II. Later Christological Discussions
II. Later Christological Discussions 1. IN THE MIDDLE AGES. During the Middle Ages the doctrine of the Person of Christ was not in the foreground. Other problems, such as those connected with the doctrines of sin and grace, and with the doctrine of the work of redemption, became the center of attention. A brief indication of the most salient points of Thomas Aquinas' construction of the doctrine of Christ will be sufficient to indicate how the matter stood at the time of the Reformation.
As to the hypostatic union in Christ Thomas Aquinas adhered to the received theology. The Person of the Logos became composite after the union at the incarnation, and this union "hindered" the manhood from arriving at an independent personality. A twofold grace was imparted to the human nature of Christ in virtue of its union with the Logos, namely: (a) the gratia unionis or the dignity that resulted from the union of the human nature with the divine, so that the human nature also became an object of worship; and (b) the gratia habitualis, the grace of sanctification which was vouchsafed to Christ as man, sustaining the human nature in its relationship to God. The human knowledge of Christ was twofold, namely, scientia infusa and scientia acquisita. In virtue of the former He could know all things that can be so known by men and all that is made known to them by revelation, a knowledge perfect in its king but yet subject to creaturely limitations. And in virtue of the latter he knew all that can be known through the intellectual faculties. There is no communication of attributes between the natures in the abstract, but both human and divine attributes may be ascribed to the Person. The human nature of Christ was not omnipotent, but was subject to human affections, such as sorrow, sadness, fear, wonder, and anger.
There are two wills in Christ, but ultimate causality belongs belongs to the divine will. The human will is always subject to the divine.
2. DURING THE REFORMATION. There is one peculiarity of Lutheran Christology which deserves special attention. Luther held firmly to the doctrine of the two natures and their inseparable union
in the Person of the Logos. But his doctrine of the real presence in the Lord's Supper necessitated the view that, after the ascension, the human nature of Christ is omnipresent. This led to the Lutheran view of the communicatio idiomatum, to the effect "that each of Christ's natures permeates the other (perichoresis), and that His humanity participates in the attributes of His divinity." Neve,
Lutheran Symbolics, p. 132. But while certain divine attributes, such as omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence, were ascribed to the human nature, there was considerable hesitation in ascribing human attributes to the divine nature, and in course of time this side of the matter was dropped altogether. According to the Formula of Concord the divine nature imparts its attributes to the human nature, but the exercise of these is dependent on the will of the Son of God. It should be noted, however, that the Formula is very ambiguous, if not actually inconsistent in its statements. Cf. Schmid,
Doctrinal Theology, p. 340. Small wonder therefore that Lutheran theologians themselves do not agree on the subject.
The doctrine of the communication of attributes led to a controversy in the Lutheran Church. Lutheran theologians evidently realized that the logic of the case required a communication of attributes at the very time of the union of the two natures. But on this assumption they at once faced the question, how to explain the life of humiliation as it is pictured in the pages of the Gospel. This led to the dispute between the Giessen and the Tuebingen theologians. The former held that Christ laid aside the divine attributes received in the incarnation, or used them only occasionally; and the latter, that He always possessed them, but concealed them, or used them only secretly. Chemnitz is the most important representative of the former, and Brenz of the latter opinion. The Formula of Concord on the whole leans to the side of the former, and his view gradually prevailed in the Lutheran Church. In the work of Quenstedt, at whose hands the doctrine received its final shape, the presence of strictly divine powers in the manhood of Christ becomes a mere potentiality. There is a noticeable tendency among some of the Lutherans today to discard their characteristic view of the
communicatio idiomatum, and to conform to the Reformed view that the properties of each one of the natures can he ascribed to the Person. Cf. Lectures on the Augsburg Confession, p. 91 f.; Sprecher,
Groundwork of a System of Evangelical Lutheran Theology, p. 458.
