The creative Christ : a study of the Incarnation in terms of modern thought

BR U5 .B63 1921

Drown, Edward Staples, 1861

1936.

The creative Christ

mi

THE CREATIVE CHRIST

A STUDY OF THE INCARNATION IN TERMS
OF MODERN THOUGHT

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

THE
CREATIVE CHRIST

A STUDY OF THE INCARNATION IN
TERMS OF MODERN THOUGHT

BY
EDWARD S; DROWN, D. D.

Professor in the Episcopal Theological
School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Author of "The Apostles' Creed Today,"
"God's Responsibility for the War," etc.

N^m f nrk

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922

AU rights reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Copyright, 1922
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and printed. Published February, 1922

FERRIS

PRINTING COMPANY

NEW YORK CITY

TO MY WIFE

THE JOHI^ BOHLElSr LECTUEESHIP

John Bohlen, who died in Philadelphia on the twenty-
sixth day of April, 1874, bequeathed to trustees a fund
of one hundred thousand dollars, to be distributed to reli-
gious and charitable objects in accordance with the well-
known wishes of the testator.

By a deed of trust, executed June 2, 1875, the trustees
under the will of Mr. Bohlen transferred and paid over
to ^'The Kector, Church Wardens, and Vestrymen of the
Church of Holy Trinity, Philadelphia," in trust, a sum
of money for certain designated purposes, out of which
fund the sum of ten thousand dollars was set apart for
the endowment of THE J0H:N' B0HLE:N' LECTUEE-
SHIP, upon the following terms and conditions : —

^'The money shall be invested in good, substantial, and
safe securities, and held in trust for a fund to be called
The John Bohlen Lectureship ; and the income shall be
applied annually to the payment of a qualified person,
whether clergyman or layman, for the delivery and publi-
cation of at least one hundred copies of two or more lecture
sermons. These lectures shall be delivered at such time
and place, in the city of Philadelphia, as the persons
nominated to appoint the lecturer shall from time to time
determine, giving at least six months' notice to the person
appointed to deliver the same, when the same may con-
veniently be done, and in no case selecting the same person
as lecturer a second time within a period of five years. The
payment shall be made to said lecturer, after the lectures

The John Bohlen Lectureship

have been printed and received bj the trustees, of all the
income for the year derived from said fund, after defraying
the expense of printing the lectures and the other incidental
expenses attending the same.

^'The subject of such lectures shall be such as is within
the terms set forth in the will of the Rev. John Bampton,
for the delivery of what are known as the 'Bampton Lec-
tures,' at Oxford, or any otter subject distinctively con-
nected with or relating to the Christian Religion.

''The lecturer shall be appointed annually in the month
of May, or as soon thereafter as can conveniently be done,
by the persons who, for the time being, shall hold the
offices of Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of
the Diocese in which is the Church of the Holy Trinity;
the Rector of said Church; the Professor of Biblical
Learning, the Professor of Systematic Divinity, and the
Professor of Ecclesiastical History, in the Divinity School
of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.

"In case either of said offices are vacant the others may
nominate the lecturer."

Under this trust the Reverend Edward S. Drown, D.D.,
Professor of Systematic Divinity in the Episcopal Theo-
logical School in Cambridge, was appointed to deliver the
lectures for the year 1921.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Christ for To-day - - - 13

II. Divine and Human _ - - - 39

III. What is the Incarnation ? - - - 68

IV. The Uniqueness of Christ _ - - 103

V. The Incarnate Life . - . - 133
Index _«_--_ 165

THE CREATIVE CHRIST

THE CREATIVE CHRIST

CHAPTER I
THE CHRIST FOR TO-DAY

That Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day and
forever means that He is the Man of the ages. And, if so,
then He is the Man for every age. There is in Him that
which can appeal to and satisfy the thoughts and hopes and
aspirations of every period of human experience.

That Jesus Christ is always the same does not, therefore,
mean that He can always be apprehended in the same way,
or that His value and meaning for human life can always
be understood and expressed in the same terms. His great-
ness eludes any complete human understanding. The best
that any age can do is to make Him real for that age, and
then to hand on to new ages the ever recurring task of
understanding Him anew, as human life changes and as
new problems call for new solutions.

Such has always been the proper task of Christian theol-
ogy. Its subject is the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.
But theology is always changing because life changes, and
therefore that revelation must constantly be reinterpreted.
Every true theology must be at once conservative and pro-
gressive. It must be conservative in that it seeks to con-
serve the value and meaning of that revelation. But it must
also be progressive, or, perhaps better expressed, contempo-
raneous, in that it seeks to understand the revelation in
accordance with the life of its own time, and to apply its

13

14 The Creative Christ

meaning to the thoughts and problems of that time.^ We
sometimes forget that those whom later ages have rightly
regarded as champions of orthodoxy were often in their
own times innovators, as they sought to put the old truth
into new and living form. Athanasius sought for a new
expression of the old truth, for only by that new expression
could the old truth stand. To have been content with the
old formula would have been to sacrifice the old truth.
Augustine in the fifth century faced a world crumbling to
ruin, as our world has crumbled in the twentieth century.
He saw that the City of God must be built anew, armed
with new defences and ready for new conflicts. Aquinas
brought together in the thirteenth century ^ a veritable
Summa of the thoughts and problems of his o^ti age.
Luther and Calvin faced a new world, and each in his own
way tried to meet the issues of his own time. All these
men sought to conserve the old by giving it new expression.
They sought to see Jesus, not only as He had been for the
past, but as He was for the present. To act on their
example is not to abide satisfied with their results, it is to
walk farther along the path they trod. To be true to the
Fathers is to follow not their formulas but their faith.

There are two false attitudes toward the thought of the
past. One such is to regard that thought as a finality
beyond which we cannot go. But that is to be untrue to
the lesson which the past itself has to teach, the lesson
taught us by men who were thinkers for their own time,
and who dared to follow thought into untrodden fields.
And the other false attitude is to disregard the past, and to
try to do our own thinking independently of what has been
thought before. But that again is to lose the lesson^ that
history has to teach, it is to fail to benefit by the experience
of mankind. If we are to understand the present, we must

The Christ For To-day 15

know the past, know it as a living thing, and from its life
we shall learn the lessons for our life to-day. We shall be
true to the Christian thought of the past if we try to make
Christ real for ourselves.

n

To make Christ real for ourselves is our task. And that
task can best be approached by a consideration of what we
mean by the belief in Christ, and of what is the value of
that belief. Christian belief can best be understood by an
appreciation of what it really is, by approaching it from
inside rather than from outside. Theoretical arguments
for belief in Christ can have little weight apart from an
understanding of what that belief is. Indeed it would
seem impossible to prove that any belief is true unless we
know what the belief is concerning which we are arguing.
All truths which touch the depths of life have self -convinc-
ing power. If they cannot commend themselves by their
own intrinsic nature, it is little use to buttress them from
outside. Coleridge maintained that the proof for the in-
spiration of Holy Scripture is that it finds you.^ So it
must be with the truth about Christ. He commends Him-
self by what He is. And so it must be with every theory,
every doctrine, about Christ. We cannot prove that such
doctrine is true apart from a study of what it is. If we
are to make Christ real for ourselves, we must seek to
interpret the truth about Him in a way that will commend
itself to our own thoughts, and that will satisfy our needs
lind solve our problems.

I purpose then to discuss the meaning of the belief in

j *"In short whatever finds me, bears witness for itself that it
has proceeded from a Holy Spirit." Letters on the Inspiration of
the Scriptures. No. I.

16 The Creative Christ

Christ, and to try to express that meaning in terms that
are ours, rather than in terms that belong to the past. Such
an attempt may indeed be deemed presumptuous. Yet
presumption of that sort is necessary on the part of anyone
who undertakes to discuss the things of God and of Christ.
Of course the task is too great for me. Bnt that is no
reason for refusing to undertake it, unless evt.^ task that
is worth while is to be refused. And if what I have to say
is of any worth at all, it must be because it is in accord
with the spirit and the need of our own time.

And it cannot be denied that the interpretation which
I have to give is a personal, an individual, one. It is the
attempt to state the truth as it appears to me. I do not
see how that responsibility can be avoided. There is no
good reason why anyone should try to state what he
believes to be truth, unless that truth has not only passed
through his own mind, but has become in a real sense his
own. It is not only undesirable, it is impossible, to avoid
the personal equation. Let the exegete of Holy Scripture
be as honest as he may, it is impossible for his judgment
to be entirely uninfluenced by his own methods of thinking.
Let the student of Church doctrine be as impartial as he
can, it is impossible for him to get rid of his judgment
as to the value and meaning of that doctrine. Quite
frankly, I am suspicious of a teacher or writer who begins
by saying: "I am going to tell you nothing of my own.
I am going to tell only what the Bible says, or what the
Church says." ITo man can be so impartial as that. If
only in the selection of his texts or of his authorities, the
personal point of view will be there, however carefully con-
cealed. It is better not to conceal it at all, but to confess
it with frankness and humility. Therefore without apol-
ogy I make my attempt. If it has any worth it is because

The Christ For To-day 17

it is my own contribution, however small, to an interpreta-
tion of the meaning of the belief in Jesus Christ, as that
belief can be expressed in the terms of our own time.

Ill

"^h" terms of our own time are essentially moral terms.
Our p'roblem is the social problem, the ethical problem ; the
two are the same. How shall society be built on the foun-
dation of righteousness, justice, and love ? How shall the
individual, every individual, find his own freedom in a
right and just relation to his fellows, a relation that shall
express and maintain the rights and freedom of all ? How
shall the State, the Nation, be so constituted as to maintain
the rights and duties, political and industrial, of all its
members ? We are not interested in abstract speculation,
or in metaphysics as that term is commonly understood.
For the last half century the social problem has been press-
ing upon us with ever increasing force. And the social
problem is the ethical problem, for there is no ethics except
in and through society, and there is no true society that is
not founded on the right and just relations of its members.

This social interest has been vastly increased by the
world war. Society has fallen into chaos, and out of the
materials of that chaos a new society must be built. The
problem has become a world problem. Eighteousness and
justice can no longer be preserved simply within the
ISTation. ISTo ISTation can be safe in isolation because no
ISTation can be in isolation. The problem concerns not only
the rights and duties of individuals, but the rights and
duties of sovereign States. How can man live in justice
and peace with his neighbors? The solution in detail it
may not be for us to see. But everywhere men dream
dreams and see visions of a Commonwealth of Free States

18 The Creative Christ

where justice and righteousness and peace can be main-
tained, and by which a true unity of the world's life can
be brought to realization. The insistent problem for us is
the social problem. The terms of our thinking are moral
terms.

It is but putting this thought in another form to say that
for us the insistent problem is that of democracy. ^ For if
democracy means anything more than a mere description of
a form of government, it means a society in which each
member is in full moral relations with his fellows. There
is as yet no perfect democracy ; it is a goal to be attained,
not a result already accomplished. It is that conception of
the State in which each member plays his full part. Thus
law is the expression of the whole community, superim-
posed only in the sense that it is the expression of the rights
and duties of every individual. It is that State in which
justice is done to all because law is the expression of all.
Democracy is the Free State, free because liberty and law
have met together. Every man is an end in himself, just
because every man is a means for the realization of that
community in which every man finds his freedom. To
bring into being that community, both politically and in-
dustrially, is the problem of our time, for only in such a
community can the moral problem find its solution. Our
problem is the moral problem, and the terms of our thinking
are moral terms.

Nor can the solution of that problem be found merely
within the borders of any individual State. As the moral
problem has become for us the world problem, so must its
solution be a world solution. Somehow, by some means,
there must be established moral relations between States,
between ISTations. It may be that no final form of that
solution is in sight. But the task is clear, unless the world

The Christ For To-day 19

is to fall again into chaos. If the war has been in any
sense whatever a war against war, if any victory whatever
against war has been won, there must under some form be
established a Community of Free Nations, a Democracy of
Sovereign States. There is no perfect democracy within
any State, and it is certain that there is hardly an approach
to a democracy between States. Such democracy is a goal
to be attained, the community of Nations, in which com-
munity each Nation shall play its full part and come fully
to its own self-realization. The law between Nations must
be the expression of the whole community of Nations,
superimposed only in the sense that it is the expression of
the full rights and duties of each individual sovereign
State. There must come that community of States in
which justice is secured to all because law is the expression
of all. There must be in some true sense a Democracy of
Free States, free because liberty and law have met together.
Every Nation must be an end in itself, just because every
Nation is a means for the realization of that Community
in which every Nation finds its freedom. Only in such a
Commonwealth of Free States can justice and righteousness
prevail on earth, only thus can the moral problem find
solution. And the moral problem, whether within each
Nation, expressing the rights and duties of every citizen,
or whether between Nations, expressing the rights and
duties of every Nation, is the problem of our time. The
terms of our thinking are moral terms.

IV

Now, this fact gives us a great advantage when we turn
to the thought of the New Testament. Everywhere in the
New Testament the ideas are moral ideas, the terms are
moral terms. God is a moral Being. His essence is love.

20 The Creative Christ

He is the Father whose loving care goes out toward all His
children. God is never thought of as a substance, as a
thing, sl dark unknown background of existence.^ "God
is light, and in him is no darkness at all."^ And that light
is the light of love. God is always conceived in terms of
character. And His character is manifested through Jesus
Christ, who came to do His will. Through Christ the
character of God becomes the life and law of the children
of God. The terms of the 'New Testament are ethical,
social, terms.

Social because ethical. It is sometimes said that the
ISTew Testament teaches only an individual and not a social
morality. But that assertion overlooks the fact that the
heart of all ethics is in the relation of a man to his neighbor.
And that is the heart of the social problem. The ISTew
Testament always thinks of man's relation to God as ex-
pressed in his relation to his neighbor. There is carried
out to the fullest extent the teaching of the Hebrew
prophets by which the righteous God reveals His will in
the righteous and just community of His people. Through-
out the prophetic teaching the emphasis is on the righteous
character of God. Therein lies the difference between
Jehovah, the God of Israel, and the nature gods of the
surrounding tribes. And the character of Jehovah deter-
mines the character of His people. The righteousness of
God is revealed in the upbuilding of the righteous common-
wealth of Israel whose law shall reflect the justice and
mercy and love of God. And this thought of the character

*In Heb. 1:3 the word vnoaraai-: (R. V. substance) is applied to
the essence of God, but the back^ound of the thought is entirely
personal. In the so-called Second Epistle of Peter, generally
recognized as a late writing, there is the phrase "partakers of the
divine nature" {(f>iais). This phrase suggests Hellenistic thought.

'I John 1:5.

The Christ For To-day 21

of God as determining human life is carried out to tlie
fullest extent in the ]^ew Testament. God is love, and,
therefore, the service of God is in love of the brethren.
The love of God becomes the law of the kingdom of God.

Whether or not the phrase ^'kingdom of God" is used in
the ^ew Testament primarily in an eschatological sense,
that is, as a society to be established by a future divine
act, it is at any rate true that the laws of that society are
moral laws, that they express the right relation of a man
to his neighbor, a relation founded upon a common relation
to God. It is impossible to emphasize too strongly the
!New Testament insistence on the right relation of man to
man. Our Lord joins together the two great command-
ments, love to God and love to the neighbor, and in the
parable of the Last Judgment there is no other test than
^'Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even
these least, ye did it unto me."^ St. Paul who finds the
source of all righteousness in trust in God, yet finds that
righteousness expressed in membership in the body of
Christ, the organic society in which every member plays his
part for the common good. ''He that loveth his neighbour
hath fulfilled the law."^ St. John, the mystic, looking
into the very face of God, is by that vision brought into
closest relation with the children of God. In the plainest
possible words he says, ''If a man say, I love God, and
hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his
brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath
not seen."^ The all-dominating thought of the E"ew Testa-
ment is the character of God. The terms are ethical terms.
The moral life of God is the foundation of fellowship

^Matt. 25:40.
*Rom. 13:8.
•I John 4 :20.

22 The Creative Christ

among men. If we are true to the spirit and purpose of
the 'New Testament, we shall find ourselves in closest touch
•with the problem of our own time, the problem of a new
society whose Maker and Builder is God, and whose laws
express the right relation of man to man.

This fact should determine for us our approach to the
belief in Jesus Christ. If we are to see God in Him, we
shall see God^s character, God's love, manifest in Him.
We may for our purpose safely set aside any metaphysics
that for us has lost its insistent meaning, and may still feel
that we are in closest accord with the ^ew Testament. To
be true at once to the thought of our own time and to the
thought of the ISTew Testament will be to understand the
Person of Jesus Christ in moral terms.

Here I would guard against a misunderstanding. There
is a feeling that, if we speak of Christ in moral terms alone,
in terms of the supremacy of His character and His com-
plete fulfillment of His task, we are not dealing with the
deepest reality of His being. There is a tendency to think
that if He is regarded as divine only in character and in
will, there is still something left unsaid. Is He not divine
in substance as well as in character? Is it sufficient to
think of Him in ethical terms ? Must we not, in order to
do justice to His divinity, to His deity, also think of Him
in metaphysical terms ?

The answer to that question depends on what is our con-
ception of reality, and on what we mean by metaphysics.
Surely, Christian faith sees in Christ the supreme reality
of God. But of what does the supreme reality of God
consist ? St. John says that God is love. And if to us the
supreme reality of God lies in His character. His will.

The Christ For To-day 23

righteousness, love, we may be confident that if we see in
Jesus Christ the supreme, the absolute manifestation of
God's will and character, God's righteousness and love,
then we shall see in Him the most real expression of deity.
If love be the essence of God, then in His Son, in whom
the divine love is perfectly realized, we have the deepest
expression of the divine being.

Do we need a metaphysical Christ? If metaphysics is
the search after the nature of reality, and if we seek to find
in Christ the reality of God, then in that sense we need a
metaphysical interpretation of His Person. But if the
supreme reality be moral, if the deepest thing about God is
His moral will. His character. His love, then a true meta-
physics will itself be moral. And in considering Jesus
Christ in moral terms we shall be giving the true meta-
physics of His Person.

JSTow here we strike the difference, of which much more
will have to be said later, between, on the one hand, the
Biblical thought of God, and, on the other hand, the
thought of God which prevailed in the Greco-Roman world,
in the terms of which the Christology of the early Church
came to its most definite expression. The Bible, Old and
IN'ew Testament alike, thinks of God as character, as a
living and creative will. The Greek conceived of God
rather as an abstract substance underlying all reality, a
substratum of pure being, free from all the relations of life
and accident and change. Thus the Greek metaphysic did
not treat character, will, as belonging to supreme reality,
but thought of that reality as purely abstract being, sub-
stance, devoid of all attributes. The only affirmation that
can be made about such a substance is that it is.

]^ow the Christian thought immediately found itself in
contact with this Greek or Hellenistic world. Its task

24 The Creative Christ

was to conquer that world. Consequently in the first eight
centuries, during which the doctrine of the Person of Christ
was worked out, that doctrine necessarily was expressed in
the terms of Hellenistic thought. God was conceived of
as substance, and therefore Christ was declared to be "of
one substance with the Father.'' The statement was in-
evitable, and was the only possible way in which the Arian
separation between God and Christ could be overcome.
The homoousion rightly expressed the Christian thought in
the terms of that age, and, since it is always the task of
Christian theology to express truth in the terms of its own
time, the !N^icene theology was true to that task. It owes
its permanent significance to the fact that it expressed and
defended the deity of Christ in the only terms in which it
could be expressed and defended in that age. That ex-
pression was in terms of substance, the metaphysics was
concerned with the idea of substance. And if we truly
appreciate the value of that attempt, we shall be bold to
make the attempt that is needed for ourselves. We shall
think of Christ in moral terms, and we shall be convinced
that, in so doing, we are thinking of Him in terms of the
deepest reality. We shall translate the Greek metaphysics
of substance into our own metaphysics, a metaphysics that
finds the true reality in the moral will, in the manifestation
of that personal love which is the deepest thing that we
know about God. The metaphysics for our time must be
a moral metaphysics.-^

VI

Our whole discussion of the idea of God and of the

*I have treated this subject more fully in The Hihlyert Journal,
Vol. IV, No. 3, "Does Christian Belief Require Metaphysics?"
See also H. R. Mackintosh, The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus
Christ, p. 472.

The Christ For To-day 25

Person of Jesus Christ must, then, be carried on in moral
terms. And this fact leads to what I believe to be a
supremely important principle for Christian theology. If
every truth that we know about God is a moral truth, then
that same truth must be applicable to the life of man. For
man is made in the image of God, he is the creature and
child of God. His moral life is founded on his relation to
God, which relation must be the ground and source of his
moral relations to his fellows. Hence the principle for
which I contend is as follows : — No doctrine about God can
claim to he a Christian doctrine unless it is capable of appli-
cation to and expression in the life of man} The moral
life of God is to Christian belief the foundation of the
moral life of men, the corner stone of the kingdom of God.
An abstract philosophy may conceivably hold theories about
God which have no bearing on human life. But such
theories have no place in a Christian theology which views
God as the Creator and source of human life, and which
holds man to be made in the image of God, the son of his
heavenly Father.

This principle demands further discussion, for it opens
up the whole subject of the relation between religion and
morality, and especially the Christian relation. It has
been maintained that in primitive forms of religion there
was no connection between religion and morality. But this
view overlooks the fact that morality is the expression of
man's social life, and that religion has always been one of
the chief factors in determining man's social life. ^ It is a
fair thesis that the origin and growth of the family, of a
sense of law and obligation, of the elementary State, were
closely connected with, if not indeed the direct product of,

^See an article toy me in The Harvard Theological Review, Vol.
II, No. 3, "A Basic Principle for Theology."

26 The Creative Christ

religious practices and belief.^ ISTowhere has religion been
without effect on the formation of custom, and custom,
mos, lies close to the heart of the morality to which it has
given its name. Probably religion has never been without
effect on morality.

Of course that effect has not always been a sound one.
So long as God is not regarded as moral, so long the rela-
tion to such a being cannot establish a true morality among
men. If the god be a mere nature god, whose power is
feared and who needs to be propitiated or cajoled into
favor, of course there can be little true moral value result-
ing from dependence on such a deity. Yet even in such
religion there is produced a common sense of loyalty to the
god of the tribe, a feeling of responsibility for the religious
worship which concerns the tribe as a whole. And in such
feelings of a common responsibility and of a common
loyalty, there are elements of great social value, even
though that value is not complete. Take for example the
often highly irrational sense of a tahoo, of something that
is forbidden on account of some relation to the deity. Of-
fence against such a taboo is supposed to injure not only
the individual but the tribe. Hence the taboo is main-
tained by custom or law, and there results a sense of obliga-
tion and of a common responsibility. And these are
elements of moral value. Yet those elements can be fully
realized only when the god is regarded as moral, for only
such a god can be the basis for a true morality among his

^See e. g. the brilliant book of Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient
City. Also Otto Pfleiderer, Philosophy and Development of Re-
ligion, Eng. trans, vol. I, p. 37. "It is an incontestable fact that
the primitive morality stands in very close connection with the
primitive religion, and indeed that the beginnings of all social
customs and legal ordinances are directly derived from religious
notions and ceremonial practices."

The Christ For To-day 27

worshippers. Also when in polytheism the religious de-
pendence is divided among many gods, there will be lacking
a sense of common unity. At most such unity will prevail
only among those who worship one in particular of the
many gods. Worshippers of other gods will be outside
the pale.

Even in these imperfect forms religion has had a pro-
found effect in producing laws and customs, in developing
a sense of social responsibility, and in uniting in moral
groups the worshippers of a common god. But it is only
as we get the belief in one God whose nature is moral that
we get a real unity for mankind, and a morality that has
its source in the moral nature of God.

It is supremely in the religion of Israel that we get the
belief in God as moral, and in God who is at the same time
the one God to w^hom Israel owes allegiance. That belief
gives the basis for the moral life of the people. The right-
eous Jehovah demands that He be worshipped in righteous-
ness and truth. As Israel worships a common God, the
life of Israel becomes a unity, and as that God is righteous,
so must His righteousness be expressed in the laws of the
righteous commonwealth which He has established by His
covenant. The book of Deuteronomy is a noble example
of the belief that the righteous Lawgiver must be wor-
shipped in mercy and in justice among men.

It is of course true that this lofty conception of one God
as a moral Being did not in Israel attain full supremacy.
The priestly elements of the religion put the ritual law of
sacrifices and burnt offerings at least as high as the demand
for righteousness of life. Hence the inevitable antagonism
between the priest and the prophet. The prophet voices
the demand of Israel's God that He be worshipped not in
ritual but in righteousness. ^'Wherewith shall I come be-

28 The Creative Christ

fore the Lord^ and bow myself before the high God ? sball
I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a
year old? Will the Loed be pleased with thousands of
rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil ? shall I give
my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for
the sin of my soul ? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is
good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do
justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy
God?"^ The same prophetic voice speaks through the
Psalmist :

"Eor thou delightest not in sacrifice ; else would I give it :

Thou hast no pleasure in burnt offering.''
And yet in the same psalm some later scribe, looking for-
ward to the rebuilding of Jerusalem, utters the persistent
demand of the ritualist :

^'Then shalt thou delight in the sacrifices of righteous-
ness, in burnt offering and whole burnt offering :

Then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar."^

It is the ever recurring contest between the formalist,
and the prophet of the righteous God.

It is also evident that Israel did not rise to the full
height of its belief in one God. Jehovah was primarily
the God of Israel, rather than the God of the world. The
moral duty of the Israelite was largely limited to those
who were members of the community of Israel. The word
"neighbor" meant preeminently a fellow Israelite. The
gentile stood without the pale. And yet there were many
gleams of a larger vision. As Jehovah became not only the
God of the Hebrews but the only God, as other deities
became "no gods," there came to the prophet's soul the

»Micah 6:6-8.
*Psa. 51:16-19.

The Christ For To-day 29

vision of a world unity, and a belief that Israel's mission
was to bless all nations. But the vision was clouded.
Israel did not rise to the full height of its own belief in
one God, the moral ruler of mankind.

It is in our Lord that the vision reaches its fulfillment.
Jesus fulfils what is highest in Israel's prophets, when to
the question. What is the great commandment of the law ?
He answers : ''The first is. Hear, O Israel ; The Lord our
God, the Lord is one : and thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
mind, and with all thy strength. The second is this, Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Therein He brings
together the two supreme teachings of the prophets, that
God is One, and that He can be worshipped only by show-
ing forth in life that which belongs to the very character of
God Himself. One of His listeners deeply understood His
meaning and caught sight of that which His meaning im-
plied. ''The scribe said unto him. Of a truth, Teacher,
thou hast well said that he is one ; and there is none other
but he : and to love him with all the heart, and with all the
understanding, and with all the strength, and to love his
neighbour as himself, is much more than all whole burnt
offerings and sacrifices." It is no wonder that the Master
said to him, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God."^
For the scribe has grasped the radicalism of the Master's
teaching. God is love, and the only service that can be
rendered to Him is the service of love. The axe is laid
at the root of the tree of all merely ritual worship. "There
is nothing from without the man, that going into him can
defile him; but the things which proceed out of the man
are those that defile the man. . . . This he said, mak-

>Mark 12:28-34, Matt. 22:36-40.

