_Christian Theology by Milton Valentine, D.D., LL.D Copyright 1906, Lutheran Publication Society Printed Philadelphia, PA. by The United Lutheran Publication House_ Volume II Pages 23-54 -------------------------------------------------------------- DIVISION II. THE PERSON OF THE SAVIOUR. From the Source of salvation in the Triune God, the "eternal purpose" has moved into realization through the manifestation and work of the Son. The move- ment of God's love, in answer to te need of man in sin, appears in the coming and person of the Christ, as shadowed forth and assured through the divine self- revelation recorded in the Old Testament and completed in the New. Our examination of this brings us to the study of what is distinctly designated _Christology_. It seeks to understand the truth or reality as to Christ's being and attributes. Christology will be found to present the pivotal reality that determines the whole nature, authority, and power of Christianity. It may well be said, as it has often been, that "Christ _is_ Christianity," in the sense that what He is decides and assures the very essence of what it is. The turning point, as between Christianity and all other or variant religions, comes into view in the correct answer to the question: "What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He?" Matt. xxii. 42). About this, its enemies, seeing the place of its mysterious power, have gathered their persistent assaulting force. But, happily, while the truth here is indeed the innermost citadel of Christian theology, it is, of all its truths, the strongest and most invincible. The subject opens to view, in a ---------------End Of Page 23------------------------------ consideration of that wonderful event in which Christ's Person was constituted, the "Word made flesh." "When the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son." -----------------End of Page 24----------------------------- CHAPTER I. THE INCARNATION. This is to be viewed as the miracle of miracles, the greatest of all, central to all, caryying all others with it. It puts into time and the world, in a sovereign and unique way and for a special and "eternal purpose," the Presence and action of the Supernatural--all pre- ceding miracles and theophanies being its anticipatory and preparing action, all succeeding miracles and powers its continuance and reverberating movement. As war- ranted by the Scriptures, and as held in the faith of the Church, this incarnation of the Son of God was the superlative event in the world's history, all earlier providential movement being in view of it and adjusted to its significance, and all after ages receiving its sublime increment of divine self-manifestation and saving good- ness, as concerned with the realization of its intention and destined to exhibit its issues. It was, and forever is, God's supreme thought and act of love for the world. I. As we approach the subject, it is important that we fix in mind some essential presuppositions involved in the incarnation. These are conditional truths. There are at least three of them. (_a_) The first is such a constitution or reality of the Godhead as to make an incarnation possible. Christian theism universally maintains that God can make Him- self known in His power and doing. A God unable to manifest Himself would not be God. This generic self- -------------End Of Page 25------------------------------ revelation is properly understood as implied in the designation "Logos" or Word, applied to the only be- gotten Son. Compare John iii. I6; i. I-4; Heb. i. I-2. It is thus placed in close connection with the entire doc- trine of the Trinity, and belongs indeed to its profoundest import. Evidently the incarnation, as a specific act of self-manifestation, must be viewed as resting back upon the same interior reality in the Godhead. The supreme unity consists with distinctions. The truth of the Trin- ity is thus a logical presupposition of the incarnation. This mystery in the interior of the being of God holds the possibility and power of the divine self-manifestiation according to His will. And in thinking of the "second Person" of the Trinity as representing to us the Divine Being or nature as self-disclosing or self-imparting, we must bear in mind that this is equally true, whether the self-expression be in creative action or in redemptory sacrifice of love. For by "the Word all things were made," before human need was answered by the grace of the incarnation. The doctrine of the Trinity is no mere speculative truth, without practical import, but a vital reality, underlying the whole creational and providential economy of the world. So practical is it, that wherever it has been denied or obscured nearly all the great truths in the order of the divine love and grace, emphasized in the Scriptures, have fallen away with it, especially those pertaining to the way of salvation, such as the true Deity of Christ, the incarnation, the atonement, regeneration, etc. We do not say that without the Trinity an incarnation would have been absolutely impossible; for Sabellianism is not metaphysically inconceivable. But we say, first, that the Scriptures clearly link the incarnation with the ------------------End Of Page 26------------------------- tripersonality of God (John i. I-4, I4, I6, 27; xvii. 5, 24, 25; Rom. viii. 32; Heb. i. 6); and secondly, that the truth of the Trinity furnishes what may be termed a natural basis for it, in the mysterious being of the one absolute eternal God, opening to us an intelligible view of the distinctly declared economy of salvation. (_b_) A second presupposition is such a constitution of _humanity_ as to make the incarnation possible. It is especially proper that this precondition should be looked at fairly. For plausible difficulties may be suggested. The incarnation of God in a human being is so strange an event, so foreign to the regular order of life, as to justify a raising of the question of its credibility. It is not necessary that it should be relieved of mystery, since mystery meets us everywhere in the immense realm of reality. But impediments to faith may be removed, if the mystery can be shown to be not essentially an impos- sibility nor incredible. And this can be done. The asserted possibility may, indeed, be made to seem doubtful if the confessedly great difference between God and man be allowed to hide from view the truth of likeness, as taught by revelation and sustained by reason. If, through theories of man's origin, or dis- crediting appearances in his actual condition, he is reduced to classification with mere animal existence, with no given life or endowment constituting him in any attributes kindred with his Creator, with nothing but positive antithesis to the Divine Nature, then, indeed, we could not conceive of an incarnation as pos- sible. There would be nothing in common, no elements of the same kind of being which could coalesce in conceivable union. But in proportion as consideration is given to the unique place of man in relation to all ------------End of Page 27----------------------------- other