The "Two Natures" and Recent Christological Speculation

The "Two Natures" and Recent Christological Speculation

has issued from Jesus Christ could issue from a mere man? Apart from every other consideration, does there not lie in the effects wrought by Him an absolute bar to all humanitarian theories of His

Person? The humanitarian interpretation of the Person of Christ is confronted by enormous historical and vital consequences, impossible of denial, which apparently spring from a fact which it pronounces inconceivable; though, apart from this fact, these consequences appear themselves to be impossible of explanation.

THE "TWO NATURES" AND RECENT

CHRISTOLOGICAL SPECULATION

I. THE CHRISTOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS

ONE of the most portentous symptoms of the decay of vital sympathy with historical Christianity which is observable in presentday academic circles is the widespread tendency in recent

Christological discussion to revolt from the doctrine of the Two Natures in the Person of Christ. The significance of this revolt becomes at once apparent, when we reflect that the doctrine of the Two Natures is only another way of stating the doctrine of the Incarnation; and the doctrine of the Incarnation is the hinge on which the Christian system turns. No Two Natures, no Incarnation; no Incarnation, no Christianity in any distinctive sense.

Nevertheless, voices are raised all about us declaring the conception of two natures in Christ no longer admissible; and that very often with full appreciation of the significance of the declaration.

Thus, for example, Johannes Weiss tells us that it is unthinkable that Godhood and manhood should be united in a single person walking upon the earth; that, while no doubt men of ancient time could conceive "that a man might really be an incarnate deity," modern men feel much too strongly the impassable barrier which separates the divine and the human to entertain such a notion. And Paul

Wilhelm Schmiedel pronounces it "simply impossible," now that they have awakened to inquire "what is psychologically possible and impossible," for men to submit any longer to a demand that does such violence at once to their intelligence and to their religious experience as the demand "that they should embrace the idea of a perfect God and a perfect Man as united in the one and indivisible person of a Saviour whom they are longing to revere." Accordingly, since the divine and human nature cannot be united in Jesus, and since "Jesus was undoubtedly man," he continues, we have simply to regard him as man and nothing more. Coming nearer home, William

Adams Brown declares that men are no longer to be satisfied with "the old conception of Christ as a being of two natures, one divine and one human, dwelling in a mysterious union, incapable of description, within the confines of a single personality." Such a conception, he thinks, fails to "do justice to the genuine humanity" of Jesus, who "shares our limitations"; and supposes "an impassable gulf between God and man" which requires "a miracle" to bridge it.

The only "incarnation" which is real, he asserts, concerns not "a single instance," but the eternal entrance of God "into humanity."4

These are but examples of numerous deliverances which may differ from one another in the clearness with which they announce the consequences, but do not differ in the decisiveness with which they reject the doctrine of the Two Natures.

The violence of the revolution which is thus attempted is somewhat obscured by the bad habit, which is becoming common, of speaking

of the doctrine of the Two Natures as in some sense the creation of the Chalcedonian fathers. Even Albert Schweitzer permits himself to write:

"When at Chalcedon the West overcame the East, its doctrine of the two natures dissolved the unity of the Person, and thereby cast off the last possibility of a return to the historical Jesus. The selfcontradiction was elevated into a law.… This dogma had first to be shattered before men could once more go out in quest of the historical Jesus, before they could even grasp the thought of His existence."

By "the historical Jesus" is here meant the merely human Jesus; and it is quite true that the doctrine of the Two Natures interposes an insuperable obstacle to the recognition of such a Jesus as the real

Jesus. There is a sense also in which it may be truly said that at Chalcedon the West impressed on the East its long-established doctrine of the Two Natures—a doctrine which had been fully formulated in the West from at least the time of Tertullian. But by this very token it is clear that the doctrine decreed at Chalcedon was nothing new; and if, as is often the case, the further suggestion is conveyed that what was new in it was the "Two Natures" itself, the perversion becomes monstrous.

It was no part of the task of the fathers at Chalcedon to invent a new doctrine, and the doctrine which they formulated had no single new element in it. Least of all was the doctrine of the Two Natures itself new. No one of the disputants in the long series of controversies which led up to Chalcedon, any more than in the equally long series of controversies which led down from it, cherished the least doubt of this doctrine—not even Arius, and certainly not Apollinaris, or Nestorius, or Eutyches, or any of the great Monophysite or

Monothelite leaders, or any of their opponents. The doctrine of the Two Natures formed the common basis on which all alike stood; their differences concerned only the quality or integrity of the two natures united in the one person, or the character or effects of the union by which they were brought together. It was the adjustment of these points of difference alone with which the council was concerned, or rather, to speak more precisely, the authoritative determination of the range within which such attempted adjustments might be tolerated in a church calling itself Christian.

It was not to the fourth-century fathers alone, however, that the doctrine of the Two Natures was "given." There never was a time when it was not the universal presupposition of the whole attitude, intellectual and devotional alike, of Christians to their Lord. The term δύο οὐσίαι may first occur in extant writings in a fragment of Melito's of Sardis (Tertullian, duae substantiae; Origen and later writers generally, δύο φύσεις). But the thing goes back to the beginning. When we read, for example, in Clement of Rome's Letter to the Corinthians, in a passage (xvi) containing echoes of Heb. 1:8 and Phil. 2:6, that "the Scepter of the Majesty of God, our Lord Jesus

Christ, came not in the pomp of arrogance or pride—though he could well have done that—but in lowliness of mind," or in a passage (xxxii) manifestly reminiscent of Rom. 9:5, that "the Lord Jesus,"… that Lord Jesus to whom the highest predicates are ascribed (as e.g. in xxxvi)—is "according to the flesh," "of Jacob," the two natures are as plainly presupposed as they are openly asserted in such Ignatian passages as: "There is one Healer, fleshly and spiritual, generate and ingenerate, God in man, true life in death, both of Mary and of God, first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord" (Eph. 7:2), or: "For our God, Jesus Christ, was borne in the womb of Mary, according to a dispensation, of the seed of David, indeed, but also of the Holy Spirit" (18:2). Adolf Harnack, it is true, has made a brilliant

attempt to distinguish "adoptionist" as well as "pneumatic"

Christologies underlying the Christian tradition. But he has felt himself compelled notably to qualify his original representation; while F. Loofs has quite properly permitted the whole notion to drop out of sight;11 and R. Seeberg has solidly refuted it. To discover a one-natured Christ, we must turn to the outlawed sects of the Docetists on the one hand, and the Ebionites with their successors, the Dynamistic Montanists, on the other. Whatever else the church brought with it out of the apostolic age, it emerged from that, its formative, epoch with so firm a faith in the Two Natures of its Lord as to be incapable of wavering. "Perfect man" it knew him to be. But the exhortation of Christians to one another ran in such strains as we find in the opening words of the earliest Christian homily that has come down to us: "Brethren, thus ought we to think of Jesus Christ— as of God, as of Judge of quick and dead";14 and so exhorting one another, they naturally were known to their heathen observers precisely as worshippers of Christ. So fixed in the Christian consciousness was the conception of the Two Natures of the Savior, that nothing could dislodge it. We shall have to come down to the radical outbreak which accompanied the Reformation— Trancendental or Socinian—for the first important defection from it after the early Dynamistic Monarchianism; and it was not until the rise in the eighteenth century of the naturalistic movement known as the Enlightenment that there was inaugurated any widespread revolt from it. It is under the influence of this revolt, which has not yet spent its force, that so many "moderns" have turned away from the doctrine as "impossible."

The constancy with which the church has confessed the doctrine of the Two Natures finds its explanation in the fact that this doctrine is intrenched in the teaching of the New Testament. The Chalcedonian

Christology, indeed, in its complete development is only a very

perfect synthesis of the biblical data. It takes its starting-point from the New Testament as a whole, thoroughly trusted in all its declarations, and seeks to find a comprehensive statement of the scriptural doctrine of the Person of Christ, which will do full justice to all the elements of its representation. The eminent success which it achieves in this difficult undertaking is due to the circumstance that it is not the product of a single mind working under a "scientific" impulse, that is to say, with purely theoretical intent, but of the mind, or rather the heart, of the church at large searching for an adequate formulation of its vital faith, that is to say, of a large body of earnest men distributed through a long stretch of time, and living under very varied conditions, each passionately asserting, and seeking to have justice accorded to, elements of the biblical representation which particularly "found" him. The final statement is not a product of the study, therefore, but of life; and was arrived at, externally considered, through protracted and violent controversies, during the course of which every conceivable construction of the biblical data had been exploited, weighed, and its elements of truth sifted out and preserved, while the elements of error which deformed it were burned up as chaff in the fires of the strife. To the onlooker from this distance of time, the main line of the progress of the debate takes on an odd appearance of a steady zigzag advance. Arising out of the embers of the Arian controversy, there is first vigorously asserted, over against the reduction of our Lord to the dimensions of a creature, the pure deity of his spiritual nature (Apollinarianism); by this there is at once provoked, in the interests of the integrity of our Lord's humanity, the equally vigorous assertion of the completeness of his human nature as the bearer of his deity

(Nestorianism); this in turn provokes, in the interests of the oneness of his Person, an equally vigorous assertion of the conjunction of these two natures in a single individuum (Eutychianism): from all of which there gradually emerges at last, by a series of corrections, the

balanced statement of Chalcedon, recognizing at once in its "without confusion, without conversion, eternally and inseparably" the union in the Person of Christ of a complete deity and a complete humanity, constituting a single person without prejudice to the continued integrity of either nature. The pendulum of thought had swung back and forth in ever-decreasing arcs, until at last it found rest along the line of action of the fundamental force. Out of the continuous controversy of a century there issued a balanced statement in which all the elements of the biblical representation were taken up and combined. Work so done is done for all time; and it is capable of ever-repeated demonstration that in the developed doctrine of the Two Natures (as it is worked out with marvelous insight and delicate precision in such a presentation of it as is given, say, in the "Admonitio Christiana," 1581, written chiefly by Zacharias Ursinus and published in his works) and in it alone, all the biblical data are brought together in a harmonious statement, in which each receives full recognition, and out of which each may derive its sympathetic exposition. This key unlocks the treasures of the biblical instruction on the Person of Christ as none other can, and enables the reader as he currently scans the sacred pages to take up their declarations as they meet him, one after the other, into an intelligently consistent conception of his Lord.

