knowledge and a power such as belong only to God. The passages cited furnish a refutation of both the Ebionite denial of the reality, and the Arian denial of the integrity, of the divine nature in Christ.Napoleon to Count Montholon (Bertrand's Memoirs):“I think I understand somewhat of human nature, and I tell you all these [heroes of antiquity] were men, and I am a man; but not one is like him: Jesus Christ was more than man.”See other testimonies in Schaff, Person of Christ. Even Spinoza, Tract. Theol.-Pol., cap. 1 (vol. 1:383), says that“Christ communed with God, mind to mind ... this spiritual closeness is unique”(Martineau, Types, 1:254), and Channing speaks of Christ as more than a human being,—as having exhibited a spotless purity which is the highest distinction of heaven. F. W. Robertson has called attention to the fact that the phrase“Son of man”(John 5:27;cf.Dan. 7:13) itself implies that Christ was more than man; it would have been an impertinence for him to have proclaimed himself Son of man, unless he had claimed to be something more; could not every human being call himself the same? When one takes this for his characteristic designation, as Jesus did, he implies that there is something strange in his being Son of man; that this is not his original condition and dignity; in other words, that he is also Son of God.It corroborates the argument from Scripture, to find that Christian experience instinctively recognizes Christ's Godhead, and that Christian history shows a new conception of the dignity of childhood and of womanhood, of the sacredness of human life, and of the value of a human soul,—all arising from the belief that, in Christ, the Godhead honored human nature by taking it into perpetual union with itself, by bearing its guilt and punishment, and by raising it up from the dishonors of the grave to the glory of heaven. We need both the humanity and the deity of Christ; the humanity,—for, as Michael Angelo's Last Judgment witnesses, the ages that neglect Christ's humanity must have some human advocate and Savior, and find a poor substitute for the ever-present Christ in Mariolatry, the invocation of the saints, and the“real presence”of the wafer and the mass; the deity,—for, unless Christ is God, he cannot offer an infinite atonement for us, nor bring about a real union between our souls and the[pg 683]Father. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:325-327 (Syst. Doct., 3:221-223)—“Mary and the saints took Christ's place as intercessors in heaven; transubstantiation furnished a present Christ on earth.”It might almost be said that Mary was made a fourth person in the Godhead.Harnack, Das Wesen des Christenthums:“It is no paradox, and neither is it rationalism, but the simple expression of the actual position as it lies before us in the gospels: Not the Son, but the Father alone, has a place in the gospel as Jesus proclaimed it”;i. e., Jesus has no place, authority, supremacy, in the gospel,—the gospel is a Christianity without Christ; see Nicoll, The Church's One Foundation, 48. And this in the face of Jesus' own words:“Come unto me”(Mat. 11:28);“the Son of man ... shall sit on the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations”(Mat. 25:31, 32);“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”(John 14:9);“he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”(John 3:36). Loisy, The Gospel and the Church, advocates the nut-theory in distinction from the onion-theory of doctrine. Does the fourth gospel appear a second century production? What of it? There is an evolution of doctrine as to Christ.“Harnack does not conceive of Christianity as a seed, at first a plant in potentiality, then a real plant, identical from the beginning of its evolution to the final limit, and from the root to the summit of the stem. He conceives of it rather as a fruit ripe, or over ripe, that must be peeled to reach the incorruptible kernel, and he peels his fruit so thoroughly that little remains at the end.”R. W. Gilder:“If Jesus is a man, And only a man, I say That of all mankind I will cleave to him, And will cleave alway. If Jesus Christ is a God, And the only God, I swear I will follow him through heaven and hell, The earth, the sea, and the air.”On Christ manifested in Nature, see Jonathan Edwards, Observations on Trinity, ed. Smyth, 92-97—“He who, by his immediate influence, gives being every moment, and by his Spirit actuates the world, because he inclines to communicate himself and his excellencies, doth doubtless communicate his excellency to bodies, as far as there is any consent or analogy. And the beauty of face and sweet airs in men are not always the effect of the corresponding excellencies of the mind; yet the beauties of nature are really emanations or shadows of the excellencies of the Son of God. So that, when we are delighted with flowery meadows and gentle breezes of wind, we may consider that we see only