3. Passaofes in which the person is the subject, but the predicate is true only of the human nature. As when Christ said, " I thirst; " "My soul is sorrowful even unto death." And when we read that " Jesus wept.'' So all those passages which speak of our Lord as walkiiKT, eating, and sleeping; and as being seen, touched, and handled. Thei*e are two classes of passages under this genei'al head which are of special interest. First, those in which the person is desio-nated from the divine nature when the predicate is true only of the human nature. " The Church of God which He i^urchased with his blood." " The Lord of glory was crucified." The Son knows not the time wlien the final judgment is to come. (Mark xiii. 32.) The forms of expression, therefore, long prevalent in the Church, "the blood of God," "God the mighty maker died," etc., are in accordance with Scriptural usage. And if it be right to say " God died," it is right to say " He was born." The person born of the Virgin Mary was a divine person. He was the Son of God. It is, therefore, coiTect to say that Mary was the mother of God. For, as we have seen, the person of Christ is in Sci'ipture often designated from the divine nature, when the predicate is true only of the human nature. On this particular form of expres- sion, which, from its abuse, is generally offensive to Protestant ears, Turrettin remarks: "Maria potest dici vere deoTOKO'i sen Mate)' Dei, Deipara, si vox Dei sumatur concrete pro toto personali Christi, quod constat ex persona Ao'you et natura humana, quo sensu vocatur Mater Domini Luc. i. 43, sed non precise et abstracte ratione Deitatis." ^ The second class of passages under this head are of the opposite kind, namely, those in which the person is denominated irom the human nature when the predicate is true only of the divine nature. Thus Christ is called the Son of man who is in heaven. Here the denomination " Son of man " is from the human, while the predicate (ubiquity) is true only of the divine nature. So our Lord says, " What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before ?" (John vi. 62.) In Romans ix. 5, He who was of the fathers (the seed of Abraham and son of David) is declared to be God over all and blessed forever.
4. There is a fourth class of passages which come under the first general head mentioned above, but have the peculiarity that the denomination is derived from the divine nature, when the predicate is not true of the divine nature itself, but only of the ®edv6puy7roi. Thus it is said, "The Son also himself shall be subject to him who put all things under him." Here the designation Son is from the 1 Locus xvni. quaest. v. 18, edit. Edinburgh, 1847, vol, il. pp. 273, 274.
394 PART III. Ch. in. — the person of CHRIST.
divine nature, but the subjection predicated is not of the Son as such, or of the Logos, nor is it simply of the human nature, but offi- cially of the God-man. So our Lord says, " The Father is greater than L" The Father is not greater than the Son, for they are the same in substance and equal in power and glory. It is as God-man that He is economically subject to the Father. Perhaps the pas- sage in John v. 26 may belong to this class. " As the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself." This may be understood of the eternal communication of life from the first to the second person of the Trinity (z. e., of eternal gen- eration) ; or it may refer to the constitution of Christ's person. And then the term Son would designate, not the Logos, but tlie Theanthropos, and the communication of life would not be from the Father to the Son, but from God to the Theanthropos. It pleased the Father that Christ should have a divine nature possessed of inherent life in order that He might be the source of life to his people.
It is instructive to notice here how easily and naturally the sacred writers predicate of our Lord the attributes of humanity and those of divinity, however his person may be denominated. They call Him Lord, or Son, and attribute to Him, often in the same sentence, what is true of Him only as God, what is true only of his humanity, and what is true of Him only as the God-man. Tlius in the beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews it is said, God hath spoken unto us by his Son. Here Son means the incarnate Logos.. In the next clause, "By whom he made the world," what is said is true only of the eternal Son. So also what immediately follows, Who is " the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, and upholding all things (the universe) by the word of his power." But in the next clause, " Wiien he had by himself (z. e., by his sacrificial death) purged away our sins," the reference is to his human nature, as the body only died. And then it is added. He " sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high," which is true of the God-man.
7%e Acts of Christ.
The second consequence of the hypostatical union relates to the acts of Christ. As a man is one person, and because he is one person all his acts are the acts of that pei'son, so all the acts of Christ are the acts of his whole person. But, as was before remarked, the acts of a man are of three classes : such as are purely mental, as thought; such as belong exclusively to the body, as