3. The soul of Jesus. — li Jesus was perfect man, it follows that He must have possessed not only a human body, but also a human soul and a human spirit ; and this is, in fact, the doctrine of the Gospels and of the NT generally. Thus He came to give His soul (i/'i^x'?") ^ ransom for many (Mt 20^^11). After the interview with the Greeks (Jn 12-''), His soul (\pvxri) was troubled, and He doubted what to say. In Gethseniane His soul was exceeding sorrowful {TreplXvwds ea-nv 7} ^vxv fiov, Mt 26*** II). There are similar references to His human sj)irit. He groaned (or was angry) in sjnrit (efe^pifxriaaTo t(^ nvev/jLaTi, Jn IP^) ; and was troubled in spirit (irapaxOr) rcj} Trvev/j.aTi., 13'-^). On tlie cross He commended His spirit to God (irapaTideixai. t6 TTveOfxd p.ov, Lk 23^"), and yielded up His spirit {d<p7JKe Tb TTvev/jLa, Mt 27^** ; irapiSwKe rb Trvevfia, Jn 19^"). After death, His Divine Personality, still in hypostatic {i.e. personal) union with His disembodied human spirit, descended to Hades, antl there preached to the disobedient spirits in prison (1 P 3"*, cf. Eph 4") ; visiting also, we infer from Lk 23^^, that compartment of Hades which is
* Cf. the striking words of Clement of Alexandria : ' The Apostles, following the Lord, preached the gospel to those irt Hades. . . . [God's] punishments [in Hades] are sai'uir/ and disciplinary, leading to connersion, and choonimj rather the repentance than the death of a sinner. . . . Did not the same dispensation obtain in Hades, .so that even there, all the souls, on he.aring the preaching, might either exhibit rei>entance, or confess that their punishment was just because they believed noW (Strom, vi. 6). See also the Shepherd of Hernias, Simil. ix. 16: 'These Apostles and teachers, having fallen asleep, preached also to those who had fallen asleep before them, and themselves gave the seal of their i)reachinjj-.'
reserved for tlie spirits of the just. It is obvious from these and other j)assages, that the view of Apollinaris tiiat Christ did not possess a human soul,* but that the Divine Logos took its place, is not Scriptural. The soul and spirit of Jesus were subject to human weakness and infirmity, and were therefore human, not Divine.
But the rejection of Apollinarism, and the adoption of the view that Christ j)ossessed a perfect human soul, involves a great psychological diffi- culty. A 2)erfect human soul is ^>c?',w?i«Z, and therefore, if Christ was perfect God and perfect man, it seems to follow that He must have been ta:o persons, as Nestorius thought, or was sui)posed to think. This difficulty has never yet received a full solution. The solution of the ancient Church was that the human nature of the incarnate Christ was InijKrsonnl. The human ^vxv of Christ, which, under normal conditions, would have developed independent personality, was pi'evented, owing to its hypostatic union with the Logos, from doing so. It attained personality, not in itself, but in the Divine Logos with which it was united ; and hence, though Christ possessed a true human ^vxv, His personality Avas single, being seated entirely in the Divine Nature. The Patristic view is open to criticism on several grounds, but it still holds the field as the best attempt to reconcile the two apparently conflicting principles of Scripture, that Christ is perfect God and perfect man, and yet only one Person, f
i. The human will of Jesus.— Jesus, as possess- ing a human .soul, possessed also a human will, for volition is one of the most characteristic activities of the soul. The Gospels regard Jesus as endowed with a human will, Avhich, though in the end always conforming itself to the Divine will, yet did so sometimes at the cost of an inward struggle. Thus in the Agony in the Garden, Jesus prays (Lk 22'*-), ' Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me ; nevertheless not my will, but thine be done' (TrX-fji' firi to df'Krj/jid /ulov, dXXd to crbv yiveadio). The distinction of wills is evident also in Jn 5^*^ (cf. 6^*) ' I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.' It is thus the teaching of Scripture that there are two wills in Christ, a Divine and a human, and that these two wills are united in one Per.son. The reconciliation of the two different points of view (duality of will, and unity of Person) is not easy. According to modern ideas, the faculty of willing is so essentially a function of personality, that it seems necessary to l)ostulate two egos where there are two wills. The ancients, however, did not connect willing with personality so closely as we do ; and, more- over, ' Avill ' is too strong a term to translate their deX-rjfia (voluntas). deX-rjfjia, it is true, in its stronger sense, a2:)proaclies the meaning of 'will,' but more often it bears the weaker .sense of 'Avish,' 'liking,' 'inclination,' 'propension.' The true Greek term for will in our sense is yvufxri, or more definitely wpoaipecris, or .still more deiinitely auTe^ovcrioTris, or avTe^ov(7Lov (self-determination). It is clearly in the weaker sense of ' inclination ' that 6^\r]/j.a is used in the Gosjjels, and it is pi-obably in the same sense tliat Dyothelitism was declared by the Sixth General Council (A.D. 680) to be the doctrine of the Church. J