RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Cliristology
ing of the Godhead in him (" ein eigentlichi.:: Sn'ii. Gottes in ihm "), by which he differs from all men.
He admits him to be " a moral
1. Sohleier- miracle," which means a great deal "maoher. for a theologian of the boldest and
keenest criticism in matters of history. He was willing to surrender almost every miracle of action in order to save the miracle of the person of him whom he adored and loved as his Lord and Savior. He adopts the Sabellian view of the Trinity as a threefold manifestation of God in creation (in the world), redemption (in Christ), and sanctification (in the Church). Christ is God as Redeemer, and originated an incessant flow of a new spiritual life, with all its pure and holy emotions and aspirations, which must be traced to that source. Sabellian as he was, Schleiermacher did not hold an eternal personal preexistence of the Logos which would correspond to the historical indwelling of God in Christ. His conception of the abstract unity and simplicity of the Godhead excluded an immanent Trinity. (For his christology, cf. his Der christlivhc Glaube, §§ 92-99, vol. ii., Berlin, 1830, pp. 26-93; cf. also the sharp criticism of Strauss, in Die christliche Glaicbenslehre, ii., Tubingen, 1841, pp. 175 sqq.)
Ullmann (d. 1865), originally a pupil of Schleiermacher, but more orthodox, wrote the best book on the important topic of the sinless -
2. TJUmann. ness of Christ, which has an abiding
doctrinal and apologetic value, independently of all speculative theories {Die Sundlosigkeit Jesu, 7th ed., Gotha, 1863, Eng. transl., Edinburgh, 1870).
Somewhat similar is the christology of Richard Rothe (d. 1866), one of the greatest speculative theologians of the nineteenth century. He wrought out an original system of ethics of the highest order. He abandons the orthodox dogma of the Trinity and the Chalcedonian dyophysitism (which he thinks goes far beyond the simplicity of Biblical teaching, and makes the vmion physical rather than moral), but fully admits the divine-human character of the one personality of Christ, and lays great stress on the ethical feature in the development of Christ, by which alone he can become our redeemer and example. God, by a creative act, calls the second Adam into existence 3. Rothe. in the bosom of the old natural humanity. Christ is born of a woman, yet not begotten by man, but created by God (as to his humanity), hence is free from all sinful bias, as well as actual sin. His development is a real, but normal and harmonious, religious moral growth, with a correspondingly increasing indwelling of God in him. There was not a single moment in his conscious life in which he stood not in personal union with God; but the absolute union took place with the completion of the personal development of the second Adam. This completion coincided with his perfect self-sacrifice in death. Henceforth he was wholly antl absolutely God (ganz und schlechthin Gott), since his being is extensively and intensively filled with the true God; but it can not be said, vice versa, that God is wholly the second Adam; for God is not limited by an individual
person. The death of Christ on earth was at the same time his ascension to heaven and his elevation above all the limitations of material existence into the divine mode of existence (a return to the morphe theou), which, however, implies also his perpetual presence with his Church on earth (.Matt, xxviii. 20).
Here is the place also for the theory of Horace Bushnell (q.v.; d. 1876), which strongly resembles those of Schleiermacher and Rothe, but differs from them by adhering to the eternal preexistence of Christ (though only in a Sabellian sense). It was first announced in his Goncio ad Clerum,, at the annual commencement of Yale College, New Haven, Aug. 15, 1848, and gave rise to his trial for heresy.
Bushnell, one of the most independent and vigorous American thinkers, read
4. Horace Bushnell.
Schleiermaclier's essay on Sabellius as translated by Professor Moses Stuart in the Biblical Repository, and said that " the general view of the Trinity given in that article coincides " with his own view, and confirmed him in the results of his own private struggles {God in Christ, New York, 1877, pp. 111-112). He maintains the full divinity of Christ on the Sabellian basis. He rejects the theory of " three metaphysical or essjntial persons in the being of God," with three distinct consciousnesses, wills, and understandings; and he substitutes for it simply a trinity of revelation, or what he calls (p. 175) an " instrumental trinity," or three impersonations, in which the one divine being presents himself to our human capacities and wants, and which are necessary to produce mutuality, or terms of conversableness, between us and him, and to pour his love most effectually into our feeling (p. 137). " God may act," he says (p. 152), " as a human personality, without being measured by it." The real divinity came into the finite, and was subject to human conditions. There are not two distinct subsistences in the person of Christ, one infinite and the other finite; but it is the one infinite God who expresses himself in Christ, and brings himself down to the level of our humanity, without any loss of his greatness or reduction of his majesty. At the same time, Bushnell holds to the full yet sinless humanity of Christ; and the tenth chapter of his work on Nature and the Supernatural is one of the ablest and most eloquent tributes to the sinless perfection of the moral character of Christ.
4. The Modern Ken otic Theory (see Kenosis) differs from the theories just noticed by its orthodox premises and conclusions as far as the dogma of the Trinity and of the eternal Deity of Christ is concerned; but it likewise departs from the Chalcedonian dyophysitism, by holding to one divinehuman Christ, with one consciousness and one will. It is chiefly based on the famous passage Phil. ii. 6-8 (Gk. heauton ekenosen, verse 7, " he emptied himself," A. V., "made himself of no reputation," the subject of the Kenosis being the preexistent, not the incarnate. Logos), and also on II Cor. viii. 9; Johni. 14 (Gk. egeneto, " became "); Heb. ii. 17, 18, V. 8, 9; and on the general impression which the gospel history makes of Christ, as a truly human.
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