has many advocates from Chrysostom downwards, but it is liable to the same objection as the preceding. It refuses to admit what the apostle asserts. He says not merely that we derive our life from Christ, which is true; but also that we derive our life from his flesh, and are partakers of it. This must mean something more specific than simply that Christ is the author of our life, and that he lives in us.*
A third view of the passage assumes that the refer- ence is to the incarnation. We are partakers of the flesh of Christ because we have the same human nature which he assumed. In Heb. 2, 10, it is said, ‘ Both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one,” i. e. of one nature; and in ver. 14, “ Foras- much then as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same.” These and similar passages do indeed prove that one of the essential elements of the union with Christ is this community of nature. And it is also true that the more specific union indicated in the text presupposes and rests upon the fact of the incarnation. But the incarnation cannot be what Paul here refers to. The incarnation consists in the eternal Son of God taking
* Diese Form des Ausdrucks ist Reminiscenz von Gen. 2, 23, wo Adam die Entstehung der Eva aus seinem Gebeinen und aus seinem Fleische ausspricht, welcher Entstehung das genetische Verhiltniss der Christen zu Christo analog ist, naturlich nicht physich, sondern im geistlichen, mys- teschen Sinne, in so fern die christliche Dasein und Wesen der Christen, aus Christo originirt, in Christo sein Principium essendi hat, wie physicher Weise Hua aus Adam herrihrte. MEYER.