pleasant or painful, by the means of that body, and is also able to actuate and influence all the animal powers of that body in a way agreeable to human nature."
The above is very far from being a full exposition of the consid- erations urged by Dr. Watts in support of liis theory. It is sim- ply a selection of the more plausible of his arguments presented in order th&t his doctrine may be properly understood.
It appears that he believed in the eternal Godhead of the Logos as the second person of the Trinity ; and that God, before any other creatures were called into existence, created a human soul in personal union with the Logos of such exalted powers as to render him the greatest of all created spirits ; that the incarnation consisted in this complex person assuming a material human body with its animal life ; that the humiliation of Christ consisted in his human soul thus exalted in its own nature, emptying itself of its knowledge, power, and glory, and submitting not only to the gradual development of his humanity, but also to all that made our Lord while here on earth a man of sorrows. His exaltation consisted in the enlargement of the powers of his soul during his state of humil- iation, and in his resurrection and ascension to the ri<iht hand of God.
Objections.
The more obvious objections to this theory are, —
1. That it is contrary to the common faith of the Church, and» therefore, to the obvious sense of Scripture. The Bible in teach- ing that the Son of God became man, therebv teaches that He assumed a true body and a rational soul. For neither a soul with- out a body, nor a body without a soul, is a man in the Scriptural sense of the term. It was the Logos which became man ; and not a God-man that assumed a material body.
2. The passages of Scripture cited in its support are interpreted, for the most part, in violation of the recognized principle that what- ever is true of either nature in Christ, may be predicated of his person. As Christ could say, " I thirst," without implying that his divine nature was subject to the wants of a material body ; so He could say, " All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth," without teaching that such power vests in his humanity.
3. The doctrine that Christ's human soul was the first and most exalted of created spirits, raises Him beyond the reach of human sympathies. He is, as man, farther from us than the angel Ga- briel. We need, and the Bible reveals to us a, so to speak, more circumscribed Saviour, one who, although true God, is neverthe-
428 PART lU. Ch. m. — the person of CHRIST.
less a man like unto his brethren, whom we can enjbrace in the arms of our faith and love.^
§ 9. Modern Forms of the Doctrine.
Corner, in the first edition of his work on the " Person of Christ," says that the Lutheran theology carried the attempt to preserve the unity of Christ's person, on the Church assumption that He possessed two distinct natures, to the utmost extreme. If that attempt be a failure, nothing more remains. He holds it to be a failure not only because it involves the impossible assumption of a transfer of attributes without a change of substance, but also be- cause it is one-sided. It refuses to admit of the communication of human attributes to the divine nature, whilst it insists on the trans- fer of divine perfections to the human nature. And moreover, he urges, that admitting all the Lutheran theory claims, the union of the two natures remains just as unreal as it is on the Church doc- trine. Any distinction of natures, in the ordinary sense of the words, must, he says, be given up. It is on this assumption that the modern views of the person of Christ are founded. These views may be divided into two classes, the Pantheistical and the Theistical. These two classes, however, have a good deal in com- mon. Both are founded on the principle of the oneness of God and man. This is admitted on all sides. " The characteristic feature of all recent Christologies," says Dorner, " is the endeavour to point out the essential unity of the divine and human." ^ The heading of the section in which this admission occurs, is, " The Foundations of the New Christology laid by Schelling, Hegel, Schleiermacher." This is equivalent to saying that the New Christology is founded on the principles of the pantheistic philoso- phy. Baur^ says the same thing. He entitles the last division of his work on the Trinity, " Die gegenseitige Durchdringung der Philosophie und der Theologie," i. e., The mutual interpenetration of Philosophy and Theology. The latter is merged into the for- mer. Dr. Ullmann says, the doctrine of the oneness of God and man, which he represents as the fundamental idea of Schleierma-
1 Dr. Watts, vol. vi. pp. 853, 854, refers to several distinguished writers and theologians as agreeing with him as to his doctrine of the preexistence of the soul of Ciirist. Among them are Dr. Henry More, Mystery of Godliness ; Dr. Edward Fowler, Bishop of Gloucester, in his Dlscowse of the descent of the man Christ Jesus from Heaven ; Dr. Francis Gsistrell Bishop of Chester, in his Remarks on Dr. Clarke's Hcripture Doctrine of the Trinity; Or Thomas Burnet, of the Charter House, in his book, De Statu Mortuorum et Resurgentiv.ni.
2 Dorner, div. ii. vol. iii. p. 101.
8 Die christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeil und Menschwerdung Goltes in ihrer get- ehicktlichen Entteicklung. Von Dr. Ferdinand Christian Baur, Tubingen, 1843, vol. iii. p. 76L