The key which unlocks so complicated a lock can scarcely fail to be its true key. And the argument may be turned around. That all the varied representations concerning our Lord's Person contained in the New Testament fall into harmony under the ordering influence of so simple a hypothesis as that of the Two Natures, authenticates these varying representations as each a fragment of a real whole. It were inconceivable that so large a body of different and sometimes apparently divergent data could synthetize in so simple a unifying conception, were they not component elements of a unitary reality.

And this consideration is greatly strengthened by the manner in which these differing or sometimes even apparently divergent data are distributed through the New Testament. They are not parceled out severally to the separate books, the composition of different writers, so that one set of them is peculiar to one writer or to one set of writers, and a set of different import peculiar to another writer or set of writers. They are, rather, pretty evenly distributed over the face of the New Testament, and the most different or apparently divergent data are found side by side in the writings of the same author or even in the same writing. The doctrine of the Two Natures is not merely a synthesis of all data concerning the Person of Christ found in the New Testament; it is the doctrine of each of the New

Testament books in severalty. There is but one doctrine of the Person of Christ inculcated or presupposed by all the New Testament writers without exception. In this respect the New Testament is all of a piece.

Book may differ from book in the terms in which it gives expression to the common doctrine, or in the fulness with which it develops its details, or with which it draws out its implications. But all are at one in the inculcation or presupposition of the common doctrine of the Two Natures.

It has no doubt required some time for the critical study of the New Testament writings to arrive solidly at this conclusion. But it is at this conclusion, it may fairly be said, that the critical study of the New Testament has at length arrived. The day is gone by in which a number of mutually exclusive Christologies could be ascribed to the writers of the New Testament and set over against one another in crass contradiction. Nowadays, the New Testament is admitted to be

Christologically much on a level, and though we still hear of a prePauline, a Pauline, and a post-Pauline Christology, this very phraseology shows the dominance of a single type, and the boundary lines which separate even the varieties which are thus suggested are

very indistinct. There are in fact next to no pre-Pauline writings in the New Testament, and therefore no pre-Pauline Christologies are taught in it; and though there are writings in the New Testament which in point of chronological sequence are post-Pauline, it is only with much ado that a post-Pauline Christology in the proper sense of the term can be even plausibly discovered in it. F. C. Baur discriminated three sharply divergent types of Christology among the New Testament writers. To the Synoptists Christ was a mere man, endowed with the Holy Spirit as Messiah; to Paul he was still a man but a deified man; to John he was a God incarnated in a human body. We have to travel far from this before we reach, say, Johannes

Weiss. To Weiss the whole New Testament is written under the influence of Paul who introduced the Logos Christology. Before Paul, men indeed thought of Christ as a deified man; but no New

Testament book is written from this standpoint. After Paul, some explication of what is already implicit in Paul took place; but the general lines laid down by Paul are only deepened, not departed from. The Christologies of Peter, Paul, and John are still distinguished; but the distinctions are posited on little or no differences in recorded utterances.

The difficulty in discovering a substantial difference between the Christologies of Paul and John, for example, is fairly illustrated by the straits to which so acute a writer as Johannes Weiss is brought in the effort to establish one. The only such difference he is able to suggest is that the superhuman Being whose incarnation constituted the Two-Natured Christ believed in by both writers alike, is, with Paul, though divine in his nature, yet of subordinate rank to the supreme God, while with John he is the supreme God himself.

Unfortunately, however (or, rather, fortunately), when Paul speaks of the superhuman element in the person of his Lord, he does not hesitate to declare him the supreme God in the most exalted sense,

and that in language which, for clearness and emphasis, leaves nothing for John to add to it.

He does this, for example, in Rom. 9:5, where he describes Christ as to his higher nature in these great words: ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων θεὸς εὐλογητὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας, ἀμήν. It is instructive to observe how

Johannes Weiss deals with such a passage. He is arguing that Paul carefully avoids calling Christ by the high name of "God," although he places Him as "Lord" by the side of God (1 Cor. 3:23, 8:6); and he adds:

"It is, then, very remarkable that in the present text of Rom. 9:5 there stands the following doxology, which can be referred only to Christ:

'He who is God over all, be blessed for ever.' If κύριος had stood here we should not have been surprised; that the text should, however, ascribe to Him here a predicate which puts Him altogether in God's place—without any indication of subordination—is inconceivable.

Accordingly it has been rightly assumed that there is a textual corruption here. It is undoubtedly genuine, however, when, in Jno.

20:28, Thomas exclaims to the resurrected Christ: 'My Lord and my God.' So also Christ is called God in 1 Jno. 5:20 and Tit. 2:13. This is accordant with the dominant Hellenistic mode of thought in these late New Testament writings. The strictly Jewish foundation of the oldest Christianity is no longer so strong; feeling is no longer shocked by the appearance by the side of God of a second Godhead."

Needless to say, however, there is not a scintilla of evidence of textual corruption in Rom. 9:5; corruption is assumed solely because the assertion of the passage does not fit in with the lowered

Christology which Weiss would fain assign to Paul. The allusion to previous writers who have assumed corruption is doubtless to the recent attempt to revive an old emendation proposed by the Socinian

controversialists, J. Schlichting and J. Crell. The suggestion is that the words ὁ ὤν be transposed, so as to read ὧν ὁ (Hoekstra would be satisfied with the simple omission of the ὁ). Thus it is thought the last clause of the passage would be brought into parallelism with its predecessors, and the whole would rise to its climax in the assertion that not only do the fathers belong to the Jews, and not only has the Christ (as regards the flesh) sprung from them, but to them belongs also the supreme God himself who is blessed forevermore, Amen.

The mere statement of the proposal surely is its sufficient refutation.

The variation of the construction in the instance of the Christ from ὧν to ἐξ ὧν, and the limitation of even this assertion with respect to him to his flesh (τὸ κατὰ σάρκα) render the adjunction of such a clause as the reconstructed form gives us simply incredible. Should

Paul, after refusing to declare their own Messiah to belong distinctively to the Jews and carefully limiting his relation to them to merely that of issuing from them—and that, only "according to the flesh"—immediately assert with climatic emphasis that the supreme and eternal God himself is their peculiar possession? "Is he the God of the Jews only and not also of the Gentiles?" Paul asks in the same broad context (Rom. 3:29), and answers with emphasis, "Yes, of the Gentiles also"; and by that answer advertises to us that he could not have written here, in his enumeration of the distinctive privileges of the Jews, that "theirs is the God over all, blessed forever." The resort to textual emendation to ease the pressure of the passage fails, thus, as dismally as, according to Weiss's own confession, the more common resort to artificial exegesis of it fails—whether this follows the older methods of varying merely the punctuation so as to throw the obnoxious clause into innocuous isolation as an interjected doxology to God, or the new suggestion of F. C. Burkitt which would take the ὁ ὢν as the Tetragrammaton itself, and read the whole passage as not "description but ascription"—a protestation, calling the Eternal to witness the sincerity of Paul's great asseveration. It is

at least a healthful sign of the times when Weiss discards all such artificial exegesis; we may even hope that the day has dawned when it is no longer possible.20 It is mere matter of fact that Paul, speaking distinctly οὐ κατὰ τιμήν, ἀλλὰ κατὰ φύσιν, as the contrast with τὸ κατὰ σάρκα shows, designates Christ here "God over all, blessed forever." It were well for us to adjust our theories to this plain fact and cease to endeavor to brush the fact out of the way of our theories.

Why so much zeal and ingenuity should be expended in attempting to vacate this declaration of its plain meaning, it is meanwhile a little difficult to comprehend. If it stood alone among Paul's utterances it might be natural for those who wish to contribute another doctrine to him to seek to set it in some way aside. But so far from standing alone, it is but one of many declarations running through his epistles, to the same effect. There is Phil. 2:6, for example, where, beyond question, Christ Jesus is asserted to be "on an equality with God" an assertion, one would think, not easy to reconcile with the notion that he was a being definitely lower than God. Lietzmann seems therefore to speak very sensibly when he writes in his comment on Rom. 9:5: "Since Paul represents Christ in Phil. 2:6 as ἴσα θεῷ there is no reason why he should not, on occasion, call him directly θεός." When he goes on, however, to say: "The decision here, as often, if we are not acting under dogmatic prejudices, is a matter of pure feeling; to me it seems that ὁ ὢν επὶ πάντων θεός is more suitable for the 'Almighty God' the Father of Jesus," he seems to forget that his former remark forbids him to say this feeling could be operative with Paul—which is the only matter ad rem. That the writer of Phil. 2:6 might very well "on occasion" call Christ directly God is made even more clear by the circumstance that he does this very thing in this very passage, and that in the most emphatic manner possible. For that the representation of Christ Jesus as ἐν μορφῇ

θεοῦ ὑπάρχων is precisely to call him God is evidenced not merely by the intimation which is immediately given that he who is "in the form of God" is "on an equality with God," but by the connotation of the phraseology itself. It is undeniable that in the philosophico-popular mode of speech here employed, "form" means just that body of characterizing qualities which makes anything the particular thing it is—in a word, its specific character. To say that Christ Jesus is25 "in the form of God" is then to say not less but more than to say shortly that he is "God": for it is to emphasize the fact that he has in full possession and use all those characterizing qualities which make God the particular Being we call "God"; and this mode of expression, rather than the simple term "God," is employed here precisely because it was of the essence of the Apostle's purpose to keep his reader's mind on all that Christ was as God rather than merely on the abstract fact that he was God.

