than others. Dr. J. H. A. Ebrard, of Erlangen, has already been repeatedly referred to as addicted to the Reformed faith ; and where he consciously departs from it, he considers himself as only carrying out its legitimate principles. His " Dogmatik " has, in fact, a far more Scriptural character than most of the modern German systems. In Ebrard, as in others, we find a compromise attempted between the Church doctrine of regenera- tion, and the modern theory of the incarnation of God in the race of man. Not only is a distinction made between repentance, con- version, and regeneration ; but also true repentance and genuine conversion are made to precede regeneration. The two former take place in the sphere of the consciousness. In all the states and exercises connected with repentance and conversion, the soul is active and cooperative • and the only influence exercised by God or his Spirit, is mediate and moral. It is not until the sin- ner has obeyed the command to repent, to believe in Christ, and to return unto God, that God gives the soul that divine some- thing which makes it a new creature, and effects its living organic union with Christ. In this latter process the soul is simply pas- sive. God is the only agent. What is said to be communicated to the soul is Christ ; the person of Christ ; the life of Christ ; his substance, or a new substance. A distinction, however, is made between essence and substance. Ebrard insists 1 that the most hidden, substantial germ of our being is born again in regenera- tion — not merely changed, but new-born. Nevertheless, he says that the " essentia animae humanae " is not changed, and assents to the statement by Bucan, " Renovatio fit non quoad essentiam ut deliravit Illyricus, sed quoad qualitates inhaerentes." What he asserts,2 frequently elsewhere, is, " That Christ, real and substan- tial, is born in us." But he adds that the words " real and sub- stantial" are used to guard against the assumption that regenera- tion consists simply in some inward exercise, or transient state of the consciousness. It is, as he truly teaches, much more ; some- thing lower than the consciousness ; a change in the state of the soul, which determines the acts and exercises which reveal them- selves in the consciousness, and manifest themselves in the life. He finds his doctrine of regeneration, not in what Calvin and some few of the Reformed theologians taught under that head, but in what they teach of the Lord's Supper, and of the mystical union. Calvin 3 says, " Sunt qui manducare Christi carnem, et
i Dogmatik, edit. Konigsberg, 1852, vol. ri. p. 320. * Ibid. p. 309.
8 Institutio, iv. xvii. 5, edit. Berlin, 1834, vol. ii. p. 403.
24 FART III. Ch. XV. — REGENERATION.
sanguinem ejus bibere, uno verbo definiunt, nihil esse aliud, quam in Christum ipsum credere. Sed mihi expressius quiddam ac sublimius videtur voluisse docere Christus .... nempe vera
sui participatione nos vivificari Quemadmodum enim non
aspectus sed esus panis corpori aliinentum sufficit, ita vere ac penitus participem Christi animam fieri convenit, ut ipsius virtute in vitam spiritualem vegetetur." "We have here certainly," says Ebrard,1 " the doctrine of a secret, mystical communication of Christ's substance to the substantial centre in man (the *anima'), which develops itself on the one xiand in the physical, and on the other, in the noetic life." These writers are correct in denying that regeneration is a mere change in the purposes, or feelings, or conscious states of any kind in man ; and also in affirming that it involves the communication of a new and abid- ing principle of life to the soul. But they depart from Scripture and from the faith of the Church universal in substituting " the theanthropic nature of Christ," " his divine-human life," " gen- eric humanity healed and exalted to the power of a divine life " (i. e., deified), for the Holy Ghost. This substitution is made avowedly in obedience to modern science, to the new philoso- phy which has discovered a true anthropology and revealed " the real oneness of God and man." As already remarked, it is as- sumed that this communication of the " theanthropic nature of Christ " carried with it his merits as well as his blessedness and power. All we have of Christ, we have within us. And if we can discover little of God, and little God-like in our souls, so much the worse. It is all we have to expect, until our inner life is further developed. The Christ within (as some of the Friends also teach), is, according to this system, all the Christ we have. Ebrard, therefore, in one view identifies regeneration and, justification. " Regeneration," he says,2 " as the act of Christ, is the cause ('causa efficiens,) of justification; He com- municates his life to us, and awakens a new life in us." This is justification, an inward subjective change, which involves merit as well as holiness. This confounding the work of the Holy Spirit in* regeneration, with the judicial, objective act of justifi- cation, belongs to the system. At least it is only on the ground of this infused life that we are pronounced righteous in the sight of God. What we receive is "the real divine-human life of Christ," and " whatever there may be of merit, virtue, efficacy, or moral value in any way, in the mediatorial work of Christ, it
1 DogmatUc, vol. ii. p. 310. 2 find. p. 315.
§2.j ITS NATURE. 25
is all lodged in the life, by the power of which alone this work has been accomplished, and in the presence of which only it can have either reality or stability. The imagination that the merits of Christ's life may be sundered from his life itself, and conveyed over to his people under this abstract form, on the ground of a merely outward legal constitution, is unscriptural and contrary to all reason at the same time." * Regeneration consisting in the communicating the life of Christ, his substance, to the soul, and this divine-human life comprehending all the merit, virtue, or efficacy belonging to Christ and his work, — regeneration involves justification, of which it is the ground and the cause.
Doctrine of Delitzsch.
Delitzsch devotes one.division of his " Biblical Psychology " to the subject of regeneration. He begins the discussion with a dis- course on Christ's person. " When we wish to consider the new spiritual life of the redeemed man, we proceed from the divine human archetype, the person of the Redeemer." 2 Man was, as to his spirit and soul, originally constituted in the image of God ; the spirit was the image " of His triune nature and the latter [the soul] of His sevenfold 4doxa.' " Man was free to conform his life to the spirit, or divine principle within him, or to allow the con- trol of his life to be assumed by the soul. Utter ruin was the consequence of the fall. This could be corrected and man re- deemed only by "a new beginning of similar creative intensity."8 This new beginning was effected in the incarnation. The Son of God became man, not by assuming our nature, in the ordinary sense of those words, but by ceasing to be almighty, omniscient, and omnipresent, and contracting Himself to the limits of human- ity. It was a human life into which He thus entered; a life including a spirit, soul, and body. There is no dualism in Christ's person, as between the corporeal and spiritual, or between the human and divine. It is the divine nature in the form of human- ity, or this divine-human nature, which is purely and simply, though perfectly, human, which is communicated to the people of God in their regeneration. To this fellowship in the life of Christ, faith is indispensable, and therefore Ebrard says, infants cannot be the subjects of regeneration, while Delitzsch, a Lu- theran, maintains that infants are capable of exercising faith, and
i Mystical Presence, by J. W. Nevin, D. D., Philadelphia, 1846, p. 191. * A System of Biblical Psychology, by Franz Delitzsch, D. D., translated by R. R Wallis, Ph. D. : edit. Edinburgh, 1867, p. 381. « Ibid. p. 382.
26 PART UI. Cn. XV. — REGENERATION.
therefore are capable of being regenerated. What is received from Christ, or that of which his people are made partakers, is " the Spirit, the soul, the body of Christ. " x The new man, or second Adam, was made a "life-giving spirit," and gradually subdues the old man, or our Adamic nature, and brings the whole man (wwiia, if/vxy, and o-w/xa), spirit, soul, and body, up to the standard of the life of Christ, in whom the divine and hu- man are merged into one, or rather appear in their original one-