30 The Creative Christ

ing all meats clean."^ All distinctions of clean and un-
clean fall away. All mere ritual must yield to the worship
that is in spirit and in truth. The first and great com-
mandment of the law attains its rightful place. God can
be served only by the manifestation of that love which
belongs to the verv nature and beina: of God Himself.

This belief in the oneness of God reaches its full result
in the second great commandment, ''Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself.'' The one God is the God of all
men. To the question, ''Who is my neighbour ?" the Lord
replies by the parable of the Jew and the Samaritan.^
Henceforth the neighbor means not only a fellow Israelite,
but a fellow child of God. The Apostle Paul fully ex-
presses the meaning of the parable, when he writes : "There
is no distinction between Jew and Greek: for the same

Lord is Lord of all, and is rich unto all that call upon
him.''3

We must later look more fully into the meaning of our
Lord's teaching concerning the Fatherhood of God. At
present it will suffice to emphasize only these two elements,
that God is absolutely One, and that He is absolutely a
moral Being. He is the one God whose nature is Love,
and therefore the whole duty of man is summed up in love,
love to God and love to our neighbor. Man is the child of
God, the son of God, and therefore all that is true of the
life of God can and should be realized in the life of man.
"Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is
perfect."* The perfection of our Father in heaven is the
birthright of the children of God.

^Mark 7 :15-19. R. V. The Authorized Version rests on a differ-
ent text, Ka^api^ov instead of Ka^apiCuiv.

=Luke 10:25-37.
^Rom. 10:12.
*Matt. 5:48.

The Christ For To-day 31

If one were forced to attempt an abstract definition of
the Christian faith in its difference from other religions,
it would not be going far afield to say that Christianity is
the absolute union of religion and morality. It is not
indeed their identity. Religion expresses the relation of
God to man, and there is always in the life of God that
which is vastly greater than at any given period is ex-
pressed in the relation between man and man. The reli-
gious content is never exhausted in any special form of
moral realization. It has always something more. It
forms the permanent basis for the ever expanding moral
life of man. It opens up the inexhaustible sources of the
life of God. Yet that life of God is never separated from
the life of man. God, the Christian God, cannot be found
in solitude. For God is the source of human life, the
foundation of human fellowship, and He can be found only
in and through the human fellowship which comes from
Him. It is told of a certain astronomer that he said, ^^I
have swept the heavens with my telescope, and I have not
found God.'' He was not looking in the right place. God
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be found in the
stars. He cannot be found in the desert, or in the cave of
the solitary life. He can be found only in and through
the human life which comes from Him. The union with
God can be realized only in that human fellowship which
has its source and foundation in the divine life. The
Fatherhood of God is the constant source of our ever deeper
and more perfect realization of human brotherhood. The
essence of the Christian relation with God is summed up
in the words, already partially quoted, of St. John: '^If a
man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar:
for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen
cannot love God whom he hath not seen. And this com-

32 The Creative Christ

mandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love
his brother also/'^ Christianity is the absolute union of
religion and morality.

And this brings us again to the principle which I have
emphasized for Christian theology: — No doctrine about
God can claim to be a Christian doctrine unless it is capable
of application to and expression in the life of man. Every
truth about God is an ethical truth, a social truth. As we
know God, we know men, who are made in the image of
God.

What is the meaning of the familiar phrase of St. Paul,
"the communion (or the fellowship) of the Holy Ghost ?"^
Does it mean a fellowship with the Spirit of God, or does
it mean a fellowship among men produced by the Spirit of
God ? And the only possible answer, if we are true to the
thought of St. Paul as well as to the thought of the whole
Kew Testament, is that it means both, that it means one
because it means the other. There is no fellowship with
the Holy Spirit of God except as that fellowship is realized
in the life of the children of God. And there is no final
basis for a fellowship among men except the basis of a
common fellowship with the Spirit of God. If a man
truly seek God he must find his fellows, and if he would
truly find his fellows he must find God. I repeat, there-
fore, that every Christian doctrine about God must have
its direct bearing on and application to the moral, the
social, life of man.

VII

Rigid insistence on this principle will prevent our theol-
ogy from becoming academic or unreal. It is sometimes
said that to-day men want not theology but ethics. The

^I John 4 :20-21.
=^II Cor. 13 ; 14.

The Christ For To-day 33

distinction is a false one, provided Christian theology is
trne to its high calling. What the saying really means is
that men are not interested in merely abstract or theoreti-
cal doctrines. And there is no reason why they should be.
But also such doctrines have no place in a true Christian
theology. God, the Christian God, the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, is the source of all that is true and good in
the life of man. And therefore every truth about God
must be rich with human values. If a supposed truth
about God has no meaning for man, it is, by that very fact,
not a Christian truth, it is not true for God as we know
Him in Jesus Christ.

It is largely the purpose of these lectures to apply this
principle to the belief in the Incarnation, to indicate that
through the incarnate Son of God the incarnate life be-
comes true for men, that through Christ men are truly the
sons of God, and can through Him attain to the full reali-
zation of that sonship, even to the measure of the stature of
the fullness of Christ. But the same principle applies to
every Christian doctrine, and I would here suggest briefly
a few of such applications.

Every Christian doctrine should be looked at under two
aspects, siib specie aeternitatis and sub specie temporis.
Under the aspect of eternity, each doctrine should be seen
to be a truth about God; under the aspect of time, each
doctrine should have its application to the life of man.
Take, for example, the doctrine of the Atonement. It is
certainly not a Christian doctrine if it supposes that some
transaction takes place in the divine life which is not in
accordance with the ethical principles of the kingdom of
God. Such theories have been set forth. God's righteous
law has been represented as satisfied by the punishment of
the innocent, a transaction utterly out of accord with any

34 The Creative Christ

morality that can stand the Christian ethical test. And
such a transaction has been defended as a '^mvstery," as
though any mystery could exist in God which contradicts
the moral principles of God's kingdom. The doctrine of
the Atonement becomes a Christian doctrine only when it
expresses the supreme law of all fellowship, the fellowship
with God and the fellowship that comes from God. The
divine love suffers with sin as all love must suffer with the
sin of the beloved ; the divine love bears the burden of sin
as all love must bear the burden of sin. The law of vica-
rious suffering is the law of God, and therefore it is the law
of human fellowship. The law of sacrifice is the law of
all love, divine or human, and the sacrifice of the cross
reveals the true law of human life. ^'Bear ye one another's
burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ."^ Unless the doc-
trine of the Atonement can meet that test, it is not a
Christian doctrine.

The doctrine of the Church must see the Church as a
divine creation, humanity re-created in Christ, to show
forth on earth the life of God. But for that very reason
the Church must be the highest expression, the sign and
symbol and sacrament, of human fellowship. It must be
vitally concerned with bringing to pass that fellowship on
earth. If the Church becomes a mere refuge from the
world, an ark in which the individual soul may seek safety
while others perish, it is not the Church of Jesus Christ.
The Church is not true to its note of catholicity unless it
is trying to make the principles of the kingdom of God
universal among men. Humani nil a me alienum puto.
There is no human interest with which the Church is not
concerned. It must be aggressive against all evil, with the

>Gal. 6:2.

The Christ For To-day 35

aggressiveness of God. It is the sacrament, the outward
and visible sign, of the justice and righteousness and love
of God. It is the work of the Church that that which is
true of the life of God should also be made true for the life
of men.

The same principle holds of the doctrine of the Sacra-
ments. The sacraments express, first, the actual contact
with the life of God, the regenerating and sanctifying
power of the divine Spirit. But they also express the
fellowship of human life, the fellowship found in and
created by the Spirit of God. The sacrament of regenera-
tion is also the sacrament of admission into the fellowship
of Christ's Church. The sacrament of the Body and
Blood of Christ is also the sacrament of membership in His
Body which is the Church. It is the common meal of those
who as joined to Christ are united with each other in the
bonds of Christian fellowship. At the Lord's Table all
distinctions of rank or money or influence are set aside.
All are citizens of the kingdom of God, all are priests in
their common relation to the High Priest of humanity. It
is the divine protest against all false divisions of society.
It is the sacrament of the supreme Democracy of the king-
dom of God.

The belief in the Holy Trinity is not a Christian belief
unless it finds in the fellowship of the divine Love the
eternal source of fellowship among men, unless the Trini-
tarian life of God is regarded as the fountain and source of
all the sacred relationships of human life. The doctrine
of the Trinity is not a separate doctrine. It is the great
summation of Christian belief, finding in God the eternal
foundations of the true society which through God's crea-
tive love is to be builded among men.

In everv Christian doctrine about God there is to be

36 The Creative Christ

found in God that which can and should also become true
for the life of man. We are here concerned with the
special application of this principle to the doctrine of the
Incarnation, the belief in the divine humanity of Jesus
Christ. It is in Jesus that the life of God comes into full
contact with humanity. In Him the life of God becomes
the life of man. In Him the kingdom of God finds its
realization, the incarnate life of Christ becomes the prin-
ciple of the true life of His brethren. If in any Christian
sense we are to find God in Christ, we are to find in His
character the ethical principles of all human life, the basis
of genuine human fellowship, the foundation of that king-
dom of God in which righteousness and justice and truth
and love become the law of life. And if Democracy ex-
presses the ideal of every man's true relation to his neigh-
bor, we are to find the eternal principles of a true
democracy in the Christ who is the Son of God and the
Brother of all men. So to know the mind of Christ will
be to understand Him in moral terms, to understand Him
in those terms which are demanded by the thoughts and
problems of our own time.

VIII

Let us now briefly review the course of our thought, and
thus indicate more clearly the task which is before us. We
considered, first, that the problem of making Christ real
for ourselves is the problem of understanding Him in the
terms of our own thinking, in accordance with the ideals
of our own time. Such has always been the task of a true
Christian theology. To appreciate fully the theology of
the past is to follow its methods rather than to abide by
its results. Only by making theology contemporaneous do

The Christ For To-day 37

we appreciate the value of the historic faith and its lesson
for ourselves. Our task is to make the Christ of the past
real for our own thought.

Secondly, in order to accomplish that task we must seek
sympathetically to understand the Christian belief from
inside, rather than to approach it by arguments from out-
side. The best apologetic for belief in Christ will be our
understanding of what that belief means for us. The
strongest proof for the belief will come from our ability to
express that belief in terms of our own thought.

Thirdly, it is clear that those terms are moral terms.
The problem for us to-day is the moral problem, the social
problem. And that is the problem of democracy. For
the task of democracy is to secure a society in which every
member plays his full part, and in which, therefore, the
law of the society is the true freedom of every individual
member. The problem for our times, both within the in-
dividual !N'ation and between the l^ations, is the problem
of democracy, which is the moral problem. The terms of
our thinking are moral terms.

Fourthly, these are essentially the terms of the Bible,
especially of the E^ew Testament. God is conceived of as
a moral Being, not as a metaphysical substance. Jesus
teaches that God is Father, that His essence is love. And
if V7e are to understand Jesus and the w^ay in which He
reveals God, we shall understand and interpret Him in
moral terms.

Fifthly, it is not to be supposed that a purely moral
treatment of the Person of Christ deals less deeply with
His essential being, or does less justice to His deity, than a
so-called metaphysical treatment. Certainly if we are to
see Christ as truly divine, we must find in Him the essen-
tial being of God. But if that being is itself moral, then.

38 The Creative Christ

in interpreting Christ in moral terms, we are interpreting
Him in terms that belong to the very essence of God, we
are doing full justice to His divine nature. If we mean
by metaphysics the search after the nature of reality, then
in that sense we do indeed need a metaphysics of the Person
of Christ. But if we believe that the deepest reality is
moral, then the distinction between an ethical and a meta-
physical theory about Christ will disappear. Our most
true metaphysics will be a moral metaphysics. We shall
understand Christ as we understand God, in moral terms.

Sixthly, we are, in fidelity to the moral point of view,
brought to a vital principle for Christian theology. If
God be moral and if men are the sons of God, then every
truth about God must be capable of application to and
expression in the life of man. 'No Christian belief can be
of merely academic or abstract meaning. If it is really
Christian it must be of value for life. The Christian faith
brings about a complete unity between religion and moral-
ity. God is the source of human fellowship. And, there-
fore, every truth about God must also be true for the
kingdom of God on earth. Every Christian doctrine must
meet that moral test. Otherwise it is not a Christian doc-
trine, it has no place in a Christian theology. In learning
to know God we must at the same time learn to know the
laws of the society of His children, the laws of that City
which cometh down out of heaven, and whose Maker and
Builder is God.

We shall try to apply these principles to the Christian
doctrine of the Person of Christ. Our next task will be to
discuss what is meant by the divine humanity of Jesus.

CHAPTER II

DIVIIN-E AND HUMAlSr

I

The doctrine of the Christian faith with which we are
concerned is commonly spoken of as that of the Divinity or
Deity of Christ. More accurately expressed it is the doc-
trine of His Divine-Humanity. However unfair from
time to time Christian theology may have been to the belief
in the humanity of Jesus, it has at any rate explicitly,
asserted it as an essential part of the orthodox Christian
faith. It has held that Jesus was both divine and human.
It has maintained belief in Him as the God-Man.

]^ow it is evident that we can attach no meaning to the
phrase ^^divine-humanity" or to the phrase '^God-Man'' ex-
cept as we attach a meaning to the terms involved. To
understand what we mean by divine-humanity demands an
understanding of what w^e mean by ' 'divine" and by
"human." The phrase God-Man requires that we ask
what we mean by "God" and by "man." That then must
be our first task. What do we mean by "divine" and by
"human," and by the relation between them? What do
we mean by "God" and by "man ?"

It also ought to be self evident that, as we are examining
a Christian doctrine, we should give to the terms involved
the Christian meaning. What is the Christian belief about
God and about man ? Only thus can we shape a Christian
doctrine of the God-Man.

39

40 The Creative Christ

I say that this ought to be self evident, so much so that
it seems hardly worth while to state it. And yet as a fact
the caution is necessary and indeed needs to be strongly
emphasized. It has too often happened that a supposedly
Christian doctrine of the God-Man has been based on con-
cepts of God and of man which were not themselves the
Christian concepts. That was indeed the great difficulty
when Christian theology came into contact with the Greco-
Roman world. It tried to express the Christian belief in
terms of an idea of God and of man which were not them-
selves Christian, and which gave no place for a complete
union of divine and human. Thus, in spite of energetic
protests, the concept of the divinity of Christ tended to
crowd out His humanity. Mediaeval Christian thought
inherited the difficulty, and it has been far from out-grown
by modem theology.-^ To overcome the difficulty we must
hold ourselves strictly to the Christian thought of God and
of man. Only thus can we properly state the Christian
doctrine of the God-Man.

E'ow the Christian thought about God and about man is
fundamentally the thought of Christ Himself. It is un-
doubtedly true that theology has too often departed from
the mind of Christ, and has constructed dogmas about Him
that were not in accordance with His owm thought. It has
constructed a theoretical relation between God and man,
instead of understanding and appreciating the relation
actually accomplished in Jesus Christ. Too often dog-
matic theories have prevented a right understanding of the

^he same criticism may be made of types of modern tlieologry
of the "speculative" school. The attempt to form a Christology
on the basis of the Hegelian concept of the Absolute and of the
realization of the identity of God and man in the Incarnation,
has failed to express the Christian thought.

Divine and Human 41

New Testament, theories about tbe Person of Christ,
theories as to the infallible inspiration of Scripture. Such
dogmas have often stood in the way of Christ Himself.
N^evertheless the purpose, however inadequately carried
out, has always been to interpret Christ, and the picture of
Jesus in the New Testament has been a steady corrective
to theories that might otherwise have gone much farther
astray. We to-day, with the results at hand of the his-
torical criticism of the Bible, ought to be better able to see
Jesus Christ as He actually was, and better able to under-
stand His teaching. If in any true way we are to see Him
as divine and human, we must ask what He meant by
divine and by human and by the relation between them.
A Christian doctrine of the God-Man must be based on our
Lord's own teaching about God and about man. We must
understand Jesus by the teaching of Jesus.

II

For that teaching we must first of all look back to the
Old Testament. For Jesus brought forth out of His
treasure things new and old. The Hebrew prophetic con-
cept of God was His by inheritance and training. He
came not to destroy but to fulfil. Much that He held was
common to Him and to His hearers. To understand Him
as He meant to be understood by those to whom He spoke,
we must understand the Hebrew background of His teach-
ing.

Two elements of Hebrew thought are of especial impor-
tance in this connection. The first is the belief in God as
the Creator, as the source and origin of the ordered universe
and of the life of man. This belief is one of the highest
expressions of Hebrew prophecy. It is, of course, the

42 The Creative Christ

result of a long development of thought. At first Jehovah
was simply the God of Israel. There were other gods, but
He was the God to whom Israel owed allegiance, the only
God for Israel. He was guiding Israel to its destiny, He
was the creator and source of all that was true and right
in Israel's life. Gradually the belief developed, and Je-
hovah became the only God. Other nations became subject
to His will, their gods w^ere "no gods.'' He is the Lord of
all. And in the first chapter of Genesis He is regarded as
the Creator of the whole universe even to its farthest
bounds. He is the Lord not only of earth but of the host
of heaven. The sun and moon are His creation. He
made the stars also. It is to be sure not clear that the
writer means that God was the Creator of matter, or
whether He made the world out of a preexisting material.
The Hebrews were not metaphysicians and had little in-
terest in speculative problems. Their interest was religious
and moral. But it is certainly clear that this narrative
regards God as the sole author and source of the universe
as we know it.^

It is hardly necessary to say that a high estimate of the
religious nature of this Hebrew account of creation does
not imply agreement with its details. We know that cre-
ation did not take place in any six days, but that it was a

^"The central doctrine is that the world is created, — that it
originates in the will of God, a personal Being transcending the
universe and existing independently of it. The pagan notion of a
Theogony — a generation of the gods from the elementary world-
matter — is entirely banished. It is, indeed, doubtful if the repre-
sentation goes so far as a creatio ex nihilo, or whether a pre-
existent chaotic material is postulated. . . . it is certain at
least that the Kosmos, the ordered world with which alone man
has to do, is wholly the product of divine intelligence and
volition." John Skinner, A Critical a/nd Exegetical Commentary
on Genesis, p. 7.

Divine and Human 43

process of evolution occupying millions of years. The
Hebrew science is not ours. But evolution does not destroy
belief in creation. The belief in creation with which we
are here concerned is a religious belief, and we leave to
science the account of the way in which it took place. In
the Genesis account of creation we are concerned with the
religious background. And that religious background is
belief in God from whom comes the world of nature and
of man. Man is the creature of God and is dependent on
his Creator. That fundamental difference between God
and man is one essential element of Hebrew thought.

The other element with which we are here concerned is
the nearness of God to the world and to man. The differ-
ence between Creator and creature does not mean that God
stands apart from the world which He has made. Quite
the contrary. The Old Testament has a profound sense
of the nearness of God. He is close to human life, He is
the guiding force of Israel's history. The prophet sees in
Israel's successes the immediate presence and favor of God,
in her failures He sees God's chastisement for her sins.
God stands in closest relation to His chosen people, guiding
and guarding, loving and correcting them. He is Israel's
husband, drawing her by His love. The Psalms are a con-
stant witness to the nearness of God.

"The Lord is my shepherd ; I shall not want."
"The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my de-
liverer."
"If I take the wings of the morning.
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ;
Even there shall thy hand lead me.
And thy right hand shall hold me."^

*Psa. 23 :1 ; 18 :2 ; 139 :9-10.

44 The Creative Christ

In the crises of our lives we still go to these Hebrew psalms
and find in them the deepest expression of our need for
God and of our confidence in His protecting care.

]^ow these two elements of Hebrew thought, the differ-
ence between God and man as Creator and creature, and
the nearness of God to man, are not opposed. Rather they
are closely connected. From this one difference result the
deepest intimacy and the closest union. Wherever in re-
ligious thought this fundamental difference is lacking, it is
easy to see that God and man are not thought of as really
coming together.

Ill

Perhaps the simplest example of this is to be found in
the difference between Hebrew and Greek thought. The
Greek knew no absolute distinction between God and the
world, between God and man. He had no real doctrine of
creation, that is, he did not start with belief in the living
personal God, from whose intelligence and will came the
universe. Greek thought was both pantheistic and poly-
theistic, the two are indeed but different sides of the same
thing. It has been well said that polytheism is the '^small
change" of pantheism. Pantheism makes no radical dis-
tinction between God and the world. God is the All,
absolute Being, the essence of all reality. Polytheism
makes no radical distinction between the gods and men.
The gods are magnified men. And from the lack of any
clear distinction between divine and human, it resulted that
divine and human could never be perfectly united. If
they were to come together, one of them must be sacrificed.

In the popular polytheism of Greece, this result can be
clearly seen in the belief in the jealousy or envy of the
gods. The gods were greater than men, more powerful,

Divine and Human 45

more blessed. But there was no real difference, and hence
if men became more than so great or powerful or pros-
perous or blessed, they were liable to become gods. Thus
the envy of the gods was aroused, and they became jealous.
The gods were not sure of their position, they were par-
venus, nouveaux riches. They must needs be jealous of
their prerogatives. Once in a while some especially suc-
cessful mortal, like Hercules, might force his way into
heaven, and win recognition as a god. But far more
often such great success is regarded as pride, insolence,
and Zeus gets out his thunderbolts and drives the pre-
sumptuous wight back where he belongs. Prometheus
steals the divine fire, and Zeus binds him to the rock in
torture. The lack of any real distinction between gods and
men heaps up artificial distinctions. The jealousy of the
gods keeps men in their proper, subordinate, place.

]^ow such a conception of divine jealousy is practically
lacking in the Old Testament. There are traces of it here
and there, as in the story of the garden of Eden, where the
serpent tempts Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowl-
edge of good and evil : ^'For God doth know that in the
day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye
shall be as God, [or as gods] knowing good and evil."*
Also in the story of the tower of Babel whose top should
reach up to heaven.^ Such traces are not surprising, as
the Hebrew religion grew up out of the surrounding nature
religions, retaining remnants of its growth. But the jeal-
ousy of God as found in the Hebrew prophets is not lest
men should aspire too high. It is jealousy lest anything
should come between men and God, lest men should stray

*Gen. 3:5. R. V. See margin.
*Gen. 11:4-6.

46 The Creative Christ

after false gods, lest they should fail of their high destiny.
Such jealousy does not keep men from God, it draws them
to Him. It is a consuming fire toward all that comes be-
tween God and man. The Hebrew God is not afraid as to
His own standing. The Creator is not afraid of His own
creatures. He has made men in His image, after His
likeness. He draws near to men that they may draw near
to Him.

In the deeper pantheistic thought of Greece we find the
same inability of God and man to meet together. God is
pure Being, unmoved substance, the essence of all reality.
The world as we see it is in movement, change, growth,
variety. But if God is really the All, if He alone is true
reality, then what shall we think of movement, change,
variety, life ? Must they not be unreal, must they not be
mere appearance ? One of the chief problems of Greek
philosophy was, abstractly expressed, the relation between
^'being'' and ^'becoming," between the unmoved, unrelated
essence of reality, and the world of movement and change.
The most logical solution, and the one to which Greek
thought tended constantly to recur, was that all this change
and movement are unreal. This was the answer of the
Eleatic School. And this answer was supported by the
fact that, as soon as we begin to examine the idea of move-
ment, we find it full of contradictions. The well known
paradoxes of Zeno were to prove that change, movement, is
unreal, is a delusion. Swift footed Achilles cannot catch
the tortoise, for when Achilles gets to the place where the
tortoise was, it has already gone ahead ; when he gets again
to the place where it was, it has gone ahead again, although
ever so short a distance. It is logically impossible that he
should ever overtake it. The flying arrow rests. Pre-
sumably the thought was something like this. If the flying

Divine and Human 47

arrow does not rest, then it moves. But where does it
move ? It must move either in the place where it is, or in
the place where it is not. It surely cannot move in the
place where it is, for there is there no room for it to move
in. But equally surely it cannot move in the place where
it is not, for it is not there to move. It does not move at
all, it rests. Motion is a delusion ; change, life, variety are
unreal. The only reality is the One, the unrelated sub-
stance, pure Being.

This same thought deeply affected the religious ideal of
Greece. If God is the One and the All, if He is pure
Being, if He alone is true reality, and the world of move-
ment is unreal, then man in order to know God must leave
the world of time and change. He must cease to be an
individual, he must lose himself, must sink into ecstatic
swoon, in order to realize his identity with God. He can
know God only by ceasing to be himself. He must give up
all that belongs to his separate, individual life. God and
man cannot come together unless man ceases to be man and
becomes identical with God.

Pantheism is often supposed to offer a religious basis
for true union with God. What can be simpler than to say
that God is all, that all is God, and that therefore man can
always find his true self in the divine? What deeper
unity can be found than identity ? But the offer of unity
is a false one. Wherever pantheism is at the heart of
religion there man's individual, personal life fails to be
maintained as soon as he seeks God. Whether in Greece
or in India the individual in finding God loses himself.
^'The dewdrop slips into the shining sea,"^ and there loses
itself in the vague ocean of existence.

*Edwin Arnold, The Light of Asia, closing line.

48 The Creative Christ

The late Henry S. E'ash well compared the pantheistic
concept of union with God to the fable of the sick lion and
the fox.^ The lion, being sick, invited all the animals to
his den for a feast. When the fox approached the den, he
saw in the sand the footprints of many animals who had
accepted the invitation. But on considering them closely
he noticed that all the tracks went into the cave and none
came out again. And the wily fox decided to stay outside.
Pantheism takes man into God, but it is at the expense of
man's own life.

Now the Hebrew concept of union with God totally lacks
this pantheistic basis. God is the Creator and man is the
creature. There is one fundamental difference between
God and man, which can never be set aside or overcome.
Hence man cannot he God, but he can, without losing him-
self, come into close, living relation with God. The belief
in the divine creatorship offers a unity with God such as
pantheism can never give.

Hence these two elements of the Old Testament belief,
that God is the Creator and that God enters into the closest
relations with men, are fundamentally connected. We
shall see shortly the importance of these two elements in
regard to the Christian belief in God.

IV

With this glance at the Old Testament background we
turn to the teaching of our Lord. What did Jesus hold
and teach as to the idea of God and of man and of the
relation between them ?

In answering this question we must keep clear in mind
the background which we have been considering. Jesus

*H. S. Nash, The Atoning LifCt P- 5.

Divine and Human 49

did not lay down a system of theology. He was a preacher,
a prophet. And, like every preacher who conveys his mes-
sage to his hearers. He spoke the language common to Him-
self and to those to whom He spoke. We cannot under-
stand Him unless we understand the meaning of His terms.

Our Lord taught that God is our Father. The all ruling
idea of His thought of God's relation to men is that of the
divine Fatherhood. But we shall fail to understand Him
if we take for granted that the w^ord Father meant to Him
exactly what it is apt to mean to us. It too easily suggests
to us a soft, indulgent attitude, a sort of general good-
nature. The W'Ord '^paternalism'' has become a weak word.
It carries the idea of a mild benevolence, with little regard
for men's duties and men's rights, little emphasis on the
more rigid elements of law 'and obligation which go to make
up a strong and worthy character. If our Father in
heaven means to us no more than paternalism in govern-
ment on earth, then God will be to us merely an indulgent
parent. The divine Fatherhood will run the risk of be-
coming what has been called a divine "papahood." We
shall have strayed far from our Lord's thought.

