CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Alfred C. Barnes 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BT201 .S21 
 
 ChristologJes ancient and modern / by Wi 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 375 213 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029375213 
 
CHRISTOLOGIES 
 ANCIENT AND MODERN 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM SANDAY, D.D., LL.D., Litt.D. 
 
 LADY MAHGARET PROFESSOR 
 
 AND CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD 
 
 HON. FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE ; FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 CHAPLAIN IN ORDINARY TO THE KING 
 
 OXFORD 
 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 
 
 1910 
 
HENRY FROWDE, M.A. 
 
 PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 
 
 LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK 
 
 TORONTO AND MELBOURNE 
 
TO THE 
 
 Cjeoiogteal jfaeultp of tlje VBnihttfAtjf of (Boettingett 
 
 THE AUTHOR GRATEFULLY DEDICATES THIS BOOK 
 
 AS SOME SMALL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE 
 
 HONOUR THEY HAVE DONE HIM BY 
 
 CONFERRING ON HIM THE 
 
 DEGREE OF D.D. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 I hope this is the last of the preliminary studies 
 which I have found myself compelled to make in 
 approaching the larger task which lies before me of 
 writing, or attempting to write, what is commonly 
 called a Life of Christ. It is necessary that I should 
 make clear, as much to myself as to others, the 
 broad lines of the conception which I have formed 
 of the most central portion of my subject — that 
 portion round which everything else really revolves. 
 
 That is my main purpose in this book. It may 
 perhaps justify — it is very possibly the only con- 
 sideration that will justify — the particular scale and 
 method adopted. My object is to bring out leading 
 principles, unencumbered by details ; and leading 
 principles in a form in which they can be appre- 
 hended by that wide general public to which I 
 must ultimately address myself. 
 
 The book consists of eight lectures, five of which 
 were delivered before, and the remaining three 
 after, Christmas of last year (1909). I intentionally 
 made a break in the middle, because I found the 
 argument developing in a direction which I had not 
 myself exactly anticipated at the outset, and which 
 is indeed to the best of my belief as yet rather new 
 and unexplored. I was anxious to give to this the 
 
vi Preface 
 
 most careful consideration I could. I have added to 
 these eight lectures the substance of a University 
 sermon, removing the sermonic form and adapting 
 it to its place in the present volume. I was not 
 satisfied with the latter part of the sermon as it was 
 preached, and I have substituted an extract from 
 a paper read at the Swansea Church Congress 
 which, if I am not mistaken, expresses the thought 
 that was in my mind with greater clearness and 
 precision. 
 
 This discourse on ' The Guiding Principle of 
 Symbolism' takes up a subject to which I had 
 devoted one of the essays in my last book (The Life 
 of Christ in Becent Research, Oxford, 1907). It may 
 be taken as an apologia for the whole position of 
 which these writings of mine are the outcome. One 
 of the most sympathetic and generous, though at the 
 same time also one of the most penetrating critics 
 of the book of which I have just been speaking, 
 seemed not a little puzzled to understand how I 
 could accept so much as I did of modern criticism 
 and yet work round so nearly to the position implied 
 in the ancient Creeds. It is this apparent paradox 
 which I have now done my best to explain. In the 
 last resort the key to the position is that there is a 
 God in heaven, who really shapes our ends, rough- 
 hew them how we will. I believe that in His hand 
 is the whole course of human history, and especially 
 the history of those who deliberately seek His 
 guidance. I therefore trace His influence in the 
 
Preface vii 
 
 ultimate decisions, the fundamental decisions, of 
 the Church of the Fathers ; and it is to me incredible 
 that He should intend the course of modern develop- 
 ment to issue in direct opposition to them. If I 
 find my own thought leading me into such oppo- 
 sition, I at once begin to suspect that there is 
 something wrong, and I retrace my steps and begin 
 again. On the other hand I am well aware that I 
 must not play fast and loose with criticism ; I believe 
 that it must be looked fairly in the face, and that we 
 must assimilate its results as best we can. Here, 
 too, I quite admit that, if I can be shown to be 
 wrong, I have also no choice but to retrace my steps 
 and begin again. Of course the difficulty is to make 
 these two processes meet. But, so far as my ex- 
 perience goes, I have never found the results of the 
 two processes finally conflicting. I have tried in 
 the last paper to describe to the best of my ability 
 that principle of continuity which runs through the 
 two processes and binds them together. I think 
 that I have been honest with myself; I am not 
 conscious of any real forcing on either side. But of 
 that others must judge. 
 
 I have once again to thank my friend Dr. Lock 
 for his great kindness in looking through the proofs 
 and helping me with his criticisms. 
 
 Oxford, March, 1910. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ANCIENT AND MODEKN CHKISTOLOGIES : 
 
 I. Ancient Christologies ..... 1 
 II. Ancient Christologies (continued) . . .31 
 
 III. Modern Christologies 57 
 
 IV. Two Types of Christology . ... 85 
 V. Comparison of the Two Types . . . .111 
 
 VI. Presuppositions of a Modern Christology . . 135 
 
 VII. A Tentative Modern Christology . . .161 
 
 VIII. The Present Position 187 
 
 Postscript 212 
 
 SYMBOLISM: 
 
 IX. The Guiding Principle of Symbolism . . 219 
 
 INDEX 241 
 
ANCIENT CHRISTOLOGIES 
 
 1147 
 
ANCIENT CHRISTOLOGIES 
 
 It is not surprising that there should be some 
 tension between Theology and Keligion. When one 
 thinks of the difference between the two, one is 
 constantly reminded of a group of poems in which 
 Wordsworth drives home the difference between 
 Poetry and Science — ' The Poet's Epitaph ', the 
 Matthew series, including ' Expostulation and Reply ' 
 and l The Tables Turned ', and especially of the 
 crowning malediction in the last of these : 
 
 Sweet is the lore which Nature brings ; 
 
 Our meddling intellect 
 Mis-shapes the beauteous form of things ; 
 
 We murder to dissect. 
 
 For the infinite tenderness and subtly blended 
 variety and delicacy of nature, we have only to think 
 of the no less infinite tenderness and subtly blended 
 variety and delicacy of Religion, and by the side of 
 it of what to many no doubt will seem the grim 
 skeleton of Theology, to have irresistibly recalled to 
 us those damnatory lines. And yet, in spite of 
 Wordsworth and all the poets, there is such a thing 
 as a science of Anatomy, and it has after all its 
 justification and its necessity ; it is the indispensable 
 foundation of a vast field of knowledge and of 
 
 B2 
 
4 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 innumerable practical applications of priceless value 
 for the amelioration of the conditions of human life. 
 And so, just in like manner, though we may 
 denounce Theology to our heart's content and with 
 much satisfaction to ourselves in certain contexts 
 and circumstances, nevertheless Theology too has its 
 deep justifications, and indeed its inner necessity to 
 a sound and masculine and strongly based religion. 
 We may keep up the analogy, and it will help to 
 remind us that for the mass of mankind the science 
 of Anatomy, however indispensable, is better kept 
 out of sight ; and in the same way it is perhaps 
 expedient that for most of us Theology also should 
 at least not be too obtrusive. We should not bring 
 it forward where it is apt to jar, any more than we 
 should bring forward science under inappropriate 
 conditions. For many of us at most times, and even 
 for the few among us at many times, it is enough to 
 know that we have a theology in the background. 
 And yet we cannot wholly do without it ; consciously 
 or unconsciously, it must be there. Theology is after 
 all only reasoned and connected belief; and belief is 
 certainly not the worse for being reasoned and con- 
 nected. Some of us, by the circumstances in which 
 we are placed, have a greater call than others to 
 make, or to try to make, our religion rational. That 
 is, I suppose, the main object for which Universities 
 exist — to try to make all things rational. And so 
 here in a University I trust that I shall only be 
 regarded as discharging, or doing my best to dis- 
 
7. Ancient Christologies 5 
 
 charge, my proper function, if I ask you to follow 
 me in an attempt to map out one difficult and impor- 
 tant, and at the present time no doubt insistent, 
 branch of theology. 
 
 Perhaps I cannot describe better than in these 
 terms the object that I have in view. I shall endea- 
 vour just to map out on a broad scale the main 
 outlines of my theme. It would be out of place in 
 a course of public lectures, and I need not say 
 impossible, to go into any minute detail. I shall 
 not try to do so, any more than is necessary to give 
 some concrete grasp of the subject and to present 
 it in such a way as to make the few suggestions 
 that I may have to offer at the end intelligible and 
 helpful. The last thing that I should wish to do is 
 to lay down conclusions dogmatically. Indeed I 
 think it is sufficiently known by this time what my 
 method really is. I am like an older ' Clerk of 
 Oxenford ', of whom it was said : 
 
 And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche. 
 
 — learn and teach together at the same time ; teach 
 a little, if I can, in the process of learning, which 
 I know will never end for me till life itself ends. 
 
 The outline of these lectures that is in my mind 
 is : (1) to sketch the course of ancient Christological 
 speculation, so far as it is necessary for my purpose ; 
 (2) in like manner to sketch the course of specu- 
 lation — which will be, in this case, mainly German 
 
6 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 speculation, for Germany is the only country in 
 which the study of the subject has had a continuous 
 history during the last century and up to the 
 present time — with some remarks at the end upon 
 more isolated Christologies here and in America ; 
 
 (3) to dwell at somewhat greater length on two 
 forms or aspects of Christology which appear to 
 have a special interest at the present time ; and 
 
 (4) to throw out tentatively some suggestions which 
 may perhaps be a help to us in clearing up our own 
 ideas and in presenting the subject to our minds. 
 
 The total net result of the Apostolic Age — or we 
 may say, of the preaching and life of two genera- 
 tions of Christians — was that the Church at large 
 thought of its Founder as divine. Those who had 
 occasion to inquire into Christianity from without, 
 as the younger Pliny had, in his administration of 
 the province of Bithynia about the year 112, soon 
 discovered that it was a leading and distinctive 
 characteristic of the new sect that its members sang 
 hymns to Christ as a God. And a Christian homilist, 
 writing about the middle of the second century, 
 begins his address by laying down that Christians 
 ought to think of Jesus Christ as of God, as of the 
 Judge of quick and dead (2 Clem. i. 1). 
 
 This general confession was no doubt for the 
 great mass of the faithful quite simple and unre- 
 flective. The Church possessed an ample body of 
 theology — the product of strenuous and severe and, 
 
J. Ancient Christologies 7 
 
 we may well say, inspired thinking — in the Epistles 
 of St. Paul and St. John and of some other leaders 
 of the first generation. But it was, if we may say 
 so, theology held in solution, not yet precipitated 
 in the form of systematic doctrine. The average 
 Christian was only just beginning to formulate his 
 own ideas. He did so under the impulse and 
 influence of Apostolic thought; but it was not to 
 be expected that he should be able to reproduce 
 this with perfect balance and insight, when he tried 
 to express either it or the facts which lay behind it 
 in his own words. A child, when it begins to 
 walk, naturally staggers and stumbles a little until 
 it has found the use of its limbs. 
 
 The first definite experiment which some early 
 Christians made, in the effort to realize to them- 
 selves the divine nature of Christ, was that which 
 we call Docetism. The ancients, and in particular 
 the early Christians who were familiar with the 
 Old Testament, had the idea of Theophany, Did 
 not God walk in the garden of Eden in the cool 
 of the day? Did not three men pay a visit to 
 Abraham before the destruction of Sodom, and 
 predict to him what was to happen in the future ? 
 Did not the Captain of the Lord's host stand before 
 Joshua and encourage him, when he was baffled 
 and depressed by the ineffectual siege of Jericho ? 
 Were not these really divine manifestations on 
 earth ? Did they not offer some analogy for the far 
 
8 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 greater manifestation which had taken place in the 
 latter days ? Speculation had not gone so far as to 
 determine the exact relation in which the earthly 
 appearance stood to the divine act which was its 
 cause. The older appearances in any case were 
 only transitory and evanescent ; but might there 
 not be one that was more prolonged? Was it so 
 very strange that there should be some who thought 
 that the manifestation of Jesus Christ in the flesh 
 was to be explained in this way? Was not the 
 human form which He wore — for one year, for 
 three years, for three and thirty years — just assumed 
 for the time ? Was it not a disguise, a semblance — 
 if we will, a phantom ? 
 
 Doubtless there is something naive — some would 
 say perhaps childish — in such reasoning. But, as 
 in childhood, simple things and deep things often 
 lie near together. It would be a mistake to suppose 
 that these Docetae had quite taken leave of their 
 senses. I will give just one specimen of a Docetic 
 work, the apocryphal Acts of John which date from 
 about the middle of the second century. In these 
 Acts the Lord is represented as holding converse 
 with the Apostle John in a cave on the Mount of 
 Olives at the very time when to the eyes of the 
 multitude He was being mocked and crucified on 
 Calvary. But before His departure there is a scene 
 in which Jesus, as a kind of mystagogue, leads in 
 a rhythmic hymn with His disciples. This is part 
 of it :— 
 
1. Ancient Christologies 9 
 
 I have no house and I have houses. Amen. 
 
 I have no place and I have places. Amen. 
 
 I have no temple and I have temples. Amen. 
 
 I am a lamp to thee who beholdest Me. Amen. 
 
 I am a mirror to thee who perceivest Me. Amen. 
 
 I am a door to thee who knockest at Me. Amen. 
 
 I am a way to thee, a wayfarer. 
 
 Now respond thou to My dancing. 
 
 See thyself in Me who speak : and when thou hast 
 
 seen what I do, keep silence about My mysteries. 
 • • • • • • 
 
 Who am I ? Thou shalt know when I go away. 
 What I am now seen to be, that am I not : but what 
 
 I am thou shalt see when thou comest. 
 If thou hadst known how to suffer, thou wouldst have 
 
 had the power not to suffer. 
 Know thou suffering, and thou shalt have the power 
 
 not to suffer. 
 That which thou knowest not, I Myself will teach 
 
 thee. 1 
 
 We see what it means. In the New Jerusalem 
 there is no temple, for the Lord God Almighty and 
 the Lamb are the temple thereof. There is no cir- 
 cumscribed and local abode of the Godhead. And 
 yet Christ as Spirit dwells in 'the upright heart 
 and pure \ In Him the soul sees itself transfigured, 
 and takes the impress of that divine ideal. 
 
 Docetism was not all folly. Rather we may 
 regard it as one primitive form of the assertion of 
 that mystical element which has never been wanting 
 to Christianity from the first days until now, and 
 we may be sure never will be wanting to it. 
 
 1 Acts of S. John (ed. James), p. 13 f. 
 
10 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 The leaders of the Church, no less than the 
 Docetae, insisted on this element ; and yet they 
 would have nothing to do with Docetism. Here 
 again I think that we are apt to do less than justice. 
 We take the action of these leaders as though it were 
 just a matter of course and there were no merit 
 in it. It is one of the titles to fame of Ignatius of 
 Antioch that he was the great opponent of Docetism. 
 Probably no one did more to kill it. ,It was against 
 the Docetists that Ignatius formulates his creed in 
 singularly compact and weighty phrase : 
 
 Be ye deaf therefore, when any man speaketh to 
 you apart from Jesus Christ, who was of the race 
 of David, who was the Son of Mary, who was truly 
 born and ate and drank, was truly persecuted under 
 Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died in the 
 sight of those in heaven and those on earth and 
 those under the earth ; who moreover was truly 
 raised from the dead, His Father having raised Him, 
 who in the like fashion will so raise us also who 
 believe on Him — His Father, I say, will raise us 
 in Christ Jesus, apart from whom we have not true 
 life (Trail. 9). 
 
 Again : 
 
 There is one only physician, of flesh and of spirit, 
 generate and ingenerate, God in man, true Life in 
 death, Son of Mary and Son of God, first passible 
 and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord (Eph. 7). 
 
 Ignatius uses language which is not always 
 exactly in keeping with the rules of the later 
 theology (e. g. cu/xa deov, iraOos deov) : but the 
 striking thing about him is the way in which he 
 
/. Ancient Christologies 11 
 
 seems to anticipate the spirit of the later theology ; 
 the way in which he singles out as central the 
 points which it made central, and the just balance 
 and proportion which he observes between them. 
 He has a broad and simple view of the mission of 
 the Son by the Father, which is more like that of 
 the prologue to the Fourth Gospel than anything 
 else. The leading thought is that of revelation. 
 The Son is the unerring mouthpiece or spokes- 
 man of the Father (Bom. viii. 2) ; He is the Word 
 of God proceeding out of silence, i. e. breaking the 
 silence of ages (Magn. viii. 2). It is to the credit of 
 Ignatius that he writes like one who still feels the 
 immense personal impression of the life of Christ. 
 But it must not for a moment be supposed that he 
 lays stress on the incarnate Christ in any sort of 
 contrast to the exalted or glorified Christ, the Christ 
 who is Spirit and who holds sway over mankind as 
 Spirit. Another leading idea with him is that of 
 the indwelling Christ, as the source of life for all 
 believers (Eph. iii. 2, Magn. i. 2, Smyrn. iv. 1, Magn. 
 xv ; for the indwelling compare Eph. xv. 3, Magn. 
 viii. 2, xii). Ignatius speaks indifferently of the 
 indwelling of Christ and of God ; such phrases as 
 ' in God ' ' in Christ ' occur frequently ; in one place 
 (Magn. xiii. 1) we have l in the Son and Father and 
 in the Spirit '. This triadic formula also occurs or 
 is implied more than once. The Apostolic Fathers 
 do not expound Trinitarian doctrine, but they 
 steadily use the language which gave rise to it in the 
 
12 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 same way in which it is used in the Apostles' Creed 
 (e. g. 1 Clem. xlvi. 6, lviii. 2). There is indeed no 
 rigidity. It is well known that Hermas equates Son 
 and Spirit (Sim. v. 5, 6, 1 where the pre-existent Son 
 is Spirit, as in 2 Clem. ix. 5). There is also the same 
 alternation of Trinitarian and Binitarian language 
 (the conjunction of Father, Son, and Spirit by the 
 side of Father and Son) that we find in St. Paul and 
 elsewhere in the New Testament. The doctrine of 
 the Trinity is not Tritheism. The Church doctrine 
 embraces these varieties of usage and does not 
 regard them as in any sense contradictory. 2 
 
 The group that is commonly known as the Apos- 
 tolic (really Sub-Apostolic) Fathers marks a period 
 of transition. There is no conscious speculation or 
 systematizing; and yet thought is at work; lan- 
 guage and usage are in process of becoming more 
 fixed ; the foundations of more developed doctrine 
 are really being laid, but laid, as it were, under- 
 ground, I do not think that we need stay to 
 discuss Gnosticism, which is not so much a move- 
 ment within Christianity as a movement from 
 
 1 It seems to me to be pressing a passage like this too hard 
 to treat it as representing a distinct type of doctrine. From 
 the later point of view it is loose, inaccurate, and unguarded ; 
 but there is no deliberate divergence from ordinary Christian 
 teaching. 
 
 2 There is a specially interesting discussion of the so-called 
 Binitarian language in Moberly, Atonement and Personality. 
 p. 192. 
 
1. Ancient Christologies 13 
 
 outside — derived in varying proportions from the 
 Oriental religions and from some current forms of 
 Greek philosophy, especially Neo-Platonism — which 
 intersected the orbit of Christianity, but is only 
 to that extent Christian. Occasionally we come 
 across really penetrating and valuable ideas among 
 the Gnostics. For instance, the essential principle 
 which underlies the doctrine of the Trinity finds its 
 first expression in a Valentinian writer — perhaps 
 Valentinus himself. 
 
 There was, he says, at first nothing whatever 
 that is begotten ; the Father was in solitude, un- 
 begotten, not circumscribed either by space or time, 
 with none to counsel Him, with no kind of sub- 
 stance that can be apprehended by any ordinary 
 mode of apprehension. He was in solitude, as 
 they say quiescent, and reposing in Himself alone. 
 But inasmuch as He had the faculty of generation, 
 it seemed good to Him at last to bring to birth and 
 to put forth what He had within Himself that was 
 fairest and most perfect ; for He was no lover of 
 solitude. For He was, the writer says, all Love ; but 
 love is not love, unless there be an object of love. l 
 
 Do not let us lay stress on the fact that behind 
 this is the Gnostic theory of * emanations ' or 
 ' aeons ', and that that theory is pure mythology. 
 It is fair to the Gnostics to remember that there 
 did not exist at that time any proper conception of 
 personality, and that even our own idea — as applied 
 to these transcendent objects — is only approximate 
 
 1 Hippolytus, EefuL vi. 29 (ed. Duncker and Schneidewin, 
 p. 272). 
 
14 Ancient and Modem Christologies 
 
 and imperfect. It is not to be supposed that 
 thinkers like Basilides and Valentinus intended 
 their mythological imaginings to be taken quite 
 literally. The deepest root, the central meaning, 
 the meaning that we can best grasp and hold 
 on to, in the doctrine of the Trinity, is just this 
 development of the truth that God is Love. He 
 is Love, and Love cannot be solitary, but implies 
 a response ; it implies a perpetual outflow and re- 
 turn. That is the essence of Trinitarian doctrine. 
 
 I find myself, as I go on, constantly impelled to 
 plead for a lenient and generous judgement on 
 these old thinkers as against their modern critics, 
 who with all the advantages of prolonged expe- 
 rience and improved methods naturally find not 
 a little to provoke their censures. And this is 
 I think especially the case with regard to the next 
 considerable Christian movement of which I shall 
 have to speak : i. e. the group of writers commonly 
 known as the Apologists — Aristides, Justin, Tatian, 
 Theophilus of Antioch, Athenagoras, Melito. In 
 their case I unwillingly cross the path of just those 
 among the moderns whom I most admire and to 
 whom my own obligations are greatest — Harnack, 
 Loofs, and even a younger writer, Geffcken, whose 
 more generous treatment of the Latin Apologists 
 in his valuable book Zwei Griechische Apobgeten 
 (Leipzig u. Berlin, 1907) I heartily welcome. Of 
 course there are differences of degree ; and I would 
 
/. Ancient Christologies* 15 
 
 not put (e. g.) Aristides in the same class with Justin 
 and Athenagoras. Nor would I detract from the 
 real importance of the criticism that we owe to 
 Harnack and Loofs, who have greatly helped us 
 to put the Apologists in their place in the history 
 of doctrine. 1 Only I confess that, when we come 
 to form an estimate of these writers as a group and 
 as individuals, it seems to me hard measure to judge 
 them so predominantly by modern standards and by 
 the standard of a particular set of modern opinions. 
 My own belief is that judgements of this kind 
 should only be (as it were) the last paragraph in 
 our verdict. In such cases as these, I believe that 
 our first question should be, what problems did 
 these men set themselves to solve? Secondly, 
 I would ask, what materials, data, or instruments 
 had they in the thought of the time to enable them 
 to solve them? And thirdly, what use did they 
 make of these materials, and what mental contri- 
 bution did they make of their own ? 
 
 The chief thing that the Apologists did — at least 
 the chief thing from our present point of view of 
 Christology — was to apply to Christianity the doc- 
 trine of the Logos as it stood in the current popular 
 philosophy. St. John, I need not say, taught a 
 doctrine of the Logos ; and St. Ignatius taught 
 a very similar doctrine after him. But the Apolo- 
 
 1 The ultimate source of much of this criticism is probably 
 von Engelhardt's Das Ghristenthum Jusiins des Martyrers 
 (Erlangen, 1878). 
 
16 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 gists gave it a rather different turn by assimilating 
 it more completely to the popular philosophy of 
 the day. St. John and St. Ignatius both identified 
 the historical Person of Jesus Christ with the pre- 
 existent Divine Word. They regarded the Incar- 
 nation as primarily a revelation of the Father. 
 The Apologists took this idea and developed their 
 doctrine of the Logos in the sense of the divine 
 reason. For them the Logos was especially the 
 creative reason, the divine intelligence as expressed 
 in creation. They thus showed a tendency to lay 
 a one-sided stress upon cosmology. They empha- 
 sized cosmology at the expense of soteriology, the 
 work of Christ in creation at the expense of His 
 work in redemption. This is the main count in the 
 indictment against them. 
 
 Prof. Loofs sums up the effect of the Apologists' 
 teaching thus — and the passage is the more note- 
 worthy because it is quoted at length and endorsed 
 by Harnack : — 
 
 The Apologists laid the foundation for the trans- 
 formation of Christianity into a revealed doctrine. 
 In particular, their Christology had a fatal influence 
 upon the subsequent development. By taking for 
 granted the transference of the conception of i Son * 
 to the pre-existent Christ, they facilitated the rise 
 of the Christological problem of the fourth century ; 
 they displaced the starting-point of Christological 
 thought (from the historical Christ into the region 
 of pre-existence) ; they threw into the shade the 
 actual life of Jesus as compared with the doctrine 
 of the Incarnation ; they combined their Christology 
 
/. Ancient Christologies 17 
 
 with cosmology, but they were not able to combine 
 it with soteriology. 1 Their doctrine of the Logos is 
 not a ' higher ' Christology than was in vogue ; 
 rather, it falls behind the genuinely Christian 
 estimate of Christ : it is not God who reveals 
 Himself in Christ, but the Logos, the depotentiated 
 God, a God who as God is subordinated to the highest 
 God (Inferiorism or Subordinationism). Moreover, 
 the depreciation of the idea of an economical Trinity 
 in favour of metaphysical conceptions of pluralism 
 in the Divine Triad goes back to the Apologists. 2 
 
 The facts are capable of being stated in this way ; 
 and it is perhaps right that they should be so stated. 
 Measured by the rule of the two German professors, 
 that is no doubt the light in which the Apologists 
 would have to be ultimately regarded. And yet, 
 even from that point of view one would have liked 
 to see a little more recognition of the services and 
 merits of the Apologists in relation to their own 
 time. Sooner or later, it was inevitable that Chris- 
 tianity should be brought into relation with the 
 contemporary philosophy. And, if that was to be 
 done at all, was there any grander idea, already 
 coined and current, than that of the Logos, that 
 could be used for the purpose ? Was there any idea 
 
 1 It is fair to remember that the Apologists were addressing 
 pagans, and that it therefore was not likely that they would 
 lay bare the arcana of their own religion ; see p. 24 below. 
 The really fundamental defect in all patristic theology was the 
 imperfect understanding of 0. T., and of the 0. T. antecedents 
 of N. T. 
 
 2 Loofs, Dogmengesch. 4 , p. 129; cp. Harnack, Grundriss d. 
 Dogmengesch. p. 110 ; Hist, of Dogma (E. T.), ii. 220 ff., 225 ff. 
 
 1147 c 
 
18 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 with anything like the same sweep and range? 
 Was it not a noble thought on the part of Justin 
 which led him to see * seeds ' of the Divine Word 
 at work in the Gentile thinkers of old, in men 
 like Heraclitus and Socrates or Plato and Pythagoras, 
 while the Divine Word as a whole was incarnate 
 in Christ ? 
 
 To see the doctrine of the Logos at its best, we 
 may look at it for a moment in stronger hands than 
 those of Justin. The following is Origen's reply to 
 a scoff by Celsus directed against the late date and 
 local character of the Incarnation, which Celsus 
 compared to Zeus awaking out of sleep and sending 
 off Hermes in the comedy ] : — 
 
 Observe here too Celsus's want of reverence when 
 he most unphilosophically brings in a comic poet, 
 whose object is to raise a laugh, and compares our 
 God the Creator of the Universe with the god in his 
 play who on awaking dispatches Hermes. We have 
 said above that, when God sent Jesus to the human 
 race, it was not as though He had just awoken from 
 a long sleep, but Jesus, though He has only now 
 for worthy reasons fulfilled the divine plan of His 
 incarnation, has at all times been doing good to the 
 human race. For no noble deed among men has 
 ever been done without the Divine Word visiting 
 the souls of those who even for a brief space were 
 able to receive such operations of the Divine Word. 
 Nay, even the appearance of Jesus in one corner of 
 the world (as it seems) has been brought about for 
 
 1 The extract is from Orig. c. Gels, vi. 78, 79 ; I avail myself 
 of a quotation in Dr. Hort's Ante-Nicene Fathers, pp. 133 ff. 
 
J, Ancient Christologies 19 
 
 a worthy reason : since it was necessary that He of 
 whom the prophets spoke should appear among 
 those who had learnt one God, who read His 
 prophets, and recognized Christ preached in them, 
 and that He should appear at a time when the 
 Word was about to be diffused from one corner 
 to the whole world. 
 
 Wherefore also there was no need that many 
 bodies should be made everywhere, and many spirits 
 like to that of Jesus, in order that the whole world 
 of men might be illumined by the Word of God. 
 For it sufficed that the one Word rising like the 
 Sun of Kighteousness from Judaea should send 
 forth His speedy rays into the soul of them that 
 were willing to receive Him. And if anyone does 
 wish to see many bodies filled with a divine Spirit, 
 ministering like Him the one Christ to the salvation 
 of men in every place, let him take note of those 
 who in all places do honestly and with an upright 
 life teach the word of Jesus, who are themselves 
 too called ' Christs ' [' anointed ones '] in the passage 
 * Touch not mine anointed ones and do my prophets 
 no harm. 5 For even as we have heard that anti- 
 christ comes, and nevertheless have learnt that there 
 are many antichrists in the world, even so, when 
 we recognize that Christ has come, we observe that 
 owing to Him many Christs have been born in the 
 world, to wit all those that like Him have loved 
 righteousness and hated iniquity : and for this 
 reason God, the God of Christ, anointed them too 
 with the oil of gladness. . . . Wherefore, since Christ 
 is the head of the Church, so that Christ and His 
 Church are one body, the ointment has descended 
 from the head to the beard [the symbol of the full- 
 grown man Aaron], and this ointment in its descent 
 reached to the skirts of his clothing. This is my 
 answer to Celsus's impious speech when he says 
 
 O 2 
 
20 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 that ' God ought to have breathed His Spirit into 
 many bodies in like manner and to have sent them 
 forth throughout the world '. So then while the 
 comic poet to raise a laugh has represented Zeus as 
 asleep and as waking up and sending Hermes to 
 the Greeks, let the Word which knows that the 
 nature of God is sleepless teach us that God with 
 regard to seasons orders the affairs of the world as 
 reason demands. But it is not to be wondered at, if, 
 seeing that the judgements of God are sublime and 
 hard to interpret, uninstructed souls do err, and 
 Celsus among them. 
 
 There is then nothing absurd in the fact that to 
 the Jews, with whom were the prophets, the Son of 
 God was sent ; so that beginning with them in 
 bodily form He might arise in power and spirit 
 upon a world of souls desiring to be no longer 
 bereft of God. 
 
 I would ask you to observe the largeness of view, 
 the enthusiastic vision, with which the Christian 
 writer follows out the permeative penetrative influ- 
 ence of the Divine Word, not limited to Christian 
 times, not requiring a multitude of reiterated super- 
 natural interventions, but developing itself at once 
 naturally and progressively, and as it were by its 
 own momentum, through the agency of duly com- 
 missioned teachers, carried into the furthest corners 
 of the earth. 
 
 A philosopher has recently propounded and an- 
 swered for us the question : 
 
 What does the existence of God, or the personality 
 of God, mean for the religious thinker save the 
 
J. Ancient Christologies 21 
 
 intense conviction of the rationality and the right- 
 eousness of the universe ? And is it not strange to 
 say of faith in God that 'it will only give us light on 
 one particular dogma, that the world is wisely and 
 righteously governed ' ? Surely this is the sum and 
 substance of all religious faith and of all philosophical 
 construction. 1 
 
 And may not we in turn ask : Is not this just what 
 the doctrine of the Logos as the Apologists employed 
 it stood for — with the further addition that they 
 saw in it the whole of the world's history culminating 
 in the manifestation of Jesus Christ ? For the Apo- 
 logists certainly did not conceive of the activity 
 of the Logos as purely intellectual, but they saw in 
 it the source of all moral and spiritual excellence 
 as well. 2 
 
 There are two figures which stand out in the period 
 immediately following the Apologists — Irenaeus and 
 Tertullian. These two writers have exercised a pro- 
 found influence, not only over subsequent theology 
 in general, but in particular over the subsequent 
 course of Christological doctrine. In different ways 
 they contributed much to shape the conception of 
 the Person of Christ which has prevailed within the 
 
 1 Prof. A. S. Pringle-Pattison, The Philosophical Radicals, 
 p. 211 calc. 
 
 I am glad to see the Apologists defended by Dr. Orr, 
 Progress of Dogma (1901), pp. 37 ff., 49 ff., 78 ff. ; Dr. James 
 Lindsay, Studies in European Philosophy (1909), pp. 53 ff. ; and 
 (but less directly as thinkers) by Prof. Gwatkin, Early Ch. 
 Hist, i. 173-211. 
 
22 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 Church down to the present day : Irenaeus, we may 
 say, especially with reference to the Person of Christ 
 in itself, as the meeting-point of human and divine ; 
 and Tertullian, especially with reference to the place 
 of Christ in the doctrine of the Trinity. 
 
 At this point I want a word which is one of 
 a group that has been so horribly misused that as 
 a rule I avoid it as much as possible. The three words 
 1 orthodox ', ' heterodox \ and * heresy ' have come 
 to have an ugly sound and to mean ugly things 
 which often do serious injustice. Much that we call 
 heresy was only in its origin experimental thinking 
 which was sure to be tried sooner or later, and 
 which did not imply moral obliquity in those who 
 had recourse to it. And in the reaction against this 
 unfair use of names on the one side, ' orthodoxy ', 
 which ought to be a term of praise, has come to be 
 with many almost a term of reproach. But in the 
 present instance I want to use it in the best sense 
 of which it is capable. We need a word to express 
 a deep centrality and balance of thought, undisturbed 
 by extraneous influences of any kind and resting on 
 a basis of genuine religion. I think we might say 
 that Ignatius had this, and that Athanasius had it, 
 and Leo ; but it seems to me to be pre-eminently 
 characteristic of Irenaeus. I should describe him 
 as representing the best type of orthodoxy. 
 
 Irenaeus was a thinker almost in spite of himself. 
 He did not like speculation. He shrank from it, 
 and deprecated its too free employment. His own 
 
J. Ancient Christologies 23 
 
 outlook upon the world was full of a deep sense 
 of awe at the mystery of things. There is truth 
 in the criticism that his thinking was determined 
 by various influences — the scriptures of both Testa- 
 ments, the baptismal confession which by this 
 time was becoming a rule of faith, the Apostles' 
 Creed in its simplest and most primitive form, as 
 well as by certain current ideas and categories — 
 which were not completely fused and harmonized. 
 But he was one of those whom instinct seems to 
 draw towards that which is really central. Take, for 
 instance, that glorious sentence (Adv. Haer. v. Praef. 
 ad fin.) in which he speaks of following the one true 
 and sure Teacher, the Word of God, Jesus Christ 
 our Lord, who for His infinite love was made as we 
 are in order that He might make us to be as He is 
 (qui propter immensam suam dilectionem /actus est quod 
 sumus nos, uti nos perficeret esse quod est ipse). For 
 Irenaeus, the whole history of redemption culminates 
 in Christ. He imagines the question asked, What 
 new thing did the Lord bring at His coming ? And 
 the answer is that He brought everything that is 
 new by bringing Himself (omnem novitatem attulit 
 semetipsum afferens, iv. 34. 1). 
 
 It enables us to do rather better justice to Justin, 
 and to see that in part the limitations which we 
 observe in him are due to the fact that only apolo- 
 getic or controversial writings of his have come 
 down to us, when we remember that the most charac- 
 teristic doctrine that we associate with Irenaeus, 
 
24 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 the doctrine of the recapitulation was apparently sug- 
 gested by Justin, in a passage which Irenaeus quotes 
 (iv. 6. 2). This doctrine of ' recapitulation ' goes 
 back ultimately to St. Paul : it is the summing up 
 of all things in Christ — in particular, the summing up 
 of all humanity, so that what had been lost at the Fall 
 might be recovered through Christ. This doctrine 
 meets us at the threshold of our inquiry, and it will 
 also meet us at the end of it (see pp. 124 ff. inf.). It 
 will be well to bear in mind this early phase of 
 its history. 
 
 The central position of Irenaeus is the assertion 
 of the true deity and true humanity of Christ. He 
 speaks of a commixtio et community dei et hominis (iv. 
 20. 4), and he does not distinguish between the 
 working of the two sides as they are distinguished 
 in the doctrine of the Two Natures. 
 
 In this respect Tertullian goes a step further. 
 With his peculiar gift of formulation, we constantly 
 come across phrases in him which find their echoes 
 in later Western theology. We observe that he 
 uses the term substantia instead of natura; but he 
 speaks, just as the later Latins spoke, of the proprietor 
 substantias, deus et homo, . . . secundum utramque substan- 
 tiam in sua proprietate distans; videmus duplicem statum, 
 non confusum sed coniunctum, in una persona, deum et 
 Iwrninem lesum. He is careful to guard against the 
 idea that the nature of Christ was a tertium quid, 
 compounded of divine and human ; the proper attri- 
 butes of each must be preserved intact, ut et spiritus 
 
7. Ancient Ckristologies 25 
 
 res suas egerit in illo, id est virtutes . . . , et caro pas- 
 siones suas functa sit, . . . denique et mortua est, quodsi 
 tertium quid esset, ex utroque confusion, ut electrum, non 
 tain distincta documenta parerent utriusque substantia^ 1 
 We might easily suppose ourselves to be reading 
 the Epistle of Leo. 
 