created existences on earth, confessedly marked by essential characteristics exalting him far above all other species of living beings, unquestionably constituting him alone an intelligent, rational, free moral personality, after God's own "image," capacitated to "think His thoughts after Him," to understand Him through His works, and to enter reverently into fellowship with His will and purposes, in love, obedience, and worship, the difficulty diminishes. God is absolute, eternal _mind_. As God formed human personality essentially in _created mind_, finite, indeed, but with powers in the likeness of His own nature, it would seem that immeasurable pos- sibilities of kindredship, affinity, and communion may have been provided for. If God is the Absolute, perfect Spirit or Mind, man is created finite spirit or mind. Revelation declares the human mental or spiritual facul- ties to be after the mould of the divine, and the deepest scientific thought of the ages sustains this conception. We are fully entitled to believe that God has made thought, love, and volition essentially the same in man as they are in Himself. Though infinite in Himself, and only finite in humanity, they are correspondent realities, creatively adjusted in man for true knowledge, obedience, and fellowship. The "religious nature" of the race to which philosophy and science are giving special emphasis, is but an expression and witness of this. It is heard in the forever repeated cry of Augus- tine: "O God, my heart was made for Thee, and cannot rest till it finds Thee." This revelation of _likeness_ of capacities, not equality of them, is the point specifically involved in the possibility of the incarnational union. The evidence of features in common between the Divine Nature and the human, as thus established, is ---------------End of Page 28---------------------------- supported by further truths integral in the teaching of revelation. The reality of "image and likeness" carries us to the truth of _sonship_ in man's nature and position. And this human sonship is most wonderfully found rest- ing back on the Trinitarian reality of an "Eternal Son- ship" in the being of God Himself. We find that the work of creating humanity in features of filial likeness to God, is by the same Son who comes to redeem. Sonship, constitutional and ethical, appears to be the ultimate principle that underlies the creation. The principle of sonship is in God Himself. The physical world is not an end in itself, but is relative, as means to spiritual ends towards which is the outflow of God's love. Thus the divine love cannot rest in creative activity through the successive stages of the inorganic and animal spheres till it has embodied in its works a realm of self- likeness in personal constitution and character. "Man is made in the image of God, because he is the analogue in creation of the uncreated Son whose working is in him consummated."[1] In the light of this analogy of human personality with the divine, the incarnational assumption of humanity, while not divested of mystery, is relieved of contradic- toriness. Nothing forbids the conception that the Infinite Spirit, the Eternal Revealer, may take the limited human capacities within the movement of the Infinite Divine, so as to blend the two natures into a single personality. God could not communicate to the human nature self- existence; for that would obliterate the very distinction between Himself and created being; but He, conceiv- ably, can communicate all communicable attributes to the Divine Human Person within the measure in which ---------------------------------------------------- [1] See Forrest's "The Christ of History and Experience," p. I83. --------------End of Page 29------------------------- humanity has been capacitated to receive, which shall fill them with the Divine. We are without warrant, then, should we undertake to say that the Logos could not personally identify Himself with and reveal Himself through humanity. The eternal Son of God could unite Himself with the humanity of created sons of God formed after the divine likeness. Very significant is it, too, that we must add that, along with the fact of man's "religious nature" with its deep sense of need of divine fellowship, and, perhaps, growing out of this, different ethnic natural religions have developed belief in some manifestation of God in human form. Incarnation has not been contradictory to, or even wholly alien from, human thought. The logic of the mighty need has been the logic for the conclusion involved in the conception. Incarnations appear in the Buddhas of Buddhism and the Vishnus of Brahminism; but paganism's false con- cepts of both Deity and man made possible only gross and distorted ideas of the divine reality. (_c_) The third presupposition _is the fact of sin_. The incarnation was not for creational work, but redemptory, providential, soteriological. Though part of the eternal purpose, it was eternally in foreview of the lapse of man out of the status and competence which creation had given him. It was to recover to the life and destiny for which God had formed and capacitated him. The question arises, could not the needed recovery have been accomplished except through this divine incar- nation? To this we answer: First, that no man can know the possibilities of God so as to be able to say that it was absolutely impossible. But, secondly, no one can show that it could have been accomplished in any other way than through the incarnate Son. Reasoning from --------------End of Page 30--------------------------- the actual fact, we are entitled to conclude, with Augus- tine and general Christian thought since his day, not only that it was an eminently fitting way, but also that it was really necessary. God does nothing in vain. And we are warranted in adding that, as nothing else than the manifestation of God's love in such an approach and appeal to the human soul as was presented therein, and in all that it involved, can be conceived of as victoriously inspiring faith and restoring real communion between God and man, we are justified in the conclusion that just this was the first great condition of human salvation.