It is in place to point out that this same weakness too
often creeps into our use of the other great word which our
Lord linked wdth Fatherhood, that is, the word Love. Love
too often means for us mere good-natured indulgence, with-
out due regard to the highest interests of the beloved. A
mother with a spoiled child may try to excuse herself by
saying that she loved her child too much. It is a hideous
thing to say. She has spoiled him by loving him too little.
She has loved herself too much, or rather she has too much
loved her own ease, her own comfort, she has been unwilling
to pay the price of love. For true love demands sacrifice,
sternness towards sin, rigid insistence on duty, a high

50 The Creative Christ

demand on moral character. Only thus can it do justice
to the loved one. Love that is mere indulgence is not true
love at all. It has omitted the weightier matters of the
law.

If in any such way we interpret our Lord's teaching of
the heavenly Father, or of the love of God, we fail utterly
to understand His thought. We err by reason of our con-
temporaneity, that is, we carry our contemporaneous ideas
into the terms, instead of asking what the terms meant to
our Lord Himself. To answer that question we must turn
to the background of His thought. To the ancient world,
the word father suggested authority and power. We need
not here discuss the disputed question as to whether the
patriarchate, the rule of the father, was the earliest form
of the family, and the earliest form of primitive society.
At any rate, in the time with which we deal, the father
stood for authority and power. Law and order centered
around the father's rule. In the Old Testament the whole
growth of Israel as a nation was the growth out of a family.
It was represented as beginning with the covenant with
Abraham and with his seed. The family was the foun-
dation of the nation, and the strength of the family was the
strength of the nation. "Honour thy father and thy
mother : that thy days may be long upon the land which the
Lord thy God giveth thee." In this "first commandment
with promise,"^ the promise of long life was not to indi-
viduals but to a nation. That nation shall be strong to live
whose foundations are laid deep in reverence and honor for
the life of the family. And the father as the source and
head of the family stands for the embodiment of authority
and power. The same concept prevailed also in the Greek

*Eph. 6:2.

Divine and Human 51

and Roman world. The patria potestas stood close to the
foundation of the Eoman State. So has China preserved
until the present day this ancient reverence for parents as
the first expression of social law.

l^ow in Jesus' teaching that God is our Father, all these
elements of law and authority are retained. And herein
we have the connection w^ith the Hebrew belief in God as
Creator. God is the Creator and source of human life.
His righteous will is the foundation of human society, the
basis of man's righteous relation to his neighbor. Man is
dependent on God, and is to see in God the source of his
ovm moral life. God is Creator, and man is His creature.

This conception of God as Creator, Jesus accepts with
all its implications. But He not only accepts it. He trans-
forms and ennobles it by His teaching that God is Father.
His creatorship is that of love, that of a Father, who
creates His children in His own image. 'Not, of course,
that the idea of God as a loving Father was altogether new.
The Old Testament had kno^vn God as the Father of His
people, had known much of the divine love. But to Jesus
the belief in the divine, loving, creative Fatherhood is the
very heart of His belief in God. God is Creator, but the
heart of creatorship is Love. The highest creatorship is
the moral and spiritual creatorship of Love. God as
Creator is not content with the creation of things. He is
content only v/hen His Love can bring forth His own chil-
dren and can give to them the fullness of the divine life.
The essence of the divine Fatherhood is creative Love.

I do not know how better to express our Lord's thought
of God than by the somewhat awkward phrase that it is the
belief in creatorship completely moralized. Creatorship is
carried over into the moral and spiritual sphere. God as

52 The Creative Christ

Father is the Creator of man's moral and spiritual life.
God as Creator is the source of all authority and power.
But that creative source is Love.

Herein Jesus fulfils the Old Testament belief in God as
Creator. For it has been well said that to fulfil means to
"fill full."^ It is thus that Jesus fulfils the message of the
prophets of Israel. It is not that they predicted definite
acts which He would do. It is that they grasped something
of the truth of God, and that Jesus filled that truth full
with the contents of His own knowledge of God, with His
own consciousness of God as His Father. Indeed may we
not say that He thus fulfils not only the prophets of Israel
but the prophets of the world ? Wherever men have known
something of the truth of God, wherever there have been
genuine longings and aspirations for God, Jesus has carried
out that truth in all its fullness. He has satisfied those
longings and aspirations. Out of the depths of His own
experience of His Father, He has filled full all of man's
knowledge and need of God. The prophets of Israel had
known God as the Creator. Jesus knows God as His
Father, who creates out of the fullness of His love. The
Old Testament knew that God created man in His image,
after His likeness ; Jesus knows that that image and like-
ness are realized in men who are the sons of God, who
receive the fullness of their Father's love.

What is the source of that knowledge which was His?
There we can only stand in awe and wonder before the
supreme mystery of the world's religious life. He needed
not to be taught of men. "He taught them as one having

*7rXi;p6a>.

Divine and Human 63

authority, and not as their scribes."^ It was the work of
the scribes to carry on unchanged that which they had
received. But He said, ^'Ye have heard that it was said
to them of old time, . . . but I say unto you.''^ And
again: "All things have been delivered unto me of my
Father: and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father;
neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to
whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him. Come unto me,
all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest."^ He knows God as His Father, He knows Himself
as God's Son. Through His own inner experience He
knows God, and out of that experience He reveals God as
His Father. Therein the belief in God as Creator is trans-
formed, completely moralized. God as the Father of Our
Lord Jesus Christ is God revealed as creative Love.

V

This brings us to His thought of the relation between
God and men. Out of the uniqueness of His own ex-
perience comes the content of the gospel which He is to
preach to others. The God whom He knows as His Father
it is His mission to reveal as the Father of men. The
Sonship which is His, he proclaims as the inheritance of
the children of God. The relation between the divine
Sonship which was His and the divine sonship which He

^Mark 1 :22 ; Matt. 7 :29 ; Luke 4 :32.

^Matt. 5:21-22.

'Matt. 11:27-28; Luke 10:22. It is questioned whether these
words are an authentic saying of Jesus. They need not be
pressed. His consciousness of an immediate relation to His
Father is sufficiently witnessed to in the Gospels, apart from this
text.

54' The Creative Christ

reveals for others, forms for us the center of the problem of
the "uniqueness of Christ; to that problem we must later
give special consideration. Here I simply emphasize the
fact that out of the uniqueness of His own experience comes
the universality of His gospel. The God whom He knows
as His Father is revealed as the Father of men. That is
the contents of the gospel of the kingdom of God.

It has, indeed, been contended that our Lord did not
preach a gospel that was universal, but only a gospel for
those who were included in the covenant with Israel, that
God is revealed by Him not as the Father of all men, but
only as the Father of those who were sons of Abraham.
It has been maintained that the Apostle Paul first gave the
gospel a universal reference beyond the commonwealth of
Israel. In support of this contention such sayings are
quoted as, "I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the
house of Israel," and : "Go not into any way of the Gen-
tiles, and enter not into any city of the Samaritans : but go
rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Verily, I say unto you. Ye shall not have gone through the
cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come."^

It would be fairly easy to answer this contention by
quoting other sayings of our Lord, which plainly have a
universal reference. Such, for example, are His words,
"And the gospel must first be preached unto all the
nations.''^ Again He is reported to have said concerning
a Roman centurion : "I have not found so great faith, no,
not in Israel. And I say unto you, that many shall come
from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abra-

^Matt. 15:24; 10:5-6, 23. It is to be noted tliat these sayings
are given only in Matthew.
'Mark 13 :10 ; Matt. 24 :14.

Divine and Human 66

ham and Isaac and Jacob, in tlie kingdom of heaven."^
But instead of balancing texts against texts it is of more
importance to emphasize the absolutely universal elements
which belong to the contents of our Lord's teachings. In
putting the two great commandments in their rightful
place, in making the essence of God to be love, and man's
service to God to consist in love. He wiped away all arti-
ficial distinctions that divide man from man. When asked
who was the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, He took a
little child, and set him in the midst of them.^ There are
no artificial requirements for the kingdom of God. The
condition of entrance is the humility of the little child, the
condition of membership is the life of love. When He said
that nothing from without the man that goeth into him, can
defile him, He made all meats clean. ^ He did away with
all distinctions of clean and unclean, all requirements of
mere ritual, all the things that divide the Jew from the
Gentile. In teaching that God is love, and that God can
be served only in love, He opened up the life of God to all
men. His gospel is universal in its essence.

It may conceivably be true that the special mission of
Jesus was to preach to His own people this gospel of the
divine love. It may conceivably be true that it was the
special mission of St. Paul to carry out to their full extent
the universal elements which were already contained in the
contents of the Master's message. A universal truth is
best realized when it is first grasped in its definite, concrete
application. If a religion embraces in its contents that

^Matt. 8:10-11. Cf. Luke 7:9; 13:28-29. I forbear to quote
Matt. 28:19, on aceoimt of the critical difficulties attending this
passage.

2Mark 9 :34-86 : Matt. 18 :l-4 ; Luke 9 :46-48.

"Mark 7 :15-23, R. V. See chapter I, pp. 29-30. Matt 15 :ll-20.

56 The Creative Christ

which is true for man in his essential relation with God,
then that religion is a missionary religion. It cannot abide
content until it makes known to all men the message that
is true for all men. And such w^as the gospel which Jesus
preached. Whether He Himself meant to preach it for all
men, or whether He left that task to be carried out by His
followers, at any rate He preached a gospel which is true
for all humanity. In knowing God as His Father, He
revealed Him as the Father of all men. In knowing Him-
self as the Son of God, He opened divine sonship to all the
children of God.

What then did Jesus mean by this divine sonship which
belongs to all men ? What was His thought of the relation
of God to men and of men to God? We shall find the
answer implied in the belief that God is Father, that He
is creative Love. God is the Giver. As He clothes the
grass of the field, much more will He clothe His children.
They are not to be anxious about food and raiment, ^^for
your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all
these things." "Ask, and it shall be given you ; . . .
Or what man is there of you, who, if his son shall ask him
for a loaf, will give him a stone ; or if he shall ask for a
fish, will give him a serpent ? If ye then, being evil, know
how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more
shall your Father who is in heaven give good things to
them that ask him?"^ God as the Father gives of His
fullness to His children. "Son, thou art ever with me, and
all that is mine is thine."^

And man is the child, the son, of God. God is his
Creator and his Father. God's creatorship is love. And

^Matt. 6:28-34; 7:7-11. Cf, Luke 11:9-13; 12:26-31.
''Luke 15 :31.

Divine and Human 57

out of that creating love God gives men all that He has and
all that He is. Man is God's son, God's child, and can
receive all that the creating love of God would give. St.
Paul deeply interprets the mind of Christ: 'Tor as many
as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.
For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear;
but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry,
Abba, Father. The Spirit himself beareth witness with
our spirit, that we are children of God : and if children,
then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ."^
And St. John sees that as children of God we are to receive
the fullness that comes to us through Christ Himself:
"Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed
upon us, that we should be called children of God; and
such we are. . . . Beloved, now are we children of
God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be.
We know that if he shall be manifested, we shall be like
him; for we shall see him even as he is."^ God, the
heavenly Father, gives all to His children. Men, the chil-
dren of God, receive all that God's creative love can give.

Hence in our Lord's teaching, God and men meet to-
gether in the deepest unity. That unity, foreshadowed in
the Hebrew belief in God as Creator, is realized in its full-
ness through the belief in God as Father. As a father
begets sons who are to be his heirs, so God creates His
children, who as children are to receive the fullness of the
divine life.

VI

If this account of our Lord's teaching be true, we are
now prepared to ask the question, What, in accordance with

^Rom. 8:14-17.
''I John 3 :l-2.

58 The Creative Christ

the Christian belief in God, is the difference between God
and man ? Of course we do not find that question directly
asked or answered in our Lord's own words. Yet the ques-
tion is for us of fundamental importance. We are dealing
with the belief that the union of God and man is accom-
plished in Jesus Christ. And we have emphasized the
thought that that union can have for us its Christian mean-
ing only if it conceives God and man in truly Christian
terms. Thus we have been trying to understand the mind
of Christ, and to ask what was His thought of God and of
man ? We have seen that He thought of God in purely
moral terms, that He conceived of Him as the Father,
whose essence is creative love, and who creates men as His
children, after His own likeness. It is the will of our
heavenly Father that His children should come into closest
union with Himself, that His character should be expressed
in their lives, that they should be perfect even as their
heavenly Father is perfect. It is the task of a Christian
theology to hold true to this thought of God, and at the
same time to apply that thought to our own problems.
And, as our special problem is that of the union of God and
man accomplished in Christ Jesus, it becomes of funda-
mental importance for us to ask this question. What, in
accordance with the Christian belief in God, is the differ-
ence between God and man?

It seems clear that that difference cannot be found in
what are called the "attributes" of God, or is to be found in
them only in degree. God is creative love, His purpose is
to create His children after His likeness. There is nothing
in the divine attributes, the divine qualities, which it is not
God's purpose to impart to men. The difference then can-
not be found in these attributes, and, if we think of them
a moment in detail, we can easily see that this is the case.

I

Divine and Human 69

The supreme attribute of God is love. But it is not love
that makes the difference between God and men. The
essence of man's moral life is given in the two great com-
mandments, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and. Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. God's love is infinitely
greater than human love, but unless divine and human love
are the same in kind, the basis of all loving communion with
God is destroyed. The difference is only in degree. God
is omnipotent, but is there any limit to the power of man
when once he has taken hold of the power of God ? ''With
God all things are possible."^ God is omniscient, but is
there any limit to what man can learn of God's truth, any
place at which it shall be said. Hitherto shalt thou come,
but no further? Rather is it not true that the Spirit of
God shall guide us into all the truth ?^ God is righteous,
but St. Paul teaches that man's only righteousness is de-
rived from the righteousness of God through Jesus Christ.^
God is blessed, but man is to share in the divine blessedness.
God is eternal, but "this is life eternal, that they should
know thee, the only true God."^ God wills to give Him-
self to men. The fundamental difference cannot be found
in what are known as the attributes of God.

The difference is to be found rather in the source of the
attributes. From God are all things. God is love, right-
eousness, power, knowledge, blessedness, life eternal. In
God are all the qualities of perfect life. And He wills
to give all these to men. God gives all, man receives all.
"Son, thou art ever with me, and all that is mine is thine."
God is Creator, who out of His love creates man in His

*Mark 10:27; Matt. 19:26.
'John 16 :13.
"Rom. 3:22.
*John 17:3.

60 The Creative Christ

image. Man is the creature, created in the divine image,
and destined to realize the divine likeness. God is the
Father who out of His love brings forth His children.
Men are sons of God, heirs of God, receiving the fullness
of their Father's life. The one and only and ineradicable
difference is the difference of source.

Let us not for a moment suppose that this conception
makes man a thing, a slave, or that it deprives him of his
freedom. True love wills to create after its own image,
and the image of love is not to be found in things but in
Persons. Love is not satisfied in creating slaves. Love
seeks for love, and the love that it seeks can be found only
in love that is produced by freedom and not by force.
Deep calleth unto deep. The depth of divine love can be
satisfied only when it is answered out of the depth of man's
free being. God wills children and not slaves. We are
not true to the thought of God's creative love if we suppose
that that love is satisfied unless it brings forth men to be
the free children of their heavenly Father. If we are
truly the creatures of God, we are free sons in our Father's
house.

As all true human love is made in the image of the divine
love, surely we can see in human love this same power to
create after its likeness. The son who has caught any glimpse
of a mother's love, knows that that love has not made him a
thing, a slave. It has brought forth in him the answering
love which is the very heart of freedom. The husband
finds in his wife's love the power that calls him to be him-
self, and leads him on the road to free and noble manhood.
Everywhere love creates after its kind. We experience the
mystery of that free creation in all the sacred relationships
of life. And he who believes that God is love finds in the
divine love the supreme creative source of human life.

Divine and Human 61

The creative love of God wills to create His children after
His own likeness, to give to them all that belongs to Him-
self. The one and only and ineradicable difference is that
of source.

The Scholastics expressed this thought by saying that
God alone has aseity. He is a se, from Himself. Man is
a Deo, from God. God is self-existent, man's existence
comes from God. God imparts all to man, except that one
quality of self-existence which is inherent in His own
being. God is forever God, the eternal Source, the eternal
Giver. Man is forever the creature, the child, of God,
eternally receiving all that God's creative love can give.

If this one difference between God and man be kept clear
in mind, then all other differences can be set aside, or re-
duced to differences merely in degree. Man can receive
the fullness of God, can partake of all that belongs to the
divine life. And yet there is no danger of confusing God
and man, of putting man in the place of God, of worship-
ping and serving the creature rather than the Creator.^
There is no place for the Greek jealousy of the gods. God
is always above man, always the source of man's life. Man
can never he God. But just for that reason all other dif-
ferences can be swept away. Man is called to the highest,
to realize the divine sonship, to partake of the divine fire,
to enter into the holiest. And in entering into the life of
God, man need give up nothing that belongs to his highest
and noblest self. He need not, as in pantheistic union with
God, lose his personal life, sink into an ecstatic swoon. He
is most himself when nearest God. He finds himself, not
loses himself, in finding God. He sees God face to face,
and his life is preserved.

*Rom. 1:25.

62 The Creative Christ

VII

In this concept of the creative God, of the divine aseity,
of the heavenly Father, is to be found the perfect union of
man's humility and man's boldness. Man is absolutely
humble because all that he has and is comes from God.
But man is absolutely bold because all that God has and is
comes to man. Man is incapable of self-conceit, because
he knows that he is nothing without God. But he wins
dignity and courage because he knows that he is not without
God. He is called to be a son of God, and he dares aspire
to the dignity of that high calling. Nothing is too great
for a son of God to ask and to expect.

These two elements find striking expression in the fifty-
first Psalm. There is first the note of confession, of self
abnegation.

^'I acknowledge my transgressions :

And my sin is ever before me.

Against thee, thee only, have I sinned.

And done that which is evil in thy sight."
And then out of the abnegation comes the confidence in the
divine power.

"Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts :

And in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know
wisdom.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean:

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Make me to hear joy and gladness :

That the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice,"^
And this union of humility and aspiration so strikingly
foreshadowed in the Hebrew thought, reaches full expres-

*Psa. 51 :3-8.

Divine and Human 63

sion in the Christian confidence in God. Before the vision
of the heavenly Father, of the creative Love, self-conceit
becomes impossible. But in that same vision self-con-
fidence based on confidence in God becomes supreme, and
man in his humility aspires to the divine life. These two
elements are finely expressed in the so-called ^'Prayer of
Humble Access" in the Communion Office of the Prayer
Book. ^^We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O
merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in
thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so
much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table." Then
out of the self-abnegation comes the boldness of the peti-
tion. ^'But thou art the same Lord, whose property is
always to have mercy : Grant us therefore, gracious Lord,
so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to
drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean
by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious
blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in
us." Out of the confession of our unworthiness even to
gather up the crumbs, comes the prayer that we may sit as
honored guests at the very Table of the Lord, and may be
partakers of the heavenly food.

In all true moral life humility and courage go hand in
hand. Self-conceit and cowardice are close companions.
Every schoolboy knows that the football player with the
*'big head" is the first to lose his nerve. The general of an
army, absolutely sure that he is the best man for the place,
is not the one who deserves his country's confidence. The
self -conceited man, confident only in his own abilities, loses
heart at the first sign of failure. The humble man seeks
strength and finds it. Accepting a trust committed to his
charge, he cares nothing about the possibility of his own
failure, but gives himself courageously to his task. There

64 The Creative Christ

is a false and pretentious humility whicli is but veiled
self-conceit. But true humility is true dignity, and goes
hand in hand with courage and strength. And the re-
ligious basis for that union is given in the Christian belief
in God the Creator and Source of human life. Relying on
the creative God, man wins his true dignity, for in God
are all things, and from God come all things. ^

VIII

These two elements of the thought of God which we have
been considering. His supremacy and His nearness, are
often expressed as the divine transcendence and the divine
immanence. The trouble with these terms is that they
tend to be taken in a spatial sense. Transcendence sug-
gests God as spatially apart from the world, seated on a
distant throne in heaven. Immanence suggests God as
spatially present in the universe, a kind of diffused sub-
stance. And then the attempt is made to combine the two
ideas in a kind of tertium quid, the main characteristic of
which is apt to be its vagueness. God is somehow or other
apart from the world and yet in the world ; the two state-
ments are left unreconciled. We avoid the difficulty by
being true to the Christian thought, by expressing the idea
of God in purely moral terms. Spatial terms have no

^William James, with his deep insight into the nature of re-
ligion, rightly demanded that all religious truths should have
"pragmatic" value, value for life. It is therefore somewhat
remarkable that among the terms ascribed to God which he
considered could have no religious value, he included the phrase
**a 86." {Pragmatism, p. 121.) That even he should have failed
to see the "pragmatic" elements of the idea of aseity, emphasizes
the necessity that theology should speak in a "tongue under-
standed of the people."

Divine and Human 65

application to Him. He is creative love, the source of all
that is true and right in human life. Therein is main-
tained the element of His transcendence. But as creative
love He creates man after His image, He gives to man the
fullness of the divine life. Therein is maintained the
element of his immanence. The Master of life gives Him-
self to men, who are His offspring. The heavenly Father
brings forth His children, that they may be in perfect unity
with Himself.

'No other religious concept succeeds in bringing together
so closely the idea of God and of man. Pantheism, as we
have seen, signally fails to do so. It unites God and man
at the cost of man's personal life. It was just this pan-
theistic background which produced difficulty when the
doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ was worked out in
the early Church. The purpose of the doctrine was to
think of Jesus Christ as the union of God and man. Chris-
tion belief saw in Him the fullness of the Godhead bodily.^
But it was forced to express that belief in terms of the
Greco-Roman world. And those terms did not succeed in
bringing God and man together. While the Christian be-
lief always explicitly asserted the divine-humanity of
Jesus, yet its theology did not do full justice to His
humanity. In asserting the divinity of Christ, it obscured
His manhood; it was jealous lest His divinity should not
come to full expression. Gradually the humanity of Jesus,
while asserted in words, became unreal in thought. Me-
diaeval theology, seeking human contact with God, set up
the worship of the Virgin and of the saints, that it might
find in them the humanity which it could no longer find in
Jesus. We must avoid all this difficulty by being true to

^Col. 2 :9.

66 The Creative Christ

the moral thought of God and of His relation to men. And
that is to be true to the thought of Christ Himself. In
His teaching that God is our heavenly Father, that God is
creative Love, we find the basis for the complete union
between God and man. If we are to understand the divine-
humanity of Jesus, we must understand the terms divine
and human as He understood them. If we are to know
Him as the God-Man, we must interpret the words God
and man in accordance with His teaching.

IX

So to understand those terms has been the purpose of
this discussion. Let me briefly review the course of our
thought. In order to understand the divine-humanity of
Jesus, we asked, first, what we mean by '^divine" and by
^'human." Then we emphasized the necessity of under-
standing those terms as Jesus understood them. For that
purpose we glanced at the Hebrew background of His
thought, the belief in God as Creator, a belief which at the
same time brought God into close and living relation with
men. His creatures. We contrasted that belief with the
Greek concept of God as substance, which, whether in its
polytheism or in its pantheism, was unable to make any
clear distinction between God and man, and thus was
unable to conceive of God and man as united. In the
teaching of Jesus we saw that the Hebrew belief in God
as Creator was carried out fully into the moral thought of
God as creative Love. In that concept is made possible
the perfect unity of God and man, as God creates His own
children in His own likeness, and gives to them the fullness
of His own life. If, then, we ask what, according to
Christian thought, is the difference between God and man.

Divine and Human 67

we find that that difference is not to be found in the divine
attributes, but in the source of those attributes. God is
a se, from Himself. Man is a Deo, from God. With that
difference maintained, all other differences may be set
aside, and God and man can come into perfect union.
This concept of the creative God unites man's humility
with his boldness to ask God for the highest. It reconciles
the ideas of transcendence and immanence, and brings God
and man into a unity which is not realized by any other
religious concept. And this result we reach by being true
to the Christian belief in God, the concept taught by Christ
Himself. We are to understand His divine-humanity by
His own teaching about divine and human.

In all this we have considered only the general ideas of
God and of man, and of those ideas as leading to the com-
plete unity of divine and human. We now have to consider
that unity as accomplished in Jesus. The historic realiza-
tion of that unity in Jesus Christ is the Incarnation.

CHAPTEK III
WHAT IS THE I^^CAK:N'ATI0N ?

Christianity is a religion of history. And by that I
mean that to Christian faith, history, the current of human
life, is of direct religious significance and value. The
relation between God and man is not merely an ideal re-
lation, but is one that is expressed in history, and that is
supremely realized in the historic Person of Jesus Christ.
God reveals Himself in the history of man, and the apex
and goal of that history is Jesus Christ, and humanity
conformed to His image. Christianity is a religion of
history.

Now it has been maintained that this emphasis upon
history is unnecessary, and that it is false to the nature of
religion. Religion seeks communion with the living God.
It is concerned with present reality, not with past events.
Why ask what happened in Palestine nearly two thousand
years ago ? Let the dead past bury its dead. We are con-
cerned with the living present. God and the soul stand
sure. The teachings ascribed to Jesus are of inestimable
value to us, and that value is retained no matter what
doubts we may have as to their source. Why complicate
Christian faith with questions about the Person of Jesus?
Can such questions have more than an antiquarian interest ?
Of what religious value to-day can be the history of the
past?

68

What Is the Incaimation? 69

Such an attitude was represented by Lessing in his
famous essay, The Education of the Human Race. To
Lessing history is the means through which men are edu-
cated, brought into possession of ideas which are themselves
independent of the history through which they come. It
is to these ideas alone that true religious value can be
attached. The same position was represented by Strauss
in his Life of Jesus. Strauss although writing a life of
Jesus was not deeply interested in the facts of His life, but
rather with the myths that had gathered around the Person
of Jesus and with the religious value of those myths. This
value was independent of the Person of Jesus Himself.
In America, Theodore Parker was influenced by Strauss,
and in his Discourse on the Transient and Permanent in
Christianity, said : ''If it could be proved — as it cannot —
in opposition to the greatest amount of historical evidence
ever collected on any similar point, that the gospels were
the fabrication of designing and artful men, that Jesus of
Nazareth had never lived, still Christianity would stand
firm, and fear no evil. ^None of the doctrines of that re-
ligion would fall to the ground, for if true, they stand by
themselves. But we should lose — oh, irreparable loss ! —
the example of that character, so beautiful, so divine, that
no human genius could have conceived it, as none, after all
the progress and refinement of eighteen centuries, seems
fully to have comprehended its lustrous life."^

It is somewhat difficult for us now to appreciate the
turmoil that was aroused in the Unitarian Churches by this
carefully guarded statement of Parker, together with his
general attitude as to the historic background of Christian
truth. At a meeting of the Boston Association of Uni-

Wiscourse, etc. Second edition. Boston. Printed for the
author. 1841. p. 18f.

