RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Christologry
but in the weakness of human nature." (6) The whole work of Christ is to be attributed to his person, and not to the one or the other nature exclusively. The person is the acting subject; the nature, the organ or medium. It is the one divine-human person of Christ that wrought miracles by virtue of his divine nature, and that suffered through the sensorium of his hiunan nature. The superhuman effect and infinite merit of the Kedeemer's work must be ascribed to his person, because of his divinity; while it is his humanity alone that made him capable of, and liable to, temptation, suffering, and death, and renders him an example for our imitation. (7) The Anhypostasia, or, more accurately, the Enhypostasia (Impersonality), of the human nature of Christ. The meaning is that Christ's hvunan nature had no independent personality of its own, and that the divine nature is the root and basis of his personality. His humanity was enhypostatized through union with the Logos, or incorporated into his personality. The Synod of Chalcedon says nothing of this feature ; it was an afterthought developed by John of Damascus. It seems inconsistent with the dyotheletic theory; for a being with consciousness and will has the two essential elements of personality, while an impersonal will seems to be a mere animal instinct. Ritschl {Justification and Reconciliation, New York, 1900, p. 437) says: " That the divine revealing Word constitutes the form, and the human individual the ^substance, of the person of Christ is what in the end the doctrine of the Greek Church comes to. For the theory of the anhypostasis of the human nature in Christ is intelligible only if the Divine Logos is the form in which this human individual exists, outside of which he has no real existence at all. For the form is the basis of reality."
2. Criticism: The Chalcedonian christology is regarded by the Greek and Roman, and by the majority of the orthodox English and American theologians, as the highest christological knowl-
1 Favor ^"^^^ attainable in this world. Dr.
able Opin- ^^^dd {History of Christian Doctrine, ions. ' i-> New York, 1863, p. 408) thinks it probable that " the human mind is unable to go beyond it in the endeavor to unfold the mystery of Christ's complex person." Dr. Hodge {Systematic Theology, il, New York, 1872, pp. 397 sqq.) notices and criticizes several of the more recent " erroneous and heretical doctrines," but holds to the Chalcedonian statement as adopted by the scholastic Calvinists of the seventeenth century.
On the other hand, the Chalcedonian christology has been subjected to a rigorous criticism in Germany by Evangelical as well as rationalistic divines— by Schleiermacher, Baur, Dorner, Rothe, and the modern Kenoticists, also by Ritschl and his followers, and by Professor Paine in America. It IS charged with a defective psychology, and now with dualism, now with docetism, according as its distinction of two natures or the personal imity is made its most prominent feature. It is said to oscillate between two extremes, without truly recon-
ciling them; as the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity stands between tritheism and modalism, now leaning to the one, now to the other, when either the tripersonality or the union is emphasized. It assumes two natures in one person; while the dogma of the Trinity assumes three persons in one nature. Professor Paine {Critical History of the Evolution of Trinitarianism, Boston, 1900, p. 279) marvels " how such a bald antinomy, Christ wholly God and wholly man, could have been adopted by theologians who were adepts in the Aristotehan and Platonic philosophies." Again he speaks of the Chalcedonian christology as " an imhistorical and unscientific violation of logical and psychological laws." The Chalcedonian definition, it is further objected, teaches a complete human
2. Otojeo- j^a^^^re with reason and will, and vet tions and. - ' j
Criticisms.
denies it personality. It does not do justice to the genuine humanity of Christ in the Gospels, and to all those passages which assert its real growth. It overshadows the human by the divine. It puts the final result at the beginning, and ignores the intervening process. If we read the Gospel history, we find that Christ was a helpless infant on his mother's breast — and therefore not omnipotent till after the resurrection, when " all authority in heaven and on earth " was given unto him (Matt, xxviii. 18); he grew in wisdom, and learned obedience (Luke ii. 40; Heb. v. 8), and was ignorant of the day of judgment (Mark xiii. 32), therefore not omniscient; he moved from place to place, and was therefore not omnipresent before his ascension to heaven; he was destitute of his divine glory, which he was to regain after his death (John xvii. 5). To confine these limitations and imperfections to his human nature, while in his divine nature he was, at one and the same time, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, even in the manger and on the cross, is to destroy the personal imity of life, and to make two Christs. How can ignorance and omniscience simultaneously coexist in one and the same mind? How can one and the same individual pervade and rule the universe in the same moment in which he exclaims, " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? " Christ speaks and acts throughout as one undivided ego. We must, therefore, so reconstruct or improve the Chalcedonian christology as to conform it to the historical realness of his humanity, to the full meaning of his own sayings concerning himself, and to all the facts of his life. This is generally felt among the Evangelical theologians in Germany, where christological speculation has been most active since the Reformation, and by not a few in other countries. If anything has resulted from the multitude of lives of Christ, written by learned and able men in the nineteenth century, it is the fact of the perfect and unique divine-human personaUty of Jesus of Nazareth (cf. some good remarks on this subject by Dr. J. O. Dykes, in the Expository Times, Jan., 1906, pp. 151 sqq.).
At the same time the Chalcedonian dogma is the ripest fruit of the christological speculations and controversies of the ancient Church, and can never be lost. It gave the clearest expres-
ChriBtolog-y