 Even more important was the work of Tertullian 
 in fixing the phraseology of the doctrine of the 
 Trinity. Even his language is still inevitably to 
 some extent fluid ; a conception at once so difficult 
 and so novel as that which we now call a distinc- 
 tion of Persons without separation could not be 
 expressed otherwise than tentatively and with 
 a certain amount of verbal experiment. And yet 
 here again we cannot help being conscious of the 
 effort by which this powerful mind is creating 
 a new vocabulary, the leading terms in which 
 were destined to be permanent. The following 
 is one of the most prominent passages from the 
 treatise * Against Praxeas ' : — 
 
 All are One, inasmuch as all are of One ; by 
 unity, that is, of substance ; and yet notwithstand- 
 ing there is guarded the mystery of the divine 
 appointment, which distributes the Unity into a 
 Trinity [this is the first known place in which the 
 word occurs], ranging in their order the Three, 
 Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ; three, that is, not in 
 essence but in degree, not in substance but in form, 
 not in power but in manifestation, but of one sub- 
 stance and of one essence and of one power, foras- 
 
 1 Adv. Prax. 27. 
 
26 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 much as there is One God, from whom these de- 
 grees and forms and manifestations are set down 
 under the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost 
 
 ([quasi non sic quoque] unus sit omnia, dum ex uno 
 omnia, per substantiae scilicet unitatem, et niliilominus 
 custodiatur otKovo/uas sacramentum, quae unitatem in 
 trinitatcm disponit, tres dirigens, patrem et filium et 
 spiritum sanctum, tres autem, non statu sed gradu, nee 
 substantia sed forma, nee potestate sed specie, unius 
 atitem substantiae et unius status et unius potestatis, 
 quia unus deus } ex quo et gradus isti et formae et 
 species in nomine patris et ftlii et spiritus sancti de- 
 pittantiir (§ 2) ). 
 
 Tertullian sees, rightly, that the unity of the God- 
 head comes first, as dominant and fundamental ; 
 the trinitarian distinctions are distinctions within 
 this unity. He repudiates with energy anything 
 of the nature of Tritheism : ' any mention of two 
 Gods or two Lords we do not suffer to escape our 
 lips 5 (§ 13), though Father, Son, and Spirit are each 
 severally God and Lord. We observe how this 
 language of Tertullian is echoed in the Quicumque. 
 
 The Trinity of Tertullian is what is called an 
 'economic Trinity ', i.e. a Trinity of dispensation or of 
 function, like the assignment of parts or duties in a 
 household ; the work of the Father has special rela- 
 tion to the creation, conservation, and government 
 of the universe ; the work of the Son has special 
 relation to the redemption of man ; and the work of 
 the Holy Spirit is the continuation of this. The 
 three modes of activity succeed each other, and they 
 are something more than the modes of action of a 
 
/. Ancient Christologies 27 
 
 single subject. Tertullian was (so far as we know) 
 the first to use the Latin word persona in this con- 
 nexion, though it is hardly likely that he attached 
 to it the full sense that came to be attached later. 
 His great coinage was that of the tres personae and 
 una substantia, which after much vacillation the East 
 also accepted in the form rpels V7rocrrao'€i9, fiCa ovcrta. 
 It was Tertullian who really created the watchword 
 of the Nicene theology, which the influence of the 
 Church of Kome, making itself felt at critical 
 moments, caused to prevail in the end throughout 
 the Christian world. 
 
 The conception of the ' economic Trinity ' could 
 not be the last word of the Church ; when thought 
 began to probe deeper, a deeper conception was 
 needed. But it was right and proper, because it was 
 natural, that the conception should begin in this 
 form. It really reflects the historical process by 
 which the idea of a Trinity arose. The first impulse 
 towards it, we may be sure, was given by the belief 
 in the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ ; and then as 
 a further step came the necessity to co-ordinate with 
 this that world-wide movement which all Christians 
 described as the work of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 When we follow this, the historical sequence, of 
 ideas, we also see why it was that Tertullian laid 
 stress — according to the later standards, a somewhat 
 undue stress — on the subordination of the Second 
 and Third Persons. He still has in his mind the 
 Divine Economy; he is thinking of the Godhead, 
 
28 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 we may say, under the figure of the family. And 
 he was very anxious not in any way to impair 
 the central truth of Monotheism. His adversaries 
 claimed to maintain the sole i monarchy ' of God ; 
 and Tertullian also desired to maintain it. But to 
 a Eoman, familiar with the working of the imperial 
 system, it was natural enough to think of monarchy 
 as administered through agents. The reigning Em- 
 peror frequently associated with himself his son or 
 destined successor with a real, if subordinate, share in 
 his imperium. The monarchy was thus unimpaired, 
 though the basis of administration was widened. 
 And so, when the Christian thinker looked first 
 at the Incarnate Life of Christ, and next at the work 
 of the Spirit diffused throughout the world, and 
 when from the contemplation of these he lifted up 
 his eyes to that supreme Source from which both 
 appeared to come, it seemed inevitable — and indeed, 
 judged by no standard, was it wrong — that he 
 should fall to using the language of subordination. 
 At this early stage in the history of the formation 
 of Christian doctrine metaphors were flying about, 
 current ideas and catchwords were circulating all 
 round ; and it was not strange that a man like 
 Tertullian, as impetuous as he was masterful, should 
 seize one after another and impress them into ser- 
 vice, without staying to consider very carefully how 
 far they were really applicable. Tertullian does not 
 hesitate, when it can help him, to borrow the Gnostic 
 idea of emanations. He uses freely the imagery of 
 
J. Ancient Christologies 29 
 
 a ray projected from the sun, of a stream flowing 
 from its source, of a flower growing from stem and 
 root. No reasonable person would find fault with 
 him for doing this. We only need to remind our- 
 selves that metaphor is metaphor, and that an 
 analogy which is apt and helpful at one point is 
 not therefore equally applicable to all. 
 
 With Tertullian we have reached a convenient 
 break ; and we will follow the further development 
 of the doctrine of the Person of Christ in the next 
 lecture. 
 
II 
 
 ANCIENT CHRISTOLOGIES 
 
 (Continued) 
 
II 
 
 ANCIENT CHRISTOLOGIES (continued) 
 
 Let me explain, at the outset of this second 
 lecture, that my object in going back to these 
 ancient Christologies, and indeed all through this 
 course, is not either historical or systematic, but 
 practical and with ultimate reference to ourselves. 
 I do not propose to make a study of either ancient 
 or modern Christologies for their own sake or for 
 any other purpose except so far as they may help 
 us to shape our own ideas ; and when I speak of 
 our own ideas, I mean those which lie at the root 
 of our own thinking here as we stand in the 
 twentieth century. Accordingly, I feel absolved from 
 any attempt to follow out the course of the history 
 in the slightest degree exhaustively. If I were 
 studying this branch of ancient theology for its own 
 sake, I should have to take movement by move- 
 ment and school by school and trace every subtle 
 variation, with its fortunes and vicissitudes as they 
 left their mark upon their time, in a connected 
 narrative. But that is not necessary and would only 
 distract us from our real purpose. Enough for this, 
 if we can just map out broadly some of the main 
 types of ancient and modern thinking, as specimens 
 of the processes which the human mind has gone 
 
 1147 ^ t 
 
34 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 through with reference to the subject and as aids 
 to us in the work that we shall have to do for 
 ourselves. For the same reason I shall try to avoid 
 technicalities, and to express what I may have to 
 say in the simplest and most generally intelligible 
 language that I can find. 
 
 We have seen that the outcome of the Apostolic 
 Age was a general diffused belief that Christ was 
 divine. But then the question arose, What was 
 the real meaning and significance of this ? The life 
 of Christ had been to outward appearance a human 
 life. What was the relation of this outward human- 
 ity to the inward divinity ? And, in particular, How 
 was this inner divinity to be thought of in con- 
 junction with the humanity ? Was it there from the 
 very first, or did it come to be ? Was Christ a man 
 who was raised to the height of deity ? Or was He 
 always from the first God in human form ? 
 
 The question might be put in another way. In 
 contemplating the Person of Christ, was it well to 
 begin from the side of the Godhead, or from that 
 of the Manhood ? It was but natural that in their 
 way of approaching the subject Christians were 
 divided. Indeed, there were various shades of 
 difference according to the extent to which the 
 speculative problem was pressed home. The main 
 body was content with such a degree of formulation 
 as they found in the baptismal Confession — that 
 widespread summary of Christian faith which is 
 
II. Ancient Christologies 35 
 
 now known as the Apostles' or Old Eoman Creed, 
 of course in its earliest and simplest form. This 
 summary, which served the double purpose of 
 baptismal confession and rule of faith or creed — 
 beginning as the first and gradually coming to be 
 used also as the second — did not trouble itself with 
 metaphysics, but (1) simply affirmed so much of 
 Trinitarian doctrine as was implied in the juxta- 
 position of Father Son and Spirit side by side, and 
 (2) was not more speculative in regard to the Person 
 of Christ, but just set down the leading features 
 indicated in the Gospels, not labelling them as 
 respectively divine or human, but leaving them 
 for contemplation just as they were. This con- 
 fession or creed, though doubtless shaped in the 
 first instance by some individual hand — perhaps 
 one of the successors of St. John in Asia Minor or 
 an early bishop of Borne — was virtually a product 
 of the Christian community, as it expressed in the 
 simplest and most broadly acceptable terms the 
 thoughts to which Christian minds were gravitating 
 all around. 
 
 With this then, as I have said, the main body 
 of the Church was content. And a certain number 
 of those who were more speculatively inclined con- 
 ducted their speculations in the same temper — the 
 temper of balancing human and divine against each 
 other and emphasizing the facts of the Gospel story 
 rather than any kind of quasi-philosophical theory. 
 This was indeed the permanent attitude of the 
 
 d 2 
 
36 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 Western half of Christendom, and especially of the 
 Church of Rome as its centre and head, notwith- 
 standing the fact that owing to the cosmopolitan 
 character of the capital of the Empire that Church 
 was at first for about a hundred and fifty years the 
 scene of not a little desultory theorizing. 
 
 But on the flanks of this middle party there were 
 thrown out two wings, consisting for the most part 
 in both cases of minor thinkers — not really deep 
 philosophical minds or leaders of the Church, but 
 men of second-rate powers with a certain amount 
 of intellectual curiosity who tried to push on a step 
 beyond that which satisfied the masses. In circles 
 such as these there arose the two kinds of theorists 
 who bore the common name of Monarchians, be- 
 cause their leading interest was to guard the sole 
 'monarchy' of God — or, as we should say, the 
 central principle of Monotheism, while yet asserting 
 the deity of Christ. They agreed in this, but differed 
 in the extent to which they asserted it. On the 
 one hand there was the thoroughgoing school — if 
 it can be called a school — who were intent on 
 asserting it to the utmost limit possible, who in 
 their view of the Person of Christ started from the 
 Godhead and made the Manhood a mere passing 
 phase or mode of the Godhead, identifying the Son 
 with the Father (woirara/)) or Son and Spirit 
 together with the Father. And, on the other hand, 
 there was the school or party of those who, starting 
 from. the Manhood, regarded Christ as primarily 
 
//. Ancient Christologies 37 
 
 a man who by successive communications of the 
 Divine Spirit was gradually deified. 
 
 It is in this last connexion that we meet with the 
 phrase \jjl\os avOpviros by which Christ is described 
 as ' man pure and simple \ It would be a mistake 
 to suppose that this was anything like Humani- 
 tarianism in our modern sense of the word. There 
 was hardly any such thing in antiquity. The 
 nearest approach to it would be the insignificant 
 Palestinian sect of Ebionites, who denied the Virgin 
 Birth and thought of Christ as just a prophet in 
 whom the Spirit of God resided for a season. The 
 group of teachers who for the most part found their 
 way to Eome — Theodotus of Byzantium, Theodotus 
 the Banker, Asclepiodotus and Artemas or Arte- 
 mon — would seem generally to have accepted the 
 Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. They did not 
 deny the supernatural in the Person of Christ; what 
 they really rejected was the doctrine of the Logos 
 and that which went with it. The question with 
 which they were really concerned was that of the 
 relation to each other of the two natures in Christ. 
 After the manner of the later Antiochene School 
 and the Nestorians, they kept them broadly distinct, 
 and they insisted on starting from the human side. 
 Christ was a man to whom deity was gradually 
 communicated ; He was not a pre-existent Divine 
 Being who assumed human flesh. 
 
 Approximating to this type, though differing from 
 it by not rejecting the idea of the Logos, is the 
 
38 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 doctrine of Paul of Samosata, who is described by 
 his opponents as the vainglorious, overbearing, and 
 secular-minded minister of Zenobia of Palmyra, and 
 whose fall quickly followed that of his mistress 
 (a. d. 272). He too taught a doctrine of Christ 
 'from below' (/carco^ev). 1 Christ was to begin with 
 a man, in whom dwelt the impersonal Logos or 
 Wisdom or Spirit of God, as the human Logos or 
 reason resides in us men. There was a difference 
 in the degree of this indwelling ; it was greater in 
 Moses than in the Prophets, but greatest and 
 closest in Christ. In Him it rested upon the com- 
 plete union of will, which was maintained intact 
 through all temptations. As a reward Christ re- 
 ceived the Name which is above every name. The 
 stress that is laid on union of will prepares us for 
 the later Antiochene theology. 
 
 The case of Paul of Samosata serves to illustrate 
 the way in which the two kinds of Monarchianism, 
 though starting apparently from opposite poles, 
 might meet in the middle. With Paul, the Logos 
 was the Divine Logos, which therefore in this 
 respect was * of one substance ' (6/xoouo-tos) with the 
 Father. The Synods which were held at Antioch 
 in the years 264-8 to try the case of Paul 
 condemned the use of this phrase ; they clearly did 
 so because it was applied to the Logos as imper- 
 sonal ; the conception of distinct hypostases in the 
 Trinity had not yet been reached. And there was 
 1 Eus. H. Kvn. 30 ff. 
 
//. Ancient Christologies 39 
 
 a feeling that the use of this term — SfAoovcrios, ( of 
 one substance* — really identified Father and Son 
 after the manner of the Sabellians. In the course 
 of about another century — say from 268 (Third 
 Synod at Antioch) to 362 (Synod at Alexandria) the 
 idea of separate hypostases became established, and 
 was seen to qualify sufficiently the fundamental 
 unity implied in the Homoousion : God was One, 
 but He exists in three forms or ' persons \ 
 
 The same difficulty made itself felt in the Mon- 
 archians of the other branch. For them, the only 
 way of reconciling the deity of Christ with the one 
 sole deity of God seemed to be to identify the two. 
 As invisible, God was Father : as visible, He was 
 Son; as Father He could not suffer, as Son he 
 suffered, and so on. There was a tendency to make 
 the different phases succeed each other in time. 
 This appears in Praxeas (post tempos pater natus et 
 pater passus &c), but it is carried out most fully by 
 Sabellius, who is the most typical exponent of this 
 way of thinking. The successive manifestations of 
 God as Father, Son, and Spirit remind us of the 
 ' economic Trinity ', and point back to the histo- 
 rical conditions under which the doctrine of the 
 Trinity arose. The stimulus to it came with the 
 attempt to correlate the Godhead on earth with the 
 Godhead in the heavens. Of all this class of Mon- 
 archians Noetus appears to have been the simplest. 
 With him the identification of Father and Son was 
 little more than a strong assertion of the Godhead 
 
40 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 of the Son : he asks naively, ' What harm do I do 
 in glorifying Christ ? ' Others tried to qualify and 
 guard the language which they used. For instance, 
 Callistus, who was Bishop of Kome 217-22, is 
 careful to say, not that the Father suffers, but that 
 He ' suffers with ' (arvixwdo^ei) the Son, where ( the 
 Son' stands for the human body of Christ and 
 the Father for the divine occupant of the body. 
 
 We are ourselves familiar with the unguarded 
 and untheological language (e. g.) of hymns (' God is 
 born on earth to dwell '), which does not distinguish 
 between the proper functions of the Divine Persons, 
 though with no deliberate intention of confusing 
 them ; x and it is not surprising that in this tentative 
 stage of the Church's doctrine this Monarchian 
 language should have been widespread among the 
 faithful, and that the leading teachers should have 
 felt it as a serious evil that was difficult to contend 
 against and overcome. The reaction against Sabel- 
 lianism (which became a general term including all 
 forms of Monarchianism) had not a little to do with 
 the exaggerations on the other side ; and in parti- 
 cular the dread of this form of error contributed to 
 the rapid rise and spread of Arianism. 
 
 The Arian controversy was no doubt the greatest 
 of all the crises in the history of ancient Chris- 
 tianity. In it was fought out the one fundamental 
 issue, Was Christ to be regarded as God in the full 
 
 1 There is a sense in which the language may be defended : 
 see p. 48 below. 
 
//. A ncient Christologies 4 1 
 
 sense of the word, or was He of the nature of 
 a demi-god, a being intermediate between God 
 and man but in the strict sense neither God 
 nor man? 
 
 The issue as well as the course of this conflict was 
 not due solely to the merits of the orthodox cause 
 as an expression of theological truth. It was much 
 mixed up with political movements which swayed 
 backwards and forwards, now to this side and now 
 to that. But there are some general observations 
 that naturally impress themselves upon us in follow- 
 ing the course of events. One is that the weight 
 both of character and ability was decidedly and 
 strongly on the side which ultimately prevailed. 
 Arianism showed at its best as a missionary creed 
 imparted to semi-barbarian nations like the Goths 
 and Vandals. But in these cases its excellence and 
 attraction was relative or comparative ; any form of 
 Christianity was an advance, and a great advance, on 
 the heathenism which it displaced ; and in the 
 hands of simple and earnest men like Ulfilas the 
 more distinctive features of Arianism played but 
 a small part. Another point, that has come out 
 more clearly as the history of the controversy has 
 been more closely studied, has been the importance 
 of the part played in it by the steadiest and 
 staunchest of all the Churches, the Church in which 
 the character of the Latin race made itself most 
 deeply and continuously felt, the great Church of 
 Rome. It is now seen that the catchwords of the 
 
42 Ancient and Modern Ckristologies 
 
 Nicene faith are really Western and not Eastern. 
 They are probably due in great part to the personal 
 influence of Hosius, Bishop of Cordova, both with the 
 Emperor and in the councils of the Church; but, 
 apart from individual influence of this kind, it is 
 clear that a determining bent was given to the 
 thought and policy of Athanasius himself by his 
 prolonged exile in the West (339^46). In meta- 
 physical discussion and in literary debate Kome was 
 not much to the front, but when the time came for 
 voting and maintaining a vote once given, its voice 
 carried far. Another weighty influence was that 
 of men like Hilary of Poitiers, Eusebius of Vercelli, 
 and after him Ambrose of Milan, mediating between 
 the West and the East, helping to make the meta- 
 physical argument of the one intelligible to the 
 other, and in return supplying to the combined 
 resistance the force that comes from character, tact, 
 and experience in dealing with men. Tact was not 
 exactly the strong point of Lucifer of Cagliari, but 
 his dour fanaticism was an element of another kind 
 that counted in the struggle. 
 
 And, lastly, we cannot help noticing that the 
 ultimate decision was in accordance with the silent 
 gravitation of the main body of the Church. The 
 instinctive tendency of the great mass of Christians 
 was in its favour. The same sort of law appears to 
 obtain in spiritual things as in physiology. The 
 processes of nature work towards a predetermined 
 ' form \ In the history of the Church this ■ form ' 
 
II. Ancient Christologies 43 
 
 would seem to have been always the strong belief 
 in the deity of Christ. Not all the intellectual dis- 
 tinction of the Socinian and Unitarian bodies has 
 ever succeeded in making them more than an unex- 
 pansive minority. Such instinctive tendencies are 
 really of no slight moment ; they show the working 
 of forces that do not take shape in tangible argument 
 but are none the less part of that constructive whole 
 to which the unconscious processes of the human mind 
 contribute as much as or more than the conscious. 
 
 A large expenditure both of moral and intellectual 
 force often has but a comparatively small result in 
 definitely formulated propositions. The total effect 
 of the Arian controversy was summed up in a few 
 prominent creeds, especially the two that are now 
 known to us as the Nicene Creed proper and the 
 Nicene Creed commonly so called (the familiar 
 Creed of our Liturgy), the Creeds of 325 and of 
 381. Beyond these creeds there was a certain 
 restriction of the use of ancient metaphors and the 
 gradual fixing of terms (such as those expressing 
 ' substance ' and ' hypostasis ' or ' person '). The 
 final touches may be said to have been given to this 
 process, as far as Greek Theology was concerned, by 
 the Cappadocian Fathers, Basil of Caesarea (ob. 379) 
 and the two Gregorys (who died in 389 and 394). 
 We may take the Council of Constantinople in 381 
 as marking the completion of this stage in the his- 
 tory, resulting in the affirmation of distinctions in the 
 unity of the Godhead, distinctions which are under- 
 
44 Ancient and Modem Christologies 
 
 stood to be subject to and not to impair that unity, 
 and to which is given the special name of ' hypo- 
 stases ' or ' persons \ These particular words are 
 chosen, though capable of other and wider uses ; but 
 it is understood that in theology they bear a special 
 sense corresponding to their special object, and it is 
 understood further that there lies behind them an 
 element which no language can really express and 
 which it is beyond the power of human thought 
 to exactly define. 
 
 The criticisms directed against this construction 
 (e,g. even by Harnack 1 ) are surely exaggerated. It 
 is easy to find contradictions if we drop or ignore 
 all the qualifications which saved them from being 
 contradictions. For instance, there is the old and 
 cheap objection that 'one' is made equal to ' two ' or 
 'three'. But the ancients themselves were well 
 aware that they did not predicate * one ' in the same 
 sense or in the same line of application in which they 
 predicated ' two ' or ' three \ They predicated unity 
 of that which they called the ' substance ' of the 
 Godhead, duality or triplicity of that which they 
 called ' hypostasis ' or person. And again, when 
 they used these terms they were conscious of using 
 them for a special purpose, and not exactly in the 
 way in which we call each other persons now. Nor 
 can it be said that, in doing this, they had not 
 definite conceptions before their minds. They had 
 conceptions which were definite enough so far as 
 1 Grundriss*, pp. 200 f. 
 
//. Ancient Christologies 45 
 
 they went, and which had particular facts of 
 observation corresponding to them ; but it is true 
 that their language was affected, as all human lan- 
 guage must needs be affected, by the consciousness 
 that it was thrown out at an object that was really 
 too large for it. Harnack writes as though it were 
 as possible to get rid of mystery in speaking of the 
 Godhead as it is in mathematics or in the classifica- 
 tions of natural science. Why should there not be 
 in that abyss which we call ( God ' some differenti- 
 ation of being or function which does not amount 
 to division ? We look out at the history of the Son 
 of Man. We believe that He Himself used that 
 title in a sense which suggested and implied that 
 He was also Son of God. But, if that was so, if 
 One who could think of Himself as Son of God did 
 pass through a human career in time and space, 
 then we must naturally (according to all human 
 standards) think of Him as a Person. That means, 
 that we must to that extent project our ideas of 
 Personality into the internal economy of the God- 
 head. We do so with all reverence and caution — 
 so far as we are compelled but not an inch further, 
 relatively to our own capacities and ways of speaking, 
 but affirming nothing that is not strictly covered by 
 these conditions. 
 
 The Cappadocians mark the end of those keen 
 dialectical discussions which reduced the doctrine of 
 the Trinity to the form which has become traditional. 
 It remained for the West to broaden the base of the 
 
46 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 doctrine in another way. The West also had its 
 discussions of the doctrine, and these too have left a 
 by no means inconsiderable literature. Prominent 
 in this literature is the great treatise of Hilary of 
 Poitiers, in which that powerful mind wrestled 
 strenuously with the Greek ideas and struggled to 
 present them in a Latin dress. There was also 
 another substantial treatise, represented by the first 
 seven books of a work Be Trinitate, which used to 
 be attributed to Vigilius of Thapsus but which has 
 been recently vindicated by Dom Morin for Gregory 
 of Elvira. 1 But the Latin characteristics come out 
 most strongly in St. Augustine. It is true that a bent 
 was given to his treatment of the subject by his 
 Neo-Platonism. We cannot find fault with him for 
 using the best philosophy that he knew ; and there 
 doubtless is an element in that philosophy which is 
 less acceptable to the modern mind. The tendency 
 in regard to which this is most to be said is the ten- 
 dency to refine away the idea of God by a process of 
 successive abstraction. There are traces of this in the 
 stress which St. Augustine lays upon the ' simplicity ' 
 of the Godhead. 2 But the emotional side of Augus- 
 tine's nature was too rich, and his religion was too 
 deep and sincere, to be content with abstractions* He 
 lifts up his eyes and lays bare his heart before God 
 in a way that reminds us most of the impassioned 
 language of the Psalms. A certain noble awe before 
 
 1 Bev. d'Hisl et de Lift Eel (1909), p. 150. 
 
 2 Cf. Loofs, Dogmengesch.*, p. 365. 
 
II. Ancient Ch?istologies 47 
 
 the majesty of God had been characteristic of Latin 
 theology from Tertullian onwards. It had been 
 associated (e.g. in Irenaeus) with a reverent self- 
 restraint in speculation about the Being of God. 
 The same self-restraint is characteristic of Hilary ; 
 but it reaches its climax in St. Augustine. His 
 daring subtlety and intense energy and activity of 
 mind are curbed and bridled here. It is to him we 
 owe that great saying which ought to silence for 
 ever misplaced taunts directed against the refine- 
 ments of Trinitarian terminology, the confession that 
 it was all invented and used only under compulsion, 
 not from any wanton intrusion into mysteries but 
 under the necessity of breaking silence— wow ut illud 
 diceretur, sed ne taceretur. 1 
 
 We must never cease to be grateful to St. Augus- 
 tine for that phrase. And there are other more 
 positive ways in which St. Augustine greatly helped 
 to keep the doctrine upon sound lines. No other 
 writer has done more to guard against the inevitable 
 tendency towards Tritheism. To him pre-eminently 
 we owe it that Christian Theology lays the supreme 
 stress it does on the unity of God. It is really 
 following in the steps of St. Augustine when Dr. 
 Moberly writes so emphatically : — 
 
 To dally for a moment with any doubt or qualifi- 
 cation of the absoluteness of the truth of the unity 
 
 1 De Trin. v. 9. 10 Tamen cum quaeritur quid tres, magna 
 prorsus inopia humanum laborat eloquium. Dictum est tamen, 
 Tres personae, non ut illud dkeretur, sed ne taceretur. 
 
48 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 of God, is to empty the word itself of its essential 
 significance. ... It is God, not * a ' God, nor a ' part 
 of God, — it is God who eternally is, who thinks, 
 who wills, who designs, who creates, who ordains : 
 it is God who eternally is, who loves, who con- 
 descends, who ' deviseth means \ who takes hold 
 of man, who reveals, who redeems : it is God who 
 eternally is, who attracts, who informs, who inspires, 
 who animates, — it is God who, in Himself, and God 
 who, even in His creatures, physical or spiritual, 
 makes from all sides Divine response to Himself. 
 The personal distinction in Godhead is a distinction 
 within, and of, unity : not a distinction which quali- 
 fies unity, or usurps the place of it, or destroys it. 1 
 
 The last sentence of this quotation should hold a 
 fundamental place in the thought of every theologian 
 and student of theology. 
 
 It is also St. Augustine himself who goes far to 
 correct the tendencies of his own Neo-Platonism by 
 the way in which he brings out the religious content 
 of the idea of God and of the Trinity. He is, I be- 
 lieve, the first to connect the doctrine of the Trinity 
 with the great text 'God is Love'. We saw in 
 the last lecture (p. 13 sup.) how the Valentinian 
 Gnostics had grasped the principle that God could 
 not be a solitary monad. They did this, however, 
 without direct reference to the doctrine of the 
 Trinity ; they treat it rather as the basis of their 
 system of emanations. St. Augustine goes a step 
 
 1 Atonement and Personality,^. 154 f. Compare the passages 
 quoted from St. Augustine by Loofs, Dogmengesch. 4 , pp. 365-7, 
 especially those which assert the inseparabilis divinitas, insepara- 
 tills trinitatis operatio. 
 
II. Ancient Christologies 49 
 
 further : having the doctrine of the Trinity already 
 given him, he applies it under the triple formula 
 amans, quod amatur, amor; he uses this as one of 
 the leading analogies by which he illustrates the 
 doctrine, and we are not surprised to find him con- 
 necting it with 1 John iv. 8, 16. It was no slight 
 service thus to find a home in the depths of the 
 Divine nature for that which is the crown and per- 
 fection of all the endowments of man. 
 
 It was in the later phase of the Trinitarian con- 
 troversy that a question came to the front which is 
 still more strictly and properly described as Christo- 
 logical. We have seen that, from the time of the 
 Apostles onwards, the watershed of discussion as it 
 were was formed by the line which divided those 
 who started from the divine side of the nature of 
 Christ and those who started from the human side. 
 For three full centuries this dividing principle had 
 been latent rather than apparent ; it lay behind the 
 differences which separated men, but it was not con- 
 sciously apprehended as the cause of the differences. 
 And as yet the question had not been brought to 
 a definite issue. It was not until about the middle 
 of the fourth century that the younger Apollinaris, 
 bishop of Laodicea in Syria, one of the keenest 
 supporters of the faith of Nicaea, directly pro- 
 pounded and gave his own answer to the question, 
 Where exactly lay the principle of personality in 
 Christ? Apollinaris had no doubt that it lay in 
 
 1147 tp 
 
50 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 His deity, but at what point and in what manner 
 did the deity combine with the humanity? He 
 argued from the postulate that the two natures 
 could not be each complete or perfect in itself; it 
 seemed to him that, to suppose that they were, 
 would destroy the unity of the Person. The logical 
 consequence appeared to be that in that case there 
 would be two Sons, one (the Logos) Son by nature, 
 the other (the humanity) Son by adoption. This 
 conception of 'two Sons' seemed to him impossible ; 
 and therefore he fell back on the alternative that 
 one at least of the two natures was incomplete. 
 Clearly this must be the human nature ; and the 
 point at which it was incomplete was that which 
 represented the centre of personality or will. At 
 first he held that the human nature of Christ was 
 a body without a soul, the place of the soul being 
 taken by the Divine Logos. But the idea of a body 
 without a soul was specifically Arian, and was 
 condemned at the Synod of Alexandria in 362. 
 Apollinaris, who at that time was fighting by the 
 side of Athanasius, was able to adjust his views 
 to this decision by subdividing the \j/vx$, and ex- 
 plaining that the higher portion or vovs was alone 
 absent; here it was that the Divine Logos took 
 up its abode, and so united deity and humanity in 
 a single Person. As the human vovs was the seat of 
 wisdom (sophia) and the Divine Logos took its place, 
 the Incarnation involved no Kenosis or self-emptying 
 of that attribute (Loofs, Dogmengcsch A y p. 269). 
 
77. Ancient Christologies 51 
 
 It is easy to understand the attraction which this 
 teaching of Apollinaris exercised upon his contem- 
 poraries. He was (as has been said) a friend of 
 Athanasius and himself a champion of the orthodox 
 side. But the leaders on that side remained un- 
 convinced. They shrank from the conclusion that 
 the Manhood in Christ was incomplete : as Gregory 
 Nazianzen pithily expressed it, if there was aught 
 in man which Christ did not assume, that He also 
 did not heal (to yap aTrpo&k^TTTov aOepdirevrov). 
 The argument has reference to a further presupposi- 
 tion, which we must not stay to discuss now, but 
 which will perhaps come before us again before we 
 have done. 
 
 Apollinaris was thrown over, and his theory 
 was condemned in 381. And yet the lines of 
 his thought were dominant in the next sixty or 
 seventy years. It was a phrase coined by Apolli- 
 naris that was the watchword of the school of 
 Alexandria, which the strong assertive character 
 of its bishops — Theophilus, Cyril, Dioscorus — main- 
 tained in power during that period. The Alexandrians 
 were careful to affirm the full humanity of Christ, 
 and yet they held that the determining element 
 in His being was the divine ; their formula was 
 jxia <f>v(TL$ rov 0eov \6yov creo-ap/cojyxeV^. Cyril dis- 
 tinguished, but did not always observe the distinc- 
 tion, between this and deov koyov aeo-apKCjfievov. 
 
 The main opposition came from the rival school 
 of Antioch. The battle was bitterly and obstinately 
 
 £ 2 
 
52 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 fought. The Antiochenes maintained a separation 
 of the two natures which almost amounted to the 
 * two Sons ' at which Apollinaris had taken fright. 
 The more orthodox guarded themselves by asserting 
 with emphasis, at least in words, the unity of the 
 Person. 
 
 The decision came, so far as it was a decision — 
 for the East never recovered from the shock of this 
 conflict; the Nestorians broke away and travelled 
 eastwards, the Monophysites sulked and offered but 
 a feeble and half-hearted resistance to the Saracens, 
 and the Empire was robbed of some of its fairest 
 provinces — the decision, such as it was, came, as it 
 had come before in the Arian controversy, from 
 Eome, which was once more backed by the imperial 
 court at Byzantium. Kome, after its manner, did 
 not commit itself to speculative adventures, but 
 asserted the even balance of the Two Natures, each 
 retaining its proper character but united in the one 
 Person. Although the characters were thus dis- 
 tinct, they were so bracketed and combined under 
 the unity of Person that it was not wrong to speak 
 of the Son of Man as coming down from heaven or 
 of the Son of God as crucified and buried. 1 
 
 This was the solution embodied in the formula of 
 Chalcedon (Oct. 25, 451). According to this, Christ 
 is at once perfect God and perfect Man, of one 
 substance with the Father in respect of His Godhead 
 and of one substance with us in respect of His 
 
 1 Leo's Tome, § 5. 
 
II. Ancient Christologies 53 
 
 manhood, manifested in two natures without con- 
 fusion, without conversion, without division, without 
 separation, the distinction of the two natures being 
 nowhere destroyed by reason of the union, but 
 rather the separate properties of each nature being 
 preserved and yet running up into a single person 
 (7rp6(roj7rov) and a single hypostasis. 1 
 
 Once more the solution was in advance of the 
 time, and the battle went on for more than two 
 centuries. And, although in the end it remained 
 unshaken and still stands on record as an ecumenical 
 decision, it had not the same good fortune as the 
 previous decision of Nicaea, but practically broke up 
 the Church of the East and seriously weakened and 
 reduced the Empire. 
 
 As the process of analysis was pressed home and 
 distinctions were more finely drawn, it was natural 
 that the controversy should pass from a question as 
 to the Two Natures into a question as to the Two 
 Wills. The ultimate formula was Two Natures, 
 Two Energies, Two Wills, One Person, It will be 
 seen that the dividing line between personality and 
 will is sharp set and difficult to realize. However, 
 that is the point at which the controversy was left. 
 The technical refinements of John of Damascus 
 (eighth cent.) made no real change, but only gave to 
 the definitions a keener edge. Their true parent 
 was Leontius of Byzantium (from about 485 to 543), 
 the influential theologian who had the ear of the 
 1 This is slightly condensed from the original. 
 
54 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 Emperor Justinian. To him is really due the idea 
 of a human nature which in itself is impersonal and 
 has its personality only in the Divine Logos : this 
 was expressed by the term €W7r6crTaro<;, Probably, 
 with the resources available at the time, no other 
 solution was possible. It is another thing to say 
 that as a solution it is wholly satisfactory or one 
 that can permanently be maintained. 
 
 Modern writers, especially in Germany, have not 
 many good words to say for the whole doctrine of 
 the Two Natures. And yet it is admitted to have 
 had one good effect. The resistance of Antioch to 
 Alexandria saved, or went as far as seemed possible 
 to save, the integrity and reality of the human nature 
 in Christ. To do this was not a slight thing, 
 even though it were done at some expense of logic, 
 and although it left a gap in the theory as a whole 
 which to the last was but imperfectly joined. 
 
 To me, I confess, the language that is often used 
 in condemnation of the doctrine of the Two Natures 
 seems too severe. Is it to be expected that the 
 philosophical and theological armoury of the fifth to 
 the eighth centuries A. D. should supply weapons that 
 are proof against attack for all time ? To demand 
 this is no doubt to demand more than those centuries 
 could give. To us it does seem artificial to conceive 
 of the two natures as operating distinctly and yet, 
 by a system of mutual give-and-take (communkatio 
 idiotnatum, Kotvmvia and olptlSoctls tq>v bvofxaTayv), 
 allow for the transference of attributes from the 
 
II. Ancient Christologies 55 
 
 one to the other. But the fair thing is, not to 
 plant ourselves rigidly in our time and from that 
 vantage-ground to weigh in the scales and find want- 
 ing the efforts of past generations, but to put ourselves 
 in their place and to ask what else, or what better, 
 they could have done. To the men of that day, with 
 the Gospels before them taken literally as they stand, 
 the two natures would obviously seem separable 
 and separate : it was as obvious to refer such things 
 as hunger and thirst, pain and death, limitation of 
 knowledge, to the one, as it was to refer miracles 
 and the supernatural beginning, as well as the super- 
 natural ending of the incarnate Life, to the other. 
 Doubtless it was just these plain facts, or facts which 
 seemed to them plain, which moved Pope Leo and 
 Pope Martin to take the stand they did. It is not 
 for us to blame them ; and least of all, to blame 
 them before we have got a coherent and consistent 
 theory of our own that we can substitute for theirs. 
 
Ill 
 
 MODERN CHRISTOLOGIES 
 
Ill 
 
 MODERN CHRISTOLOGIES 
 
 I must now try to sketch in outline the history 
 of modern Christologies. And this means practi- 
 cally that I must try to follow the course which 
 this subject has taken in Germany. I do indeed 
 believe that our own race, in this country and in 
 America, has had some not unimportant contri- 
 butions to make to it. But, if they have not been 
 exactly desultory, they might at least be described 
 as more or less isolated or episodical. In Germany 
 alone can the subject be said to have had a con- 
 tinuous history. And there the more recent phase 
 of this history covers more than a century. 
 
 We may take our start from the Rationalism which 
 ran over from the eighteenth into the earlier years 
 of the nineteenth century. This Rationalism made 
 a clean sweep of Christology altogether. For it 
 Christianity meant the teaching as it conceived it, 
 and especially the moral teaching of Christ. But 
 within these limits there was little or no room for 
 a doctrine of His Person. An average representa- 
 tive of this school, writing in 1813, laid it down 
 that Christology as a dogma formed no part of the 
 Christian faith. That faith was a religion which 
 Christ taught, not one the object of which He was. 
 And accordingly, all that related to the Person and 
 
60 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 Work of Christ belonged not so much to Religion as 
 to the History of Religion. 1 
 
 It is an advance when we come to the philosophy 
 of Hegel (1770-1831), who has at least the great 
 merit of trying to work in Christology into a com- 
 prehensive scheme of human history. I am by no 
 means sure that in this respect he is not even now 
 some way in advance of many who believe them- 
 selves to have got beyond him. From the point of 
 view of the theologian, he will naturally seem to 
 try to express religious truth too much in terms of 
 philosophy. In any case his formula is too predomi- 
 nantly intellectual. It cannot do more than indicate 
 a single step in the great process. Hegel sought to 
 deal with Christianity by his favourite method of 
 the synthesis of opposites. For him it represented 
 the meeting-point of Infinite and Finite, of Deity 
 and Humanity. From his point of view the 
 important thing was the idea — the idea of the 
 union of Infinite and Finite, of God and man. This 
 idea, however, was with him not passive but active. 
 It was a working out of the process of the Absolute 
 Spirit in history. His conception of the process may 
 be too a priori ; it may be too much imposed upon 
 history rather than extracted from it, i. e. from the 
 actual course of historical development. But it has, 
 as I have just said, the great merit of comprehen- 
 
 1 Faut, Die Christologie sett Schleiermacher (Tubingen, 1907), 
 p. 1, In the sketch which follows I am practically following 
 the outline in this clear and ably written monograph. 
 