The most complete official deliverance on the Reformed position with respect to the doctrine of Christ is found in the Second Helvetic
Confession, prepared in 1566. We quote some of the most pertinent statements:
"Therefore the Son of God is co-equal and consubstantial with the Father, as touching His divinity; true God, and not by name only, or by adoption, or by special favor, but in substance and nature … We therefore do abhor the blasphemous doctrine of Arius, uttered against the Son of God … We also teach and believe that the eternal
Son of the eternal God was made the Son of Man, of the seed of Abraham and David; not by means of any man, as Ebion affirmed, but that He was most purely conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born of the virgin Mary … Moreover, our Lord Jesus Christ had not a soul without sense or reason, as Apollinaris thought; nor flesh without a soul, as Eunomius did teach; but a soul with its reason, and flesh with its senses … We acknowledge, therefore, that there be in one and the same Jesus Christ our Lord two natures—the divine and the human nature; and we say that these two are so conjoined or united that they are not swallowed up, confounded, or mingled together, but rather united or joined together in one person (the properties of each nature being safe and remaining still), so that we do worship one
Christ, our Lord, and not two … As, therefore, we detest the heresy of Nestorius, which makes two Christs of one and dissolved the union of the person, so do we abominate the madness of Eutichus and of the Monothelites and Monophysites, who overthrow the propriety of the human nature. Therefore we do not teach that the divine nature in Christ did suffer, or that Christ, according to His human nature, is yet in the world, and so in every place. For we do neither think nor teach that the body of Christ ceased to be a true body after His glorying, or that it was deified and so deified that it put off the
properties, as touching body and soul, and became altogether a divine nature and began to be one substance alone; therefore we do not allow or receive the unwitty subtleties, and the intricate, obscure, and inconsistent disputations of Schwenkfeldt, and such other vain janglers, about this matter; neither are we Schwenkfeldians."
3. IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. During the eighteenth century a striking change took place in the study of the Person of Christ. Up to that time the point of departure had been prevailingly theological and the resulting Christology was theocentric. Scholars engaged in constructing the doctrine of Christ took their startingpoint in the Logos, the Second Person in the Trinity, and then sought to interpret the incarnation so as to do justice to the unity of the Person of the Saviour, but also to the integrity and veracity of both natures. But in the course of the eighteenth century there was a growing conviction that this was not the best method, and that more satisfying results could be obtained by beginning closer at home, namely, with the study of the historical Jesus. A new Christological period was ushered in. For more than a century the attention was focussed on the picture of the Saviour presented to us in the Gospels, and many are so delighted with the results of this study that they speak of it as the rediscovery of Jesus. The point of view was anthropological, and the result was anthropocentric.
Now the statement of Mackintosh may be true, that "these adjectives need imply no serious difference of opinion as to ultimate conclusions," since "anthropomorphic must not be confused with humanitarian," but as a matter of fact the new method was employed in such a manner as to yield destructive rather than constructive results. Its application went hand in hand with a strong aversion to authority and the supernatural, and with an insistent appeal to reason and experience. Not what the Bible teaches us concerning
Christ, but our own discoveries in investigating the phenomena of His life and our experience of Him, was made the determining factor in forming a proper conception of Jesus. A far-reaching and pernicious distinction was made between the historical Jesus,
delineated by the writers of the Gospels, and the theological Christ, the fruit of the fertile imagination of theological thinkers from the days of Paul on, whose image is now reflected in the Creeds of the Church. The Lord of Glory was shorn of all that is supernatural—or nearly so—and the doctrine of (concerning) Christ gave way for the teachings of Jesus. He who had always been regarded by the Church as an object of divine worship now became a mere teacher of morality. Attempts were not wanting, however, to retain something of the religious significance of Jesus Christ, while yet conceiving of Him in a manner that conformed to the spirit of the age. We limit ourselves to a brief indication of some of the outstanding views respecting Christ. a. The View of Schleiermacher. In the Christology of Schleiermacher
Jesus can hardly be said to rise above the human level. The uniqueness of His Person consists in the fact that He possesses a perfect and unbroken sense of union with the divine, and also realizes to the full the destiny of man in His character of sinless perfection. He was the second Adam, truly man like the first, but placed in more favorable circumstances and remaining sinless and perfect in obedience. He is the new spiritual head of the race, capable of animating and sustaining the higher life of all mankind. His transcendant dignity finds its explanation in a special presence of God in Him, in His supreme God-consciousness. He is the perfectly religious man, the fountain of all true religion: and through living faith in Him all men may become perfectly religious. The extraordinary character of Christ points to the fact that He had an unusual origin, for there is no hereditary influence in Him that makes for sinful tendencies. It is not necessary to accept the virgin birth. His Person was constituted by a creative act which elevated human nature to the plane of ideal perfection. b. The Conceptions of Kant and Hegel. The speculative Rationalism of Germany also claims a sympathetic appreciation of specifically
Christian doctrines, and finds in them a large deposit of rational truth.