C(

70 The Creative Christ

tarian ministers held in 1843 it is reported that one
member said: '^The difference between Trinitarians and
Unitarians is a difference in Christianity; the difference
between Mr. Parker and the Association is a difference
between no Christianity and Christianity.''^ Yet now this
position of Parker is widely held, and it is commonly
maintained that historic facts cannot have essential re-
ligious value.

This view has been largely represented by so-called
speculative" types of theology, using the method of
Hegel's logic. To Hegel himself history was of great
importance, for history is the expression of the Absolute
Spirit. But to many of the followers of Hegel, history
became only the medium, and the more or less imperfect
medium, through which certain ideas as to the relation
between God and man came to consciousness. Jesus is the
one in whom first the relation with God attains clear ex-
pression. But, that expression once realized, the truth for
which it stands becomes independent of Jesus Himself.
Jesus is the ladder by which we have attained a certain
height. But, our feet once firm upon the rock which we
have reached, we can throw down the ladder by which we
climbed, and can allow it to decay. Our footing is still
secure. The Person of Jesus becomes of merely transitory
importance.

This thought has often been expressed by the difference
between '^the Christ" and ^'Jesus," ''the Christ" being
interpreted as the eternal principle by which the life of
God is manifested to men, and ''Jesus" being the one in
whom that manifestation reached, on the whole, its fullest
and clearest expression. The Christ-idea is represented as

^Theodore Parker, Preacher and Reformer, by John WTiite Chad-
wick, p. 118.

What Is the Incarnation? Tl

independent of the Person, Jesus, in whom it "first came to
realization. History is but the means through which cer-
tain ideas of God and man came to consciousness. True
Christianity must deal with those ideas, rather than with
the forms in which they were expressed. Christianity be-
comes a religion of ideas, rather than a religion founded on
a historic fact which is of essential and permanent sig-
nificance and value.

II

I have dwelt at some length on this attitude, not only
because of its widespread character, but also because it
contains certain elements of truth which are of great im-
portance, and the value of which we should gladly recog-
nize. Christian faith is not concerned merely with past
events. If in its contents it includes past events, it is
because those events are of permanent value and have
essential meaning for us to-day. Orthodoxy that is con-
cerned only with the past is an orthodoxy that is dead. To
believe with all accuracy certain statements about the birth,
life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus does not in
itself constitute Christian faith. Faith becomes truly
Christian only when it is faith that through the historic
Person of Jesus we are admitted into a new and living
relationship with God. It is not facts alone with which we
are concerned, but with the ideal meaning and value and
the permanent power of those facts. The ideal element
which this tendency we have been considering has empha-
sized must at all costs be retained.

But this tendency does more than seek to maintain this
ideal element. It also seeks to separate that element from
the historic facts through which it came to realization. It

72 The Creative Christ

seeks to give a Christianity apart from Christ, or at any
rate apart from Jesus. It abandons the value of history,
and yet tries to preserve the value of the ideal truths which
that history expresses.

In considering this position we might well maintain, first
of all, that a Christianity apart from the historic Christ is
not Christianity in the historic sense of that word. From
the beginning. Christian faith has looked to Jesus not only
as its Founder, not only as a revealer of truth, but as an
essential element of its contents. The E^ew Testament
centers around the Person of Jesus, and the Christian
Church has looked to Him not only as teacher, but as Lord
and Master. It has held fast to the conviction that ''other
foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is
Jesus Christ."^ It has believed that if that foundation
were destroyed, the edifice would crumble.

Yet, true as this is, it w^ould not of course be a final
answer to our problem. It is conceivable that the historic
may not be of fundamental value, and that it ought to be
abandoned. Unwelcome though that position may be, yet
it is conceivable that we might be forced to hold it. What
we want is the truth, and if truth calls us to abandon the
historic, then Christian faith must meet the test. In short,
we must examine this attitude on its merits, and not con-
demn it simply because it contradicts former standards.

It does not seem difficult fo show that this non-historical
attitude does not really retain religious values. It is easy
to say that such value lies only in an idea, divorced from
the historic process through which it came. But as a
matter of fact no idea can be divorced from its history and
still retain its full meaning. It is not a satisfactory defi-

*I Cor. 3:11.

What Is the Incarnation? 73

nition of a horse to give such an account as that of the
schoolboy in Dickens' Hard Times : ''Quadruped, Grami-
nivorous. Forty teeth, namely, twenty-four grinders, four
eye-teeth, and twelve incisive," and so on. You have not
truly defined a horse unless you see him as the product of
evolution, unless you trace his origin and development in
the animal world. The Gradgrind demand for ''facts" is
not satisfied unless the fact is understood through the
process by which it came to be. The only definition that
really tells what a horse is, or what any fact is, is a
definition in terms of evolution. And evolution is simply
history, the process which lies behind a fact, and which
alone interprets the meaning of that fact.

Above all, when we turn to human life, to the things
that concern the spirit of man, it is supremely true that we
can understand them only through the history of the human
life that lies behind them and of which they are the out-
come. For history is not a dead thing. The current of
human life flows from the past into the present. The
spirit of the past becomes incarnate in the present, and the
present can be known only through its past. Who can
understand the spirit of America apart from the history
which has made America what it is ? A cross-section of
America to-day leaves America not explained and not
understood. To know America we must know Washington
and Lincoln. They are not dead. They still live in the
spirit of the free country which they helped to found and
to preserve.

One danger of our times is that we seek to solve the
problems of the present without due regard to the past.
The world is so new and our problems are so insistent that
we are tempted to suppose that we can offhand invent new
solutions. But no solution can be sound that does not

74 The Creative Christ

understand the present in the light of the past which has
made it what it is. A cure requires diagnosis, and the
diagnosis of our ills demands a knowledge of their cause.
And that cause can be found only in history, for only
through history can the present be understood. And the
diagnosis can lead to a cure, not by trying to reproduce the
past, but by applying its lessons to the present and the
future. For the past was itself a development, a progress,
and the right understanding of it will give the key to the
development and the progress which the present so insist-
ently demands.

It seems, therefore, a mere abstraction to separate re-
ligious ideas from the historic persons or events through
which those ideas came into the world. It has been said,
that there is no such thing as religion, there are only
religions. And that saying, while one-sided and not alto-
gether true, yet contains a very great truth. Keligion as
a power in the w^orld has not existed in the form of abstract
religious ideas, but in definite concrete forms of religious
life. Above all, the supreme religious forces have come
through men in whose character and life religious ideas
have found expression. It is sometimes said that it is
ideas which rule the world. But there are millions of
excellent ideas stored away on musty pages of forgotten
books on the shelves of disused libraries. What moves the
world are not ideas but ideas incarnate in men. When a
man gets hold of an idea, or rather when an idea gets
hold of a man, seizes him, incarnates itself in him, then
the idea has all the power of a personal life. The great
powers are not abstract ideas or ideals, they are persons.
An idea that has forced itself into human life through a
person, becomes a living part of history, and cannot be
separated from the person through whom it came to birth.

What Is the Incarnation? 75

It is supremely true that the Christian values cannot be
separated from Him in whom those values became flesh.
The power of Christian faith has been the power of a per-
sonal life that reveals God. The Christian relation between
God and man expressed only in the abstract terms of a
mere idea, becomes pale and weak. Expressed and real-
ized in the historic Person of Jesus Christ, it becomes full
of life and power. To separate the idea from the Person
in whom it is enshrined is to miss the value and meaning
of the idea itself.^

The whole question may be put in another form. The
question whether history can have religious significance and
value depends on what we mean by history. If history be
but a succession of disconnected events, mere accidents or
happenings, then indeed it can have no religious meaning.
But if history be the process of human life through which
God is revealed, through which God comes into contact
with the life of man, then history becomes of supreme
religious meaning. I remember speaking to a company of
ministers and teachers on how to teach the Old Testament
to children. I maintained that we should emphasize the
thought that the Old Testament deals with the special his-
tory which prepared the way for Christ, and that in that
fact the Old Testament has its Christian value. In the
discussion that followed, a clergyman said with some

^James Martincau writes: "Nothing is so sickly, so paralytic,
so desolate as 'Moral Ideals' that are nothing else: like a pale
and beautiful ecstatica that can only look down, and whisper
dreams, and show the sacred stigmata, they cannot will or act
or love ; and their whole power is in abeyance till they present
themselves in a living personal being, who secures the righteous-
ness of the universe and seeks the sanctification of each heart."
A Study of Religion, vol. 2, p. 34. It seems strange that Mar-
tineau failed to apply these principles to the Person of Jesus.

76 The Creative Christ

vehemence : ^'I disagree witli the speaker. He holds that
the Old Testament is a book of history. I hold that it is
a book of revelation." The misunderstanding came as a
surprise. When I spoke of history as preparing the way
for Christ, I took it for granted that that preparation in
history was the way of God's revelation. History is reve-
lation. To that thought we must return shortly. Here it
need only be said that if the living God is to make Himself
knowQ to men, He must do so in and through the life of
men. It is in history that God is known, and from that
fact history derives its permanent value and significance
for religion.

If, indeed, religion concerns only the world to come,
then it may not need history. If religion is only to furnish
an escape from earth and to prepare men for heaven, then
it would seem of small importance whether or not God
were manifested in the course of this world. For example,
it has been generally characteristic of the religions of India
that religion has been regarded as a means of escape from
this world with all its evils. The purpose has not been to
transform this world, but to get away from it. And it is
no accident that India has attached no importance to his-
tory. Of what value is this current of human life when
the very purpose of religion is to get away from that
current? God need not be manifested in history if the
relation with God is to draw men out of history.

In vivid contrast stands the religion of Israel. God
was revealed in the upbuilding of the commonwealth of
Israel, in the bringing forth of justice and righteousness
among men. Therefore to Israel history was full of mean-
ing. The prophet looked forward to the fulfilment of that
meaning when the day of the Lord should come, and God's
purposes should be accomplished upon earth.

What Is the Incarnation? T7

'Now if Christianity be only to prepare men for heaven,
it can be content with a non-historical relation with God,
with finding God merely in ideas or ideals. But if an
essential part of the Christian purpose is to bring heaven
down to earth, to transform this world into the kingdom of
God, then the question whether God can be and has been
manifested in history becomes of the utmost importance.
Can we find God in this life, or must we go outside of this
life to find God ? Is human history of no account to Him ?
Or is His moral will directed to upbuilding a righteous
commonwealth on earth ? Can we find the deepest incen-
tive to make this w^orld over according to the divine stand-
ard, according to the pattern showed us in the Mount of
God, unless we believe that we have God with us in our
task ? And if so must we not seek to find in human history
the witness of the divine presence and the divine purpose ?
Must not the course of human history be of supreme re-
ligious significance if we are seeking to bring to pass God's
kingdom on earth ?

In short, the non-historical conception of religion does
not correspond to the belief in God as a moral Being. If
we believe that God is righteous love, then we shall be sure
that God is seeking to bring to pass righteousness and love
among men. And we shall seek in human history the
presence and the power of God.

I return then to the statement that Christianity is a
religion of history. It believes that the relation between
God and man is not merely an ideal relation, but is one
that is manifested in history, and that is fully realized in
the historic Person of Jesus Christ. God reveals Himself
in history, and the apex and goal of that history is Jesus
Christ and humanity conformed to His image. That belief
is belief in the Incarnation. This is the belief which we

78 The Creative CJirist

have to consider, and whicli it is our task to try to express
in the terms of our own thought to-daj.

Ill

Perhaps the best method of approach will be through the
idea of revelation. I have already suggested that the
Christian concept of revelation is that God is revealed in
history, in the current of human life. Let us examine
this thought more closely.

The primary question is, How is God known ? How does
He come into contact with human life? And in saying
that God is known through revelation, it may seem that
thereby the knowledge of God is put on a plane by itself,
and is taken out of relation to knowledge in other fields.
The word revelation thus tends to become unreal, and our
knowledge of God to be considered as radically different
from our knowledge of nature or our knowledge of our
friends.

Yet, rightly considered, the idea of revelation enters into
every kind of knowledge. Ask the fundamental question,
How do we know anything ? And it is a pretty clear result
of modern philosophy that all knowledge comes through
experience. We know anything only by coming into con-
nection with it and having experience of it. Of course the
nature of the knowing mind reacts on the experience and
determines to a great extent what the experience is. If I
write on blotting paper, the result is different from what
it is if I write on glazed paper. A dog may have the same
environment as a man, but the capacity of receiving is
different. To say that all knowledge comes through ex-
perience is not to deny the activity of the mind in shaping
and molding that which the senses receive. This is the
truth permanently secured to philosophy by Kant. But it

What Is the Incarnation? 79

is also true, as Kant maintained, that the mind must have
data on which to work, and that without experience there
is no knowledge.

Take a simple example. There could be no botany ex-
cept through our experience of flowers. The mind reacts
on that experience, arranges and correlates it, and thus
opens up the way for further experience. But only through
experience is the primary knowledge which makes botany
possible. Astronomy exists only if the stars are experi-
enced. By our eyes, assisted by the telescope, we get the
knowledge which makes astronomy possible. Flowers and
stars can be knowm only through experience.

I^ow it w^ould be an unusual use of language to say that
flow^ers and stars can be known only through revelation.
Yet revelation and experience are but names for different
aspects of the same thing. Flowers and stars are known
only as they reveal themselves, as they are experienced.
Without that revelation or that experience knowledge is
impossible.

The term revelation becomes less strange when we apply
it to our knowledge of persons. How does a child come to
know his mother ? Only as the mother reveals herself to
him. The child must have experience of his mother, ex-
periences that come through sight, sound, touch. But
through these sensations the mother reveals herself, and the
child knows her care, her patience, her love. Our friends
reveal themselves to us through our senses, and through our
sensations we have experience of what our friends really
are. Experience and revelation are but different names
for the same thing. The experience of reality is the reve-
lation of reality.

When, therefore, it is said that God is kno\Mi only
through revelation, that is only to state a truth that holds

80 The Creative Christ

for all knowled2:e. We can know God only as in some
way we have experience of God, and that experience is on
its outward side God's revelation of himself to men.

The distinction between ''natural" and ''revealed" re-
ligion must be given up. If religion implies any relation
with God, any knowledge of God, then religion can exist
only as God is experienced or revealed. The religion may
be very incomplete, but if it have any truth at all, that
truth must have its source in the revelation of God.^

IV

How then is God revealed? Partly through nature.
"The heavens declare the glory of God ; and the firmament
sheweth his handiwork." Familiar enough are the argu-
ments for the divine existence which are derived from
nature, the cosmological argument, inferring God as the
cause of the world, the teleological argument inferring God
from the plan of the world. Whatever value these argu^
ments may have lies in the fact that nature may be to some
extent the revelation of God, the means through which God
speaks. The arguments are interpretations of our ex-
perience of God derived through nature. The only true
meaning for "natural religion" is that God is to some extent
revealed in nature.

Yet nature can only partially reveal God. The heavens
declare the glory of God, but they cannot declare His
character. The plan of nature may show His intelligence,
but it cannot reveal His love. Nature is full of horrors,
"red in tooth and claw." Through nature alone we can
never know God as our heavenly Father.

^Coleridge repeatedly emphasized the thought that the phrase
"revealed religion" is a pleonasm.

What Is the Incarnation? 81

^'Know, man hath all which !N"atiire hath, but more,

And in that more lie all his hopes of good.

JSTature is cruel, man is sick of blood;

JSTature is stubborn, man would fain adore.

• •••••••••

Man must begin, know this, where l^ature ends ;
JSTature and man can never be fast friends.
Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave."^

If God is a moral, a personal Being, He cannot be fully
revealed in things. He can be revealed onlj in persons.
Not nature but man must be the only way in which we can
fully experience the life and being of God. It is only in
life that the living and loving God can reveal His true
character and being.

Here we come to the parting of the ways so far as con-
cerns the idea of revelation. When God has been thought
of as impersonal substance, the underlying basis of nature,
in short where pantheism has prevailed, then revelation has
been thought of as taking place through impersonal means,
through something below the human. So it was largely in
the religions of Greece and Rome. God was revealed in
signs and omens, through thunder on the right hand or on
the left, through the flight of birds, by the sacred chickens,
in the entrails of sacrificial victims. Or if revealed through
men or women, it was as they sank below the level of full
personal life. The messages came in dreams, in mystic
utterance, through ecstasy or swoon, in which the priest or
priestess became the unconscious instrument for the divine
influence.

^Mattliew Arnold, In Harmony with Nature.

82 The Creative Christ

In strong contrast stands the religion of the Old Testa-
ment. There God is thought of as a moral, a righteous, a
personal, God, and the revelation of God comes preemi-
nently through human life. Of course the religion of Israel
emerged only slowly from the nature religions among
which it had its birth, and naturally we find traces of lower
forms of thought ; dreams and ecstatic visions play a part.
But their part is utterly subordinate to the belief that God
was revealed in life. Through persons God's word was
spoken. And it came to persons not in remoteness of life,
but as leaders of life. Moses, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jere-
miah, these men were patriots and statesmen, men standing
in the market-place, and proclaiming the divine will of
justice and righteousness and truth. '^Thus saith the
Lord" was the utterance not of the recluse, but of men in
the vigor of their strength and in deep contact with life.
Through these prophets came the revelation of the living
God.

And not only in individual prophets here and there came
the word of God. Israel felt that the whole nation was the
means of God's revelation, that God's character was to be
revealed in the upbuilding of a righteous commonwealth,
where the justice and truth and mercy of God should form
the basis of a human society reflecting and revealing the
divine life. And Israel looked forward to the coming of
the Day of the Lord, when under the anointed King all
should know the Lord, and His Spirit should be poured out
on all flesh.

When we turn to the ^ew Testament, it is essentially
in life that God is manifested. The ^N^ew Testament is the
story of a Life that reveals God. The gospel begins with
the teaching of Jesus. And He becomes to His followers
the essential contents of the message which He taught.

What Is the Incarnation? 83

The beginning of the apostolic preaching is that Jesus is
the Christ. His followers find in Him the reality of the
kingdom which is to manifest the w^ays of God. St. Paul
resolved to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him cruci-
fied.-^ To him Christ is the image of the invisible God.^
To St. John He is the Word of God become flesh. No man
hath seen God at any time ; the only begotten Son, which is
in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared Him.^ He
that hath seen him hath seen the Father.^

It is notable that in the whole New Testament, with the
exception of the Revelation, which, being cast in the popu-
lar apocalyptic form, demands treatment by itself, there is
small value set upon the idea of revelation through signs
or omens, or through the subconscious or ecstatic state. It
is to be sure true that the Apostles are said to have cast
lots to discover the divine will as to which of two should
take the place of Judas.^ But the instance stands alone.
It is true that St. Paul had by night a vision of a man from
Macedonia calling to him.^ But the vision cannot be
separated from his waking thoughts and aspirations. It
is true that once St. Paul, whether in the body or out of
the body he could not tell, felt himself caught up into the
third heaven. But it is also true that we get no content
from his experience. All that he heard were ^^unspeakable
words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter."^ The
Paul who brings to us the message of the gospel is not the
ecstatic visionary, but the missionary in contact with life,

»I Cor. 2 :2.
=Col. 1:15.
"John 1 : 14-18.
*John 14 :9.
'Acts 1 :26.
"Acts 16 :n.
^11 Cor. 12 :l-4.

84 The Creative Christ

upon whom rests the care of all the Churches, the man who
writes his letters with the fullest use of all his spiritual
and mental powers. He lightly esteemed the ecstatic gift
of tongues, for by it the understanding was unfruitful and
the Church was not edified. He declared that he would
rather speak five w^ords with his understanding, that he
might instruct others also, than ten thousand words in a
tongue.^ The revelation of God comes through persons,
through life at its highest and its best. And the supreme
Life, the supreme Person, is Jesus Christ. He is the
divine message, the Word of God.

To know God we must have experience of God, God must
be revealed. And if God be a moral Being He can be
revealed only through moral beings. God, the personal
God of righteousness and love, has made man in His image,
and He can be revealed only through the image which He
has made.

It is a commonplace of modern theories of education that
teaching cannot be by telling. A child does not know
arithmetic if he is simply told it, or if he reads it in a
book. Learning comes through contact. jSTumbers must
be learned through numbers. Doing must be added to lis-
tening, the laboratory must supplement the textbook. The
simplest truths can be known only through contact with the
truth itself. Most of all is this true of things that pertain
to the spirit of man. ~Ro textbook about literature can
take the place of Shakespeare and Milton. Who can de-
scribe in words the Venus of Milo? The most accurate
and minute analysis of a symphony does not make the
orchestra unnecessary. We are taught only through being
in touch with realitv. And God knows at least as much

^I Cor. 14 :12-19.

What Is the Incarnation? 85

pedagogy as we do. He might have tried to reveal Himself
in words. He might have written the most perfect system
of theology, and handed it down from heaven. He might
have dictated a book of infallible sentences telling of His
essence and His attributes. And small good would it have
done, little should we have learned about God. He is a
w^iser Teacher than that. He revealed Himself by giving
Himself. He spoke His message, His Word, in and
through human life. In that Word was Life, and the Life
was the light of men.^ Wherever there has been human
life, there has been some revelation of the divine, to some
degree God's Word has been spoken. And the full message
w^as in Him in whom ''the Word became flesh, and dwelt
among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only
begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth."^ The
revelation of God is in the Incarnate Life.

The word "revelation" is sometimes regarded as a w^eak
and inadequate word to describe the Incarnation. To say
that in Jesus God is revealed, is felt not to do full justice
to the Christian belief in the Divinity, the Deity, of Christ.
But the objection comes from too low an idea of revelation.
It is taken for granted that the revelation of God is a
revelation only of truths about God, of statements concern-
ing Him. But no such statements can truly reveal God.
God is revealed only as He is given. To know Him we
must not only know about Him, we must know Him. He
must give Himself, must give the deepest of His being.
And if God be moral, then the depth of His being is His
character. To know the essence of God is to know His
character. His purpose. His will. And they are given in
Jesus Christ. The Father is revealed, is given, in His

^John 1 :4.
'John 1 :14.

86 The Creative Christ

Son. That is the Incarnation. The Word has become
flesh. God has given Himself in Jesus Christ, and in
Jesus Christ we see God in the life of man. He is the
God-Man.

In the last chapter I considered the phrase God-Man,
and emphasized the thought that its meaning depends on
the meaning of the terms God and man, the meaning of the
words divine and human. And as we are dealing with the
Christian belief in the God-Man, it is essential that those
terms be given their Christian meaning. We considered
that meaning, as based on the Hebrew prophetic teaching
that God is Creator, a teaching which reaches its full
results in our Lord's belief in the divine Fatherhood. In
the belief in God our Father, the creative idea of God is
carried over into the fullness of creative Love. God is the
absolute source of all that is true and right, and man as
the son of God receives the fullness of God's gifts. The
difference between God and man is not a difference in
attributes, but in source. God gives all, and man can
receive all. The Christian belief in God and in man leads
to the belief in the complete unity of God and man. The
accomplishment of that unity in Jesus Christ is the
Incarnation.

It seems, then, evident that the Incarnation cannot be
an isolated event in human history. It is the outcome of
God's purpose, the realization of the divine will. But God
has always been God, and God's will is not changing.
With Him is ^'no variation neither shadow that is cast by
turning."^ He has always sought to give Himself to man,

^James 1 :17.

What Is the Incarnation? 87

to utter His Word in human life, to bring to pass the unity
of God and man which is the purpose of His creative love.
The Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ carries us back to
all history before Christ, as the preparation for His coming,
and carries us forward to all history after Christ, as the
working out of the divine purpose to sum up all things in
Christ, until God shall be all in all.^ Let us consider more
fully these two thoughts, the preparation for the Incar-
nation, and the effect of the Incarnation.

It is no accident that the first verse of the fourth Gospel
takes us back to the first verse of Genesis. ^'In the begin-
ning God created the heaven and the earth." St. John has
this verse in mind, and as it were comments on it. Yes,
and ^'in the beginning was the Word. . . . All things
w^ere made through him." He w^as the instrument of
creation. He was the means by which God revealed Him-
self to man. ''In him was life ; and the life was the light
of men. And the light shineth in the darkness; and the
darkness apprehended [or overcame] it not." And this
previous revelation of God's Word, imperfectly received,
has now been summed up in Him in whom the Word has
become flesh.

It is not necessary to decide the question as to the
sources of St. John's doctrine of the Word, the Logos.
There is much in the Old Testament that might serve as a
basis. The word of God is there thought of as God's
instrument in creation and in revelation. Analogous is the
doctrine of the Spirit of God, the Spirit which seized on
the prophets, and by whose inspiration they spoke the
divine message. Again, the doctrine of the Wisdom of

^Eph. 1:10. I Cor. 15:28.

88 The Creative Christ

God, as in the book of Proverbs, makes Wisdom the active
principle of the life of God in creation :

"The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way,
Before his works of old.

I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning,
Or ever the earth was.

vr w TT

When he marked out the foundations of the earth :

Then I was by him, as a master workman :

And I was daily his delight.

Rejoicing always before him ;

Rejoicing in his habitable earth ;

And my delight was with the sons of men."^

The same thought is even more fully developed in the book
of Wisdom, in the Apocrypha.

"For she is a breath of the power of God,

And a clear effluence of the glory of the Almighty ;

* * -x-

An unspotted mirror of the working of God,
And an image of his goodness.

* * x-

And from generation to generation passing into holy

souls
She maketh men friends of God, and prophets."^

God has been manifesting Himself through His Word, His
Spirit, His Wisdom.

Moreover we find in Greek philosophy the concept of the
Logos or Reason as the underlying principle of the life of

»Prov. 8:22-31.
^Wisdom 7 :25-27.

What Is the Incarnation? 89

the world. And the Jew Philo had united Greek phi-
losophy with the Old Testament in his teaching that the
Logos is a second God, the eternal mediator between God
and the world.

To whatever source St. John owes his doctrine of the
Word, at any rate he brings to it the one great thought that
all this preexistent divine activity is summed up in Jesus
Christ. All that God has been seeking to show of Himself
in the world and in man is now summed up in its fullness
in Him who is the Word of God incarnate.

The fourth Gospel is the only part of the Xew Testament
in which the actual phrase the Word of God is used in this
sense. But we find essentially the same thought in St.
Paul, perhaps most fully expressed in the Epistle to the
Colossians. The Son ^'is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation; for in him were all things
created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible
and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or prin-
cipalities or powers; all things have been created through
him, and unto him ; and he is before all things, and in him
all things consist."^ And the unknown author of the Epistle
to the Hebrews begins with the words: ^^God, ha^dng of
old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers
portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these
days spoken unto us in his Son, [or a Son] whom he
appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made
the worlds." And tlie same author applies to the Son the
saying of the Psalmist :

''Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation

of the earth,
And the heavens are the works of thy hands.""

^Col. 1 : 15-17.
''Hebrews 1:1-2, 10.

90 The Creative Christ

The thought is not essentially different from that of St.
John. That which St. John calls the Word, these writers
call the Son. And the Son, the instrument of God's crea-
tion and revelation, is now known to us in Jesus Christ.