[1] The denial of the true Deity of Christ, reducing Him to a mere man or some semi-deified creature, leave the rup- ture made by sin unabridged. But a further question has been raised and claims notice: Whether sin was its sole ground, or whether it does not rest on a deeper and non-contingent basis, and would have taken place if sin had never entered the world? Speculative theology has here and there been setting forth the conception that the incarnation rests not alone in a redemptive need and work, but belongs to God's creative work and its necessities as required for the perfecting of human nature, irrespective of the fall. The first appearance of this is found in the scholastic age, in Rupert, Abbot of Deutz, a theologian of mystic temper. He was followed in its maintenance by Alexander Hales, Duns Scotus, Raymond Lullus, John Wessel, and others, and earnestly confuted by Thomas Aquinas and Bonaven- tura. At the Reformation Osiander adopted it. No advo- cacy of it is found during the period of Protestant dogmatic theology until its modern revival by Lieber, Martensen, and Dorner, in Germany and Denmark, and by some ---------------------------------------------------------- [1] Sartorius, "Doctrine of Divine Love," pp. I46-I47. ----------------End of Page 31------------------------- "progressive" theolgians in England and our own coun- try. The aim of the theory is to offer what its supporters think better ground for speaking of Christianity as the "absolute religion," by lifting it above the contingent basis of dependence on man's lapse into sin through abuse of his freedom. And while its advocates formulate it in different types of view, these have converged in conceiving of the incarnation as an immanent necessity of the love of God, or as involved in the best possible creation--as determined by the necessities, not of re- demptive need, but creative love. Its fundamental and supreme end is the _perfecting_ of man, while subordinately and incidentally it answers the need that has conti- gently occurred through sin. But neither the Scriptures nor reason authenticate this view, as a few points suffice to show. To begin: the asserted _necessity_ of the incarnation for "perfecting hunmanity," apart from man's fall into sin, is a pure assumption. The intimation that God's "creative" action was incompetent to perfect His crea- tive work according to His "purpose," has no warrant in Scripture or reason. The anthropology of both the Old and New Testaments negatives the idea. It repre- sents man as actually made "in the image and likeness of God," declared "very good" (not "_a torso_," simply pointing to the future, "merely destined" to ethical goodness, as Dr. Dorner puts it), called a "son of God" (Luke iii. 38), placed, in fact, in living fellowship with God. He was endowed by creative love and power for all that he was to become and enjoy. When the re- generative and restorative work of redemption is defined by St. Paul, it is in being "renewed unto knowledge --after the image of Him who created him, in right- -----------------End of Page 32----------------------- eousness and true holiness" (Col. iii. 9-I0; Eph. iv. 24). Christ Himself puts it as "being born again" (John iii. 5). The only perfecting function asserted for the God- man is with respect not to unfallen, but fallen men, and for these marked as a _restoration_ into the "image and likeness" with which human nature was originally en- dowed. The Headship of the "second Adam" exhibits a necessity for _redeemed_ humanity, not for the natural as something which God's creative power failed ade- quately to endow or put in right and necessary relation to Himself. Perhaps the evolutionary hypothesis of the genetic origin of man and the unity of creation may seem to some to give a scientific place and justification to the asserted necessity of this completing step. Dr. Dorner's suggestion[1] concerning the original man, that the crea- tive work made him "innocent" but "_not yet pneu- matic_," might appear thus to obtain real force. It might be imagined that the genetic origin from physical and animal existence failed to endow with a true _pneuma_ or pneumatic principle, and that nothing short of a per- sonal incarnation in humanity could confer it. It is said: "More stress is laid in recent theology upon the cosmical relations of the incarnation. The old truth of the natural headship of Christ receives new significance in view of modern theories of the origin and unity of creation. If theistic evolution be assumed, the Christ is not dethroned, but exalted as the goal of the whole ascent of life, the end and completion of all conceivable development, the perfect Man, beyond which there can be none higher, the Head of all, in whom Humanity is raised to the throne of Divinity, the second Man, who is --------------------------------------------------------- [1] "System of Christian Doctrine," Vol. II., pp. 2I0-2I2. --------------End of Page 33----------------------------- the Lord from Heaven."[1] But the intimation in this representation is gratuitous, that the necessity of the in- carnation was primarily to help out the failure of the eternal Son, by whom "all things were made" (John i. I-3), by _creative_ power to endow man with spiritual or pneumatic principle. It not only reflects on God's crea- tive work as inadequate, but is compelled to abandon the very principle of evolution to which it appeals. For that principle, even theistically viewed, is that the crea- tive and perfecting processes are purely _naturalistic, i.e._, found simply in the forces and interactions of nature under law. From monera to fish, from fish to reptile, from reptile to mammal, from brute to man, with whom Christianity has come to deal, the process is naturalistic only. When Professor John Fiske, as its prophet for the "destiny of man," interprets theistic evolution, he finds, as we have seen, the reality of what theologians term "original sin," in the incomplete evolution, as "the brute inheritance which every man carries with him"; and he sees redemption and regeneration in such further transformation that "nothing of the brute can be de- tected in him; the ape and the tiger become extinct." The process of natural evolution is thus the true progress toward salvation--`the creation and perfecting of man being the goal toward which nature's work has been all the time tending.'[2] In locating the primary direct func- tion of the supreme _miracle_ of the incarnation in the ne- cessity of completing the creation of man, this new the- ology, we repeat, contradicts the evolutionist principle itself, that the formative and perfective cosmic powers belong to nature by original divine constitution and reach ---------------------------------------------------------- [1] Schaff-Hertzog Ency., Art. _Incarnation_, by Dr. Newman Smyth. [2] "Destiny of Man," pp. 25, I03. ------------------End of Page 34--------------------------- their goal by simply _natural process_. Whatever may have been the _mode_ of God's creation of humanity, there is no warrant for assuming that it was left without its right endowment for its high position and blessed life. And still further, it must be noted that should human nature _per se_ be thought necessarily to require incarnation for right endowment, must we not, on parallel logic, hold that the perfecting of the nature of angels demands it in their nature also? But an apostle declares: "He took not on Him the nature of angels." But further, the Scriptures positively give another and different reason for the incarnation. They make sin its distinct presupposition. The given relation is: "incar- nation in order to redemption." Everywhere from the _proto-evangelium_ in the forfeited Eden to the song "unto Him that loved us and washed us in His blood" in the new heavens of the restored state, the explanation of the glorious phenomenon presented in the person of Christ as "God manifest in the flesh," is declared to be the world's need of a Saviour. Take