By the side of Phil. 2:6 there stands also Col. 2:9, where it is declared that in Christ "there dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily," that is to say, in plain words, that Christ is an incarnation of the Godhead in all its fulness, which again is a statement rather difficult to harmonize with the notion that its author believed it was something less than God which was incarnated in Christ. And by the side of the whole series of such passages there stands the immense number of instances in which Christ is designated "Lord." For κύριος is not with Paul of lower connotation than θεός. Johannes Weiss does, indeed, in the passage we have quoted from him above, suggest that if only it were κύριος instead of θεός which we found in Rom.

9:5 we should experience no surprise at the declaration and, presumably, feel no inclination to correct the text; the implication being that Paul might very well call Christ "Lord over all" but not "God over all." "Lord over all" would have meant, however, precisely what "God over all" means, and it is singularly infelicitous to give the

impression that Paul in currently speaking of Christ as "Lord" placed him on a lower plane than God. Paul's intention was precisely the opposite, viz., to put him on the same plane with God; and accordingly it is as "Lord" that all divine attributes and activities are ascribed to Christ and all religious emotions and worship are directed to him. In effect, the Old Testament divine names, Elohim on the one hand, and Jehovah and Adhonai on the other, are in the New Testament distributed between God the Father and God the Son with as little implication of difference in rank here as there. "Lord," in a word, is Paul's divine name for Christ; is treated by him as Christ's proper name—as, in fact, what can scarcely be called anything else than his inter-trinitarian name and, in this technical sense, his "personal" name. Accordingly Paul does not enumerate the Persons of the Trinity as our Lord is reported as doing (Mt. 28:19), according to their relations to one another, "Father, Son, and Spirit," but according to his own relation to each in turn, as God, the Lord, the Spirit: "the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all" (2 Cor. 13:14).

The only distinction which can be discerned between "God" and "Lord" in his usage of the terms is a distinction not in relative dignity, but in emphasis on active sovereignty. "God" is, so to speak, a term of pure exaltation; "Lord" carries with it more expressly the idea of sovereign rulership in actual exercise. It is probable that Paul's appropriation specifically of the divine designation "Lord" to Christ was in part at least occasioned by his conviction that he, as God-man, has become the God of providence in whose hand is the kingdom, to "reign until he hath put all his enemies under his feet" (1

Cor. 15:24, etc.; cf. Phil. 2:9 ff.), or, as it is expressed with great point and fulness in Eph. 1:20–23, He has been seated on the right hand of God, far above any conceivable power and made head over all things for his church. In a word, the term "Lord" seems to have been specifically appropriated to Christ not because it is a term of function

rather than of dignity, but because along with the dignity it emphasizes also function.

All this is, of course, well known to Johannes Weiss. He writes:

"To expound the religious significance which the use of the name 'Lord' had for the early Christians, the whole New Testament would need to be transcribed. For in the formula 'our Lord Jesus Christ' the essence of the primitive religion is contained. Obedient subjection, reverence, and holy dread of offending him, a complete sense of dependence on him for all things ('if the Lord will!' 1 Cor. 4:19), gratitude and love and trust—in short, everything that man can feel in the presence of God—comes to expression in this term. We can best perceive this in the benedictions at the opening of the epistles.

Here 'grace and peace' are invoked or desired 'from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' What is looked for from God can also be granted by the Lord. This inclusion of God and Christ in a single view which corresponds precisely with their coenthronement is characteristic of the piety of primitive Christianity. As Christians cry

'Abba Father' and pray to him, so there can be no doubt that they also 'prayed' in the strict sense of the word to Christ, not only in loyal adoration, but also in the form of petition. We have particular instances of this 'calling on the Lord' (Rom. 10:12) in Paul (2 Cor.

12:8) and in Stephen (Acts 7:60). But such prayers were certainly made infinitely more often. Christians stand, therefore, in point of fact, over against Christ, as over against God (cf. 2 Clem. i. 1)."

And again, from Phil. 2:9 ff. as a starting-point:

"Now not only is this word (κύριος) known in the general language of Hellenisticism, but it has a special history in the peculiar region of Jewish Hellenisticism. The Jews were taught to substitute for the proper name of God, Jahwe, in the sacred text the expression Adonai

(Lord). The Greek translators of the Old Testament were acting in the correct Jewish fashion when they replaced the name יהוה by κύριος, the frequently occurring combination האלהם יהִיה by κύριος ὁ θεός that is, exactly, 'Lord, the God' (so also, Luke 1:32, 68, etc.). The κύριος without an article is felt almost as a proper name. When

Luther represents it by 'God, the Lord,' it is on the contrary 'God' that he feels as a proper name. It is from this that the passage in the Epistle to the Philippians may be understood—all the more that there is a reminiscence here of passages like Isa. 42:8, 45:23: 'I am κύριος ὁ θεός, this is my name, my honor will I not give to another': 'to me shall every knee bow and every tongue confess God.' This name which God jealously guards as his own prerogative, he has now ceded to Christ, and has thereby publicly proclaimed that all beings shall bow to him and acknowledge him Lord. The transference of the name signifies, according to ancient usage, endowment with the power which the name designates. This passage is only another declaration of the transference to him by God of sovereignty over the world, of His constitution as 'Lord of Lords and King of Kings.' Thus the content of this passage coalesces in substance with what is said in Acts 2:36 and intimated in 1 Cor. 8:5. But whereas it is there to be understood that Christ alone rightly bears the name of κύριος, there is this much more intimated here—that κύριος is not merely a general designation of honor but the name of God become almost

Christ's proper name. By this Christ is not merely elevated into a generally divine region: He takes the very place of the omnipotent

God. Here, accordingly, κύριος cannot in any case have a weaker meaning than θεός."

Despite, however, such a clear perception of the high connotation of κύριος in the case of Paul (and the whole primitive Christian community), Johannes Weiss endeavors to interpret it, on Paul's lips, as expressive of something short of "God." He asserts (quite in

the teeth of the facts, as we have seen) that Paul carefully avoids using the term "God" to denote Christ. Forgetting that with Paul,

Christ (because—as nobody doubts—he is a two-natured person) is not only all that God is, but also all that man is, he appeals to 1 Cor.

3:23 to prove that Christ is dependent on God specifically with respect to his divine nature. He even points to 1 Cor. 8:6 as implying this manner of subordination. Let us, however, hear him fully on this latter passage. He writes:

"What Paul understands [by the term 'Lord'] may be seen from 1 Cor.

8:5. When he here grants that there are, in point of fact, many (certainly only so-called) 'Gods and Lords,' he means to say that there exist many (in his view demonic) beings to whom men render worship and adoration, calling upon them as God or Lord. In contrast with these many 'lords,' particularly perhaps to emperor worship, Christians acknowledge and venerate only the one κύριος,

Jesus Christ (cf. Deissmann, 'Licht von Osten,' pp. 233 ff.). It would not be impossible—though there is no way certainly to prove it—that in Paul's sense the predicate 'Lords' stands a grade lower than 'Gods,' that he would recognize it as applied only to deified men, heroes, and gods of lower degree. In any event, speaking from the point of view of style, to the word 'Gods' in vs. 5 the 'God the Father' of vs. 6 corresponds; and to the word 'Lords' the 'Lord Jesus Christ.' Now there can be no doubt (and precisely our passage gives a distinct proof of it) that what Paul seeks to do is, in spite of Christ's position by God's side, to subordinate him again to God (so, e.g., 2 Cor. 1:3 when he calls God not only the Father but also 'the God of our Lord

Jesus Christ': cf. Eph. 1:17; Jno. 20:17). And thus it were possible that he took over all the more readily the name κύριος derived by him from the primitive community, because he could express by it, no doubt, the divine position of Christ and the divine veneration due

to him, and yet draw a line by means of which the interval between Christ and God should remain protected."

It certainly is surprising to find Weiss suggesting here that Paul may be using the term "Lord" after a heathen fashion to designate only gods of lower degree; we have just seen him solidly proving that, in its application to Christ, at least, Paul employs it in a sense in which it is not capable of discrimination from "God." For the same reason it is surprising to find him suggesting here that one of Paul's motives in applying to Christ the term "Lord" may perhaps have been to avoid confounding him with God. And in view of Paul's doctrine of the Two

Natures (which Weiss does not in the least question) it is still further surprising to find him adducing here the circumstance that Paul sometimes speaks of God as the "God," as well as the Father, "of our

Lord Jesus Christ" as throwing doubt on his ascription of proper deity to Christ's divine nature—a procedure which one would think would have been rendered impossible by the circumstance (to which Weiss himself calls attention) that the same mode of speech occurs in John, where, at least, Weiss does not doubt Christ is simply God.

