§ 142. THE OKTuoDox CHPasT:)LOGr. 757
7. Tlie anhypostasia^ impersonality^ or, to speak more accurately, the enhypostasia^ of the human nature of Christ. This is a difficult point, but a necessary link in the orthodox doctrine of the one God-Man ; for otherwise we must have two persons in Christ, and, after the incarnation, a fourth person, and that a human, in the divine Trinity. The impersonality of Christ's human nature, however, is not to he taken as absohite, but relative, as the following considerations will show.
The centre of personal life in the God-Man resides unquestionably in the Logos, who was from eternity the second person in the Godhead, and could not lose his personahty. He united, himself, as has been already observed, not with a human person, but with human nature. The divine nature is therefore the root and basis of the personalit}' of Christ. Christ himself, moreover, always speaks and acts in the fall consciousness of his divine origin and character ; as having come from the Father, having been sent by him, and, even during his earthly life, living in heaven and in unbroken communion witli the Father.' And the human nature of Christ had no independent personality of its own, besides the divine ; it had no existence at all before the incarnation, but began with this act, and was so incorporated with the pre-existent Logos-personality as to find in this alone its own full self-
is both God and man in one person." (Declaration of the Glorious Mystery of the Person of Christ; chap, xviii., in Owen's Works, vol. i. p. 234). Comp. also the admirable exposition of the article Passus est in Bishop Pearson's Exposition of the Creed (ed. Dobson, p. 283 ff.).
* The Logos is, according to the scholastic terminology of the later Greek theologians, especially Jolin of Damascus, iSioo-iWraros, or tSiouTrdo-TaTos, L e., per ^ Bubfistens, and tSioTrepiopto-Tos, proprio termino circumscriptus. " Haec et simiUa Yocabula," says the learned Petavius (TheoL Dogm. torn. iv. p. 430), •' demonstrant hypostasiii non aliena ope fultam ac sustentatam existere, sed per semet ipsam, ac oroprio termino definitam." Schleiermacher's Christology therefore, on this point, ."onns the direct opposite of the Chalcedonian ; it makes the man Jesus the bearer of the personahty, that is, transfers the proper centre of gravity in the personality to the human individuality of Christ, and riews the divine nature as the supreme revelation of God in Him, as an impersonal principle, as a vital power. In thia view the proper idea of the incarnation is lost. The same thing ia true of tb« Christology of Hase, Keim, Beyschlag (and R. Rothe).
758 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
consciousness, and to be permeated and controllud by it in every stage of its development. But the human nature forma a necessary element in the divine personality, and in this sense we may say with the older Protestant tlieologians, that Christ is a persona avv^€To<i, which was divine and human at once.'
Thus interpreted, the church doctrine of the enhypostasia presents no very great metaphysical or psychological difficulty. It is true we cannot, according to our modern way of thinking, conceive a complete human nature without personality. We make personality itself consist in intelligence and free will, so that without it the nature sinks to a mere abstraction of powers, qualities, and iunctions.^ But the human nature of Jesus nerer was, in fact, alone ; it was from the beginning inseparably united with another nature, which is personal, and which assumed the human into a unity of life with itself. The Logos-personality is in this case the light of self-consciousness, and the impelling power of will, and pervades as well the human nature as the divine.*
' The correct Greek expression is, therefore, not a.vviro(TTa<Tla, but cVvTroo-Tao-io. The human nature of Christ was awiroaraTos, impersonalis, before the incarnation, but became ewrrSirraTos by the incarnation, that is, eV aiir^ ti, toD ©eoD Koyov intoara(T(i inroiTTua-a, and also iTfpouiroaTaTos, and avyvirSfTTaros (compersonata), i. e., quod per se et proprio modo non subsistit, sed inest in alio per se subsistente et substantia cum co copulatur. Christ did not assume a human person, but a humana natura, in qua ipse Deus homo nasceretur. The doctrine of the arthj^postasia, impersonaUtas, or rather e?ihypostasia, of the human nature of Christ, is already observed, in incipient form, in Gyvil of Alexandria, and was afterwards more fully developed by John of Damascus (De orthodoxa fide, lib. iii.), who, however, did not, for all this, conceive Christ as a mere generic being typifying mankind, but as a concrete human individual. Comp. Fetavius, De incarnatione, 1. v. c. 5-8 (torn. iv. p. 421 sqq.); Dorner, 1. c. ii. p. 262 ff, ; and J. P. Lange, Christliche Dogmatik, Part ii. p. 713.
' Even in the scholastic era tliis difficulty was felt. Peter the Lombard saya (Sentent. iii. d. 5 d.): Non accepit Verbum Dei personam hominis, sed naturmn, quia non erat ex carne ilia una composita persona, quam Verbum accepit, sed accipiendo univit et uniendo accepit. £: A quibusdam opponitur, quod persona assumpsit personam. Persona enim est substantia naturalis individuaa naturae, hoc autem est anima. Ergo si animam assumpsit et personam. Quod ideo non sequitur, quia anima non est persona, quando alii rei unita est pei-sonaliter, sed quando per se est Dla autem anima nunquam fuit quin csset alii rei conjuncta.
' The Puritan theologian, John Owen (Works, vol. i. p. 223), says of the human oature of Christ quite correctly, and in agreement with the Chalc(doniau Christolo