2. The Reformed Church took a different path. Its theologians held fast to the principle of the Middle Ages, that finite human nature is not capax infiniti ; but they applied it, as the Middle Ages had failed to do, to set in stronger relief the reality of Christ's human life. They considered the imity of Christ to be sufficiently safeguarded by the fact of the personal unity and the correspondence of the two natures, and emphasized the distinctness of the natures to the point of being charged with Nestorianism by their Lutheran opponents. Instead of such a communication between the natures as the Lutherans maintained, they were content to think of the liuman nature of Christ as working in harmony with the Divine through the anointing and activity of the Holy Spirit. Through this Holy Spirit, coming by way of the Logos, the human nature of Christ received certain Divine charisms ; but it did not receive the absolute Divine attributes, or any other powers than such as a human nature, remaining human, could receive. Thus they claimed for the liuman Christ sinless- ness, infallibility in His teaching, and abiding fellowship with God the Father ; but they Avere earnest also in maintaining a true growth in Christ of positive knowledge, holiness, and power. Not even did the risen and exalted Christ surpass the limits of the human, or arrive in His humanity at complete coincidence with the Divine. On the other hand, they balanced this doctrine of a truly human development by the position that the per- sonality of Christ lay in the Logos, who, in assum- ing this human nature, and appearing on earth in lowly guise, at the same time also remained outside of the human Christ, clothed with all the attributes of heavenly glory. (The Logos was tofus in came, but also totus extra carnem). Their theory results practically in the doctrine of a double life, the eternal life of the Son of (iod, the pure Logos ex came, who remains unchanged in heavenly dominion and glory ; and the life in time of the man Christ Jesus, the Logos Incarnate, the God-man in lowly form. (This is the interpreta- tion given by Bruce, Humiliation of Christ, 163 ff'., Schultz, Gottheit Christi, 180, and others). It may be mentioned, as indicating the growing import- ance attached to the humanity of Christ, that the idea of CXwiat^ spre-existent humanity gained ground during this century as well among the Reformed as the Lutheran divines. It recommended itself to the Lutheran theologian as exalting the human nature, and affording some support to his doctrine that the whole earthly life of Christ rested on the voluntary self-humiliation of the God - man ; while to some of the Reformed side it seemed to explain the position of Christ as the type and instrument of creation, and the medium of revela- tion prior to the Incarnation.
Comparing the views of the Reformed and Lutheran Churches, we may say that while both adhered to the ancient formula of Chalcedon, the Lutheran Church emphasized the Divinity of Christ, and the Reformed Church the humanity. In the Lutheran field of vision stands the figure of the Divine, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Christ, upon which the humanity hangs like a thin trans- parent garment ; while, for the Reformed Church, the human Jesus of Nazareth stands in the fore- ground, and the Divinity lies in the background of faith, constituting a union with the human Jesus that is beyond comprehension. It cannot be said that either Church solved the problem of Christ's Person, for indeed no solution is possible on these terms. So long as the Divine and the human are defined by categories that are absolutely incon- sistent— omnipotence and weakness, omniscience and ignorance, the infinitude of omnipresence and local bodily finitude — the union of these in one
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person is inconceivable. It is only when we read the glory of Uod in the face of Christ, and realize that the central and essential attributes of God are love, grace, compassion for human frailty and need, that we can recognize the Divine and the human as one, and acknowledge in Christ the reve- lation of the Divine, the Word of God Incarnate.
3. Outside of the orthodox theology a freer de- velopment of thought took place, under the influ- ences derived from the anti-Trinitarianism of the 16th cent., and the growth of modern philosophy. Socinianism was a growing power, and the influ- ence of its criticisms passed into every land. The Socinians made a clean sweep of the old Trinitarian and Christological dogmas, and so cut the knot of the intellectual difficulties involved. In their view it was irrational and unscriptural to speak of God as being three. It was equally irrational to think of God generating a Son after the manner of cor- ruptible animals, or to speak of two natures, each complete in itself, coming together and forming one person. The rational and Scriptural doctrine was that Christ was verus homo. Yet, having once made this fundamental position clear, the Socinians made many concessions in favour of Christ's uniqueness in respect of Divine super- natural endowment. He was born supernaturally of a virgin. He Avas equipped for His work on earth by ascending into heaven, and receiving there all needful supernatural knowledge. He also exercised supernatural powers on earth ; and after His ascension He was exalted to the right hand of God, and was endowed with new Divine powers for the guidance of His Church. As thus exalted He might be called God, and Socinus himself went so far as to justify the adoration of Christ. This Socinian doctrine rests on the same presupposition as the orthodoxy of the day, viz. that the supreme and essential characters of Deity are omnipotence, omniscience, unchangeableness ; Vjut by applying this conception logically to the Person of Christ, Socinians emptied their Christology of all religious value. For union with God is the need of the human heart ; and the doctrine of the God-man, contradictory as it was, held a truth for which Socinianism found no expression.