Ill Modern Christologies 6i 
 
 siveness ; it does conceive of history as a continuous 
 process, and a continuously divine process ; it does 
 not, as so much modern theology at least appears to 
 do, take a positive pleasure in setting one age in 
 opposition and contrast to another. It prefers to 
 think of the ages as succeeding each other in the 
 gradual evolution of a vast divine purpose. And 
 this, I must needs think, whatever the defects of the 
 theory in detail, is in its broad outline the sounder 
 and truer view. 
 
 It is well known that Strauss (David Friedrich 
 Strauss, 1808-74) began life as a follower of 
 Hegel, and that in his first book he took his start 
 from the Hegelian philosophy, though he grafted 
 on to this a quantity of destructive criticism which 
 constitutes his real importance in literature and in 
 history. It was on the strength of his Hegelian 
 Christology that he felt himself emancipated from 
 any servile dependence upon the Gospels. So long 
 as he remained true to the idea of the union of 
 Godhead and Manhood, the historical facts in which 
 that idea was supposed to be expressed were in- 
 different to him, and he exercised freely the most 
 trenchant criticism upon them. He himself, at the 
 end of his book, sums up rhetorically the outcome 
 of his criticism : — 
 
 The key to the whole of Christology consists in 
 this, that as subject of the predicates which the 
 Church ascribes to Christ, an individual is replaced 
 by an idea — but a real idea, and not an unreal one, 
 
62 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 as in the theory of Kant. As conceived of in an 
 individual, a God-Man, the attributes and functions 
 which the Church doctrine ascribes to Christ con- 
 tradict each other; in the idea of the Race they 
 agree together. Humanity is the union of the two 
 Natures, God become man, the Infinite Spirit ex- 
 ternalized as finite, and the finite spirit remember- 
 ing its infinitude ; it is the child of the visible 
 mother and the invisible Father, of the Spirit and 
 of Nature ; it is the worker of miracles, in so far 
 as in the course of human history the spirit ever 
 becomes more completely master of nature, within 
 man as well as outside him, while nature is de- 
 pressed as the powerless material of its activity ; 
 it is the sinless One, inasmuch as the course of its 
 development is blameless, inasmuch as defilement 
 ever attaches to the individual but disappears in the 
 race and in its history ; it is Humanity that dies, 
 that rises again, and that ascends to heaven, in so 
 far as out of the negation of its natural self there 
 ever proceeds higher spiritual life and, out of the 
 destruction of its finitude as the spirit of the in- 
 dividual, the nation, and the lower world, there 
 arises its union with the infinite Spirit of heaven. 1 
 
 Strauss was driven to this substitution of the idea 
 for the Person by his assumption that the idea 
 never reaches its full expression in the individual 
 but only in the race. It is, however, not at all 
 surprising that, after reducing Christianity to this 
 shadowy semblance of itself, he should end by 
 throwing it over altogether. The intense sincerity 
 which, whatever his faults, was such a marked 
 feature in his character, could not be satisfied with 
 
 1 Quoted by Biedermann, Bogmatik, p. 536 n. 
 
111. Modern Christologies 63 
 
 half measures ; and in his latest work, The Old and 
 the New Faith (1872), he directly put the question, 
 Ai*e we still Christians? and answered it in the 
 negative. 
 
 Into the vacant place which was thus left by 
 Strauss stepped his great admirer, the Swiss theo- 
 logian Biedermann (Alois Emanuel Biedermann, 
 1819-85). Unlike many of the Swiss Professors, 
 who cross the border from Germany, Biedermann 
 was born in the neighbourhood of Zurich, where he 
 afterwards became Professor. He had a vigorous 
 personality and took an active part (on the extreme 
 liberal side) in the Church controversies of his time, 
 being in fact one of those who helped to impress on 
 the religious life of his canton the stamp which it 
 still bears to-day. When Strauss, just before his 
 death, put forth the book to which reference was 
 made a moment ago, Biedermann exclaimed that 
 sooner than have had it published he would have cut 
 off a finger of his own right hand. He had, however, 
 shortly before (in 1869) published his own Dogmatik 
 which, as I have said, takes up very much the 
 earlier position of Strauss, and — I think we may add 
 — with some improvement. Like Strauss, Bieder- 
 mann was a direct and forcible writer ; his book 
 has considerable merits of form, and it still receives 
 attention in Germany. Biedermann is quite as 
 radical in criticism as Strauss ; but, although their 
 position is virtually the same, the later writer seems 
 
64 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 to have some advantage in his mode of statement. 
 I would describe in this way the fact that, whereas 
 his predecessor took as the foundation of his con- 
 struction the idea of Christ as the God-Man, he 
 persistently speaks, not of the ' Christus-Idee ' but 
 of the ' Christus-Prinzip '. 
 
 There are indeed in German three related terms 
 which are used in this connexion, and I think that 
 they may be taken as each marking a distinct step 
 above the other. The terms are Christus-Idee, 
 Christus-Prinzip, and Christ us-Per son. I would 
 venture to distinguish between them thus. The 
 idea is the expression of a general truth ; in this 
 case the general truth of the intimate mutual rela- 
 tion of God and man, of Deity and Humanity. It is 
 implied, but not directly expressed, that this idea 
 embodies itself, or works itself out, in history. 
 The term principle, as compared with idea, lays 
 more stress on this active working out or realiza- 
 tion ; it brings to the forefront the fact that the 
 idea is not a mere abstraction of the mind but a 
 working creative force in history. Both these terms 
 are less heard of than they were. In their place 
 we hear more now of the Christus-Person. I take 
 it that this is a clear gain. We come back at last 
 to the real Christ — historic or (as we should say) 
 supernatural. I must leave this further distinction 
 for the present ; to me it seems to mark a yet fur- 
 ther step in advance. I shall have to come back to 
 this point later ; for the present we are dealing with 
 
77/. Modern Christologies 65 
 
 the lower stages of the development. But I think 
 you will find it a help as a key to all this part of the 
 lecture to bear well in mind this triple distinction 
 of Idea, Principle, and Person. 
 
 Strauss began as, and Biedermann was all along, 
 a thoroughgoing Hegelian. They were of course 
 both Hegelians of the Left, open enemies of the in- 
 herited Christian tradition. We had ourselves here 
 in Oxford a Hegelian, not of the Left, one who was 
 indeed quite free and fearless in his acceptance of 
 all that it seemed right to accept in criticism, and yet 
 was at the same time not only a Christian but an 
 intense Christian, for whom Christianity meant 
 a great deal more than it means for the average 
 man. I refer to the late Professor Thomas Hill 
 Green (1836-82). It happened that just at the 
 time of his mature activity the influence of Strauss 
 and F. C. Baur was at its height. The Germans were 
 taking a lead in scientific theology. We had not 
 much in England that could be exactly called by 
 that name. The great body of the Anglican clergy 
 was staunchly conservative. A few, mainly Oxford 
 students, were feeling their way with the help of 
 the Germans, and put forth their views in Essays 
 and Reviews (1860). At Cambridge the great trio 
 Westcott, Hort, and Lightfoot were writing ; and 
 their theology was scientific in the best sense. But 
 it was also very cautious, and as yet touched for the 
 most part the fringes of the great subject. It was 
 inevitable that a man like Green should seek for 
 
 1147 
 
6§ Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 guidance from the Germans, and from those who 
 stood out most conspicuously in Germany. In 
 Philosophy he was an expert ; his theology he was 
 obliged to take at second hand. But, in so doing, 
 he mixed it with his own remarkable personality. 
 One of his friends said of him after his death, * We 
 shall never know a nobler man.' I knew him only 
 a very little, but enough to echo the same thought 
 in the same words. He was a unique compound of 
 Hegelianism in philosophy, Liberalism in politics, 
 and Puritanism in religion. He said of himself 
 (characteristically, we are told, and I can fully 
 believe it) that the Bible was the only book that he 
 knew really well ; and yet his mind was also stored 
 with the graver and austerer kinds of literature — 
 Shakespeare, Milton, Bunyan, Wordsworth. And 
 though his nature too was somewhat austere upon 
 the surface, beneath the surface there lay a deep 
 affectionateness and power of restrained feeling. 
 All this unusual combination comes out in the two 
 lay sermons which are printed among his Works 
 (iii. pp. 230-76), and are among the most striking 
 utterances of their kind in the last century. I will 
 permit myself a single quotation of some length. 
 And, as I must economize, I will choose a passage 
 which I think will be specially worth bearing in 
 mind for our present purpose. It is indeed little 
 more than a condensed summary of salient features 
 in New Testament teaching, but of those features 
 with which the writer was most in sympathy and 
 
Ill Modern Christologies 67 
 
 which he was able with a minimum of substantial 
 change to work into the structure of his own philo- 
 sophy. The reader will make what allowance he 
 thinks well for the peculiar views implied, whether 
 of philosophy or of criticism. 
 
 There came One who spake as never man spake, 
 yet proclaimed Himself the son of man, and was 
 conscious in the very meanness of human life, in its 
 final shame of death, of the communication of God 
 to Himself, and through Him to mankind. There 
 came another, who, bringing with him certain 
 1 metaphysical ' conceptions, the result of the philo- 
 sophy of the time, found them in this Man, whom 
 death could not hold, suddenly become real ; who in 
 spirit, yet with a light above the brightness of the 
 sun, saw manifested in Him that which Philo and 
 the Stoics knew must be; even the heavenly Man 
 in whose death all barriers were broken down, that 
 all in the participation of His life might be equal 
 before God. ... In a generation or two the intui- 
 tion of the present Christ, which Paul even in his 
 lifetime seems to have been unable to convey to 
 others as it was to himself, had faded away. . . . 
 Yet, when it might be thought that the life of Christ 
 must already have ceased to be a spiritual presence 
 and become a wonder of the past — more, probably, 
 than two generations after St. Paul had gone to his 
 rest — there arose a disciple, whose very name we 
 know not (for he sought not his own glory and pre- 
 ferred to hide it under the repute of another), who 
 gave that final spiritual interpretation to the person 
 of Christ, which has for ever taken it out of the region 
 of history and of the doubts that surround all past 
 events, to fix it in the purified conscience, as the 
 immanent God. The highest result of ancient 
 
 F 2 
 
68 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 philosophy had been the conception of the world as 
 a system of thought, related to God as His word or 
 expression, i. e. as the spoken thought is related to 
 the man. This conception, however, great as it was, 
 did not present God under moral attributes, nor did 
 it bring Him near to the conscience of the individual. 
 But in Christ, the writer whom the Church calls 
 St. John, saw this divine thought manifesting itself 
 in human life as Truth and Love, and that not 
 merely or fully through a past visible existence — 
 though such existence had been vouchsafed as a 
 ' sign ' — but through a spirit which should dwell in 
 men, drawn out of the world, won from sense and 
 the flesh, for ever. The presence of this spirit was 
 the presence of the Son, so that the perfect know- 
 ledge and love which subsisted from eternity between 
 the Father and the Son might be reproduced in men 
 as the knowledge of God and love of each other. . . . 
 He thus comes, as the context explained, in the spirit 
 of truth. In this spirit they are with Him where 
 He is, even in the presence of God (xvii. 23), and 
 the love wherewith God has loved Him is in them, 
 even as He is in them. Those who have been able 
 to receive this saying, in the spiritual sight of Christ 
 have seen the Father ; in worshipping Christ they 
 have worshipped God under the attributes of per- 
 sonal intelligence and love. . . . Such believing love, 
 once wrought into the life and character, ( not in 
 word but in power ', can survive all shocks of criti- 
 cism, all questions as to historical events. ... It 
 needs no evidence of the presence of God, or the 
 work of Christ the Spirit, for it is that presence and 
 work itself. It is the crucifixion of the flesh, it is 
 the new life, it is the resurrection of the dead. 1 
 
 With every possible qualification which may be 
 1 Op. cit iii. 241-3 ; in the separate edition (1883), pp. 26-31. 
 
III. Modern Christologies 69 
 
 due either to the transference of these ideas from 
 their ancient dress into their modern or to any 
 reservations, critical or otherwise, in the mind of the 
 writer, I will make bold to say that one who could 
 use this language as sincerely as the writer used it, 
 even though there may have been a good many 
 things that he could not accept as many of us accept 
 them, yet must have had a strong grasp on the very 
 essence of Christianity. 
 
 It was still under the Hegelian stimulus that in 
 the middle of the last century an elaborate attempt 
 was made by Dorner (Isaac August Dorner, 1809- 
 84) to mediate between the old and the new (i. e. 
 the new conception as it then was). Dorner also 
 started from the idea of the God-Man, Deity and 
 Humanity not as opposed to but as implying each 
 other, a humanity which is capax deitatis. But, with 
 this scheme in his mind, Dorner worked it out 
 much more on the lines of the Bible and Church 
 Doctrine. His chief work is a very massive History 
 of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ (ed. 1, 1839 ; 
 ed. 2, 1845 ; E. T. 1872). Towards the end of his 
 life he returned to the subject in his systematic 
 Glaubenslehre (1879-80). Whatever may be thought 
 of the success of his theoretic construction, in any 
 case the History was a thorough piece of work, and 
 remains a standard book on the subject. And yet 
 the execution rather breaks down between the 
 tendencies of two periods. In spite of his Hegelian 
 starting-point and qualified use of Hegelian language, 
 
70 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 we can see that Dorner had a feeling of the necessity 
 of finding a real basis not in metaphysics but in 
 religion. Accordingly, the Incarnation is no longer 
 for him a moment in the evolution of the Absolute, 
 but it has its motive in the Divine Love. Man is 
 created for communion with God. God, by the 
 impulse of His own being, communicates Himself 
 to man. Lesser revelations may be made by in- 
 spired men, but the perfect revelation must be 
 made by one who is God as well as man. It is 
 true that the necessity is not a priori ; but when it is 
 given to us as a fact, we can see that it is reasonable. 
 Sin has caused a breach between man and God, and 
 it is the work of the Sinless to heal this breach. 
 This called for a new act of creation. The Divine 
 Logos, which is the appropriate organ of this media- 
 tion, takes to Itself human nature. There is no 
 double personality ; but there is development in 
 the penetration of the human by the Divine. It is 
 characteristic of Dorner to insist on this develop- 
 ment ; and he rather breaks away from his patristic 
 authorities by making the complete union of the 
 two natures come at the end of the process rather 
 than at the beginning. 
 
 It is also characteristic of Dorner to lay stress on 
 the single personal Head and Eepresentative of 
 humanity ; and his critics point out that this is by 
 no means required either by his philosophical or by 
 his religious premisses. It is not required by the 
 conception of the relation of the Infinite to the 
 
JJZ. Modern Christologies 71 
 
 finite ; and God may as well be thought of in direct 
 relation to many souls as to one. 
 
 Under the head of 'mediating theology' would 
 fall the theory commonly known by the name of 
 Kenosis or ' self-emptying ' of the Divine Nature of 
 Christ. This theory began really in Germany about 
 the time of which we have been speaking, the 
 middle of the last century. It was adopted rather 
 freely by continental theologians ; but just as it 
 seemed to have run its course and to be dying out 
 there, it was taken up and vigorously pressed in 
 this country, where it has indeed had a fuller and 
 more eventful history than any other form of 
 Christological doctrine. 
 
 This rough outline of the history I must try to fill 
 in with somewhat more detail. 
 
 The theory took its rise among a group of theo- 
 logians who were predominantly orthodox and 
 desired to be orthodox, but who found themselves 
 in need of some reasoned explanation of certain 
 phenomena in the Life of our Lord on earth, 
 especially those which appeared to imply a restric- 
 tion or limitation of His divinity, such as His own 
 explicit statement as to the limit to His divine 
 knowledge (Mark xiii. 32) and St. Luke's de- 
 scription of His advance 'in wisdom and stature and 
 in favour with God and men' (Luke ii. 52). All 
 the examples of this kind were brought under the 
 general head of the language used by St. Paul in the 
 
72 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 famous passage Phil. ii. 5-8, and summed up in the 
 word heliosis or ' self-emptying ', formed from the 
 principal verb in the sentence (eKtvaxrev iavrov). 
 
 Both in patristic and in more modern times 
 there had been occasional suggestions pointing in 
 the direction of some such theory, though it no 
 doubt ran counter to the main tenor of Christian 
 thought. It was first definitely put forward as 
 a theory by Thomasius (Gottfried Thomasius, 1802- 
 75, Professor at Erlangen). His main work, 
 Christi Person und Werk, was first published in 
 1853-61 in three parts. In order to remove the 
 objection that his theory involved change in the 
 Godhead, Thomasius drew a distinction between 
 the essential and immanent (or inherent) attributes 
 of God, which include His moral attributes, and 
 such ' relative attributes ' — attributes arising out of 
 His relation to the universe — as omnipotence, omni- 
 science, omnipresence. Some writers speak of these 
 as ' physical attributes ' (e. g. Fairbairn, Christ in 
 Modern Theology, pp. 476, 477). The writer whose 
 statements on the subject of the Kenosis are most 
 sweeping and unguarded is Gess (Wolfgang Friedrich 
 Gess, 1819-91), the first edition of whose Lehre von 
 der Person Christi was contemporary with the work 
 of Thomasius (1856), and who maintained his views 
 in the later form of the book (1870-87). Another 
 continental theologian who is better known in 
 England, Fr^ric Godet (1812-1900), Professor at 
 Neuchatel, a thoughtful and devout rather than an 
 
III. Modern Christ ologies 73 
 
 exact and methodical writer, also took up an extreme 
 position similar to that of Gess. 
 
 Certainly there is a sense in which the Incarna- 
 tion involved a Jcenosis. The great act of divine 
 condescension could not but carry with it a putting 
 off at least of the external circumstances of majesty 
 and glory. Phil. ii. 7 is not the only New Testa- 
 ment passage which refers to this. Other conspi- 
 cuous places are 2 Cor. viii. 9 (' Though He was 
 rich, yet for your sakes He became poor'), John 
 xvii. 5 (' Now, Father, glorify Thou me with 
 Thine own self with the glory which I had with 
 Thee before the world was '). But the general ob- 
 jection to building a formal theory on such founda- 
 tions is that they are not really qualified to sustain 
 it. The most expressive passages are largely inci- 
 dental and metaphorical. It is a mistake to seek to 
 harden them into dogma. Really the tendency of 
 recent years has been all the other way, not so 
 much to multiply definitions and distinctions as to 
 reduce them, not to complicate doctrine but rather 
 to simplify it as much as possible. I believe that this 
 is distinctly the more wholesome tendency of the two. 
 
 So far as I can see, the formal theory of Kenosis 
 rests upon an altogether insufficient basis, both 
 biblical and historical. The best criticism with 
 which I am acquainted is that by Loofs, s. v. 
 ' Kenosis ' in the new edition of Herzog (1901). But 
 the subject is one to the discussion of which this 
 country has made some contributions of value. 
 
74 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 I am afraid it is, or at least has been, one of our 
 characteristics that, before we really grapple with 
 a subject, especially a difficult subject, we are apt 
 to need the stimulus of controversy. If that is so, 
 there is, on the other hand, this to be said for our 
 controversies, that usually something worth having 
 is struck out in the course of them. Controversy 
 is as a rule our chief way of securing thoroughness 
 of treatment. When a prolonged controversy has 
 passed over a subject, that subject is held in the 
 national consciousness — not only in the conscious- 
 ness of scholars but in a certain degree in that of 
 the general public as well — in a much more solid, 
 digested, and clarified form than it would have been 
 otherwise. We are not at all a people of system : 
 knowledge with us is much more like a country in 
 process of reclamation, in which certain tracts are 
 far more thoroughly broken up and tilled than 
 others, just because the ploughs and harrows of 
 controversy have passed over them. 
 
 Such has been the case with this doctrine of the 
 Kenosis. The impulse to the discussion of the 
 Kenotic Theory which has taken place in this 
 country, with special activity during the decade 
 1889-99, came in the first instance from the side 
 of Biblical Criticism. The protagonist at first was 
 Dr. Gore (now Bishop of Birmingham). In his Lux 
 Mundi (1889) essay which made so much stir, on 
 'The Holy Spirit and Inspiration', he was compelled 
 to refer to the question as to the knowledge of our 
 
///. Modern Christologies 75 
 
 Lord as Man in its bearing on such points as (e. g.) 
 the authorship of Ps. ex ; and the subject was taken 
 up again in his Bampton Lectures for 1891 and yet 
 again in the Dissertations on Subjects connected with the 
 Incarnation (1895). It happened that Dr. Eashdall 
 in a sermon preached in the same year (1889) ap- 
 pealed to the same doctrine for the same purpose, 
 though not committing himself to any particular 
 kenotic theory. Similarly, Bp. Moorhouse of Man- 
 chester in his Teaching of Christ (1891), Dr. Fairbairn, 
 Christ in Modem Theology (1893), Dr. A. J. Mason, 
 The Conditions of our Lord's Life on Earth (1896), Dr. 
 Ottley, Doctrine of the Incarnation (1896). All these 
 writers may be ranged on the same side as insisting 
 to a greater or less degree on the Kenosis. On the 
 other hand a steady opposition was maintained all 
 through the period by The Church Quarterly Review 
 in articles dated respectively October 1891, January 
 and October 1896, July and October 1897, January 
 1899. To the same effect was a weighty charge by 
 Bp. Stubbs of Oxford delivered in 1893 ; an elaborate 
 work by the Eev. H. C. Powell, The Principle of the 
 Incarnation (1896) ; Dr. Gifford, The Incarnation : 
 a Study of Philippians ii. 5-11 (1897) ; a survey of 
 the whole subject by Dr. P. J. Hall of Chicago, Tlie 
 Kenotic Theory (1898) ; and a number of incidental 
 allusions in writings by Dr. W. Bright, e. g. The 
 Incarnation as a Motive Tower (2nd edition, 1891), 
 Morality in Doctrine (1892), Waymarks in Church 
 History (1894). A great deal of this literature was 
 
70 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 of real value. Dr. Bright was our foremost patristic 
 scholar — one of the greatest that the Church of 
 England has ever possessed, and all his utterances 
 on the subject were marked not only by com- 
 manding knowledge but by great precision and 
 carefulness of language. Dr. Gilford's little book 
 was confined to the discussion of a single passage, but 
 was quite a model in its kind, i. e. in its treatment 
 of the data supplied by N. T. Exegesis, and is likely 
 to remain the highest authority possible so far as it 
 goes. Mr. Powell's work was most thorough and 
 exhaustive in its way ; it was only rather a mis- 
 fortune that it mixed up much excellent learning 
 with rather disputable philosophy. I should also like 
 to add to the list of books mentioned from the penul- 
 timate decade a single book from the last decade, 
 Canon (now Bishop) F. Weston's Tlie One Christ 
 (1907). I am proud to claim Dr. Weston as an old 
 pupil of my own, and his book, written in the 
 isolation of Zanzibar, shows great freshness and 
 originality. It treats the subject from the point 
 of view of high dogmatics ; and I shall have 
 occasion to refer to it again, when I come to offer 
 something constructive in relation to Christological 
 doctrine. 
 
 The most thoroughgoing and the boldest in lan- 
 guage of those who lay stress on the Kenosis is 
 Dr. Gore. His position generally seems to be 
 similar to that of Thomasius; and he does not 
 hesitate to speak of the ' abandonment ', * real aban- 
 
777. Modem Christologies 77 
 
 donment', or 'surrender' of some of the divine 
 attributes, where a writer like Dr. Bright would 
 speak of voluntary self-restraint in their exercise. 
 I do not think that I shall be far wrong if I were 
 to describe the general effect of the controversy as 
 a lesson of caution in the use of language and in the 
 drawing of dogmatic inferences. Bp. Gore deserves 
 full credit for the directness and boldness with 
 which he grasped a difficult problem ; and I for 
 one believe that both he and Dr. Rashdall were 
 justified in refusing to prejudge questions of criti- 
 cism on the ground of an abstract doctrine as to 
 our Lord's Person. Nor should I question their 
 right to base this refusal on a doctrine of Kenosis, 
 if they prefer to call it by that name ; in other 
 words, to bring it under the head of the conditions 
 assumed by our Lord in His Incarnation. But it 
 seems to me that of the two practically simul- 
 taneous utterances, Dr. RashdalTs was the more 
 judicious in keeping to general terms and declining 
 to press them into the mould of a particular theory. 
 I should like, if I may, to take the opportunity of 
 expressing a hope that Dr. KashdalTs volume, Doctrine 
 and Development, may not be forgotten, as occasional 
 volumes of sermons of that kind are apt to be. 
 I believe it to be specially fitted to place in the 
 hands of a layman who desired to see Christian 
 doctrine restated in a fresh, independent, and un- 
 technical way. And, although I should perhaps 
 go further on some points myself, it would be 
 
78 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 ungrateful not to recognize the amount of clear 
 and positive teaching which the book contains. 
 
 What I have just been saying about the Kenotic 
 Theory has been of the nature of a digression which 
 will detract somewhat from the symmetry and pro- 
 portion of the treatment of my main subject. It 
 seemed impossible to break off without bringing it 
 down to the present time ; and the English contro- 
 versy comes in as rather an excrescence upon the 
 direct history of the development of Christological 
 doctrine. We branched off at the appearance of 
 Thomasius's book in the middle of the fifties, when 
 the Hegelian philosophy was still in the ascendant. 
 It was not much later that that philosophy began to 
 decline, especially in the influence which it had 
 upon theology, and a new set of forces began to 
 make themselves powerfully felt. These are asso- 
 ciated with the name of Albrecht Ritschl (1822- 
 89) and his school. Eitschl had already in 1857 
 brought out the second edition of his Entstehung der 
 (dtkatJiolischen Kirche, the epoch-making work which 
 not only marked his complete breach with the 
 Tubingen School but more than anything else 
 really gave the death-blow to that school and its 
 theories. Much, no doubt, was contributed by the 
 cumulative work of the great Cambridge trio ; but 
 that was later in date, and it did not come with 
 quite the concentrated and nervous originality of 
 this single early work of Ritschl's. The Cambridge 
 
777. Modern Christologies 79 
 
 influence was rather that of a different type and 
 direction of scholarship ; that of Ritschl seemed 
 due to the mental thews and sinews of a single 
 scholar outgrowing his own surroundings. 
 
 Ritschl himself began as a follower of Baur and 
 of Tubingen ; but to understand his place in history 
 we have to go further back and to a collateral line 
 of development. Tubingen was the theological 
 application of Hegelianism ; the more distinctive 
 features in the theology of Ritschl are rather in the 
 line of descent from Schleiermacher (Friedrich D. E. 
 Schleiermacher, 1768-1834). Philosophically, I sup- 
 pose that Ritschl drew not a little of his inspiration 
 from Kant (1724-1804) ; but his conception of 
 religion came more from Schleiermacher. It is to 
 Schleiermacher that we must really trace the eman- 
 cipation of theology from that dominant intellectual- 
 ism which culminated in Hegel. Schleiermacher 
 saw that religion was by no means a matter only of 
 the pure intellect, as the Rationalists as well as the 
 Idealists made it. He saw that it was not only 
 a doctrine but a life, and a life even more than 
 a doctrine ; the emotions and the will had an even 
 larger part in it than the intellect. Schleiermacher 
 thus takes his start, not from dogma, not from 
 metaphysical theory, but from religious experience. 
 This is the great revolution, in which later theology 
 has so largely followed him. At the same time it 
 was not to be expected that so great a change should 
 reach its final expression all at once. Schleiermacher 
 
80 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 gathered up in his own person a large part of the 
 best culture of his time. He was open to influences 
 from many quarters ; and he built up his system 
 with the discursive play of a many-sided genius. It 
 was but natural that there should linger on in it 
 some features derived from the past. For instance, 
 he makes much use of the conception of the rela- 
 tion of the finite to the infinite, and makes religion 
 arise out of the feeling of utter dependence. The 
 consciousness of God includes with him a sense of 
 the order of nature. Accordingly, he rejects the 
 idea of miracle as a breach in that order, and gener- 
 ally reduces the miraculous element in the Life of 
 Christ. Christ is for him the embodiment of the 
 ' Urbild ' or Ideal of Humanity. This ideal is to be 
 judged, not by the empirical standard of the extent to 
 which it has been actually reproduced in the Church, 
 but rather by its boundless possibilities of reproduc- 
 tion. Christ is the organ for the indwelling of God 
 in humanity ; He communicates that indwelling 
 from Himself to the race, not (as it would seem) 
 supernaturally, but in the same kind of way in 
 which one man influences another. Measured by 
 the distance which separates Him from the average 
 of mankind, His appearance on earth is a miracle ; 
 but it is better regarded as the meeting-point of 
 God's creative act and the evolution of Man. 
 Schleiermacher would restate Christian doctrine 
 in some such terms as these. 1 
 
 1 Kirn in Hauck-Herzog, RE.*> xvii. 605. 
 
777. Modern Christohgies 81 
 
 Speaking for myself, I should be inclined to 
 describe this as rather an effort towards the expres- 
 sion of a truth than the successful expression of it. 
 I cannot see in Schleiermacher's view more than 
 a stage on the road. He is still too much infected 
 by the philosophies around him ; there is still too 
 much of the 'idea', and not yet enough of that 
 direct analysis of religious experience to which he 
 had himself called attention. 
 
 Schleiermacher leaves upon us the impression of a 
 keen and quick intelligence, cultivated and receptive 
 on many sides, containing in itself the seeds of 
 many distinct movements and full of suggestiveness 
 for the future, but with its visible products not 
 quite completely fused and harmonized. Compared 
 with this the mind of Eitschl seems slowly moving 
 and heavily moving ; but it impresses us by sheer 
 weight of brain power, by its independence, and by 
 the closely knit structure of the thought. He is 
 plastic, but not with the plasticity which adapts 
 itself to the varied configuration of the data ; the 
 leading quality with him is rather a masterful 
 strength and tenacity of purpose, which bends even 
 unpromising materials to its will. 
 
 Ritschl made his system culminate in the God- 
 head of Christ, though his correspondence x shows 
 that even in the act of doing so he was aware that 
 he would not conciliate his opponents either on the 
 right hand or on the left. He used the phrase, and it 
 1 Albrecht Eitschls Leben, ii. 149, 
 
 1147 G 
 
82 Ancient and Modern Cliristologies 
 
 was natural to him to use it, but its content was 
 not quite the same as that which it bore in the 
 doctrine of the Church. At the same time he was 
 accused of unworthy accommodation. He did not 
 deserve this charge, because he really meant to 
 convey much that the Church does, but he ap- 
 proached it differently, and he places his positive 
 teaching in a different setting. Kitschl was a 
 Biblicist, and he works out his ideas in the form 
 of Biblical exegesis ; but when his texts do not 
 suit him, he overrides them. 1 He treats Luther 
 even more eclectically than the Bible, content 
 if he can find support from some passages, though 
 he has to confess that there is different teaching 
 in others. His method is to ignore or minimize 
 everything of the nature of metaphysics, and to 
 assert and build upon all that is concerned with the 
 moral and practical side of religion. Kitschl will 
 not separate the Person of Christ from His Work ; 
 it is rather in the work that we are to seek for the 
 expression of the Person. The following summary 
 is given by his son 0. Kitschl. 
 
 Ritschl's whole doctrine of the Godhead of Christ 
 amounts to this, that in Christ as Man God Himself 
 may be known as He is (in seinem Wesen). The 
 Manhood of Christ is here no longer opposed to His 
 Godhead, as in the formula of His Two Natures. For 
 Christ as Man is not regarded as possessing human 
 nature in the abstract, but altogether in the concrete 
 
 1 There is a rather conspicuous example of this in Eechtf. u. 
 Vers.*, iii. 80. 
 
III. Modern Christologies 83 
 
 as the individual Man Jesus, who has faithfully 
 fulfilled His special and peculiar mission in perfect 
 love and perfect patience. And in the whole of this 
 life's achievement of His Christian faith at the same 
 time recognizes Him as the self-revelation of God 
 (Leben, ii. 216). 
 
 We may see sufficiently from this how Eitschl's 
 doctrine differs from the traditional. At the same 
 time Eitschl is thoroughly in earnest in the stress 
 which he lays on Christ as revealing the Father. 
 The two favourite texts which he applies in this 
 connexion are John i. 14 (' We saw his glory . . . full 
 of grace and truth'), and Matt xi. 27-9 ('All 
 things have been delivered unto me of my Father . . . 
 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am 
 meek and lowly in heart '). ' All things have been 
 delivered unto me of my Father ' marks the victory 
 over the world ; and the meekness and lowliness 
 are shown especially in the patient self-surrender of 
 the Cross. 
 
 In his exposition of the doctrine Eitschl makes 
 use of the ordinary categories of Prophet, Priest, and 
 King. But I do not know that there is anything in 
 his treatment of these that would differentiate him 
 much from any other writer. 
 
 G 2 
 
IV 
 TWO TYPES OF CHKLSTOLOGY 
 
IV 
 
 TWO TYPES OF CHRISTOLOGY 
 
 We have traced a certain progress in the theo- 
 logizing of the last century, so far as it centres in 
 the doctrine of the Person of Christ, which for the 
 sake of clearness we connected with the three 
 landmarks described in those expressive German 
 phrases, the Christus-Idee, Christus-Prinzip, and 
 Christus-Person — as we might say, the doctrine of 
 Christ considered as an idea, considered as an active 
 principle, and considered as the influence of a 
 person : that is, supposing that I am right in taking 
 ' Prinzip ' as compared with ' Idee ' to mean just an 
 operative idea, an idea expressed or realized in act. 
 In this case the two terms would go closely together, 
 and the second would be only a more complete form 
 of the first; as a matter of fact the use of it did come 
 later in order of time, and may be regarded as just 
 an improvement in expression. The three land- 
 marks of which I have spoken would represent one 
 short step and one longer step ; for many purposes 
 the first two might be bracketed together. 
 
 The Christus-Idee or doctrine of Christ considered 
 as an idea may (as we have seen) be specially 
 identified with Hegel. And no doubt recent years 
 have seen rather a reaction against Hegel. I should 
 
88 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 not be at all surprised if many of my hearers dis- 
 missed from their minds at once the notion that 
 Christ could be described in terms of an idea as 
 simply the explaining away of substantial Christian 
 truth as a mere abstraction. I should myself at 
 one time have done so. But there is really more 
 in it than this. Hegelianism in the hands of its 
 best representatives, in the hands of those who are 
 not only Hegelians in philosophy but are also steeped 
 in the language and thought of the New Testament, 
 has shown great powers of adaptation and approxi- 
 mation to New Testament ideas. I have already 
 quoted one admirable passage from the late Pro- 
 fessor T. H. Green which seemed to me — with one 
 or two slight modifications, not at all affecting its 
 essence — to express as well as we could wish the 
 real teaching of the New Testament. And I must 
 give myself the pleasure of quoting another passage 
 for the double purpose, both of confirming this 
 impression and also of putting before you thoughts, 
 concisely and aptly stated, which I believe it will 
 be useful and helpful to bear in mind. The follow- 
 ing, I venture to think, is not only good Hegelian 
 theology but also good Biblical theology as well ; 
 and it anticipates a great deal of more recent teach- 
 ing to which I shall have to come back presently. 
 
 A death unto life, a life out of death, must, then, 
 be in some way the essence of the divine nature — 
 must be an act which, though exhibited once for all 
 in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, was 
 
IV. Two Types of Christology 89 
 
 yet eternal — the act of God Himself. For that 
 very reason, however, it was one perpetually re- 
 enacted, and to be re-enacted, by man. If Christ 
 died for all, all died in Him : all were buried in 
 His grave to be all made alive in His resurrection. 
 It is so far as the Second Man, which is from 
 Heaven, and whose act is God's, thus lives and dies 
 in us, that He becomes to us a wisdom of God, which 
 is righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. In 
 other words, He constitutes in us a new intellectual 
 consciousness, which transforms the will, and is the 
 source of a new moral life (The Witness of God, p. 8 ; 
 Works, iii. 233). 
 
 Once again it is difficult for me to bring myself 
 to stop ; Prof. Green was a most attractive exponent 
 of ideas of this kind. And I would ask you to 
 observe that not the slightest exception can be 
 taken to such a statement as that which I have 
 just read from the point of view of the strictest 
 orthodoxy. If exception were taken to it, it would 
 be far more likely to come from what I may call 
 the dominant school in Germany, of which I shall 
 soon be speaking, and perhaps from some quarters 
 among ourselves. 
 
 With such writing before my mind, I should not 
 feel that I could dismiss the attempt to express 
 either the person or the work of Christ in the terms 
 of an idea. Along with the tendency to move 
 further away from Hegel at the present time, there 
 is also a tendency here and there among us to some- 
 thing of the nature of a return to him. It is in 
 such a region as this that philosophy and theology 
 
90 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 most tend to meet ; and if some student of philo- 
 sophy should feel disposed to experiment in this 
 direction, I should be sorry to dissuade him. 
 
