The supernatural birth of Jesus is not our war- rant for belief in His Divinity and His sinlessness. But belief in His Divinity and His sinlessness is our warrant for regarding the supernatural birth as being not merely possible or credible, but as being wholly congruous with the uniqueness of His personality, and, therefore, as ser\'ing as a welcome illustration and confirmation of the con- tents of Christian experience.
(6) In studying the record of the life of Christ, many questions arise in connexion with the re- lation of the Divine to the human aspects of His personality. Are not the notes of Godhead ab- soluteness, finality, completeness, independence of all the means by which human character is de- veloped ? How, then, are we to understand the evident facts of our Lord's life on earth, that He
inquired, and learned, and was ignorant ; that He passed through the stages of a temporal develop- ment, moving toward His goal through conflict and suffering ; and that, in His communion with His Father, He employed the means of grace which are ordained for men — reading the Sacred Scrip- tures, and being much in prayer ?
In considering such problems. Christian thought has been much hindered by the domination of metaphysical conceptions such as ' nature,' and by the controlling influence of a dualism which has opposed the Divine and human natures, regarding them as possessed of contrary attributes. The history of Christology consists, mainly, in a series of attempts to bring into harmony with one another, in the unity of the person, ' natures ' which, it is presupposed, are fundamentally op- posed in their characteristics and activities. Eutychianisni brings them so close together as to confound them in a result which is a compound of Divine and human. Nestorianism holds them so far apart as to make them almost the seats of independent personalities. The formula of Chal- cedon can scarcely be called a theory ; it is rather an enumeration of the contrasted elements and a mere assertion of the unity which comprelRiids them. The Lutheran Christology seeks to reduce the dualism of Divine and human to the lowest possible degree by the deification of Christ's human nature. The Kenotic theories of more recent times have sought to reach the same result by the idea of a depotentiation of His Divine nature. However remarkable these schemes may be as intellectual efforts, and whatever value they may have in directing attention to one or another ele- ment in the complex fact, it is certain that they all fall under a threefold condemnation, (i. ) They are dominated by metaphysical conceptions which are profoundly opposed to the ideas which prevail throughout Scripture ; being dualistic to the core, whereas the ruling ideas of Scripture are synthetic, and are far removed from the distinctions which mark the achievements of the Greek mind. (ii. ) They do not correspond with, or do justice to, the knowledge which faith has of the personal Christ ; separating, as they do, what faith grasps as a unity, while their attempted harmonies are arti- ficial, and not vital, (iii. ) They fail to reproduce the portrait of Christ presented in the Gospels ; they utterly fail to give adequate utterance to the impression which the Christ of the Gospels makes upon the minds which contemplate Him. This is true even of the Chalcedonian scheme, which, in substance, is repeated in many modern creeds and confessions.
\ 1 J Miliiiies in an inscruteble fashion Divine with
1,'; ji !■ , :ind of whom, consequently, contradictory
.," 1 : . ;, ,1 ; made, while His dual natures hold an unde-
liiiil li til; - .11.- another. This is not a scheme to satisfy
either hea«l or heart' (Principal Dvkes, papers on 'The Person of. our Lord ' in Expos. Times, Oct. 1905-Jan. 1906).
Christian thought, accordingly, must abandon the dualism which has so long impeded its efforts. It can never, indeed, emphasize too strongly the lowliness of man, both as creature and as sinful creature, and must never, even in its most spiritual exercises, forget the reverenre that i^ duo from man to God. But it must reject m- mi-l'Milinu .all theories which presuppose a genei i, .lill. i .n. i lirtween the Divine and the human naturi~. It iiin>t, therefore, reject the ' twii-natures' doctrine ot the Person of Christ, in tlic fiirni in which it has hitherto prevailed ; .and nuist ^t.-ut in its study of Christ from the r.ililical point of view of the essential affinity of tlift Divine and the human natures.
In recent literature the influence of Psychology upon Christological study is deeply marked. In- stead of two natures, two consciousnesses are
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INCARNATION
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giving the adequate conception of our Lord's life on earth. Tlie Son of God became the Son of Man; and had a true human experience in respect of knowledge, will, and every other aspect of normal human life ; while at the same time He remained the Logos, retaining the attri- butes of Deity, such as omniscience. He lived, so to speak, in two universes at once, the macrocosm of creation at large and the microcosm of human life. This double life and double consciousness, it is suggested, are to be interpreted in the light of recent psychological experiments, whicli seem to establisli the conclusion that there is a vast sub- liminal sphere, where the larger part of our life is lived, that Mliith emerges in consciousness being liut a section of the greater M'hole.