the emanations of the sweet benevolence of Jesus Christ. When we behold the fragrant rose and lily, we see his love and purity. So the green trees and fields, and singing of birds, are the emanations of his infinite joy and benignity. The easiness and naturalness of trees and vines are shadows of his beauty and loveliness. The crystal rivers and murmuring streams are the footsteps of his favor, grace and beauty. When we behold the light and brightness of the sun, the golden edges of an evening cloud, or the beauteous bow, we behold the adumbrations of his glory and goodness, and in the blue sky, of his mildness and gentleness. There are also many things wherein we may behold his awful majesty: in the sun in his strength, in comets, in thunder, in the hovering thunder clouds, in ragged rocks and the brows of mountains. That beauteous light wherewith the world is filled in a clear day is a lively shadow of his spotless holiness, and happiness and delight in communicating himself. And doubtless this is a reason why Christ is compared so often to these things, and called by their names, as the Sun of Righteousness, the Morning Star, the Rose of Sharon, and Lily of the Valley, the apple tree among trees of the wood, a bundle of myrrh, a roe, or a young hart. By this we may discover the beauty of many of those metaphors and similes which to an unphilosophical person do seem so uncouth. In like manner, when we behold the beauty of man's body in its perfection, we still see like emanations of Christ's divine perfections, although they do not always flow from the mental excellencies of the person that has them. But we see the most proper image of the beauty of Christ when we see beauty in the human soul.”On the deity of Christ, see Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1:262, 351; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 127, 207, 458; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:61-64; Hovey, God with Us, 17-23; Bengel onJohn 10:30. On the two natures of Christ, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 201-212.
The reality and integrity of Christ's divine nature have been sufficiently proved in a former chapter (see pages 305-315). We need only refer to the evidence there given, that, during his earthly ministry, Christ:
(a) Possessed a knowledge of his own deity.
John 3:13—“the Son of man, who is in heaven”—a passage with clearly indicates Christ's consciousness, at certain times in his earthly life at least, that he was not confined to earth but was also in heaven [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and B, omit ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ; for advocacy of the common reading, see Broadus, in Hovey's Com. onJohn 3:13];8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”—here Jesus declares that there is a respect in which the idea of birth and beginning does not apply to him, but in which he can apply to himself the name“I am”of the eternal God;14:9, 10—“Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?”Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 24-49, gives the following instances of Jesus' supernatural knowledge: 1. Jesus' knowledge of Peter (John 1:42); 2. his finding of Philip (1:43); 3. his recognition of Nathanael (1:47-50); 4. of the woman of Samaria (4:17-19, 39); 5. miraculous draughts of fishes (Luke 5:6-9;John 21:6); 6. death of Lazarus (John 11:14); 7. of the ass's colt (Mat. 21:2); 8. of the upper room (Mark 14:15); 9. of Peter's denial (Mat. 26:34); 10. of the manner of his own death (John 12:33;18:32); 11. of the manner of Peter's death (John 21:19); 12. of the fall of Jerusalem (Mat. 24:2).Jesus does not say“our Father”but“my Father”(John 20:17). Rejection of him is a greater sin than rejection of the prophets, because he is the“beloved Son”of God (Luke 20:13). He knows God's purposes better than the angels, because he is the Son of God (Mark 13:32). As Son of God, he alone knows, and he alone can reveal, the Father (Mat.[pg 682]11:27). There to clearly something more in his Sonship than in that of his disciples (John 1:14—“only begotten”;Heb. 1:6—“first begotten”). See Chapman, Jesus Christ and the Present Age, 37; Denney, Studies in Theology, 33.
John 3:13—“the Son of man, who is in heaven”—a passage with clearly indicates Christ's consciousness, at certain times in his earthly life at least, that he was not confined to earth but was also in heaven [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and B, omit ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ; for advocacy of the common reading, see Broadus, in Hovey's Com. onJohn 3:13];8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am”—here Jesus declares that there is a respect in which the idea of birth and beginning does not apply to him, but in which he can apply to himself the name“I am”of the eternal God;14:9, 10—“Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?”
Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 24-49, gives the following instances of Jesus' supernatural knowledge: 1. Jesus' knowledge of Peter (John 1:42); 2. his finding of Philip (1:43); 3. his recognition of Nathanael (1:47-50); 4. of the woman of Samaria (4:17-19, 39); 5. miraculous draughts of fishes (Luke 5:6-9;John 21:6); 6. death of Lazarus (John 11:14); 7. of the ass's colt (Mat. 21:2); 8. of the upper room (Mark 14:15); 9. of Peter's denial (Mat. 26:34); 10. of the manner of his own death (John 12:33;18:32); 11. of the manner of Peter's death (John 21:19); 12. of the fall of Jerusalem (Mat. 24:2).
Jesus does not say“our Father”but“my Father”(John 20:17). Rejection of him is a greater sin than rejection of the prophets, because he is the“beloved Son”of God (Luke 20:13). He knows God's purposes better than the angels, because he is the Son of God (Mark 13:32). As Son of God, he alone knows, and he alone can reveal, the Father (Mat.[pg 682]11:27). There to clearly something more in his Sonship than in that of his disciples (John 1:14—“only begotten”;Heb. 1:6—“first begotten”). See Chapman, Jesus Christ and the Present Age, 37; Denney, Studies in Theology, 33.
(b) Exercised divine powers and prerogatives.
John 2:24, 25—“But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all man, and because he needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man; for he himself knew what was in man”;18:4—“Jesus therefore, knowing all the things that were coming upon him, went forth”;Mark 4:39—“he awoke, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm”;Mat. 9:6—“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath authority on earth to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick of the palsy), Arise, and take up thy bed, and go unto thy house”;Mark 2:7—“Why doth this man thus speak? he blasphemeth: who can forgive sins but one, even God?”It is not enough to keep, like Alexander Severus, a bust of Christ, in a private chapel, along with Virgil, Orpheus, Abraham, Apollonius, and other persons of the same kind; see Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. xvi.“Christ is all in all. The prince in the Arabian story took from a walnut-shell a miniature tent, but that tent expanded so as to cover, first himself, then his palace, then his army, and at last his whole kingdom. So Christ's being and authority expand, as we reflect upon them, until they take in, not only ourselves, our homes and our country, but the whole world of sinning and suffering men, and the whole universe of God”; see A. H. Strong, Address at the Ecumenical Missionary Conference, April 23, 1900.Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 39—“What is that law which I call gravitation, but the sign of the Son of man in heaven? It is the gospel of self-surrender in nature. It is the inability of any world to be its own centre, the necessity of every world to center in something else.... In the firmament as on the earth, the many are made one by giving the one for the many.”“Subtlest thought shall fail and learning falter; Churches change, forms perish, systems go; But our human needs, they will not alter, Christ no after age will e'er outgrow. Yea, amen, O changeless One, thou only Art life's guide and spiritual goal; Thou the light across the dark vale lonely, Thou the eternal haven of the soul.”
John 2:24, 25—“But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all man, and because he needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man; for he himself knew what was in man”;18:4—“Jesus therefore, knowing all the things that were coming upon him, went forth”;Mark 4:39—“he awoke, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm”;Mat. 9:6—“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath authority on earth to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick of the palsy), Arise, and take up thy bed, and go unto thy house”;Mark 2:7—“Why doth this man thus speak? he blasphemeth: who can forgive sins but one, even God?”
It is not enough to keep, like Alexander Severus, a bust of Christ, in a private chapel, along with Virgil, Orpheus, Abraham, Apollonius, and other persons of the same kind; see Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. xvi.“Christ is all in all. The prince in the Arabian story took from a walnut-shell a miniature tent, but that tent expanded so as to cover, first himself, then his palace, then his army, and at last his whole kingdom. So Christ's being and authority expand, as we reflect upon them, until they take in, not only ourselves, our homes and our country, but the whole world of sinning and suffering men, and the whole universe of God”; see A. H. Strong, Address at the Ecumenical Missionary Conference, April 23, 1900.
Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 39—“What is that law which I call gravitation, but the sign of the Son of man in heaven? It is the gospel of self-surrender in nature. It is the inability of any world to be its own centre, the necessity of every world to center in something else.... In the firmament as on the earth, the many are made one by giving the one for the many.”“Subtlest thought shall fail and learning falter; Churches change, forms perish, systems go; But our human needs, they will not alter, Christ no after age will e'er outgrow. Yea, amen, O changeless One, thou only Art life's guide and spiritual goal; Thou the light across the dark vale lonely, Thou the eternal haven of the soul.”
But this is to say, in other words, that there were, in Christ, a knowledge and a power such as belong only to God. The passages cited furnish a refutation of both the Ebionite denial of the reality, and the Arian denial of the integrity, of the divine nature in Christ.
Napoleon to Count Montholon (Bertrand's Memoirs):“I think I understand somewhat of human nature, and I tell you all these [heroes of antiquity] were men, and I am a man; but not one is like him: Jesus Christ was more than man.”See other testimonies in Schaff, Person of Christ. Even Spinoza, Tract. Theol.-Pol., cap. 1 (vol. 1:383), says that“Christ communed with God, mind to mind ... this spiritual closeness is unique”(Martineau, Types, 1:254), and Channing speaks of Christ as more than a human being,—as having exhibited a spotless purity which is the highest distinction of heaven. F. W. Robertson has called attention to the fact that the phrase“Son of man”(John 5:27;cf.Dan. 7:13) itself implies that Christ was more than man; it would have been an impertinence for him to have proclaimed himself Son of man, unless he had claimed to be something more; could not every human being call himself the same? When one takes this for his characteristic designation, as Jesus did, he implies that there is something strange in his being Son of man; that this is not his original condition and dignity; in other words, that he is also Son of God.It corroborates the argument from Scripture, to find that Christian experience instinctively recognizes Christ's Godhead, and that Christian history shows a new conception of the dignity of childhood and of womanhood, of the sacredness of human life, and of the value of a human soul,—all arising from the belief that, in Christ, the Godhead honored human nature by taking it into perpetual union with itself, by bearing its guilt and punishment, and by raising it up from the dishonors of the grave to the glory of heaven. We need both the humanity and the deity of Christ; the humanity,—for, as Michael Angelo's Last Judgment witnesses, the ages that neglect Christ's humanity must have some human advocate and Savior, and find a poor substitute for the ever-present Christ in Mariolatry, the invocation of the saints, and the“real presence”of the wafer and the mass; the deity,—for, unless Christ is God, he cannot offer an infinite atonement for us, nor bring about a real union between our souls and the[pg 683]Father. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:325-327 (Syst. Doct., 3:221-223)—“Mary and the saints took Christ's place as intercessors in heaven; transubstantiation furnished a present Christ on earth.”It might almost be said that Mary was made a fourth person in the Godhead.Harnack, Das Wesen des Christenthums:“It is no paradox, and neither is it rationalism, but the simple expression of the actual position as it lies before us in the gospels: Not the Son, but the Father alone, has a place in the gospel as Jesus proclaimed it”;i. e., Jesus has no place, authority, supremacy, in the gospel,—the gospel is a Christianity without Christ; see Nicoll, The Church's One Foundation, 48. And this in the face of Jesus' own words:“Come unto me”(Mat. 11:28);“the Son of man ... shall sit on the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations”(Mat. 25:31, 32);“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”(John 14:9);“he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”(John 3:36). Loisy, The Gospel and the Church, advocates the nut-theory in distinction from the onion-theory of doctrine. Does the fourth gospel appear a second century production? What of it? There is an evolution of doctrine as to Christ.