 We have so far traced the development of modern 
 Christology down to Ritschl. He may be regarded 
 as inaugurating the latest phase in the history of the 
 subject, the phase of which the watchword would 
 be, neither Idea nor Principle but Person. There 
 is a great deal that is very wholesome in the move- 
 ment out of which this development has sprung. 
 It arose from and has been sustained by a great 
 desire to look at the reality of things, to put aside 
 conventions and to get into close and living contact 
 with things as they really are. It came to be seen 
 that — whether or not it has some partial justifica- 
 tion — in any case as a complete philosophy of 
 religion Hegelianism was too purely intellectual. 
 It did not correspond to the true nature of religion, 
 in which the emotions and the will are involved 
 quite as much as the intellect. Along with the 
 reaction in this sense against Hegelianism, there 
 was also something of a reaction against the body 
 of doctrine inherited from the Ancient Church. It 
 was felt that this too was just as predominantly 
 intellectual, and therefore also a departure from the 
 true ideal of religion. A good deal of dissatisfaction 
 was felt with the old metaphysics in the forms of 
 which Christological doctrine had clothed itself. 
 The doctrine of the Two Natures in particular, as 
 
IV. Two Types of Christ ology 91 
 
 embodied in the writings of St. Leo and partly 
 sanctioned at Chalcedon, was sharply criticized. 
 There was also not a little tendency to revolt 
 against the later idea of a human nature which had 
 not a proper personality of its own but which took 
 its personality from the divine nature. It seemed 
 to promise a great simplification all round when 
 Eitschl proposed to discard metaphysics altogether, 
 and to take his stand on what he called 'judgements 
 of value ', i. e. judgements constructed with a view, 
 not to their absolute truth or falsehood, but to their 
 bearing upon practical life. 
 
 It must not be thought that dissatisfaction with 
 some of the ancient formulae was confined to the 
 Germans or to quarters hostile to orthodoxy. Dr. 
 Westcott writes decidedly enough in his Commentary 
 on the Epistle to the Hebrews (p. 66) : ' It is un- 
 scriptural, though the practice is supported by 
 strong patristic authority, to regard the Lord during 
 His historic life, as acting now by His human and 
 now by His divine nature only. The two natures 
 were inseparably combined in the unity of His 
 person.' It is true that this note is criticized in 
 The Chureh Quarterly Review for Jan. 1899, p. 345. 
 But on the other hand it is endorsed by Bp. Gore 
 (Dissertations, p. 166), who, after illustrating the 
 tendency to regard the divine and human natures 
 in our Lord as simply placed side by side, and to 
 speak of Him as acting now in the one and now in 
 the other, expressly dissociates himself from this 
 
92 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 mode of speaking. He himself prints the sentence 
 in which he does this in italics. ' This is a point on 
 which — it must be emphatically said — accurate exe- 
 gesis renders impossible to us the phraseology of the 
 Fathers exactly as it stands/ Dr. Gore has a care- 
 ful note (p. 163) on the difference in degree of 
 authority between the actual decision of a Council 
 and a writing (like Leo's Tome) approved by a 
 Council. The latter may well be regarded as 
 illustrative rather than dogmatically defining. It 
 would certainly be wrong to press all the incidental 
 expressions used in this sense. Or we might put it 
 in this way : the language of St. Leo was very in- 
 telligible and very natural for the purpose for which 
 it was used, and there was a broad sense in which 
 it was not really wrong ; but it must not be taken 
 as laying down a formula unalterably for all time. 
 
 Dr. Moberly is another writer whose language 
 diverges somewhat from that of Pope Leo. For 
 instance, he writes thus : — 
 
 The phrase ' God and man ' is of course perfectly 
 true. But it is easy to lay undue emphasis on the 
 1 and '. And when this is done — as it is done every 
 day— the truth is better expressed by varying the 
 phrase. * He is not two, but one, Christ.' He is, 
 then, not so much God and man, as God in, and 
 through, and as, man. He is one indivisible 
 personality throughout. In His human life on 
 earth, as Incarnate, He is not sometimes, but con- 
 sistently, always, in every act and every detail, 
 Human. The Incarnate never leaves His Incarna- 
 
TV. Two Types of Christology 93 
 
 tion. God, as Man, is always, in all things, God as 
 man. . . . There are not two existences either of, or 
 within, the Incarnate, side by side with one another. 
 If it is all Divine, it is all human too. We are to 
 study the Divine in and through the human. By 
 looking for the Divine side by side with the human, 
 instead of discerning the Divine within the human, 
 we miss the significance of them both (Atonement and 
 Personality, pp. 96 £). 
 
 Dr. Du Bose is no less explicit. 'Jesus Christ 
 Himself, he says, 'is not God in some acts and 
 man in others, but equally God and equally man in 
 every act of His Human life/ x I hope to make a 
 suggestion on this head before I have done. 
 
 It is not perhaps necessary to place ancient 
 language and modern language in opposition to 
 each other on another aspect of the doctrine of the 
 Two Natures — the question as to the centre of 
 personality in our Lord. Dr. Moberly writes : — 
 
 Christ is, in fact, a Divine Person : but a Divine 
 Person not merely wearing manhood as a robe, 
 or playing upon it as an instrument; but really 
 expressing Himself in terms of Humanity. . . . There 
 was in Him no impersonal Humanity (which is 
 impossible) ; but a human nature and character 
 which were personal because they were now the 
 method and condition of His own Personality : 
 Himself become Human, and thinking, speaking, 
 acting, and suffering, as man (op. cit. p. 94). 
 
 This is in strict agreement (although the idea of 
 
 1 The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 37. 
 
94 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 an 'impersonal humanity' is pronounced impossible) 
 with Leontius of Byzantium, John of Damascus, and 
 the Council of 553. And yet, when Dr. Du Bose 
 comes to touch upon the same point he seems to feel 
 himself compelled to assume a double personality, 
 a divine personality and a human personality, which 
 he regards as a difficulty that is perhaps insoluble. 1 
 It is a little remarkable that he should do this and 
 that Dr. Moberly apparently should not, because 
 both hold the same view of personality. We seem 
 to understand why Dr. Moberly should not find a 
 difficulty in one personality doing duty for two 
 natures, because for him the consummation of 
 human personality is to be sought in its inter- 
 penetration by divine. Dr. Du Bose agrees in this, 
 and yet he seems compelled to postulate a double 
 personality. On such a view no question need be 
 raised as to the perfectus Deus and perfedus homo of 
 
 1 ' Yet, assuming, as we must, that our Lord's temptations were 
 to their utmost limit our own temptations and not those of one 
 other than ourselves, are we not involved in the difficulty of a 
 double personality in our one Lord ; a divine personality in 
 which He is the very Word of God Himself uttered or expressed 
 in humanity, God self-fulfilled and self-fulfilling in the nature 
 and under the conditions of us all ; and on the other hand, too, 
 a human personality which alone can be the real and perfect 
 expression of God humanly self-realized and manifested? . . . 
 The time may come when we shall better state to ourselves 
 this paradox or seeming contradiction, and better too perhaps 
 adapt and fit ourselves to its acceptance ; it can never come 
 when we shall be able either to solve it or to reject it ' (op. 
 cit. p. 300). 
 
IF. Two Types of Christ ology 95 
 
 the Quicumque ; the rock ahead is Unus omnino, 
 non confusione substantiae sed imitate personae. Dr. 
 Moberly escapes this ; but the difficulty in his case 
 would be as to the perfectus homo. And I am afraid 
 that this difficulty attaches to the whole patristic 
 position. I do not mean to leave the dilemma in 
 this state ; but the solution which I hope to suggest 
 must be deferred for the present. 
 
 These are examples of the strain put upon the 
 modern mind when it tries to follow out problems 
 of this kind to their last issues. The least we can 
 do is to recognize the utter relativity of our own 
 language. It is not only subject to limitations and 
 conditions that we can see, but to much more that 
 we cannot see. And we can well understand when 
 (e. g.) Dr. Bigg pronounces that l the later Councils 
 were too inquisitive, and attempted to solve prob- 
 lems which need not be set and cannot be 
 answered. Even of the third and fourth Councils 
 this may be said. They went beyond their author- 
 ities into regions where we may hardly venture to 
 intrude, and therefore they both led to permanent 
 national schisms' (The Spirit of Christ in Common 
 Life, p. 144). It was a more sweeping movement 
 of the same kind when Ritschl tried to banish 
 metaphysics altogether. Even philosophy is at- 
 tempting much the same thing in the case of 
 Pragmatism. I doubt if these more extreme 
 measures can ultimately succeed, because the mind 
 of man is irresistibly impelled towards a theory of 
 
96 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 things, and even a negative theory is still a theory. 
 But in any case we have learnt caution ; we have 
 learnt to speak with far greater reserve than we 
 did. And if we regard Ritschl as expressing a 
 tendency rather than a rigid and absolute position, 
 as a tendency it is wholesome enough in its way. 
 
 On this particular subject of Christology I believe 
 that the tendency represented by Eitschl and his 
 followers is wholesome. It is a good thing that our 
 attention should be drawn to the Person of Christ, 
 and that it should be kept fully in view in any 
 construction of Christological doctrine. So much 
 I should be willing to grant. But I should decline 
 to affirm either that the introduction of metaphysics 
 had never been justified in the past or would never 
 be possible in the future. The human mind will 
 not permanently renounce the attempt to find a 
 theory of the universe which shall include all being, 
 even the highest. 
 
 We may in any case take the Ritschlian stand- 
 point as characterizing the present stage of inquiry. 
 Even where the Eitschlian or the Pragmatist theories 
 are not held, there is a widespread tendency to 
 look for moral and religious values rather than 
 for metaphysical definition. The immediate object 
 before us must be to discriminate more closely 
 between the different views that are capable of 
 being held on this general platform. 
 
 The longer I study the course of contemporary 
 
IF. Two Types of Christology 97 
 
 thought, and especially contemporary Christian 
 thought, in relation to religion, the more distinctly 
 does it seem to crystallize in two main types. I 
 will call the one ' full Christianity ', and the other 
 1 reduced Christianity ' ; and each of these, as it 
 seems to me, has a Christology of its own. No 
 doubt there are many intermediate shades and 
 degrees ; and yet I should be inclined to say that 
 even these shades and degrees distinctly trend in 
 the one direction or the other ; there is a tendency 
 to gravitate towards one or other of the two main 
 types, and it is not difficult to say which, even in 
 cases where the prevailing tendency is subject to 
 not a little qualification. 
 
 I must try to describe these types as objectively 
 as I can. I have no doubt which of the two I lean 
 towards myself; but I can feel at the same time 
 the attraction of the other. Indeed I am perhaps 
 conscious of a certain call to offer to mediate 
 between them — at least so far as to help to bring 
 about a mutual understanding. If two sides so 
 clearly understand each other as to know what the 
 other is aiming at and what it is not aiming at, if 
 prejudices and mistakes and misrepresentations are 
 cleared away as far as possible, then at least the 
 first step is taken towards mutual respect. 
 
 There is the more reason for an effort to mediate 
 in this case, because the difference between the 
 
 1147 H 
 
98 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 two types presents itself to a rough and general 
 view as almost international. When I speak of ' re- 
 duced Christianity', I have before my mind more 
 especially the kind of view that I believe to be 
 dominant in liberal religious circles in Germany. 
 When I speak of the 'fuller Christianity', I am 
 thinking of the type that still prevails in religious 
 circles, even on the whole in liberal religious- circles, 
 in this country. I do not for a moment deny, either 
 that there are in Germany many other religious 
 circles besides those which I have described as 
 liberal, or that in this country there are not many 
 scattered types of Liberalism. It is difficult to 
 speak of that which is unexpressed ; but I have the 
 feeling that there is amongst us a great amount of 
 diffused but silent Liberalism which would corre- 
 spond more nearly to the German type than to our 
 own. I will go so far as to say that I should be 
 glad to think that it did conform to this type. 
 I say so because I think that I am conscious of its 
 excellences ; and I would a great deal sooner that 
 it conformed to this type than to other inferior types, 
 and still more so than that it should escape beyond 
 the bounds of what can be called Christian at all. 
 
 This type that I have called ' reduced Christian- 
 ity ' has one immense advantage. It aims at being, 
 and I believe that it is, strictly scientific. In saying 
 that I do not mean to admit that the other type, 
 which I shall call my own, is unscientific, in the 
 
IV. Tico Types of Christology 99 
 
 sense of being contrary to, or excluded by, science. 
 But, whereas there is in this case a large fringe of 
 debatable ground where the question may be raised 
 whether particular views are consistent with science 
 or not, in the other case it seems to me to be a 
 reasonable claim that the whole of the ground 
 maintained has the positive support of science, and 
 that as against opposing negative views a sound 
 scientific method will be found favourable rather 
 than otherwise. The German position (if I may 
 call it so for short) seems to me like a compact 
 fortress, small but well found in every respect, with 
 arms and ammunition of the latest pattern and 
 capable of offering a prolonged resistance to any 
 attack that can be brought against it. 
 
 If the only purpose of the Christian faith were 
 self-defence, I too should acquiesce in such a posi- 
 tion. We must not be backward to recognize its 
 advantages or the virtues that go along with it. It 
 is impossible not to admire the scrupulous care 
 with which the scientific ideal is kept in view, and 
 the steady refusal to go beyond it. I must only 
 qualify this admission. I must only speak with 
 some reserve on the subject of the science. That 
 of course may from time to time be open to question ; 
 the best of principles are apt to fail in the applica- 
 tion. Allowing for defects of this kind, we must 
 still ungrudgingly recognize the excellence of the 
 intention. That is the strong point : the strength 
 of the scientific interest, and the logical persistence 
 
 H 2 
 
100 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 with which it is followed out, no matter what the 
 consequences. 
 
 And yet, even so, the spirit that I am describing 
 seems to me to come some way short of the ideal. 
 It is science pursued with a certain lack of balance. 
 It is too apt to ignore considerations that ought not 
 to be ignored. 
 
 Why is it that in so many quarters ' orthodoxy ' 
 has come to be a term of reproach ? It ought not to 
 be so in the nature of things. And again, why is 
 tradition and everything that can be called 'tradi- 
 tional ? looked upon so much askance ? That is not 
 the right attitude, however inveterate it may have 
 become. It is really a reaction from one extreme 
 to another. Many virtues went to the original 
 opposition to orthodoxy and tradition. It arose, on 
 its better side, out of an impulse of sincerity, the 
 warm pursuit of freshness and freedom. But the 
 proverbial risks lay near at hand. One generation 
 persecutes, and the next erects monuments to the 
 persecuted. An orthodoxy of fashion succeeded to 
 the older orthodoxy, which had at least a nobler 
 sanction ; the shibboleths of opposition were applied 
 — at least have often been applied as rigorously as 
 those of faith. And the total result has been a want 
 of sympathy and a want of justice in the study of the 
 past, a perverted view of history, a series of discordant 
 notes where there should rather be harmony. 
 
 I shall have occasion shortly to illustrate what 
 I mean. It is not that side of things on which 
 
IV* Two Types of Christology 101 
 
 I desire to insist at present. I am speaking of two 
 typical conceptions of Christianity, which have as 
 their correlatives two typical Christologies. And 
 I do not wish the antithesis to seem greater than it 
 is. It is almost sure to do so, if each side is not 
 judged in complete connexion with its context; 
 I mean, if we look only at results, and not at the 
 conditions which have led to the results. I have 
 called one a ' reduced Christianity ' and the other 
 a i full Christianity ' ; I might call the one a 
 * minimum Christianity' and the other a * maxi- 
 mum Christianity', meaning by that of course a 
 relative, and not an absolute minimum or maximum. 
 But you will see how at once the whole situation 
 is altered if we regard the opposing types as (from 
 the point of view of those whom they represent) 
 deliberately ' minimum ' and ' maximum '. When 
 I say this, I do not mean that the two sides 
 consciously and of set purpose aim respectively at 
 a minimum and a maximum, but rather that the 
 whole bent of their antecedents and character 
 impels them in the direction of minimum and 
 maximum. The important point is that in any 
 comparative estimate of the two types allowance 
 has to be made opposite ways. Those who hold the 
 form of Christianity which I have called ( reduced * 
 practically isolate themselves here in the twentieth 
 century and ask, What verifiable facts can we lay 
 down? What demonstrable propositions can we 
 commit ourselves to as modern men? The others 
 
102 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 do not feel that they can isolate themselves in this 
 way from their predecessors in time or from the 
 corporate teaching of the body to which they 
 belong. They are conscious of an organic con- 
 nexion or solidarity with the Church of the past, 
 and they desire to maintain this connexion. They 
 are not individualists, and they do not wish to be. 
 They have a respect for science, and they are 
 prepared to put their opinions to the test of science; 
 but in certain cases where the continuity of old and 
 new is involved they are content with lower degrees 
 of proof if higher are not be had. 
 
 I hope this is not an unfair description of the two 
 leading types of opinion of which I have been 
 speaking. If I call the one German and the other 
 English, I do so mainly for convenience and with 
 the full knowledge that the labels are accurate only 
 in the roughest and most general way. I have (as 
 I said) the impression that the type which I have 
 called German has spread considerably beneath the 
 surface and is spreading among ourselves. And 
 at the present time and during the last two or three 
 years there has been a rather vigorous reaction in 
 Germany on lines parallel to though not identical 
 with those which prevail among ourselves. I refer 
 to the movement which goes by the name of 
 ' Modern Positive ', with Eeinhold Seeberg of Berlin 
 at its head and with no lack of energetic supporters. 
 The other attitude is, however, still on the whole 
 dominant in the Universities. 
 
IV. Two Types of Christology 103 
 
 I have dwelt at some length and in some detail 
 on this survey of the situation for a reason which 
 will be understood as soon as I come to speak more 
 directly on the subject of Christology. It is in the 
 Christology that the difference between the two 
 types culminates. Christology is the strongest 
 dividing line between the Modern Positive school 
 in German theology and the Liberal. It is also the 
 strongest dividing line between German Liberalism 
 and ourselves. And yet I am anxious that the 
 difference should not be exaggerated. Stated baldly 
 and without regard to the contexts in each case, the 
 gulf will seem impassable. Eitschl put the doctrine 
 of the Godhead of Christ in the forefront : not all, 
 but by far the greater part, of his followers, and all 
 the more pronounced Liberals who are independent 
 of them, would deliberately put it on one side. 
 I say * P u * it on one side '; and I think that is the 
 most accurate expression I can use. The Kitschlians 
 generally would say, when they were questioned, 
 that there was a sense in which the doctrine was 
 true. But they do not like to affirm it for fear of 
 being misunderstood. It is the scrupulous scien- 
 tific conscience that comes into play. Most English- 
 men, I believe, in the like position would affirm it. 
 I have little doubt that, if I held the Eitschlian 
 premisses — as a matter of fact I do not hold them, 
 but if I did — I should affirm it myself. You see, the 
 difference is this : I should be anxious to keep in 
 agreement so far as I possibly could with the Church 
 
104 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 Universal. In order to maintain that agreement, 
 I should be willing to strain so far — if it were really 
 a question of straining, and I do not think it is — my 
 conscience on the side of science. The Ritschlian, 
 the German, takes the opposite line to this. He is 
 very sensitive on the subject of science, and he is 
 comparatively indifferent to the Church Universal. 
 And therefore, sooner than incur to himself or to 
 others the slightest suspicion of yielding anything 
 on the side of science, he will shelve the whole 
 question, or (if he is pressed) will even deny what 
 upon the same premisses I should be prepared to 
 affirm. 
 
 That, I think, is how the matter stands. And now, 
 you will naturally wish to know precisely how far the 
 Ritschlian — I have in view especially the Ritschlian 
 — is prepared to go with us. The formula on which 
 he insists, and will insist as much as we please, is 
 contained in those words of St. Paul's, ' God was in 
 Christ, reconciling the world to himself ' (2 Cor. v. 
 19). His assent to this is whole-hearted. By ' God 9 
 he means the Almighty who rules the universe. 
 The life of Christ upon earth was a manifestation of 
 true Godhead. The inference might be safely drawn 
 that the character which He manifested on earth was 
 the character of God. If we had been left entirely 
 to ourselves, we might not have known, we should 
 never have been quite sure, that God was really 
 Love, that love was the ultimate motive with which 
 He made and sustains the world. But not only so ; 
 
IV. Two Types of Christology 105 
 
 to find Christ or be found of Christ, is to find God 
 or be found of God ; to be in touch with Christ is to 
 be in touch with God, and to feel His presence in 
 the soul. 
 
 That is the religious nucleus of Kitschlianism, in 
 regard to which, as I said just now, it is quite 
 whole-hearted. And I confess that to me this 
 profession of faith, brief and guarded as it is, is of 
 immense value. I am not sure that it is not really 
 the essence of everything. We can all go together 
 so far. And, while we are in the way together, 
 I am not disposed to count up too carefully the 
 other items that are dropped. I really think that 
 in regard to these other items I at least could come 
 to an understanding. I know that I mustn't take 
 myself too much as a standard ; I only throw out 
 this as a possible point of view. But, for instance, 
 I believe that if a Eitschlian were questioned he 
 would admit that such a doctrine as that of the 
 Trinity had a relative and historical justification ; it 
 was a natural and appropriate form for the doctrine 
 to take ; it was a form that the men of the early 
 centuries could understand so far as it was capable 
 of being understood. It safeguarded for them, as 
 nothing else could, that one fundamental tenet of 
 ' God in Christ \ I should add myself that it was 
 not only a doctrine for that day, to be afterwards 
 abandoned. Even now, I do not think that we have 
 any other better formula to put in its place. Eightly 
 guarded — guarded as the ancients guarded it, with 
 
106 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 due discrimination as to the use of the word 
 Person — I do not think that we can improve upon 
 it. And then, for me, it has the immense advantage 
 of linking the centuries together, of forming a bond 
 of union between the early ^cgnturies and our own. 
 If the Kitschlian thinks that I have too much to say 
 about the early centuries, that I do not distinguish 
 sufficiently between the twentieth and the fourth or 
 fifth, perhaps I should ask him to consider whether 
 after all the men of the fourth and fifth centuries, 
 the leaders of the Church in those days, were not 
 really contending for that principle which he values, 
 the principle of God in Christ. And I would ask 
 him whether that is not a justification that is still 
 valid. It may be said perhaps that the doctrine of 
 the Trinity is not verifiable on the ground of 
 religious experience in the same sense in which 
 (e. g.) the principle of God in Christ is verifiable. 
 I might reply that it is at least remotely verifiable 
 as a safeguard to that principle. But I would go 
 further, and I would say, that the doctrine of the 
 Trinity was built up in the first instance on a basis 
 of experience. It was a certain way of describing 
 the ultimate details, the theological details, involved 
 in a given set of experiences. All theology is after 
 all only a way of describing in connected and 
 systematic terms groups of experiences that are 
 in the last resort religious, and that apart from the 
 religious experience which underlies them would be 
 of no value. 
 
IF. Two Types of Christolog]) 107 
 
 On some such lines as these I believe that 
 I could come to terms with the Kitschlians. By 
 which I mean that, if I were to say that I saw what 
 they meant and respected their motives, I believe 
 they would be willing tg ^return the compliment and 
 to say that they saw what I meant and respected my 
 motives. Ideal truth would probably include us all. 
 In any case I should agree with Dr. Du Bose that the 
 Gospel can be broken up into parts, and that each of 
 the parts so far as it goes is a Gospel. ' I hold ', he 
 says, ' that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is so true and so 
 living in every part that he who truly possesses and 
 truly uses any broken fragment of it may find in 
 that fragment something— just so much — of gospel 
 for his soul and of salvation for his life' (The Gospel 
 in the Gospels, p. 4). Certainly that applies to the 
 Kitschlian fragment as well as to others. 
 
 But the Eitschlians themselves do not always 
 go the right way to work to make converts or to 
 conciliate opponents. I have in my mind a par- 
 ticular book which may be considered to be among 
 the classics of the party, Prof. Wilhelm Herrmann's 
 Communion with God. 1 I doubt if any other book 
 produced by it has a wider reputation. And a 
 great deal may be forgiven to Prof. Herrmann. He 
 so evidently has the root of the matter, and so 
 evidently knows in his own person what communion 
 
 1 Curiously enough, the English translation of this book 
 gives the author's name as Willibald ; but this appears to be 
 a mistake. 
 
108 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 with God really means. But just on this ground 
 one is the more surprised that the book should be 
 so disfigured by perpetual polemics. Fortunately 
 for myself, I only possess the English translation 
 made from the second edition, from which we are 
 told that a good deal of this element has been 
 removed. I hardly like to guess what the first 
 edition must have been. The author has two 
 bugbears against which he is continually tilting : 
 orthodox dogma is one, and Eoman Catholicism is 
 the other. All his piety goes out towards Luther. 
 We can see that it is a real pleasure to him when- 
 ever he can find Luther in the right ; and he does 
 produce many excellent sayings, which really tend to 
 warm our hearts towards the man. But he is not 
 less bent on putting the other things I have named 
 in the wrong. To insist on putting the best con- 
 struction on your own side, and the worst construc- 
 tion on your neighbour's is not the way to ingratiate 
 yourself with a reader who has any wish to be 
 impartial. There are, no doubt, extenuating circum- 
 stances : the book was written a good many years 
 ago (in 1886), when the position was different from 
 what it is now. The ' Kulturkampf ' was still fresh 
 in men's minds, and the awakening that has since 
 come over the Church of Eome, and especially over 
 Roman Catholic scholarship, was still in the future. 
 The more generous spirits in Germany look upon 
 their old antagonists with different eyes. But there 
 is still not a little to be done. With us, half — or 
 
IV Two Ttjpes of Christology 109 
 
 perhaps a third — of the thinking classes in the 
 nation have been converted, but a good deal of the 
 old fanaticism still survives. However, things are 
 moving in the right direction, and the next genera- 
 tion will see a marked change. The time is, I hope, 
 not far distant when Roman and Anglican and Free 
 Churchman and Lutheran will only emulate each 
 other in good works and in the search for deeper 
 truth side by side. 
 
 Besides the two opponents that I have mentioned, 
 Prof. Herrmann has yet a third in Mysticism. 
 Here he touches a point that is important for our 
 more immediate subject. But I must reserve the 
 discussion of this for the next lecture. 
 
COMPARISON OF THE TWO TYPES 
 
COMPARISON OF THE TWO TYPES 
 
 At the end of the last lecture we were left with 
 two distinct types of Ohristology confronting each 
 other. They might be described in many different 
 ways. I have called one the ' fuller type ' and the 
 other the ' reduced type '. The first is really the 
 present-day expression of traditional Christianity. 
 The other might be considered to be, in different 
 degrees according to the form it took, a product of 
 Modernism. 
 
 Most English or British or Anglo-American teach- 
 ing in what are sometimes called the orthodox bodies 
 conforms more or less to the first type. The other 
 is represented mainly in Continental Protestantism. 
 By this I do not mean that this particular type of 
 Christology and Continental Protestantism are at 
 all co-extensive ; but only that in certain character- 
 istic and influential circles — influential especially 
 from the point of view of theological teaching in the 
 Universities — that type of Christology has a certain 
 predominance. 
 
 Towards the close of the lecture I took upon me 
 to express the hope that we in England, notwith- 
 standing our own preferences, would not undervalue 
 this other teaching. I hoped that we should look 
 
 1147 T 
 
114 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 at its positive side, which is very real ; and I hoped 
 that we should make full allowance for its context, 
 or for the habits of thought that go with it, which in 
 some ways differ considerably from our own. 
 
 From this latter point of view — from the point 
 of view, that is, of an improved mutual under- 
 standing between the various bodies concerned — I 
 should attach considerable importance to a book 
 recently published by Dr. James Denney of Glasgow. 
 Dr. Denney's name will be well known to many 
 here as Professor in the United Free Church College, 
 Glasgow, and as one of the ablest and most influen- 
 tial of Scottish Presbyterian theologians at the 
 present time. He is distinctly and strongly on the 
 conservative side on most of the questions of theology 
 and criticism which he discusses. I imagine that 
 I should not be wrong if I were to describe his 
 position as before all things Biblical. The historical 
 and traditional element in opinion has not the 
 same interest for him that it has for most Anglicans, 
 though he is by no means opposed to tradition 
 as such. At the same time he has an intelli- 
 gent knowledge of modern criticism, and takes full 
 account of critical views, while his own attitude 
 is usually on the defensive. Perhaps the book by 
 which he would be best known is one on The Death 
 of Christ, which is now in its 6th edition, and which 
 is nearer to the standpoint of the late Dr. Dale than 
 any of those lately published on the same subject. 
 The work of his to which I have just referred has 
 
V. Comparison of the Two Types 115 
 
 for its full title Jesus and the Gospel : Christianity 
 justified in the Mind of Christ (Hodder & Stoughton, 
 1908) : it is an energetic defence of the full deity of 
 our Lord as implied in the New Testament gene- 
 rally, and as required by the Synoptic Gospels (studied 
 in the sense of a moderate criticism) as much as by the 
 writings of St. Paul and St. John. Dr. Denney has, 
 however, this in common with the Eitschlian School, 
 that he looks throughout especially at the religious 
 value of the doctrine involved. He has evidently, for 
 his own part, no wish to challenge the theology of 
 the Creeds ; but he puts Christian experience and 
 Christian life before metaphysical formulae, and 
 would be prepared to reduce these within the limits 
 necessary to sustain Christian practice. He is not 
 in favour of subscription to theological creeds, but 
 he goes so far as to suggest that the essence of the 
 Christian faith might be expressed in brief terms : 
 ' I believe in God through Jesus Christ His only 
 Son, our Lord and Saviour ' (p. 398). Dr. Denney 
 himself would take each term of this confession in 
 a pregnant sense. For instance, the title 'Lord* 
 would include a reference to the Resurrection as 
 being properly applied to Christ exalted and 
 glorified. 
 
 1 With Dr. Denney's book may be mentioned, as similar to it 
 in character, though not quite its equal in strength, the sober 
 and well equipped work of the Kev. C. F. Nolloth, The Person 
 of Our Lord and Eecent Thought (London, 1908), and an able 
 book from the other side of the Atlantic, The Lord of Qlory % 
 by Prof. B. B. Warfield of Princeton (London, 1907). 
 
 I 2 
 
116 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 I am afraid we are still a long way from having 
 before us for our consideration the conditions of 
 the complete reunion of Christendom. But no harm 
 is done by such very tentative anticipations of the 
 time when that great question may be more directly 
 raised. And I cannot help pointing out how far 
 such a formula as that suggested would go towards 
 supplying a meeting-ground between the two Chris- 
 tologies of which I have been speaking. The mere 
 contemplation of such a meeting-ground, wholly apart 
 from any question of practical politics, would be of 
 no slight value. 
 
 There is another light in which the Ritschlian 
 watchword of 'God in Christ ', with the whole body 
 of positive teaching of which it forms as it were the 
 apex and summary, may be of use, and even great 
 use, to us for whom that teaching as a whole would 
 be inadequate. We may take it as an ' irreducible 
 minimum ' of what Christianity means for us. In all 
 those questions that are connected with or arise out 
 of intercourse with others it is helpful to have an 
 irreducible minimum before one's mind. 
 
 And there is yet another way in which Ritschlian 
 teaching may be useful to us. Our minds are full of 
 beliefs which in the aggregate form our conception 
 of Christianity. But these beliefs are not all in an 
 equal degree verifiable ; some are more verifiable, 
 and others less. Now I think it may be said that 
 Ritschlianism, and the allied forms of opinion, while 
 
V t Comparison of the Two Types 117 
 
 they are no doubt eclectic, do as a matter of fact 
 bring together those parts and aspects of Christianity 
 which are most verifiable. And it cannot but be 
 a real advantage for us, however much further our 
 own beliefs may extend, yet to have that which 
 is most verifiable in them collected and brought 
 together in a compact body. 
 
 And there is an additional advantage for us in 
 England. If we set ourselves deliberately to look 
 at Ritschlianism and its allies in this light, viz., as 
 embracing the most verifiable portions of our own 
 beliefs, we shall approach these external forms of 
 teaching in a more sympathetic and friendly spirit, 
 and with a higher expectation of deriving benefit 
 from them for ourselves. My own conviction — and 
 I may say, experience — is that they are capable of 
 being of the greatest benefit to us. 
 
 There is a body of literature in Germany that 
 cannot be easily matched in this country. At the 
 head of it would be a comprehensive work like 
 Wernle's Einfuhrung in das theologische Studium 
 (Tubingen, 1908), and it would include many books, 
 large and small, by Bousset, Jlilicher, von Soden, 
 Johannes Weiss, and Harnack, whose famous lec- 
 tures on Das Wesen des Christentums (1900) set an 
 example in one class, as his recent critical studies, 
 from Lukas der Ard (1906) onwards, have done in 
 another. In these writings there is, on the one 
 hand a workmanlike completeness of scholarship, 
 and on the other hand a warmth and freshness of 
 
118 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 treatment in close touch with reality, to which we 
 find it hard to attain. There are indeed just at this 
 moment encouraging signs among us, especially in 
 our younger scholars, of the combination of these 
 qualities ; but, if we take the literary output of the 
 last ten years, we are as much behindhand as the 
 Germans have been conspicuously ahead of us. 
 
 What I wish to suggest is that, if we approach 
 this literature, not as competing with or directed 
 aggressively against our own beliefs but rather as 
 co-operating with us in the presentment of the most 
 verifiable portion of those beliefs, we shall make it 
 available for our own purposes and enjoy its admir- 
 able qualities with less of the reserve that is due to 
 the feeling of friction and antagonism. 
 
 Having now, as I hope, done something to mitigate 
 the opposition between the two types of thought 
 between which we have more or less to make 
 a choice — for they are really two types of thought, 
 which, while they culminate in Christology, are by 
 no means confined to it, but spread out over a wide 
 surface — I can with a clearer conscience go on to 
 state the other side, or in other words to set forth 
 the differences which separate the more contracted 
 position from our own. 
 
 In regard to Christology, the first and most 
 obvious difference is the difference of method, the 
 much broader basis on which the higher Christology 
 (if I may so describe it) rests. On the other side the 
 
V t Comparison of the Two Types 119 
 
 tendency has been more and more to withdraw 
 within the lines of the Synoptic Gospels, and even 
 within them to restrict the standpoint to the oldest 
 documents that are critically ascertainable. The 
 endeavour has been to elicit from these as much as 
 can be discovered of the self-consciousness of Christ, 
 and to take that as the whole and sole criterion of 
 any constructive doctrine as to His Person. Both 
 sides would agree that the appeal must be made to 
 this. No doctrine can hold good that can be proved 
 to be inconsistent with what is revealed to us of the 
 consciousness of Christ ; our estimate of His Person 
 cannot go beyond His own. But we must not be 
 too ready to assume that we possess anything like 
 a complete knowledge of what that estimate was. 
 If we had been in possession of an autograph docu- 
 ment by our Lord Himself, setting down in plain 
 terms His own account of His relation to the Father, 
 that of course would have been final and we should 
 have needed nothing else. But the materials that 
 we have in the Synoptic Gospels, or in the docu- 
 ments so far as they can be reconstructed which 
 underlie those Gospels, come very far short of this. 
 It is doubtless our duty to make the most we can of 
 these materials, to collect all the hints and indica- 
 tions which they supply. But after all they are 
 hints and side allusions, rather than anything in 
 the way of direct statement ; and we must use them 
 as such. That means that our data are very partial, 
 and we must not treat them as though they were 
 
120 Ancient and Modern Christologiex 
 
 complete. The arguments which critics draw from 
 the extant data are very largely arguments from 
 silence ; and such arguments must in this case be 
 specially precarious. It is an old story that the eye 
 sees and the ear hears what they bring with them 
 the power of seeing and hearing. We are really 
 dependent not only on such fragments of narrative 
 and discourse as time and chance have left to us, 
 but we are also dependent on the limits to the 
 intelligence and insight of those who originally 
 set down those fragments in writing. The more 
 we realize what are the conditions under which 
 this part of our knowledge comes to us, the more 
 we shall feel how inadequate it is to erect a solid 
 edifice upon, and the more we shall be driven to 
 utilize any further evidence that has survived. 
 
 As a matter of fact, besides the Synoptic Gospels, 
 we have all the rest of the New Testament. And 
 the difference between the two positions I have 
 been describing is that one does, and the other does 
 not, make a substantial use of this further evidence. 
 It is true that critical writers from time to time 
 speak of the impression which Jesus Christ made 
 upon His contemporaries as an element in the 
 estimate which must be formed of Him. But our 
 complaint is that on one ground or another they 
 explain this away, or at least do not give it the 
 weight that it deserves. It is really the case that, 
 broadly speaking, all the rest of the New Testament, 
 with more or less of emphasis according to circum- 
 
V. Comparison of the Ttvo Types 121 
 
 stances, OeoXoyet tov X/hotov, treats of Christ as God; 
 and the Church Universal has done the same from the 
 time of the Apostles until now. I do not think that 
 the weight of that evidence can rightly be explained 
 away. It (or rather the Biblical part of it) is set 
 out at length impressively by Dr. Denney in the 
 book of which I have spoken. 
 
 No doubt these other New Testament writers, 
 beginning with St. Paul, express this common belief 
 of theirs in categories of the time ; and those 
 categories are no longer as living as they were. 
 But apart from any such temporary expression, we 
 can see that there was a very great force at work, 
 and I find it difficult to think that the language 
 used to describe it overshot the mark. 
 
 I do not wish to invoke writers like St. Paul and 
 St. John merely as authorities who are not to be 
 questioned. I am content to take them as witnesses 
 to the effect upon their own minds and upon those 
 around them. And I doubt if this effect can be 
 understood without introducing factors that would 
 be called mystical. 
 
 St. Paul uses language that is extremely strong. 
 He was evidently conscious of a great transformation 
 that had taken place in himself. He refers this 
 transformation to the exalted Christ or the Spirit 
 of Christ. He felt an immense change from his old 
 self to his new self (Gal. ii. 20) ; and he does not 
 seem to have any doubt that this change was 
 produced in him by spiritual action from without. 
 
122 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 He also assumes that a like change could be operated 
 in others. He uses a remarkable metaphor : in Gal. 
 iv. 19 he speaks of Christ being formed as an 
 embryo within the soul. He (St. Paul) has himself 
 set the processes in motion which are to have this 
 extraordinary result; but he does not himself do 
 more than set them in motion. Clearly he is pro- 
 jecting his own experience into the consciousness 
 of others. He assumes that the effect wrought 
 within himself will be repeated in them ; and the 
 strangely vivid metaphor that he uses seems alone 
 adequate to his purpose. 
 