the classic text in which Jesus Himself expressed the whole Gospel of the divine love: "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should _not perish_, but have eternal life" (John iii. I6). The object in view was that men might not "perish" in want of that regeneration just spoken of to Nicodemus. Jesus makes the affirmation still more explicit when He says: "The Son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke xix. I0). Again, He is come "to give His life a ransom for many" (Matt. xx. 28). He pictured His own mission and the reason for it in the parable of the lost sheep--the fact of its being lost forming the definite and alone ground of His leaving ------------------End Of Page 35---------------------------- `the ninety and nine and going after the wandering one. Christ's own distinct answer, thus given, why the Word was made flesh and dwelt among men, thenceforward clearly formed the regulative conception on the subject in the minds of the apostles, and it is the monotone of their statements throughout the Epistles. "For what the law could not do," writes St. Paul, "in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh," etc. (Rom. viii. 3). "But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons" (Gal. iv. 4-5). "Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, He also Himself in like man- ner partook of the same, that through death He might bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is the devil; and might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For verily not of angels doth He take hold, but He taketh hold of the seed of Abraham. Wherfore it behooved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people" (Heb. ii. I4-I8). Could it be more definitely and explicitly stated than it is here, that the revelation of the Son in human nature had its great end in His _priestly_ action, to _make propitiation for sin?_ "Faithful is the saying," further explains St. Paul, "and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners" (I Tim. i. I5). "To this end," declares St. John, "was the Son of God manifested, that He might destroy the works of the -------------End of Page 36------------------------------- devil" (I John iii. 8). "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation of our sins." "And we have beheld and bear witness that the Father hath sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world" (I John iv. I0-I4). Many other passages might be quoted. Indeed, the web and woof of the Gospel representation is woven to this pattern. It is to be borne in mind that all this is but the cul- mination of the voices that, in the long centuries of the Old Testament preparation, had been prophesying of the needed Messiah as the Immanuel, God with us. From the first and all through, the promises marked the coming blessing as a Deliverer, a Saviour, through whom the sinful and guilty might have hope. His mission was centralized in a royal priesthood, His work typified in altars and sacrifices, in atoning and reconciling blood, in self-offering, in being bruised for men's iniquities, and making intercession for the transgressors. Through great preparing dispensations, the people had been taught that the promised One, who was at once the seed of the woman, the Son of David and the Son of God, was coming that He might bruise the serpent's head, and by the one offering of Himself for sin forever perfect them that believe; so that when John the Baptist discovered in Jesus the long-looked-for Messiah, he but expressed the ages of divine shaping thought in announcing Him and His mission in the characterizing terms: "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world" (John i. 29). Thus we have the spirit of prophecy in the Old Testament, the words of Christ Himself in the New, continuously and constantly, in- stead of seeing and announcing a reason for the God-man ----------------End of Page 37--------------------------- back of sin and redemptive need, connecting the divine coming with the "eternal purpose" to provide salvation for fallen man. It is but fair to note that several Scriptures have been offered in behalf ot the new view. They are: Eph. i. 9-I2, 22, "Having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him unto a dispensation of the fullness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon earth; in Him, I say, in whom also we were made a heritage, having been fore-ordained according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His will; to the end that we should be unto the praise of His glory, we who had before hoped in Christ. . . . And He put all things in subjec- tion under his feet, and gave Him to be Head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all"; and Col. i. I5-I7, "Who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in Him were all thigns created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things have been created through Him and unto Him; and He is before all things and in Him all things consist." Now it seems to us impossible to read this new ground of the incarnation out of these passages without first reading it in. There is neither distinct assertion of it, nor fair implication of it. For they simply declare relations of the Son to other orders of intelligence than man--relations of creation and gov- ernment--without even a suggestion that these relations have come only by virtue of the incarnation, or that the incarnation was necessary to them. The Logos, of course, --------------End of Page 38----------------------------- by becoming the God-man, is none the less thereby the eternal Son in whom all things consist, their natural Head by creation, under whose dominion they are for- ever. There is no assertion that it has been through the incarnation that the Son became or eternally is the Head of the angels, or that only thus He became revela- tory of the Godhead to them or the center of their union in God. Moreover, the incarnation for _redemption_ is the only consistent idea that will explicate the apostle's statement of Christ's purpose to "sum up," "gather together agin" (_anakephalaiosasthai_) all things in heaven and on earth. The _ana, iterim_, "again" in the com- pound word points back to a state in which no separation as yet existed. The disharmony came by _man's sin and fall_. The redeeming work of Christ, annulling this disharmony, re-establishes the unity of God's kingdom in earth and heaven. The gathering together is "in Christ." He is the central point of the union. But it takes place by the recovery of _man_ and the necessity was _redemptive_. There is not a word in all this that legitimately implies that the harmonization of the things in heaven and earth, or the gathering of them under one blessed headship, required the incarnation apart from the lapse of humanity. To connect the necessity of a God- man with the placing of the _angels_ in right harmony would not only be _per se_ singularly inept as implying that _man_ is the center about which the things in heaven are to be summed up, but utterly incongruous also with the non-relation of the