Let us now try to make use of these results and to give
them an expression for ourselves. The central thought in
the Christian belief in the Incarnation is that the revelation
of God, the Word of God, is through human life, and that
in the Person of Jesus the revelation of God is given in its
completeness, that in Him God's Word is fully uttered.
But this thought carries us back to all history before Christ.
God has always been giving His Word to men. Wherever
men have known something of God's truth, something of
God's will, there the Word of God has found an entrance,
however imperfectly, into human life. Through prophet
and psalmist and lawgiver of Israel God's Word has been
given. In the life of Israel as a nation God's truth and
righteousness and mercy were revealed in the upbuilding of
a righteous commonwealth that should manifest the divine
character and the divine will. And not only in Israel did
God's Word find expression. Whatever has been known of
God's truth has come from God, has been the utterance of
God's Word. He has not left Himself without witness.
The religions of the world have been not only cravings after
God, they have been revelations of God. There the Word
of God has been spoken, although men have been only im-
perfectly able to comprehend it. The prophet Malachi
may have had a foregleam of this truth : ^'From the rising
of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name
is great among the Gentiles ; and in every place incense is
offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name

What Is the Incarnation? 91

is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts." ^
Christian thought has been slow to rise to the fullness of
this belief. Yet the early Christian writers referred all
the truth of the Gentile world to the working of the divine
Logos or Reason. Later Christian thought largely allowed
these ideas to disappear, and separated sharply between
'^sacred" and ^'profane" history. But no history is ''pro-
fane/' for no history has been without God. There has
always been some utterance of the divine Word, some prep-
aration for the fullness of the time, when God sent forth
His own Son, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among
us.

We might speak of all history before Christ as the partial
incarnation of the Word. Whether it is better so to use
the term incarnation, or to restrict it to the full utterance
of the Word in Jesus Christ, may well be a matter of
opinion. At any rate the truth is clear that if God be the
living God, the God who out of His infinite love seeks to
give Himself to men, then that giving has always been
taking place. God has always given just as far as man was
capable of receiving. The Incarnation of God in Jesus
Christ is no isolated event. It carries us back to all history
before Christ.

It also carries us on to all history after Christ. The
unity of God and man accomplished in Christ Jesus is the
result of the divine purpose. But that divine purpose con-
cerns all humanity. That which was accomplished in
Jesus Christ is through Him to become true for those who
are conformed to His image, that He may be the firstborn

^Mal. 1 :11. The renderins shall 6e instead of is in the Author-
ized Version has obscured the meaning of this passage. In any
case the meaning is not quite clear. The reference may be to
the worship carried on by Jews of the Disi)ersion.

92 The Creative Christ

among many brethren. ^ We too are to receive the adoption
of sons. ^'Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit
of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.''^ The
purpose of God in Christ is a purpose for all humanity.
The unity of God and man accomplished in Christ is the
will of our heavenly Father, whose love creates after its
own image. God wills all men to be saved, and to come to
the knowledge of the truth." And Jesus Christ Himself
is the way, the truth, and the life.* The purpose of God
in His Son can be fulfilled only in the upbuilding of the
body of Christ, until we all attain unto a full-grown man,
unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.^
The belief in the Incarnation calls us to believe in the
incarnate life of humanity through Christ.

Here indeed is the very heart of every Christian doc-
trine. We come back to the principle stated in the first
chapter. Every Christian doctrine about God must be
capable of application to and expression in the life of man.
God is love, and love creates after its own image. God is
the Giver, and all that He has and is He gives to man.
The supreme expression of that truth is in the Incarnation.
Through the incarnate Christ God gives Himself to man.
Jesus is the God-Man, and in Him begins for humanity
the incarnate life.

It hardly needs to be said that the view here presented
is in full agreement with those theologians who regard the
Incarnation as essential to humanity, as the realization of
the eternal purpose of God. I cannot consider the Incar-

*Rom. 8:29.
'Gal. 4:6.
»I Tim. 2:4.
*John 14 :i).
«Eph. 4:12-13.

What Is the Incarnation? 93

nation to be contingent on the fact of sin and the need of
Atonement. Such a theory makes the Incarnation merely
a scheme for repairing a defect in the execution of God's
plan, a veritable deus ex machina brought in to restore the
broken unity of the divine purpose. In that case the
Incarnation is an artificial scheme, and the resulting
theories of the Atonement are sure to have an artificial
character. Indeed, if the fact of sin were the occasion for
the supreme expression of divine love, we may well be
tempted to call sin itself a blessing to humanity, and to
join in the apostrophe of Kichard of St. Victor, "O blessed
fault, which deserved to have such and so great a Re-
deemer."^ Rather, the Incarnation is the realization of
God's eternal purpose to give Himself to man and to draw
man to Himself. It is the expression of the divine char-
acter, and thus in regard to sin it is the Atonement, the
manifestation of God's redeeming love. The Atonement
is the Incarnation in the world of sin. Sin affects its form,
but does not produce the fact.

VI

The belief in the divine-humanity of Jesus was expressed
in the early Church as the doctrine of the two "natures"
of Christ. That form of statement had as its backgTound
the Hellenistic rather than the Christian modes of thinking.
The Christian thought found itself in contact with the
Greco-Roman world, and it was forced to express itself in
the terms of that world. And we have already seen that
the Greek concept of God as substance rather than as moral

^Migne, P. L., vol. 190, col. 1003. O felix culpa, quae talem ac
tantum meruit habere Redemptorem.

94 The Creative Christ

will did not succeed in bringing God and man, or God and
the world, into unity. There was an underlying dualism,
which kept them apart. And when the doctrine of the
Person of Christ came to be stated in these terms it was
inevitable that this dualism should appear. The two
^^natures'' of Christ were not brought into a genuine per-
sonal unity, and the result was that the divine nature
tended to crowd out or at least to overshadow the human.
N^evertheless the purpose of the Church is clear in so
shaping its doctrine. The heart of Christian belief was
that God and man are united in Jesus Christ, and the
Church did its best to maintain that belief. It tried so to
state the doctrine of the two natures of Christ as to pre-
serve both His divinity and His humanity. That it did
not altogether succeed was due to the fact that it was trying
to express the Christian belief in terms which were not
themselves Christian, and which contained an essential
element of dualism. But the fight was worthy of all honor,
even though it did not issue in complete victory. It is
worth while to glance, even if ever so slightly, at this con-
test against dualism, with this one purpose in mind, to see
the Christian belief in the union of God and man in Christ
seeking to express itself in terms which practically made
that union impossible.

The first great foe was Gnosticism. Gnosticism was a
mixed product, largely due to Eastern influences. It
separated God and the w^orld by an immeasurable distance,
and filled up the gap by a series of emanations or beings or
aeons which to us seem the product of the wildest fantasy.
Yet this mythology was much in evidence and commanded
intellectual respect. It readily absorbed certain Christian
elements, and found a place for the Person of Christ in
some one of the descending scale of beings between the

1

What Is the Incarnation? 95

unknowable divine and the material universe. Here the
dualistic opposition to the belief in the unity of God and
man was in open form. The best that such a system could
do to conceive of God and man in union was to offer a being
who was neither God nor man. And that attempt aroused
the fiercest hostility of the Church, until as a result Gnos-
ticism was so overcome that to-day it is hardly known to us
except by the enemies that it made.

More subtle in its attack was the doctrine of Arius. In
the contest over Arianism, the important issue was ex-
pressed by the question whether there was ''a time when
the Son was not." Arius maintained that the Logos, the
preexistent Son, was not coeternal with God, but that there
was a time before He existed. He stood at the head of all
creation, but was not essentially one with God, was not "of
one substance with the Father." Athanasius rightly main-
tained that such a theory imperiled the whole Christian
faith, for it failed to bring God and man together in Christ,
and thus failed to bring man into an actual relation with
God.

^ow the phrase "of one substance with the Father"
indicates that God was thought of as "substance," rather
than as moral will. The terms of thinking were Greek
terms, not those of the 'New Testament. ^Nevertheless the
Christian purpose in asserting that Christ was of one sub-
stance with the Father is clearly seen. That purpose was
to assert the unity of God and man accomplished in Jesus
Christ. Arius by separating Christ from the Father had
made Christ merely a demigod, and had destroyed the
whole Christian concept.

A similar inability to bring God and man together,
although starting from a different point of view, is to be
found in the theory of Apollinaris. Apollinaris held the

96 The Creative Christ

position of Athanasius, that the Son or Logos was of one
substance with the Father, but he found difficulty in
reconciling this belief with belief in the humanity of Jesus.
He therefore denied the full humanity of Jesus, asserting
that He had no human spirit, or, as we should say, no
human soul, and maintaining that the place of a soul was
taken by the preexisting Son. The humanity of Jesus con-
sisted only of His body, and into that body the Logos
entered and became the indwelling soul or spirit. This
thought plainly destroyed the true humanity of Jesus, and
denied the genuine union of God and man in Him. And
the Church, again seeking to maintain that union, formally
denounced the new theory of Apollinaris as a heresy.^

Each of these two theories, that of Arius and that of
Apollinaris, indicates the same difficulty. God and man
could not come into complete union, and therefore Christ
could not be regarded as at once divine and human. The
Church in its condemnation of each contended against the
dualism expressed by each.

This same contest against dualism was carried on by the
Church in the discussion as to the two natures of Christ.
The word ^'nature'' was a physical term,^ and did not
easily lend itself to the Christian thought of God as a per-
sonal and moral Being. It was the expression of the idea
of God as substance, and we have already seen that that
idea furnished no clear distinction between God and the
world, and at the same time failed to bring God and the
world together. This difficulty appears in the whole dis-
cussion of the two natures of Christ. The divine nature
was thought of as one thing, and the human nature as

^First Council of Constantinople, A. D. 381.

What Is the Incarnation? 97

another thing. The problem was in terms of things rather
than of persons. How could these two things, these two
natures, that of God and that of man, come together ? And
how did they actually come together in Christ ? The ques-
tion was an artificial one, it was the attempt to express the
Christian belief about God and man in terms that were
not themselves Christian. The result was bound to be
unsatisfactory. Yet the problem was inevitable, and the
Church was forced to solve it as well as it could. For that
purpose, it steadily resisted any attempt to deprive Christ
of either of these two natures, and it insisted that the two
were perfectly joined in Him. The famous formula
adopted at the Council of Chalcedon was the best statement
that the Church could make, and it clearly expresses the
purposes and interests which the Church had in hand. It
asserted that the two natures were joined in Christ ''with-
out confusion, without change, without division, without
separation." The formula may seem unreal to us, but it
was the only way in which the Church could express its
belief under the conditions in which it was, and using the
terms that it was obliged to use.

But the end was not yet, and the subsequent history
shows how difficult it was to maintain a spiritual truth
when expressed in physical terms. Chalcedon had declared
that Christ had two natures ; henceforth that was the ortho-
dox statement, and was verbally accepted. But other ques-
tions arose, showing how imperfectly the dualism was
overcome. Were these two natures equal ? Might it not
be that to the divine nature alone belonged the element of
will, and that the human nature was without will, merely
controlled by the divine ? But that was to reduce the
humanity of Christ to a mere figment, a mere name. And
the Church was so deeply concerned with maintaining the

98 The Creative Christ

union of divine and human in Jesus that, at the third
Council of Constantinople/ it even asserted that Christ had
two wills, one divine and one human. The statement seems
to us strange and confusing, it seems to split apart the
Person of Christ. But the purpose of the Church was
clear; it was so insistent in maintaining the humanity o±
Jesus that it ventured even this extreme statement, that Ke
had two wills. Nothing could more clearly show the pur-
pose of the Church to insist on the unity of God and man
in Jesus Christ, and nothing could more clearly indicate
the impossibility of giving such belief an adequate expres-
sion in physical terms. The doctrine of the two natures
was the splendid attempt of Christian faith to maintain
and express itself in a scheme of thought that was itselt
unchristian. .

Not even vet was the end reached. In spite oi the asser-
tion that Christ had two natures and that each of these two
natures was possessed of will, there had steadily crept m a
doctrine which had gained implied recognition at the sec-
ond Council of Constantinople, A. D. 553. It was the theory
that onlv to the divine nature of Christ belonged person-
ality, and that His human nature was impersonal. It is
difficult to see how a nature that has will can be impersona ,
or how an impersonal humanity can be humanity at all.
In spite of the struggle of the Church, the humanity ot
Jesus was practically surrendered by this doctrine. It
was indeed essentially the revival of the heresy of Apoi-
linaris, that Jesus had no human soul. That which had
been heresv in the fourth century gradually prevailed nntii
it became ''practically orthodox. Throughout the Middle

^A. D. 680-1.

^This subject is discussed more fully in the fifth chapter.

What Is the Incarnation? 99

Ages tlie human Christ was obscured. The monophjsite
heresy, that Jesus had but one nature, and that that one
was divine, prevailed, disguised under new forms. The
belief in the living, tempted, struggling, conquering hu-
manity of Jesus almost disappeared. He became the
purely divine Being. The Church turned to the Virgin
and the saints, to find in them the humanity that had been
obscured in Christ.

The doctrine of the two natures of Christ must for us
be reinterpreted in ethical terms. In its original form it
had proved incapable of fully expressing the divine-human-
ity of Jesus. It was trying to express a Christian belief
in terms that were not themselves Christian. So long as
God was thought of as substance, no unity of God and man
was possible. The doctrine of the two natures did all that
was possible under the circumstances. It registered the
purpose of the Church to hold fast to the divine-humanity
of Jesus in the presence of concepts in which that belief
could not find true and adequate expression.

These difficulties disappear when we turn to the moral
concept of God, which is that of the New Testament.
Therein the belief that was sought to be expressed in the
doctrine of the two natures of Christ receives its true inter-
pretation. In Christ is the perfect unity of God and man,
the revelation, the manifestation, of God in human life.
God the Father and Giver has given Himself to man in
His Son. And man, the son of God, has received the full-
ness of the divine gift. The unity of God and man is the
goal and purpose of the divine creative love, and that unity
is accomplished in Jesus Christ. We see in Him the God-
Man. His two natures are not two parts, two separate
things, into which we can divide His Person. Rather they
are two aspects under Avhich Christian faith must always

100 The Creative Christ

regard His whole Person. He is God giving Himself to
men. He is man receiving the fullness of God.^

With this ethical interpretation, the doctrine of the two
natures not only expresses the deepest truth with regard to
the Person of Christ, but it suggests again the double aspect
under which every Christian doctrine must be regarded.
The Atonement is, on the one hand, the divine love giving
itself in sacrifice ; it is, on the other hand, the work of the
tempted, struggling, victorious Son of man, the High Priest
of all humanity. The Church is, on the one hand, a divine
creation, a divine gift; on the other hand, it is the fellow-
ship of human life, imperfect, sinful, and yet struggling
to manifest the fellowship with God. It is both divine
and human. The Sacraments are, on the one hand, visible
signs of a divine gift, on the other hand, visible marks of
human fellowship. Every Christian doctrine is seeking
to understand and to express, however imperfectly, the way
in which the creative God gives Himself to the creatures
whom He has made. And in the incarnate Christ we see
God giving Himself in His fullness to man capable of
receiving the fullness of God. The Word of God has be-
come flesh.

VII

This chapter began with the assertion that Christianity
is a religion of history, that is, that it regards history as of
direct religious meaning and value. I considered at con-
siderable length objections to this statement, and tried to
show that the ideal elements in Christian faith can not be
separated from the historic events or persons in whom those

*His Person is "ethisch betrachtet ganz Mensch, reliccios betrach-
tet ganz Gott." H. Schultz, Q-rundriss der Evangelisclien Dog-
matiJc, p. 105.

What Is the Incarnation? 101

ideals have found expression. I also maintained that if
religion is to be not simply other-worldly, but also is to
have meaning for this world, then the question whether in
this world we can actually experience God becomes of the
utmost religious importance. A purely idealistic attitude
may conceivably prepare men for the hereafter, but if they
are to be coworkers with God in His kingdom on earth,
then they must know that God is indeed with them in their
task. We returned then to the statement, that Christianity
is a religion of historv, that is, that the relation between
God and man is not simply an ideal one, but one that has
been realized in history in the Person of Jesus Christ.
That is the Incarnation.

We then approached the idea of the Incarnation by dis-
cussing the nature of revelation. Revelation and experi-
ence are but different aspects of the same thing. If God
is to be known He must be experienced or revealed. That
revelation can take place partly in nature, but only partly.
If God be a moral Being, He can be fully known only
through life, only through moral beings. The revelation
of God must be in and through the history, the life, of man.
And God can be revealed in that history only if His essen-
tial nature and being are given in that history. We cannot
know God by being told about Him, He must be experi-
enced. And in the perfect Life which completely reveals
God to man and in man, we have that union of God and
man which is the goal of creation. We see in Christ the
God-Man. He is the incarnate Word.

Here w^e come to the most important problem in Chris-
tology. Jesus Christ is the union of divine and human,
which imion is the very purpose of God's creative love.
But then comes the question. How is the union of divine

102 The Creative Christ

and human in Him different from what it is in other men ?
That is the central problem of Christology, and must now
claim our attention.

CHAPTER IV

THE UNIQUENESS OF CHRIST

I

We come now to the central problem in Christology. Was
Jesus Christ different from other men? If so, in what
does that difference consist? Is it a difference that sepa-
rates Him from us, or does it draw us to Him? Is the
union of divine and human in Him different from what it
is or can be in all the children of God ?

The course of our previous thought has brought us
directly to this problem. We are seeking to understand
the divine-humanity of Jesus Christ. And the phrase
''divine-humanity" has no meaning except as we attach a
meaning to the words ''divine" and "human." And as we
are dealing with Christian theology, it is necessary that we
give to those terms their Christian meaning, the meaning
that they had for Christ Himself. We have seen that His
teaching that God is our Father and that man is the child
of God, the son of God, brings God and man into perfect
unity. God as creative Love is the absolute source of all
that is good and true in the life of man. God gives all
and man receives all. The Christian concept of God and
man leads us to the belief in the unity of God and man as
the outcome and purpose of the divine creative love. And
this unity is accomplished in Jesus Christ. The Incar-
nation is the realization in history of that divine-human

103

104 The Creative Christ

unity which is the eternal purpose of God. The Christian
belief in the Incarnation is the fullest expression of the
Christian belief about God and about man. The creative
God, the heavenly Father, seeks to give Himself in His
fullness to His children, and that gift is accomplished in
the God-Man, Jesus Christ.

This brings us directly and inevitably to the problem of
the uniqueness of Christ. If Jesus Christ is just the reali-
zation in history of the purpose of God with all humanity,
then how is He different from other men ? If the union
of divine and human in Him is simply that which it is
God's purpose to bring to pass in all men, then how can we
speak of Christ as in any special sense divine and human ?
Is He the God-Man in any other way than that in which
God-Humanity is the goal for all men ? Is He anything
more than the ideal man 1 If all men are sons of God, in
what sense does the Apostles' Creed speak of Jesus Christ
as ''His only Son ?" How can we retain His supremacy
and at the same time find in Him the truth that holds good
for all humanity ?

II

While our course of thought has brought us directly to
this central problem, it is also true that the problem is
quite independent of the way in which it has been here
approached. It is the problem of all Christian faith. For
Christian faith has always regarded Jesus under a twofold
aspect. He is the Incarnation of the divine Word, the
Lord and Master of life, and He is also the brother of man,
the ideal for all humanity.

This twofold attitude is found in our Lord's own thought
as expressed in the Synoptic Gospels. He is conscious of
an immediate and unique relation to the Father; yet out

The Uniqueness of Christ 105

of that uniqueness comes the universality of His message.
That which is true for Ilim is to be made true for others
also. To accomplish that is His vocation. He is to pro-
claim the kingdom of God, and to draw men into that king-
dom. Therefore He is called to be the Christ, and, in that
kingdom which He as the Christ proclaims, all men are to
be the children of their heavenly Father.

The same twofold attitude runs through the w^hole New
Testament. In the Pauline thought, Jesus Christ is the
foundation, and other foundation can no man lay than that
which is laid. He is the image of the invisible God, the
firstborn of all creation, who is before all things, and in
whom all things consist. And yet He is the firstborn
among many brethren. And the time is looked for when
we shall all attain unto a fullgrown man, unto the measure
of the stature of the fullness of Christ.^ In the Epistle to
the Hebrews, Christ is the very image of the divine sub-
stance. And yet He was touched w^ith the feeling of our
infirmities. He was made perfect through suffering, and
though He were a Son yet He learned obedience by the
things which He suffered. ^ To St. John, Christ is the
Incarnate Word, the only begotten Son. And yet He calls
His followers into fellowship with Himself and with His
Father. They also are to be the children of God. Those
who believe in Him shall do even greater works than He
has done. They are to be in Him even as He is in the
Father, and whither He goes they shall go also. Through
Him who comes from God they are to be exalted into that
fellowship with God which is His own.^

^I Cor. 3:11; Col. 1:15-17; Rom. 8:29; Epb. 4:13. The Epistle
to the Ephesians may not have been written by St. Paul, but at
any rate it belonjxs to the development of Pauline thought.

^Ileb. 1 :3, 8 ; 2 :10 ; 4 :15 ; 5 :8.

^John ] :12, 14, 18; 14:12, 20; 17:21, 24. I John 1:3; 3:1.

106 The Creative Christ

When we turn from tHe ^N'ew Testament to the develop-
ment of the ecclesiastical doctrine, it is evident that the
endeavor of the Church was to establish and maintain thi
twofold attitude to the Person of Christ. An endeavor i
was rather than a complete success. For while, from the
Council of JSTicaea, the doctrine of the deity of Christ was
firmly established, the belief in His complete humanity
failed to secure as full and adequate recognition. Yet the
purpose of the Church to maintain His full manhood is
clear. In the rejection of the theory of Apollinaris (that
Jesus had no human spirit or soul), in the condemnation of
the Monophysite theory (that He had only one nature, the
divine), in the statement that He had two wills (a human
will as well as a divine), the Church fought vigorously
against the suppression of His manhood. Yet the struggle
was not altogether successful. In the assertion that His
Personality belonged only to His divine nature, theology
carried into the Middle Ages a Christ who was divine, but
whose humanity was far separated from the humanity of
His brethren.

This result was chiefly due to the failure to carry out
fully the moral belief in God which is the belief of the N^ew
Testament. It has already been indicated that the Greek
idea of God as substance, under which idea the Church was
obliged to shape its theology, did not allow a full union
between God and man. It must also be noted that this
same idea of substance led to a concept of salvation which
was not truly moral, and which therefore did not require
any emphasis on the full moral humanity of Jesus Christ.
God was regarded as of a certain substance or nature, and
man as of a certain difl'erent substance or nature. Hence
man's salvation was to consist in his receiving the divine
nature, the reception of which nature conferred immor-

The Uniqueness of Christ 107

talitj. The impartation of this gift of the divine nature
or substance took place in the Incarnation. In the Incar-
nation God touched human nature from above, and thereby
conferred the gift of salvation or immortality. For such
a work, the humanity of Christ played no real part. At
the most it served only as the meeting-point between God
and man. The work of salvation was not really a moral
work ; it was only the transformation of the human, accom-
plished in the Incarnation and rendered effective through
the Sacraments. For this purpose the Monophysite con-
ception of Christ, as consisting only of the divine nature,
really sufficed, and although Monophysitism was condemned
as a heresy, yet its implications were still effective, inas-
much as the humanity of Christ was regarded as imper-
sonal and played no vital part either in His Person or in
His work. As God was not regarded as fundamentally
personal, so neither the Person nor the work of Christ was
regarded as fundamentally ethical, and therefore His
humanity had no real significance. There was no need of
the tempted, struggling, victorious Son of Man.

Of course it would be quite untrue to say that the Church
did not have in mind the moral concept of God, and that it
was not trying to apply it. The Church held strenuously
to the belief that God is Love. The history of the Councils
is largely a record of the Church's attempt to maintain its
belief in the humanity of Christ as the means through
which the divine love expressed itself in man's redemption.
And the doctrine of the Atonement, whenever it became
prominent, as in Anselm, sought to express the relation
between God and man in moral terras. Nevertheless the
humanity of Christ was not fully emphasized. To give it
its full meaning, it was necessary to break away from the
conception of God as substance, and to adhere strictly to the

108 The Creative Christ

belief in God as moral, as righteous will, as the loving
Creator, as our heavenly Father.

Certainly such an attempt was made at the Reformation.
The prominence of the doctrines of justification and of the
Atonement emphasized the moral idea of God, and the
moral character, the righteousness, of Christ. Hence
arose a deeper sense of His humanity. Yet even here the
relation between divine and human in Him was too often
imperfectly expressed. His divine nature and His human
nature still tended to be regarded as separate parts of His
Person, as two things, which failed to come into genuine
union. And while theology became more closely related
with the Bible, yet the lack of a historical critical approach
to Scripture prevented the witness of the ]^ew Testament
from being fully appreciated. It was to the credit of
Unitarianism that it maintained the complete humanity of
Jesus. And in the presence of theories which made the
human Christ unreal, in the presence of theories of pre-
destination and of Atonement which maligned the character
of God, Unitarianism had a righteous protest to make. It
affirmed truths which orthodoxy had neglected to its peril.
And yet, as Unitarianism failed to maintain the supremacy
of Christ, and thus to ensure the religious value of His
Person, the protest remained ineffective to produce a theory
of His Person which could satisfy the Christian conscious-
ness and meet the demands of Christian faith.

In all this we see the Church seeking, albeit with mani-
fold aberrations, to maintain at once the supremacy, the
divinity, and also the humanity of Jesus. And yet we see
that the forms of statement, with all the value that they
had under the conditions of the time, too often failed to be
true to the moral concept of God, and thus too often failed
to express fully the divine-humanity of Jesus Christ.

The Uniqueness of Christ 109

III

This twofold attitude toward the Person of Christ, found
in the ^ew Testament, and expressed, however imperfectly,
in the whole course of Christian theology, is an essential
element, we may well say the essential element, in Christian
faith. Jesus Christ is Lord and Master of life. He is the
supreme revelation of God, the gift of God to man, the
incarnate Word. He that hath seen Him hath seen the
Father. His supremacy, His deity, is at the very heart of
Christian faith. And yet His deity is manifested, revealed,
in the life of man. He is true Man, the only perfectly
true Man. He is our Example as well as our Saviour.
And if He is our Example and calls us to follow Him,
there can be in Him nothing that is unattainable by man.
If there were anything such, He would lose His humanity,
He would no longer be our Example.

It is the task of Christian theology to maintain and to
try to express as perfectly as possible this double attitude
towards the Person of Christ. His supremacy must be
maintained in such a way as not to separate Him by an
impassable gulf from His brethren. His relation to His
brethren must be so maintained as not to bring Him down
to the dead level of ordinary humanity, and thus to destroy
His supremacy and His power. His divinity must be ex-
pressed in His humanity, His humanity must not separate
Him from His divinity. That is the problem of the
Uniqueness of Christ.

~Eo solution can be of any value that clouds either of
these two aspects of His being, and especially no solution
that leads to a compromise between these two sides. Xo
denial that He has a human soul, no denial of His human
personality, can meet the test. !N"or can any assertion

110 The Creative Christ

avail that separates between His two "natures/' and asserts
that certain qualities belonged only to His divine, and cer-
tain other qualities only to His human nature. Such, for
example, was the theory that He knew certain things "as
God," but did not know them "as man." Such a theory
gives us a being who is neither God nor man, and calls such
a compromise a union of divine and human! Or rather,
such a theory brings divine and human into parallel lines,
and, revealing a dualism between them, fails to bring them
into union. That is flatly to deny the Incarnation.