Finally, how little 1 Cor. 8:5, 6 itself can be supposed to suggest the subordination of the "Lord" Jesus Christ as to His deity to "God" the Father, becomes evident at once on our noting that the two—the one

Lord Jesus Christ and the one God the Father—are represented here as together constituting that God of which it is emphatically declared there is but one. For it is precisely in exposition of his energetic assertion in verse 4, in contradiction of all polytheistic points of view, that "there is no God, except one," that Paul declares that Christians recognize that there is only "one God the Father and one Lord Jesus

Christ." By as much as it is certain that he did not intend to represent the Christians themselves as polytheists, worshiping, like the rest, deity in grades, but, in contrast with all polytheists, as worshipers of but one Deity, it is clear that he did not intend to assign to Christ the

position of a secondary deity. Obviously to him the "one God the Father" and "the one Lord Jesus Christ" were in some high and true sense alike included in that one God who alone is recognized as existing.

This energetic assertion of monotheism by Paul, combined with a provision within it for at least some kind of dualism, leads us to revert for a moment to the closing clauses of the first extract we quoted from Johannes Weiss. There Weiss, having recognized for the Johannine writings and the Pastoral Epistles—what he would not recognize for Paul—that in them Christ is directly called "God" with the fullest meaning, seeks to account for this by suggesting that these

"late New Testament writings" may have lapsed from the strictness of Jewish monotheism under the influence of Hellenistic modes of thought, and thus have been enabled to place a second God by the side of God the Father in a sense still impossible to Paul. On the face of it, however, it certainly does not appear that there has been any falling away from the highest monotheism in their case; monotheism is rather the presupposition of all their teaching (Jno. 5:44; 17:3; 1

Tim. 1:17; 2:5; 6:15). It is Weiss' method which is again at fault.

Whatever conclusion may seem valid to him he obtrudes without more ado upon the New Testament writers, although their point of view obviously differs from his by a whole diameter. On his frankly

Socinian postulates, it may seem clear that where two are God there cannot be one God only. He therefore at once declares that the monotheism of John and the author of the Pastoral Epistles, who recognize at least two as God, is clearly falling into decay. But the Socinian postulates, dear to Weiss, have not determined the point of view of these writers! Their ascription of proper deity to Christ, therefore, in no wise imperils the purity of their monotheism; no monotheism, however strict, could inhibit the fullest recognition of the proper deity of Christ with writers whose fundamental thought

runs on the lines on which their thought runs, and the ascription of a purer monotheism than theirs to Paul, on the ground that they look upon the deity of Christ as proper and supreme, is nothing but a gratuitous prejudicing of the case. In point of fact, Paul stands precisely on the same level with them as with respect to the doctrine of God, so with respect to the doctrine of Christ. Every line of his epistles is vocal with the cry of Thomas, "My Lord and my God"; for the Epistle to the Romans as truly as for the Epistle to Titus, Christ is

"our great God and Savior"; to the Epistle to the Philippians as fully as to the First Epistle of John, Christ is "the true God," that is to say, he fills out and perfectly satisfies the whole idea of God—for that is as distinctly the connotation of ὑπάρχων ἐν μορφῂ θεοῦ as it is of ὁ ἀληθινὸς θεός.

The attempt to separate Paul's doctrine of Christ from John's as something essentially different, therefore, utterly fails. It is much more plausible to expound John's doctrine as a mere copy of Paul's.

There is considerable appearance of reasonableness, for example, in P. Wernle's representation that the significance of John's Gospel consists merely in its "bridging the chasm between Jesus and Paul and transferring the Pauline gospel back into the discourses and lifedelineation of Jesus." Was it not precisely through this transposition, indeed, he asks, that Paulinism first attained to dominance in the church? The trouble with this representation, however, is twofold: it ascribes distinctively to Paul what was the common doctrine of the whole church; and it credits particularly to John a service which had already been rendered—if it needed to be rendered—by the Synoptics. For the difficulty of construing Paul's Christology in lower terms than that of John is fairly matched by the difficulty of construing the Christology of the other writers of the New Testament in lower terms than that of Paul. The attempt has most frequently been made with respect to the Synoptic Gospels, and among them

probably most persistently with respect to Mark. We have often been told that in that "oldest of the Gospels"—the first attempt to sketch a narrative "life of Christ"—we have a portrait of the human Christ, unfalsified as yet by "dogmatic elements." From this ineptitude, it is to be hoped, we have now been conclusively delivered, more especially through its trenchant exposure by Wrede, who, whatever else he did, certainly made it abundantly clear that what we have in the Gospel of Mark is far from what has been called a "primitive document" presenting a "primitive" view of the Person of Christ. The highest astonishment is accordingly being now expressed from every quarter that it could ever have been imagined that documents written in "the sixties," or at least in "the fifties," could fail to reflect the high Christology which, as we know from Paul's letters, was at that time the established faith of the whole Christian community.36

In any event the Christology of the Synoptic Gospels is indistinguishable from that of Paul, and this is as true of the Christology of Mark as of that of Matthew or of Luke. We do not ourselves look upon Mark as "the primitive Gospel"; we do not even subscribe to the now almost universal opinion that it is the earliest of our three Synoptics; we agree with Johannes Weiss in assigning it to 64–68 A.D., but for reasons of our own we place it quite at the end of this period; we agree with Harnack in thinking Luke certainly as old as this and much more likely as old as 63 A.D., or even as 58–60

A.D.; and Matthew, we are sure, is as old as Mark and may very well be as old as Luke; we should find no serious difficulty, indeed, in placing both Matthew and Luke early in the "fifties." But the brevity, and, so to say, relative externality, of Mark naturally suggest it as the particular one of the Synoptics in which the Christology common to them all is likely to be expressed in, if not its lowest, yet at least its least-elaborated terms; and it is not unnatural, therefore, that it has been scrutinized with especial care with a view to determining the real nature of the synoptic conception of Christ. The result has been

to make it perfectly plain that the Synoptic conception of the Person of Christ is just that doctrine of the Two Natures which, as we have seen, is given expression in Paul's Epistles and is everywhere presupposed in them as the established faith of the Christians of the middle of the first century, and of any earlier date to which the retrospective testimony of this body of Epistles may be allowed to extend.

"The Christology of the Gospel of Mark [writes Johannes Weiss] is already given expression in the title: his gospel treats of Jesus Christ

(the Son of God, in case these last words are genuine).… The particularly designating names of Jesus are for him 'the Son of God' and 'the Son of Man.' When the evangelist so frequently places the latter of these in the mouth of Jesus as a self-designation, he thus betrays that he no longer possesses any sense of the suitability of this name exclusively for the heavenly Messiah, whether as pre-existent or as exalted. For him it is precisely the Jesus who walks the earth who is no other than the 'heavenly Man,' who came down from heaven, and has been again exalted to heaven (14:62), whence he is to come again in the clouds with great power and glory (13:26).

Accordingly he makes Jesus call himself the Son of Man even when he is speaking of his earthly activity (2:10, 28; 10:45), of his sufferings (e.g., 8:31), and of his resurrection (9:9). He was in this already preceded by the Discourses-source (Mt. 11:9 = Lk. 7:34) and Matthew carried still farther this replacement of an 'I' in the mouth of Jesus by 'the Son of Man' (cf. Mt. 16:13 with Mk. 8:27). This use of the name is an altogether sufficient proof that, just like Paul, Mark looked upon Jesus as the 'Man' who came from heaven. Similarly it cannot be doubted that this post-Pauline writer understood, as Paul understood it, the name 'Son of God,' which stood perhaps in the title of his gospel as the most significant name of dignity—that is to say, not in the theocratic sense, examined above (pp. 19 ff.), of him who

has been chosen and called to the messianic kingship, but (p. 34) of him who was the sole one among men that, of his nature, bears in himself the essence (Wesen) of God.

Of course Weiss would distinguish shades of view among the several writers—the authors of the Gospels severally and Paul—but his testimony to the main matter is quite distinct; that, in a word, to the author of Mark, as to all the others of these writers, Christ was, as he himself puts it, "a divine being 'incarnated'—we must already make use of this expression—in a man." And it will be found impossible to make this divine being, with Mark any more than with Paul, anything less than the supreme God himself. When Mark records our Lord himself as testifying that he is, in the hierarchy of being, above even the angels, he places him outside the category of created beings; and there is no reason to doubt that with him as truly as with all his

Jewish compatriots the Son of God which he repeatedly calls Jesus connoted, as John defines the phrase for us (5:18), just "equality with God."

It is not necessary to labor the point. It is undeniable that the Christ of the whole body of New Testament writers, without exception, is a Two-Natured Person—divine and human; and indeed this is scarcely any longer denied. Whatever attempts are still made to discriminate between the Christologies of the New Testament writers fall within the limits of this common doctrine. Wilhelm von Schnehen does not go one whit beyond the facts of the case when he declares, no doubt after a fashion and with implications derived from his own point of view:

"Go back into the history of Christianity as far as you will, you will nowhere find the least support for the notion that Jesus was revered on the ground of his purely human activity and attributes, say as the

founder of a religion, as teacher of morals, or even only as religiousethical example. Understand the content of the word 'gospel' as you may, never has it to do with a mere 'man' Jesus, never does it give to this the central place in Christian worship. For the glad-tidings of the Rabbi of Nazareth, even the adorers of his human personality will not in the end deny this. That it is valid also for the Gospel-writings of the New Testament is equally indubitable. The Jesus of which these writings tell us is through and through not a man but at the very least a super-man. Yes, he is more than that; he is the unique

Son of God; the Christ, the coming God-man of the orthodox church.