purpose of the incarnation to the angels clearly indicated in the declaration: "Not of angels doth He take hold, but He taketh hold of the seed of Abraham." These texts, critically examined, give no different conception of the incarnation from that --------------End of Page 39------------------------------- for redemption. The most that can be claimed for them is that, if the theory we are studying were elsewhere distinctly taught, they _could_ be interpreted in accord with it. But in themselves they are utterly inadequate to establish it. The theory, moreover, is unnecessary for the very pur- pose for which it has been fomulated and urged--a sup- posed gain is illusory. If the aim is to lift the reality of the God-man out of all relation of contingency into that of eternal certainty and sure divine purpose, this, in all essential features, clearly belongs to it without this new view. As we have seen,[1] the prevailing understand- ing of the Scriptures has been that they teach that God's foreknowledge, whether based on fore-ordination or not, is absolute and eternal. It covered the fall of humanity and the need of redemption as completely as it did the purpose of creation; and this at once gives the same absolute certainty to the redemptive basis as belongs to the creational and perfective. For all theology acknowl- edges that creation is a free action of God--not an abso- lute reality like the immanent activity or _opera ad intra_ of the Trinity. Absoluteness of that kind is not sought or supposed in the necessity for the incarnation. The only absoluteness is that of the free eternal purpose of love in Jesus Christ. And as the foreknowledge of God covered the future fact of sin as truly as the creation, though He stood in a different causal relation to the two, His love could act as absolutely in the purpose to redeem as in the purpose to create. Each purpose was a purpose of free love, and eternally chosen in the same absoluteness of love's foresight and free fore- ------------------------------------------------------- [1] Vol. I., pp. 232-262. ---------------End of Page 40--------------------------- determination. Redemptive Christianity is the "abso- lute religion." Further, transfer of the motive of the incarnation to the creative aim would take from it the unique and in- comparably inspiring significance it has as a _specific revelation of God's love to recover and save a self-ruined and undeserving race_. No merely cosmic working can disclose such a view of the reach and possibilities of the divine goodness. It has, indeed, been urged that since the incarnation is so transcendently the world's greatest exhibition of God's love, it is something that cannot reasonably be supposed to have been left contingent on human sin. But the impressive fact is rather that it is just in its relation to the necessities of the race as self- ruined and guilty in sin, that it _becomes_ such an un- equalled exhibition of the heart of God that we have no calculus to measure it. The sore heart of a lapsed humanity, struggling in the faith that has caught a glimpse of the vision and hope it offers, is not easily ready to surrender it. It has even an apologetic value, as having in itself the very reason why we may believe it. The soul opens in confidence toward God through the very thought of such supremely Godlike goodness. There is a cor- respondence between means and end. "The incarnation, apart from the _cross of redemption_, would lack precisely that revelation of God's love which is to us the most immediately impressive and soul-subduing--His yearn- ing compassion for the unworthy."[1] "God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us" (Rom. v. 8). It is this all-surpassing vision of redemptory self-manifestation that has inspired the mind and shaped the songs of the Church, breathing --------------------------------------------------------- [1] Forrest, "The Christ of HIstory and Experience," pp. I89-I90. --------------End of Page 41--------------------------------- out even in the rapt strains of "_O felix culpa quae talem ac tantum meruit habere redemptorem_," as being a vision that more than compensates for the damage done by sin, and forms the supreme environment of the moral uni- verse. The ecstatic strain is no bewildered concession to sin, but a recognition of the superlative reach and triumph of God's love. And it is in line with the truth of the incarnation for recovery, that philosoph- ical thought is beginning to obtain, if not a solution of the mystery of moral evil in the world, yet glimpses that offer some light for the problem. For it is conceded that the problem is inseparably con- nected with God's creation of free personal beings capa- ble of abuse of freedom in wrong-doing. Such creation, indeed, raised creature existence into attributes kindred to God's own life, with correspondent fellowship and blessedness. But, as already pointed out, with this supreme endowment, in His "image and likeness," and its correspondent exaltation of the world system above the mere aggregations of matter--"things," or forms of material or physical motion--into the sublime realm of intelligence, reason, ethical character, and the blessed- ness of holy communion in love, came also necessarily the possibility of the misuse of freedom in sin. The elevation of life into this realm involved the possibility of lapse into moral evil. But God, as we must conceive, could not find His true measure of satisfaction in a uni- verse of mere mechanics and incapable things, unable to respond to creative love or share in its meanings. The only kind of creature that could satisfy a Being of absolute personal goodness would be a creature capable of the highest form of excellence, in filial relation and blessedness. "Creation, to be agreeable to Him, must ------------------End of Page 42--------------------------- be of creatures like Him; spirit as He is Spirit, intellect as He is Intelligence, love as He is Love."[1] The material creation is only relative and subsidiary. "The only creation worthy of a personal God is a universe of per- sons," freely obedient to duty and love, respondent to their motives, and advancing in the high life of free goodness. Some further things need to be distinctly perceived. (I) God's purpose in forming a creature world in the supreme grade of exaltation of life and excellence, was neither to introduce sin nor as _necessitating_ it. At the fullest import, sin thereby becomes a possibility, to the _actuality_ of which through creature will, God's will is an eternal moral antagonism. He neither created sin nor any necessity for it; on the contrary, He incorpo- rated in the dowry of a moral personality kindred with His own, a law of utter condemnation of it and of absolute obligation to righteousness. (2) If the ethical world-system is, indeed, the best, and the only one worthy of God, His eternal self-consistency and good- ness forbid us to think that He could then, by acts of preventive interference with freedom, have secured against the possibility of any but right moral choices. For such system