It is also evident that no solution can be reached so long
as we abide by the category of "substance," so long as we
regard God as consisting of a certain "substance," and man
of a certain different "substance," and then try to effect a
combination of the two. E"ot only does the history of doc-
trine, as previously traced, show the failure of such a
method, but simple logic leads us to the same result. If
there be in Christ some "substance," some thing, which is
divine and w^hich therefore cannot belong to men, then He
has in Him something to which humanity can never attain,
and He ceases to be our Example. On the other hand, if
there be in Him only the "substance" of humanity, then
He is brought down to the level of other men, and He
ceases to be our Lord and Master. From that dilemma
there is no escape so long as we try to state the uniqueness
of Christ in terms of "substance."

One other solution has had popularity and appeals be-
cause of its simplicity. It seeks to solve the problem of
divine-humanity by asserting that divine and human are
identical, and that therefore there is no problem to ba
solved. This is the solution of pantheism. God and man
are but different parts of the same reality, or, rather, all
reality is God, and man is identical with God. The con-

The Uniqueness of Christ 111

sciousness of that identity in Jesus Christ is the Incar-
nation. There is no need of reconciling divine and human,
for they are already the same. In one form or another
''speculative" types of theology have made much use of this
conception as a means of interpreting the belief in the
Incarnation.

The difficulties of the pantheistic position have been
dwelt upon at length in the second chapter, and it is not
necessary to reopen that discussion. But it may here be
suggested that the attempt to solve the problem of the
divine-humanity of Jesus by saying that divine and human
are just the same has another difficulty which is of funda-
mental importance for a theology that tries to be Christian.
And the difficulty is the perfectly simple one that the belief
in the identity of God and man is not the Christian belief.
We are trying to express the Christian belief as to the
union of God and man in Jesus Christ in terms of our own
thought, in terms that correspond to our modes of thinking
to-day. But if, in making this attempt, we use terms that
deny the Christian belief altogether, then we are giving up
the attempt. We may recognize the possibility that the
Christian belief is not true. If we should be forced to that
conclusion, let us frankly acknowledge it. But we have no
right to translate the belief into terms that deny its essen-
tial contents, and still to maintain that we hold the same
belief. The solution offered by pantheism is not a Chris-
tian solution.

It is also to be said that pantheism carried to its logical
results radically destroys all moral distinctions. We have
seen that the terms of our own time are essentially moral
terms, that our problems are moral, social, problems. We
have seen that these same moral terms are those of the New
Testament. God is a moral Being whose character is love.

112 The Creative Christ

The relation between God and man is a moral relation.
The presence of God is the presence of the moral qualities
of the life of God. And morality implies, demands, differ-
ence. There is a difference between right and wrong,
between good and bad, between love and hate. But pan-
theism in identifying God and the world logically makes
everything divine, and thus undermines all moral distinc-
tions. God is present wherever there is being, without
regard to the quality of that being. He is present in a
stone as He is in a man, in a bad man as in a good man, in
Iscariot as He is in Christ. Perhaps no pantheism has
ever fully faced that conclusion. But the conclusion is
inevitable unless moral distinctions are introduced. And
when moral distinctions are introduced, the essence of
pantheism is destroyed.

The pantheistic attempt to solve the problem of divine-
humanity must be definitely abandoned. It gives us no
real unity, it is not the Christian solution, and it destroys
moral distinctions.

We return then to the problem of the uniqueness of
Christ, recognizing that the problem is at the heart of
Christian faith, and that it can be solved only through
strict adherence to the Christian belief about God and man.
Risking repetition let me state again the conclusions which
bring us directly to this problem. God as our Father is
creative Love, Man as creature is the child and heir of God.
God creates His children after His o^^^l image, destined to
receive the fullness of His own life, to grow into the full
likeness of God. The difference between God and men is
a difference not in attributes, but in source. All that is
true and best in man comes to him from God. The purpose
of God is that man should enter into his heritage as the son
of God. He is to be in perfect unity with God. The

The Uniqueness of Christ 113

bringing about of that unity is God's eternal purpose for
man. And the accomplishment of that purpose in Christ
Jesus is the Incarnation. It is on the basis of these prin-
cii)les that we are to try to answer in Christian terms the
question, What then is the difference between Christ and
other men? Only on this basis can we look for a truly
Christian solution of the problem of the uniqueness of
Christ.

From this point of view there are three elements in the
uniqueness of Christ, each of which will add something to
our thought about Him.

IV

In the first place, the unity of God and man is in Jesus
Christ realized in all its fullness, while in other men it is
realized only in degree. In Him God and man have per-
fectly met together. And as true manhood consists in union
with God, He alone is perfect !Man. In Him is manifest
God's purpose for humanity. In Him we see man as he
ought to be. He is different from other men, first, in that
He is the ideal Man.

It is hardly necessary to point out that the idea of Christ
as perfect man runs through all the New Testament. His
own consciousness is that of perfect union with God. His
sense of divine Sonship, of unity with His Father, is un-
clouded. He shows no self-consciousness of sin.-^ He is

^Tlie only passages which might possibly seem to contradict this
statement are the accounts of the baptism of Jesns, and his reply
to the young ruler: "Why callest thou me good? none is good
save one, even God." (Mark 10:18, cf. Matt. 19:17, Luke 18:10.)
As to the baptism, the reply of Jesus to .Tohn as given in Matt.
3:15, "Suffer it now; for thus it becometh us to fulfil all right-
eousness," should not be pressed, as the words, not found in Mark

114 The Creative Christ

the Son who alone knows the Father, and He calls others
to come to Him that they may find rest with God.^ St.
Paul sees in Christ the last Adam, the spiritual man, the
life-giving spirit.^ The Epistle to the Hebrews sees Christ
as tempted at all points like as we are, yet without sin.
Having been made perfect, He becomes the representative
of true humanity, the High Priest after the order of Mel-
chizedek.^ And Christian theology, following the ]^ew
Testament, has always emphasized the thought of Christ as
representing true humanity, as the ideal Man. His perfect
likeness to true humanity is that w^hich, first of all, dis-
tinguishes Him from others of the sons of God in whom
that likeness is only imperfectly realized.

This thought of Jesus Christ as the ideal Man has some-
times been expressed in a false form, which deprives the
Person of Christ of individual and historic meaning. His
humanity has often been regarded as a sort of abstract idea
of humanity in general, instead of as the revelation of God
in a concrete, individual human life. Thus it has been

or Luke, are very likely a later addition. Rather it seems prob-
able that the baptism of Jesus indicates His taking part in a
great religious and moral movement, and marks for Him the
beginning of a new period of consciousness of and devotion to His
life work. It cannot be taken as expressing an individual con-
sciousness of sin and need of repentance. Rather His refusal to
be baptized would have indicated an abnormal consciousness of
aloofness, and a lack of simple humility and sense of religious
dependence. As to the reply to the young ruler, the words denote
a rejection of the easy and careless way in which the young man
uses the phrase "Good Master," and indicate our Lord's con-
sciousness of the greatness of the unfulfilled task still before Him.
The general lack on our Lord's part of any personal consciousness
of sin seems to make It impossible to infer such consciousness
from these passages.

^Matt. 11 :27-28, Luke 10 :22.

=1 Cor. 15:45-48.

»Heb. 2:17; 4:15; 5:8-10.

The Uniqueness of Christ 115

said that He became '^man/' but that He did not become
^'a man." His humanity is treated as impersonal, and thus
His life has been deprived of genuine moral value. Such
a conception is untrue to the moral aspect under which we
are trying to consider the Incarnation.

In this thought, false as it is, there may be found two
genuine motives, which however can be better expressed.
One motive is to preserve the thought of God becoming man
from being changed into the different thought of a man
becoming God, to prevent the Incarnation being exchanged
for an apotheosis. It is feared that if we speak of Jesus
being a man, then the only way in which we can interpret
His divinity is to say that a man became God, and thus to
lose the religious value of the belief in the Incarnation.
Yet the fear is unjustified. Certainly the Christian belief
is that the divine-humanity of Jesus is the gift of God, not
the achievement of humanity. Yet surely God can give
Himself, His character. His love. His being, more fully in
a definite historical life than in a pale abstraction of
humanity in general. The belief that God gives Himself
in the Person of the individual Man, Jesus of iJ^azareth, is
not the same as the belief that a man became God. Rather,
God becomes man in the individual Man, Jesus Christ.

The other motive in the above mentioned form of ex-
pression is the wish to preserve the universal significance
of the Person of Christ. It is feared that, if He be re-
garded as an individual. He will have only a partial mean-
ing for mankind. Thus, in denying that He was "a man"
the purpose seems to be to assert that in His universal
humanity His Person has universal significance. But the
error lies in confusing two different kinds of universals.
One sort of universal is got by a mere abstraction from all
individual characteristics, thus arriving at a general idea

IIG The Creative Christ

which is devoid of all concrete meaning. Thus we might
try to gQt the idea of an American by conceiving an abstract
American, neither white nor black nor red, neither tall nor
short, neither man, woman, nor child. But such an idea
tells us nothing. All meaning has gone out of it. Indeed
the only absolutely universal idea of that kind, arrived at
by successive abstraction of particulars, is the final, empty
concept of pure ^'being'^ which Hegel justly declared to be
identical with '^nothing,'' and which he compared to the
night in which all cows are black. It reduces everything
to a blank identity devoid of all contents. The other kind
of universal is found by taking a concrete, definite indi-
vidual in whom the universal elements are vividly ex-
pressed and realized. If we want the universal American,
we shall do well to find him in Abraham Lincoln. He was
individual enough, one of the most individual men that ever
lived, but in his individuality are found the essential ele-
ments of his country's life. Here in concrete, historical,
individual form are the characteristics of the genuine
American, vividly expressed and realized. We find in him
the universal American far more truly than in any pale
abstraction.

So it is, in far deeper sense, with the universality of
Jesus Christ. We have in Him no mere abstraction of
humanity in general, but the very life of God given in the
concrete, historic life of man. He is the universal Man in
that in Him are given the essentials of true humanity. In
Him the perfect union of God and man is accomplished.
The truth intended by the statement that He was not ^'a
man" may be better expressed by saying that He was the
Man. He is the one in whom the truth of human life in
its union with God is completely realized. And therein

The Uniqueness of Christ 117

His Person and His work are of value and meaning for all
humanity.

I recall hearing Phillips Brooks discuss the relation
between the minister and other men. Should the minister
be different from other men, and, if so, in what respect?
He answered that the minister should be different from
other men by being most a man. His calling should free
him from the accidents of life, and should enable him to
deal with the things that are of deepest and most essential
meaning. Pie ought to be able to represent most fully the
elements that belong to the highest life of man. Thus his
difference from other men ought to bring him into the
closest contact with all men. ^lay we not say that therein
alone can the minister be the true priest to his people, in
that he can most fully deal with the things that are of
supreme importance to all ? His difference from his people
brings him closest to his people. And so it is, in infinitely
deeper degree, with Him who is the Priest for all human-
ity, the High Priest after the order of Melchizedek. Jesus
Christ is the perfect Man. The difference between Him
and other men is not in that which separates Him from
men, but in that which draws Him closest to all humanity.
In His perfect union of divine and human He alone is
fully and completely Man.

This consideration, however, brings us only to the begin-
ning of our search. If all that we mean by the uniqueness
of Christ lies in that which constitutes Him truly man,
then His supremacy is endangered. He becomes for us the
moral Example, but hardly the Lord and Master of life.
It seems misleading to speak of His divinity in any
peculiar or unique sense. It would be ambiguous to say
that the difference between Him and other men becomes
only a difference of degree and not of kind, for the theory

118 The Creative Christ

of evolution has obscured the distinction, and it is difficult
to tell exactly what is meant by it. Successive differences
in degree may make a distinction so great that we speak of
it as one of kind. But without using that ambiguous
phrase, it seems clear that the difference we have been con-
sidering does not in itself give sufficient ground for the
religious preeminence of Christ, and does not fully express
the belief in His divinity.

V

We turn then to the second suggestion as to the unique-
ness of Christ. And we may begin by asking the question,
How is it that He is the ideal Man? What were the
forces that produced Him ? How out of the level of ordi-
nary humanity does He come who transcends the limits of
that humanity ? And the answer of Christian faith is that
we see in Jesus the direct expression of God's creative will.
He is not the mere product of the race. He is the new
beginning of the race. He cannot be explained as the mere
outcome of human forces. In modern phrase. He is not
the mere result of evolution. He is the direct gift of God
to the world. As deriving His origin direct from God, He
is in a unique sense the Son of God.

The whole E^ew Testament sees in Jesus Christ one who
can be understood only as the direct gift of God. While
in the Synoptic Gospels there is comparatively little theo-
logical interpretation of the Person of Christ, yet He is
everywhere regarded as beyond the limits of ordinary
humanity. At His baptism He is declared to be God's
beloved Son. As the bridegroom He is contrasted with the
sons of the bridechamber. He is the dearly beloved Son
as compared with the servants sent to receive the fruits of

The Uniqueness of Christ 119

the vineyard. He as the Son alone knows the Father. He
is greater than the son of David. He is the Christ, the
Son of the living God. He will come again for judgment
on the clouds of heaven.^ In the thought of St. Panl He
is declared to be the Son of God with power. He is the
Son whom God sent forth in the fullness of time. He is
the last Adam, the second man, from heaven. His being
finds its origin in the life and being of God. He is the
image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. In
all things He has the preeminence. He being in the form
of God took the form of a servant, and through His life of
obedience He has won the name that is above every name,
that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every
tongue should confess that He is Lord.^ In the Epistle to
the Hebrews He is the Son through whom God made the
worlds. He is above all angels, and to Him are applied
the words of the psalm, ^'Thy throne, 0 God, is for ever and
ever."^ To St. John He is the incarnate Word. He is
not of this world. His life on earth is the revelation of
the eternal glory which He had with the Father before the

*The following references will serve as examples of the Synoptic
attitude : Mark 1 :11, Matt. 3 :17, Luke 3 :22, Mark 2 :6-10, Matt.
9:2-8, Luke 5:21-24. Mark 2:19, Matt. 9:15, Luke 5:34. Matt.
11:27, Luke 10:22. Mark 8:27-29, Matt. 16:13-17, Luke 9:18-20.
Mark 9:7, Matt. 17:5, Luke 9:35. Matt. 14:33; 16:27. Mark
12:2-8, Matt. 21:34-39, Luke 20:10-15. Mark 12:35-37, Matt.
22 :41-45, Luke 20 :41-44. Mark 14 :62, Matt. 26 :64, Luke 22 :69-71.
Matt. 28 :17.

^See e. g. Rom. 1:4, Gal. 4:4, I Cor. 15:45-47, Col. 1:15-19, Phil.
2 :6-ll.

»Heb. chap. 1.

120 The Creative Christ

world was/ Through the whole IsTew Testament He is
regarded as one whose life and being can be explained only
as the direct outcome of the life and being of God.

It should be emphasized that this thought of the divine
origin of Jesus is not to be limited to or identified with the
belief in the Virgin Birth of Jesus. The belief in the
divine origin of Jesus is found through the ^ew Testament
as a whole, and it is indeed most strongly emphasized by
those writers who show no knowledge of the Virgin Birth,
namely St. Paul, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews,
and St. John. It would therefore run contrary to the
whole ISTew Testament to maintain that this belief was
identical with that of the Virgin Birth, and would weaken
the whole position which we have been maintaining. The
theological meaning underlying the stories of the Birth of
Jesus is probably essentially the same as the thought which
we have been considering. The belief that Jesus was of
divine origin, that He was the direct gift of the creative
Spirit of God, found one expression in the belief in the
Virgin Birth. But while the narratives in the early chap-
ters of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke are dis-
tinctly Hebraic in character and go back to a very early
period, they form no part of the common basis of the
Synoptic Gospels, and are attended with peculiar critical
difficulties. To identify the two beliefs, that of the divine
origin of Jesus and that of the Virgin Birth, or to hold that
the latter is absolutely essential to the former, is to be wise
above that which is written. It makes the belief in the
Incarnation dependent on what is critically the weakest
part of the ^ew Testament, and it surrounds the belief in
the Incarnation with difficulties that are very serious to

^John 1:1-18; 0:02; 8:23, 42, 58; 17:5; 20:28; I John 1:1-2.

The Uniqueness of Christ 121

many honest and sincere men who are in sympathy with
modern thought. Each belief should stand by itself, and
should be investi2:ated on its own merits. But the two are
not the same, and to make them such is to be untrue to the
]^ew Testament, and to cast stumbling blocks in the way of
faith. The belief in the divine origin of Jesus is found
throughout the New Testament as a whole, and it is not
necessarily dependent on the belief in the Virgin Birth. ^

It need hardly be said that Christian faith, following the
Xew Testament, has always regarded Jesus Christ as one
whose origin cannot be found in human forces alone. The
world cannot account for Him, history cannot explain Him.
He is the direct product of God's creative will. He is the
miracle of human history.

This word '^miracle," which I here deliberately use, calls
us to pause and consider carefully its meaning. It may be
said that, as I am trying to express the belief in Christ in
terms of present day thought, I have been untrue to that
attempt when I use the word miracle. For the word, sug-
gesting as it does an irregular and capricious interruption
of those processes of nature which we call laws, seems a
peculiarly offensive one for modern thought. Our age is
one of science. And has not science unveiled the majestic
spectacle of the imiformity of nature's laws ? Has the
modern man any place for the miracle ?

Certainly not, if by miracle we mean a lawless, unregu-
lated, as it were an accidental, element in reality. And if
miracle can mean only that, then the word must go. It is
not worth while fighting for a word if that word is linked
with implications which are no longer admissible. But
there is another aspect of modern thought, indeed another

^I have treated the subject of the relation of the Virgin Birth
to the Creed in my book Tli<i Apostles' Creed To-day, pp. 88-101.

122 The Creative Christ

aspect of science itself, whicli may give us a different point
of view. Grant that science has revealed with ever in-
creasing clearness the uniformity, the regularity, of
nature's actions. But, also, science by means of that
uniformity has been ever increasingly able to use nature
for the purposes of man. Through the uniformity of
nature science has made nature produce results that are far
from uniform. The last century has been an age of
science, but it has also been an age of wonders, we may well
say an age of miracles. Man's intelligence and will have
produced through nature that which nature itself was
powerless to produce.

Take a simple example. An aeroplane is built in
strictest relation to nature's laws. Only through that strict
relation can it be depended on to do its work. And yet the
aeroplane does that which nature left alone could never do.
To the course of nature alone it is a miracle, that is, it is a
revelation of a higher law, the law of personality. In it
nature has become obedient to man. The intelligence and
purpose of man have through strict obedience to nature's
laws made nature itself obedient to a higher law. Through
nature is brought forth that which is above nature, that
which testifies to the higher reality, the life of man.

May we not similarly regard God's relation to the world ?
If by a miracle we mean that God by an arbitrary fiat sets
aside His regular ways of working, and contradicts the
orderly method of nature's laws, then the belief in miracle
cannot easily be held to-day. But if by a miracle we mean
that God so uses the world that in it He may express and
reveal His own purpose and will, then what we call a
miracle will be no breaking of law, but will be the reve-
lation of a higher law of the personal God. And when we
say that the supreme miracle of the world's history is Jesus

I

The Uniqueness of Christ 12 o

Christ, we shall mean that in Christ God's purpose for the
world has found its highest and most complete expression.
Jesus Christ is above the world, He is that which the world
itself never could produce. We see in Him the highest
expression of the creative power of God. But that creative
power is no arbitrary or disorderly act. God has always
been seeking to give Himself in the life of man. And
when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His
Son. But that sending forth is the culmination of God's
ordered plan. History, if it could be read aright, if it
could be read in the light of God's eternal purpose, would
all be seen to be prophetic of the Christ. Every true
human hope and aspiration is fulfilled in Him. Every
imperfection of man cries out for Him wdio is the perfect
realization of humanity. Without Him history is but a
torso. He is the desire of all nations. He 'Svas fore-
known indeed before the foundation of the world, but was
manifested at the end of the times for your sake."^ As the
miracle of history ELe alone makes history intelligible. As
the new creation of God He is the fulfillment of God's cre-
ative purpose wdiich was from the beginning of the world.
Let the word miracle go, if you will. I seek but to make
clear the thought that Jesus Christ cannot be accounted for
by human forces, that He is the direct new creation of God,
and that in Him history finds its culmination and its goal.^

*I Peter 1 :20.

The statement that Jesus Christ is the direct creation of God
is of course not intended to apply to the eternal Son or Logos,
declared in the Nicene Creed to be "begotten, not made." The
Logos belongs to the eternal life of God (See chapter III.). The
supreme expression of the activity of the Logos is given in Jesus
Christ, who is the archetype of the new man, and who becomes
the source of a new humanity. (Cf. I Cor. 15:45-47, 2 Cor. 5:17,
Col. 3:10.) The relation between the Logos and the Person of
Jesus is discussed in the fifth chapter.

124 The Creative Christ

It may be objected, Is not every man in some sense a
new creation of God ? Is there not truth in the old theory
of Creationism, namely, that the sonl of each man is a new
creation, versus the theory of Traducianism, namely, that
every man, soul as well as body, is but the product of his
ancestors ? Does not every man born into the world have
individual elements which cannot be reduced merely to his
inheritance ? May it not be said by every man, as Rous-
seau said of himself, "When nature made me she broke the
mould ?" May we not translate Rousseau's sajdng into
Christian terms, and hold that every child of God is a new
expression of the divine creative will of our heavenly
Father? And if so, does not this consideration do away
with the uniqueness of the divine origin of our Lord ?

In answer it may be said that, as believers in God, we
will naturally recognize in every human being the creative
hand of God. But that fact does not reduce the Person of
Jesus to the level of ordinary humanity. And just for the
reason that He in the completeness of His manhood, in His
perfect union of divine and human, is different from and
above others of the sons of men. That is to say, this second
suggestion as to the uniqueness of Christ must be regarded
in connection with our first suggestion. It is just because
of the uniqueness of His Person that we see in Him a
unique act of God's creative power. God is always Creator,
and creation is a constant process. From the time ^vhen
the creative Word first brought order out of confusion and
light out of darkness, God has been leading His creation to
ever higher levels. And when the supreme result is
reached, the perfect union of God and man in the God-Man
Jesus Christ, there God's creative will finds its most com-
plete expression. W^e find the meaning and the purpose
of the world in Him in Avhom the creative Word became

Tlie Uniqueness of Christ 125

flesh. And in the uniqueness of His Person we see the
uniqueness of a new and creative act of God.

Another and a more fundamental objection may now be
made. Granted that we have in Jesus Christ a unique
union of divine and human, granted that we can account
for that union only through a unique act of creation, still
the question remains, Will His uniqueness be eternal ? He
has been unique in the past. He is unique in the present.
How about the future ? Is He not our Example ? And
does not that fact imply that we may become like Him?
Are we not called on to attain ^^unto a fullgrown man, unto
the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ?" Is
not the union of divine and human in Him the ideal and
goal for all humanity? And when that goal is reached by
others, will not His uniqueness disappear? Will He not
become simply the firstborn among many brethren, first in
time, but no longer first in preeminence ?

VI

We are thus brought to the third and most important
consideration in regard to the uniqueness of Christ. The
fundamental difference between Christ and other men lies
in His power to create a new humanity in His image, after
His likeness. If we ever get to be liJce Him, it will be
through Him. Christ is the creative source of Christlike-
ness. The nearer we attain to Him, the more fully shall
w^e know His unique power to make us so to attain. His
divine Sonship brings to us also the power to become sons
of God. In theological language He is the Son of God ''by
nature," w^hile we are the sons of God "by adoption and

126 The Creative Christ

grace/' the adoption and grace that come through Him.^
He is the foundation on which we may build, and "other
foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which
is Jesus Christ."^ He is the Creator and Founder of the
kingdom of God.

This factor I believe to be of fundamental importance in
regard to the uniqueness of Christ. It demands careful
consideration. And it is especially necessary to emphasize
its connection with the Christian belief about God and man
and the relation between God and man. If we fully appre-
ciate this connection, we shall see in this consideration the
deepest expression of the belief in the deity of Christ.

The difference between Christ and other men does not
consist in His having certain qualities or attributes to
which we can never attain. In that case He would be un-
human, and would cease to be our Example. What He has
is of value to us only because He gives it to us. What He
is is of value to us only because through Him we can
become as He is. Christ is the creative source of Christ-
likeness. The difference between Him and other men lies
not in attributes but in the source of those attributes.

But this is just the difference between God and men.
We must return to our treatment of the idea of God as we
considered it in the second chapter. We saw that the
Christian belief in God presumed the Old Testament belief

"That all men are sons of God "by nature" in the sense that
they are sons of God in their true essential beins:. that divine
sonship is the birthright of all men, is nndonbtedly true. It is
a truth too often neglected by theology, and strongly emphasized
by Frederick W. Robertson and by Phillips Brooks. But in their
actual, "natural" condition, the divine sonship is undeveloped and
unrealized, and needs to be quickened into full reality by the
power of Christ. The latter is the sense intended in the text.

n Cor. 3 :11.

I

The Uniqueness of Christ 127

in God as Creator. That belief brought God into closest
relation with man, a far closer relation than when the belief
in creation was lacking. The pantheistic identity of God
and man brought about only a pseudo-relation between
them, and in reality prevented any closeness of approach.
Man could come near to God only by giving up that which
belongs to his own personal, individual life. The Hebrew
religion on the contrary conceived of God and man pre-
eminently in moral terms, and brought the creative God
into living and personal relation with His creatures. The
Greek idea that the gods were jealous of men found no
place in a belief that gave God the eminence of creative
power.

All this thought we saw to be carried out in its fullness
in our Lord's teaching that God is our Father. The belief
in divine Fatherhood is the belief in creatorship completely
moralized, carried over fully into the moral and spiritual
sphere. God as Father is the absolute source of all that is
best in the life of man. Man as son of God can receive all
that God can give. And yet God is always Creator and
Father, man is alwavs creature and child. There is no
confusion between God and man.

To Christian thought the difference between God and
man consists not in ^'attributes," but in source. God out
of His infinite love creates men in His image, He gives to
them the fullness of His own life. But he alone is the
source and origin of that fullness. He alone has "aseity."
He is from Himself, we are from Him. All that we have
and are we owe to Him. The one and only and ineradi-
cable difference between God and man is that of source.
With that difference kept clear, all other differences fall
away, or become differences only in degree. God remains

128 The Creative Christ

supreme, and His supremacy is manifest in the creative
power of His love.

'Now it is just this difference which Christian faith finds
between Christ and other men. He creates humanity anew
after His likeness. He is God incarnate, God manifested
in the flesh. His Deity is in that creative power which is
the essence of Deity. That which distinguishes Him from
other men is just that which distinguishes God from men.
That which exalts Christ above men, at the same time
draws men to Him. His uniqueness is the uniqueness of
God, the power to create after His own image. Therein
He is the incarnate Word, perfectly revealing the creative
mind and will of God. '^^o man hath seen God at any
time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the
Father, he hath declared him.'' He that hath seen Him
hath seen the Father.^

There are two objections that may be made to this third
suggestion as to the uniqueness of Christ. First, it may
be said that all men have creative power. Does not man's
freedom mean his ability to create ? And in so far as any
man has in him the life of God, does he not have something
of God's creative power ? Does this suggestion really dis-
tinguish Christ from other children of God ?