 It might be thought that we were pressing a 
 metaphor too hard if these two passages of St. Paul's 
 had stood alone. But in the writings of St. Paul 
 himself they are very far from standing alone ; 
 they are only salient expressions of an experience to 
 which he is constantly referring. In fact, the whole 
 of the eighth chapter of Eomans may be taken as an 
 exposition of this experience. There is nothing 
 more fundamental in the Pauline psychology. And 
 then, with a little variation of phrase, a like expe- 
 rience and a like psychology are implied in the 
 writings that bear the name of St. John. This is 
 one of the most remarkable points of contact 
 between the Gospel and the Eevelation. Thus we 
 read in the Gospel (xiv. 23), ' If a man love me, he 
 will keep my words : and my Father will love him, 
 and we will come unto him, and make our abode 
 with him ' ; and in Rev. iii. 20, ( Behold, I stand at 
 
V. Comparison of the Two Types 123 
 
 the door and knock : if any man hear my voice and 
 open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup 
 with him, and he with me.' And the metaphor of 
 indwelling or abiding is a well-known connecting 
 link between the Gospel and the First Epistle. In 
 the New Testament language of this kind is strongly 
 established and deeply ingrained ; and the New 
 Testament has in this respect furnished a model 
 which the experience of Christians has followed all 
 down the centuries. Many of the examples have 
 left a deep mark on devotional literature. One of 
 the most important recent books is a searching 
 examination of a case of this kind — Tlie Mystical 
 Element of Religion as studied in Saint Catherine of 
 Genoa and her Friends, by Baron Friedrich von 
 Htigel (London, 1908). 
 
 Now I am aware that a higher and a lower inter- 
 pretation may be put upon these experiences. But 
 I am more and more inclined to think that the 
 lower interpretation is an instance of the mistaken 
 attempt to unduly narrow and restrict both the aspi- 
 rations of the human soul and the modes of divine 
 response in which they find their satisfaction. 
 
 There are many ways in which the question of 
 what I have called comprehensively l Mysticism ' 
 comes in. 
 
 We have, I think, most of us the feeling that 
 there is something inclusive in the life and mission 
 of our Lord ; we cannot in His case lay stress on 
 4 the single life ', ' the single soul ', as we can in our 
 
124 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 own. We feel sure that it was no accident that the 
 title which he habitually chose for Himself, ' Son of 
 Man/ meant strictly in the usage of the time 'Man', 
 i. e. man collectively or in the abstract. There are 
 places in the Gospels where we could almost sub- 
 stitute Humanity for the Son of Man ; as conspi- 
 cuously in that well-known passage, 'The sabbath 
 was made for man, and not man for the sabbath : so 
 that the Son of man is lord even of the sabbath' 
 (St. Mark ii. 28). I do not indeed go with those 
 critics who think that in this passage, and in others 
 like it, as originally spoken our Lord meant man 
 collectively or in the abstract without reference to 
 Himself. I believe that He meant Humanity as 
 gathered up in Himself. I take it that such a 
 passage as this is an intimation of the kind of out- 
 look with which the title was used. Antecedently 
 we might have inferred that it must have associa- 
 tions of this kind. I have said elsewhere that I have 
 little doubt that our Lord made what in one of 
 ourselves we should call a profound study of all the 
 places in the Old Testament where this phrase ' son 
 of man ' occurs. I agree with most scholars at the 
 present time that the most direct line of suggestion 
 came to our Lord, ultimately at least, from Dan. vii. 
 13. But the choice of the title and its personal 
 application were one thing, and the meaning read 
 into it was another. One of the most prominent 
 passages which helped to determine that meaning 
 was Ps. viii. 4, ' What is man that thou art mindful 
 
F. Comparison of the Two Types 125 
 
 of him ? And the son of man that thou visitest him ? ' 
 The original subject of the psalm was Man in the 
 sense of Mankind or Humanity. But the significant 
 way in which the psalm is discussed and applied in 
 Heb. ii. 6-9 shows how easy it was to pass from 
 Man in the abstract to the one representative Man. 
 And there is much in the Gospels to show how 
 conscious our Lord was of His own representative 
 character ; notably the great passage (which is 
 beyond the reach of invention and in close harmony 
 with other language of Jesus, though too many 
 critics have cast doubt upon it) Matt. xxv. 31-46, 
 * Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my 
 brethren,' &c. 
 
 Another important set of passages would be those 
 in which St. Paul speaks of the First and Second 
 Adam (Rom. v. 12-19; 1 Cor. xv. 20-22, 45-49). In 
 all these places the exact nature of the representa- 
 tion or inclusion is left open ; and it is interesting 
 and instructive to compare the interpretations which 
 recent writers have given of them. Some are 
 especially noteworthy. 
 
 This, for instance, is Dr. Denney's comment on 
 Rom. v. 12 ff. :— 
 
 This is the conception which lends itself most 
 readily to what are usually called ' mystical ' inter- 
 pretations of Christ's life and work. What is most 
 important in it is the truth which it embodies of the 
 kinship of Christ with all mankind, and the pro- 
 gressive verification of that truth which comes with 
 the universal preaching of the gospel. Paul was 
 
126 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 convinced of the representative character of Christ 
 and of all His acts ; the death that He died for all 
 has somehow the significance that the death of 
 all would itself have ; in His resurrection we 
 see the firstfruits of a new race which shall wear 
 the image of the heavenly man. It may indeed 
 be said that any man is kin to all humanity, but 
 not any man is kin in such a sense that men of 
 all races can find their centre and rallying-point in 
 Him. The progress of Christian missions is the 
 demonstration in point of fact that Christ is the 
 second Adam, and while His true humanity is 
 asserted in this, as it is taken for granted every- 
 where in the New Testament, it leaves Him still in 
 a place which is His alone. When Paul thinks of 
 Christ as the second Adam, he does not reduce Him 
 to the level of common humanity, as if He were only 
 one more in the mass ; on the contrary, the mass is 
 conceived as absorbed and summed up in Him. It 
 is not a way of denying, it is one way more of 
 asserting, His peculiar place (Jesus and the Gospel, 
 p. 34 f.). 
 
 That is not mysticism, but it shows the approach 
 made towards mysticism by a mind to which it is 
 not naturally congenial. 
 
 Not less striking — indeed in any case very help- 
 ful — is Dr. Edwin A. Abbott's paraphrastic expansion 
 of the passage in Heb. ii, in his recent book The 
 Message of the Son of Man (London, 1909), p. 83 : — 
 
 Such a ' chief-and-leader ' of the sons of man, not 
 ashamed to call them brethren, might carry his 
 fellow-soldiers with him in a way impossible for any 
 angel. Placing himself at their head, he might 
 make them feel that they are his limbs, his body. 
 
V. Comparison of the Two Types 127 
 
 Or he might be said to draw his followers into 
 himself, or to breathe his spirit into them. What- 
 ever metaphor we may choose to express the deed, 
 the doer makes them one with himself. Then, 
 being himself Son of God, and one with God, such 
 a son of man draws the other sons of man into unity 
 with his Father and their Father in heaven. Such 
 appears to be the argument of the writer of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews. And it seems to be in 
 conformity with Christ's doctrine and with our own 
 experience of the links between human beings. It 
 is expressed in the Fourth Gospel by the words 
 ' I ascend unto my Father and your Father ', that is 
 to say, ' unto my Father, whom, through me, you 
 have been led to recognise as your Father '. 
 
 Observe the subtle and skilful way in which the 
 meaning of leadership is so drawn out to the utter- 
 most as virtually to amount to union. This is done 
 by the help of a variety of metaphors, all of which 
 are Biblical. But I am not quite sure whether or not 
 Dr. Abbott intends to commit himself absolutely 
 to the doctrine that is commonly called 'mystical 
 union \ 
 
 The two writers about whom there can be no 
 doubt whatever in this respect are Dr. Moberly and 
 Dr. Du Bose. There are one or two passages in 
 Dr. Moberly 's Atonement and Personality that have 
 become almost classical on this subject (see especially 
 pp. 86-91, 254 f., 281-286). I must allow myself 
 one or two short extracts from these pages, to 
 show how absolute is the union assumed between 
 humanity and Christ, and how absolutely the key to 
 
128 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 that union is sought in the indwelling of the Holy 
 Spirit, which is the Spirit of Christ and of God. 
 
 To think of [Christ] merely in the light of the 
 ordinary possibilities of others, to think of the 
 significance, or power, of His humanity as limited 
 to His sole individual self-hood, is incompatible 
 with the very existence and meaning of the Church. 
 He alone was not generically but inclusively man 
 [i. e. He is not to be classed among men, but in 
 some sense embraces or includes them]. . . . That 
 complete indwelling and possessing of even one 
 other, which the yearnings of man towards man 
 imperfectly approach, is only possible, in any fulness 
 of the words, to that Spirit of Man which is the 
 Spirit of God : to the Spirit of God, become, through 
 Incarnation, the Spirit of Man. No mere man 
 indwells, in spirit, in, or as, the spirit of another. 
 Whatever near approach there may be seen to be 
 towards this, is really mediated through the Spirit 
 of Christ. ... As it is, the very essence of the 
 Christian religion is the indwelling of the Spirit of 
 Christ. ... If there is one corollary from the Deity 
 of Christ, which, more than another, we may defy 
 any man to eradicate from New Testament theology, 
 without shivering the whole into fragments, it is 
 the truth of the recapitulation and inclusion of 
 the Church, which is, ideally at least, as wide as 
 humanity, in Christ (pp. 87-91). 
 
 And again : — 
 
 For the reality of our own relation to the atone- 
 ment, which is its consummation in respect of each 
 one of us, everything unreservedly turns upon the 
 reality of our identification, in spirit, with the Spirit 
 of Jesus Christ. In proportion to our essential 
 distinctness, and remoteness from Him, is our 
 
V. Comparison of the Two Types 129 
 
 distinctness, and remoteness, from the consumma- 
 tion of Atonement. . . . Even if, in a sense, we may 
 consent to speak of vicarious penitence ; yet it is not 
 exactly vicarious. He indeed consummated peni- 
 tence in Himself, before the eyes, and before the 
 hearts, of men who were not penitent themselves. 
 But He did so, not in the sense that they were not 
 to repent, or that His penitence was a substitute for 
 theirs. He did so, not as a substitute, not even as 
 a delegated representative, but as that inclusive total 
 of true Humanity 1 9 of which they are potentially, and 
 were to learn to become, a part. ... It is not by 
 becoming like Him that men will approach towards 
 incorporation with Him : but by result of incorpora- 
 tion with Him, received in faith as a gift, and in 
 faith adored, and used, that they will become like 
 Him. It is by the imparted gift, itself far more 
 than natural, of literal membership in Him ; by the 
 indwelling presence, the gradually disciplining and 
 dominating influence, of His Spirit — which is His 
 very Self within, and as, the inmost breath of our 
 most secret being ; that the power of His atoning life 
 and death, which is the power of divinely victorious 
 holiness, can grow to be the very deepest reality of 
 ourselves. . . . It is the Spirit of Christ which con- 
 stitutes the Pentecostal Church. The Church means 
 nothing but this. It is the perpetuity of the Pre- 
 sence, it is the living Temple, of God Incarnate — 
 no longer in the midst of, but within, men (pp. 
 283-285). 
 
 In my last book, TJie Life of Christ in Recent 
 Research (Oxford, 1907), I ventured to reprint 
 a review in which I had pointed out that on the 
 subject before us the teaching of Dr. Du Bose 
 
 1 These italics are mine, all the others are in the original. 
 
 1147 K 
 
130 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 entirely coincides with that of the Oxford Professor. 
 I made the mistake of saying (op. cit. p. 310) that 
 Dr. Du Bose, in speaking of the * universal humanity 
 of Christ ' (which is his equivalent for Dr. Moberly's 
 ' inclusive humanity '), implied rather than expressed 
 the explanation of it by reference to the Holy Spirit. 
 It happened that I had before me at the time only 
 the second volume of Dr. Du Bose's trilogy, The 
 Gospel according to St. Paul (New York and London, 
 1907) ; and I believe it is true that in this volume 
 the reference to the Holy Spirit is understood and 
 not expressed. But in the earlier volume, The 
 Gospel in the Gospels (1906), the point had been 
 abundantly anticipated. I ought just to illustrate 
 this: — 
 
 That Spirit was His own without measure, not 
 only to have but to impart. Of His fulness we all 
 received, and grace for grace. Through that eternal 
 Spirit He offered up Himself without spot to God, 
 and the selfsame Spirit in us is the inspiration and 
 the power of all love and service and sacrifice. The 
 Spirit was the distinctive promise of God in the 
 Gospel ... If the objective fact of Christianity 
 culminated on Easter, Pentecost was marked by 
 a subjective revolution in relation and in response to 
 that fact that was quite its complement and most 
 effectually its completion . . . The Word, as I have 
 frequently said, is the principle and medium of 
 objective revelation. The Spirit is that of subjective 
 apprehension, comprehension, and appropriation. 
 Deep answereth unto deep. The deep of God with- 
 out us and above us is inaudible save as it is 
 answered by the deep of God within us. There is 
 
V. Comparison of the Two Types 131 
 
 no gospel or salvation for us which does not come 
 by the Word through the Spirit (op. cit. pp. 242- 
 246). 
 
 And a little later : — 
 
 All the reality in the universe can be no Gospel 
 to us so long as it remains objective, or until it 
 enters into living relation with ourselves . . . What 
 is necessary within ourselves to give effect to all 
 that is true without us is a corresponding response, 
 or a response of correspondence, on our part. That 
 correspondence is, I repeat, not a fact of natural 
 relationship, but an act of spiritual communication 
 or self-impartation. When the Spirit bears witness 
 with our spirit, that we are sons of God, it is not 
 only God who communicates the gracious fact, but 
 it is God who awakens the humble and grateful 
 response, and puts it into our heart to say, Abba, 
 Father. ... It was in this eternal Spirit that the 
 whole creation in humanity offered itself without 
 spot to God in the person of Jesus Christ ; and in 
 that consummate act fulfilled His relation to it 
 through realizing its own relation with Him. It is 
 through this eternal Spirit, which is God's and 
 Christ's and ours, that we pass from ourselves into 
 Christ and through Christ into God (pp. 286, 287). 
 
 It would be impossible to have a more direct, 
 comprehensive, and emphatic assertion of the doc- 
 trine that we call Mysticism, than that which is 
 found in these two writers. There was a time 
 when I should have very much hesitated to give 
 any kind of endorsement to this teaching myself. 
 But now it seems to me to be after all nothing 
 more than a Christian application of the belief for 
 
 k 2 
 
182 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 which philosophy prepares us in the Divine Im- 
 manence. The doctrine is strictly Biblical ; indeed 
 it gives the deepest and fullest meaning possible 
 to Biblical language. It is no less thoroughly in 
 accord with the main lines of ancient orthodoxy. 
 It might perhaps be supposed by any one not theo- 
 logically instructed that difficulties might be raised 
 in connexion with the doctrine of the Trinity ; but 
 that is not the case : the theory is perfectly con- 
 sistent with that doctrine accurately stated. From 
 various quarters of late warnings have come that 
 the popular view of the doctrine verges dangerously 
 upon Tritheism. It is this tendency which has 
 given to the doctrine an appearance of rigidity 
 which does not really belong to it. I should rather 
 expect opposition in this country from writers like 
 Dr. Denney, and from the German theologians, 
 most of whom are averse to mystical solutions. 
 
 If, however, there is truth in the doctrine of 
 Divine Immanence — if, that is, there is implanted 
 in us a seed, that is capable of indefinite expansion, 
 of the truly divine — then we have put in our 
 hands an analogy which may go some way to 
 explain other difficulties of the Incarnation. The 
 presence of this divine element, whatever it is — the 
 Christian would say, the working of the Holy Spirit 
 even in its highest degree — is seen to be no wise 
 incompatible with the fullest humanity ; it operates 
 deep down at the roots of being, and leaves the 
 external expression in speech and action, not less 
 
V. Comparison of the Two Types 133 
 
 thoroughly and completely, but only more perfectly 
 human. 
 
 The full recognition of this fact will determine 
 the shape of that constructive attempt at a modern 
 Christology that I hope, if all 's well, to offer next 
 term. I shall aim at doing justice to both sides of 
 the problem ; I believe that, when we come to the 
 point, it will be seen to be not only possible but 
 natural to do justice to both sides of it — to assert at 
 one and the same time the full humanity of our 
 Lord without detriment to His deity, and the real 
 deity without detriment to the humanity. 
 
 Events move fast. Only within the last few days 
 I have been reading the supplement to The Hibbert 
 Journal discussing the question Jesus or Christ?, 
 which might be taken as a summary description of 
 those two types of Christology of which we have 
 been speaking. I hope to return to this in more 
 detail next term. My first impression is that the 
 volume carries us distinctly a step forward. We 
 see in it a great variety of minds approaching the 
 subject in a great variety of ways. There is of 
 course not a little negation mixed with what is 
 positive. And yet, if I am not mistaken, the total 
 outcome seems to me both helpful and hopeful. It 
 seems to me that we can put the negations into 
 their proper place, and at the same time plant 
 our feet upon our own ground more firmly than 
 before. 
 
VI 
 
 PRESUPPOSITIONS OF A MODERN 
 CHRISTOLOGY 
 
VI 
 
 PRESUPPOSITIONS OF A MODERN CHRISTOLOGY 
 
 In recent years considerable attention has been 
 paid to a department of Psychology which in pre- 
 vious times was hardly recognized as coming within 
 the range of Psychology at all. Sir W. Hamilton 
 defined Psychology as * the Science conversant about 
 the phaenomena or modifications, or States of the 
 Mind, or Conscious Subject, or Soul or Spirit, or Self 
 or Ego'. 1 It will be observed here that the phrase 
 ' Conscious Subject' has slipped in — and we cannot be 
 surprised that it should do so, as the conscious states 
 of the mind were the first that presented themselves 
 for analysis and it might naturally seem as though 
 Psychology were confined to these. That, however, 
 is not really the case ; and it is more and more coming 
 to be seen that the unconscious and semi-conscious 
 states are also of great importance and deserve all the 
 study that can be given to them. Prof. W. James 
 uses more unqualified language than I have ventured 
 to do, and writes as though the inclusion of these 
 states were a discovery made at a comparatively 
 recent and definite date. He says (Varieties of 
 Religious Experience, 1902, p. 233) : — 
 
 I cannot but think that the most important step 
 
 1 Metaph. L viii. 129 ; see Murray, New Eng. Diet. s*v. 
 ' Psychology \ 
 
138 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 forward that has occurred in psychology since I have 
 been a student of that science is the discovery, first 
 made in 1886, that, in certain subjects at least, there 
 is not only the consciousness of the ordinary field, 
 with its usual centre and margin, but an addition 
 thereto in the shape of a set of memories, thoughts, 
 and feelings which are extra-marginal and outside of 
 the primary consciousness altogether, but yet must 
 be classed as conscious l facts of some sort, able to 
 reveal their presence by unmistakable signs. I call 
 this the most important step forward, because, unlike 
 the other advances which psychology has made, 
 this discovery has revealed to us an entirely unsus- 
 pected peculiarity in the constitution of human 
 nature. No other step forward which psychology 
 has made can proffer any such claim as this. 
 
 For us in England the recognition of this wider 
 field of psychology is chiefly associated with the 
 late F. W. H. Myers and the Society of Psychical 
 Research ; and indeed I am not sure that the precise 
 date given by Prof. James is not really referable to 
 the same source. For a number of years the con- 
 ception of which I am speaking, if it was not 
 confined to, had its principal focus in the more or 
 less private transactions of the Psychical Society. 
 It was employed especially in the discussion of the 
 particular class of phenomena to which the Society 
 devoted itself. Prof. James himself gave it a wider 
 application and introduced it before a wider public, 
 
 1 The use of this word does not seem to be quite consistent — 
 it certainly includes facts some of which would be described 
 as sub- or unconscious ; the phrase corresponds to the ' more 
 comprehensive consciousness ' of the next quotation* _ 
 
VI. Presuppositions of a Modern Christology 139 
 
 especially in his Gifford Lectures published in 1902. 
 In the next year followed the posthumous publica- 
 tion of an elaborate work in two volumes by Mr. 
 Myers under the title Human Personality and its 
 Survival of Bodily Death. The author had died on 
 January 17, 1901 ; but his book was practically 
 complete, and set forth his ideas in full, with a 
 special nomenclature of his own. An abridged 
 edition was published in 1907. 
 
 Mr. Myers possessed a literary gift of a high order, 
 and it is worth while to quote in his own words 
 a few of the sentences which express the way in 
 which the subject presented itself to him and in 
 which he presents it. 
 
 The 'conscious-Self' of each of us, as we call it — 
 the empirical, the supraliminal Self, as I should 
 prefer to say, — does not comprise the whole of the 
 consciousness or of the faculty within us. There 
 exists a more comprehensive consciousness, a pro- 
 founder faculty, which for the most part remains 
 potential only so far as regards the life of earth, but 
 from which the consciousness and the faculty of 
 earth-life are mere selections, and which reasserts 
 itself in its plenitude after the liberating change of 
 death. . . . The idea of a threshold (limen, Schwelle) of 
 consciousness — of a level above which sensation or 
 thought must rise before it can enter into our 
 conscious life — is a simple and familiar one. The 
 word subliminal, — meaning ' beneath the threshold ' 
 — has already been used to define those sensations 
 which are too feeble to be individually recognized. 
 I propose to extend the meaning of the term, so as 
 to make.it cover. all that takes place beneath the 
 
140 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 ordinary threshold, or say, if preferred, outside the 
 ordinary margin of consciousness ; — not only those 
 faint stimulations whose very faintness keeps them 
 submerged, but much else which psychology as yet 
 scarcely recognizes ; sensations, thoughts, emotions, 
 which may be strong, definite, and independent, but 
 which, by the original constitution of our being, 
 seldom emerge into that supraliminal current of 
 consciousness which we habitually identify with 
 ourselves. ... I find it permissible and convenient to 
 speak of subliminal Selves, or more briefly of a 
 subliminal Self. I do not indeed by using this term 
 assume that there are two correlative and parallel 
 selves existing always within each of us. Rather 
 I mean by the subliminal Self that part of the Self 
 which is commonly subliminal ; and I conceive that 
 there may be — not only co-operations between these 
 quasi-independent trains of thought — but also up- 
 heavals and alternations of personality of many 
 kinds, so that what was once below the surface may 
 for a time, or permanently, rise above it. And I 
 conceive also that no Self of which we can here 
 have cognizance is in reality more than a fragment 
 of a larger Self— revealed in a fashion at once 
 shifting and limited through an organism not so 
 framed as to afford it full manifestation {Human 
 Personality, 1907, pp. 13-15). 
 
 This is an interesting statement of the theory by 
 its real author. For us, from our present point of 
 view, the main drawback is that it was conceived 
 from the first for a particular limited purpose and 
 that the whole form which it assumes was guided by 
 that purpose. Mr. Myers had constantly before his 
 mind a certain set of phenomena, which it was his 
 chief interest to digest, correlate, and, so far as 
 
VI. Presuppositions of a Modern Christology 141 
 
 possible, explain. The limitation was perfectly 
 natural and legitimate, and I can only be glad that 
 such an examination of phenomena that are often 
 simply despised and ignored should have been 
 undertaken. But for the purpose at present before 
 us these phenomena must be regarded as for the 
 most part abnormal, or at least peripheral rather 
 than central. 
 
 I am myself inclined to believe that the question 
 of what we may follow his example of calling 
 subliminal consciousness and subliminal activities is 
 destined to be of much importance and (I would 
 even hope) of much value in the future of theology 
 as well as of psychology. It ought, however, to be 
 worked out on the ground of psychology first by the 
 disinterested methods of psychological science, and 
 then on the foundation thus laid the theologian 
 may build. As yet, so far as I can gather, a great 
 deal remains to be done. 
 
 My attention was caught by a book on The 
 Subconscious (London, Boston, and New York, 1906) 
 by Professor Joseph Jastrow of the University of 
 Wisconsin, and I hoped that this might produce 
 something. So it does to some extent, but I found 
 the outcome disappointing. There is a certain air 
 of alertness and intelligence about the book ; but 
 the style is painful. It seems to consist almost 
 wholly of metaphor, and the metaphors crowd in 
 one on the top of another, while there is a general 
 lack of scientific precision (want of exact references 
 
142 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 and the like). The book that has been to me most 
 really helpful is Prof. William James's Varieties of 
 Religious Experience (London, 1902). 
 
 It should be noted that the terms I have just used 
 cover much the same ground as the older term * un- 
 conscious cerebration ', which appears to have been 
 coined by Dr. W. B. Carpenter about the year 1853 1 
 to express that unconscious action of the brain which 
 produces the same kind of results as conscious 
 thought. It is just the deepest and the most far- 
 reaching mental activities that appear to do their 
 work in this way. I can well believe that there have 
 been many anticipations of the train of thought that 
 I am about to follow at different times in the past ; 
 but its more direct antecedents in my own case are 
 those of which I have spoken. 
 
 Besides the upper region of consciousness there is 
 a lower region into which the conscious mind cannot 
 enter. It cannot enter, and yet it possesses a 
 strange magnetic power by which the contents of 
 the lower region are as it were drawn upwards and 
 brought within the range of its cognition. This 
 lower region is a storehouse of experiences of the 
 most varied kinds, in fact of all the experiences 
 that make up human life. It is filled with images 
 left by the senses — not only with the images of 
 sights and sounds, but with those left by the other 
 more restricted senses of touch and taste and smell. 
 
 1 See New Eng t Diet. s. v. t Cerebration \ 
 
VI. Presuppositions of a Modern Christology 143 
 
 Not only is the lower region of which I speak filled 
 with these to an extent that seems incredible — it 
 seems incredible that room can anywhere be found 
 within this little organism of ours for the endless 
 multitude of sensible impressions — but, in addition 
 to these and intermingled with them, there are the 
 more complex experiences of past thought and past 
 emotion. In some form or other they must be 
 there, and from this inner cornucopia one never 
 knows what will come forth — whether it will be 
 weighty memories of the greater shocks of life, its 
 deepest tragedies and its highest joys, or whether 
 it will be things the most trivial and insignificant. 
 And — most wonderful of all — these impressions, 
 experiences, inferences, principles, which so crowd 
 and jostle each other down below, are not so many 
 passive and disconnected items (like dried peas in a 
 bottle) but they are endowed with an active power 
 of combining and recombining, of modifying and 
 being modified, so that when they come up to the 
 surface again it is often in quite different shapes 
 from those in which they sank beneath it. 
 
 All these things are latent. The door of that 
 treasure-house, which is also a workshop, is locked, 
 so far as the conscious personality is concerned. 
 For it there is no ' harrowing of hell ', no triumphant 
 descent into the nether world, followed by a release 
 and return of captives on any large scale. The door 
 is locked against any such violent irruption. And 
 yet, in some strange way, there seem to be open 
 
144 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 chinks and crevices through which there is a con- 
 stant coming and going, denizens or manufactured 
 products of the lower world returning to the upper 
 air of consciousness and once more entering into 
 the train and sequence of what we call active life, 
 though indeed the invisible processes of this life are 
 just as active as the visible. 
 
 It appears to be the function of the subconscious 
 and unconscious states to feed the conscious. There 
 is that continual movement from below upwards of 
 which I have been speaking, A never-ending train 
 of images, memories, and ideas keeps emerging into 
 the light. But only in part are they subject to the 
 will and conscious reason. Only in part do they 
 come at call. And only in part do they come in 
 fully organized form. 
 
 The phenomena of sleep and dreams seem to 
 belong to a sort of midway condition. They are in 
 part organized and articulated. They present a suc- 
 cession of pictures, which as pictures are like those 
 which occur in the waking state ; but they are 
 wanting in method. They are like a faggot of sticks 
 without any band to hold them together. There is 
 no connected meaning in them. The controlling 
 power is dormant, and does not shape them to any 
 practical end. 
 
 And yet the region of the unconscious and 
 subconscious is no mere chaos. The processes that 
 go on there must be to a large extent processes of 
 differentiation and combination. Problems that 
 
VI. Presuppositions of a Modern Christology 145 
 
 baffle the waking mind often seem to find their 
 solution, or to make steps towards solution, in ways 
 that are beyond its ken. The next time that the 
 intractable problem comes up into thought, it is with 
 its worst tangles wholly or partially unravelled. 
 
 The lower region corresponds to the upper in not 
 being all of one moral colour. It contains the same 
 potentialities of good and bad. If the dominant 
 impulses and influences in conscious thought and 
 life are good, then the dominant impulses and in- 
 fluences in the unconscious state will be good also ; 
 and vice versa. The under-world is a repetition or 
 reflexion of the upper-world. In the one, not less 
 than in the other, character is moulded. And, though 
 the processes are not seen and cannot be followed, 
 their results appear in the conscious responsible acts 
 and thoughts of the waking man. 
 
 The wonderful thing is that, while the unconscious 
 and subconscious processes are (generally speaking) 
 similar in kind to the conscious, they surpass them 
 in degree. They are subtler, intenser, further- 
 reaching, more penetrating. It is something more 
 than a mere metaphor when we describe the sub- and 
 unconscious states as more ' profound \ It is in 
 these states, or through them, that miracles are 
 wrought— especially those connected with person- 
 ality. They doubtless played the largest part in 
 the historical miracles of the Gospels, just as they 
 are to this day most active in what we are still 
 inclined to call miracles, the more successful 
 
 L 
 
 1147 
 
146 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 examples of efforts that often fall short of success, 
 
 The high that proved too high, the heroic for 
 
 earth too hard, 
 The passion that left the ground to lose itself 
 
 in the sky. 
 
 It was evidently this ' supernormal ' character, or 
 these supernormal possibilities, which caused Mr. 
 F. W. H. Myers to have recourse to the ' subliminal 
 self in order to explain such phenomena as tele- 
 pathy or hypnotism. To us too it offers itself — but 
 quite as much within the normal as the supernormal 
 sphere — as, if not exactly furnishing an explanation, 
 yet at least pointing where an explanation is to be 
 sought, of many of the phenomena of religion. 
 
 I had wr i tten so far without any conscious 
 reference to Prof. William James ; but I find myself 
 practically taking up the inquiry very much at the 
 point where he had left it. Towax*ds the end of his 
 Varieties of Religious Experience (pp. 511 ff.) he wrote 
 as follows : — 
 
 The subconscious self is nowadays a well-accredited 
 psychological entity; and I believe that in it we 
 have exactly the mediating term required. Apart 
 from all religious considerations, there is actually 
 and literally more life in our total soul than we are 
 at any time aware of. The exploration of the 
 transmarginal field has hardly yet been seriously 
 undertaken, but what Mr. Myers said in 1892 in 
 his essay on the Subliminal Consciousness is as true 
 as when it was first written : * Each of us is in 
 reality an abiding psychical entity far more exten- 
 
VI. Presuppositions of a Modern Christology 147 
 
 sive than he knows — an individuality which can 
 never express itself completely through any cor- 
 poreal manifestation. The Self manifests through 
 organism; but there is always some part of the 
 Self unmanifested ; and always, as it seems, some 
 power of organic expression in abeyance or reserve/ 
 Much of the content of this larger background 
 against which our conscious being stands out in 
 relief is insignificant. . . . But in it many of the 
 performances of genius seem also to have their 
 origin ; and in our study of conversion, of mystical 
 experiences, and of prayer, we have seen how 
 striking a part invasions from this region play in 
 the religious life. 
 
 Let me then propose, as an hypothesis, that 
 whatever it may be on its farther side, the 'more' 1 
 with which in religious experience we feel ourselves 
 connected is on its hither side the subconscious 
 continuation of our conscious life. Starting thus 
 with a recognized psychological fact as our basis, 
 we seem to preserve a contact with * science ' which 
 the ordinary theologian lacks. At the same time 
 the theologian's contention that the religious man is 
 moved by an external power is vindicated, for it is 
 one of the peculiarities of invasions from the sub- 
 conscious region to take on objective appearances, 
 and to suggest to the Subject an external control. 
 In the religious life the control is felt as ' higher ' ; 
 but since on our hypothesis it is primarily the 
 higher faculties of our own hidden mind which are 
 controlling, the sense of union with the power 
 
 1 Compare p. 508 : ' He becomes conscious that this higher 
 part is conterminous and continuous with a more of the same 
 quantity, which is operative in the universe outside of him, 
 and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion 
 get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has 
 gone to pieces in the wreck.' 
 
 L 2 
 
148 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 beyond us is a sense of something, not merely 
 apparently, but literally true. 
 
 This doorway into the subject seems to me the 
 best one for a science of religions, for it mediates 
 between a number of different points of view. . . . 
 Disregarding the over-beliefs, and confining our- 
 selves to what is common and generic, we have in 
 the fact that the conscious person is continuous with a 
 wider self, through which saving experiences come, 
 a positive content of religious experience which, it 
 seems to me, is literally and objectively true as far as 
 it goes 1 . * . . Name it the mystical region, or the 
 supernatural region, whichever you choose. So far 
 as our ideal impulses originate in this region (and 
 most of them do originate in it, for we find them 
 possessing us in a way for which we cannot articu- 
 lately account), we belong to it in a more intimate 
 sense than that in which we belong to the visible 
 world, for we belong in the most intimate sense 
 wherever our ideals belong. Yet the unseen region 
 in question is not merely ideal, for it produces 
 effects in this world. When we commune with it, 
 work is actually done upon our finite personality, 
 for we are turned into new men, and consequences 
 in the way of conduct follow in the natural world 
 upon our regenerative change. But that which 
 produces effects within another reality must be 
 termed a reality itself, so I feel as if we Lad no 
 philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical 
 world unreal. 
 
 God is the natural appellation, for us Christians 
 at least, for the supreme reality, so I will call this 
 higher part of the universe by the name of God. 
 We and God have business with each other ; and 
 in opening ourselves to His influence our deepest 
 destiny is fulfilled. The universe, at those parts of 
 
 1 The italics are in the original. 
 
VI, Presuppositions of a Modern Christology 149 
 
 it which our personal being constitutes, takes a 
 turn genuinely for the worse or for the better in 
 proportion as each one of us fulfils or evades 
 God's demands. As far as this goes I probably 
 have you with me, for I only translate into 
 schematic language what I may call the instinctive 
 belief of mankind: God is real since He produces 
 real effects. 
 
 So far Prof. James. I am glad to have the 
 statement of a philosopher to build on, and all the 
 more glad to be able to call as witness a philosopher 
 who tells us expressly (p. 379) that he has no bias 
 in favour of mysticism. In spite of this want of 
 sympathy he lays down 'that personal religious 
 experience has its root and centre in mystical states 
 of consciousness 7 (ibid.), and also that 'mystical 
 states, when well developed, usually are, and have 
 the right to be, absolutely authoritative over the 
 individuals to whom they come' (p. 422). It is 
 true that he goes on to add that these states have 
 no authority for those who do not share in them, 
 and true also that he seeks to weaken the consensus 
 in their favour by pointing to the diversity of 
 opinion with which they are accompanied. I can- 
 not say that this argument weighs with me strongly, 
 because the same central belief is quite compatible 
 with different contexts and different inferences. It 
 is this central fact of Mysticism that seems to me 
 to be so abundantly attested. 
 
 I should explain that by 'mysticism ' I mean the 
 belief in the union of man with God and by ' Chris- 
 
150 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 tian mysticism' I mean the union of the human 
 spirit with the Spirit of Christ, who is also the 
 Spirit of God. There is this specific character about 
 Christian mysticism that it is not so vague and inde- 
 terminate as other forms, but that it starts from the 
 full conception of Christ ; the belief in the Spirit 
 of Christ — i. e. in the exalted Christ as Spirit — 
 never forgets its origin ; there are blended with it 
 the features of the historical Christ, which impart to 
 it a richness and power of human appeal, which 
 other more abstract forms of mysticism do not 
 possess. 
 
 A recent paper by Prof. Lutgert of Halle (in 
 Theol. Litteraturbericht for April, 1909) calls attention 
 to the revived interest in mysticism and study of its 
 phenomena. Dr. Lutgert points out that (in Ger- 
 many at least) this revived interest and study is not 
 so much in the narrower circle of professed theolo- 
 gians as in the wider circle just outside of but in 
 touch with these ; and he makes it clear that the 
 mystical view of things will have to be taken account 
 of more seriously. This conclusion would have been 
 considerably strengthened if the writer had had 
 before him the English and American theological 
 literature of the last decade as well as the German. 
 In this country and in America the movement has 
 been more central and more directly connected with 
 the Theological Faculties. The chief impulse to it 
 was given by Dr. Moberly's Atonement and Personality 
 (London, 1901). But this had been to some extent 
 
VI. Presuppositions of a Modern Christology 151 
 
 anticipated by Dr. W. E. Inge's Christian Mysticism 
 (the Bampton Lectures for 1899) ; and the same 
 gifted writer has since kept recurring to the subject, 
 especially in his Personal Idealism and Mysticism 
 (London and New York, 1907). Another powerful 
 reinforcement has come from a connected series of 
 works by Dr. W. P. Du Bose of the University of 
 the South {The Gospel in the Gospels, 1906; The 
 Gospel according to St Paul, 1906 ; High Priesthood 
 and Sacrifice, 1908). There is also another recent 
 work by an American writer, Dr. Rufus M. Jones, 
 Studies in Mystical Religion (1909). And the year 
 before last (1908) was marked by the elaborate work 
 of Baron Friedrich von Htigel, with its impressive 
 combination of scholarship, criticism, and philo- 
 sophy, The Mystical Element in Religion as studied in 
 Saint Catherine of Genoa and her Friends. All this 
 literature bears a stamp of unusual weight and 
 distinction, and the movement which it represents 
 and leads is both strong and deep. 
 
 Can we define any more closely the meaning of 
 Christian Mysticism? In other words, can we 
 present to ourselves more sharply what we mean 
 by the union of the Christian with Christ ? It 
 is difficult, and especially difficult because of the 
 inadequacy of the metaphors of which we are com- 
 pelled to make use. We are speaking of the union 
 of spirit with spirit ; and yet we are compelled to 
 describe it in terms that are taken from matter and 
 from space. We are speaking of the union of 
 
152 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 person with person ; and yet we hardly know — in 
 any case we cannot assume — how far union is pos- 
 sible between person and person. Some of the 
 writers I have named push this conception to its 
 furthest limits (so Dr. Moberly and Dr. Du Bose). 
 