of control would annihilate the very principle of free self-determining personality. The in- tervention would be destruction. The lofty grandeur of self-moving spiritual life in holy love would be lost in a show of will-less automata. (3) The term "per- mission," often used to state God's relation to the entrance of sin, needs distinct interpretation before its use can be true to the truth. It suggests a degree of ------------------------------------------------------ [1] See suggestive presentation by A. M. Fairbairn, "Philosophy of the Christian Religion," pp. I52-I68. -------------------------End of Page 43--------------- "consent" that cannot possibly have been involved. "Nonprevention" would better express the reality, as accordant with the principle of responsible freedom in which He Himself had constituted human life. The moral law, with its behests and prohibitions, had been written in that life. The moral elevation had been given for blessed preservation and its fellowship of holi- ness. The creature's use of it for sin was a direct antago- nism to God's will or eternal purpose of creative love, and God's attitude permitted the sin in no more positive sense than simple abstention from physical prevention. Sin is eternally that with respect to which God says to those made in His image of freedom: "Thou shalt not." (4) But here, from the incarnation, enters light upon the mystery of unprevented creature disobedience. While God did not, forseeing the disobedient purpose, arrest it by annihilation of the creature freedom which His wisdom and love had created, and, going back upon His plan, drop His world-system down to the low grade of impersonal things, with no capacity of fellowship in thought, aim, or love, He _did_, just as truly as He fulfilled His purpose to create with foresight of a possible or even actual fall, also, in the same foresight, determine to establish a providen- tial administration of redemptive grace and recovery of the fallen, through this remedial incarnation and its otherwise unrevealable love. The true theodicy of crea- tion must include, with the foreseen possibility of sin, the predetermined incarnate manifestation of love for restora- tion of moral life. God thus gave the universe the supreme revelation both of His love and of His oppo- sition to sin. He turned the creature's self-ruin and guilt into occasion for transcending creative goodness by the new glory of the compassionate and self-sacrificing ----------------End of Page 44----------------------------- goodness of redeeming love. He thus added to His cre- ational expression against moral evil, in the ethical behests made constitutional for guidance of human free- dom, the infinitely surpassing expression of antagonism to it given in the incarnational and redemptory admin- istration for salvation from it. Though God could not fail creationally to lift the world-system up into the worthy range of ethical life, nor retract the system by annulling freedom, yet in His infinite resources of wisdom, power, and love, He could establish a provi- dential economy of recovery through motives appealing to personal freedom itself. The incarnations stands for this whole economy of provision and persuasion for man's return from self-wreck to the true relation and life to which his creation looked. It has its appropriate agencies, means, and spiritual influences. "Marvelous was the absolute primal creative love, which made some- thing, nay, everything, out of nothing. But still greater is redeeming love, still greater is God as the Redeemer, inasmuch as He conquers the contradiction of Himself (Heb. xii. 3), the enmity of sin, by His divine _love of His enemies, or grace_."[1] This view explains and justifies the fact that the con- servative evangelical theology of our day is increasingly emphasizing the incarnation. Its significance and value are more and more clearly seen. It is viewed not only as a necessary prerequisite to the teaching, ministry, and atoning sufferings of Christ, but as itself, in its place and aim, the sublimest and most assuring revelation of the holy character and love of God. In it, sin-smitten and enslaved humanity is given a vision of His goodness and beneficence, than which nothing can be conceived more ------------------------------------------------------ [1] Sartorius, "Doctrine of Divine Love," p. I28. -------------End of Page 45------------------------------ impresssive or appeal more mightily to the soul for abandonment of sin and new life in righteousness. It is a vision the world cannot afford to lose. Yet over against this supremely needed, significant, and inspiring truth is the fact that evangelical theology is facing an active movement appealing to science and philosophy against acceptance of it. Materialistic evolutionism and idealistic monism or pantheism, also evolutionistic, have been elaborating cosmogonies that, even if claim- ing to be theistic, wholly exclude from the creative process for both the world and man any forces but those that operate under the form of natural causation, and leave no place for any direct divine working or super- natural manifestation in the world--God forever remain- ing, either apart from it, an absentee God, or pan- theistically self-revealed in it, in all its naturalistic forms and individualities of being, but without any direct, miraculous self-manifestation. This teaching deletes the whole supernaturalism of Christianity, to which the incarnation pre-eminently belongs. In the law of cosmic creation and procedure God is regarded as self-barred from all direct working or transcendence of natural causation. We are told: "The modern per- ception of the uniformity of nature and the unbroken domain of law makes the idea of miracle inconceivable, save in the line of natural causation. We do not, and we ought not to expect God to act otherwise than in accordance with those modes of His action which we have learned to designate natural law." If natural law be understood, as rightly, the unbroken uniformity of causation established by God's creational will and work, the incarnation, the redemptive self-manifestation of God, is abolutely excluded from His administra- ------------End Of Page 46----------------------------- tion, or is strongly discredited to faith, and we are pointed to Christ only as the divinest of men and the best religious teacher of the world. The miracle of the incarnation is eliminated from Christianity, and Christi- anity is reduced to a natural religion, though the high- est that human thought has thus far read from God's self-discosure in nature. No wonder that conservative theology resists these destructive urgings, based only on speculative science or pantheistic theorizings, tending to darken out of sight this vision which the incarnation gives of God's redeeming love and saving aim for humanity--the vision that, above all others, has been the inspiring power of Christianity and remains the supreme appeal to the human soul to forsake sin and turn to righteousness. 