CHRISTOLOGY.
The Medieval Church (§ 4). VI. The Ecumenical Christology.
1. Its Leading Ideas.
2. Criticism. Favorable Opinions (§ 1). Objections and Criticisms (§ 2). Real Value (§ 3).
VII. The Orthodox Protestant Christology.
VIII. The Scholastic Lutheran Christology.
1 . The Communicatio Idiomatum.
2. The Doctrine of the Twofold State of Christ.
3. The Threefold Office of Christ. IX. The Kenosis Controversy Between Giessen and Ttibingen.
X. Modern Christologies.
1. The Humanitarian or Unitarian Christology.
2. The Pantheistic Christology.
3. The Christology of Schleiermacher and His School.
Schleiermacher (§ 1).
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Christolog:y
THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
5QI
I Cor. XV.); the ideal, the perfect, the absolute man, the head of a new nice, the king of Jews and Gentiles, the model man for universal
1. Christ imitation. While putting himself on a the par with us as man, he claims at the
Ideal Man. same time, as the Son of Man, superiority over all, and freedom from sin, and thus .stands solitary and alone as the one and only spotless human being in the midst of a fallen race, as an oasis of living water and fresh verdure, surrounded by a barren desert. He nowhere confesses sin, betrays a consciousness of sin, or asks pardon for sin; and this was not because he did not feel the evil of sin, for he pardoned sin and condemned sins in the severest terras. He alone needed no repentance, no conversion, no regeneration, no pardon. This sinlessness of Christ is the groat moral miracle of history which underlies all liis miraculous works, and explains them as natural manifestations of his miraculous person.
On the other hand, Christ as emphatically asserts his divinity, and calls himself not simply a son of God among other children of God by adoption, but " the Son of God" (q.v.) above all others, in a peculiar sense ; the Son by nature; the Son from eternity; the Son who alone knows the Father, ■ who reveals the Father to us, who calls him, not " our " Father (as we are directed to pray), but " my " Father. He is, as his favorite disciple calls him, the " only-begotten Son " (according to some of the oldest manuscripts, " the only-begotten God," Gk. theos); or, as the Nicene theology expresses it, " eternally begotten of the essence (Gk. ousia) of the Father." He is thus represented by himself ; and the representation which he makes of himself was affirmed by the apostles. Paul never calls him " the son of man," but frequently " the son of God " (" God's own son," Rom. viii. 3, 32, etc.). To the apostles Christ was a divinehuman being, truly God and truly
2. Yet man in one person; and his words also God. and acts and sufferings have a corresponding character and effect. Hence
he puts forth claims which in the mouth of every other man, no matter how wise and how good, would sound like blasphemy or lunacy, but which from his lips appear as natural as the rays of light emanating from the sun. He represents himself constantly as being sent from God, or as having come directly from God, to teach this world what he ha:l not learned from any school or book. He calls himself the Light of the World, the Way, the Truth, and the Life; he invites all men to come to him, that they may find rest and peace; he claims the power to forgive sins, and to raise the dead; he says, " I am the Re surrection and the Life," and he promises eternal life to every one that believeth in him. Even in the moment of his deepest humiliation, he proclaimed himself the King of truth, and the Ruler and Judge of mankind. His kingdom is to be coextensive with the race, and everlasting as eternity itself. And with this conscious- Tr.'ss he s;.'iit forth his disciples to proclaim the gospel of salvation to e\'ery creature, forewarning them of persecution and pledging them his presence to the end of the world, and a crown of glory in heaven.
He coordinates himself in the baptismal formul| with the Eternal Father and the Eternal Spirit, and; allows himself to be worshiped by the skeptical Thomas as his " Lord " and his " God."
This central truth of Christ's divine-human person and work is set forth in the New Testament writings, not as a logically formulated dogma, but as a living fact and glorious truth, as an object of faith, a source of comfort, and a stimulus to a holy life, in humble imitation of his perfect example. The simple narrative of the Gospels is far more powerful for the general benefit of mankind than all the systems of theology. But the mind of the Church must meditate, and try to grasp this truth; and the New Testament itself furnishes ever new impulse and food for theological speculation. The formulated statement of christology begins as early as Paul and John.
II. The Ante-Nicene Christology, from 100 a.d. to the Council of Nicsea, 325. — 1. The Early Simple Faith: The ecclesiastical development of the fundamental dogma started from Peter's confession of the Messiahship of Jesus (Matt. xvi. 16), and from John's doctrine of the incarnate Logos (John i. 14). It was stimulated by two opposite heresies— Ebionism and Gnosticism; the one essentially Jewish, the other essentially heathen; the one affirming the humanity of Christ to the exclusion of his divinity, the other running into the opposite error by resolving his humanity into a delusive show (Gk. dokesis, phantasma; 1. Heresies, see Docetism); both agreeing in the denial of the incarnation, or the real and abiding union of the divine and' human in the person of our Lord. There also arose in the second and third centuries two forms of Unitarianism or Monarchianism : (1) The Rationalistic or Dynamic I Unitarianism — represented by the Alogi, Theodotus, '■ Artemon, and Paul of Samosata — which either denied the divinity of Christ altogether, or resoh'ed it into a mere power (Gk. dynamis), although its representatives generally admitted his supernatural generation by the Holy Spirit. (2) The Patripassian and Sabellian Unitarianism, which maintained 'the divinity of Christ, but merged it into the essence of the Father, and so denied the independent, preexistent personality of Christ. So Praxeas, Noetus, Callistus (Pope Calixtus I.), Beryllus of Bostra, and Sabellius. See the articles on the heresies named and their representatives.
In antagonism to these heresies, the Church taught the full divinity of Christ (against Ebionism and rationalistic Monarchianism),
(^h.TU'oh ^^^^ humanity (against Gnosticism
Doctrine and Manicheism), and his indepcfident personality (againsf Patripassianism and Sabellianism). The dogma was developed in close connection with the dogma of the Trinity, which resulted, by logical necessity, from the deity of Christ and the deity of the Holy Spirit on the basis of the fimdamental truth of Monotheism.
The ante-Nicene christology passec through many obstructions, loose statements, uncctain conjectures and speculations; but th ii.stinct and main current of the Church was steadily toward the Nicene and Chaleedonian crei d-state-