(1) The Kantian Christ. To Kant Christ was first of all merely an abstract ideal, the ideal of ethical perfection. What saves is faith in this ideal, and not in Jesus as a Person. The Church made a mistake when it applied to Him epithets and conceptions which rightly belong only to the ethical ideal, which He merely symbolizes. This ethical ideal, which hovered before the mind of God from the beginning and can be called the Son of God, came down from heaven and becomes incarnate in the measure in which it is realized on earth in a perfect humanity. It is revealed in the truths of reason, and is the content of a rational faith, of which Jesus was the most eminent preacher and pioneer. If truly appropriated, it will save man irrespective of any personal relation to Jesus Christ. This view eliminates the Gospel of the New Testament, robs us of our divine
Lord, and leaves us only a preacher of morality.
(2) The Hegelian Christ. For Hegel the beliefs of the Church respecting the Person of Jesus Christ are merely man's stammering utterances of ontological ideas—symbols expressive of metaphysical truth. He regards human history as the process of God's becoming, the self-unfolding of reason under conditions of time and space. This is the only sense in which the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God becomes incarnate in humanity, and this incarnation expresses the oneness of God and man. Though students of Hegel differ as to the question, whether he conceives of the incarnation as purely racial, or regards the unique incarnation of Jesus Christ as its culminating point, the latter seems to be the correct interpretation.
According to Hegel the historical manifestation of God in Christ is viewed in two different ways. Humanity in general regards Jesus as a human teacher, bringing the doctrine of the Kingdom of God and a supreme code of morality, and giving us an example by living up to this teaching even unto death. But believers take a higher view. Faith recognizes Jesus as divine and as terminating the transcendence of God. All that He does becomes a revelation of God. In Him God
Himself draws near unto us, touches us, and so takes us up into the divine consciousness. Here we meet with a pantheistic identification of the human and the divine in the doctrine of Christ. Of course, the
Church expresses this idea only in a symbolical and imperfect way; philosophy, we are told, gives it more perfect expression. c. The Kenotic Theories. A remarkable attempt was made in the socalled Kenosis doctrine to improve on the theological construction of the doctrine of the Person of Christ. The term Kenosis is derived from Philippians 2:7, which says that Christ "emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant." The Greek word here translated
"emptied" is ekenosen, the aorist of kenoo. A misinterpretation of this passage became the Scriptural basis for the Kenosis doctrine, along with 2 Cor. 8:9. These passages were interpreted as teaching that Christ at the incarnation emptied or divested Himself of His divinity. But there are serious objections to this interpretation: (1) as Dr. Warfield has shown the rendering "emptied Himself" is contrary to the usual meaning of the term "to make oneself of no account"
(Christology and Criticism, p. 375); and (2) the implied object of the action expressed is not Christ's divinity, but His being on an equality with God in power and glory. The Lord of glory made Himself of no account by becoming a servant. However, the Kenoticists base on this passage and on 2 Cor. 8:9 the doctrine that the Logos literally became, that is, was changed into a man by reducing (depotentiating) Himself, either wholly or in part, to the dimensions of a man, and then increased in wisdom and power until at last He again assumed the divine nature.
This theory evidently resulted from a double motive, namely, the desire (1) to maintain the reality and integrity of the manhood of Christ; and (2) to throw into strong relief the exceeding greatness of Christ's humiliation in that He, being rich, for our sakes became poor. It assumed several forms. According to Thomasius the divine
Logos, while retaining His immanent or moral attributes of absolute power or freedom, holiness, truth and love, divested Himself temporarily of His relative attributes of omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, but after the resurrection resumed these attributes.
The theory of Gess, which was more absolute and consistent, and also more popular, is to the effect that the Logos at the incarnation
literally ceased from His cosmic functions and His eternal consciousness, and reduced Himself absolutely to the conditions and limits of human nature, so that His consciousness became purely that of a human soul. It comes very close to the view of Apollinaris.
Ebrard, a Reformed scholar, assumed a double life of the Logos. On the one hand the Logos reduced Himself to the dimensions of a man and possessed a purely human consciousness, but on the other hand
He also retained and exercised His divine perfections in the trinitarian life without any interruption. The same ego exists at once in the eternal and in the temporal form, is both infinite and finite.
And Martensen postulates in the Logos during the time of His humiliation a double life from two non-communicating centers. As the Son of God, living in the bosom of the Father, He continued His trinitarian and cosmic functions, but as the depotentiated Logos He knew nothing of these functions and knew Himself to be God only in the sense in which such knowledge is possible to the faculties of manhood.