The answer is that this thought of the creative power of
Christ must be taken in connection with the two preceding
suggestions as to His uniqueness. The first one was that
in Him the union of God and man is perfectly realized.
Through that union He is the perfect, the ideal ^Ean. Now
it is in virtue of that uniqueness that He has unique crea-
tive power, the power to create perfect manhood. The
uniqueness of His creative power is the result of the

iJohn 1 :18 ; 14 :9.

The Uniqiieness of Christ 129

"uniqueness of His Person. And the second suggestion was
that we see in Christ the gift of God, a new creation, the
direct outcome of God's creative will. He is unique in
His direct origin from God. But that same uniqueness
marks the uniqueness of His creative power. His power
comes direct from God, our power comes through Him, the
Son of God. Thus these three suggestions stand together.
He is unique in His own perfect being, unique in His
origin, and His uniqueness is supremely expressed in His
power to create men after His likeness.

The second objection is as follows. Grant that no other
man has realized the fullness of humanity as did Jesus
Christ. Grant that all men, so far as we know, are there-
fore dependent on Him for their highest life. Still, may
not someone, sometime, somewhere, arise who will achieve
perfection apart from Christ? Can we deny such a pos-
sibility ? And if not, does not the possibility destroy His
uniqueness ?

The answer is that in that case there would be a new
Incarnation. As an abstract possibility, we cannot deny
that God might, apart from the course of history which has
been affected by Christ, give Himself again fully in a new
life. We can no more deny such a possibility than we can
deny the possibility of an Incarnation on some other planet.
But not thus do we understand the ways of God as He
has revealed Himself in the history of this world. History
is not cut up into utterly separate parts. Human life is
one, and we may well believe that God deals with it as one.
We believe that Jesus Christ and humanity remade in Him
are the goal of history. The supposition of a new and
separate Incarnation has for us no religious meaning. We
may dismiss it as an academic fancy. It need cast no
doubt on the Christian belief that Jesus Christ is the light

130 The Creative Christ

of the world. And, understanding the Christian salvation
in no narrow sense, but as meaning the fullness of our life
with God, we may say with confidence that ''in none other
is there salvation : for neither is there any other name under
heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be
saved,'' ^ save only the !N^ame of the one Lord and Master,
Jesus Christ.

This uniqueness of the creative Christ is eternal. It
can never be set aside by others becoming like Him, for
that likeness must be accomplished through Him, and will
therefore be the witness to His supremacy. We may be-
come like Christ, but we shall not ourselves become Christs,
for the very meaning of the Christ is that He can create us
in His likeness. The completion of that creation will be
the final witness to the preeminence of our Creator. If
the supreme miracle should ever be accomplished, and I, a
sinful man, be made over in perfect likeness to my Lord,
then first should I fully appreciate and reverence the
supremacy of Him who could accomplish so great a work.
The more Christlike we become the more shall we worship
the creative Christ. When the saints in heaven shall gain
the perfect victory, then shall they take the crowns from
their heads and cast them before the throne of the Lamb.

Thus the attitude of man to the creative Christ, as to the
creative God, is that of absolute humility and of perfect
boldness. Of absolute humility, for we owe all to Him as
our Master. Of perfect boldness, because the Master calls
us not servants but friends. He gives to us of His own
fullness, and in the joy of that gift we walk with Him
boldly and unafraid.

Here we have the supreme expression of that principle

^Acts 4:12.

The Uniqueness of Christ 131

of Christian belief on which I have before dwelt. The
truth of God becomes true for men who are the sons and
heirs of God. God gives Himself to men. And the com-
plete expression of that gift is in Jesus Christ and in
humanity remade after His image. God has given Himself
in His Son that He might be the firstborn among many
brethren. ^'If God is for us, who is against us ? He that
spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all,
how shall he not also with him freely give us all things ?"^

It need hardly be said that herein lies the very essence
of the Christian Church. Get rid of all the narrow and
partisan associations which disfigure the name of the
Church of Christ. In the broadest sense, the Church is
humanity remade after the image of the Christ. The
Church is the Bride of Christ, rejoicing in the fullness of
His love. The Church is the Body of Christ, manifesting
the power of His Spirit. It is the outward and visible
sign, the Sacrament, of the kingdom of God. It can never
put itself in the place of Christ, for it knows Him always
as its Lord and Master, it derives its power from Him.
But it does derive that power from Him and from His
creative Love, and in the confidence of that Love it goes on
conquering and to conquer, knowing that the gates of hell
shall not prevail against it.

We may sum up briefly the three considerations which,
on the basis of the Christian belief about God and man,
express the uniqueness of Christ. In the first place. He is
unique in that He is the expression of the complete union
of God and man, in which union true humanity consists.
Secondly, He is unique in that we see in Him no mere
product of the race, but the direct gift of God to man.

*Rom. 8:29-32.

132 The Creative Christ

And, thirdly, He is eternally unique in tliat He is the
Master of Life, the creative power to shape us after His
likeness, the Creator and Builder of the kingdom of God.

CHAPTER V

THE II^CARI^ATE LIFE

We now turn to tlie bearing of our previous discussion on
certain problems which concern the historic Person of
Jesus Christ. We considered in the first chapter the neces-
sity of interpreting the Incarnation in the terms of our
present thought, and we saw that those terms are essentially
moral terms, which are also those of the New Testament.
In the second chapter, we came to the result that the moral
concept of God and of man leads to the complete union of
God and man. Divine-humanity is the goal of God's
creative love. In the third chapter we considered the In-
carnation as the realization of the goal in Jesus Christ.
The fourth chapter dealt with the uniqueness of Christ, as
the One in whom that unity is perfectly accomplished, in
whom we see the direct creative act of God, and who, as the
Creator of a new humanity after His own likeness, becomes
eternally the unique Lord and Master of Life.

We turn now to the application of these results to our
interpretation of the Person of Jesus, to the way in which
the unity of God and man is accomplished in Him, and to
the problems of His knowledge and of His character.

Now if in this discussion we hold fast to the belief in
God as a moral Being, and to His union with man as a

133

134 The Creative Christ

moral union, we are, I believe, led to one fundamental
result of much importance. The Incarnation, as the his-
torical actualization of the moral unity of God and man,
cannot be regarded as an event taking place in a moment
of time. It is a moral process which concerns the whole
life of Jesus. The unity of God and man in Him is not
accomplished in a momentary act. It is accomplished in
the moral development and growth and completion of His
divine-human Personality. The union is a personal union,
and personality is the outcome of moral growth. The
Incarnation as the moral and personal union of divine and
human can take place only through a process of moral and
personal development. The Incarnation concerns the whole
life of Jesus.

The Incarnation is often, perhaps generally, regarded as
a momentary event identical with the conception or the
birth of Jesus. Such an idea is perfectly logical if the
Incarnation be a physical event, the giving of a new ^^sub-
stance'' or ^^nature" to humanity. This idea of substance
was, as we have seen, a leading idea in Greek thought, and
it found its way into Christian theology from Greek
sources. The result was that the Incarnation was too often
interpreted in physical instead of in moral terms. And
thus it could easily be identified with the conception or the
birth of Jesus. This same thought logically led to a
similarly physical concept of the Church and of the Sacra-
ments. Through the impartation of a divine substance in
the Incarnation, the Church becomes a new physical organ-
ism, depending for its continuance on a tactual connection
with and succession from its source. The Sacraments
become means through which a physically conceived
"grace," regarded as a substance, a thing, is conveyed.
Salvation comes through the reception of this physical and

The Incarnate Life 135

life-giving substance, and hence there is no salvation out-
side the Church. The thought is that of the impartation
of a divine substance through the Incarnation, and the
whole process tends to become formal and mechanical, even
magical, in its nature. Such a thought is perfectly logical
if the Incarnation is regarded as primarily a physical
event, taking place in a moment of time.

The true Christian thought must be that of a moral
process and a moral power. If God be a moral Being and
if man be truly the child of God, then the union of God
and man, and the consequence of that union must be ex-
pressed in moral terms. The Incarnation is not a physical
event, but a moral and spiritual union. And a moral and
spiritual union must take place in the form of a moral and
spiritual process. For moral realities can take place only
in time and in the form of growth. The Incarnation
covers the whole life of Jesus, His growth. His temptation,
His victory.

All morality implies growth. And that growth must be
not the result of physical necessity, but must be the expres-
sion of the free spirit. A moral event cannot be produced
all at once by force. !Not even omnipotence can create by
a mere fiat a righteous man, for omnipotence does not
imply moral contradictions. A righteous man must be
produced through growth into righteousness. God might
produce a physically full-grown man, and might give to
him every good impulse and disposition. But he would
be only an imitation of a truly good man. His righteous-
ness would not be real righteousness unless it had gro^vn,
his character would not be real character unless it were the
outcome of a free process. God can no more make offhand
a righteous man than He can make offhand a man thirty
years old. For a man to be thirty years old, thirty

136 The Creative Christ

years must have elapsed, and for a man to be a righteous
man, the process of development must lie behind his right-
eousness.

So it must be with the Incarnation, if the Incarnation be
the expression of the moral God in the moral life of man.
It must itself take place in the form of morality, that is, of
growth. The Incarnation is identical with the whole life
and development of the divine-humanity of Jesus. And
that development must have moral meaning and moral
value. We must see the Incarnation being accomplished
in Him who increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor
with God and man, who was tempted in all points like as
we are, yet without sin, who though He was a Son yet
learned obedience by the things which. He suffered, and,
having been made perfect became unto all them that obey
Him the Author of eternal salvation.-^ As we now recog-
nize that the Atonement cannot be confined to the death of
Christ, but must be expressed in His whole life of obedi-
ence, finding its consummation in and giving its meaning
to the cross, so must the Incarnation not be limited to His
birth, but must concern His whole life of temptation and
struggle and victory. In the whole development of the
Person of Jesus we see the process of the Incarnate Life.^

^Luke 2 :52. Heb. 4 :15 ; 5 :8-9.

^he phrase is suggested by the title of Dr. Henry S. Nash's
book on the Atonement, The Atoning Life. The idea of the Incar-
nation as a growth, I believe I first owe io I. A. Dorner, System
of Christian Doctrine, Eng. Trans, vol. iii, pp. 32ff. I have pre-
viously treated this subject in an article in The Harvard Theo-
logical Review, vol. VII, No. 4, "The Growth of the Incarnation,"
and I acknowledge with thanks permission to make use here of
certain parts of that article.

The Incarnate Life 137

II

We may look at the subject in a somewhat different way.
In the third chapter I discussed the Incarnation from the
point of view of revelation. There we saw that men's ideas
of revelation have varied in accordance with their ideas of
God. If God be regarded as impersonal, as the mere
underlying essence of all reality, then He can be revealed
in things. But if God be personal, moral, then He can be
revealed only through moral beings, through persons.
Thus the Christian belief holds that God is revealed in life,
in history. All life in some degree reveals God, and the
full revelation can come only in the perfect Life. In the
life of Jesus the Word of God, the revelation, the message,
of God, has become flesh. All human life is to some degree
an utterance of the Word of God. In Him in whom the
Word of God became flesh, there is the surmning up of all
which human life had imperfectly revealed of God. The
course of human history is a preparation for the incarnate
Word, is, we may say, a partial incarnation of the Word.
In the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son, and the
Word became flesh in the perfect Life.

E'ow that which is true of the development of human life
as a whole, through which the Word is partly revealed,
holds true also of the growth of Him in whom the Word
finds full expression. God's Word can be expressed in a.
life in proportion as that life reaches completeness. In
Jesus we see the growth of the perfect Life which ever
more and more completely reveals God. The union of
God's Word, God's Logos, with humanity is a moral union,
and that moral union can take place only through moral
growth. The life of Jesus is perfect in that each stage is
perfect in its kind, is perfect in the degree possible for that

138 The Creative Christ

stage. At birth there can be given only the conditions
which make possible a perfect development. In the Child
there is revealed that which is possible for the child. And
as the life develops through temptation and struggle, made
perfect through suffering, there is ever more completely
accomplished the union of divine and human. In the final
struggle of the cross the victory is won, the Incarnate Life
is complete, and the seal of that completeness is revealed in
the risen and ascended Lord. In the whole life of tempta-
tion and struggle and victory we see the process and de-
velopment of the Incarnate Life.

The thought may be expressed in still another way, and
I risk redundancy for the sake of clearness. The Incar-
nation expressed in moral terms is the Incarnation of the
divine character. There is no thing in God w^hich can
become incarnate, for God is not a thing. He is a moral
Being, and if He is to be revealed He must be revealed in
that which is of the essence of His beinsr. That essence is
love, character. He that hath seen Christ hath seen the
Father, for He has seen the character of the Father, and
character is the deepest thins: that we know or can know
about God. To see God in Christ is to see the divine love
and righteousness and truth perfectly expressed in the life
that reveals God.

As previously maintained in the first chapter we are not
to suppose that an Incarnation expressed in moral terms,
as the Incarnation of the divine character, is anything less
than an Incarnation of the divine being. If it be true that
the essence of God is love, then love, and not some abstract
concept of reality, is itself the very being of God. And if
we see in Christ the divine character we see in Him the
very reality of the divine life. The Incarnation of the

The Incarnate Life 139

divine character is the Incarnation of that which is the
deepest reality of God.

It follows that, if the character of Jesus Christ is the
supreme revelation of God, then the character of Christ
must be true moral character. It cannot be produced by
force, nor can it be the necessary result of a native endow-
ment. It must be the outcome of a moral process. And
as that process becomes more complete, so is God more per-
fectly revealed. The indwelling of God, the Incarnation
of God, becomes ever more complete until the perfect end
in the victory of the cross. And in the resurrection and
the ascension the Victor is evermore at one with the Father.
The Incarnation is accomplished. God and man are per-
fectly united. The gospel of the Incarnation is the story
of the Incarnate Life.

It is important to avoid an essential misunderstanding.
This thought is not that of a man who becoming perfect is
therefore taken up into the life of God. That would be to
substitute a man becoming God for God becoming man, to
put an apotheosis in place of the Incarnation. It would lose
the religious value of the Person of Christ, and would make
of Him at most a moral example. But the thought is not
that He grows into a perfect man and is then united with
God. Christian faith sees in Jesus not first the ascent of
humanity to God, but first the gift of God to humanity. It
is not that a human person grows to perfection inde-
pendently of union wdth God. It is rather that the union
of divine and human constitutes the essential Person of
Jesus. But that union takes place gradually, and as it
becomes ever more complete, so does His Person grow to its
full realization. The Incarnation is no less an Incarnation
because it takes the form of growth.

This thought gives greater meaning and value to the

140 The Creative Christ

whole life of Jesus. It is not as though certain parts of
His life alone had meaning. His birth, His temptation,
His crucifixion, His resurrection. His ascension are not
isolated events. Thej receive their meaning from His life
as a whole. The birth is the beginning of a process that is
completed only in His perfect life. The cross is the sum-
ming up of a process that began at birth. The resurrection
and the ascension are the eternal results of the life that has
won the perfect victory. These events have their meaning
and value not in themselves but as the outcome and expres-
sion of His whole life. They are the crises which derive
their meaning from the process of which they are the result.
They are Mounts of Transfiguration, high points of His
divine-human experience, sacramental expressions of the
unitv of God and man which through His whole life was
ever becoming more perfectly realized. They are the Sac-
raments of the Incarnate Life.

This thought gives added meaning to the life of every
follower of Christ who would walk in the footsteps of his
Master. Through Him we are to win union with God.
His incarnate life is the source of that divine-humanity
which is to be accomplished in us through His example and
His power. And that achievement is the daily task of the
Christian life. We are to make His experience our own.
Day by day we are to follow in the path He trod. And
this thought gives added meaning and value to the Church
Year. It is the sign and symbol of the daily Christian life
in its following of the Master. From Advent to Ascension
we are to bear within our hearts the birth, the dying, and
the rising of our Lord. These events are the expression of
that perfect Life which was manifested that we might have
life and that we might have it abundantly.

The Incarnate Life 141

III

The concept of the Incarnation as a moral process pro-
vides the best way to approach the problems of our Lord's
knowledge and of His righteousness. To identify the
Incarnation with His conception or birth is to heap up diffi-
culties, and to deprive His life of its genuinely human
qualities. To regard His Incarnation as the gradual
development of a moral process is to enable us to see His
knowledge as progressive, and to regard His righteousness
as the outcome of the struggle and temptation which alone
can make that righteousness real.

In regard to our Lord's knowledge, it is natural that
some persons should feel a shrinking at the problem, and
that to them the discussion should seem irreverent, a too
curious prying into the mind of Him who is our Lord and
Master. In reply there are two things to be said. In the
first place, the problem is squarely put before us by the
E^ew Testament. It needs only an unbiased reading of the
Gospels to realize that the limitations in the knowledge of
our Lord are plainly indicated. If we are to study the
iN'ew Testament we cannot evade the problem. And in the
second place, if Christ be truly our Lord and Master, and
if He is to be our guide, it is above all necessary that we
should understand Him and what He thought. The su-
preme guide for the Christian is "the mind of Christ."^
And we cannot understand the mind of Christ unless we
try reverently to see Him as He truly was. He is the
Truth, and He should be truly known. The problem is
not the result of irreverent curiosity, but is the outcome of
a regard for the I^ew Testament and of a reverence for
Christ Himself.

^I Cor. 2 :16.

142 The Creative Christ

It hardly seems necessary to-day to argue that our Lord
was not omniscient. The older theory that He must if
divine have kno^\TL all things even from the cradle came
from a false concept of the Incarnation, indeed from a real
denial of the Incarnation. Tor the belief in the Incar-
nation is the belief that God has actually been manifested
in human life. And He is not so manifested if that life
when it receives the divine ceases to be human in its con-
ditions. The belief in the omniscience of Jesus was the
outcome of the dualism which held that God and man could
not be perfectly united, and which therefore found it neces-
sary to do away with the conditions of humanity in order
that humanity might receive God. But if we really believe
in the Incarnation, if we believe that God can be and has
been manifested in human life, then we shall get rid of the
antagonism. We shall believe that God can be manifested
under genuinely human conditions, and we shall not begin
with a presupposition which prevents us from reading the
New Testament as it stands, and which dehumanizes the
Christ. We shall ask fairly the question, What was the
nature of His knowledge, and what were its limitations ?

As to the E'ew Testament witness to those limitations,
the matter has been so thoroughly studied that little need
here be said. St. Luke says that He '^advanced in wis-
dom.''^ He is represented as acquiring knowledge. He
asks for information. And in one passage which even the
most radical criticism maintains to be an authentic saying
of our Lord, He declares of His coming again, ^'But of that
day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in
heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.'^^ To suppose
that He was possessed of omniscience is to disregard the

^Luke 2 :52.

'Mark 13 :32, Matt. 24 :36.

The Incarnate Life 143

witness of the ]^ew Testament and to be wise above that
which is written.^

One unsatisfactory attempt to explain the limitations of
our Lord's knowledge has often been made by reference to
His two ''natures/' by holding that in His divine nature
He was possessed of omniscience, while His human nature
had human limitations. Thus it is maintained that He
knew certain things ''as God" which He was ignorant of
"as man." When He expressed ignorance, He referred
only to His human nature. But the theory is artificial and
full of difficulties. It separates the personality of Jesus
into two parallel lines, really making of Him two separate
persons. Such a theory virtually denies the Incarnation,
in that it denies a real union of divine and human. The
union is at most a spatial one, merely the union of two
different lines of consciousness under the outward form of
a bodily person. Substantially this view was the heresy
ascribed to J^estorius and condemned at the Council of
Ephesus. And entirely aside from its condemnation at
that somewhat irregular and decidedly disorderly Council,
it merits condemnation by any one who believes in a real
Incarnation of God in Jesus.

Even more important are the moral difficulties involved.
To suppose that our Lord could deliberately say that He
was ignorant of that which w^as at the same within His
divine consciousness is to reflect on His moral integrity.
And to suppose that we can defend that mode of speech
on His part by explaining that He knew "as God" what
He was ignorant of "as man" is to class Him with those
casuists who defend "mental reservation." Such an ex-

*For a careful study of the New Testament facts, rendered more
impressive by the cautious conservatism of tlie writer, see Arthur
James Mason, The Conditions of Our Lord's Life on Earth.

144 The Creative Christ

planation cannot be tolerated by any one who wishes to
maintain either the divine-humanity or the moral integrity
of Jesus.

IV

Of more importance in modern theology as an explana-
tion of the limits of our Lord's knowledge has been the
theory of the '^Kenosis/' namely that our Lord, the second
Person of the Trinity, in the Incarnation voluntarily laid
aside, ''emptied Himself" of. His divine attributes, in-
cluding His omniscience, and assumed the limitations of
humanity. Thus as Man He lived a life of humility and
obedience, and, having become obedient even to the death
of the cross, was exalted to His former position of glory.
The word "Kenosis" is of course taken from the Greek of
Philippians 2 :7,^ and this whole passage is given as the
chief exegetical support for the theory.

Unquestionably this theory has a sound purpose. It
makes an honest attempt to face the facts as to the limita-
tions of our Lord's knowledge indicated in the Gospels, and
to do so without recourse to the artificial distinction be-
tween His knowledge ''as God" and "as man." ;N"everthe-
less the theory has fundamental difficulties. These diffi-
culties all concern the question as to what is meant by the
preexistence of Christ. I have several times touched upon
this subject in my criticism of the theory that our Lord's
humanity was impersonal. But the subject is of great
importance, and requires a fuller treatment. It is directly
brought before us by the theory of the Kenosis.

The preexistence of the Logos, the Word, the divine side
of our Lord's nature, the eternal Christ if we will use that

'eauToi' eK6i/a)(7ei/.

The Incarnate Life 145

expression, is an essential part of the Christian belief in
the Incarnation. The Logos belongs to the eternal life of
God, partly revealed in all history, and perfectly incarnate
in Jesus Christ. But Jesus Christ Himself is not only
divine. He is the union of divine and human. His per-
sonality cannot be expressed in terms of either divine or
human alone. Its very essence consists in the union of
divine and human. That union constitutes His unique
personality, that of Jesus Christ of E'azareth, the Son of
God and the Son of Man.

'Now the doctrine of the Kenosis confuses these two
things, the preexistence of the divine Logos or divine nature
of Christ with the preexistence of the total divine-human
personality, that of the God-Man, Jesus Christ. It thinks
of Jesus of ISTazareth in His total personality as preexisting
in heaven, and then simply coming to earth. But that
coming to earth adds nothing to His personal character or
life. Such a conception brings us into serious difficulties
both in regard to the doctrine of the Trinity and in regard
to the doctrine of the divine-humanity of Jesus Christ.

As regards the doctrine of the Trinity, this theory con-
ceives of the three 'Tersons," ^Tersonae," ^'Hypostases,"
of the Trinity as though each one represented a separate,
individual '^person" in our modern sense of the word, as
though there were three people in the being of God. And
then it supposes that the second of these ^'Persons" volun-
tarily relinquishes His heavenly attributes, comes to earth,
and passes through a human experience, as the result of
which He is reinstated in possession of the attributes which
He had relinquished. Such a view leads to a belief in the
Trinity as essentially tritheistic, as consisting practically in
three gods. It is hardly necessary to speak of the ad-
ditional difficulties which result as to the trinitarian life of

146 The Creative Christ

God and its continuance during the period of the Incar-
nation. The whole conception expresses a view of the
Trinity which is utterly out of accord with the ISTew Testa-
ment belief in the unity of God, and which is a departure
from the original meaning and purpose of the word ''per-
son" in its Trinitarian sense.

Of equal importance are the difficulties which this theory
involves as to the Person of Christ. In making His total
personality preexistent it leaves for His humanity no place
except as the form under which He appears on earth. His
only self is that of the Logos. Here we have again essen-
tially the old heresy of ApoUinaris, that our Lord had no
human soul or spirit, that its place was taken by the Logos.
I have already traced in the third chapter the opposition of
the Church to this heresy, and the way in which the Church
contended for the genuine humanity of Jesus. And we
have already there noted how under the influence of Greek
thought the humanity of Christ became gradually less and
less emphasized, until finally the doctrine that His human-
ity was impersonal attained a certain quasi orthodoxy.
But this was no less than the reappearance of the teaching
of ApoUinaris, or of its later form in the monophysite
heresy that Our Lord had no human nature. For a human
nature without personality is no more a genuine human
nature than is human nature without a soul or spirit. The
doctrine that His humanity played no part in His personal
life should be abandoned by any one who wishes to believe
in a true and complete Incarnation, in a real union of
divine and human. And with the abandonment of this
doctrine it should be recognized that the preexistence of

Tlie Incarnate Life 147

Christ applies to His divine nature, to the Logos, and not
to the total personality of Jesus of ISTazareth.^

From the point of view of the Trinity as consisting of
three separate egos, one of which simply comes to earth in
Jesus Christ, there are just three possible ways of inter-
preting the Person of Christ. There is, first, the open
monophysite declaration that He had no human nature.
His omniscience is implied, and His humanity becomes a
mere appearance. Or, secondly, there is assumed that in
Him there is a separate human personality, which coexists
with His divine self. This theory separates Him into two

^It is interesting to see how the doctrine of the dwiroffTaala
or lack of personality, of the human nature of our Lord, is treated
by some modern writers. Bishop Gore somewhat half-heartedly
defends it in a note. "The truth which the phrase 'Christ's im-
personal manhood' is intended to guard, is that the humanity which
our Lord assumed had no independent personality. It found its
personality in the Son who assumed it. But as assumed by Him
it was most truly personal." {The Incarnation of the Son of God.
Note 34, p. 279. Italics in text.) Notice the distinction between
"Him" and "it." The Him belongs entirely to the preexistent Son.
The it applies to His humanity.

Somewhat similarly writes Dr. Francis J. Hall : "The im-
personality, avvTTocTacia, ascribed to the Manhood of Christ by
catholic writers had reference to that Manhood considered apart
from the divine Person who assumed it. and gave it being by
assuming it. It [notice throughout the "it"] is truly personal, but
its personality is that of the Eternal Word — not a separate ego,

other than His The Manhood of Christ never had any

other personal subject or self than God the Son ; and this interior
relation of the Manhood to the second Person of the Godhead, is
called ivviro(TTa(Tia. The two terms. dwiroaTaaia and ivvTro(XTa<rla,
require to be taken together, if we would avoid misunderstanding
their application." {The Incaimation, pp. 134-5.) Evidently the
Eternal Word has "a separate ego," distinct from the ego of
the Father and that of the Holy Spirit, and this ego forms the
total personality of Jesus. Can He then be said to have in any
real sense a human soul or spirit? And does not this whole point
of view imply essentially a tritheistic interpretation of the
Trinity?

148 The Creative Christ

distinct persons, and is the heresy condemned as that of
Nestorius. Or, thirdly, there is the theory of the Kenosis,
which we have been considering. Of these three possibili-
ties, the third is doubtless the best. But the fundamental
difficulty remains. The Trinity is regarded in tritheistic
terms, and the humanity of Jesus is not real.

