certain attrilnites or properties. Three persons are not thus three j)arts of one God, nor are they three Gods; nor yet are Father, Son, and Spirit oiAy three names, but distinct hypostases with characteristic at- tributes. In modern times, especially in (ierniany, and through a prevalent philosophical mysticism, opinions are projiagated al)out the person of Christ which are quite opposed to the doctrines of all the orthodox and evangelical confessions. The second article of the Church of England, and the eighth of the \Vi stmiustei- Co/ifdision, e.s press the general view. So does the Qui- cunque vult of the Liturgj'. But the modern theory teaches a different dogma, thus : Martensen and Ebrard seem to adopt a view very similar to that of Beron in the early ages, who held that the Logos assumed the form of a man, that is, subjected himself to the limitations of humanit}-. The infinite became finite, the eternal and omnipresent imposed on himself the limitations of time and space ; God became man. The statement of Ebrard is, " The eternal Son of God, bj' a free act of self-limitation, determined to assume the existence- form of a centre of human life, so that he acted as such from the conception onward, and having assumed this form, he fashioned for himself a body," etc. Ac- cording to this view there are not two natures in Christ, in the established sense of the word nature, but only two forms of existence, a prior and posterior form of one and the same nature. The most common mode of presenting the doctrine is to say that the Lo- gos assumed our fallen humanity. But by this, we are told, is not to be understood that he assumed an individual body and soul, so that he became a man, but that he assumed generic humanity, so that he be- came the man. By generic humanit}' is to be under- stood a life-power, that peculiar law of life, corporeal and incorporeal, which develops itself outwardlj^ as a bodj' and inwardly as a soul. The Son, therefore, became incarnate in humanity, in that objective real- ity, entit}-, or substance in which all human lives are one. Thus, too, Olshausen, in his comment on John i, 14, says, " It could not be said that the Word was made man, which would imply that the Redeemer was a man by the side of other men, whereas, being the second Adam, he represented the totality of human nature in his exalted comprehensive personality." To the same effect he says, in his remarks on Rom. v, 15, "If Christ were n man among other men, it would be impossible to conceive how his suffering aiul obedience could have an essential influence on mankind : he could then onlj' operate as an example. But he is to be regarded, even apart from his divine nature, as tJie man, i. e. as realizing the absolute idea of humanity, and including it potentially in himself spiritually as Adam did corporealh'." To this point archdeacon Wilberforce devotes the third chajiter of his book on The [nciirnaiion, and represents the whole value of Christ's work as depending upon it. If this be denied, he says, "the doctrines of atonement and sanctifica- tion, though confessed in words, become a mere empty phraseology." In fine. Dr. Nevin, in his Mysticid Presence, p. 210, says, " The Word became flesh ; not a single man only, as one among many; hntjlesh, or humanity, in its universal conception. How else could he be the principle of a general life, the origin of a new order of existence for the human world as such.' How else could the value of his mediatorial work be made over to us in a real way by a true imputation, and not a legal fiction onlj'?" The hypostatic union, on these hypotheses, is the assumption on the part of the eternal Son of God, not simply or primarily of a true body and a reasonable soul, as the Church has always held, but of humanity as a generic life, of our fallen humanity, of that entity or substance in which all human lives are one. The effect of this union is that humanity is taken into divinity: it is exalted into a true divine life. The life of Christ is one, and it mav be desiirnated as divine or as human. On this
PERSOXATI
987
PERTHES
point, more than anj' other, its advocates are specially full and earnest. Sclileierniacher ignoi'es all essential difference between God and humanity, holdiiij^ that they differ in our conception, and functionally, but are essentially one. Dorner, also, the historian of the doctrine concerning Christ's person, avows that the Church view of two distinct substances in the same person involves endless contradictions, and that no true Christolo-'y can be framed which does not jjroceed on the assum])tion of the essential unity of God and mm ; while Ullmann makes this essential oneness be- tween the divine and human the fundamental idea of Christianity.
The term person, when applied to Deity, is cer- tainlj' used in a sense somewhat different from that in ■which we apply it to one another ; but when it is con- sidered that the Greek words vwurrracng and Trpuvio- TTov, to which it answers, are, in the New Testament, applied to the Father and Son (Heb. i, 3 ; 2 Cor. iv, 6), and that the personal pronouns are used by our Lord (John xiv, 20), it can hardly be condemned as iinscriptural and improper. There have been warm debates between the Greek and Latin churches about the words h>/jM^tasis and p(r.-<ona: the Latin, conclud- ing that the word hypostasis siirnified substance or es- sence, thought that to assert that there were three divine hypostases was to say that there were three Gods. On the other hand, the Greek Church thought that the 'mov(\. person did not sufficiently guard against the Sabellian notion of the same individual Being sustaining three relations. Thus each part of the Church was ready to brand the other with heres}', till, hy a free and mutual conference in a synod at Alex- andria, A.D. 362, they made it appear that it was a mere contention about the grammatical sense of a word ; and then it was allowed liy men of moderation on both sides that either of the two words might l)e in- differently used. See Beza, Prlnciplis of the Chris- tian Religion; Owen, On the Spiiit; Marci Medulla, i, 5, § 3; Kidglej% Dirinit//, qu. 11; Hurrion, On the Spirit, p. 140 ; Doddridge, Lectures, lee. 159 ; Gill, On the Trinity, p. 93; Watts, Wcrks, v, 48, 208; Gill, Body of Divinity (8vo), i, 205; Edwards, History of Redemption, p. 51, note ; //oz-re Sol. ii, 20 ; Stuart, Letters to Chinning; Keith, Norton, and Winslow, On the Trinity ; Knapp, Theology, p. 325 ; Biblioiheca Sa- cra, Feb. 1844, p. 159 ; Oct. 1850, p. C9G ; July, 18G7, p. 570; New- Englander, July, 1875, art. iii ; Stud. u. Kiitlken, 1838, 1847. Older monogra]ihs on the sub- ject are cited hy Volbeding, In lex Programmattim, p. 82. See Trinity.