This theory, once very popular in one form or another, and still defended by some, has now lost a great deal of its charm. It is subversive of the doctrine of the Trinity, contrary to that of the immutability of God, and at variance with those passages of Scripture which ascribe divine attributes to the historical Jesus. In the most absolute and most consistent form it teaches what La
Touche calls "incarnation by divine suicide." d. Dorner's Conception of the Incarnation. Dorner may be regarded as the main representative of the Mediating School on the doctrine of Christ. He stresses the fact that God and man are akin, and that there is in the essential nature of God an urge to communicate Himself to man. In view of this fact the incarnation was transcendentally and historically necessary, and would have taken place even if sin had not entered the world. The humanity of Christ was a new humanity, in which the receptivity of the human for the divine was raised to the highest point. This was necessary, since Christ was destined to be the Head of the redeemed race. Now the Logos, the ante-mundane
principle of revelation and self-bestowal in God, joined Himself to this humanity. But the bestowal of the Logos to the new humanity was not complete at once; the incarnation was of a progressive nature. The measure of it was at every stage determined by the everincreasing receptivity of the human nature for the divine, and it did not reach its final stage until the resurrection. This theory is subversive of Scripture, since it represents the incarnation as the birth of a mere man, who gradually became the God-man in His conception and birth. It is really a new and subtle form of the old
Nestorian heresy. Moreover, by making the union in Christ to consist of a union of two persons, it makes this even less intelligible than it is otherwise. e. Ritschl's View of the Person of Christ. With the single exception of Schleiermacher no one has exercised greater influence on present day theology than Albrecht Ritschl. In his Christology he takes his startingpoint in the work of Christ rather than in His Person, and emphasizes the former far more than the latter. The work of Christ determines the dignity of His Person. Christ is a mere man, but in view of the work He accomplished and the service He rendered we rightly attribute to Him the predicate of Godhead. He who does the work of God can properly be described in terms of God. Christ, revealing God in His grace, truth, and redemptive power, has for man the value of God, and is therefore also entitled to divine honour.
Ritschl does not speak of the pre-existence, the incarnation, and the virgin birth of Christ, because these have no point of contact in the believing experience of the Christian community. His view of Christ is in reality only a modern counterpart of the construction put on the historical Jesus by Paul of Samosata. f. Christ in Modern Theology. On the basis of the modern pantheistic idea of the immanence of God, the doctrine of the Person of Christ is today often represented in a thoroughly naturalistic way. The representations vary, but the fundamental idea is generally the same, that of an essential unity of God and man. Christ differed from other men only in that He was more conscious of the God immanent in
Him, and consequently is the highest revelation of the Supreme Being in His word and work. Essentially all men are divine, because
God is immanent in all, and they are all sons of God, differing from Christ only in degree. The latter stands apart only in view of His greater receptivity for the divine and of His superior Godconsciousness.)
Questions for Further Study: What ancient errors were virtually revived by Roscelinus and Abelard? What was the Christological
Nihilism in vogue among the disciples of Abelard? How did Peter the Lombard view Christ? Did the Scholastics bring any new points to the fore? What is the Boethian definition of personality, generally accepted by the Scholastics? Did Luther give occasion for the characteristically Lutheran view of the communicatio idiomatum?
Where do we find the official Lutheran Christology? How can we account for the seemingly inconsistent representations of the Formula of Concord? What Christological differences were there in the Lutheran Church? What objections are there to the Lutheran view that divine attributes may be predicated of of the human nature? How did the Lutherans and the Reformed differ in their interpretation of Phil. 2:5–11? How does the Reformed Christology differ from the Lutheran? What is the main difference between the Christological discussions of the last two, and those of the previous centuries? How do the Christologies of Kant and Hegel, and those of Schleiermacher and Ritschl differ? What objections are there to the Kenosis doctrine? What are the objectionable features of the Christology of Modernism?
Literature: The Formula of Concord and the Second Helvetic Confession; La Touche, The Person of Christ in Modern Thought;
Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus; Ottley, The Doctrine of the Incarnation, pp. 485–553, 587–671; Mackintosh, The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, pp. 223–284; Bruce, The Humiliation of Christ, pp. 74–236; Sanday, Christologies Ancient and Modern, pp.
59–83; Heppe, Dogmatik des deutschen Protestantismus, II, pp. 78– 178; Dorner, History of Protestant Theology, pp. 95 f., 201 f., 322 f.,;