§ 142. THE ORTHODOX CHRIS lOLOGY. 755
for m it the lowliness of man and the majesty of God perfectly pervade one another. . , . Because the two natures make only one person, we read on the one hand : ' The Son of man came down from heaven' (John iii. 13), while yet the Son of God took flesh from the Yirgin ; and on the other : ' The Son of God was crucified and buried ' (1 Cor. ii, 8), while yet he suffered not in his Godhead as co-eternal and consubstantial with the Father, but in the weakness of human nature."
Here again the Chalcedonian formula has a firm and cleai basis in Scripture. In the gospel history this personal unity everywhere unmistakably appears. The self-consciousness of Christ is not divided. It is one and the self-same theanthropic subject that speaks, acts, and suffers, that rises from the dead, ascends to heaven, sits at the right hand of God, and shall come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead.
The divine and the hnman are as far from forming a double personality in Christ, as the soul and the body in man, or as the regenerate and the natural life in the believer. As the hnman personality consists of such a union of the material and the spiritual natures that the spirit is the ruling principle and personal centre : so does tlie person of Christ consist in such a union of the human and the divine natures that the divine nature is the seat of self-consciousness, and pervades and animates the human.'
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* Comp. the Athanasian Creed : " Sicut anima rationalis et caro unus est homo, ita Deus et homo unus est Christus." In the same way does Augustine express himself, and indeed this passage in the Creed, as well as several others, appears to be taken from him. Dr, Shedd (History of Christian Doctrine, i. p. 402) carries out vividly this analogy of the human personality with that of Christ, as follows : " This union of the two natures in one self-conscious Ego may be illustrated by reference to man's personal constitution. An individual man is one person. But this one person consists of two natures, — a material nature and a mental nature. The personality, the self-consciousness, is the resultant of the union of the two. Neither one of itself makes the person." [This is not quite exact. PersoiiaUty lies in the reasonable soul, which can maii.tain its self-conscious existence without the body, even as in Christ His personality resides in the divine nature, as Dr. Shedd himself clearly states on p. 406.] "Both body and soul are requisite in order to a complete individuality. The two natures do not make two individuals. The material nature, taken by itself, is not the man ; and the mental part, taken by itself, is not the nmn, But only the union of the two is. Yet in this intimate union of two such divers*
756 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
I may refer also to the familiar ancient analogy of the firfl and the iron.
6. The whole woi'lc of Christ is to be referred to \\\^ jperson^ and not to be attributed to the one or the other nature exclusively. It is the one divine-human Christ, who wrought miracles of almighty power, — by virtue of the divme nature dwelling in him, — and who suffered and was buried, — according to his passible, human nature. The person was the subject, the human nature the seat and the sensorium, of the passion. It is by this hypostatical union of the divine and the human natures in all the stages of the humiliation and exaltation of Christ, that his work and his merit3 acquire an infinite and at the same time a genuinely human and exemplary significance for us. Because the God-^\^T\ suffered, his death is the reconciliation of the world with God ; and because he suffered as Man^ he has left us an example, that we should follow his steps.'
substances as matter and mind, body and soul, there is not the slightest alteration of the properties of each substance or nature. Tiie body of a man is as truly and purely material as a piece of granite ; and the immortal mind of a man is as truly and purely spiritual and immaterial as the Godhead itself. Neither the material part nor the mental part, taken by itself, and in separation, constitutes the personality; otherwise every human individual would be two persons in juxtaposition. There is therefore a material 'nature,' but no material 'person,' and there is a mental ' nature,' but no mental ' person.' The person is the union of these two natures, and is not to be denominated either material or mental, but human. In like manner the person of Christ takes its denomination jf t/ieanfhropic, or divinehuman, neither from the divine nature alone, nor the human nature alone, but from the union of both natures."
' Here also the orthodox Protestant theology is quite in agreement with the old Catholic. We cite two examples from the two opposite wings of English Protestantism. The Episcopalian theologian, Ricliard Hooker, says, with evi lent reference to tlie above-quoted passage from the letter of Leo : " To Christ we ascribe both working of wonders and suffering of pains, we use concerning Him speeches as well of humility as of divine glory, but the one we apply unto that nature which He took of the Virgin Mary, the other to that which was in the beginning " (Eccles. Polity, book V. ch. 52, vol. ii. p. 291, Keble's edition). The great Puritan theologian of the seventeenth century, John Owen, says, yet more explicitly: "In all that Christ did as the King, Priest, and Propliet of the church, — in all that He did and suffered in all that He continueth to do for us, in or by virtue of whether nature soever it ba aone or wrought, — it is not to be considered as the act and work of this or that nature in Him alone, but it is the act and work of the whole person, — of Him thai