2. The Historical Preparation for the Incarnation claims some notice. As redemption realizes the divine purpose from the foundation of the world, all his- tory preceding the incarnation was a progressive providential preparation for it, prophesying of it, and providing the fitting conditions for it. This historical movement, in accordance with the two great courses of human history, presents two lines of development. (_a_) In the _ancient pagan_ world, humanity, through its rational faculties and religious constitution, so far as the depravity of its sinful state had left the elements of its spiritual constitution still operative, was striving to realize the divine fellowship for whose right possibilities the incarnation was ordained, but without true success-- only exhibiting its semi-conscious _need_ of this form of God's self-manifestation. Glimmerings of the conscious need of it appear in almost every system of heathen religion, showing man's sense of broken fellowship with -------------------End of Page 47------------------------ his Creator, and developing proof of the greatness of the evil and the inadequacy of human effort to secure and make known the remedy. Through the experiences of highest civilizations and natural culture, as well as of grossest ignorance and degradation, was given demon- stration of the necessity of some divine self-revelation that should show the true way of salvation, and prove to be Love's victorious power of moral and spiritual re- covery. (_b_) Among the _Jewish people_, with its special provi- dential dispensation and training, the preparatory un- folding was of a much more direct and positive kind. The movement looked to providing the immeidate con- ditions for the divine advent. The incarnation was voiced, as a keynote, in the very first promise that assured of grace and redemption to fallen man: "The Seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." In clearer and clearer statements the great fact took shape in Jewish history. It matters not that through want of spirtual apprehension the people failed to see the distinct and full import of the unfolding truth, and largely misconceived the real purpose of the Messianic coming as well as the true lineaments of the promised Saviour. The mystery of the divine event had to await explanation and true understanding through its reali- zation. Enough that it was foretold and marked for sure identifications. The preparing Promise ran through centuries of prophecies and reminders, assuring a Divine Deliverer or Saviour, with His great offices and work defined and emphasized (Gen. xii. I-3; xxii. I8; Deut. xviii. I5; Ps. ii.; Isa. xi; Isa. liii; Micah v. 2; Dan. ii. 44; ix. 26; Mal. iii. I-4). Supporting and interpret- ing the Promise itself there was an established order of --------------End Of Page 48------------------------------ national worship in a system of typical sacrifices and institutions pointing to His redeeming mission, and surely identifying His personality. This double preparatory movement deserves some measure of emphasis. In the pagan line, the insufficiency of naturalism, or man's native powers without direct revelation or special divine redemptory provision, was demonstrated through a length and breadth of history justly entitled to settle that question for the whole race and for all time. The issue certified human helplessness before the task. For it sufficed to test and bound the abil- ity of the human faculties in relation to the transcendent realities and problems involved in the question of God's forgiveness of sin and revcovery of free moral agents to loyalty to Himself and holiness. The solution lay in a realm beyond the reach of these finite faculties, and _ex necessitate_ could be made known only by the All-know- ing God through a supernatural teaching. The culture of the human mind and its scientific findings in the physical and intellectual realms of the cosmic universe, can never of themselves reach up into the realm in which that problem lies. So the pagan trial was wide enough and long enough not only to develop for that time a prevalent sense of human need of more light by direct divine manifestation--a condition favorable to the reception of the Gospel--but also to furnish a permanent demonstration of the insufficiency of naturalism. In the movement of supernatural providence in the Old Testament history, the aim was more specific and direct, looking to and positively effecting the best attain- able conditions for a recognition of the divine reality, a response of faith in the incarnate Son and the gracious redemption, and for successful planting and initial work ----------------End Of Page 49-------------------------- of Christianity in the world. Though this preparation was of supernatural order, yet, as it had to be secured in harmony with human free agency, it required the use of means in the way of instruction and spiritual influence. It trained the Jewish mind into the great truth of mono- theism; is clarified and exalted the divine attributes, espe- cially those of righteousness, power, eternity, and suprem- acy, yet assured God's goodness, compassion, and grace; it taught and disciplined the moral and religious conscious- ness into the increasing sense of responsibility to Jehovah's law[1] and the guilt of disregard of its requirements; it sought through its system of sacrifices and confessions of sin to beget a true conception of God's holiness as neces- sarily to be kept uncompromised in remission of trans- gressions; and through prophecy assured of the sending of salvation, in a Messiah-Redeemer who should bear the people's iniquities and bring in a dispensation of forgive- ness and holy life. This development was through the Church or community of Old Testament believers, which contained enough "prepared people" (Luke i. I7) to receive the accomplished redemption, and form the ordained agency for the evangelization of the world. Of course the incarnation is to be viewed primarily as a fact rather than a doctrine. If it is a truth at all, it is the truth of a great historical event, the greatest of the earth's history, an event that, in the divine order, stands back of the Scriptures which record it, and of the doctrines that rise out of it. It needs to be per- petually emphasized that Christianity is not a system of thought-out truths, or a philosophy of history or of life. It is grounded primarily in a series of supernatural -------------------------------------------------------------- [1] "The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ" (Gal. iii. 24). --------------End of Page 50---------------------------------- facts, of which this is the center or heart--the reality that integrates and inter-relates them all. The coming of the God-man, His teachings, miracles, sufferings, death, resurrection, and ascension, underlie all the doc- trines that are legitimately derived from them. The power of Christianity is not in the power of abstract truth or theory, but of redeeming action, as believingly apprehended. Our first business with this truth is, therefore, to recognzie it as a fact, certified in its appro- priate and fitting evidence; only as thus certified and vindicated are we to seek to understand and trace out the doctrinal realities or practical truths involved in the meaning and bearings of the stupendous event. 