The communication of the theanthropic life to the soul is an act of the divine Spirit in which we have neither agency nor con- sciousness. Delitzsch infers from what our Lord said to Nicode- mus, John iii. that " The operation of the Spirit of regeneration is, therefore, (1.) A free one, withdrawn from the power of hu- man volition, of human special agency. (2.) A mysterious one, lying beyond human consciousness, and only to be recognized by its effects." 2 " It is peculiar to all God's creative agencies, that the creature which is thereby brought into existence, or in which this or that is brought into existence, has no consciousness of what is occurring." 3
Various as are the modifications of this doctrine as presented by different writers of this general school, regeneration is by all of them understood to be the communication of the life of Christ to the soul. By the life of Christ is meant his manhood, his hu- man nature, which was at the same time divine, and therefore is theanthropic. It may be called human, and it may be called divine, for although being one, one life, it is truly divine by being perfectly human. We are all partakers of humanity as polluted and degraded by the apostasy of Adam. Christ, or rather, the Eternal Son of God, assumed human nature, in that He became man, and being God, humanity in Him was filled with the treas- ures of wisdom and knowledge and grace and power ; of that hu- manity we must partake in order to have any part in the salva- tion of Christ. The communication of this life to us, which is our regeneration, is through the Church, which is his body, because animated by his human life. As we derive our deteriorated humanity by descent from Adam, we are made partakers of this renovated, divine humanity by union with the Church, in which Christ as a man, and God-man, lives and dwells. And as the
1 A System of pMical Psychology, by Franz Delitzsch, D. D., translated by R. E. Wallis, Ph. D. ; edit. Edinburgh, 1867, p. 398. 8 Ibid. p. 402. 8 md. p. 403.
2-3