The view of the Incarnation which I am maintaining
avoids these difficulties. It holds that the personality of
Jesus Christ is formed by the complete union of the divine
Logos or Word with humanity. Thus His personality is
both divine and human. It cannot be interpreted in either
divine or human terms alone. We cannot ascribe to the
Logos a complete and separate personality apart from the
one personality of the Trinitarian God. Therefore the
preexistence of Christ is that of the divine Logos and not
that of the total divine-human personality of Jesus.

I^ow comes a problem which it would be unfair for me
to shirk, and which calls for careful consideration. Does
the [N^ew Testament teach a preexistence only of the Logos,
of the divine side or "nature" of Christ, or does it also
teach a preexistence of the total personality of Jesus
Christ ? Is not the latter thought found in the fourth
Gospel, in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews,
and in the writings of St. Paul, not only in the Kenosis
passage but in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Colos-
sians, as well as elsewhere? The answer to this question
should be given on the basis of simple exegesis, the honest
attempt to find the meaning of the writers. We have no
right to let our theology be the guide to the understanding
of the ISTew Testament. Exegesis has been too often

The Incarnate Life 149

strained for the purpose of buttressing one's own theology,
whether orthodox or liberal. And as a matter of exegesis
I am led to conclude that the 'New Testament writers do
not sharply draw the distinction that I have made between
the eternal element or essence in the being of Jesus and His
total personality, and that the latter is often thought of as
preexistent, that Jesus is sometimes regarded as a pre-
existent Man w^ho comes to earth from a heavenly habita-
tion. But when it is attempted to make this thought an
essential part of our theology to-day, and to let it lead
to what is for us virtually a tritheistic concept of God and
a non-human Christ, there are considerations which must
make us pause.

In the first place it may well be noted that in the Kenosis
passage in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Philip-
pians, St. Paul is dealing primarily with ethical admoni-
tions rather than with theological or metaphysical theories.
^'Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus."
It is the humility of Christ ajs shown in the Incarnation
and in the cross which St. Paul is setting forth as an
example to men. So also in the Second Epistle to the
Corinthians where he says of Christ ^^that though he was
rich, yet for your sakes he became poor/'^ the writer is
thinking of the Incarnation as an act of sacrifice which
should arouse the Churches to liberal giving for their
poorer brethren. To take these passages in which the lead-
ing thought is that of love manifested in sacrifice and to
make them the basis for the elaborate metaphysical theory
of the Kenosis is to run a risk of misinterpreting the
writer's thought. Thus, Wordsworth writes : —

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting :

^11 Cor. 8 :9.

150 The Creative Christ

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar :

IN'ot in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glorj do we come

From God, who is our home."

If we should interpret these words as though they were a
philosophical statement of the theory of the preexistence of
souls, we should misinterpret Wordsworth's thought. He
himself in a note says that the idea "is far too shadowy a
notion to be recommended to faith, as more than an element
in our instincts of immortality," that he used it ''as a poet."
So with St. Paul we must be on our guard lest we stretch
a form of expression used in enforcing a moral truth fur-
ther than was intended by the writer. Still this caution
by no means alters the fact that the idea of preexistence
and that probably of the total personality of Jesus is in the
mind of St. Paul as well as of other writers of the ]^ew
Testament.

Secondly, we must, therefore, take note of the fact that
the idea of preexistence was in E^ew Testament times a
familiar one both to Jewish and to Hellenistic thought, and
that it played a very different part from that which it plays
in our thinking to-day. It was characteristic of the time
to ascribe preexistence to any reality which had divine
meaning and value. The Jewish Apocalyptic literature is
full of examples of this tendency, and it is frequently re-
flected in the ^ew Testament. The Epistle to the Hebrews
thinks of the earthly tabernacle as made according to the
pattern of a preexisting heavenly reality.^ St. Paul con-

^Heb. 8 :5. Cf . Exodus 25 :40.

The Incarnate Life 151

trasts "the Jerusalem that now is'' with "the Jerusalem that
is abdve."^ And tlie seer of the Apocalypse sees "the holy
city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from
God."" Also Greek thought was conversant with the world
of eternal Ideas where preexisted the earthly realities.
Both in Jewish and in Hellenistic thought the idea of
preexistence is readily applied to that which has divine
meaning and value.

'Now the New Testament sees in Jesus Christ the direct
gift of God to humanity, the very life and being of God.
His Person is of abiding significance and value, as He
admits us into the life of God. This thought is expressed
by St. John in that he sees in Christ the divine Logos
incarnate, and the Logos belongs to the essential life of
God Himself. And the same thought, although not the
same form of expression, is found in St. Paul and in the
Epistle to the Hebrews. ^Now it was inevitable that, with
the prevailing idea of preexistence, this belief in the deity
of Christ and in the presence in Him of the eternal Logos,
should take the form of the preexistence of His total per-
sonality. In that form of expression no distinction is
drawn between the divine and human elements of His
Person. But this thought does not imply, as it would for
us, a division of "persons," in our modern sense, in the
being of God, nor a denial of the genuine humanity of
Jesus. So to make use of it is to be untrue to the New
Testament itself.

The essential content of the l^ew Testament thought
seems to me, then, to be this : — first, the preexistence in the
life of God of the eternal Logos or Word, the creative and

^Gal. 4 :25-26.
2Rev. 21 :2.

152 The Creative Christ

revealing principle of the life of God, that which theology
knows as the second Person of the Trinity; and, secondly,
the deity and the abiding significance and value of the
Person of Jesus Christ, in whom the Word became flesh.
But for our thinking, in which preexistence plays such a
different part from that which it did in Xew Testament
times, the preexistence of Christ means the preexistence of
the divine Logos, and not that of the total personality of
Jesus of E'azareth. But with this result disappears the
entire basis for the doctrine of the Kenosis as a voluntary
renunciation on the part of the second Person of the
Trinity. We must look elsewhere for an explanation of
our Lord's human life.

VI

We can approach the problem of our Lord's knowledge
far more simply from the point of view of the Incarnation
as a development. We shall see the whole life of Jesus as a
growth, and we shall be able to understand St. Luke's say-
ing that He ^^advanced in wisdom and stature." He grows
in body, in mind, and in spirit, and in each respect His
growth is genuine. The life of God is the overruling and
controlling source of the life of Jesus. But that life of
God enters into Him as His own life develops, its entering
in is indeed the source of that development. Thus as to
His knowledge we have no need to assume any omniscience,
or any knowledge that is beyond the limits of a perfectly
normal human life. He learns as a child, in all worldly
matters His knowledge is that of His experience and that
of His time. We shall not look to Him for infallibility in
matters of science or of history. But we shall look to Him
for that knowledge of God which comes to a life whose

The Incarnate Life 153

unclouded source is God Himself. And that knowledge of
God is ever more perfectly received as Jesus the Son of
God enters into ever more perfect unity with the Father.
His knowledge grows as the unity of God and man in Him
becomes ever more complete. When that perfect union is
accomplished, then are the limitations of knowledge done
away. It is written even of us that then shall we know
even as we have been known. -^ And for Him the fullness
of knowledge is the result of the fullness of the incarnate
life. We shall not look for omniscience until that perfect
union is accomplished.

Does such a view weaken or destroy the moral and
spiritual authority of our Lord? Two things are to be
said in reply. In the first place, we must remember that
His was the perfectly righteous life, unclouded by sin.
And sin is that which, coming between God and man, keeps
us from the knowledge of God. We know little of the
limits of knowledge belonging to a life without sin. And
in Jesus we have the perfect life whose constant source is
the very life of God Himself. Thus He is the supreme
possessor of moral and spiritual insight. 'No moral or
spiritual error could have entered a life whose source was
the eternal and revealing Word of God. His knowledge
was progressive, there were things He did not know. But
so long as the relation with the Father was the overshadow-
ing and undisturbed source of His knowledge, so long could
there have been no place for moral or spiritual error. Such
error comes from sin. In Him who knew no sin we find
perfectly revealed the divine character and the divine will.
To Him in whom were given the very mind and heart of
God we go with confidence as to our guide into the life of
God. He that hath seen Him hath seen the Father.

»I Cor. 13 :12.

154 The Creative Christ

Secondly, we must ask ourselves, What kind of an
authority are we looking for in Christ ? We find in Him
the revelation of God. But how does that revelation come,
and what kind of a revelation are we seeking ? Do we seek
from Him a system of theological doctrines, a series of
verbal statements which will convey to us accurate ideas of
God ? Surely if such had been the divine purpose, Jesus
would have written down or dictated the truths which He
wished to teach. Surely God would have provided some
means by which that record would have been preserved for
us without alteration, and beyond any shadow of question.
Such a record we do not have. We have only a few words
coming down to us in the language which Jesus spoke, and
the Greek translations of his teaching come to us in dif-
ferent forms, brought from varied sources, the origin of
which presents still a not perfectly solved problem. If we
look to our Lord for such a collection of accurate theological
statements, we shall indeed be disappointed. May it not
be a mark of divine Providence that we do not have any
such infallible record, any such perfectly authenticated
account of the exact words, the ipsissima verba, of our
Lord ? If we had such, might we not be greatly tempted
to linger by the words and so to fail to perceive the Word?
For the Word of God does not consist of sentences. 'No
mere verbal statements can show us God. The Word of
God is Life, the perfect Life which reveals God. That
Life, perfectly setting forth the divine w^ill and the divine
mind, is the constant guide to the follower of Christ. In
Jesus He finds God.

The limitations of our Lord's knowledge form a diffi-
culty for us only if we look to Him for that which it was
not God's purpose that He should give. But if we look to
Him not for mere theological statements, which can never

The Incarnate Life 155

reveal God, but for the very life and being of God in the
life of man, then we shall find Him the supreme Master
and Guide. We shall see in Him God manifest in the
flesh.

To such a thought of Jesus as revealing the will and
character of God, the limitations of His knowledge are not
an obstacle. Rather, without such limitations, we could
not find in Him the truly righteous character. For true
righteousness must be worked out in temptation and
struggle, and there could be no real temptation and struggle
for one who was omniscient, and for whom therefore there
could be no place for the life of prayer and of faith.
There could have been no value in the cross if it had pre-
sented no problem, if it had made no demand for a victory
of faith. If everything had lain clear before Him, abso-
lutely known and foreseen in all its details, then the cross
would have been only the endurance of a few hours' suffer-
ing, instead of being the victory of the faith that overcame
the world. Only through the limitations of knowledge
w^hich belong to genuine human life could He have been
made perfect through suffering, could He have achieved the
perfect righteousness.

VII

Thus from the problem of His knowledge we are brought
to the problem of His character. How was His perfect
righteousness achieved, and what was its relation to struggle
and temptation ?

So long as the Incarnation is regarded as a momentary
event, identical with conception or birth, so long is it need-
less and even impossible to regard the temptation of Jesus
as real. The inability to sin, the non posse pecca/re, is the

156 The Creative Christ

only logical statement concerning Him who from His birth
is identical with God. Thus many theologians have denied
that Jesus could really be tempted, or, at any rate, tempted
by sin. His character is determined by His native endow-
ment.

Such a theory gives us at most a sinless Christ. It does
not give us a Christ of actual righteousness. For sinless-
ness is a negative quality, and may be due to the absence of
temptation. A stick or a stone is sinless. But righteous-
ness is more than sinlessness, and demands a growth which
shall be real, which shall be made perfect through suffering,
in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.-^ In-
stead of the sinlessness of Christ, I prefer, therefore, the
larger phrase, His perfect righteousness.

It is more advantageous, even from an apologetic point
of view, to deal first with the idea of Christ's perfect right-
eousness, rather than first with the idea of His sinlessness.
For sinlessness is a negative term, and to prove a negation
is always the hardest task, it requires a knowledge of every
possible contingency. To prove the sinlessness of Christ
to one who does not already believe in Him, demands that
we should have an exhaustive knowledge of the details of
His life. Such knowledge we do not have. But what we
do have in Him is a positive righteousness which sets a new
standard for the righteousness of the world. It is not as
though, without Him, we could construct a standard of
righteousness, and then, condescendingly applying it to
Him, assert that He comes up to our standard, and that
therefore He is sinless ! It is rather that in Him we find
a new ideal of righteousness, infinitely greater than that
which we could have formed without Him. We do not

*Heb. 2 :10 ; 4 :15.

The Incarnate Life 157

judge Him, He judges us. All judgment is committed
unto Him because He is the Son of man. He is the new
standard, the new ideal, for human life. And that stand-
ard at once includes sinlessness and is more than sinless-
ness. We are to deal not with the negative sinlessness, but
with the positive and perfect righteousness of Christ.

It is in the idea of the Incarnation as a growth that we
find the possibility of such a positive righteousness. In
His native endowment we find that which makes such a
righteousness possible. But for its actual realization, grow-
ing and yet with each stage perfect in its growth, we must
turn to His development in the midst of struggle and
temptation.

But, then, of course it may be asked. How could He be
tempted if His life was perfect at every stage? Is not
temptation due to the sin which doth so easily beset us?
Would there be temptation in a perfect life ? Thus it has
been maintained that the perfection of His character rules
out the possibility of temptation.

Such a view not only flatly contradicts the New Testa-
ment but it also deprives the Person of Christ of moral and
spiritual power. He is removed from such struggle as we
have to endure, and His life becomes without moral sig-
nificance for us. And it is not difficult to point out the
fallacy of the theory which leads to such a result.

In the first place, this theory confuses temptation with
sin. But temptation is a good, for it is necessary to the
development of the moral life. And whatever is necessary
for morality is not sin. It was the Spirit by which Jesus
was driven into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. ^
Sin is the yielding to temptation, righteousness is the re-

^Mark 1 :12-13, Matt. 4 :1, Luke 4 :l-2

158 The Creative Christ

sisting of it. The tree of the guilty knowledge of good and
evil, the tree of temptation, to eat which is to die, stands in
the midst of the garden of the moral life. Without it, the
garden would indeed be a garden of animals. It is false
logic to confuse temptation with sin.

Secondly, this theory confuses a moral process with a
moral result. It is indeed true that to a perfected character
temptation ceases to appeal. But such a result is the out-
come of a moral process. At every stage in that process
there must be the temptation without which that final result
could not be reached. And if the final victory of our Lord
over temptation be a moral victory, it must be due to
struggle against temptation, by which struggle He was
made perfect.

But now comes the difiiculty. In our own imperfect
and sinful lives we never meet with temptation which is not
affected by our sins and failures. It is hard for us to
conceive what temptation would be in a life apart from sin.
How could the sinless Jesus have known any temptation
and struggle comparable to our own ?

Doubtless we cannot completely answer the question. In
the perfect life there will always be mystery which we can-
not fully understand. But there is one consideration that
should help us in our search, and which should enable us
to see Jesus Himself, rather than our own ideas, as the
solution of the problem. We do not have to ask the ques-
tion, What would be the perfect character in a perfect
world ? To try to answer would be to carry us into the
field of unreal abstractions. But that is not the question
presented to us by the temptation of Jesus. He was the
perfect character, but He did not live in a perfect world.
We have to deal with the concrete, historical question, What
was the perfect character in the world of sin ? And therein

The Incarnate Life 159

we are called on to try to understand Jesus as He was. In
the relation between His own righteousness and human sin
we should be able to find the secret of His temptation.

For it is only righteousness that can fully perceive the
depth and the horror of sin. It is psychologically true that
only differences are perceived. So long as we are immersed
in sin, so long are we unconscious of its true nature. It
is only when we begin to emerge from it, or when we feel
the presence of a power opposed to it, that we begin to
perceive the fact of sin itself. And to the perfect character
of Jesus the sin and evil of the world were knowTi as they
could be known only by righteousness. And the question
is, How was His righteousness maintained and preserved in
the presence of the world of sin?

It is certainly clear that righteousness cannot be won
by turning the back to sin and trying to escape from it.
Sin and righteousness are not spatially bounded, l^o man
can say, ''Sin is there, and I am here, free from its presence
and its power." The more perfect a man is, the more fully
must he feel the fact of sin, and the more fully must he
feel his own duty and responsibility concerning it. There
is no righteousness but missionary righteousness; a selfish
righteousness is a contradiction in terms. To flee to the
desert and there to seek for righteousness is to turn away
from the only road on which righteousness is to be found.
The righteousness of the righteous man is found only in
his saving relation to the sin of the world.

Thus we find two ideals of righteousness in the ^ew
Testament. The one is that of the Pharisee, the very word
meaning "separatist." The Pharisee tries to win right-
eousness by keeping apart from sin. He thanks God that
he is ''not as other men are," and it is a short step to thank
God that other men are not as good as he is. Sin is re-

160 The Creative Christ

garded almost in spatial terms. It can exist there, while
I am free from it here. The Pharisaic ideal led to the
seeking of righteousness in selfish seclusion.

The other ideal is that of the righteousness of Christ.
His righteousness drives Him into contact with the sinful
world. He abhorred sin, and therefore He was the friend
of sinners. Simon the Pharisee said of Him, ^'This man,
if he were a prophet, would have perceived who and what
manner of woman this is which toucheth him, that she is a
sinner."^ Simon could not conceive that just because
Jesus knew her sin, therefore His life must touch her life.
His own righteousness could not hold Him back from sin.
His own purity could be preser\^ed only if it became a
purifying power to the world. St. Paul deeply interprets
the mind of Christ when, in strong paradox, he says that
Him who knew no sin God made to be sin on our behalf.^
His perfection could be won only by making Himself to
be sin for others, only by regarding their sin as though it
were His own. Only by bearing the burden of others' sin
can He tread the way of righteousness.

Can we not see here the temptation of His life, the
temptation that only a perfect life could fully know? It
was the temptation to seek righteousness in some other way
than through the saving and cleansing contact with sin, a
contact which was the means of cleansing others and the
only means by which His own life could be kept clean.
When the Pharisee heard the cry ''Unclean," he kept him-
self aloof. But Jesus touched alike the physical and the
moral leper. His own cleanness could be achieved only by
touching the life of the unclean. Because He knew no sin,

*Luke 7 :39.
•II <:k)r. 5:21.

The Incarnate Life 161

He must indeed be made sin for us. What must that fact
have meant to Him whose inner life was perfectly pure, who
felt the horror of sin most fully because of His own perfec-
tion ? Must He not often have echoed the wish of the
Psalmist, ^'Oh that I had wdngs like a dove! Then w^oald
I fly aw^ay and be at rest f ' But not so can He do His
task and win His righteousness. His wearied feet must
walk the crowded streets of the sinful city until finally
they tread the way of the cross.

The perfect life does not mean freedom from tempta-
tion. It means temptation harder than we can ever know.
Perfection is tempted more than imperfection, for it makes
its own temptation. Only the perfect life can know the
horror of contact with sin, the contact without which per-
fection itself cannot be attained. The righteous Christ
must bear others' burdens, until, making them His own.
He conquers in the fight for His own righteousness and for
the righteousness of the world.

VIII

In the conflict between these two ideals of righteousness
we see the conflict between the two ideals of what it was to
be the Christ. As the Christ, Jesus is called to be the
founder of the kingdom of God. What are the forces by
which that kingdom is to be established and by which it is
to do its work ? They are not physical forces. To com-
mand that stones be made bread, to trust in divine power
for support against material downfall, to bow the knee to
Satan in compromise with worldly power, these seem to be
the way of strength. But not so is the Christ called to
walk. He must tread the path that leads to human failure,
He must walk the w'av of the cross. The leader of the

162 The Creative Christ

Twelve brings before Him the temptation of His life:
^'Be it far from thee, Lord : this shall never be unto thee.
But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me,
Satan: thou art a stumblingblock unto me: for thou
mindest not the things of God, but the things of men."^
The divine way is the way of sacrificing love, the way that
to man's judgment seems so weak. And that way must be
trod by faith and not by sight. ''My Father, if it be
possible, let this cup pass away from me : nevertheless, not
as I will, but as thou wilt.''^ And the end is the cross, a
human failure and a divine victory. Therein is the Christ
made perfect through suffering, therein does He achieve
His perfect righteousness. In the victory of the cross the
way of God becomes perfectly manifested in Him who
revealed God to men, who brought God and man together
in the Incarnate Life.

And that incarnate life becomes through Christ the true
principle of the life of man. The perfect righteousness of
Christ, achieved in sacrifice, becomes the creative source of
a new Avorld. Through Christ the kingdom of God is
established, and the law of that kingdom is sacrificing love.
The supreme powers of the kingdom of God, the powers for
which the Church of Christ is to stand, are not physical
powers. They are stronger than armies and battleships,
for they are the powers of God Himself. The Church of
Christ has day by day to meet the temptation of the Master,
the temptation to rely on any other powers than the powers
of righteousness and truth and love. And if it is to win
the victory it must win it through the lesson of the cross, it
must win the victory of the faith that overcame the world.

^Matt. 16 :22-23, Mark 8 :32-33.

=Matt. 26:39, Mark 14:36. Luke 22:42.

The Incarnate Life 163

The Person of Jesus will always be infinitely deeper
than we can understand. But this we know: in Him we
see God in human life. And if we are sure that in Him
we see God manifested, we shall not be afraid to see the
Man. We shall see Him in the limitations of His knowl-
edge and in His struggle against His temptation. Only
thus can the divine enter the human. And in those limita-
tions and in that struggle ^^God was in Christ reconciling
the world unto himself."^ In those limitations we see the
victory of faith, in that struggle we see the perfect right-
eousness. In Him who ' 'advanced in wisdom and stature,
and in favour with God and men" we see the presence and
the power of the Incarnate Life.

^11 Cor. 5 :19.

E :^r D

INDEX

Absolute, the, 40 note.

Anhypostasia, 98, 146f.

Anselm, 107.

Apollinaris, 37, 95f, 146.

Apologetics, 37.

Apotheosis versus Incarnation,

115, 139.
Aquinas, 14.
Arius, 95.

Arnold, Edwin, 47 note.
Arnold, Matthew, 81.
Aseity, 61, 64 note, 66.
Athanasius, 14.
Atonement, 33f, 93, 100, 107f,

136.
Attributes of God, 58f.
Augustine, 14.

Baptism of Jesus, 113 note.
Brooks, Phillips, 117, 126 note.

Calvin, 14.

"Christ" and "Jesus", 70.

Christ, twofold attitude to Per-
son of, 104ff.

Church, 34f, 100, 131, 134.

Church year, value of, 140.

Coleridge, S. T., 15.

Coulanges, Fustel de, 26 note.

Councils, General, Niceaa, 106.
I Constantinople, 96.
Ephesus, 143.
Chalcedon, 97.
Ill Constantinople, 98.

Creation and evolution, 43.

Creative power of Christ, 125ff.

Creator, 41ff, 51ff, 66.

Criticism, historical, 41.

Deity of Christ, 126flF.
Democracy, 18f, 35f, 37.
Difference between Christ and

other men, 126ff.
Difference between God and man,

57ff, 66.
Divine-humanity, meaning of

terms, 39ff, 66, 86, 103.
Dorner, I. A., 136.
Dualism, 94fr, 96f.

Eleatic School, 46f.

Fatherhood of God, 30, 37, 49ff.
Fulfilment of prophecy, 52.

Gnosticism, 94f.

God-Man, meaning of terms, see

"divine-humanity."
Gore, Charles, 147 note.
Greco-Roman thought, 40, 65,

93ff.

Hall, F. J., 147 note.

Hebrew and Greek Thought,

difference between, 44.
Hegel, 40, 70, 116.
Highpriesthood of Christ, 114,

117.
Histo-ic Christ, the, 72fr.
History and revelation, 76.
History, Christianity a religion

of, 68ff.
History, God manifest in, 77.
History, meaning of, 75, 100.
Holy Spirit, fellowship of, 32.
Homoousion, 24.

165

166

Index

Humanity of Christ, 40, 65, 96ff,

106tf.
Humility, 62ff.

Ideal manhood of Christ, 113ff.

Ideas and history, 7 Iff.

Immanence of God, 64, 66.

Impersonality of human nature
of Christ. See "Anhypostasia."

Incarnation, a moral and spirit-
ual process, 133ff.

Incarnation, growth of, 133ff.

Incarnation, the, essential to
humanity, 92f.

Incarnation, physical concept of,
134.

Incarnation, preparation for,
86flf.

India, religion of, 76.

Inspiration, 15.

James, William, 64 note.
Jealousy of the gods, 45, 61.

Kenosis, theory of, 144ff.
Kingdom of God, 21, 126, 131ff,

161.
Knowledge, our Lord's, 141ff.

progressive, 152-155.

Lessing, 69.

Logos and human history, 90ff.

Logos, St. John's doctrine of,
preparation for in Hebrew and
Greek thought, 87ff; relation
to St. Paul and Epistle to
Hebrews, 89ff.

Luther, 14.

Man, divine sonship of, 56f.
Martineau, James, 75 note.
Mason, A. J., 143.
Metaphysics, 22-24.
Miracle, 121ff.

Monophysitism, 106f, 147.

Nash, H. S., 48, 136 note.
"Natural religion", 80.
Nature religious, 26.
Nature, revelation through, 80f.
Natures, two, of Christ, 93-100,

110, 143.
Nestor ius, 143.
Nicene theology, 24.

Old Testament, idea of God, 20,
27f, 41ff, 82.

Old Testament, jealousy of God,
45fr.

Old Testament, meaning of his-
tory to, 76.

Old Testament, nearness of God,
43f.

Old Testament, priest and pro-
phet, 27f.

Pantheism, 44, 46ff, 61, 65, 66,
81, llOff, 127.

Parker, Theodore, 69f.

Past, attitude to, 14.

Paternalism, 49.

Pfleiderer, O., 26 note.

Polytheism, 44ff, 66.

Preexistence, in New Testament
thought, 148ff; in Jewisli and
Hellenistic thought, loOf.

Preexistence of Christ, 144-152.

Reformation, the, 108.

Religion and history, 74. 101.

Religion and morality, 2off, 3><;
Christian relation between, 31.

Revelation, 78ff, 137, and In-
carnation, 85f, 101.

Richard of St. Victor, 93.

Righteousness of Christ. 156fT.

Robertson, F. W., 126 note.

Rousseau, 124.

Index

167

Sacraments, 35, 100, 107, 134.
Schultz, H., 100.
Science and luiracle, 121ff.
Sin and temptation, 157ff.
Sinlessness of Christ, 113ff.
Skinner, John, 42 note.
Social problem, 17, 20.
Sonship of Christ, 53.
"Speculative" theology, 40 note,

70, 111.
Strauss, David, 69.
Substance, idea, of, applied to

God, 20, 24, 66, 81, 93-95, 99,

106ff, 110, 134.

Taboo, 26.

Temptation of Jesus, 155ff.
Theology, a basic principle of,
25, 32, 35f, 38, 92.

Theology and ethics, 32f.
Theology, task of, 13, 36.
Transcendence of God, 64, 67.
Trinity, 35, 145ff.

Uniqueness of Christ, 103fr.
Unitarianism, 69f, 108.
Universality of Jesus, 116.
Universality of the Gospel, Jesus

and Paul, 54ff.
Universals, two kinds of, 115.

Virgin Birth, 120ff.

Will of Christ, human, 96f, 106.
Wordsworth on preexistence,
149f.

•"I'm ■'ni" ^•'foto^'C'il Semjnary-Speer Lil

1 1012 01145 7209