For the Fourth Gospel this is, of course, universally recognized; the Johannine Jesus is an incarnate creative word, the human manifestation of the 'Logos,' who from the beginning was with God and himself was God, whose divine glory was continuously apparent to his disciples, beneath its earthly shell. But the other Gospels also think of nothing so little as telling us of a mere 'man' Jesus, and demanding a believing reverence for such a one. No, the miraculously begotten Son of the Virgin with Luke and Matthew, the Jesus who rose from the dead and ascended into heaven of the First and Third Gospels, is just as little a mere 'natural man' as the Johannine Christ. And as regards finally the Gospel of Mark,

Professor Bousset, for example, remarks: 'It is already from the standpoint of faith that the oldest Gospel is written; already for Mark

Jesus is not only the Messiah of the Jewish people but' (in consequence of the communication of the Spirit at the baptism!) 'the miraculous, eternal Son of God whose glory shines into this world.

And it has been rightly emphasized that in this respect our three first Gospels differ from the Fourth only in degree.' "

The comment which is made on this and similar utterances of recent radicalism, by Richard Grützmacher is eminently justified:

"The immense significance of this acknowledgment can be measured only by one who knows the unnumbered theological and extratheological attempts of the last century and a half from the extremest left to far into the circle of the mediating theology to obtain from the New Testament itself, or at least from the three first Gospels, a purely human portrait of Jesus, and to eliminate all metaphysical and supernatural content from their expressions. The 'modern' and the church interpretation of the New Testament at the beginning of the twentieth century—to which also in very large measure the later

'Liberalism' gives its adhesion—is in complete accord in this result: that the church-doctrine of the God-man Christ can appeal with full right to the New Testament in its entire compass, and any development beyond that which has taken place is only formal. The allegorizing-dogmatic exegesis of the last hundred and fifty years has been transcended."

That is to say, the doctrine of the Two Natures of Christ is not merely the synthesis of the teaching of the New Testament, but the conception which underlies every one of the New Testament writings severally; it is not only the teaching of the New Testament as a whole but of the whole of the New Testament, part by part. Historically, this means that not only has the doctrine of the Two Natures been the invariable presupposition of the whole teaching of the church from the apostolic age down, but all the teaching of the apostolic age rests on it as its universal presupposition. When Christian literature begins, this is already the common assumption of the entire church.

If we wish to translate this into the terms of positive chronology, what must be said is that before the opening of the sixth decade of the first century (for we suppose that I Thess. must be dated somewhere about 52 A.D.), the doctrine of the Two Natures already is firmly established in the church as the universal foundation of all

Christian thinking concerning Christ. Such a mere chronological

statement, however, hardly does justice to the case. What needs to be emphasized is that there is no Christian literature in existence which does not base itself, as upon an already firmly laid foundation, on the doctrine of the Two Natures. So far as Christian literature can bear testimony, there never has been any other doctrine recognized in the church. This literature itself goes back to within twenty years or so of the death of Christ; and of course—since it did not create but reflects this faith—has a retrospective value as testimony to the faith of Christians.

Nevertheless, men still seek to posit an "earlier," "more primitive,"

"simpler" view of the Person of Christ, behind this oldest attested doctrine. In another article we shall ask whether it is possible thus to go back of the doctrine of the New Testament writings to a more

"primitive" view of the Person of Christ.

II. THE NEW TESTAMENT JESUS THE ONLY REAL JESUS

In a former article we have pointed out that the doctrine of the "Two Natures" is the common presupposition of the whole body of the New Testament writings—a presupposition which is everywhere built upon, and which comes to clear enunciation wherever occasion calls for it. The literature gathered into the New Testament is not only the earliest Christian literature which has come down to us, but goes back to within twenty years or so of the death of Christ; and since it did not create but reflects the faith it expresses, it must be allowed to possess a retrospective significance in its unbroken testimony to the belief of Christians. What the whole Christian community is found to be resting in, with complete assurance, as the truth respecting the person of its founder in, say, 50 A.D.—a time when a large number of his personal followers were doubtless still living, and certainly the

tradition of which they were bearers (cf. Lk. 1:2) cannot have become obscured—can scarcely fail to have been the aboriginal belief of the Christian body. Nevertheless, a determined effort is still made to discover an "earlier," "more primitive," "simpler" view of the person of Christ behind the oldest attested doctrine. There is confessedly no "direct" evidence of the existence of any such "earlier," "more primitive," "simpler" view. "Of the religion of the earliest JewishChristian community," says Johannes Weiss, as he enters upon the exposition of "the faith of the primitive community," "we have no direct witnesses; for we can, today, no longer consider the Epistles of Peter and James genuine works of the primitive apostles"—largely, it needs to be remembered, because they do not contain the "more primitive" Christology which it is assumed these "primitive apostles" must have cherished. But it is thought that by means of indirect evidence, the existence in the first age of Christianity of an earlier view of Christ than any which has found record in the New

Testament may be established. The whole mass of expressions of which the New Testament writers make use in speaking of Christ, is subjected to a searching scrutiny with a view to discovering among them, if possible, "survivals" of an "earlier" mode of thinking of Christ. Weiss accordingly continues:

"For this pre-Pauline epoch also we are first of all directed to the letters of Paul. He occasionally speaks of having received something from the primitive community (1 Cor. 15:3 ff.). But more important still are the numerous elements of the oldest primitive-Christian conceptions which without expressly notifying the fact he carries along in his theology, and which betray themselves to the eye of the investigator as a universal-Christian stratum underlying the more

Hellenistically colored specifically-Pauline doctrine. Similarly, all the other documents of the Apostolic and post-Apostolic age contain such old Christian traits, which point back to the standpoint of the

oldest community. Thereto we reckon especially the discourses in the first part of Acts. Though they may have come from a later time, yet, precisely in their Christology, they contain very antique conceptions."

What is attempted, it will be seen, is on subjective grounds—there are, in the circumstances, none other available—to distinguish, among the New Testament deliverances concerning Christ, those which belong to the primitive age from those which belong to the age when the books were written. The whole New Testament is doubtless laid under contribution for this purpose, but the happy huntingground of the quest is found in the early chapters of the Acts and in the Synoptic Gospels.

It is not without the clearest justification that we have emphasized the purely subjective grounding of this quest. If we possessed a single

Christian document earlier in date than those which constitute our New Testament, in which was taught the special Christology which it is proposed to extract from our New Testament as an earlier form of belief than that which the New Testament itself universally commends to us, there might be some excuse for gathering out of our

New Testament books the sentences and forms of expression which semed to fall particularly in with the teachings of this earlier document and pronouncing them survivals of its earlier modes of thought. But in the absence of any such earlier document, what reason is there for pronouncing these forms of expression

"survivals"? The touchstone by which their "earlier" character is determined, Weiss tells us, resides in "the searcher's eye." That is to say, shortly, in the critic's a priori paradigms. The critic comes to his task with a settled conviction, a priori established, that Jesus was a mere man, and must have been thought of by his followers as a mere man; and sets himself to search out in the extant literature—which is

informed by a contrary conviction—modes of expression which he can interpret as "survivals" of such an "earlier" point of view.

Meanwhile, there is no evidence whatever that these modes of expression are "survivals," or that there ever existed in the Christian community an "earlier" view of the person of Christ than that given expression in the New Testament writings. Reinhold Seeberg has quite accurately expounded the state of the case when, speaking more particularly of Harnack's unfortunate attempt to distinguish in primitive Christianity an "adoptionist" and a "pneumatic"

Christology, he says:

"Investigators, in my opinion, are as a rule misled by this—that they make the 'historical Jesus' their starting-point by simple assumption, and treat all expressions which go beyond this as attributes added to him in gradual precipitation on the ground of faith in his resurrection. The historical starting-point is, however, in reality contained in three facts: (1) that Jesus in his earthly life manifested a superhuman self-consciousness; (2) that his disciples were convinced by him, after his resurrection, not precisely by it, that they had directly experienced and received proof of his divine nature; and (3) that they accordingly honored and proclaimed him as the heavenly Spirit-Lord. These facts are, in my opinion, indisputable, and from these facts as a starting-point—they are simply 'given' and not deducible—the entire thought-development can be fully explained."

When the study of historical records is approached with a fixed assumption of an opposite point of view to their own as instrument of interpretation, it is not strange if their representations are replaced by a set of contradictory representations. But the "results" thus reached are not in any recognizable sense "historical." They are

the product of wresting history in order to fill in a foregone conclusion of abstract thought.

It should not pass without very particular notice that the forms of expression gathered from our New Testament books, out of which is to be fashioned an "earlier" Christology than that presupposed by this literature, do not lie on the face of the New Testament as alien fragments. It is not without significance that Johannes Weiss, after remarking that Paul occasionally puts forward statements as derived by him from "the primitive community," at once adds that, for the purpose of reconstructing the faith of this "earlier community" from Paul's writings, "survivals" in his writings not expressly notified as such are both more numerous and more important. In other words, our New Testament writers who have preserved for us the elements of this "earlier" Christology wholly different from their own, and indeed contradictory to it, have preserved them with the most engaging unconsciousness of their alien character: in point of fact, they have written down these contradictory sentences with no other thought than that they were the just expression of their own proper views; and they betray no sense of embarrassment whatever with respect to them. This is true even—or perhaps we should say, especially—of the extreme case of the record of Peter's christological utterances in the earlier chapters of the Book of Acts. It is quite clear that Luke is wholly unaware that he is recording views of his Lord which differ from his own, which, indeed, are in sharp conflict with his own and, to speak frankly, stultify his entire attitude toward his

Lord, for the validation of which his whole great two-part work was written. We may well ask whether such unconscious naïveté can be attributed to such an alert writer as Luke shows himself to be. Or if with Schmiedel we deny these chapters to Luke and suppose the speeches of Peter "free compositions" of a later author, the tour de force which we attribute to this great nameless dramatist rises quite

to the level of the miraculous. It is hardly worth while to ask similarly whether Paul, in his fervid expressions of reverence to Christ as "Lord," can be supposed with such simplicity to mix in with his own language, so vividly expressive of this reverence, other forms of speech standing in flat contradiction to all that he was proclaiming, merely because he found them in use in "the primitive community."