3. THE MODE OF ITS BECOMING A FACT.--As an event, we must conceive of the mode of incarnation according to its historic records as divinely stating it. As in the supreme sense it was a supernatural move- ment, our imagination cannot inform us of it. From the divinely-given account of it we may mark a number of essential features or elements in the mode. (_a_) As it was a process in which the Son of God voluntarily surrendered a state or condition that belonged to Him as divine, and took on Him human nature, He entered it through a _human birth_, becoming the "seed of a woman." In this He assumed true and full human nature, the humanity in which the race is con- stituted. He became "Immanuel," God-with-us (Gen. iii. I5; Luke i. 30-33; Gal. iv. 4; Heb. ii. I4). He entered personally into the life of the race. (_b_) The conception was without human fatherhood, the immediate power of God, the Holy Spirit, super- naturally effecting and quickening for birth (Matt. i. 20-23; Luke i. 35; Mark i. I; John i. I4; Heb. ii. I6). ---------------End Of Page 51-------------------------- Though skeptical criticism has lately been seeking to discredit the genuineness and historic authority of the Scripture passages asserting this feature, known theo- logically as the "miraculous conception," the general and best critical judgment sustains both their genuine- ness and credit. Moreover, the fact itself, so far from being incredible and inviting unbelief, is so thoroughly accordant with the supernatural character of the incar- nation, and, we may say, justified and even demanded by its generic principle and bearings, as to commend it strongly to acceptance. For, as simple suggestions in this line, we may recall that birth of woman is itself and alone sufficient to convey true and actual "human nature" in its integrity; that ordinary or natural genera- tion carries the inheritance of a corrupt moral condition; that such a corrupt nature would have voided the possi- bility of Christ's presenting a sinless and perfect man- hood, either as the divine model, or as a sinless sacrifice for redemptive atonement; that it is not difficult to con- ceive that God, for spiritual ends so sublime and glorious as those centered in the incarnation--the event of divine eternal counsel, about which the earth-history revolves-- should work this miracle of a human birth from woman by supernatural power, but entirely in keeping with the whole transcendent movement; that, furthermore, it is _easy_ to conceive that in this virgin birth--this birth entirely due to the "power of the Most High"--the miraculous power, thus efficiently present, could and did annul the transmission of the element of sin as no proper part of true human nature, and the transmission of which to the Christ would have been inconflict with the revelation of a sinless and perfect Saviour, whose consciousness the sense of sin never invaded during His ------------End of Page 52------------------------------- whole life, nor led, so far as we know, to a single prayer for forgiveness. (_c_) The Son of God, "the Word," "Logos," was a Person, self-existent in the Trinity from eternity, but His human nature had no personal or individual existence prior to is creation in the incarnation. The act did not consist in uniting two personalities already existing, a divine and a human, but two _natures_--the Son of God uniting with His own Divine Nature also the fullness of the nature belonging to mankind or the seed of Abraham. The mode of the assumption acted creatively for the true reality of that nature, yet appropriated it from the midst of the race, the union realizing the theanthropic person- ality, the God-man. (_d_) In forming the union the Divine Nature was _active_, the human _passive_. It was entirely God's work in behalf of a humanity wholly helpless. "He took on Him the seed of Abraham" (Heb. ii. I4-I7). "He took on Him the form of a servant" (Phil. ii. 7). (_e_) These things imply, further, that it gave the per- sonality of Christ from the _divine_ side. The Son had eternal personality in the Trinity, carrying it in the assumption of the incarnate state. The personality of the human nature, if realized, was not self-given, but consequential on the completion of the act or process of incarnation. The question whether, in the completed union in the divine-human person of Christ, the human nature as therein perfected attained real personality, or remained "impersonal" (_anhypostasia_, non-personal_) as often represented since John of Damascus, must be left for a later page. (_f_) It involved a certain reality of _self-limitation_ or emptying of Himself on the part of the divine Son. -------------------End Of Page 53----------------------- This is distinctly taught us (Phil. ii. 6). "Being in the form of God, . . . equal with God" in the fullness of the divine attributes and activities, He, in some way, "emptied Himself" (_heauton ekenosen_) not of the divine _essence_ (_ousia_) or _nature_ (_phusis_) with its attributes, but of that "form" of being; and, further, in this state "humbled Himself" to an order of service and "obe- dience unto death." He accepted mysterious limitations which involved an actual human life in human form, development, and experiences, all the privations, trials, labors, and sufferings that marked His history to death on the cross and descent into the grace. While the constitution of human nature after the "image of God" removed the incredibility of the incarnation, this self- limitation thus involved, nevertheless, covers a mystery for whose speculative or theoretical explanation theology presents us with somewhat differing views. This need not disturb us. Human inability to point out the actual mode cannot be claimed to annul the fact, inasmuch as while the fact is distinclty revealed, the manner of it, lying in a realm of transcendent divine possibilities, has not been descriptively declared to us. Unquestionably there was a divine self-limitation, as in themselves the divine and the human, the infinite and the finite, have not equal diameter or comprehension; but the mode of bringing them to conincide in their personal union in the theanthropic Christ, we may well regard as so far hu- manly inscrutable as to make it impossible for theology to determine definitely how it was effected. It is one of the secrets of God's love and power "past finding out" and beyond our descriptive definitions. --------------End of Chapter on Page 54-------------------- This text was converted to ascii format for Project Wittenberg by William Alan Larson and is in the public domain. You may freely distribute, copy or print this text. Please direct any comments or suggestions to: Rev. Robert E. Smith of the Walther Library at Concordia Theological Seminary. E-mail: smithre@mail.ctsfw.edu Surface Mail: 6600 N. Clinton St., Ft. Wayne, IN 46825 USA Phone: (260) 452-2123 Fax: (260) 452-2126