I^eiiosis {kivwchq), a Greek term signifying the act 0^ emptying or self-divestiture, employed by modern German divines to express the voluntary humiliation of Christ in his incarnate state. It is borrowed from the expression of Paul, " But made himself of no reputa- tion {lavTov hKh'ujae, emptied himself),"' etc. (Phil, ii, 7). The same self-abasement is indicated in other pas- sages of Scripture ; e. g. the Son laid aside the glory which he had with the Father before the world was (John xvii, 5), and became poor (2 Cor. viii, 9). This term touches the essential difficulty in the doctrine of the incarnation. That difficidty seems to consist in the supposition that the Logos in his absolute infinitude of being and attributes imited himself in one personality with an individual created man. On the other hand, it has been alleged as an objection to the ke?wsis tlieory that "to assume any self-limitation on the part of God is inconsistent with the unchangeableness of the divine Being." But God's immutability is that perfection by virtue of which his will and nature remain in constant harmony. Every change must, as a matter of course, be rejected that woidd bring God's will or nature in conflict with each other. But any act on the part of God, affecting his existence internally or externally, that is in harmony with the divine will and being, is consistent with the divine immutabilitj'. To deny such acts on the part of God is to deny the living God him- self A God without a motion internally or externally would be, according to the Scriptures, a nuUity, a dead God, an idol. "Tlie very idea," says Ebrard, "of God as the living one implies the possibility of a self-lim- itation or change of self, of course of such a change by which God continues as God, and out of which he has at all times the power of asserting his infinitude. In the divine Being this is possible through the Trinity. As the triune God, there is in his being the possibility for him to distinguish himself from himself also in time, i. e. to receive within himself the difference between existence within time and out of time." That the Son of God can become a man without thereby destroy- ing his true divinity even the fathers of the Church taught, Tcrtullian says: "God can change himself into everything and yetremain (in substance) what he is." Hilary says: "The form of (Jod and the fiirm of a servant can indeed not umiualilledly become a unity ; they rather exclude one another as such. But how does their union Jjecome a possibility ? Answer : Only by giving up the one, the other can be assumed. But he that has emptied himself, and taken upon himself the form of a servant, is therefore not a different person. To give tq) a form does not imply the desti-uction of its substance. Exacth' in order to prevent this destruction the act of self-emptying goes only far enough to consti- tute the form of a servant." Ebrard makes the fitting comparison : " If a crown prince, in order to set others free, should go for the time being into voluntary servi- tude, he would be, to all intents and purposes, a servant, and, .18 he has not forfeited his claims to the crown, also a prince, so that he could with propriety be called both
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sen^ant ami a prince : in the same manner Jesus was the true and eternal God, and at the same time a true and real man ; and it can be said with propriety of him, the Son of God is man, and the mau Jesus Christ is God." To this is added by the author of Die biblische Glauhenslehre (published by the " Calwer Verem") : " The same is the case with man, who, notwithstanding the various changes of liis circumstances here, and the great changes which he shall undergo in the resurrec- tion, is stiil the same person. We meet even in God ■nith a change of conditions. He rested before and after he had created the world ; does not this imply a self- llmitatioa 0:1 the part of God? And what self-limita- tions docs not God impose upon himself with regard to human liberty ! The omnipresence of God is no infinite diffusion, but has its definite starting-point; and if God is not as near to the wicked as he is to the pious, this is likewise an act of self-limitation on God's part over against the ungodly. Again, the personality of God, what else is it than a self-comprehension of the infinite V Yet in all these self-liniitations God remains God. Should, then, the Son not be able to remain in sub- stance what he is, if, out of compassion for fallen hu- manity, he becomes a man, and, in order to become a man, lays aside his divine glor}^ V"
This leads us, then, to the main question. What have we to understand hij the divine- glory v-hich the Son laid aside durinfi his sojourn on earth? To this question the Chris- tologians who adopt the l-enosis return different answers. We are met here again by the old dillicidty to unite the di- vine and the human in one self-consciousness. The ques- tion is this, Whether the self-consciousness of the God- man is the divine self-consciousness of the eternal Son, or the self-consciousness of the assumed luiman nature? Gess (Gesch. d. Dor/mulik-) takes the latter view, and says tliat, in order to do justice to the true humanity of Jesus Christ, it is necessary to consistently caiTy out the self- emptying act of the Logos, so that the Son of God in the act of the incarnation laid aside the divine attributes of omnipotence and omniscience, together with his di- vine self-consciousness, and regained the latter gradual- ly in the way of a really human development, in such a manner as not to affect the true and real divinity of Christ. Whether a temporary la}'ing aside- of the di- vine self-consciousness is consistent with the immuta- bility of the divine Being we need not discuss here. The argimientation of Gess is very acute, and may appear to the metaphysician the most consistent and satisfactory analysis of the personal union of the divine and the hu- man in the person of Christ; but exegcticaUy it seems to us untenable, nor is it fit for the practical edifica- tion of the Christian pcojile, an<l a theology that cannot be preached intelligibly from the pulpit is justl}^ to be suspected. We conclude with Liebner and other Chris- tologians that by the glory which the Son of God laid aside during his sojourn on earth we must not under- stand his divine self-consciousness, n'ot the fulness of the Deity, as far as it can manifest itself in a human nature. Oil the contrary, it is said of this very glory, "The Word became tiesh and dwelt among us, and we saw hU glory, a glory as of the only begotten of the Father, fu'.l of grace and truth. . . . And of his fulness we all have received grace for grace." This divine fulness the Son did not give up at his incarnation, but it followed him as his peculiar property from heaven, from out of the Father's bosom, to legitimate him as the Logos, as the only begotten of the Father, yet so that he turned it into a divine-human glory, actjuired in a human man- ner. Only the form of (iod, the divine form of exist- ence, consequently the transcendent divine majesty and sovereign power over all things, united with uninter- rupted ghny, he exchanged, at his incarnation and dur- ing the time of his sojourn on earth, for his human form of existence, for the form of the servant. Into this his antemundane glory, however, he re-entered (John xvii, 5) on his going home to his Father (John vi, (32), also in the capacity of the exalted Son of man (Phil, ii, 9).