Surely the Epistle to the Galatians does not encourage us to believe Paul to have been filled with such blind veneration for "the primitive community," that he would be likely to continue to repeat its language in devout subjection to the authority of its modes of statement, though it ran counter to his profoundest convictions and his most fervent religious feelings.

The general point we are endeavoring to make deserves some elaboration with special reference to the Synoptic Gospels. It is particularly behind their narrative that the traces of an earlier conception of the person of Christ than that presented by our whole

New Testament—inclusive of these Gospels—are supposed to be discoverable. It is frankly allowed, as we have seen, that the Gospels as they stand present to our view a divine Christ, an incarnated Son of God, who came to earth on a mission, and whose whole earthly life is only an episode in the existence of a Heavenly Being. But it is immediately added that in the narrative put together from this standpoint, there are imbedded elements of an earlier tradition, to which Jesus was a mere man, bounded by all human limitations. And it is assumed to be precisely the task of criticism to identify and draw out these elements of earlier tradition, that we may recover from them the idea formed of Jesus by his real contemporaries and, therefore, presumably, the true conception of him before he was transformed by the reverent thought of his followers into an exalted

Being, to be which he himself made no claim. We say nothing now of purely "literary criticism"—the attempt to ascertain the sources on

which our Gospels as literary compositions rest, and from which they draw their materials. For this "literary criticism" in no way advances the discovery of a "more primitive" Christology lying behind that presented by the authors of our Gospels. It would have been a strange proceeding indeed had the authors of our Gospels elected to draw their materials, by preference, from earlier documents presenting a totally different, or, rather, sharply contrasting conception of Jesus from that which they had in heart and mind to commend to their readers; and they are obviously wholly unaware of doing anything of the kind. Happily, we are delivered from the necessity of considering the possibility of such a literary phenomenon. It is no doubt impossible to reconstruct any of the sources which "have found their graves" in our Gospels with full confidence, with respect either to the details of their contents or even to their general compass. But neither the "narrative source"—the socalled Urmarkus—which underlies all three of the Synoptics, nor the "discourses-source"—the so-called "Logia"—which underlies the common portions of Matthew and Luke not found also in Mark, on any rational theory of its compass and contents, differs in any respect in its christological point of view from that of the Gospels, so large a portion of which they constitute. We may remark in passing that this carries the evidence for the aboriginality in the Christian community of the two-natured conception of Christ back a literary generation behind the Synoptics themselves; and that surely must bring us to a time which can scarcely be thought to be wholly dominated by Paul's innovating influence. It is enough for us here to note, however, that "literary criticism" does not take us back to documents presenting a "pre-Pauline" Christology. If such a "pre-Pauline" Christology is to be found in the background of our Gospels, much coarser methods of reaching it than "literary criticism" must be employed.

The absurd attempt of P. W. Schmiedel to reverse the conception of Christ transmitted to us by the Gospels, by insisting that, in the first instance, we must trust only such passages as are—or rather, as, when torn from their contexts, may be made to seem—inconsistent with the main purpose of the evangelists in writing their Gospels, namely, to honor Christ, is only an unusually crass application of the method which from the beginning has been common to the whole body of those who, like him, are in search of evidence in the Gospels of the existence of a "more primitive" tradition than that which the Gospels themselves represent. The essence of this method is the attempt to discover in the Gospel-narrative elements in the delineation of Jesus which are inconsistent with the conception of Jesus which it is their purpose to convey; to which unassimilated elements of a different tradition, preference is at once given in point of both age and trustworthiness. This method is as freely in use, for instance, by Johannes Weiss, who seems to wish to separate himself from Schmiedel, as by Schmiedel himself. Let us note how Weiss deals with the matter:8

"The Christology of the evangelist himself [he is speaking of Mark] is very far advanced in the direction of the Johannine; there can be no doubt that Jesus is to him the Son of God, in the sense of a divine being with divine power and divine knowledge from the beginning on. Nothing is hidden from him: his own destiny, the denial, the betrayal, the fate of Jerusalem—he tells it all exactly beforehand.

Nothing is impossible to him: the most marvelous healings, like the sudden cure of the withered hand, of leprosy, of blindness, are performed by him without any difficulty; he raises a dead person; he walks on the water, and feeds thousands with a few loaves; he makes the fig tree wither—it is all related as if nothing else could be expected; we see in these accounts neither the bold faith to which all is possible nor the enthusiasm of one beside himself, nor natural

intermediation; Jesus can do just anything. And therefore, to the evangelist, it is nothing singular that at his death the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent; and that he left the grave on the third day—all this follows altogether naturally and of itself from his Christology. But alongside of these stand other traits: his power rests on the Spirit, which was communicated to him at baptism; we see how this Spirit struggles with the spirits (1:25, 3:11,

5:6, 8, 9:25 f.); his miraculous power is limited by unbelief (6:5), he must have faith himself and find faith in others if he is to help; his dominion over suffering and death has its limits; he trembles and is afraid, and feels forsaken by God; he is ignorant of the day and hour; he will not permit himself to be called 'Good Master'; he prays to the Father like a man, and is subject to all human emotions, even anger, and to mistake with reference to his disciples."

The whole art of the presentation is apparent. Weiss would make it appear that there are two Jesuses in Mark's narrative, a divine Jesus and a human Jesus; and if we take the one, he suggests, the other must be left. Mark himself believed in the divine Jesus; the human

Jesus, which he places by His side, must therefore be the "earlier"

Jesus, to which he has been so accustomed that he cannot away with him even when he would. The astonishing thing, however, is that Mark is entirely unconscious of the straits he is in. He records the human traits, which are supposed to refute the whole portraiture he is endeavoring to draw, with no sense of their incongruity. For, "we must … remember," as Dr. Percy Gardner admonishes us, "that the three Gospels are not mere colourless biographies, but collections of such parts of the Christian tradition as most impressed a society which had already begun to seek in the life of its founder traces of a more than human origin and nature." They are, to put it more accurately, presentations of the salient acts and sayings of Jesus by men who thoroughly believed in the divine Christ, and who wished—

as Dr. Gardner says of Paul, the master of two of these evangelists— to "place the human life of Jesus between two periods of celestial exaltation." Why then did these men, of all men, preserve elements of an earlier tradition which contradict their own deepest convictions of the origin and nature of their Lord? Is it because they lacked literary skill to convey the picture they were intent on conveying, and so, as Dr. Gardner puts it, in their attempt to depict the Jesus they believed in, the "human legend was not effaced, but it was supplemented here and there with incongruous elements"? Surely, the day is long since past when our Gospels can be treated thus as naïve narratives by childlike hands endeavoring only to set down the few facts concerning Christ which had come to their knowledge. If these elements of "the human legend" were retained, it was, on the contrary, precisely because they presented to the consciousness of these writers no incongruity with their conceptions of the divine

Christ; and that is as much as to say that the Jesus whom they were depicting was in their view no less truly human than truly divine. The life of the Master on earth, which they placed between the two periods of celestial exaltation, bore for them the traits of a truly human life.

But as soon as we say this, it is clear that we cannot appeal to the human traits which they ascribe to Jesus as evidence of the existence of an "earlier" Christology than theirs, which looked upon Jesus as merely human. These traits are congruous parts of their own

Christology. They are not fragments of an earlier view of Christ's person, persisting as "survivals" in a later view; they are the other half of a consistent christological conception. They supply, therefore, no evidence that there ever existed an earlier Christology than that in which they occupy a necessary place. We may reject, if we please, the Christology of the evangelists, and, rejecting it, insist that Christ was not a divine-human, but simply a human being. But we can get no

support for this private, and possibly pious, opinion of our own, from the writings of the evangelists. The human traits, which they all ascribe to Jesus, do not in the least suggest that they, in the bottom of their hearts, or others before them, believed in a merely human

Jesus. They only make it manifest that they, and those from whom they derive, believed in a Jesus who was human. The attempt to distort the evidence that they believed in a Jesus who was human, as well as divine, into evidence that they had inherited belief in a merely human Jesus, and unconsciously lapsed into the language of their older and simpler faith, even when endeavoring to commend quite another conception, does violence to every line of their writings; it is not acute historical exposition, but the crassest kind of dogmatic imposition. Because from the critic's own point of view the doctrine of the "Two Natures" involves a psychological impossibility, when he finds the evangelists presenting in their narratives a Jesus who is both divine and human, he proclaims that there are clumsily mixed here two mutually inconsistent Christologies chronologically related to one another as earlier and later; and because from his own point of view a purely divine Jesus were as impossible as a divine-human one, he pronounces that one of these two warring Christologies which makes Jesus a mere man, the earlier, "historical" view, and that one which makes Him divine, a later, "mythical" view. For neither the one nor the other of these pronouncements, however, has he other ground than his own a priori prejudice. The divine and the human Jesus of the evangelists do not stand related to one another chronologically, as an earlier and a later view, but vitally, as the two sides of one complex personality; and had there been reason to interpret them as chronologically related there is no reason derivable from the evangelists themselves—or, we may add, from the history of thought in the first years of the Christian proclamation—why the human view of Christ's person should be supposed to be the earlier of the two. From all that appears in these narratives, and from

whatever other records we possess, Jesus was, on the contrary, from the beginning understood by His followers to be very God, sojourning on earth. In a word, not only is the doctrine of the "Two

Natures" the synthesis of the entire body of christological data embodied in the pages of the New Testament; and not only is it the teaching of all the writers of the New Testament severally; but the New Testament provides no material whatever for inferring that a different view was ever held by the Christian community. The entire

Christian tradition, from the beginning, whatever that may be worth, is a tradition of a two-natured Jesus, that is to say, of an incarnated

God. Of a one-natured Jesus, Christian tradition knows nothing, and supplies no materials from which He may be inferred.