 We may take two verses of St. Paul as typical in 
 this connexion. One is that great text in Galatians 
 (ii. 20) : * I have been crucified with Christ ; yet I 
 live ; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me.' 
 And the other is in the same Epistle (iv. 19) : ' My 
 little children, of whom I am again in travail until 
 Christ be formed in you/ Nothing can be more 
 vivid. But the last passage is in any case strongly 
 metaphorical ; and it compels us to ask the question 
 whether the former passage must not also contain 
 an element of metaphor. And if there is an 
 element of metaphor, how large is that element? 
 One is tempted to fall back upon an answer which 
 is in principle like the famous answer of Queen 
 Elizabeth : — 
 
 What that word doth make it, 
 That I believe and take it. 
 
 We leave a margin of reverent agnosticism, for that 
 which we cannot wholly fathom. And yet we desire 
 our words to have the full meaning which they 
 ought to have. In any case this is the least that we 
 are justified in saying. We are justified in saying that 
 there is a reality corresponding to the language which 
 speaks of divine indwelling. And the tendency 
 
VI Presuppositions of a Modern Christology 153 
 
 of thought at present is rather to strengthen than 
 to weaken the sense of this reality. 
 
 The main difficulty and question turns round the 
 conception of personality. Are we to think of 
 personality as a hard fact, an ultimate fact, or not ? 
 There is no doubt one form of philosophical theory 
 which would answer that we are ; that personality 
 represents a point beyond which analysis cannot be 
 carried ; that just as a short time ago the atom was 
 held to be an ultimate unit in the material world, 
 so personality is an ultimate unit in the spiritual 
 world. Perhaps the use of this analogy supplies 
 something of an augury against the particular view 
 of which I am speaking. I suppose it is the case 
 that recent physical research has completely broken 
 up the old conception of the atom, that what used to 
 be called an atom is now known to be made up of 
 an immense number of much smaller units called 
 electrons. 1 In like manner the old view of the 
 person as not less impervious and impenetrable than 
 the material atom also seems to be giving way. 
 
 We may note approximation from the two sides. 
 On the one hand a writer like Dr. Moberly, who 
 takes a very high view of the extent to which the 
 human spirit is capable of penetration by the Divine 
 Spirit, yet insists strongly upon the ' response ' 
 which the human spirit makes to the Divine, and is 
 in this way guarded against Pantheism. On the 
 other hand a well-known passage of Browning states 
 1 Sir O. Lodge, Electrons (1906). 
 
154 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 in very striking terms the possibilities of interpene- 
 tration even by ordinary human personalities. Here 
 
 are two stanzas from i By the Fireside ' : — 
 
 My own, see where the years conduct ! 
 
 At first, 'twas something our two souls 
 Should mix as mists do ; each is sucked 
 
 In each now : on, the new stream rolls, 
 Whatever rocks obstruct. 
 
 Oh I must feel your brain prompt mine, 
 Your heart anticipate my heart, 
 
 You must be just before, in fine, 
 
 See and make me see, for your part, 
 
 New depths of the divine ! 
 
 The note struck by the last line shows where we are 
 to look for the meeting-ground of human spirit with 
 human spirit, and suggests a fortiori the yet further 
 point which may be reached when the penetrating 
 force is the Divine Spirit. 
 
 We are thus prepared for another step in the 
 process of our inquiry. I do not know what will 
 have been the experience of others, but for myself 
 it would be understating the facts to say that I have 
 been led to realize far more vividly than I had done 
 before the fullness of meaning which the language 
 of mystical union conveys and is intended to convey. 
 We have so far been speaking of states of conscious- 
 ness. The descriptions incidentally given of these 
 states all have reference to them as conscious. But 
 that is far from being the whole of the matter, or 
 
VI. Presuppositions of a Modern Christology 155 
 
 perhaps even the most important part of it. In 
 one sense we may say that whatever enters into con- 
 sciousness, by the fact that it does so, is more im- 
 portant than that which does not. That which is 
 latent must in some ways yield to that which is appa- 
 rent. But from another point of view causes are more 
 important than consequences ; and it is the invisible 
 part of the process which takes us nearer to the 
 cause. The deepest truth of mysticism, and of the 
 states of which we have been speaking as mystical, 
 belongs not so much to the upper region of con- 
 sciousness — the region of symptoms, manifestations, 
 effects — as to the lower region of the unconscious. 
 The roots of that of which we are conscious strike 
 down deep into the unconscious. It is there that 
 the forces are generated which enter into our con- 
 scious and active lives. But the fa<;t that they are 
 thus generated as it were underground withdraws 
 them from observation; we cannot experiment 
 upon them or analyse them as we can with that 
 which comes more directly within our ken. All 
 that we can know or guess about the subconscious 
 and unconscious is derived by inference from the 
 conscious. The states of which we are aware are 
 resultant states ; it is another thing to penetrate to 
 the original forces of which they are resultants. 
 
 Here lies the source of the element of mystery in 
 mysticism. I accept Dr. Moberly's account of what 
 we may perhaps call normal (as compared with 
 abnormal or eccentric) mysticism : — 
 
156 Ancient and Modern CHristologies 
 
 It is comparatively easy to say what the real 
 truth of Christian mysticism is. It is, in fact, the 
 doctrine, or rather the experience, of the Holy 
 Ghost. It is the realization of human personality 
 as characterized by, and consummated in, the in- 
 dwelling reality of the Spirit of Christ, which is 
 God {Atonement and Personality, p. 312). 
 
 But then, the ' fruits ' of the Spirit we can see, the 
 work of the Spirit we cannot see. It is however, 
 I cannot but think, a clear gain if we firmly grasp 
 the fact that the work of the Holy Spirit, the true 
 and proper work, the active divine influence brought 
 to bear upon the soul, does belong to this lower 
 sphere. It is subliminal, not supraliminal. We 
 know it only by its effects. 
 
 Now the subliminal region is as it were divided 
 into zones ; and in proportion as we go down deeper 
 through these zones our power of understanding 
 and describing what goes on there diminishes ; the 
 processes become more complex and more remote 
 from common experience. Between the upper 
 strata of the subconscious and the lower strata of 
 the conscious the paths are numerous, broad, and 
 easy. In these upper regions are stored the simple 
 impressions of outward objects, the record of remem- 
 bered facts, the outlines of past events, which are 
 recalled to consciousness with more or less of the 
 vividness and intensity, but in very much the same 
 guise in which they vanished below the horizon of 
 consciousness. The recollection of things past is 
 only a fainter image of the things past themselves, 
 
VI. Presuppositions of a Modern Christology 157 
 
 and the language which describes them as past is 
 a repetition or revival of the language used to 
 describe them when they were present 
 
 But these surface impressions are one thing, the 
 deeper storage of thoughts and emotions and the 
 deposits of past thought and emotion are another. 
 However we are to think of these more permanent 
 and grouped phenomena, or of the mental states in 
 which they inhere, in any case we must remember 
 that these states are alive and active, and their 
 activity is communicated to their contents. The 
 deposits left by vital experience do not lie together 
 passively side by side, like so many dead bales 
 of cotton or wool, but there is a constant play as it 
 were of electricity passing and repassing between 
 them. In this way are formed all the deeper and 
 more permanent constituents of character and 
 motive. And it is in these same subterranean 
 regions, and by the same vitally reciprocating action, 
 that whatever there is of divine in the soul of man 
 passes into the roots of his being. 
 
 The reflexion in consciousness of these profounder 
 movements is by no means a mechanical repro- 
 duction. Impulses towards good and impulses 
 towards evil come flickering up from below. Very 
 often they come lightly and go lightly. They do 
 not themselves amount to any solid basement of 
 character. They are only an index of the real 
 basement. And the index is but light and flicker- 
 ing, like the finely poised needle on the face of 
 
158 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 a dial. The really important thing is not the index, 
 but the weight or the pressure that moves the index. 
 And that, in the case of moral character and religious 
 motive, is out of sight, down in the lowest depths of 
 personality. 
 
 The difficulty for us is to read the full signifi- 
 cance of these messages from below. There are all 
 degrees of directness and clearness. Sometimes the 
 message can hardly be deciphered at all ; the needle 
 seems to play aimlessly backwards and forwards ; 
 the most that can be made out is the single fact 
 that there is a message. At other times we are left 
 in no doubt that the message has a meaning ; and 
 in part the meaning is sufficiently plain, while in 
 part it is so wrapt up in symbol and metaphor that 
 as a whole we are baffled by it. But, again at times, 
 the ear is so attuned to the message, the listener is 
 so endowed with a special gift, that what is obscure 
 to others is revealed to him. To such gifted indivi- 
 duals, in their moments of clairvoyance, God seems 
 to speak ' face to face, as a man speaketh with his 
 friend \ There are these differences of degree, but 
 I must not now stay to dwell upon them ; neither 
 must I attempt to apply all this of which I have 
 been speaking. I shall seem perhaps to have been 
 beating about the bush too long. I have said 
 nothing so far on the subject of Christology. The 
 connexion with this has still to be made good. But 
 I can perhaps show you the relevance, and even the 
 importance, of this preliminary matter, if I first sum 
 
VI. Presuppositions of a Modern Christology 159 
 
 up the result of what I have been saying in one 
 proposition, and then go on to anticipate what I am 
 about to say in another. 
 
 The first, retrospective, proposition is : that the 
 proper 1 seat or locus of all divine indwelling, or 
 divine action upon the human soul, is the subliminal 
 consciousness. 
 
 And the other, anticipatory, proposition that I 
 shall try to work out is : that the same, or the cor- 
 responding, subliminal consciousness is the proper 
 seat or locus of the Deity of the incarnate Christ. 
 
 1 Some stress is laid upon 'proper*, for which I might almost 
 have written ' primary \ I do not of course mean to deny that 
 this divine element makes itself felt, and at times directly felt, 
 in consciousness. But it seems to come up (as it were) unto 
 consciousness, as if from some lower and deeper sphere. 
 
VII 
 
 A TENTATIVE MODERN 
 CHRISTOLOGY 
 
 1147 TIT 
 
 M 
 
VII 
 
 A TENTATIVE MODERN CHRISTOLOGY 
 
 In the last lecture we found ourselves led to the 
 conclusion that the proper seat or locus of whatever 
 there is of divine in man — by whatever name we 
 call it, ' immanence/ ' indwelling,' ' mystical union/ 
 or the like, and whatever the extent of the real 
 experience corresponding to those names — is that 
 part of the living organism of man which we are 
 learning to call the subliminal consciousness. Per- 
 haps we ought in this instance to use an even 
 stronger term, and to speak of ' infraliminal 3 in- 
 stead of ' subliminal \ But no ; I am inclined to 
 think that ' subliminal ' is better. It is true that 
 the proper seat of the really divine — as well as, 
 I am afraid, the really diabolical — in man is that 
 part of the living self which is most beyond his ken. 
 And yet, as I shall have occasion presently to point 
 out in greater detail, although this divine element 
 lies so deep, and in its quiescent state is so far 
 withdrawn from our contemplation, it is by no 
 means always quiescent, but sends up impulses 
 from time to time which — if they elude us still in 
 their deeper roots themselves — nevertheless produce 
 effects which come within the field of consciousness, 
 so that they can be rightly called subconscious. 
 
 m 2 
 
164 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 That which comes to expression is for the most 
 part not so much the divine itself (though this too 
 appears sometimes, in the great mystics, to reach 
 direct expression) as indications of the presence of 
 the divine. 
 
 If we look into ourselves, this is what we shall 
 see. There is an impulse to right action, and we 
 act ; there is an impulse to prayer, and we pray ; 
 there is an impulse towards thanksgiving, and we 
 give thanks ; there is above all that central impulse 
 of faith, the impulse as it were to take hold of God 
 in Christ and cling fast to Him, so that no outward 
 deterrent, no other conflicting attraction, can loosen 
 the hold. We feel that all these promptings come 
 from a hidden source within us. We can say with 
 St. Paul * the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity : , . . 
 the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with 
 groanings which cannot be uttered ' (Eom. viii. 26). 
 We know enough of what goes on within us to be 
 able to trace it to its source, but we cannot go 
 beyond this ; we cannot in any more explicit way 
 describe or define the ultimate cause of these 
 abysmal motions. Not only the ordinary life but 
 the highest life of the saintliest of men is conducted 
 upon the human plane ; to all superficial appearance 
 he leads just the same kind of life as his neighbours. 
 He knows, and we know, that that is not a full 
 account of the matter — that he really has ' meat to 
 eat' that we others 'know not of; but, however 
 true that may be, however deep the source of this 
 
VII. A Tentative Modern Christology 165 
 
 inward sustenance, his outward acts, so far as they 
 are outward, are subject to precisely the same laws, 
 and present the same generic appearance, as those 
 of other men. It would take some time before we 
 should discover that the saint or the mystic was 
 what he was ; and we should discover it, not by 
 direct inspection, but by inference — or rather, by 
 inference within inference, as by a cunning arrange- 
 ment of mirrors the surgeon is able to see further 
 into the interior of the body than is possible to 
 direct observation. It is literal truth to say that 
 the inner life of the spirit is 'hid with Christ in 
 God ' ; but the medium through which that inner 
 life is manifested — so far as it is ever manifested — 
 is the common workday life of men. 
 
 Now it seems to me that the analogy of our human 
 selves can at least to this extent be transferred to 
 the Incarnate Christ. If whatever we have of divine 
 must needs pass through a strictly human medium, 
 the same law would hold good even for Him. A 
 priori we should expect that it would be so ; and 
 a posteriori we find that as a matter of fact it was so. 
 We have seen what difficulties are involved in the 
 attempt to draw as it were a vertical line between 
 the human nature and the divine nature of Christ, 
 and to say that certain actions of His fall on one 
 side of this line and certain other actions on the 
 other. But these difficulties disappear if, instead of 
 drawing a vertical line, we rather draw a horizontal 
 line between the upper human medium, which is 
 
166 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 the proper and natural field of all active expression, 
 and those lower deeps which are no less the proper 
 and natural home of whatever is divine. This line 
 is inevitably drawn in the region of the subconscious. 
 That which was divine in Christ was not nakedly 
 exposed to the public gaze ; neither was it so entirely 
 withdrawn from outward view as to be wholly sunk 
 and submerged in the darkness of the unconscious ; 
 but there was a sort of Jacob's ladder by which the 
 divine forces stored up below found an outlet, as it 
 were, to the upper air and the common theatre in 
 which the life of mankind is enacted. 
 
 The advantage of this way of conceiving of the 
 Person of Christ is that it leaves us free to think 
 of His life on earth as fully and frankly human, 
 without at the same time fixing limits for it which 
 confine it within the measures of the human ; it 
 leaves an opening, which in any case must be left, 
 by which the Deity of the Incarnate preserves its 
 continuity with the infinitude of Godhead. 
 
 The great gain from the recognition of the 
 subliminal activities of consciousness lies in the 
 fact that it reduces the conscious self to its proper 
 proportions, and makes us realize in a way in which 
 we hardly did realize before how much larger the 
 Whole Self is than this limited part of it. And, 
 in like manner, the application of this analogy to the 
 Life of Christ enables us to realize it much more 
 in its true proportions — in the proportions, that is, 
 which the human life as lived on earth really bore 
 
VII A Tentative Modern Christology 167 
 
 to the whole transcendent manifestation of the Son 
 of God. 
 
 On the one hand, we think of the human 
 consciousness of the Lord as entirely human ; we 
 make no attempt to divide it up and fence off one 
 part of it as human and another part as divine. 
 Whatever there was of divine in Him, on its way 
 to outward expression whether in speech or act, 
 passed through, and could not but pass through, 
 the restricting and restraining medium of human 
 consciousness. This consciousness was, as it were, 
 the narrow neck through which alone the divine 
 could come to expression. This involves that only 
 so much of the divine could be expressed as was 
 capable of expression within the forms of humanity. 
 We accept this conclusion unreservedly, and have 
 no wish to tamper with it. The Life of our Lord, so 
 far as it was visible, was a strictly human life ; He 
 was, as the Creeds teach, ■ very Man * ; there is 
 nothing to prevent us from speaking of this human 
 life of His just as we should speak of the life of one 
 of ourselves. Over this we can shake hands with 
 those continental theologians who insist on taking 
 the humanity of our Lord in real earnest, and as 
 no mere matter of form. 
 
 But, on the other hand, we no less emphatically 
 refuse to rule out or ignore or explain away the 
 evidence which the Gospels and the rest of the New 
 Testament afford that this human life was, in its 
 deepest roots, directly continuous with the life of 
 
168 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 God Himself. If St. Paul could quote and endorse 
 the words of a pagan poet claiming for the children 
 of men that they are also God's offspring ; and if 
 they are this notwithstanding the fact that they are 
 confined in the body as creatures of perishable clay ; 
 if in spite of these limitations it may still be said of 
 them that in God they 'live and move and have 
 their being', might not the same be said in a yet more 
 searching and essential sense of Him who was 
 Son in a more transcendent and ineffable mode 
 of being than they? Whatever the Homoousion 
 means — and in the last resort it remains a symbol 
 rather than a term of direct description, because it is 
 a corporeal metaphor applied to Spirit — whatever it 
 means, can it be doubted that on this view there is 
 ample room for it ? Indeed, whatever room there is 
 in the universe is at our command, and we can fill it 
 as we will. That which stays our hand in the free- 
 dom of theorizing is not any external condition but 
 only the reverence which does not seek to be wise 
 beyond that which is written. There may well have 
 been a self-determination of the Godhead, such as 
 issued in the Incarnation, as far back as thought can 
 go. I add that as perhaps a tenable modern 
 paraphrase of the primary element in the doctrine 
 of the Trinity. This doctrine, in its essence as in its 
 origin, turns upon the recognition of the Incarnation 
 of the Son. But in these regions the modern thinker 
 will desire to walk warily, and not to intrude further 
 than he is compelled. 
 
VII A Tentative Modern Christology 169 
 
 In a previous lecture I mentioned a work which 
 appeared about three years ago, Tlie One Christ, by 
 F. Weston, B.D., at that time Canon and Chan- 
 cellor, and now Bishop, of Zanzibar. I believe that 
 its very merits have stood in its way, and that it has 
 received less attention than it deserves. But those 
 who have read it will I think agree with me that it 
 is a remarkable book. Written in mental solitude 
 and isolation only a little less than we might sup- 
 pose — the dedication shows that the isolation was 
 not quite complete, — 'in a country where books 
 are few and which is far away from ail centres of 
 theological thought/ it is concerned with high 
 themes and treats them with marked originality and 
 with sustained earnestness and elevation. The book 
 starts from a different side of approach to mine — 
 not from modern thought and psychology, but from 
 Dogmatics in the highest sense of the word. And 
 yet I am glad to think that we meet in the middle 
 to such a large extent as we do. Dr. Weston's 
 purpose is to vindicate the one consciousness of the 
 Christ ; and with him too this consciousness is 
 strictly human. His main point, if I understand 
 aright, is that this human consciousness was assumed 
 by a single act of will anterior to the Incarnation, 
 not by a succession of acts repeated during the 
 Incarnation. I must let Dr. Weston speak in his 
 own words: — 
 
 \ With the Incarnate [this suppression of certain 
 powers] is not an act of forgetfulness. Rather it is 
 
170 Ancient and Modern Chrlstologies 
 
 an act of supreme divine power that so orders the 
 life of the Logos that within a certain sphere He 
 wills to have no consciousness of Himself that is not 
 mediated for Him by His human soul. . . . Looked 
 at from above, as from the standpoint of the Logos 
 Himself, His consciousness as man must surely bear 
 the marks of self-sacrificing love, of powerful self- 
 restraint. It is the result of the self-emptying of the 
 Son ; of His determination to accept, within certain 
 relationships, the fashion of a man and the form of 
 a slave. He willed so to relate Himself to the Father 
 and to men that within these relationships He could 
 not know Himself as unlimited Son of God. 
 
 But looked at from below, from our standpoint, 
 His consciousness as man is that of the perfect Son 
 of Man, who at every moment, in ever-growing 
 clearness, realizes in and through manhood His 
 divine Sonship ; who knows Himself as God at 
 every moment just in the measure that such self- 
 knowledge can be mediated by the soul as it passes 
 from perfect infancy to perfect childhood, from 
 perfect childhood to perfect youth, and from perfect 
 youth to perfect manhood. And in this it is really 
 human ; the self-consciousness of the Man Christ 
 Jesus, the self-consciousness of God in manhood. 
 
 It is in the light of such a theory as this that we 
 best understand the saying of our Lord that His 
 Father is greater than He is. For the Incarnate 
 speaks of Himself as He was on earth in His Incar- 
 nate state, within the relationships made concrete 
 by His assumption of flesh. He speaks not of His 
 manhood, but of His Incarnate being and state. As 
 Incarnate He is less than His Father. As touching 
 His manhood, and the conditions that it has imposed 
 upon His person, He is inferior to His Father. 
 
 The importance of arriving at a conception of 
 a single consciousness of the Christ cannot be over- 
 
VII A Tentative Modern Christology 171 
 
 estimated. The popular teaching that assumes in the 
 Incarnate a full consciousness of divine glory side 
 by side with a consciousness of certain occasional 
 human limitations cannot be too strongly deprecated. 
 We must not allow ourselves to speak of the Babe 
 of Bethlehem as ruling the universe from His 
 mother's knee ; nor of the sacred Heart of Jesus as 
 consciously embracing the whole race from the first 
 moment of its existence. To do so is to require 
 three states of the Logos : the first in which He is 
 unlimited and unincarnate ; the second in which He 
 is incarnate, and unlimited except when He wills to 
 allow some merely human condition to prevail over 
 Him ; and the third in which He is self-limited in 
 that human condition. And the result of such a 
 conception of the Incarnate is to make His manhood 
 unique not only in the degree of its perfection, but 
 also in kind. It makes it utterly unlike ours, and 
 also removes it from all part in the mediation of 
 His self-consciousness. 
 
 And, on the other hand, the Kenotic theories 
 are equally to be deplored. For they picture the 
 Incarnate as of a dual consciousness in the sense 
 that they require two centres of activity in the 
 lower state ; a centre of self-abandonment, and 
 a centre of His divine-human or human activities 
 after the self-abandonment has taken place. 
 
 For myself, the daylight shines most fully at the 
 point in which I am able to assign to the universal 
 sphere of Logos-activity all the self-limitation that 
 was necessary for the mediation of Christ's con- 
 sciousness by His manhood. The child Jesus was 
 able to be a perfect child, not because He as 
 Incarnate restrained divine powers lest they should 
 overpower His boy-nature, but because as Incarnate 
 He is at every moment observant of and obedient 
 to a law of self-restraint which He as unlimited 
 
172 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 Logos wills should be imposed upon Himself. The 
 child in Joseph's shop is the concrete expression 
 of those relations of the Incarnate, Godward and 
 manward, which depend for their reality at every 
 moment upon the action of the Logos Himself in 
 His universal sphere of activities. The Logos as 
 able to limit Himself and as conscious of that ability 
 is to be regarded as in the sphere of the universal 
 and eternal relationships ; the special, incarnate 
 relationships are to be conceived as those of the 
 Logos self-limited, who knows Himself only as 
 Logos limited in manhood (pp. 156-159). 
 
 This long quotation will I hope have made clear 
 the position taken up. The writer says at the out- 
 set that his task would make great demands alike 
 upon courage and faith. I believe that he has met 
 all these demands. He is a devout son of the 
 Church, and has written throughout with absolute 
 loyalty ; but at the same time he has followed his 
 thought where it led him. He has stated his views 
 as explicitly as possible; and yet I do not think 
 that he has really come in conflict with any catholic 
 doctrine. It is important to observe that his 
 contemplation is focused upon the Consciousness of 
 Christ. I do not think that there is any real 
 contradiction even with a popular statement such as 
 that in a lovely sequence published by Dr. Neale. 1 
 
 Patris Unigenitus, 
 
 Per quern fecit omnia, 
 Hie degit humanitus 
 
 Sub matre paupercula : 
 
 1 Sequmtiae ex Missalibus (London, 1852), p. 11. 
 
VI L A Tentative Modern Christology 173 
 
 Ibi sanctos angelos 
 
 Reficit laetitia: 
 Hie sitit et esurit 
 
 Degens in infantia. 
 
 Ibi regit omnia ; 
 
 Hie a matre regitur : 
 Ibi dat imperia; 
 
 Hie ancillae subditur: 
 Ibi summi culminis 
 
 Residet in solio; 
 Hie ligatus fasciis 
 
 Vagit in praesepio. 
 
 The substance of what is said here has of course 
 higher authority than the sequence. But the 
 language used by Dr. Weston does not refer to the 
 fact, but only to the consciousness of the fact. If 
 I were pressed myself and called upon to give 
 account at the bar of modern thought, I should 
 content myself with speaking of the consciousness 
 of the Christ. I should not deny what the Church 
 has ever said. I do not like such denials, and will not 
 make them unless I am (intellectually) compelled. 
 And in this case I do not think that I am compelled. 
 I would rather keep silent. I should feel that I 
 was out of my depth when I began to go beyond 
 the limits of the consciousness of Christ. The 
 mystery of the relation of the Son to the Father 
 stretches beyond our ken. The Deity which rules 
 the universe is in the last resort the same Deity 
 which took human flesh. So much I believe ; and 
 that belief seems to me enough to connect the faith 
 of the patristic age with our own. 
 
174 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 The consciousness of our Lord, as I have been 
 trying to describe it and as I conceive that it is 
 presented to us in the Gospels, is a genuinely human 
 consciousness. But I shall doubtless be asked : If 
 that is so, what ground have we for thinking that 
 there was in Him a root of being striking down 
 below the strata of consciousness, by virtue of which 
 He was more than human ? My reply is, that we 
 know it by the marks which have been appealed to 
 all down the centuries in proof that in Him Deity 
 and humanity were combined. All those little in- 
 cidental sayings which have so long been noted in 
 the Gospels, although comparatively slight singly in 
 themselves, nevertheless in their accumulated force 
 convey a distinct impression ; and to that impression 
 justice is only done when we proclaim Him God as 
 well as man. The conscience that has sunk itself 
 in Christianity cannot stop short of this. It refuses 
 to think of Christ merely as man. If it were to do 
 so, it would feel that half of Him was unexplained, 
 that there were features in Him that were otiose, 
 ineffective, and without meaning. 
 
 The most definite, the most comprehensive and 
 the most exalted (according to the current ideas of 
 exaltation) of all the titles which our Lord took 
 to Himself was the Jewish title Messiah. This 
 title certainly included for our Lord Himself, as for 
 all who ever used it, the idea of vast dominion. 
 The Messiah was to be the vicegerent on earth of 
 God Himself ; the kingdom of God on earth was 
 
VII. A Tentative Modern Christology 175 
 
 His kingdom. It included the idea of a vast resto- 
 ration, redemption or salvation — according to the 
 Jews' notion in the first instance for their own 
 people, but through them for the human race. And 
 the outlook of our Lord was, we are sure, grander 
 than theirs. Lastly, the title Messiah included the 
 functions of the Judge — the Judge of all mankind. 
 And we cannot doubt that our Lord thought of 
 Himself as destined to hold this great assize. 
 
 The incidental expressions of which I spoke are 
 really grouped round this central idea ; they all 
 converge inwards upon it. When our Lord assumes 
 the right to forgive sins ; when He lays down a new 
 Law like a second Moses ; when He allows it to be 
 seen that He thinks of Himself as greater than 
 Jonah or than Solomon ; when He pronounces 
 blessing on acts done to His disciples as acts done 
 to Him — in all these cases His Messianic conscious- 
 ness is the moving cause. 
 
 This Messianic consciousness was central. But 
 to say that it was central is not by any means the 
 same thing as to say that it was adequate. It was 
 very far from being this. The most we can say for 
 it is that it was the nearest idea and the nearest ex- 
 pression that offered itself at the time. Whenever 
 our Lord used it — and we know that, although He 
 presupposed it always, He used it seldom and with 
 great reserve — He strained it almost to bursting. 
 
 In particular, He fused with it two further con- 
 ceptions ; first, that contained in the prophetic ideal 
 
176 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 of the Servant of Jehovah, an ideal that was never 
 far away from His thoughts ; and secondly, the sense 
 of closest intimacy with God, a sense which He 
 expressed by speaking of Himself as ' the Son ' and 
 of God as 'the Father'. 
 
 Even so — even when it was enriched in these 
 deeply significant ways — still the idea of Messiah- 
 ship was inadequate. But we are not to think of 
 the inadequacy as at all surprising or different from 
 what was to be expected. Let us go back to our 
 psychology, and consider the essential conditions of 
 the case. 
 
 I have described our human consciousness as 
 a kind of ' narrow neck ' through which everything 
 that comes up from the deeps of human nature has 
 to pass. It may help us to think of the conscious- 
 ness as a sort of porous material stretched entirely 
 across this neck and closing the orifice. The orifice 
 is closed, but not absolutely or imperviously ; the 
 material is so porous that it permits a great deal of 
 that which comes up to pass through. The process 
 is like that of filtering : certain particles, very many 
 particles pass through the pores and come to the 
 surface. In other words, dropping or varying the 
 metaphor, a certain proportion of the hidden con- 
 tents of human nature enter into consciousness, and 
 through consciousness find expression. But in what 
 relation do these stand to the remainder that is left 
 behind, that does not enter into consciousness and 
 never finds expression ? How much of ' the vision 
 
FIL A Tentative Modern Christology 177 
 
 and the faculty divine 5 has no accomplishment of 
 phrase corresponding to it ? 
 
 The poets are perpetually reminding us of this. 
 Perhaps Wordsworth most of all, for it is one of his 
 leading ideas. He sums it up in the famous line, 
 
 We feel that we are greater than we know. 
 
 If we are to paraphrase this in the language of 
 philosophy, and of present-day philosophy, we should 
 say that the unconscious processes of cerebration are 
 richer and more productive than the conscious ; the 
 subliminal activities of the human mind are subtler 
 and more various than the supraliminal. Words- 
 worth is constantly aiming at this, and in many of 
 his best-known passages : as when he speaks of the 
 1 something far more deeply interfused ', or of the 
 
 Blank misgivings of a creature 
 Moving about in worlds not realized. 
 
 But of course he does not stand alone. We think 
 of Tennyson, with his ' Higher Pantheism ' and 
 ' FJower in the crannied wall ', or of Browning's 
 
 fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, 
 A chorus-ending from Euripides, 
 
 with the train of thought which such things set in 
 motion. Or again we think of Blake's 
 
 To see a World in a grain of sand, 
 And a Heaven in a wild flower, 
 Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, 
 And Eternity in an hour. 
 
 1147 N 
 
178 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 Feats of which the conscious soul is not capable 
 become possible with the help of the subconscious. 
 
 The narrow-necked vessel has an opening at the 
 bottom, which is not stopped by any sponge. Through 
 it there are incomings and outgoings, which stretch 
 away into infinity and in fact proceed from, and are, 
 God Himself. That is the ultimate and most im- 
 portant point. I have said already that, whatever 
 there may be of divine in man, it is in these deep 
 dim regions that it has its abiding-place and home. 
 And I feel sure that we may make use of this 
 analogy when we speak or think of the divine 
 Person of our Lord. 
 
 Perhaps I may remind you of another metaphor 
 to which I had recourse in the last lecture. I spoke 
 of the upper consciousness as a kind of dial-plate, 
 with an index needle moving lightly backwards and 
 forwards before it. The deepest movements of the 
 human mind cannot be read upon the dial ; they 
 can only indicate their presence, and through some 
 faint symbol or other hint at their nature. Our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, when He became Incarnate, assumed 
 such a disability as this. He could not — by His 
 own deliberate act of self-restraint He could not — 
 wear His Deity (as it were) upon His sleeve. He 
 knew that the condition which He was assuming 
 permitted only degrees of self-manifestation. He 
 knowingly condemned Himself, if the phrase may 
 be allowed, to that inadequate expression of which 
 I have spoken. But just as in the man the whole 
 
VII A Tentative Modern Christology 179 
 
 Self, conscious, subconscious, and infraconscious, is 
 indefinitely larger than the conscious Self taken 
 alone, so even in our Lord the manifested Life was 
 only, as it were, an index to the total Life of which 
 the visible activities were but a relatively small 
 portion. 
 
 We may venture then to picture to ourselves the 
 working of our Lord's consciousness in some such 
 way as this. His life on earth presented all the 
 outward appearance of the life of any other con- 
 temporary Galilean. His bodily organism discharged 
 the same ordinary functions and ministered to the 
 life of the soul in the same ordinary ways. He had 
 the same sensations of pleasure and pain, of distress 
 and ease, of craving and satisfaction. Impressions 
 received through the senses and emotions awakened 
 by them were recollected and stored up for use by 
 the same wonderful processes by which any one of 
 us becomes the living receptacle of personal ex- 
 periences. His mind played over all these accumu- 
 lated memories, sifting, digesting, analysing, extract- 
 ing, combining, and recombining. Out of such con- 
 stituent elements, physical, rational, moral, and 
 spiritual, character was formed in Him as in any 
 one of ourselves, though with unwonted care and 
 attention. Not that we need suppose that the actual 
 process of character-forming was more self-conscious 
 with Him than it is with us. The forming of 
 character is the unconscious automatic effect of 
 
 N 2 
 
180 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 particular decisions of judgement and acts of will. 
 Conscience discriminates between right and wrong ; 
 in His case it invariably chose the right and eschewed 
 the wrong. But out of the midst of all these moral 
 decisions and actions, out of the interplay of social 
 relations, under the guidance of observation and re- 
 flection, there gradually grew up a sense of deliberate 
 purpose, a consciousness of mission. Of all the 
 shaping influences from without doubtless the most 
 important was the study of the Jewish Bible, the 
 sacred scriptures of the Old Testament. It would 
 be by the help of these, suggesting ideas and forms 
 of expression, that the mind of our Lord singled out 
 for itself by degrees those particular terms of 
 which I have spoken as best fitted to describe the 
 character and the mission of which He was conscious 
 in Himself — Messiah, Son of Man, Son (i. e. of God). 
 I do not think we can doubt that in order of time 
 the last of these came first. The Child Jesus, like 
 any other Jewish child, first learnt to think of God 
 on His mother's knee. But the thought soon took 
 possession of Him as it did not take possession of 
 other Jewish children. And then, what could be 
 more natural than that He should extend and apply 
 to the Heavenly Father the content of the nearest and 
 most familiar to Him of all earthly relations ? The 
 thought of God as His Father grew with His growth 
 and strengthened with His strength ; indeed it seems 
 as though it absorbed all other thoughts beside ; other 
 thoughts affected Him only as they stood in relation 
 
VII. A Tentative Modern Christology 181 
 
 to this. To be Son of God : what an idea ! What 
 heights and depths were contained in that single 
 Name! Everything else that Jesus of Nazareth 
 ever thought about Himself was but an explication 
 of it, was but an incident or episode involved in it 
 from the first, though only taking outward ex- 
 pression in course of time. The oldest historic use of 
 the title Son of God was for the Davidic king, as 
 an agent of the theocracy ; and then next, by an easy 
 transition, for the Messianic King, of whom the 
 earthly king was a type. Hence, when the voice 
 came at His Baptism, * Thou art My beloved Son, 
 in Thee I am well pleased,' or possibly (as in the 
 Western text of Luke ii. 22) ' Thou art My Son, this 
 day have I begotten Thee', Jesus at once knew 
 what it meant ; He at once knew that He was to 
 regard Himself as the Messiah of prophecy. This 
 led to much searching of heart, of which the 
 (symbolic) story of the Temptation gives us a 
 glimpse. It was as a last outcome of those solitary 
 wrestlings that Jesus chose for Himself that other 
 title, already stamped with Messianic meaning, 
 though with other associations wider still, the title 
 Son of Man. By this title He chose to be known, 
 speaking of Himself with wonderful delicacy, nearly 
 always in the third person. What was the mission, 
 what was the course marked out for one who knew 
 Himself to be in a sense indefinitely deep the Son 
 of God? Why was He placed upon the earth in 
 human guise? What was to be the end of His 
 
182 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 human career ? And — still more important — what 
 destiny was in store for Him, and for the human 
 race through Him, when that career was ended? 
 Once more, the Messiah could not be in doubt. 
 He knew — every Israelite knew — that in Him all 
 the nations of the earth were to be blessed. We 
 may well believe that at first Jesus went upon His 
 way wondering how those ancient prophecies were 
 to be fulfilled, by what precise means the tide of 
 blessing would spread from Palestine outwards and 
 onwards. It would seem as though at first, while 
 waiting to have this more fully revealed to Him, He 
 simply did the work that lay to His hand, teaching 
 and healing: That would in any case prepare the 
 way for the Kingdom of Heaven ; and in any case 
 He knew that blessedness was to come through the 
 Kingdom of Heaven. It was His chief mission to 
 bring about the coming of that kingdom- Was He 
 to do so as manifested King ? Was the theocracy 
 to be restored as a true theocracy ? By degrees His 
 eyes were opened, and He came to see what was 
 really awaiting Him. If there was to be a kingdom, 
 it was not kingdom from a throne, but kingdom 
 from a cross. This too He faced ; and its meaning 
 became clear to Him when He thought of the 
 Servant of Jehovah in the latter part of Isaiah. 
 Here was another role that He felt that He was to 
 play. He felt, and He understood, and became 
 obedient unto death. But He knew that, for all 
 this — for all the suffering of death, the prophecies of 
 
VII A Tentative Modern Christology 183 
 
 blessing were not abrogated. Still they remained 
 in force, and they would certainly be fulfilled ; but 
 how? When that question came to be asked How 2 
 our sources leave us in some ambiguity. The 
 solution that lay nearest at hand was that of the 
 Jewish Apocalypses. And it would be very natural 
 and very probable that our Lord would at least at 
 times have recourse to this solution ; He would 
 express Himself in the familiar language ; and His 
 disciples were evidently allowed to fall back to 
 a large extent upon that language. 
 