“Harnack does not conceive of Christianity as a seed, at first a plant in potentiality, then a real plant, identical from the beginning of its evolution to the final limit, and from the root to the summit of the stem. He conceives of it rather as a fruit ripe, or over ripe, that must be peeled to reach the incorruptible kernel, and he peels his fruit so thoroughly that little remains at the end.”R. W. Gilder:“If Jesus is a man, And only a man, I say That of all mankind I will cleave to him, And will cleave alway. If Jesus Christ is a God, And the only God, I swear I will follow him through heaven and hell, The earth, the sea, and the air.”On Christ manifested in Nature, see Jonathan Edwards, Observations on Trinity, ed. Smyth, 92-97—“He who, by his immediate influence, gives being every moment, and by his Spirit actuates the world, because he inclines to communicate himself and his excellencies, doth doubtless communicate his excellency to bodies, as far as there is any consent or analogy. And the beauty of face and sweet airs in men are not always the effect of the corresponding excellencies of the mind; yet the beauties of nature are really emanations or shadows of the excellencies of the Son of God. So that, when we are delighted with flowery meadows and gentle breezes of wind, we may consider that we see only the emanations of the sweet benevolence of Jesus Christ. When we behold the fragrant rose and lily, we see his love and purity. So the green trees and fields, and singing of birds, are the emanations of his infinite joy and benignity. The easiness and naturalness of trees and vines are shadows of his beauty and loveliness. The crystal rivers and murmuring streams are the footsteps of his favor, grace and beauty. When we behold the light and brightness of the sun, the golden edges of an evening cloud, or the beauteous bow, we behold the adumbrations of his glory and goodness, and in the blue sky, of his mildness and gentleness. There are also many things wherein we may behold his awful majesty: in the sun in his strength, in comets, in thunder, in the hovering thunder clouds, in ragged rocks and the brows of mountains. That beauteous light wherewith the world is filled in a clear day is a lively shadow of his spotless holiness, and happiness and delight in communicating himself. And doubtless this is a reason why Christ is compared so often to these things, and called by their names, as the Sun of Righteousness, the Morning Star, the Rose of Sharon, and Lily of the Valley, the apple tree among trees of the wood, a bundle of myrrh, a roe, or a young hart. By this we may discover the beauty of many of those metaphors and similes which to an unphilosophical person do seem so uncouth. In like manner, when we behold the beauty of man's body in its perfection, we still see like emanations of Christ's divine perfections, although they do not always flow from the mental excellencies of the person that has them. But we see the most proper image of the beauty of Christ when we see beauty in the human soul.”On the deity of Christ, see Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1:262, 351; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 127, 207, 458; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:61-64; Hovey, God with Us, 17-23; Bengel onJohn 10:30. On the two natures of Christ, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 201-212.
Napoleon to Count Montholon (Bertrand's Memoirs):“I think I understand somewhat of human nature, and I tell you all these [heroes of antiquity] were men, and I am a man; but not one is like him: Jesus Christ was more than man.”See other testimonies in Schaff, Person of Christ. Even Spinoza, Tract. Theol.-Pol., cap. 1 (vol. 1:383), says that“Christ communed with God, mind to mind ... this spiritual closeness is unique”(Martineau, Types, 1:254), and Channing speaks of Christ as more than a human being,—as having exhibited a spotless purity which is the highest distinction of heaven. F. W. Robertson has called attention to the fact that the phrase“Son of man”(John 5:27;cf.Dan. 7:13) itself implies that Christ was more than man; it would have been an impertinence for him to have proclaimed himself Son of man, unless he had claimed to be something more; could not every human being call himself the same? When one takes this for his characteristic designation, as Jesus did, he implies that there is something strange in his being Son of man; that this is not his original condition and dignity; in other words, that he is also Son of God.
It corroborates the argument from Scripture, to find that Christian experience instinctively recognizes Christ's Godhead, and that Christian history shows a new conception of the dignity of childhood and of womanhood, of the sacredness of human life, and of the value of a human soul,—all arising from the belief that, in Christ, the Godhead honored human nature by taking it into perpetual union with itself, by bearing its guilt and punishment, and by raising it up from the dishonors of the grave to the glory of heaven. We need both the humanity and the deity of Christ; the humanity,—for, as Michael Angelo's Last Judgment witnesses, the ages that neglect Christ's humanity must have some human advocate and Savior, and find a poor substitute for the ever-present Christ in Mariolatry, the invocation of the saints, and the“real presence”of the wafer and the mass; the deity,—for, unless Christ is God, he cannot offer an infinite atonement for us, nor bring about a real union between our souls and the[pg 683]Father. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:325-327 (Syst. Doct., 3:221-223)—“Mary and the saints took Christ's place as intercessors in heaven; transubstantiation furnished a present Christ on earth.”It might almost be said that Mary was made a fourth person in the Godhead.