This determination of the state of the case includes in it, it will be observed, Jesus' own self-testimony. We know nothing of Jesus' selfconsciousness, or self-testimony, save as it has been transmitted to us by His followers. The Jesus whom the evangelists have given us testifies to the possession of a self-consciousness which matches perfectly the conception of Jesus which the evangelists are set upon conveying; indeed, the evangelists' conception of Jesus is embodied largely in terms of Jesus' self-testimony. Behind this we can get only by the method of criticism whose inconsequence we have been endeavoring to expose. That "historical Jesus," whom Johannes

Weiss (in act of bearing his witness as a historian to the historical validity of the higher Christology) describes as, "so far as we can discern him, seeing his task in drawing his followers into the direct experience of sonship with God, without demanding any place for himself in their piety," has never existed anywhere except in the imaginations of Weiss and his "liberal" fellow-craftsmen. The evangelists know nothing of Him nor does He lurk anywhere in the background of their narratives. The only Jesus of which they have knowledge—or whose figure is traceable in any of their sources—is a

Jesus who ranked Himself above all creatures (Mk. 13:32, one of Schmiedel's "pillar-passages," of which J. H. Moulton speaks as "that saying of uniquely acknowledged authenticity"); who represented

Himself as living continuously in an intercourse with God which cannot be spoken of otherwise than as perfect reciprocity (Mt. 11:25;

Lk. 10:22—a passage which has its assured place in the "discoursessource"); and who habitually spoke of Himself as the "Son of Man"

(as witnessed in both the "narrative-source" and the "discoursessource"—of course, with all the implications of heavenly origin, ineffable exaltation, and judgeship of the world—divine traits all— which accompany that designation). It is pure illusion, therefore, for Karl Thieme to think of himself as faithful to the self-consciousness of Jesus, or as casting off only an "apostolical theologoumenon

(Glaubensgedanke)"—which he considers no fault—when he attaches himself to a merely human Jesus and pronounces all that is more than this "mythological." This merely human "historical Jesus" is a pure invention of the wish that is father to the thought, and would have been, not merely to Paul, as Martin Brückner justly reminds us,13 but to all the New Testament writers as well, and to Jesus himself, as depicted by them and as discernible in any sense behind their portraiture—just "nonsense."

We cannot withhold a certain sympathy, nevertheless, from men who, caught in the toils of modern naturalism, and unable themselves to admit the intrusion of the supernatural into this world of "causative nexus," are determined to keep the merely human

Jesus, whom alone they can allow to have existed, free from at least the grosser illusions concerning His person with which the thought of His followers has been (in their view) deformed. There surely is manifested in this determination—utterly unhistorical as it is, in both spirit and effect—a strong underlying wish to honor Jesus; to preserve to Him at least his sanity—for that is what it comes to in the

essence of the matter. A merely human Jesus, who nevertheless believed Himself to be God, were a portentous figure on which to focus the admiring gaze of the Christian generations. We may well believe that a saving instinct underlies all the more extreme historical skepticism in the modern attempts to construe the figure of Jesus, as it is somewhat grotesquely phrased, "historically." The violence done to historical verity, for example, in denying that Jesus thought and proclaimed Himself the Messiah, receives a kind of— shall we say psychological, or shall we say sentimental?—if not justification, yet at least condonation, when we reflect what it would mean for Jesus, if, not being really the Messiah (and from this naturalistic point of view the whole body of messianic hopes were but a frenzied dream), He nevertheless fancied himself the Messiah and assumed the rôle of Messiah. There may even be pleaded a sort of historical condonation for it; it certainly were inconceivable that such a man as Jesus is historically authenticated as being—His whole life informed, for example, with a gracious humility before God— could have been the victim of such a megalomania.

It is into a perfect labyrinth of inconsistencies and contradictions, in fact, that the assumption that Jesus was a mere man betrays us; and from them there is no issue except by the correction of the primal postulate. The old antithesis aut Deus, aut non bonus need, indeed, no longer be pressed; none in these modern days (since Renan) is so lost to historical verisimilitude as to think of charging Jesus with coarse charlatanry (cf. Mt. 27:63). But His integrity is saved only at the cost of His intelligence. If none accuse Him of charlatanry, there are many who are ready to ascribe to Him the highest degree of fanaticism, and a whole literature has grown up in recent years around the matter. There is, indeed, no escape from crediting to Him some degree of "enthusiasm," if He is to be considered a mere man.

And this, let us understand it clearly, is to ascribe to Him also, when

the character of this "enthusiasm" is understood, some degree of what we are accustomed, very illuminatingly, to call "derangement."

It is easy, of course, to cry out, as Hans Windisch, for example, does cry out, against the antithesis "Either Jesus Christ was mentally diseased, or He was God-man," as "frightful and soul-imperiling." It is that; but it offers us, nevertheless, the sole possible alternatives.

Shall we not recognize it as a delusion which argues mental unsoundness when a mere man proclaims himself God? Even D. F.

Strauss taught us this much two generations ago: "If he were a mere man" says he,16 "and, nevertheless, cherished that expectation "—the expectation, to wit, of quickly coming on the clouds of heaven to inaugurate the messianic kingdom—" we cannot help either ourselves or him. He was, according to our conceptions, a fanatic

(Schwärmer)." It is possible, no doubt, sturdily to deny that Jesus could have harbored these high thoughts of Himself, or cherished these great expectations. But this is flatly in the face of the whole historical evidence. It is undeniable that the only Jesus known to history was both recognized by His followers and Himself claimed to be something much more than man, and to have before Him a career accordant with His divine being. Nor can this lowered view of Jesus be carried through: neither Harnack, nor Bousset, nor Hausrath, nor Otto has been able, with the best will in the world, to present to us a Jesus free from supernatural elements of self-consciousness. So that it is a true judgment, which Hermann Werner passes upon their efforts to depict a merely human Jesus: "The historical Jesus of the liberal theology is and abides a mentally diseased man—as Lepsius strikingly said, 'a tragedy of fanaticism' (Schwärmerei)." If these supernatural claims were "mythical," then either there was no real

Jesus, and His very personality vanishes into the myth into which all that is historical concerning Him is sublimated, or the real Jesus was the subject of acute megalomania in His estimate of Himself.

And here we discover the significance in the history of thought of the new radicalism which has, in our day, actually raised the question—a question which has become a "burning" one in Germany, the home of the "merely human Jesus"—whether "Jesus ever lived." Men like

Albert Kalthoff and Karl Kautsky, Wilhelm von Schnehen and Arthur Drews, emphasize the fact that the only Jesus known to history was a divine being become man for human redemption—not a deified man, but an incarnate God. If this Jesus is a mythological figure—why, there is no "historical Jesus" left. The zeal for vindicating the actual existence of a "historical Jesus," which has developed in the circles of German "liberalism" during the past two years, is most commendable. The task is easy, and the success with which it has been accomplished is correspondingly great. But the real significance, whether of the attack or the defense, seems to be only slowly becoming recognized, or at least to have been acknowledged by those involved most deeply in the conflict. It lies, however, very much on the surface. Arthur Drews is simply the reductio ad absurdum of David Friedrich Strauss. And the vindication of the actuality of a "historical Jesus," against the assault of which Drews has become the central figure, is the definitive refutation of the entire

"mythical theory," which, inaugurated by Strauss, has been the common foundation on which the whole "liberal" school has built for two generations. There is, of course, nothing more certain than that "Jesus lived." But there is another thing which is equally certain with it; and that is expressed with irrefutable clearness and force by Arthur Drews when he declares that "the Jesus of the oldest

Christian communities is not, as is commonly thought"—that is to say, in the circles of "liberalism"—"a deified man, but a humanized

God." It is impossible to sublimate into myth the whole Jesus of the New Testament testimony, the Jesus of the evangelists, the Jesus of all the evangelical sources which can be even in part isolated and examined, the Jesus, in a word, of the entire historical witness, and

retain any Jesus at all. The "mythical Jesus" is not the invention of Drews, but of Strauss, and it is common ground with Drews and all his "liberal" opponents. It is a mere matter of detail whether we say with Weinel that the historical Jesus was a mere man, but a man whom "we know right well—as well as if we could see him still before us today, and were able to hear his voice"; or with Pfleiderer, that He was certainly a mere man, but is so bound up with the legends that have grown up about Him that we can never know anything about His real personality; or with Drews, that there is no reason for supposing that He ever existed at all: a mere matter of detail, indifferent to history, which knows nothing of any Jesus but the divine Jesus. The advent of the new radicalism into the field of discussion cannot fail, however, greatly to clear the air; the merely human Jesus is really eliminated by it from the catalogue of possible hypotheses, and the issue is drawn sharply and singly: Is the divinehuman Jesus, who alone is historically witnessed a reality, or a myth? Tertium non datur.