 But the Apocalyptic teaching itself branched off 
 in two main directions. There was the part to be 
 played by the Messiah Himself as King and as 
 Judge. But another characteristic of the Last Days 
 was to be the great outpouring of the Spirit, con- 
 spicuously foretold by the prophet Joel. As a matter 
 of fact the Church witnessed such an outpouring. 
 A new and a powerful influence took up the work 
 begun by the Incarnation — took it up so promptly 
 and so continuously that to writers like St. Paul 
 and St. John it seemed to be the Incarnate Himself 
 still at work through His Spirit. Already in 
 St. Luke's evangelical narrative (Luke xxiv, 49, cf. 
 Acts i, 4, 8) this further working is represented as 
 predicted by Jesus. How did Jesus Himself think 
 of it ? I conceive that here, if anywhere — here, most 
 of all — that subliminal consciousness of His, to which 
 I have been referring, came into play. We speak 
 of a ' reserve of power ' in ordinary men, i, e. of 
 
184 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 latent powers that from time to time, on great 
 occasions, assert themselves in them. With Jesus, 
 these latent powers had throughout His life been 
 more abundant and nearer at hand than with others. 
 It was they which gave an extraordinary aspect to the 
 whole of His ministry. It was they which fed His 
 consciousness as Messiah and as Son. He had never 
 made any parade of them. He had treated them 
 with a certain irony, rather minimizing their pre- 
 sence than magnifying it. It was with Him as it 
 has been with the saints of all ages — that which 
 they had of deepest and most divine has never 
 been obtruded upon the public gaze, but rather 
 hidden away out of sight and known only by its 
 fruits. But now that the end was nigh, now that 
 the moment of release from the burden of the flesh 
 was all but come, I do not doubt that the Lord felt 
 these latent powers, so steadily restrained and so 
 sparingly used, surging up within Him, gathering all 
 their forces for an outbreak, crowding, as it were, 
 towards the exit and ready to burst out upon the 
 world. Still the human thought and tongue even 
 of Jesus — and it was only through human thought 
 and human speech that even He could communicate 
 with His disciples who were also His brethren — 
 could only express themselves in terms of current 
 meaning, could only express themselves with that 
 inadequacy and relativity of utterance which at- 
 taches to all that is human. The language of Apoca- 
 lypse, in one or other ofjts forms, was almost the 
 
VII. A Tentative Modern Chiistology 185 
 
 only language available. What applies to language 
 applies also to thought ; and I can well believe that 
 in the human thought, as well as in the language, of 
 Jesus there was an element that was vague, ap- 
 proximate, and undetermined. We ourselves have 
 the vantage-ground, not only of nearly nineteen 
 centuries of retrospect, but also of a terminology 
 more adapted to the thought of our own time ; and 
 it is no abuse of our rights if we prefer to employ 
 that terminology in describing the historic con- 
 sequences of the Incarnation as best we may. 
 
 But the one thing that has to be realized is that, 
 just as in one of us the conscious self is but a small 
 portion of the true self and such imperfect descrip- 
 tion as we can give of the history of the conscious self 
 most inadequately represents the real fortunes of a 
 soul travelling between two immensities, so a for- 
 tiori does the written record that has come down to 
 us utterly come short of the real history of the Son 
 of Man. We must bear this in mind and never 
 allow ourselves to forget it, but carefully adapt both 
 our language and our judgements to these conditions. 
 
VIII 
 THE PRESENT POSITION 
 
VIII 
 
 THE PBESENT POSITION 
 
 The appearance of the Hibbert Journal Supplement 
 for 1909, entitled Jesus or Christ?, is an event of 
 some importance. It came out about the same 
 time as the volume of Cambridge Biblical Essays ; 
 but the two books, although consisting of nearly 
 the same number of essays (in the one case eighteen, 
 in the other case sixteen), are of very different 
 character and purpose. There is of course no 
 comparison as to the amount of labour expended 
 upon them or as to the weight of authority which 
 they command. The Cambridge book had been 
 upon the stocks for several years ; it was prepared 
 with an educational object, to gather together within 
 moderate compass the more or less authenticated 
 results of prolonged research and study, and to do 
 this as a step in the process of mental discipline at 
 one of our foremost seats of learning. The essays 
 in the other book were evidently thrown off at 
 comparatively short notice ; they were not written 
 with the same consciousness of responsibility ; but 
 up to a certain point they make amends for this by 
 greater freedom of experiment. 
 
 This latter aspect of the book is the most 
 significant. "Whereas in the Cambridge volume we 
 
190 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 see one of our leading Universities carefully taking 
 stock of progress already made with a view to its 
 methodical extension, the ffibbert Journal venture is 
 not only spread over a much wider area — it includes 
 three contributions from the Continent and one from 
 America — but it evidently aims more deliberately at 
 breaking new ground, not over the whole field but 
 over one very central portion of it. This tentative- 
 ness and freedom of suggestion is just that which 
 gives it interest and attraction. I myself believe 
 that it will be a distinct help to the movement of 
 reconstruction which is going forward. 
 
 I shall not attempt to review the whole volume, 
 which reflects in its variety the ferment that is 
 going on in the public mind, but I shall try to single 
 out some of the points which have the most direct 
 bearing upon the subject of the preceding lectures. 
 In more places than one it appears to cut across 
 the particular construction which I have been 
 propounding. 
 
 The point at which the coincidence is greatest is 
 in the brief essay, of barely five pages, by Sir Oliver 
 Lodge. If this essay does not suggest exactly the 
 same solution that I have suggested, it at least seeks 
 for it in the same direction. It seeks a solution in 
 the same direction, and it dwells rather more upon 
 one aspect of it than I have done. As most of 
 what I had to say was already written before I had 
 read Sir Oliver Lodge's contribution, a rather full 
 comparing of notes may be desirable. There are 
 
VIII. The Present Position 191 
 
 several expressions to which I think that exception 
 may be taken, but my wish is rather to draw 
 attention to the general drift of the essay as a whole. 
 It is headed ( A Divine Incarnation ' ; and it begins 
 by asking, — 
 
 What is the meaning of Incarnation ? Surely the 
 manifestation in time and place of something pre- 
 viously existing — the display in bodily form, for 
 a limited period, of some portion of an eternal 
 spiritual essence. 
 
 Existence itself is illimitable and perennial, but 
 its manifestations are local and temporary. Nor is 
 the whole of a spiritual existence ever manifested, 
 — only that which the material employed can be 
 made to subserve. . . . The idea of an oak tree, with 
 its various phases, its ancestry, its future potentiali- 
 ties, is far larger than any actual manifestation, 
 whether in winter or in summer. A * flower in 
 a crannied wall' is an incarnation which is in 
 intimate touch with the whole universe. And 
 shall not the spirit of a man be larger and greater 
 than that which animates his body and enters his 
 consciousness? (p. 115). 
 
 At this point a question is raised which I did 
 distinctly contemplate, but did not discuss : — 
 
 It is customary with a certain not perfectly 
 orthodox school of psychology to speak of the non- 
 incarnate (?) and supplementary portion of a human 
 being as his * subliminal self/ the portion which is 
 beyond or beneath or above the threshold of his 
 ordinary consciousness. I do not say that 'self' is 
 the right term; 'self may best designate the 
 conscious and individualised portion only, and not 
 the hypothetical whole. 
 
192 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 I have little doubt that we cannot afford to debar 
 ourselves from using the word 'self in this con- 
 nexion. I do not know of any other word that we 
 can use. We mean by ' self ' in these contexts ' the 
 whole man ', all that is embraced within the range 
 of his personality, the unconscious part of him as 
 well as the conscious. We know that there is an un- 
 conscious region which in the strictest sense belongs 
 to him, because from time to time influences — or 
 ' uprushes ' as they are often called — make them- 
 selves felt in the conscious region, coming up out 
 of the unconscious. At the same time it is no doubt 
 well to remember that the word ( self ' has to do 
 double duty, sometimes for what we call the centre 
 of personality, and sometimes for the whole circum- 
 ference to which personality can be said to extend. 
 
 Sir Oliver Lodge goes on : — 
 
 But it is to the thing, rather than to the term used 
 to denote it, that I direct attention, to a larger and 
 dominant entity, belonging to us in some sense, or 
 rather to which we belong, which is still behind 
 the veil so far as planetary existence is concerned — 
 the self which has not entered into the region of 
 present consciousness, — an accumulation of powers 
 and insight, of which the ordinary uninspired man 
 is unaware, but to which the genius has moments 
 of access. The existence of this larger and per- 
 manent self, of which what we ordinarily know as 
 ourselves is but a fragment,— not anything divine, 
 but greater than humanity,— is the working hypo- 
 thesis to which facts have driven psychological 
 experimentalists. 
 
VIII. The Present Position 193 
 
 Much of this language is evidently tentative. 
 I could not adopt all of it. I fully believe in the 
 ' larger and dominant entity ' ; but that entity makes 
 itself felt in many more ways than its relation to 
 genius. And I should not like to put upon it the 
 limitation, ' not anything divine, but greater than 
 humanity/ I would beware of attempting to define 
 too far ; I prefer to leave a margin, which perhaps 
 philosophers or psychologists may narrow down 
 later. And therefore I have as a rule made use of 
 a vaguer phrase, 'whatever there is of divine in 
 man/ or the like; not by this implying that the 
 unconscious self consists only of this divine, or 
 diviner, element ; there is in any case a vast amount 
 that is purely human in it as well. But man is cer- 
 tainly conscious of divine influences within him ; 
 and these influences do not live in the consciousness 
 but come up into it from time to time ; always 
 bearing with them evidence that their origin is 
 deeper and larger than themselves. 
 
 We resume our quotation. In the first part Sir 
 Oliver Lodge speaks in an interesting way as a man 
 of science. In the latter part he writes rather as 
 a speculative layman than as a theologian. And 
 I will not intrude theology upon him, though I do 
 not think that the passage would lose anything 
 substantial if I did so : — 
 
 Given this hypothesis as a working clue, the 
 episodes of birth and death present no fundamental 
 difficulty. . . . Each of us is greater than we know. 
 
 1147 
 
194 Ancient and Modem Christologies 
 
 We have our roots in an infinite past, not only in 
 the bodies of our ancestors, but in the region of 
 mind or spirit as well ; we claim a transcendental 
 existence, some part of which began to assume 
 a temporary and local habitation at conception, and 
 so gradually entered more and more fully into 
 relation with matter, as the organism developed 
 into fitness for it and harmony with it. No sudden 
 entrance into flesh need be supposed, nor need the 
 exit be sudden. Gradual bodily decadence, as the 
 soul gradually begins to resume its immaterial exist- 
 ence, is the normal and healthy condition. Terres- 
 trial life remains an episode of surpassing interest 
 and importance, but is not begun and ended by 
 anything of the nature of creation and destruction, 
 merely by organisation and disorganisation ; it is an 
 episode of individualisation through bodily growth 
 and experience ; it is the attainment of personality, 
 of a definite kind of association with matter, with 
 reminiscences of bodily life and activity never 
 thenceforth to be effaced. 
 
 This is the experience through which every son 
 of man must pass. It is this which transmutes any 
 spirit into a human being. It is the process by 
 which any spirit must enter into relation and sym- 
 pathy and corporate union with humanity. 
 
 Christianity tells us that a Divine Spirit— that 
 the Deity himself, indeed — went through this 
 process in order to make himself known to man, 
 and also in order fully to realise the conditions and 
 limitations of the free beings which, through evolu- 
 tion, had gradually been permitted to exist. It 
 teaches us that, among all the lofty Spirits which 
 ever became incarnate on the earth, one supremely 
 Divine Spirit entered our flesh and walked on the 
 planet for a time, was born, loved, suffered, and 
 died, even as one of us. 
 
VIII. The Present Position 195 
 
 And this individualised and human aspect of the 
 eternally Divine Spirit we know as Jesus of 
 Nazareth, a man like ourselves, save that the glory 
 of that lofty Spirit shone through the fleshly cover- 
 ing and preserved it from the load of sin which 
 follows from inadequate knowledge, imperfect in- 
 sight, animal ancestry, and an alien will ? (p. 118 £). 
 
 This is not quite theologically ' correct '; but it is 
 easily corrected. In any case the main drift of it is 
 clear; and I believe that it throws real light on 
 what we may conceive to have been the mode or 
 method of the Incarnation. It also, I venture to 
 think, fits on well with, and supplements, the views 
 that I have been trying to expound in the two 
 preceding lectures. 
 
 If it had no other result, the collection of essays 
 has at least had this, that it reduces to their true 
 dimensions the objections brought in the original 
 article by the Kev. E. Roberts. These had indeed 
 been sufficiently answered in the two articles contri- 
 buted to the July number of the Hibbert Journal by 
 Mr. G. K. Chesterton and Prof. J. H. Moulton. On 
 its best side Mr. Roberts's paper was a reaction from 
 the somewhat vague and unreal panegyric that is so 
 often met with, especially in sermons. His criti- 
 cisms of this were probably prompted in the first 
 instance by a certain sincerity, which was however 
 soon lost in perverse inference and rhetorical exag- 
 geration. In these respects the article was only 
 a more cultivated version of the tirades of secularist 
 
 O 2 
 
196 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 lecturers. This side of it was easily and effectually 
 exposed. In the Hibbert volume I think we should 
 assign a special value to the refutations supplied on 
 the one hand by writers like Dr. Drummond and 
 on the other hand by two of the foreign contributors, 
 Profs, Weinel and Schmiedel. These come with all 
 the greater force because they are written from a 
 point of view that is not fundamentally very different 
 from that of Mr. Eoberts. Prof. Weinel's is the more 
 conservative, approximating to the position taken 
 up by Harnack, while Dr. Schmiedel is quite explicit 
 and rather severe in his negations (see for instance 
 pp. 59, 66, 76 f.). But both writers afford a con- 
 spicuous illustration of what I said in a previous 
 lecture. Although they both adopt what I have 
 called a ' reduced ' Christianity — I am afraid this 
 must be said of the Jena Professor as well as of his 
 colleague from Zurich, — they yet make the fullest 
 possible use of so much as they accept. By means of 
 close, careful, sympathetic study they extract from it 
 more than we should probably succeed in extracting. 
 An example will show best what I mean. Professor 
 Weinel, I think, nowhere commits himself to the 
 dogmatic confession of Christ as we confess Him. 
 But from the contemplation of the historic Jesus he 
 draws out almost as much of spiritual value 1 : — 
 
 1 We are tempted to ask whether all this spiritual value is 
 quite legitimately obtained, whether the language used (to 
 be fully justified) would not require a background of more 
 orthodox doctrine. 
 
VIII. The Present Position 197 
 
 So did Jesus live his own life in the first instance, 
 and in that life is contained the strength which is 
 flowing forth from him down to the present day. 
 And he who cannot define it scientifically may yet 
 Jeel it in the sayings of Jesus, and in his whole atti- 
 tude towards men, as revealed by the brief stories 
 which have been preserved concerning him. Every- 
 body may feel this Divine inwardness and fulness, 
 this certainty and clarity, this purity of a life wholly 
 lived in God. 
 
 These last words explain why we cannot detach 
 the person of Jesus from this ideal, as Roberts 
 wishes, and as others have wished. This is no 
 doctrine, but a life in God ; it cannot be put into 
 dogmatic statement, but merely described, or much 
 rather felt ; nor can it be handed down otherwise 
 than in precisely these sayings and stories of a per- 
 son. It can be attained only by seeing it lived out 
 in a human life, especially in that of its exponent. 
 One of the earliest disciples of Jesus has quite cor- 
 rectly said that this life is like the wind : ' Thou 
 hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence 
 it cometh nor whither it goeth.' Its seat is in the 
 indefinable and subtle realm of personality, in the 
 unconscious regions of the soul, which cannot be 
 apprehended by theories and dogmas, but only by 
 a spiritual experience. ... It is Jesus himself, and 
 not an ideal that can be detached from him, who 
 is the fulfiller of the moral religion of Judaism, 
 which he developed to its uttermost and trans- 
 formed into the religion of moral redemption 
 (pp. 38, 39). 
 
 That is, I think it will be admitted, a very 
 attractive passage. It shows how much may be 
 done with what we should consider imperfect tools ; 
 and here again we observe the same feeling after 
 
198 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 the unconscious as containing the key to modern 
 problems. 
 
 The disjunctive question 'Jesus or Christ?' 
 expresses well the issue which runs through the 
 whole volume. The essayists, as might be expected, 
 take different sides. Profs. Weinel and Schmiedel 
 may be taken as accepting the first half of the alter- 
 native, and not the second. The English writers 
 for the most part, though not entirely, accept 
 both. Perhaps the most striking representation 
 of this latter point of view comes from Professor 
 Percy Gardner : — 
 
 Up to a certain point the statements of Mr. 
 Eoberts seem to me not only true but incontrover- 
 tible. The picture drawn in the Synoptic Gospels is 
 of one who partook in every way of human nature, 
 and was bounded by human limitations. . . . But 
 we have next to turn to another range of facts, facts 
 of history and facts of experience, which are as 
 undeniable, and have as good a right to demand 
 explanation, as those on which so far we have 
 dwelt. And they are from the historic point of view 
 even better attested. . . . The Pauline writings 
 amply prove that in his time a most remarkable 
 movement was taking place in the spirits of men. . . . 
 We can best judge of it from its working in the 
 mind and heart of St. Paul, though no doubt he 
 was but one among many who felt the same 
 enthusiasm. ... He was also the progenitor of 
 a long line of Christian saints and heroes who 
 have lived in the faith of Christ, and carried on in 
 the world the propaganda begun by Paul. They 
 have lived in conscious relation with a divine power, 
 
Fill. The Present Position 199 
 
 they have been members of a great spiritual com- 
 munion, and they have all declared that this life 
 had its source not in themselves, but in the divine 
 spring of power and light which from age to age in- 
 spires the Christian Church, and makes it capable of 
 redeeming the world from sense and sin. Now, the 
 first range of phenomena of which I have spoken 
 is summed up in the word Jesus : the second range 
 of phenomena is summed up in the word Christ. 
 The existence of the Church has from the first 
 depended on the possibility of bringing the] two 
 sets of facts into relation one with another.*^ The 
 Church is the Church of Jesus-Christ : and a lover 
 of paradox might say that it is built upon a hyphen 
 (pp. 45-50). 
 
 That is certainly to put a fine point upon it : the 
 Christian faith ' built upon a hyphen ' ! Of course 
 the meaning is that the two significant halves of 
 that significant Name must not be separated but 
 combined. What proof have we of this ? — 
 
 What we want to know is what basis in fact and 
 reality there is for the hyphen of which I have 
 spoken. Is there a historic connection to be traced 
 between the life of Jesus on earth and the life of 
 Christ in the Church ? It appears to me that such 
 connection cannot be proved to a sceptic, for the 
 historic data are insufficient, and may be interpreted 
 in various ways. We cannot prove the spiritual 
 resurrection as we can prove the assassination of 
 Julius Caesar or the beheading of Charles I. It 
 must be accepted as an article of faith, not as the 
 result of intellectual research. 
 
 It is in the nature of all faith — not Christian 
 faith alone, but of faith in our fellow-men and in 
 
200 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 the divine government of the world — that though it 
 has a basis of fact and experience, it strains beyond 
 fact and experience into the realm of the ideal. . . . 
 The real question which lies before modern Chris- 
 tians is not whether a continuity of spiritual power 
 can be rigorously proved to run from the human 
 life of Jesus on into the life of the Christian Church, 
 but rather whether such a view can be reasonably 
 held, whether it is in contradiction with the ascer- 
 tained results of historic investigation. If not, then 
 it is a sufficient basis for a reasonable faith, if 
 faith is called for by Christian experience, and the 
 demands of the higher life. 
 
 Any person who should maintain that history 
 disproves such continuity of life would* be a most 
 arrogant dogmatist. We know more, much more, 
 in regard to our psychical conditions and spiritual 
 surroundings than did our fathers. But yet our 
 knowledge is strictly limited. It certainly behoves 
 us,, in dealing with such subjects as inspiration, 
 divine action in history, the nature of the world of 
 spirits to which we belong as members, to speak 
 with extreme caution. Above all things, to make 
 dogmatic denials where evidence is defective, is 
 certainly not the part either of a wise man or of 
 a really scientific man. 
 
 It is a fatal aberration to make the human life of 
 Jesus as recorded in the Gospels in any way unreal : 
 we must be content to see in them the memorials of 
 a human life, but without sin, and governed by 
 a unity of will with the divine purposes which makes 
 it quite unique. Yet we in no way transgress the 
 canons of reason and of history if we connect that 
 life with the outpouring of a fresh tide of spiritual 
 life upon the world, which took form in the 
 perpetuation of the spirit and the obedience of 
 Jesus in the inspiration of the Christian Church. 
 
VIII. The Present Position 201 
 
 He who came to the earth as Jesus has dwelt there 
 to our days as Christ. The Christian consciousness 
 of our day is one with the consciousness which has 
 set apart the followers of Christ from the world 
 since the day when the Apostles first realised that 
 though their Master was hidden from sight he was 
 with them until the end of the world. 
 
 And when contemporary Christians claim that 
 they, like St. Paul, have learned to live in 
 communion with, and in dependence upon, the 
 heavenly Christ, we are compelled to take the claim 
 seriously (pp. 54-56). 
 
 Professor Gardner writes with great caution and 
 moderation ; but he also writes with welcome open- 
 mindedness and a wide recognition of the range of 
 spiritual possibilities. After all, he is only interpret- 
 ing the experience of Christians as thousands and 
 tens of thousands have interpreted it for themselves. 
 And this interpretation goes back without a break 
 to the first generation of all. Let us listen to 
 Canon Scott Holland: — 
 
 For them, and for him [St. Luke and his readers], 
 there was no hint of variance or of conflict 
 between the Eternal Christ who offered the sacrifice 
 to God, and the Jesus of Nazareth who was done to 
 death by wicked men. On the contrary, it was 
 faith in the Christ that lent its breathless significance 
 to every tiny detail in the facts of the human tragedy. 
 Because they believed in Him as Christ, the Son of 
 God, therefore they found a priceless value in the 
 narration of each accident that befell the Son of Man. 
 
 Now, it is this fusion of the double interests that 
 constitutes our riddle. ... Do we feel as if the two 
 conceptions are in hopeless collision, as Mr. Koberts, 
 
202 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 in his article, vehemently argues ? Then that only 
 shows how far we must be from understanding the 
 mind of those who wrote and read our Synoptic 
 Gospels. To stop short in this apparent collision is, 
 simply, to confess that we can find no answer to the 
 riddle that we are set to solve. For the riddle is — 
 Why did those who wrote those Gospels not feel the 
 collision which afflicts us? They passed smoothly 
 from one conception to the other. They looked for 
 the Christ in the Jesus, and found what they looked 
 for (p. 128 £). 
 
 So Canon Scott Holland ; and another very instruc- 
 tive discussion of the subject, which I am specially 
 glad to see, is by Prof. B. W. Bacon of Yale (pp. 
 218-224). This is too long to quote, where so much 
 has been quoted already ; but it is an exposition of — 
 
 the essentially dual aspect of the Christian faith, 
 which began as a gospel preached by Jesus in 
 Galilee to publicans and sinners ; but which 
 experienced a new birth in the resurrection as 
 a gospel about Jesus proclaimed to every crea- 
 ture .... The Church has followed Peter in a more 
 or less vacillating and illogical, but practically 
 salutary, attempt to occupy both poles of doctrine, 
 that which centres in the earthly Jesus, and that 
 which centres in the heavenly Christ. 
 
 I am not sure that I quite understand what Prof. 
 Bacon means by the epithets ' vacillating and 
 illogical \ I should have thought that the testimony 
 of the Church was solid, so far as it went — that it 
 did consistently claim * to occupy both poles of 
 doctrine \ I should have thought that, at least for 
 
Fill. The Present Position 203 
 
 many centuries, the only substantial limitation to 
 this was that some minds are naturally averse to 
 everything that can be called ' mystical ', and that 
 the Church included specimens of this type, as well 
 as of its opposite. 
 
 I am glad to think that there is room for both 
 types, far removed as they are from each other. 
 I must not ignore the fact that there is an alter- 
 native view to that for which I have just been citing 
 witnesses. Dr. Schmiedel has a page of important 
 comment which ought not to be overlooked, and 
 which expresses his views with his usual uncom- 
 promising precision : — 
 
 If we now say 'Jesus is my life 5 , we are not 
 referring to the historical Jesus, as including 
 characteristics which to us are unacceptable, but 
 we are referring to an ideal for which the historical 
 Jesus has supplied only the essential features. That 
 this kind of attachment to Jesus should cease, in 
 order to satisfy the demands of veracity, is surely 
 not the wish of Eoberts. In such an event, religion 
 would certainly lose something which is essential to 
 its nature. Keligion always unfolds itself with the 
 greatest vitality in the intercourse of a person with 
 a person. For that reason it thinks of God as a 
 Person with whom communion can be held, and 
 greatly prefers to commune with a Person who at 
 the same time comes nearer to the soul in the guise 
 of humanity. In discussion with theologians, the 
 truth must be most deeply emphasised that it is 
 impossible to hold a real communion with Jesus as a man 
 of the past; what appears to be such a communion 
 consists entirely in self-identification with the mental 
 
204 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 attitude of Jesus, and in producing in oneself thoughts 
 which are believed to be called into being by Jesus in 
 a hind of conversation. Such a proceeding, however, 
 is richly fraught with blessing to the soul, even 
 though it involves intellectual error. And naturally 
 it leads to a lofty reverence such as is rendered 
 to no other hero, however great, to no other bene- 
 factor of mankind, however eminent. To all these 
 we look up with awe, with the feeling of littleness 
 in comparison with them, with heartfelt gratitude 
 for what we have received from them, and with the 
 consciousness of still being by them helped forward 
 on the path of victory. But towards none of them 
 do men stand in relations of such intimate spiritual 
 communion as towards Jesus, because the region in 
 which they feel he is helping them is more central 
 than in the case of the rest ; and because from none 
 else as from him do they receive so deep an impres- 
 sion that he has a heart of love for every human 
 being who approaches him — thanks to his image as 
 depicted in the gospels (p. 78). 
 
 I have italicized a passage which is evidently very 
 deliberate, and which deserves close attention. It 
 may be described as the minimum construction 
 that can be put upon the facts to which it refers. 
 Dr. Schmiedel is, of all the writers that I know, the 
 most austerely rational ; and in this passage he has 
 taken pains to ward off from himself the least suspi- 
 cion of Mysticism. That being so, it is interesting to 
 note how he goes on to rescue as much as possible 
 of the sentiment of Christian devotion. 
 
 This is, as I have already remarked, characteristic 
 of his essay all through. I must allow myself to 
 
VIII. The Present Position 205 
 
 quote one or two more passages, which will enable 
 us, I think, to do still more justice to this really 
 remarkable position. I will again take the liberty 
 of emphasizing points which seem to me specially 
 noticeable : — 
 
 The further we go back into the beginnings of 
 Christianity, the more must we recognise that the 
 effort to rank Jesus on an equality with God was a 
 noble effort, and a natural expression of the value 
 which was attached to the Christian religion. The 
 blessings which it brought were received, it is true, 
 from God ; but they were received through Christ, 
 and thus gratitude and veneration were also directed 
 towards him. Paul makes him, in the first stage, 
 an instrument in the hand of God (Rom. iii. 25, viii. 
 32) ; and yet Paul cannot avoid ascribing grace 
 to Christ himself (2 Cor. viii. 9). It is a very serious 
 question whether we to-day should possess Christianity at 
 all if Jesus had not been interpreted as a divine being. 
 In any case, this presentation of Christ, which 
 corresponded to heathen modes of conceiving the 
 gods and the sons of gods, has greatly contributed 
 to the diffusion of Christianity. Thus it was in its 
 own time a source of many blessings, and for that 
 very reason if for no other we ought to be ready to 
 pass a just estimate on the unfavourable after-results 
 which it is producing to-day (p. 65). 
 
 In the essential matter of genuine piety what has 
 come down to us from the religion of Jesus has 
 proved itself to be of infinite value. His funda- 
 mental principles have actually permeated the world 
 like leaven, and are permeating it more and more ; 
 and so far, no prospect exists that anything better 
 will be able to displace them (p. 75). 
 
 On Prof. Schmiedel's premisses we could not wish 
 
206 Ancient and Modem Christologies 
 
 for anything more clear-sighted or more just. But 
 is there no reaction from the admissions made in the 
 text back upon the premisses? Can the universe 
 really be explained on such narrowly restricted lines? 
 Are we to think of history as a tissue of self-decep- 
 tion? Are we to suppose that the natural and 
 necessary forms of human thought at one period 
 melt into mere mirage at another ? Are the spiritual 
 influences which seem so powerful and so deep merely 
 cases of the human soul talking to itself, or talking in 
 its sleep? The proper answer to Prof. Schmiedel 
 surely is : — 
 
 There are more things in heaven and earth, 
 
 Horatio, 
 Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. 
 
 It is the philosophy that needs to be altered and 
 
 enlarged, and not the world that is to be cut down 
 
 to the measure of the philosophy. 
 
 Far more congenial is the essay of Prof. Henry 
 Jones. The assumptions of Prof. Schmiedel seem 
 to be very like those of eighteenth-century Deism. 
 Prof. Jones, on the other hand, starts by assuming 
 that ' such conceptions as those of the divinity of 
 man and the immanence of God are becoming 
 commonplaces of religious thought' (p. 92). He 
 follows out the consequences of this assumption in 
 a way that is perhaps onesided, but that at least 
 within its limits has more affinity to the teaching of 
 the Bible and historical Christianity. The warmth 
 of the language with which Prof. Jones works out 
 
VIIL The Present Position 207 
 
 the implications of the doctrine of the Fatherhood 
 
 of God reminds us forcibly of more than one New 
 
 Testament passage: 'For whom he foreknew, he 
 
 also foreordained to be conformed to the image of 
 
 his Son, that he might be the firstborn among 
 
 many brethren' (Kom. viii. 29); 'For it became 
 
 him, for whom are all things, and through whom 
 
 are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to 
 
 make the author of their salvation perfect through 
 
 sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth and they 
 
 that are sanctified are all of one : for which cause 
 
 he is not ashamed to call them brethren ' (Heb. ii. 
 
 10, 11). The chief point of difference is that the 
 
 Biblical writers emphasized the ' leadership ' no less 
 
 than the 'brotherhood'. 1 And Prof. Jones does not 
 
 ignore this ; he says : — 
 
 I can well believe that [Jesus] felt that he stood 
 alone in his mission ; and that the revelation had 
 come to him with a fulness and power with which 
 it came to no other, I do not doubt : but if it could 
 
 1 Cf. an excellent criticism in Journ. of Theol- Studies for 
 January, 1910, p. 304 ; the writer is criticizing an objection 
 brought against certain teaching of Dr. Denney's : ' " It is the 
 exclusiveness of his relation to God which is at stake. Does 
 Jesus alone stand in a true filial relation to God?" In his 
 [Prof. Jones'] argument to the contrary it is a small matter 
 that he seems to misunderstand Dr. Denney : but he seems 
 also consistently to overlook certain commonplaces of Christian 
 theology, as that in a very real sense God is recognized as 
 the Father of all men, that the very possibility of "adoption" 
 rests upon an original relation of " likeness"; that it is pre- 
 cisely where the loss incurred through practical denial of 
 sonship has been most deeply felt that its reassertion on the 
 
208 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 come in another way — and has it never come in any- 
 other way ? — I do not believe that he would have con- 
 cerned himself about the manner of its coming (p. 94). 
 
 I would not say myself that the revelation made 
 by our Lord Jesus Christ was never made in any 
 other way. Neither would I exactly deny what is 
 asserted in the first two sentences of another elo- 
 quent passage : — 
 
 Jesus did not come in order to reveal his singu- 
 larity or his isolation ; nor, indeed, to reveal himself 
 at all. The purpose of his coming was to show to 
 men, not only with what love they were loved by 
 himself, but with what love they were loved by 
 God. 'I have declared unto them thy name, and 
 will declare it : that the love wherewith thou hast 
 loved me may be in them, and I in them.' It was 
 this truth which Jesus taught ; it was this that he 
 presented in the living pattern of his life, that he 
 ratified and exemplified by his consciousness of his 
 
 ground of fellowship with Jesus has been most triumphant. 
 Curiously enough, Professor Jones does not (unless it is in a 
 single parenthetical remark) raise the point which seems to be 
 crucial, viz., that historically it has been through Jesus that men 
 have discovered that they and the divine are " on one side ", 
 and that they have usually begun by discovering that ethically 
 they were on the opposite side. The distinction between son- 
 ship real but not realized and sonship brought into unclouded 
 consciousness is of vital importance for this discussion. It 
 surely turns the edge of this criticism of Dr. Denney. For as 
 long as men have not realized their sonship the divine must 
 offer itself to their consciousness as " confronting them". And 
 therein lies the simple explanation of the fact on which 
 Dr. Denney lays stress, that "Jesus is set on the side of reality 
 which we call divine ". The truth is that this article, like 
 some others in the volume, seeks to insert the critical knife 
 where no joint is to be found.' 
 
VIII. The Present Position 209 
 
 own Sonship, established and sealed by his death ; 
 and it was this truth thus lived which gave to Jesus 
 of Nazareth the pla^e and the power which are all 
 his own in the history of mankind (p. 93). 
 
 The Incarnate, as the Incarnate, ' did not come 
 in order to reveal His singularity or His isolation/ 
 What there was in Him of singularity and isolation 
 was revealed incidentally in the course of His mis- 
 sion ; and the Church was not wrong in drawing 
 out this and in building upon it. It is just once 
 more a question of the ' hyphen \ 
 
 I see the difficulty. But I venture to hope that 
 the view suggested, or the facts to which attention 
 has been called, in these lectures may go some way 
 to explain it. I have insisted upon the complete 
 reality of our Lord's Manhood. I can even borrow the 
 language of Prof. Schmiedel, and say with him : — 
 
 It is not for an instant doubtful that Jesus must 
 be considered as man in the full sense of the term, 
 and that anything divine may be sought in him only 
 under the condition that his humanity is not put in 
 question (p. 60). 
 
 The Church itself has asserted this, from Chalcedon 
 onwards. And it does but, I think, make the whole 
 position clearer to affirm, with Dr. Weston, that 
 the consciousness of our Lord, in His incarnate 
 state, was a genuinely and thoroughly human con- 
 sciousness. But that does not contradict or exclude 
 the presence beneath it of Deity one in kind with 
 that of God who rules the universe. It did not 
 
 1147 p 
 
210 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 prevent our Lord from being aware of the presence 
 of Deity within Him ; neither did it prevent this 
 knowledge, especially towards the end of His earthly 
 career, from surging up as it were within Him, and 
 carrying with it a sense of boundless possibilities 
 when the limitations of the flesh were removed 
 and the Divine Spirit, instead of being 'cabin'd, 
 crib'd, confin'd ', went forth again conquering and to 
 conquer : — 
 
 Christianity, then, found its originating impulse 
 outside the limits of the Gospel story. Its faith 
 was focussed on a spot beyond death. It existed to 
 declare a fact which had its seat in Heaven, The 
 fact upon which it built was expressed for it under 
 the terms of Christ's exaltation to the right Hand 
 of God. It is from that high Throne that He dis- 
 charges this Power, the Holy Spirit, which men 
 could see and hear. Without that Power there was 
 no Gospel. For without that Power there could be 
 no deliverance for man out of his moral impotence. 
 The manifestation and confession of this impotence 
 had been the sole supreme result of the preaching 
 of the Baptist. Man could do nothing until he was 
 baptized by the Fire of the Spirit. Until the Fire 
 fell upon him and transfigured him, he was still 
 arrested where the Baptist left him. And nothing 
 that Jesus said or did, while He moved about among 
 men doing good, set free the energising Fire. 
 Pentecost is the actual birthday of the Christian 
 religion (Canon Scott Holland, p. 122). 
 
 This is really to take history as it is, to give it its 
 full value, and not to begin to explain away the 
 facts as soon as we have got them. If it is true — 
 
VIII. The Present Position 211 
 
 as it certainly is — that ' the Spirit Himself beareth 
 witness with our spirit that we are children of God ', 
 the converse is no less true that our spirits bear 
 witness to the working of the Divine Spirit. If we 
 are ' sons ', the sonship within us reflects and illus- 
 trates the Sonship of Him who is pre-eminently the 
 Son. 
 
 The mistake made in the past has been to think 
 of the Human and the Divine too much in contrast 
 and opposition to each other, to think that we must 
 needs weaken or restrict — or, if we may say so, 
 dilute — our conception of the one in order to make 
 room for the other. On the contrary, our real duty 
 and our real policy is to emphasize fearlessly both 
 sides at once : our Lord Jesus Christ is at one and 
 the same time truly human and truly Divine. And 
 the analogy of our own nature, as I have tried to 
 work it out in the last two lectures, shows us, 
 I believe, more clearly than anything else how this 
 can be. 
 
 P 2 
 
212 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 POSTSCRIPT 
 
 If I am not mistaken, the signs of the times are 
 thickening which point to the urgency of such an 
 inquiry as that which I have been undertaking and, 
 I hope I may add, the helpfulness of the particular 
 solution that has been suggested. As the last of 
 the preceding lectures were being delivered there 
 came into my hands a book by the Eev. J. M. 
 Thompson entitled Jesus according to St. Mark, which 
 has been somewhat adversely criticized and which 
 I am aware has caused some disquietude. It is 
 indeed a symptom of the extent to which modern 
 problems and modern methods have taken hold of 
 the minds of our younger scholars ; and I cannot be 
 surprised if to those who are not quite familiar with 
 these problems and methods the effect should be at 
 first sight disturbing. At least one review that 
 I have seen is calculated to give a wrong idea both 
 of the book and of its author. Mr. Thompson is 
 a thoroughly believing and reverent writer ; but he 
 feels, as others of us feel, that if Christianity is to 
 be restated in such a way as to carry conviction 
 to the modern world it must be by methods that 
 are strictly scientific and that do not involve any 
 
Postscript 213 
 
 assumptions. He feels that it is necessary to begin 
 at the very beginning and work upwards step by 
 step. This is what he has done. He has taken 
 the oldest narrative Gospel, St. Mark, and he has 
 sought to recover from it the first simple impression 
 which it would give apart from all later comment 
 and interpretation. The sum of this impression is 
 given as follows : — 
 
 This, then, is the first conclusion towards which 
 I am led by the evidence of the second Gospel — 
 that Jesus is a single person, who as a whole lives 
 a human life, and as a whole can be worshipped as 
 divine. There is no possible or desirable division 
 between what is human in him and what is divine. 
 The human in him is divine. When he is most 
 truly man, then he is most truly God^(pp. 277 £). 
 
