CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE INCARNATION.

THOSE who are learned in the signs of the times warn us that probably the next great battle of the Church will be on the proper Deity of our Lord. It is to be feared that, through past neglect of careful, systematic instruction, many intelligent and otherwise educated people have very inexact notions on this great subject, and are ill prepared for such a crisis; it is, therefore, the more desirable that we should meantime take care to gain clear and correct views of this fundamental doctrine of the faith.

We have already, in the second chapter, stated the fact which God has been pleased to reveal to us, that in the unity of the Divine essence there is a threefold manner of Being-three Hypostases, or Personæ, or Persons-the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; that the Son is consubstantial, co-equal, and co-eternal with the Father. It is this second Person of the ever-blessed Trinity, God the Son, who took human nature of the substance of the blessed Virgin and "was made flesh," was "born of a woman,” for our redemption.

We shall, as before on the subject of the mystery of the Holy Trinity, refer our readers to the Athanasian Creed for a full and authoritative statement of the doctrine of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, and content ourselves with some notes which seem likely to be practically useful. The first error on the subject which we find recorded was a

doubt of the true humanity of Jesus. Some of the first hearers of the Gospel believed in the Deity of Him who had done such marvellous things, but they could not understand how God could really become man, and really suffer and die as man; and so they entertained a notion that the humanity was only a temporary cloak or mask of humanity, which God assumed for the time in order to appear to men and enact the drama of the life and death of Jesus, and then put it off, and returned to heaven as He was, God, and God only.

There are Scripture texts enough and to spare to prove that "the Word was made Flesh," but what will most impress the truth on our hearts will be a careful study of the Gospels themselves, which show how truly our Lord was born an infant, and grew through childhood to manhood, and lived our common human life, ate and drank and laboured, and was fatigued and rested and slept; and by thirty years of common life, led under all the ordinary conditions of life, gave all the assurance it is possible to conceive that he was truly man.

There are many now who need to assure themselves of Christ's true humanity. They admit it readily enough in words, but they fail really to grasp the truth, as is seen in the fact that they hold so vaguely and loosely the necessary corollaries from it. For example, they think when our Lord ascended to heaven He became what He was before, and left His humanity behind as useless, now it had served its purpose. This is, in effect, the heresy of the Docetæ, and denies our Lord's true humanity. The Catholic doctrine is that God the Son took our human nature to His Divine nature never to be divided; ascended into heaven God and man; sitteth on the throne of heaven God and man, where all the angels of God worship at His human feet; is still man to sympathise, God to succour; is still Mediator, God

and man; to Him, as man, is committed all power in heaven and earth; to Him, because He is the Son of Man, will be committed the judgment.

The next error in point of time was that which denied the true Deity of Jesus. It admitted that He was a Divine person, the eldest and greatest of all beings next to the self-existent God, Himself God in a certain sense. But it held the unity of the Godhead in such a sense as to deny that Jesus was very and eternal God, of one substance (or nature) with the Father. That was the point about which the Arian controversy turned; the Arian denied, what the Catholic Church affirmed as the truth once for all delivered to the saints, that Jesus was ópoóvotos, of one and the same undivided substance with the self-existent Father. It is not our business here to enter into the proofs of this vital truth. The elements of the proof may be found in the works on the Thirty-nine Articles of Beveridge and Harold Browne; at greater length in Pearson on the Creed; in a shape adapted to meet modern doubts and difficulties in Prebendary Row's "Christ of the Gospels," or Canon Liddon's "Bampton Lectures."

The next erroneous notion is that of Nestorius, who conceived of the Incarnation as if a man was born of the Virgin and then the Son of God united Himself with this man. This error would make Jesus Christ two persons, a human person and a Divine person, united together. The Catholic doctrine is that our Lord, from the moment that, by the miraculous operation of the Holy Spirit, He was conceived in the womb of His virgin mother, was not only man but God also,* two whole and perfect natures, the Divine nature and the human nature being united in one person.

The personality of Jesus Christ is to be sought not in the

* "The flesh, and the conjunction of the flesh with God, began both at one instant" (Hooker's "Eccl. Pol.," bk. ix. 1. 3, 5).

human but in the Divine nature. He is not a man who has been made Divine, but He is God the Son who has taken human nature upon Him. The two natures are not, as Eutyches (the next famous heretic) taught, so united as to be confused (mixed together) into a third nature; they stand side by side-distinct, yet indissolubly united in one Person. The Monothelites in the seventh century held that there was only one will in Christ, and that the Divine. They were condemned in the sixth general council, the second of Con. stantinople, which declared the Catholic faith to be, that it was necessary to the perfectness of our Lord's human nature that He should have had a human will.

*

The union between the two natures in the person of Christ is so intimate that what properly belongs to one is sometimes said of the other. Thus St. Paul says (1 Cor. ii. 8) that men "crucified the Lord of Glory." Again, St. Paul says (Acts xx. 28), "God purchased the Church with His own blood"; and our Lord Himself (John iii. 13) speaks of "the Son of Man who is in heaven," at the time that He was upon earth. The explanation of this mode of expression is, that when thus speaking of the Son of God or the Son of Man, we are not expressly speaking of either nature, but of the Person of Christ, in which both natures are.

The illustration of the union of the two natures in the one person of Christ given in the Athanasian Creed, "For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ," is satisfactory, and is worth thinking out. The material body and the immaterial spirit, though so widely different in their nature, yet are joined together in one man. They stand side by side in one person, not mixed

* It may be well to state that there is only one will in the Godheadnot three wills. An illustration of the distinct action of the human will and the Divine will in our Lord is in the agony of Gethsemane-"not My will but Thine be done" (Luke xxii. 42).

together, but intimately united by a bond which we cannot discover or conceive.

What more different see that matter and

So with the two natures in Christ. than matter and spirit? When we spirit are joined together in man, we are helped to believe that beings so different as God and creature are united in Christ. The matter and spirit are not mixed together in the being of man, but stand side by side, intimately united by a bond which we cannot discover nor conjecture. So in Christ there is "no confusion (con-fusion=mixing together) of substance," but the Divine nature and the human nature stand side by side, united by an ineffable personal bond in Christ. The material nature and the immaterial nature of man can exist separately, i.e., the spirit will be separated from its body at death, but it is the union of soul and body which makes man. So the human nature and the Divine in Christ have existed separately, or rather the Son of God existed from all eternity before He took the human nature upon Him, but it is the union of God and man which makes Christ.

It is desirable to say a few words as to the process by which these various definitions were arrived at. For there are some who think that the Church gratuitously philosophised on these mysterious subjects, laid down these subtle definitions, and then required all men to believe them on pain of damnation. The actual process was the reverse. It was the philosophical disputers who put forth now one, now another erroneous view of the truth. When the error seemed to be in itself dangerous, or to lead to dangerous consequences, the Church thought it right to interpose in the interest of the truth. Thereupon a general council of the Church was called to declare authoritatively what was the faith of the Church. What the Bishops and others