Harnack, Das Wesen des Christenthums:“It is no paradox, and neither is it rationalism, but the simple expression of the actual position as it lies before us in the gospels: Not the Son, but the Father alone, has a place in the gospel as Jesus proclaimed it”;i. e., Jesus has no place, authority, supremacy, in the gospel,—the gospel is a Christianity without Christ; see Nicoll, The Church's One Foundation, 48. And this in the face of Jesus' own words:“Come unto me”(Mat. 11:28);“the Son of man ... shall sit on the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations”(Mat. 25:31, 32);“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”(John 14:9);“he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”(John 3:36). Loisy, The Gospel and the Church, advocates the nut-theory in distinction from the onion-theory of doctrine. Does the fourth gospel appear a second century production? What of it? There is an evolution of doctrine as to Christ.“Harnack does not conceive of Christianity as a seed, at first a plant in potentiality, then a real plant, identical from the beginning of its evolution to the final limit, and from the root to the summit of the stem. He conceives of it rather as a fruit ripe, or over ripe, that must be peeled to reach the incorruptible kernel, and he peels his fruit so thoroughly that little remains at the end.”R. W. Gilder:“If Jesus is a man, And only a man, I say That of all mankind I will cleave to him, And will cleave alway. If Jesus Christ is a God, And the only God, I swear I will follow him through heaven and hell, The earth, the sea, and the air.”
On Christ manifested in Nature, see Jonathan Edwards, Observations on Trinity, ed. Smyth, 92-97—“He who, by his immediate influence, gives being every moment, and by his Spirit actuates the world, because he inclines to communicate himself and his excellencies, doth doubtless communicate his excellency to bodies, as far as there is any consent or analogy. And the beauty of face and sweet airs in men are not always the effect of the corresponding excellencies of the mind; yet the beauties of nature are really emanations or shadows of the excellencies of the Son of God. So that, when we are delighted with flowery meadows and gentle breezes of wind, we may consider that we see only the emanations of the sweet benevolence of Jesus Christ. When we behold the fragrant rose and lily, we see his love and purity. So the green trees and fields, and singing of birds, are the emanations of his infinite joy and benignity. The easiness and naturalness of trees and vines are shadows of his beauty and loveliness. The crystal rivers and murmuring streams are the footsteps of his favor, grace and beauty. When we behold the light and brightness of the sun, the golden edges of an evening cloud, or the beauteous bow, we behold the adumbrations of his glory and goodness, and in the blue sky, of his mildness and gentleness. There are also many things wherein we may behold his awful majesty: in the sun in his strength, in comets, in thunder, in the hovering thunder clouds, in ragged rocks and the brows of mountains. That beauteous light wherewith the world is filled in a clear day is a lively shadow of his spotless holiness, and happiness and delight in communicating himself. And doubtless this is a reason why Christ is compared so often to these things, and called by their names, as the Sun of Righteousness, the Morning Star, the Rose of Sharon, and Lily of the Valley, the apple tree among trees of the wood, a bundle of myrrh, a roe, or a young hart. By this we may discover the beauty of many of those metaphors and similes which to an unphilosophical person do seem so uncouth. In like manner, when we behold the beauty of man's body in its perfection, we still see like emanations of Christ's divine perfections, although they do not always flow from the mental excellencies of the person that has them. But we see the most proper image of the beauty of Christ when we see beauty in the human soul.”
On the deity of Christ, see Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1:262, 351; Liddon, Our Lord's Divinity, 127, 207, 458; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:61-64; Hovey, God with Us, 17-23; Bengel onJohn 10:30. On the two natures of Christ, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 201-212.