§ 142. THE ORTHODOX CHKI8T0L0GY. 759
8. Criticism and deielopment. This Clialcedonian Chris tologj has latterly been subjected to a rigorous criticism, an.3 has been cliarged now with dualism, now with docetism, ac' cording as its distinction of two natures or its doctrine of the impersonality of the human nature has most struck the eye.'
But these imputations neutralize each other, like the imputations of ti'itheism and modalism which may be made
gy: "In itself it is avviroiTTaro^ — that which hath not a subsistence of its own, which should give it individuation and distinction from the same nature in any othei person. But it hath its subsistence in the person of the Son, which thereby is its own. The divine nature, as in that person, is its suppositum.''''
' Dr. Baur (Geschichte der Trinitatslehre, Bd. i. p. S-23 f.) imputes to the Creed of Chaleedon " untenable inconsistency, equivocal indeSniteness, and discordant incompleteness," but ascribes to it the merit of insisting upon the human in Christ a? having equal claims with the divine, and of thus leaving the possibility of two equal ly legitimate points of view. Dr. Dorner, who regard.s the Chalcedonian statement as premature and inadequate (Geschichte der Christologie, Bd. ii. pp. 83, 130), raises against it the double objection of leaning to docetism on the one hand and to dualism on the other. He sums up his judgment of the labors of the ancient church down to John of Damascus in the sphere of Christology in the following words (ii. 273) : " If we review the result of the Christological speculation of the ancient church, it is undeniable that the satisfying and final result cannot be found in it, great as its traditional influence even to this day is. It mutilates the human nature, inasmuch as, in an ApolHnarian way, it joins to the trunk of a human nature the head of the divine hypostasis, and thus sacrifices the integrity of the humanity to the unity of the person. Yet after all — and this is only the converse of the same fault — in its whole doctrine of the natures and the will, it gives the divine and the human only an outward connection, and only, as it were, pushes the two natures into each other, without modification even of their properties. We discover, it is true, endeavors after something better, which indicate that the Christological image hovering before the mind, has not yet, with all the apparent completeness of the theory, found its adequate expression. But these endeavors are unfruitful." Dr. W. Beyschlag, in his essay before the German Evangelische Kirchentag at Altenburg, held in 1864, concurs with these remarks, and says of the Chalcedonian dogma* " Instead of startmg from the living intuition of the God-filled humanity of Christ, it proceeded from the defective and abstract conception of two separate natures, to be, as it were, added together in Christ ; introduced thereby an irremediable dualisna into his personal life; and at the same time, by transferring the personality wholly to the divine nature, depressed the humanity which in thesi it recognized, to a mere unsubstantial accident of the Godhead, at bottom only apparent and docetistic." But Beyschlag denies the real personal pre-existence of Christ and consequently a proper incarnation, and has by this denial caused no small scandal among the believing party in Germany. Dorner hold^ firmly to the p:e-existence and incarnation, but makes the latter a gradual ethical unification of tee Logos and the humar nature, consummated in the baptism and the exaltation of Christ.
760 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
against the oi'tLodox doctrine of the Trinity when either the tripersonality or the consubstantiality is taken aloue. This, indeed, is the peculiar excellence of the creed of Clialcedou, that it exhibits so sure a tact and so wise a circumspection in uniting the colossal antitheses in Christ, and seeks to do justice alike to the distinction of the natures and to the unity of the person.* In Christ all contradictions are reconciled.
Within these limits there remains indeed ample scope for further Christological speculations on the possibility, reality, and mode of the incarnation ; on its relation to the revelation of God and the deyelopmont of man ; on its relation to the immutability of God and the trinity of essence and the trinity of revelation : — questions which, in recent times especially, have been earnestly and profoundly discussed by the Protestant theologians of Germany.*
The great want, in the present state of the Christological
' F. R. Hasse (Kirchengeschiclite, i. p. 177): "By the Creed of Chalcedon justice has been done to both the Alexandrian and th ; Antiochian Christology ; the antagonism of the two is adjusted, and in the dogma of the one ^fdvbpuTros done away."
" Witness the Christological investigations of Schleiermach' r, R. Rothe, Giischel, Dorner, Liebner, Lange, Thomasius, Martensen, Gess, Ebrard, Sc-hobcrlcin, Plitt, Beyschlag, and others. A thorough criticism of the latest theories is given by Dorner, in his large work on Christology, Bd. ii. p. 1260 ff. (Eng. transl. Div. 2d, vol. iii. p. 100 ff.), and in several dissertations ujion the immutability of God, found in his Jahrbiicher fiir Deutsche Theologie, 1856 and 1858; also by Philippi, Kirchliche Glaubenslehre, iv. i. pp. 344-382 ; Plitt, Evangelische Glaubenslelire (1863), i. p. 360 ff. ; and Woldemar Schmidt, Das Dogma vom Gottmenschen, mit Beziehung auf die neusten Losungsversuche der Gegensiitze, Leipzig, 1865. The English theology has contented Itself with the traditional acceptance and viudication of the old Catholic doctrine of Christ's person, without instituting any special iuvestigations of its own, while the doctrine of the Trinity has been thoroughly reproduced and vindicated by Cudworth, Bull, and Wateriaiui, without, however, being developed further. Dr. Shedd also considers the Clialccdonian symbol as the ne jdus ultra of Christological knowledge, "beyond which it is probable the human mind is unable to go, in the endeavor to unfold the mystery of Christ's complex person, which in ■ome of its aspects is even more baffling thati the mystery of the Trinity " (History of Christian Doctrine, i. p. 408). This is probably also the reason why this work, in •urprising contrast with every other History of Doctrine, makes no mention whatever of the Monophysite, Monothelite, Adoptian, Scholastic, Lutheran, Socinian, Rationalistic, and later Evangelical controversies and theories respecting this cen Vral dogma of Christianity.