Thus we are brought to the final issue. The two-natured Christ is the synthesis of the whole mass of biblical data concerning Christ. The doctrine of the Two Natures underlies all the New Testament writings severally, and it is commended to us by the combined authority of all those primitive followers of Christ who have left written records of their faith. It is the only doctrine of Christ which can be discerned lying back of our formal records in pre-written tradition; it is the aboriginal faith of the Christian community. It is the only alternative to a non-existent Christ; we must choose between a two-natured Christ and a simply mythical Christ. By as much as "Jesus lived," by so much is it certain that the Jesus who lived is the person who alone is witnessed to us as having lived—the Jesus who, being Himself of heavenly origin and superior to the very angels, had come to earth on a mission of mercy, to seek and save

those who are lost, and who, after He had given His life a ransom for many, was to come again on the clouds of heaven to judge the world.

No other Jesus than this ever lived. No doubt He lived as man, His life adorned with all the gracious characteristics of a man of God. But He cannot be stripped of His divine claims. We have already had occasion to advert to the gross contradiction which is involved in supposing that such a man as He was could have preserved that fine flavor of humility toward God which characterized His whole lifemanifestation and yet have falsely imagined Himself that exalted being in whose fancied personality He lived out His life on earth. The trait which made it possible for Him to put Himself forward as the Fellow of God would have made the humility of heart and demeanor which informed all His relations with God impossible. Our modern humanitarians, of course, gloze the psychological contradiction; but they cannot withhold recognition of the contrast of traits which must be accredited to any Jesus who can really be believed—even on their postulates—to have ever existed. Standing before this puzzle of his life-manifestation, Adolf Harnack writes:20

"Only one who has had a kindred experience could go to the bottom here. A prophet might perhaps attempt to lift the veil; such as we must be content to assure ourselves that the Jesus who taught selfknowledge and humility, yet gave to himself, and to himself alone, the name of the Son of God."

And again:

"But it is of one alone that we know that he united the deepest humility and purity of will with the claim that he was more than all the prophets who were before him, even the Son of God. Of him alone, we know that those who ate and drank with him glorified him, not only as the Teacher, Prophet, and King, but also as the Prince of

Life, as the Redeemer, Judge of the world, as the living power of their existence—'It is not I that live, but Christ in me'—and that presently a band of the Jew and gentile, the wise and foolish, acknowledged that they had received from the abundance of this one man, grace for grace. This fact which is open to the light of day is unique in history; and it requires that the actual personality behind it should be honored as unique."

In similar vein Paul Wernle, having pointed out that the two elements found in the Gospels are also found in Jesus' own consciousness, exclaims:

"What is astonishing in Jesus is the co-existence of the superhuman self-consciousness with the most profound humility before God. It is the same man that cries, 'All things have been delivered unto me of my Father, and no one knoweth the Father save the Son,' and who replies to the rich young ruler, 'Why callest thou me good, there is none good save God.' Without the former, a man like us; without the latter, a fanatic."

By his last words Wernle apparently fancies that all is said which needs to be said in order to explain the anomaly, when it is said that Jesus takes up "the rôle of Mediator": we shall no longer be surprised that he claims something on both parts. But the astounding features of the case cannot be so lightly disposed of. When the two elements of it are given each its full validity; when the completeness of Jesus' humility before God is realized on the one side, and the height of His claim reaching to the supreme deity itself, on the other, it is safe to say that such a combination of mental states within the limits of a single nature will be acknowledged to be inconceivable. It is inconceivable that the same soul could have produced two such contradictory states of mind contemporaneously. Could have

produced them, we say. Should we not add the question whether a single soul could even have harbored such contradictory states? Such contradictory states of consciousness could no more dwell together in one unitary conscious spirit than issue from it as its creation. The self-consciousness of Jesus is, in other words, distinctly duplex, and necessarily implies dual centers of self-consciousness. Only in such a conception of the person can the mind rest. If Jesus was both the Son of God, in all the majesty of true deity, and a true child of man, in creaturely humility—if, that is, He was both God and man, in two distinct natures united, however inseparably and eternally, yet without conversion or confusion in one person—we have in His person, no doubt, an inexhaustible mystery, the mystery surpassing all mysteries, of combined divine love and human devotion. If He was not both God and man in two distinct natures combined in one person, the mystery of His personality passes over into a mere mass of crass contradictions which cannot all be believed; which, therefore, invite arbitrary denial on the one side or the other; and which will inevitably lead to each man creating for himself an artificial Jesus, reduced in the traits allowed to Him to more credible consistency—if indeed, it does not directly tempt to His entire sublimation into a highly composite ideal.

It can scarcely be necessary to add that escape from these psychological contradictions, incident to the attempt to construct a one-natured Christ, cannot be had by fleeing to "the discoveries of the new psychology." It is vain to point, for example, to the phenomena of what is commonly spoken of as "multiple personality" as offering a parallel to the duplex consciousness manifested by our

Lord. We need not insist on the pathological character of these phenomena, and their distressing accompaniments, marking as they do the disintegration of the normal consciousness; or on the lack of affinity of the special form of mental disease of which they are

symptomatic with the paranoia from which Jesus must have suffered, on the hypothesis that He was no more than a man. It is doubtless enough to ask what kind of a super-divine nature this is that is attributed to Him under the guise of a human nature, which is capable of splitting up in its disintegration into supreme Godhood and perfect manhood as its aliquot, perhaps even as aliquant, parts.

If the mere fragments of His personality stand forth as God in His essential majesty and man in the height of man's possibilities, what must He be in the unitary integration of His normal personality?

Surely no remotest analogy to such a dualism of consciousness can be discovered in the pitiable spectacle of Dr. Morton Prince's "Miss

Beaucamp" and her "Sally." If we have here a merely human personality, in dual dissociation, the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes is eclipsed; the fragments are in immeasurable overplus of the supply.

It may seem more hopeful, therefore, to call in "the new psychology" as an aid to the explanation of the mystery of our Lord's person, when the divine nature is not denied. Even if, however, the original nature be conceived as divine, and the man Jesus be interpreted as a dissociated section of the divine consciousness, which maintains itself in its full divinity by its side, what have we given us but a new

Docetism, complicated with a meaningless display of contradictory attributes? A special form is sometimes given to this mode of conceiving the matter, however, which, perhaps, should not pass without particular notice. Appeal is made to the curious cases of "alternating personality," occasionally occurring, in which a man suddenly loses all consciousness of his identity and becomes for a time, longer or shorter, practically a different person. Thus, for example, Ansel Bourne, preacher, of Greene, R. I., became suddenly

A. J. Brown, confectioner, of Norristown, Pennsylvania, and remained just A. J. Brown for some months with no consciousness

whatever of Ansel Bourne, until just as suddenly he became Ansel Bourne again with no consciousness whatever of A. J. Brown.25 In the light of such instances, we are asked, what psychological obstacle forbids our supposing that the Divine Being who created the universe and has existed from eternity as the Son of God became for a season a man with all the limitations of a man? Why may we not, with psychological justification, look upon Jesus Christ as the infinite God

"functioning through a special consciousness with limited power and knowledge"? Why not explain the man Jesus, in other words, just as the "alternative personality" of the Second Person of the Trinity?

Such purely speculative questions may possess attractions for some classes of minds; but they certainly have no concernment with the Christ of history. The problem which the Christ of history presents is not summed up merely in the essential identity of the man Jesus with the God of heaven, but includes the co-existence in that one person, whom we know as Christ Jesus, of a double consciousness, divine and human. The solution which is offered leaves the actual problem wholly to one side. In proposing a merely human Jesus, with a divine background indeed, of which, however, He is entirely unconscious, it constructs a purely artificial Jesus of whom history knows nothing: the fundamental fact about the historical Jesus in His unoccultated divine consciousness.

For the same reason the suggestion which has been made that the phenomenal Jesus may be allowed to be strictly human, and the divine Jesus be sought in what it is now fashionable to call His

"subliminal self," is altogether beside the mark. The "subliminal self" is only another name for the subconscious self; and the relegation of the divine in Jesus to the realm of the unconscious definitely breaks with the entire historical testimony. Even if the hypothesis really allowed for a two-natured Christ—which in the form, at least, in which it is put forward, it does not, but presents us with only a man-

Christ, differing from His fellow-men only in degree and not at all in kind—it would stand wholly out of relation with the only Christ that ever existed. For the Christ of history was not unconscious, but continually conscious, of His deity, and of all that belongs to His deity. He knew Himself to be the Son of God in a unique sense—as such, superior to the very angels and gazing unbrokenly into the depths of the Divine Being, knowing the Father even as He was known of the Father. He felt within Him the power to make the stones that lay in His pathway bread for His strengthening, and the power (since He had come to save the lost) rather to bruise his feet upon them that He might give His life a ransom for many and afterward return on the clouds of heaven to judge the world. Of this

Jesus, the only real Jesus, it cannot be said that His consciousness was "entirely human"; and a Jesus of whom this can be said has nothing in common with the only historical Jesus, in whom His divine consciousness was as constant and vivid as His human.

The doctrines of the Two Natures supplies, in a word, the only possible solution of the enigmas of the life-manifestation of the historical Jesus. It presents itself to us, not as the creator, but as the solvent of difficulties—in this, performing the same service to thought which is performed by all the Christian doctrines. If we look upon it merely as a hypothesis, it commands our attention by the multiplicity of phenomena which it reduces to order and unifies, and on this lower ground, too, commends itself to our acceptance. But it does not come to us merely as a hypothesis. It is the assertion concerning their Lord of all the primary witnesses of the Christian faith. It is, indeed, the self-testimony of our Lord Himself, disclosing to us the mystery of His being. It is, to put it briefly, the simple statement of "the fact of Jesus," as that fact is revealed to us in His whole manifestation. We may reject it if we will, but in rejecting it we reject the only real Jesus in favor of another Jesus—who is not

another, but is the creature of pure fantasy. The alternatives which we are really face to face with are, Either the two-natured Christ of history, or—a strong delusion.

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