 This is essentially the same conclusion that is 
 arrived at in Dr. Weston's The One Christ, and also 
 in these lectures. It is only arrived at in a different 
 way — not from the side of dogma, nor yet from the 
 side of psychological analysis, but by careful exe- 
 gesis applied to the oldest Gospel. The convergent 
 result of three such different inquiries seems to be 
 in itself a fact of some importance. 
 
 It is true that the surface of our Lord's life is 
 entirely human. Even the Deity in Him, on its 
 way to expression, had to pass through, and is in 
 this respect (i.e. in the forms of its expression) 
 limited by, the human medium. But there is no 
 paradox in this. On the contrary, it is what was to 
 
214 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 be expected if there was to be any such thing as an 
 Incarnation at all. The divine in man 
 
 dwells in deep retreats 
 Whose veil is unremoved. 
 
 And the same description applies even to the God- 
 head of the God-Man. 
 
 Another illustration tells in the same direction. 
 Indeed I do not think that I should be wrong if 
 I were to say that the main current of theological 
 science has for some time past been setting this 
 way. But the illustration which I am about to 
 give deals directly with Christology. 
 
 When I first planned this course of lectures I 
 expected to make considerable use of a careful and 
 pleasingly objective article on ' Die neuesten Christo- 
 logien im Verhaltnis zum Selbstbewusstsein Jesu \ 
 by Prof. Dr. Karl Thieme of Leipzig, in Zeitschrift 
 fur Theologie und Kirche for 1908, pp. 401-72. The 
 development of the lectures worked out rather 
 differently, and the essay was left on one side ; 
 I had some doubt whether the details of it would 
 be interesting to an English public, and it would 
 not have contributed much to the particular line of 
 construction which I was attempting. But to the 
 broad issue now before us I believe that it does 
 contribute. 
 
 The Christologies which Dr. Thieme passed in 
 review were mostly from the Eight or mediating 
 parties, by such authors as Kunze, Sch&der, R. 
 
Postscript 215 
 
 Seeberg, the two Kaftans, Haring. The first two 
 of these writers followed traditional lines most 
 closely, with excellent intentions but (as it seemed 
 to me) not without some straining of language, 
 while Seeberg seemed to combine some good and 
 helpful remarks with others that were decidedly 
 fanciful. I think that the construction which 
 appealed to me most was that of Julius Kaftan. 
 All the writers I have named wished to maintain 
 the old doctrine of the Deity of Christ. The 
 criticism which Dr. Thieme directed against them 
 turned mainly round features in the life of Christ 
 on earth, especially His constant attitude of faith, 
 obedience, and prayer addressed to the Father. It 
 was urged persistently that the attitude implied 
 in these was essentially human, and therefore that 
 Jesus was essentially Man. 
 
 Now, if the line of argument which I have taken, 
 and which the writers whose alliance I am claiming 
 have taken, is sound, all this may be frankly con- 
 ceded, yet without any prejudice to the Deity of our 
 Lord, We have seen that He was not only Man 
 but thoroughly Man. Every Christian must insist 
 that He was not only Man but thoroughly Man. 
 Every Christian must insist that the faith of our 
 Lord was real, His obedience was real, and the 
 prayers addressed by Him to the Father were as 
 real as ours. To maintain the contrary would be 
 to revive the ancient Docetism. And it is probably 
 true that many orthodox people do, with the best 
 
216 Ancient and Modern Christologies 
 
 of motives, verge upon what is practically Docetism. 
 But if I am not mistaken, Dr. Thieme himself may- 
 help us to see how this might be. His own distinc- 
 tive contribution to theology is the stress which he 
 has laid upon, and the use which he has made of, 
 the Christian virtue of Humility. Before writing 
 the essay to which I have referred he brought out 
 a book with the title Die christliche Demut (Giessen, 
 1906). The book, which is attractively written, sets 
 forth at length that humilitas Christi which had been 
 a favourite theme with St. Augustine. 1 
 
 Both in the book and in the essay Dr. Thieme has 
 studied with so much candour the unique sense of 
 Sonship in Jesus, and the unique endowment out 
 of which that sense arose, as almost to end in 
 a confession of His Deity. He contemplates for a 
 moment the conception of a Middle Being, a kind 
 of demigod. But he rightly regards this as unten- 
 able, and the Christian instinct has always been 
 against it. He therefore lapses back into simple 
 Humanitarianism. In other words, with two sets 
 of phenomena before him, he allows his ultimate 
 conclusion to be determined by one, and leaves the 
 other unaccounted for. 
 
 It is here that I would venture to press the 
 alternative solution offered in these lectures. The 
 strength of the position seems to me to be that it 
 
 1 See Loofs, Dogmengesch.*, pp. 357, 359, 395, 399. Dr. Loofs 
 points out (after Scheel) the presence of this thought in Hilary 
 and Ambrose, and its subordinate place in Greek theology. 
 
Postscript 217 
 
 does full and equal justice to all the historical data. 
 It recognizes at one and the same time a real Man- 
 hood and a real Godhead. And, while it does this, 
 by its appeal to that mingling of divine and human 
 of which we are conscious even in ourselves, it 
 points towards a mode of Incarnation which we can 
 within our measure realize and understand. 
 
SYMBOLISM 
 
 IX 
 
 THE GUIDING PRINCIPLE OF 
 SYMBOLISM 
 
IX 
 
 The Guiding Principle op Symbolism 
 
 It fell to me, not very long ago, to set forth in 
 some detail the place which Symbolism fills in the 
 Bible. 1 I did this, because it was impressed upon 
 me that a broad recognition of the extent of sym- 
 bolism is necessary in any process of adjusting our 
 modern ways of looking at things with the ancient 
 ways. It was but natural that, while my statement 
 of the case was so far as I know nowhere impugned, 
 I did from one or two quarters receive a kindly 
 hint or warning that the appeal to symbolism has 
 its risks, that it is indeed an edged tool that may 
 sometimes be found to cut away more than we wish 
 or intend. I was well aware of this ; indeed I had 
 present to my mind examples of a use of the 
 principle of symbolism with which personally I had 
 no sympathy. Of most things there is a wrong use 
 as well as a right, and in regard to most things 
 there is a more or less wide extent of debatable 
 ground as to what is wrong and what is right. My 
 object was, on the occasion to which I have referred, 
 to start from the solid ground of a fairly wide 
 survey of facts. I confined myself to the Bible, 
 
 1 See The Life of Christ m Becent Besearch (1907), pp. 3-34. 
 
222 Symbolism 
 
 and I tried to form some idea, and to help others to 
 form some idea, of the actual place which symbolism 
 holds in the Bible. I did not then seek to press 
 the inquiry further, or to apply the principle which 
 I was laying down. I left the further step to be 
 taken later ; and it is that further step, or at least 
 a part of it, that I am endeavouring to take now. 
 
 We look about for indications of some rule or 
 principle to be followed in the use that we 
 make of symbolism. And I do not know what 
 others will think, but I should be myself disposed 
 to say that the most helpful example with which 
 I am acquainted is to be found in a poet — the one 
 poet of all others who (to my thinking at least) has 
 done most to help us to adjust our compass and 
 take our bearings among the complex conditions of 
 our modern life. Many here will be familiar with 
 a short poem in blank verse contained in the last 
 volume of Browning's poems, the volume which by 
 a coincidence was published on the very day on 
 which the poet died. It is called ' Development \ 
 and it begins : 
 
 My father was a scholar and knew Greek : 
 
 you will remember the rest. A small boy of five 
 asks his father what he is reading. He is told that 
 the book is about the siege of Troy. The lad presses 
 his question : 
 
 What is a siege and what is Troy? 
 
IX. The Guiding Principle of Symbolism 223 
 
 whereupon his father piles up the nursery chairs and 
 tables and tells him that is a town and is to stand 
 for Troy ; the boy himself is Priam, King of Troy ; 
 the cat is Helen, enticed away by wicked Paris. 
 Achilles is the pony; the two dogs are the Atreidai ; 
 the page-boy is Hector — and so on. Two or three 
 years later the father comes upon his son with 
 his playmates playing their game of the Siege of 
 Troy ; he now thinks that he is advanced enough to 
 read Pope, and he puts into his hands Pope's Iliad, 
 with the further promise that he shall soon begin 
 Greek and study the Iliad in the original. This the 
 lad does, and at the age of twelve, when he finds 
 that with the help of grammar and lexicon he can 
 make his way through the Greek, he begins to think 
 that he knows all about it and that there is nothing 
 more to be known ; until one fine day he hears of 
 Wolfs Prolegomena, and presently of a dozen more 
 followers of Wolf who, he is given to understand, 
 have 
 
 Proved there was never any Troy at all, 
 Neither Besiegers nor Besieged, — nay, worse, — 
 No actual Homer, no authentic text, 
 No warrant 
 
 for the whole story. That is the point at which 
 Browning left it, with some little moralizing upon 
 the father's method, what he had told and what he 
 had not told, and the reason for his reservations ; 
 why he had not tried to teach the child everything 
 at once but had let him into the secret piecemeal, 
 
224 Symbolism 
 
 at intervals of time and by distinct steps and degrees. 
 Perhaps at the present moment Wolfs Prolegomena 
 is not exactly the last word. There has been, 
 I imagine, some reaction since. Perhaps we can 
 reconstruct rather better the process by which the 
 poem assumed its present shape. It was a dis- 
 covery — or rather, perhaps I should say, a brilliant 
 guess — that the poem arose out of ballads recited 
 by wandering minstrels in the halls of the chiefs. 
 And yet the very probable view that the poem had 
 its ultimate origin in these is not a complete account 
 of the whole matter. Doubtless the ballads were 
 collected together so as to form a series, and this 
 series became more and more stereotyped. The 
 poem passed through phases, and had a history. 
 And yet there is a unity about it. At some point 
 in the chain the master-hand came in and left its 
 indelible mark behind. It may still be something 
 of a problem exactly at what point this happened, 
 and whether there was one master-hand or more. 
 But these are questions of detail and perhaps in part 
 of speculation that can never be wholly set at rest. 
 
 You will readily see to what all this is tending, 
 and I need not enlarge at any great length upon 
 it. Browning's poem is of course a parable. The 
 education of this boy as he goes on to youth and 
 manhood has its counterpart on a grander scale in 
 the education of the world. We may think of all 
 human progress as carrying out a comprehensive 
 
IX. The Guiding Principle of Symbolism 225 
 
 divine design. The progress falls into periods, each 
 of which has its appropriate method. We may call 
 the first ' symbolical ' or figurative in the narrower 
 sense, where the sign is comparatively remote from 
 the thing signified and associated with it by a deli- 
 berate act of naming or application. It was not so 
 much any obvious resemblance as the father's word 
 which made the piled-up chairs and tables represent 
 Troy town and the cat and the dogs Helen and her 
 pursuers. There is enough real resemblance to 
 make the comparison natural and up to a certain 
 point intelligible ; the boy understands as much as 
 his mental development at the time permits him to 
 understand. He has learnt his first lesson, and the 
 way is prepared for further lessons. Then we come 
 to a stage which we may call 'paraphrastic 5 , where 
 what is written in one language and at one time is 
 translated into another language which is also the 
 language of another time. As the language differs, 
 so also does the whole complex of ideas differ, and 
 the mind is always seeking, not for identity, but for 
 the nearest equivalents it can find. Thirdly, we 
 come to a method which we will call ' exegetical ', 
 where the object to be understood is attacked more 
 directly, as if by the aid of grammar and lexicon. 
 We are coming at last to closer quarters; at the 
 same time there is a certain literalness about this 
 method which makes the diversity of treatment 
 seem less than it really is. 
 
 I may note by the way that there is an 
 
 1147 Q 
 
226 Symbolism 
 
 ambiguity in Browning's poem which rather inter- 
 feres with the complete symmetry of its expression. 
 Sometimes he speaks as though it were the Iliad, as 
 a work of literature, that was to be understood ; 
 sometimes, as though it were the substance of the 
 story contained in the Iliad, a possible real Siege of 
 Troy as an event of prehistoric times, dimly seen 
 through the veil of the poem. It is quite conceivable 
 that there was such an event ; and I gather that 
 ethnological science at present inclines to the view 
 that there was something of the kind, in connexion 
 with those early racial movements which preceded 
 the settlement of Hellenic peoples on both sides of 
 the Aegean. Of course this cannot be more than 
 a hypothesis ; we are peering by torchlight into an 
 age that is dark to us. At the same time there is 
 sufficient probability to suggest a reasonable belief, 
 or at least the shadow of a belief. 
 
 Lastly, we have the * critical ' method, not at first 
 timorous and hesitating but rather drastic and 
 tending to extremes. That has been sometimes the 
 way with criticism ; it has been a surgical process 
 in which the operator has been carried beyond the 
 point of discretion by the new-found pleasure in 
 operating. By degrees the youthful zeal has been 
 curbed and a juster balance struck between old and 
 new. 
 
 But the point that I wish to bring out and to lay 
 stress upon most is that, beneath all these differing 
 modes of presentation and apprehension, there is an 
 
IX. The Guiding Principle of Symbolism 227 
 
 underlying identity and unity. It is only a difference 
 of presentation and apprehension ; the thing to be 
 presented or apprehended remains one and the 
 same. In the case of the Iliad as a poem, the object 
 is a perfectly definite and tangible quantity ; in the 
 case of the events which may be supposed to be 
 behind the poem, the object to be ascertained is of 
 course far more elusive, something 
 
 half-guessed, half-seen, 
 Grasped at — not gained, held fast. 
 
 Of such subject-matter as this we can only speak 
 with due caution and reserve. 
 
 There is what we might perhaps call a system of 
 equivalence : the ' critical 5 method at one stage 
 corresponds to the ' exegetical ' at another, and 
 that to the ' paraphrastic * at a third and the ' sym- 
 bolical ' at a fourth. But the change is only in the 
 mode of presentation ; the essence of that which is 
 presented remains unchanged. From our limited 
 human point of view, the change of presentment 
 may seem to cut in deep ; but it must not be 
 allowed to cut in too deep. We need to remind 
 ourselves from time to time that the way in which 
 a thing appears to us does not affect the underlying 
 reality. 
 
 This caution is perhaps especially needed in the 
 case of Theology. The truths of theology in its 
 different branches vary in their nature. Some are 
 as definite as the text of the Iliad, and are to be 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 Symbolism 
 
 determined by methods as strictly objective and 
 scientific. For instance, the textual criticism of the 
 New Testament differs in no essential particular 
 from that of the Iliad ; it is equally a weighing 
 of evidence, and the reconstruction of a history 
 based on positive data as far as they will carry. 
 
 But many theological truths are more mixed in 
 their nature. There is an element in them of direct 
 and, if we are to call* it so, scientific inference ; but 
 there is also an element of remoter inference or 
 speculation. In regard to these mixed truths it is 
 worth while to remember Milton's description : — 
 
 To be still searching for what we know not by 
 what we know, still closing up truth to truth as we 
 find it (for all her body is homogeneal and propor- 
 tional), this is the golden rule in Theology as well as 
 in Arithmetic (Areopagitica, ed. Arber, p. 67). 
 
 This is a general description : but over and above 
 any such description, it is suggested to us that certain 
 conditions should be satisfied by any construction 
 that is likely to maintain itself as true. If it is the 
 same fundamental truth that assumes those different 
 forms of which we have been speaking, then con- 
 versely, if we attempt to argue backwards from the 
 forms to the truth behind them, we should have 
 some assurance that the truth which we set out to 
 discover is the same. It should have upon it the 
 note of identity ; and when we try to trace the his- 
 torical process by which it assumed these varied 
 forms one after the other, there should be upon our 
 
IX, The Guiding Principle of Symbolism 229 
 
 reconstruction of the process the note of continuity. 
 In other words, when we compare the forms in which 
 a given belief presents itself at one period and at 
 another, we ought not to see in it difference only, 
 but likeness in difference. The comparison should 
 end in our being able to re-affirm the old truth — 
 modified, it may be, corrected and amended so as 
 to suit the new conditions — and not simply in our 
 contradicting and denying it. It is the principle 
 which, in the sphere not so much of science as of 
 feeling, Wordsworth expressed so felicitously long 
 ago:— 
 
 The child is father of the man ; 
 And I could wish my days to be 
 Bound each to each by natural piety. 
 
 Eight or wrong, this principle has either tacitly or 
 explicitly guided all my own studies ; and I have 
 never yet had reason to consider it disproved. On 
 the contrary, I seem to myself to have had some 
 reason to consider it verified and confirmed. 
 
 I may be allowed perhaps to illustrate this from 
 the history of two conceptions in regard to which 
 what may seem to be very different views have been 
 held at different times. 
 
 All down the centuries, almost as far back as 
 thought can go, there has been throughout the various 
 races of mankind the persistent belief that God reveals 
 Himself to man. The metaphor that has been most 
 commonly used to describe this revelation has been 
 
230 Symbolism 
 
 the metaphor of ' speaking'. One of the most primitive 
 forms of it may be seen in the Hebrew tradition 
 which relates how our first parents 'heard the 
 voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the 
 cool of the day ' (Gen. iii. 8). The writer doubtless 
 thought of a real voice, actually and literally heard. 
 The Old Testament is full of stories of revelation 
 conveyed directly through the senses of sight and 
 hearing. And we may well believe that there was 
 not a little real foundation for that belief ; the men 
 of that age really saw sights and heard sounds 
 which they took to be, and which were for them, 
 divine revelations. 
 
 The centuries pass, and not very long after the 
 beginning of the Christian era we again open our 
 Bibles and read : £ God, having of old time spoken 
 unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions 
 and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days 
 spoken unto us in His Son, whom He appointed 
 heir of all things, through whom also He made the 
 worlds ' (Heb. i. 1, 2). There is a world of theology, 
 a broad comprehensive view of religious history, 
 compressed in those brief clauses. And the view 
 embodied in them lasted on with very little change 
 of expression all across the Middle Ages. A really 
 new stage does not open out until we come to the 
 Eeformation. Then we are told that 
 
 Melancthon discoursing with Luther touching 
 the prophets, who continually boast thus : 'thus saith 
 the Lord,' asked whether God in person spoke with 
 
IX. The Guiding Principle of Symbolism 231 
 
 them or no. Luther replied : They were very holy, 
 spiritual people, who seriously contemplated upon 
 holy and divine things : therefore God spake with 
 them in their consciences, which the prophets held 
 as sure and certain revelations (Luther's Table-Talk, 
 dxlix). 
 
 That is exactly the right way to put it. When 
 the prophets claimed that God spoke with them, 
 they meant what they said. It was the nearest way 
 they had of describing the process that went on in 
 their minds. Luther does not in the least find 
 fault with them for this, or question their veracity. 
 He only goes on to describe the same process in 
 a different way ; in a way that was better suited to 
 his own age. And it is again only a like adaptation 
 to modern ideas when Professor P. Gardner, with 
 still further insight and penetration, writes as follows : 
 
 From the present point of view the question of 
 the inspiration or non-inspiration of a book is not 
 primary. For how does divine inspiration act upon 
 a writer ? In two ways : first by strengthening and 
 intensifying his natural powers, and second, by pro- 
 ducing in him what W. James has called an up- 
 rush of the sub-conscious. I should prefer to call 
 the last an inrush of the super-conscious. It makes 
 a man a vehicle of deep-lying forces, so that he 
 builds better than he knows. He may think that 
 he is writing for a society, or even for an individual, 
 when he is really writing for future ages, and to 
 meet needs of which he is unconscious {Cambridge 
 Biblical Essays, p. 417). 
 
 That is to place the belief in divine revelation, 
 
232 Symbolism 
 
 communicated through human media, on the 
 reasoned basis of modern psychology. 
 
 The point that I would ask you to notice is the 
 absolute continuity that runs through the process. 
 The language of Genesis is very different from that 
 of the Epistle to the Hebrews ; that again differs 
 from the language of Luther ; and Luther in turn 
 has undergone considerable development of expres- 
 sion in the version of the modern psychologist. 
 The process is one of evolution ; but in this case of 
 evolution in a straight line. We might say that the 
 most advanced conception of modern philosophy 
 was all contained in germ in the simple primitive 
 belief of the writer of the early document incor- 
 porated in the Book of Genesis. At no point in the 
 series is there anything of the nature of contradic- 
 tion; there is only a fuller and more exact explication 
 of meanings already presupposed. 
 
 In like manner, if we take a single important 
 branch of that method of revelation which God has 
 pursued in His dealings with men. Prophecy is 
 such a branch, and the fulfilment of prophecy has 
 been differently conceived at different times. In 
 the New Testament period men were struck, and 
 could not but be struck, by the marked resemblance 
 between the series of events which they saw 
 unfolding itself before their eyes and the language 
 of ancient prediction, or what they took to be 
 prediction. It had been as a matter of fact thrown 
 out into the future in a vague mysterious way, but 
 
IX. The Guiding Principle of Symbolism 233 
 
 with a kind of confidence that it would find its 
 fulfilment in due time. The contemporaries of 
 Christ, and — we may say it with all reverence — 
 Christ Himself, saw in this correspondence the 
 working out of a pre-established order and a great 
 divine design. But they were content to note the 
 fact. If they philosophized upon it, they did so (if 
 we may thus describe it) in the forms of a philosophy 
 which was not so much intellectual theory as 
 religion. In other words, they were content to see 
 in it and to feel in it the hand of God ordering all 
 things according to His will. But, beyond this, 
 they did not make the relation of prophecy to 
 fulfilment a matter of speculation ; they did not 
 stay to analyse the process ; they did not attempt to 
 fill in the intermediate links by which beginning 
 and end were connected together. But this absten- 
 tion of theirs does not preclude us from attempting 
 to fill in these links. The ancients found no 
 difficulty in leaping over a gap of ages. On one 
 side of the gap was the divine word, on the other 
 side was the divine fulfilment ; that was enough. 
 But we have to trace the course of this wireless 
 telegraphy. We do it through the medium of 
 insight into principle. The prophets understood the 
 principles of God's working. They expounded 
 these principles with reference to their own time, 
 but not without a consciousness that they were no 
 less applicable to other times than their own. 
 They might be even more applicable ; because the 
 
234 Symbolism 
 
 later series of events might be on a grander scale 
 than the earlier. In this way it ceases to be a 
 paradox to say that the prophetic word was not 
 seldom fulfilled on more magnificent lines than 
 they themselves intended and knew. They did not 
 know it, in the sense of any human foresight ; but 
 they were well aware that all fulfilments were in 
 the hand of God, and nothing that He did could 
 ever surprise them. 
 
 I may take such examples as these as instances 
 of what may be called the normal relation between 
 modern thought and ancient. The modern view 
 supplements, adjusts, and within certain limits cor- 
 rects, the ancient ; but it does not lift up its voice 
 and say, We are right, and the ancients were 
 wrong ; we are they that ought to speak, and 
 wisdom shall die with us. 
 
 This is the kind of principle that I shoxild wish to 
 apply in all cases of the relation of ancient and 
 modern in the field of religion, and especially of the 
 Christian religion. 
 
 The most urgent question of the kind at the 
 present time has to do with the relation of private 
 judgement to the historic Creeds. An English 
 churchman, and especially an English cleric, may 
 state it as a question of the relation of individual 
 opinion to the Creeds and Articles. I desire to 
 meet this question as directly and as precisely 
 as I can. 
 
IX. The Guiding Principle of Symbolism 235 
 
 Doubtless there is a marked distinction between 
 the Creeds and the Articles ; but for our present 
 purpose they may be treated together. We only 
 have to remind ourselves what the Creeds and 
 Articles essentially are. The Creeds are, strictly 
 speaking, the confession of faith of the ancient 
 Church ; the Articles are the confession of faith of 
 the Church of England in the sixteenth century. 
 There is a certain process of extension involved in 
 taking either the Creeds or the Articles as con- 
 fessions of faith for the present day. But our real 
 object is to get at the mind of the Universal Church 
 as lying behind the Creeds, and the mind of the 
 National Church as lying behind the Articles. 
 From this point of view it is easy to see that they 
 are all we have to fall back upon. There are no 
 other formulated confessions that claim our accep- 
 tance ; and, under present conditions, it would be 
 hopeless to think of obtaining any. They are the 
 nearest approach to present-day confessions for the 
 Catholic Church and for the National Church, and it 
 is in that sense that we use them. We use the Creeds 
 in worship as representing the mind of the Church 
 Universal as nearly as we can come to it. We do 
 not use the Articles in worship, but we keep them 
 as a standard of reference when we want to know 
 what was the mind of the National Church when it 
 started upon its career of greater independence. The 
 recitation of the Creeds in public worship is a cor- 
 porate act, and we take part in it as a corporate act ; 
 
236 Symbolism 
 
 for the moment the individual sinks himself in 
 the society. I may say in passing that for this 
 reason I am less sensitive than some of my friends, 
 and less sensitive than I used to be myself, about 
 such a matter as the recitation of the so-called 
 Athanasian Creed. 1 It is not really I who say it, 
 but the Church which says it. And the Church 
 does not say it exactly in the way of which it 
 would most approve to-day, but we in the Church of 
 England make use of the only form we have — or 
 rather of this as one of the three only forms we 
 have — in regard to which we have a definite his- 
 torical guarantee that they really stand for the mind 
 of the Church Universal. If I were to analyse my 
 own consciousness in repeating the Creed, I should 
 say that I repeat it, not as an individual, but as 
 a member of the Church. I do not feel that I am 
 responsible for it ; what I am responsible for is the 
 desire to enter into the mind of the Church. 
 I tacitly correct the defects of expression, because I 
 believe that the Church would correct them if it 
 could, but it cannot. For the Creed as it stands the 
 Church is responsible, and not I. 
 
 The use of the Creeds in public worship is one 
 thing, and their use as a standard of opinion is 
 another. As a standard of opinion, again, we must 
 distinguish between their use for public purposes 
 
 1 It does not follow that I am in favour of retaining the 
 compulsory use of the Creed as it stands, which is a burden 
 to so many consciences. 
 
IX. The Guiding Principle of Symbolism 237 
 
 and for private. With private opinion, as I con- 
 ceive, the world at large is not concerned. On this 
 head I do not feel called upon to speak at all, and 
 yet I will say a few words in case they should 
 possibly be helpful to others. The way, then, in 
 which I myself regard the Creeds, from this most 
 individual and personal point of view, is as great 
 outstanding historical monuments of the faith of the 
 Church. As such I cannot but look upon them 
 with veneration. As such I desire as well as I can 
 to conform my own opinions to them. But the same 
 principle comes into play that I have just been 
 laying down. I desire to enter into the mind of the 
 Church. I desire to the utmost of my ability to be 
 loyal to that mind. But, at the same time, I cannot 
 forget that the critical moments in the composition 
 of the Creeds were in the fourth and fifth centuries, 
 and that they have never been revised or corrected 
 since. It is impossible that the thought and lan- 
 guage of those centuries should exactly coincide 
 with the genuine, spontaneous, unbiased, scientific 
 — or that aims at being scientific — thought and 
 language of the present day. We must modernize, 
 whether we will or no. But, indeed, one does not 
 aim at a mechanical coincidence. I suppose that 
 as a matter of fact not the Creeds alone, but the 
 whole course of history as culminating in the Creeds, 
 looms before the mind ; and the mind, not so much 
 consciously as subconsciously, plays upon the image 
 which it receives, and tries to reduce it to harmony 
 
238 Symbolism 
 
 with the results of its own independent research. 
 It is only by an effort that one can bring the process 
 to a head in the precise formulation of detail. But 
 all the time there is shaping itself an indefinable 
 background of thought, which is like the indefinable 
 background of character. This background (if we 
 are to call it so) belongs to the subconscious rather 
 than to the conscious region of mental activity. It 
 constitutes what we call the ' self ', and it is never at 
 rest, but is always growing ; and it is this which in 
 the end brings about the fusion of old and new. 
 The particular form of fusion each one of us must 
 work out for himself. To his own Master he stands 
 or falls. 
 
 If we believe that the world is one, and that the 
 whole course of history is one, the working out of 
 a single divine purpose, coherent and continuous in 
 all its parts — whether we are able to see the coher- 
 ence and continuity or not ; if we have this fixed 
 belief in our minds, then the process will not be 
 really so difficult as it may appear. It will doubtless 
 contain gaps — abundance of gaps ; it is not to be 
 expected that any one individual, under present 
 conditions, should be able to work out an absolutely 
 consistent theory of the universe from beginning to 
 end. But the great thing is that the main outlines 
 are marked out for us ; if we come to a gap, we 
 know why it is a gap ; and we also know that it is 
 sure to be filled up in time. But all that we need is 
 patience ; and faith is the mother of patience. If 
 
IX. The Gviding P?inciple of Symbolism 239 
 
 we once have an assured hold on God in Christ, all 
 the rest will come, when and as He wills. 
 
 The clue that guides us through this mighty maze 
 is the principle of continuity. But, once more, we 
 have to remember that this continuity is not 
 mechanical. What we have to look for, and what 
 we may expect to find, is not any rigid and formal 
 identity of expression ; it is an identity not of the 
 letter but of the spirit. In other words, the con- 
 tinuous thread that we hold in our hands is truth 
 to type, the genuine Christian type, manifested at 
 sundry times and in divers manners, but preserving 
 throughout its essential oneness and its essential 
 harmony. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbott, E. A., 126 f. 
 Alexandria, School of, 51. 
 
 — Synod of, 39. 
 Ambrose, St., 42, 216. 
 
 avTi8o<Tts, 54. 
 
 Antioch, School of, 51 f. 
 
 — Synods of, 38 f. 
 Apollinaris of Laodicea, 49-52. 
 Apologists, The, 14 ff. 
 Apostles' Creed, 35 ; see also 
 
 Creeds. 
 Apostolic Fathers, 11 f. 
 Arian Controversy, 40 ff. 
 Artemas, or Artemon, 37. 
 Asclepiodotus, 37. 
 Augustine, St., 46 ff., 216. 
 
 Bacon, B. W., 202. 
 
 Basil of Caesarea, 43. 
 
 Biedermann, A. E., 63. 
 
 Bigg, C, 95. 
 
 Binitarian, 12. 
 
 Blake, W., 177. 
 
 Bousset, W., 117. 
 
 Bright, W., 75 ff. 
 
 Browning, R, 154, 177, 222-7. 
 
 Callistus, 40. 
 
 Cambridge Biblical Essays, 189. 
 Carpenter, W. B., 142. 
 Celsus, 18. 
 
 1147 
 
 Chalcedon, Council of, 52 f., 
 
 92. 
 Chesterton, G. K., 195. 
 Christology, 49, 59, 96 ff., 103 
 
 ff., 113, 118 ff., 165 ff. and 
 
 passim. 
 Christus-Idee, 61f. ? 87. 
 
 — Prinzip, 64, 87. 
 
 — Person, 64, 87, 90. 
 Church, Mind of the, 235 ff. 
 
 — Universal, 104. 
 
 Church Quarterly Beview, 75, 91. 
 Clement of Kome, 12. 
 communicatio idiomatum, 54. 
 Consciousness of Christ, 165- 
 
 85, 215. 
 Continuity, Principle of, vii, 
 
 102, 229, 232, 238 f. 
 Creeds, The, vi, 115, 234-8. 
 
 Denney, J., 114 f., 125 f., 132. 
 Dioscorus, 51. 
 Docetism, 7 ff., 215. 
 Dorner, I. A., 69 ff. 
 Du Bose, W. P., 93 f., 107, 127, 
 130 f., 151. 
 
 Eastern Church, 53. 
 
 ivvTrooTwros, 54. 
 
 Equivalence, Principle of, 227. 
 Eusebius of Vercelli, 42. 
 
242 
 
 Index 
 
 Fairbairn, A. M., 72, 75. 
 
 Gardner, P., 198-201, 231 f. 
 German Theology, 59, 98 ff., 
 
 132. 
 Gess, W. R, 72. 
 Gifford,E. H., 75 f. 
 Gnosticism, 12 ff. 
 Godet, F., 72 f. 
 Gore, Bp. C, 74-7, 91 f. 
 Green, T. H., 65-9, 88 f. 
 Gregory of Elvira, 46. 
 
 — Nazianzen, 43, 51. 
 
 — Nyssen, 43. 
 Gwatkin, H. M., 21. 
 
 Hall, F. J., 75. 
 Hamilton, Sir W., 137. 
 Haring, Th., 215. 
 Harnack, A., 14 ff., 44 f., 117. 
 Hegel, G. W. F., 60 f., 87 f. 
 Hernias, 12. 
 Herrmann, W., 105 ff. 
 Hilary of Poitiers, 42, 46, 216. 
 Holland, H. S., 201 f., 210. 
 H6moousion, 38 f., 168. 
 Hosius, 42. 
 
 Htigel, Baron F. von, 123, 151. 
 Humanitarianism, 37, 43. 
 Humanity (collective), 124 ff. 
 hypostasis, 38 f. 
 
 Idealism, 60, 79. 
 Ignatius, 10 f. 
 Incarnation, 191-5. 
 Indwelling, Divine, 9, 11, 80, 
 
 chaps. VI- VIII passim; see 
 
 also Mysticism. 
 
 Inge, W. K., 151. 
 Irenaeus, 21-4, 47. 
 
 Jastrow, J., 141 f. 
 
 James, W., 137 f., 142, 146-9. 
 
 Jesus or Christ? 133, chap. 
 
 VIII passim. 
 John, St., 121 ff. 
 
 — Acts of, 8 f . 
 John of Damascus, 53. 
 Jones, H., 206-9. 
 
 — R. M., 151. 
 Jiilicher, A., 117. 
 
 Justin Martyr, 14, 23 f. ; see 
 also Apologists. 
 
 Kaftan, J., 215. 
 
 — Th., 215. 
 Kant, I., 79. 
 Kenosis, 71-8. 
 Kunze, J., 214. 
 
 Leo I, Pope, 55, 92. 
 Leontius of Byzantium, 53 f. 
 Lindsay, J., 21. 
 Lodge, Sir O., 190-5. 
 Logos, Doctrine of, 15-21, 38, 
 
 70. 
 Loofs, F., 14 ff., 48, 73, 216. 
 Lutgert, W., 150. 
 Luther, 108, 230 f. 
 
 Martin I, Pope, 55. 
 Mason, A. J., 75. 
 Milton, J., 228. 
 Moberly, R. C, 12, 47 f., 92 f., 
 95, 127 ff., 152 f., 155 f. 
 
Index 
 
 243 
 
 Modern Positive, 102. 
 Monarchians, 36-40. 
 Monopbysites, 52. 
 Moorhouse, Bp. J., 75. 
 Moultpn, J. H., 195. 
 Morin, Dpm G., 46. 
 Mysticism, 109, 123, 149-59 ; 
 see also Indwelling. 
 
 Natures : see Two Natures. 
 Neo-Platonism, 46, 48. 
 Nestorians, 52. 
 Nicene Creed, 43 j see also 
 
 Creeds. 
 Noetus, 39 f. 
 Nolloth, C. F., 115. 
 
 Origen, 18 ff. 
 Orr, J., 21. 
 Ottley, K. L., 75. 
 
 Pantheism, 153. 
 Paul, St., 121 ff. 
 Paul of Samosata, 38. 
 Personality, 45, 153. 
 Powell, H. C, 75 f. 
 Pragmatism, 95 f. 
 Praxeas, 39. 
 
 Pringle-Pattison, A. S., 21. 
 Prophecy, 233 ff. 
 Psychology, chaps. VI-VIII 
 passim. 
 
 Rashdall, H., 75, 77. 
 Eationalism, 59, 79. 
 Eecapitulation, Doctrine of, 24. 
 Kevelation, 229-32. 
 
 Kitschl, A.,78f., 81 ff., 95 f. 
 Kitschlians, 103-9, 116 f. 
 Eoberts, R, 195. 
 
 Sabellians, 40. 
 
 Sabellius, 39. 
 
 Schader, E., 215. 
 
 Schleiermacher, F. D. E., 79 ff. 
 
 Schmiedel, P. W., 196, 203-6, 
 209. 
 
 Self, Subliminal, 139, and 
 chaps. VI-VIII passim. 
 
 Soden, Freiherr H. von, 117. 
 
 Son of Man, 124. 
 
 Spirit, Holy, 25-8, 39, 128-31, 
 156. 
 
 Strauss, D. F., 61-3. 
 
 Stubbs, Bp. W., 75. 
 
 Subconscious, The, chaps. VI- 
 VIII passim, 238. 
 
 Symbolism, chap. IK passim. 
 
 Synoptic Gospels, 119 f. 
 
 Tennyson, A., 177. 
 
 Tertullian, 21 f., 24-9. 
 
 Theodotus of Byzantium, 37. 
 
 — the Banker, 37. 
 
 Theology and Keligion, 1 ff, 
 
 Theophany, 7. 
 
 Theophilus of Alexandria, 51. 
 
 Thieme, K, 214-16. 
 
 Thomasius, G., 72, 78. 
 
 Thompson, J. M., 212 f. 
 
 Trinitarian language and doc- 
 trine, 11 ff., 25-9, 39, 44-9, 
 105 f., 132. 
 
 Tritheism, 26, 47. 
 
244 
 
 Index 
 
 Two Natures, Doctrine of, 24 f., 
 
 37, 50, 52-5, 90 f., 165 f. 
 Two Wills, 53. 
 
 Ulfilas, 41. 
 
 Unconscious, The, chaps. VI- 
 VIII passim. 
 
 Valentinians, 13. 
 
 Warfield, B. B., 115. 
 Weinel, H., 196 ft 
 Weiss, J., 117. 
 Wernle, P., 117. 
 Westcott, Bp. B. P., 91. 
 Western Church, 36. 
 Weston, Bp. F., 76, 169-73, 
 
 213. 
 Wordsworth, W.,1, 177, 229. 
 
 Oxford : Printed at the Clarendon Press by Horace Hart, M.A. 
 

 
 .■■'•.'■■■. 
 
 .--■^.- I 
 
 '■:.". 'i " ■' ■ ' ;'■■■ •